The
door closed behind him with a heavy thud, a sound his over active imagination
likened to a coffin lid being closed. It was loud, but not loud enough to drown
out the phantom voice and the snide comment.
“That’s going to be a quick
interview.”
Liam heard it clearly, as if someone
had said it just inches from his ear. He wasn’t stupid enough to believe that
the comment was aimed at anyone else. It was directed at him. He knew it, and
yet, it didn’t bother him. In fact, it was a true reflection of how he felt.
He followed the two Bodyguards, his
feet moving as if his shoes were weighted with lead. They escorted him down a
wide hallway that was decorated with row after row of po-faced portraits, none
of whom Liam recognised. He only gave them scant attention anyway, disliking
the way their eyes looked down on him, their disapproval paramount in their
countenances.
You don’t belong here, those
disapproving faces seemed to be saying.
I know, Liam retorted, from the
confines of his mind.
There was another door at the end of
the passageway, which the Bodyguards held open for him. This was not done as a
courtesy, but to shepherd the boy deeper within that inner sanctum. Beyond the
door was an antechamber with three other doors at the other points of the
compass. One of these doors would lead outside and to freedom. Another, into
the actual interview room. The final door would lead... well... Liam didn’t
know and didn’t care. If he had the balls, he’d ask right now which door was the
exit, bid the Bodyguards a fond adieu, and would skulk away and enjoy the rest
of his afternoon.
Take the easy way out, in other
words.
Liam sighed, a deep inhalation and
exhalation that could have been seen, by a casual observer, as someone preparing
to take a big plunge. Psyching himself up. If only.
“This way,” one of the Bodyguards
announced. There was no fanfare. Just the rough voice and an arm turning a door
handle and pulling open the door. There was not even a “good luck” or something
similar as Liam strode between the duo and into the next chamber.
The meeting room was a huge, high
ceilinged chamber designed to make the interviewee feel small and
insignificant. To further the sense of powerlessness, the dominating feature of
the room was a massive wooden desk shaped like a crescent. Around the outer
curve of the crescent were three high backed chairs occupied by the three
interviewers. These sat facing the door so that the three interviewers could
watch the boy carefully as he walked towards them. His own chair, which the
interviewer in the middle of the trio bade he deposit his sorry arse into with
a gesticulation, was much smaller, and was without arms or soft cushions.
Sitting in it, Liam felt the back of the chair conspiring to hold his spine
straight, to force him to actually sit up, and look directly at the men across
from him.
“Good afternoon, Liam,” the tutor in
the middle crowed. The chamber amplified his voice, deep and mellifluous, so
that it filled the entire room seemingly without effort. “My name is Peter
Osborne. To my left is Elias Clough and to my right... Gerard Lucas.”
“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” Liam
replied, his voice sounding tiny and hesitant, pitched a little too high. He
hated that sound, hated the tremulous quality he heard coming from his own
mouth.
“So... Liam,” Osborne said, his
voice dripping with sarcasm. “You want to become an apprentice?”
For a split second, Liam was sorely
tempted to answer honestly. Instead, he pictured his father at the moment he
announced in his usual brusque manner that he’d nominated Liam as a candidate.
There was no sarcasm in his father’s voice, just a dead certainty that whatever
Liam said this afternoon mattered little. His place was all but assured.
Therefore, what passed in these few minutes was a farce, and it was in Liam’s
best interests to simply play along and bring the formality to a speedy
conclusion.
“Yes,” he lied. “There is nothing
more I want than to become an apprentice.”
He watched with satisfaction as all
three tutors blanched. The fellow who posed the question coughed, and shuffled
at the papers set out on the desk before him. Liam glanced at these but
briefly. They were all blank, there for show, each sheet adding a layer of lead
around his rapidly beating heart.
“You’re aware of the requirements
for the apprenticeship?” Clough asked.
“Yes, sir,” he replied, diligently.
He even allowed himself to sound
excited by the prospect of being force-marched around the training yard, of
having boys nearly twice his size pummelling him with wooden swords and fists
clad in boxing gloves. Just yesterday, he had been the only boy to put the
wrong foot in the stirrup and to mount the horse backwards, eliciting howls of
derision from his peers. Yes sir, he thought. I am ready for twelve months of
humiliation and pain.
“Can you write?” Lucas demanded.
“Yes, sir,” Liam said. Sure, he
could write, but his handwriting was like most other things he did. It was
awkward, uncoordinated, a slow process. It didn’t help that he was left handed
and that if ever a tutor caught him using his pen in that hand, they’d rap him
over the knuckles with whatever device of torture was in their possession and
force him to use his right hand.
“It’s only proper,” they would quip.
That or some other trite expression. What they said didn’t matter. Liam’s
cheeks would burn with humiliation regardless of what they said, and so too the
offensive left hand.
“Can you read?”
At first, the question seemed daft.
I can write, why wouldn’t I be able to read? Liam was tempted to say. But thankfully,
he stopped himself. The two skills weren’t mutually exclusive, he realised. Any
monkey could copy the symbols onto a piece of paper. But not every monkey could
read those same symbols back. There was a tale he remembered his father telling
him about how ancient priests with precious secrets would hire waifs from the
slums and get them to simply copy the scripts from one parchment to another.
Because they couldn’t read, the secrets were safe. And once the waifs had served
their purpose, they’d be given a few coins as payment and sent on their way.
“I can read,” Liam said. Then, after
a pause, added, “My father made sure I learned that skill.”
The trio nodded in unison. Whether
they approved of Liam’s literary skills or the fact that his father insisted he
acquire them was largely immaterial. Until mention of his father, the trio
looked about as excited to be here as Liam. He might have been naïve about
much, but Liam knew boredom when he saw it. And until his last remark, boredom
was scrawled across the faces of his interviewers like an exquisitely detailed
map. Now, the faintest glimmer of interest arose in their eyes.
“Your father is a good man,” Osborne
said. “Would you agree with that, Liam?”
“It would be unwise to disagree with
that, I think, sir.”
The tutors smiled at this remark, cold
smiles barely touched with mirth. “Indeed, it would be,” Osborne commented. On
either side of him, his companions nodded silently, dutifully. “Tell me... what
line of work is your father in?”
“Trade, sir. My father is a
merchant.”
“A quite successful merchant, too,
from what I have heard,” Clough murmured.
“That is true,” Osborne replied.
“So the matter of... certain
donations... wouldn’t be beyond his means, then?” Clough wondered aloud.
Osborne shook his head slowly. “Not
at all.” He turned his gaze back to Liam, his cold smile still firmly in place.
“I’m fairly certain that he’d meet any charitable need to ensure that young
Liam here is made an apprentice. Isn’t that right, Liam?”
In that moment, Liam felt his heart
lurch inside his chest. But, like the good boy he was, the good boy that his
father always required him to be, he simply nodded. “Yes, sir,” he said.
