The Apprentice Read online

  I feel my belly leap. Is this what this is: a tryst? Suddenly my life seems exciting, one worthy of a would-be writer. Yet much as I might have felt I wanted that, my legs have started shaking. I’m terrified of what might be about to happen. Am I going to have an affair with James Carnaby? And, if so, what does he see in me? What do I have to offer a man like him?

  He turns side-on to the bar, still looking at me, and asks me what I want to drink. My first thought is a Staropramen and a vodka chaser, but I decide that that sounds a bit studenty, and certainly unfeminine, and ask for a large glass of white wine. Already I’m annoyed with myself at being concerned about making a good impression, at foregoing what I really want because I’m afraid of what James will think of me. Why can’t I relax and be myself? Why do I always feel this need to match people’s expectations?

  James turns back to me, two drinks in his hand, one of them a tall glass of foaming amber beer. It looks delicious. I could kick myself.

  ‘Are you OK?’ he says, sensing that something is wrong, and for the first time since I’ve got here I meet his gaze. At once, feeling like I’m being sucked into a black hole, I forget all about the beer as I struggle to maintain my composure. James has gorgeous warm brown eyes that inspire confidence. He looks, as he stands there questioning me with them, as if he really cares. As if I am the only person in the world for him right now.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I manage at last.

  ‘Shall we?’ He gestures with his head to the right, and I follow him as he dips through one of the hatchways and then another to find us a deserted snug. Reaching the one at the end, he places our glasses on the table and then swings back to close the hatchway against the rest of the world.

  I study him as he goes. He moves athletically as he bobs through the hatchways, with surprising litheness for a man his age. I guess he must go to the gym on a regular basis to remain so lean and limber. His hair, though well and truly grey, is expertly cropped and shaved at the neck, giving him a clean, youthful look. His clothes are casual but smart: well-fitted Paul Smith jeans and a pale linen jacket over a cream shirt. Brogues glimmer on his feet, polished and of impeccable quality. He’s a man, it’s clear, who has the good taste to spend his money wisely. A man who knows what suits him and how to show himself off to best advantage. For the first time, I find myself wondering about the women in his life.

  I know next to nothing about him, I realise, despite his being a literary figure of some renown. He’s written well-received tomes on various aspects of art history, including a very famous work on the nude in Western art, and has curated numerous exhibitions. But of his private life I know nothing. Is he perhaps a widower? And how come he’s currently single, given his looks, fame and money? Or isn’t he currently single at all?

  My worries must be inscribed on my face, for James reaches over to give my hand a reassuring pat and, just as he did the first time at Anne’s house, he lets it linger, his eyes probing mine.

  ‘How has your day been?’ he says, and I cast around for something sensible to reply. I can hardly tell him I spent much of it looking at nude photos and thinking about him, having a wank in my room as Anne – the more I think about it the more I’m convinced she was there – listened in.

  ‘Busy?’ he prompts me. ‘Anne working you hard?’

  I shrug. ‘Not very. I tidied her piles of crap for her.’

  ‘Oh good.’ He laughs. ‘That confounded kitchen. A nightmare. Anne’s really not very good at the domestics, and even with Hettie around it’s a losing battle. What else did you get up to?’

  ‘I … I went for a run. She wasn’t around and I didn’t know what else to do. She – I’m not sure what she wants of me, to be honest.’

  James takes a sup of his beer, and his eyes leave mine and wander over to the window. I follow his gaze. Through the etched glass a tree is fluttering and flapping in the rising breeze.

  ‘Oh,’ he says a little vacantly, as if his mind is suddenly elsewhere. ‘I’m sure it will all become clear in time. I’m certain Anne has plans for you.’

  I stare at him. Suddenly there’s a sinister edge to everything: to his voice, to this meeting, to the telephone call. I remember how this confident, self-assured, worldly man was ready to defer to Anne’s wishes at the height of our sexual excitement, and I wonder again what’s in it all for him. Is this really a date or is James playing games with me?

  ‘Like what?’ I ask, surprised by the sudden harshness in my voice. ‘What plans?’

  He looks back at me, but his eyes seem unseeing. ‘How should I know?’ he says. ‘But she wouldn’t have placed the ad if she didn’t need help, would she? I’m sure you’ll get the hang of things soon enough.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I mutter, looking down at the table, tracing with my fingers the damp circle on the beer mat where my glass has stood.

  Sensing that I am going away from him, that the good mood we started out with risks being lost, he leans into me, and I can feel his breath on my face, minty and fresh but tinged with the beer he’s been sipping. It’s all I can do not to swoon. My hand tightens on his as I feel his free hand beneath the table, alighting on my knee, pushing up my pencil skirt and then making its way up my inner thigh. I grab my glass and take a huge gulp of the honey-coloured Chardonnay, then another.

  ‘Your legs have started to shake,’ says James in a low voice.

  Is it any bloody wonder? I want to shout, but instead I look panicked over towards the section of bar that fronts our snug. Luckily, we’re in the very last one, and the few staff on duty on this quiet evening seem to have congregated at the other end, where the main doors from the street are. Nobody can see us, thank God.

  He leans in further, nuzzles my throat, and I moan and start shuddering, my whole body convulsing. This is where it really gets me, and he’s found it – my main erogenous zone, the place where madness begins. With one hand I steady myself against the wall, with the other I reach out wildly, flailing, almost sending my drink flying from the table as I seek something to grab, to anchor me to the Earth. My head is thrown back, and I’m at his mercy now, totally, still aware that we could be seen by a passing member of staff at any moment but unable to do anything to prevent that happening. Unable to countenance the act of calling this to a halt, of insisting we go somewhere more private.

  Still steadied against the wall and the table, I bring one knee up against my chest, shucking my shoe off as I do so. I slip one bare foot between James’s inner thighs and with my toes stroke the bulge of his cock and balls in his designer jeans. His breath sharpens on my neck, speeds up, becomes irregular. I let go of the table edge, bring my free hand down and unzip his fly deftly, then slip my hand into his trousers and down his pants. His dick, blood warm and hard, stiffens further as I take it in my sweaty palm. I yank at it.

  ‘I want you,’ I whisper urgently. ‘I want you now.’

  He lifts his head a little and shoots a glance over his shoulder.

  ‘Don’t worry about them,’ I command him. ‘There’s no one there.’

  I’ve let go of his cock, am struggling to bring my knickers down over my thighs, to reveal myself in all my sodden glory, ripe and ready for him. But he’s distracted still, his mind suddenly elsewhere. I am the driving force now, despite it being he who initiated this.

  I leave my knickers where they are, wrap one hand around the back of his neck and try to coax him towards me. I no longer care where we are, or what damage may be incurred by the furniture, the glassware.

  Then suddenly I know why James’s attitude has changed. All of sudden it’s like a sixth sense has fired up in me, and I know, I just know, that Anne Tournier is on the other side of the wooden partition, listening in on us. I don’t know how I know, exactly, but there is something in James’s face, in the way he held his body as he turned to look around, the way his attention seems to be directed more towards the neighbouring snug than towards the bar, as one would have expected to it be, that gave the game away.

 
; And with that comes the suspicion that this has all been a set-up – that James phoned with Anne’s prior knowledge or probably even at her bidding, in the hope that I would answer and that he could set up this meeting. This was never a tryst, in the strictest sense of a secret date. But it does, I think, remembering something I learnt at uni, match more closely the idea conveyed by the original French word triste, meaning a waiting place in a hunt. For what is happening here if not that I am being preyed upon by Anne in some way that goes beyond my comprehension?

  Of course these thoughts only really come to me in flash form or with hindsight, for I’m preoccupied both with the sudden certainty of Anne’s presence behind the screen and the awareness of the ludicrousness of what I’ve been trying to do – which is to fuck James right here in this pub, sprawled against this rickety table sticky with beer. I’ve got carried away to the point of utter recklessness and disregard for the social proprieties, and now the reality is catching up and I feel foolish and exposed.

  I whip my skirt down, my knickers still bunched around my lower thighs. ‘She’s here, isn’t she?’ I hiss, and James looks back towards the half-height door and nods.

  As my gaze follows his, the door slowly opens. Although I’m expecting it, the sight of Anne’s face sends a jolt through my body, like an electric shock.

  ‘Wha–?’ I begin. But, before I can go on, James, having quickly zipped himself up, is walking towards Anne, reaching out to hold the door open for her, his body language betraying no shock or even surprise.

  Bent forwards from the waist, Anne slips through and then straightens up. Her eyes are fast on James’s, and something passes between them, some information conveyed in a language I don’t know, that is foreign to me. It’s not amusement, or embarrassment on James’s part. It’s just a kind of knowledge, an understanding of some kind; something that speaks of years of a friendship with depths at which I can’t even guess. These are looks resplendent with secrets.

  As if remembering, in some kind of psychic synchronicity, that I am there, they both look towards me, where I stand by the table.

  ‘Hello, Genevieve,’ says Anne coolly, as if her intrusion on this scene is perfectly natural. No explanation is proffered for her sudden appearance. I’m so stunned by this that I’m unable to reply.

  James takes up the baton. ‘How about if we go back to my flat?’ he says, and Anne nods.

  ‘Lovely,’ she says. ‘I trust you still have some of that Hennessy, the Private Reserve?’

  James smiles, holding open for us the door that leads directly out from our snug onto the street. ‘I’ve been saving it just for you,’ he says. ‘It’s worthy only of a very special lady.’

  Anne laughs, a high, slightly forced or false laugh it seems to me. ‘Superb,’ she says, linking her arm through his. ‘Genevieve, you absolutely must try some. It’s indescribable, a mix of dried orange and roses, roasted almond and vanilla.’ She looks me deep and hard in the eyes, as if she’s trying to tell me something, but at the same time her gaze is curiously expressionless. My stomach lurches: for a moment it’s as if I’m staring into the void.

  ‘Vanilla,’ she goes on, ‘is an aphrodisiac, of course.’

  I look back at her, still lost for words.

  James, intentionally or not, comes to my rescue. ‘It should be something special,’ he says, ‘at that bloody price.’ Now it’s his turn to look deep into my eyes. ‘Seventy-five quid a bottle is what that little beauty costs. Your boss has expensive tastes.’

  Anne laughs unconvincingly again; the sound resembles a bell, clear and over loud in the deserted street along which we walk.

  ‘But I’m worth it, aren’t I?’ she says, rolling her eyes first at James, then at me.

  Walking along, I’m glad that Little Venice is so quiet tonight. We must form quite a curious threesome: me, Anne and James. A timid young thing in her twenties, a jaded and world-weary French novelist in her fifties, and a distinguished-looking art historian possibly in his sixties. But of course the casual passer-by would take us for a girl – a student or young professional – out for an evening stroll with her mum and dad.

  Yet a threesome, precisely, is what I imagine I am on my way to. James’s phone call was pure ruse – a way to get me out of the house in order that Anne might follow me, finding her own kind of titillation in that. I can’t imagine why else it should have come about this way. Anne’s appearance – her interruption – was certainly no accident or coincidence; nor can James claim that she must have listened in to our telephone conversation, for nothing in him showed surprise at her arrival. No, the two of them cooked it up between them, perhaps for the sheer novelty value of it all. Anne must get bored at home all day.

  I shrug, fatalistic now. Let her have her fun, I think, and as the thought passes through my mind I’m surprised: it’s not as if I’ve had that much to drink. I could use that excuse yesterday, but not today. Or not yet: already I’m tasting in my mouth, in the back of my throat, the burn of the cognac I’ve been promised, and along with it the lure of sweet forgetfulness.

  After ten minutes or so, James and Anne slow down and then halt before an imposing red-brick block of flats on a wide avenue. James rattles his pockets in search of his keys, and then opens the heavy front door and gestures us to go in before him. As I walk behind Anne, I look up into his face, and there must be a question in my expression, or at least doubt or hesitation, for he smiles reassuringly, and for a moment his hand comes down to rest on my shoulder, ever so lightly.

  We take a shiny modern lift to the top floor, where James’s flat turns out to be. It doesn’t take long to make the ascent, but the atmosphere has grown perceptibly more tense since we left the street, or perhaps it’s just the fact that we are suddenly packed together in a small space, our bodies almost touching, our breaths mingling, the tinge of sweat in the air, from one or from all three of us – who knows? I’m careful to avoid catching my own eye in the mirror at the back of the lift, knowing that if I do I might well bottle it. Or perhaps I just won’t recognise myself, and that, surely, is the first step on the road to madness?

  Part of me, of course, wants to bottle it. Part of me recognises how laughable this is to start with, and also the demeaning nature of it all – already it’s clear that Anne is using me as some kind of puppet or toy. But bottling it, I remind myself, would bring my new world, my chance at a new life, crashing down around me, and I know I would regret that – at least if I did it prematurely, without giving it my best shot. I don’t, after all, know what Anne and James have in mind, and I’ll never know if I bolt at the first hurdle like a frightened horse.

  We step out into a long corridor, at the end of which James opens another door that takes us into his apartment. Despite the traditional nature of the building, the space inside has been opened up and much ingenuity put into creating a modern layout. The main living space is open-plan, with a large seating area with several dark-leather sofas and armchairs arranged in a circle into which a large stainless-steel arc lamp dips its head like a metallic swan. The effect is 1970s Paris. There’s no television, or none discernible. To the right of the room, on the side that must face the street, is a long stainless-steel island that forms a sort of breakfast bar cum kitchen work surface. Parallel to it along the wall are some units in pale Scandinavian wood, and an oven, hob and sink – all, again, in sparkling stainless steel. The kitchen is impeccable and looks hardly used. Nothing – not even a bottle of olive oil or washing-up liquid – has been left out to disrupt the minimalist effect.

  James sees me looking around and taking all this in. ‘Welcome to my little nest,’ he says. ‘It’s nothing special, but it does for an old bachelor like me.’

  ‘It’s lovely,’ I blurt, but already the word ‘bachelor’ is whirring around in my head, reawakening my unanswered questions of earlier. What exactly is James’s role in all this, in this game of which Anne is so clearly the ringleader? What’s in it for this worldly, successful man, who despite
his age could most likely seduce any woman he desired?

  He shrugs. ‘It’ll do,’ he says faux modestly.

  Anne, in the meantime, has ensconsed herself on one of the squishy leather armchairs. ‘How about some of that cognac?’ she calls across, her lips pinched in a meagre smile, as if she disapproves of our small talk. Just get on with it, her face seems to say, and the butterflies start up in my stomach again as the uncertainty of her motives and intentions fires up in me once more. I very gladly accept the glass of amber liquid that James proffers me.

  ‘Chin-chin,’ he says, having handed Anne her glass and then turned back to his drinks cabinet to get his own. He and I clink glasses; as we do so, he looks me hard in the eyes, as if trying to send me some sort of telepathic message. I smile nervously, and he smiles back. Then he gestures towards where Anne is sitting.

  ‘Do sit down, Genevieve,’ he says, and I turn around and plump myself down opposite Anne, without looking at her.

  James fiddles with a swanky Bosch hi-fi system set on a low Oriental-looking table in a corner of the room. After a few seconds, something soothing comes on, something that has at least some measure of a calming effect on my jangling nerves.

  ‘Ah,’ says Anne, and I risk a glance over in her direction. She’s leaning back against the chair, chin tilted up a little, eyes half-closed. I wonder what scenes are playing themselves out on the inside of her eyelids.

  ‘Górecki,’ she adds after a few moments. ‘A perfect choice.’ She takes a swig of her cognac.

  Watching her, I do the same. Then I take another.

  Seeing how fast I’m getting through it, James crosses the room with the bottle and refreshes my glass, giving me a more than generous measure. As he stands beside me, letting the fiery Hennessy flow from the bottle, he places one hand on my shoulder. This time it stays there. We look at each other and time seems to stand still. I have to have you, I think, and I wonder if he can read my thoughts in my eyes, hear them in some way or other.