The Pupil by Caro Fraser Page A

disturbed by any of this. David Liphook and William Cooper, who shared a room on the same floor as Jeremy, treated him kindly, for he was an eminently likeable, cheerful and amusing young person. When they thought he was insufficiently occupied, they would send him off to look up cases and make notes on them, and when Edward was doing this he felt that he was getting along fairly well. In fact, he was doing little more, and on many days a great deal less, than he had done at university.
    Still, life pleased him. He was doing what a young man of his age was supposed to be doing. He shared a flat in a square just off the Brompton Road with three other young men. They gave rowdy dinner parties attended by other young ex-public schoolchildren, all largely indistinguishable in conversation one from the other, except that the girls squealed and the men roared; he played the occasional game of rugby, swam at the RAC Club (generally regarded asmore amusing than the Oxford and Cambridge) and went to long and boisterous parties at the weekends. He had several girlfriends, enough money, and went home to his family every third or fourth weekend, where he would shout authoritatively at the dogs and delight his parents with his young, masculine presence. He was supremely content.

    One day in early December, Edward and his pupilmaster were sitting in their room at 5 Caper Court. All was still. Outside the air was foggy and the gas lamps were being lit around the Temple, although it was only four o’clock in the afternoon. Jeremy was employed in researching some procedural points of law, which any moderately competent pupil should have been able to do for him, had they been allowed, while Edward, ostensibly reading a textbook, was making impressively little headway with the
Telegraph
crossword. There was a knock at the door, Jeremy called ‘Come!’, as men of his type will, and Leo Davies came in.
    Leo and Jeremy did not get on especially well with one another, although they managed to conceal this fact. Leo found Jeremy humourless and pedantic, while Jeremy mistrusted Leo’s glib elegance and charm. He disliked hearing Leo’s laugher echoing round the building, as it so often did, suspecting, without foundation, that some of it might be directed at him. What irked him most was that Leo had an informality of manner that made Jeremy feel stuffy and constrained. In the blustering uncertainty of his twenties, Jeremy had found it useful, especially in court, to assume an air of unbecoming pomposity, which he now found impossible to discard.
    ‘Jeremy, I was wondering if I might borrow Edward for a while. I’m fairly snowed under and I thought he might be able to help me with some pleadings. Good practice for him, eh?’ he added, a little questioning Welsh lift to his voice.
    Edward’s heart sank a little. This sounded suspiciously like work. Pleadings – yes, they’d done a bit of that at Bar School and in the exams. That was a long time ago, though. Months. Jeremy sighed impatiently and leant back in his chair, as though reluctant to lose his valuable assistant.
    ‘Of course, of course.’ Then he carried on with his work as if to suggest that he did not wish to be interrupted by any more trivia.
    ‘Right,’ said Leo lightly. ‘Pop along in about ten minutes, then,’ he said to Edward, and left.
    Edward tidied his books away, went for a pee, and set off for Leo’s room with a quaking heart. On the stairs he met Anthony. He had noticed over the weeks that Anthony’s manner had seemed a little distant, but his present nervousness obliterated the recollection and he collared Anthony confidingly.
    ‘God, Anthony, Leo Davies has just asked Jeremy if he could borrow me. He wants me to do some work for him!’ Edward practically squeaked.
    ‘Well, is that such a problem?’ asked Anthony, on a note of genuine enquiry.
    ‘It could be! It could be bloody awful. He mentioned something about pleadings. I haven’t done any of those