The Philosopher's Pupil

by Iris Murdoch

  ‘How can that be?’ said Pearl. ‘We’ve only met today.’ Pearl was wearing a summer dress too, not a flowy flowery one like Hattie’s, but a straight yellow shift, like a sort of science fiction uniform, roped in at the waist to an increased narrowness. Her head too, with her straight profile, looked narrow as if it were trying to be two-dimensional. The sun had made her dark complexion a shade darker, raising a reddish-brown glow in her cheeks, and finding reddish lights in her dark hair, which she had had expertly cut much shorter.

  ‘I saw you several times at the Baths, at the Institute as they call it.’

  ‘Oh —?’ Pearl found Emma very odd. He was perspiring in his coat and waistcoat, and his pale face was burnt to an uncomfortable shiny pink. He peered at her sternly through his narrow oval glasses.

  ‘Yes. You interest me.’

  ‘It’s kind of you to be interested! You know I’m Miss Meynell’s maid?’

  ‘Yes, that’s picturesque but not important. It’s quaint for anybody to be anybody’s maid these days.’

  ‘You’re Irish, aren’t you?’

  ‘That too is picturesque but not important.’

  ‘Well, what is important?’

  ‘You are.’ Emma threw a stone into the pool but it did not sink, it rested upon a thick water-lily leaf. He threw another to hit the first but missed.

  ‘What can I do for you?’ said Pearl, rather curtly.

  ‘Ah, I don’t know that yet,’ said Emma. ‘Possibly nothing.’ He added, ‘I wanted to meet you before I knew who you were.’

  ‘But why did you want to meet me? I’m sorry, this is becoming a rather silly conversation.’

  ‘I don’t think so. A little laboured, but we make progress. Again, I don’t know. Why is one impressed by some people and not by others? That’s not a matter of logic.’

  ‘I think we should go back — ’

  ‘I don’t usually talk to girls like this. I don’t usually talk to girls at all.’

  ‘It may be better not to talk. You’ll find me very dull.’

  ‘Why do you think that?’

  ‘I know nothing.’

  ‘That’s all right, I know everything. If you want to know anything, I can tell you.’

  ‘You’re a historian —?’

  ‘Yes. Of course all I know is facts and a few tattered ideas I find adhering to them.’

  ‘We’d better go and join Miss Meynell and Mr McCaffrey.’

  ‘My friend is called Tom, your friend is called Hattie. Can’t you drop the Misses and Misters?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘As you please. I’ve thought of a reason why I wanted to meet you.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You look dry.’

  ‘Dry?’

  ‘Yes. Girls are seldom dry.’

  ‘What does it mean?’

  ‘Dry as in hard and dry. The opposite to soft and mushy.’

  ‘I thought men liked softness. Perhaps you think I’m like a boy.’

  ‘Tell me something about yourself.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Anything.’

  ‘My mother was a prostitute.’

  ‘Am I supposed to be impressed?’

  Meanwhile Gabriel was having a terrible experience. She had set off walking along the beach (as Brian had seen her do) but had soon climbed up on to the rocks on the landward side and begun to clamber along them. Was she looking for George? No. The idea of being alone with George in this intense wild region filled her with fear. Did she enjoy the fear? She went on and came at last to a place she knew, not far from the lighthouse, where the rocks became steep and the strip of sand between the seaward rocks and the landward rocks disappeared, and the rocks fell sheer into deep water. Here, lifting her head from a difficult scramble, she suddenly saw a man ahead of her, outlined against the sky. For a second she thought it was George. Then she saw that in fact it was not a man, but a tall teenage boy. As she advanced, she saw another boy. They were standing looking down into a shallow pool in the rocks where, above the high-tide mark, the winter storms had tossed some flying water. Gabriel knew the pool. As she came forward the boys saw her. ‘Hello.’ ‘Hello.’ Gabriel paused beside the pool and looked down too. Then she felt an instant spasm of pain and premonitory fear. There was a fish swimming to and fro in the pool, a large fish about eighteen inches long. Gabriel thought, that fish has no business in that pool, he must have been put there by the boys. Her identification with the fish was instantaneous. She thought, he will very soon suffocate if he is left here. The pool is foul anyway, the sea never reaches it at this time of year.

  She said, ‘What a lovely fish. Did you catch him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you going to put him back in the sea?’

  ‘No. Not likely!’

  ‘You can’t leave him here — ’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘He’ll suffocate in that small pool.’

  ‘We’re going to take him home,’ said the other boy. ‘We’ve got a bucket.’

  ‘To eat?’

  ‘Maybe. Or maybe just to keep.’

  ‘You wouldn’t be able to keep that fish alive.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Won’t you please put him back in the sea? We could catch him and just drop him over the edge here into the deep water, and see him swim away. Wouldn’t that be a nice thing to do?’

  The taller boy laughed. ‘I’m not going to put it back. It’s my fish!’

  The boys were about fifteen, dressed in black leather jackets and jeans, their hair cut close to their heads. The spectacle of Gabriel’s distress clearly amused them.

  ‘Please,’ said Gabriel, ‘please.’ She squatted down beside the pool.

  ‘Hey, leave it alone!’

  ‘He’s so lovely, he’s so alive, and he may die — ’

  ‘I bet you eat fish and chips!’ said the other boy.

  Gabriel said, with a sudden inspiration, ‘I’ll buy it from you!’

  They laughed again. ‘Would you, how much?’

  ‘I’ll give you a pound.’

  ‘Two pounds.’

  ‘All right, two pounds.’

  ‘Ten pounds, twenty pounds, a hundred pounds.’

  ‘I’ll give you two pounds for the fish.’

  ‘Let’s see the two pounds.’

  ‘Oh dear — ’ Gabriel had no money with her. Her handbag was lying on the sand under a rug with the remains of lunch. ‘I haven’t got it here. I’ll get it from the beach. But can we let the fish go first, please let’s, and I promise I’ll give you the two pounds. You can come with me — ’

  ‘No,’ said the taller boy. ‘You bring the two pounds and we might, I just say might, let you have the fish.’

  Tears came into Gabriel’s eyes. She stood up. ‘You will stay here, you won’t take the fish away?’

  ‘We won’t stay forever!’

  Gabriel turned and began to scramble back across the rocks. She slipped and tore her stocking and grazed her leg and scarcely noticed and bundled on.

  ‘Oh there you are!’ It was Brian who had returned to the beach.

  ‘Oh Brian, darling!’ Gabriel slithered down to the sand, wrenching her skirt. ‘Could you give me two pounds, quick, please — ’

  ‘Two pounds?’ said Brian, whose relief had instantly evaporated as soon as it appeared. He was exhausted with running to and fro, and annoyed with Gabriel for vanishing. ‘What for?’

  ‘Some boys have got a fish, a live fish, I want to buy it to save it— ’

  ‘Two pounds, for a fish?’

  ‘I want to put it back in the sea.’

  ‘Oh don’t be silly.’ said Brian. ‘We’re not made of money. Certainly not.’

  Gabriel turned from him and ran on laboriously, her feet sinking in the sand, her face red with tears.

  ‘And did those feet in ancient time

  Walk upon England’s mountains green?

  And was the holy Lamb of God

  On England’s p
leasant pastures seen?

  And did the Countenance Divine

  Shine forth upon our clouded hills?’

  The four young people were together again in the wild garden. Tom, after his second defeat, as he felt it to be, at the hands of Hattie, had hastened, with her, to seek for Emma and Pearl. Then they had walked on together and climbed into the ruined shell of the manor house which was filled with grass and buttercups and daisies and white-flowering nettles. Inside the irregular remains of the walls, which contained two fine Elizabethan windows, it felt odd and ghostly, as if, in spite of the bright sun, the place were twilit. In the grassy space which had been the great hall there was a curious echo, and Tom had persuaded Emma to sing, and Emma had sung Blake’s beautiful anthem. Emma had drunk as much whisky and Riesling as he could lay hands on at lunch, and this explained his readiness to sing, as well as the temerity of his conversation with Pearl. The sheer sudden force of the singing and the high sweet slightly rough piercing quality of the sound amazed and fascinated the two girls as Tom had intended. Looking at their rapt faces, he felt a sharp pang of envy. He was not always able to feel his friend’s gifts as his own.

  ‘I don’t understand the poem,’ said Hattie, after they had congratulated Emma. ‘Why is he asking “did those feet”?’

  ‘It’s a poem,’ said Tom. ‘It doesn’t have to mean anything exact. It’s a sort of rhetorical question. He’s just imagining Christ here.’

  ‘But perhaps he was here,’ said Emma. ‘Miss Meynell is right to notice the question. After all there is that legend — ’

  ‘What legend?’ said Tom.

  ‘That Christ was here.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Yes, in England, as a child. He came here as a child with his Uncle Joseph of Arimathea who was a tin merchant.’

  ‘Did he? Christ? Here?’

  ‘It’s a legend. Haven’t you ever heard it?’

  ‘No. But it’s wonderful!’ said Tom, suddenly transported. ‘And it could be true. Fancy Christ here, walking on our fields. It’s so - oh it’s so beautiful - and it’s great! He came with his Uncle Joseph of Arimathea as a child. Oh that makes me so happy!’

  Emma laughed at him. ‘You’re easily excited by what every schoolboy knows!’

  ‘I didn’t know it,’ said Hattie.

  ‘I must go - I must run — ’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘I must tell somebody else, I must pass the news on! Oh I’m so pleased! I must run and run!’ With these words Tom vaulted over one of the low parts of the wall and ran across the ruined terrace littered with broken stone, leapt to the grass, and began to run away as fast as he could towards the sea down a long avenue of vast ragged yew trees which had once been yew hedges.

  Left above with the girls, Emma felt annoyed, annoyed with Tom for deserting him, annoyed with himself for singing, annoyed with Pearl for having been the occasion of that silly conversation, and annoyed with Hattie for being, as he had got it into his head, a touchy stuck-up little miss. He said rather curtly, ‘We’d better get back now.’ They set off after Tom, walking in silence.

  Tom ran fast, then becoming breathless ran more slowly. He ran along a footpath bordered by misty white cow-parsley which was just coming into flower. The footpath ended at a little tarmac road, and across the road was the field and the descending track where they had parked the cars, and the vast semi-circular rim of the sea framed on one side by the old black-and-white lighthouse, and on the other by the promontory and the house set upon it, Maryville, which was fully visible from the top of the field. A man was walking along the road, it was George.

  Tom ran up and seized his brother’s arm, ‘Oh George, George, did you know? Christ was here. Oh, it’s a legend but it could be true. He was here in England like in Blake’s poem. I never understood it before. He came as a child with his Uncle Joseph of Arimathea who was a tin merchant! It could be true, couldn’t it? Fancy Christ here in England! Did you know?’

  ‘I knew of the legend,’ said George, detaching Tom’s arm, but gently.

  ‘Everybody knew but me. But now I know and it’s - like a revelation - it changes things. Oh George, I do want you to be all right, I’d do anything for you, I’ll pray for you, I do pray for you when I pray, I sort of pray, I suppose that’s what it is, I care for you so much. Stella will come home, everything will be all right again. I think I see that now. I hate to think of you wandering about alone and thinking. Don’t be alone and think terrible thoughts, will you, please. Something good will happen to you, something very good will come to you, I feel sure, I feel so sure — ’

  ‘Do you really pray for me?’ said George, smiling with his little blunt teeth. ‘I think that’s rather impertinent.’

  ‘Oh come and swim, come and swim with me now, like we used to. You know that would be good.’

  ‘We go different ways. Go on. And as for your friend, he was never here, you may be certain of that. Go on, go on.’

  Adam had gone along the beach with Zed and discovered a place where a sort of river or gully of sand ran between the rocks right to the sea itself. Adam and Zed ran down to where the small waves were breaking. Adam took off his shoes and paddled. He knew that he was not supposed to go swimming by himself but it was so nice to be able to walk into the sea on gently shelving sand, instead of hobbling over stones and rocks. He was wearing his bathing trunks, and when the water was deep enough he sat down, then turned over and swam a stroke or two. The water was very cold, but Adam was used to that. He loved the taste of the salt. Zed stood on the sand well back from the foam. He disliked and feared the sea and did not want to get his fur splashed. He wished that Adam would come back. To cheer himself up he pawed a pebble, pushing it a little, but his heart was not in the game. Adam came back and picked Zed up. He thought Zed might like a little swim, he swam so well, and Adam was always strangely and deeply excited to see him swim. He took the dog out beyond the surf and let him down gently into the water, watching the dry white fur become wet and clinging, feeling the warm dog in the cold sea. He let Zed go and watched with joy as the little dog paddled along keeping his fastidious nose and high forehead well above the water. Zed could have let Adam know how much he hated it, but he felt he had to be brave because that is a dog’s duty, and had to pretend in order to please his master. Adam swam on a little bit and Zed followed, paddling with his strong little white paws, through the smooth glossy water which so quietly rose and fell. Adam played with Zed, encouraging him to ride on his shoulder. The sea felt warm now, and the blue sky blazed radiantly at them over the close horizon of the rhythmic waves.

  Tom ran down on to the beach. Brian and Alex were searching for Alex’s watch. He ran up to them. ‘Did you know that Christ was in England?’

  ‘What?’ said Alex.

  ‘Christ was in England. It’s a legend. He came as a child with his Uncle Joseph of Arimathea who was a tin merchant.’

  ‘I’ve lost my watch,’ said Alex. ‘It dropped off somewhere here. Or was it here? We’ve moved.’

  ‘You search over there near that rock,’ said Brian. He was upset because he had been nasty to Gabriel, he had not tried to take in what she was saying, and when he followed her to the beach Alex had collared him and Gabriel had disappeared.

  ‘But did you know about Christ?’ said Tom. ‘It seems to me so extraordinary and so moving. Like in Blake’s poem. “And did those feet in ancient time …” I never understood it before.’

  ‘It’s impossible,’ said Brian.

  ‘But had you heard?’

  ‘The legend, yes, but it’s impossible, as your historical chum will tell you. Does he always drink so much? He reeled off positively sozzled.’

  ‘Please help us to look!’ said Alex, red-faced and stooping in an awkward position as she used to when she cried ‘Damn, damn, damn!’ with the dustpan and brush.

  ‘We ought to get Zed. You remember he found that pack of sandwiches once.’

  ‘Alex’s watch doesn’t smell,
’ said Brian.

  ‘For a dog, anything smells.’

  ‘Ruby’s gone off again, blast her,’ said Alex. ‘She went to stare at Maryville. Sometimes I think she’s mental.’

  ‘Ruby will find it,’ said Tom. ‘She’s got second sight. It’s the gipsy blood.’

  ‘Just search over there, will you? We haven’t done that bit. I’ve got to go and find Gabriel. Have you seen Adam?’

  ‘No. All right, all right!’ Tom went over to the rock and looked about vaguely, thrusting at the coarse gritty sand with his foot. Then he sat on the rock and looked at the sea which was dark blue with a glittering crusty look like broken enamel. The tops of the waves were white with crisp creamy foam whipped up by the wind which had become stronger and colder. The sunny sky, where a few white puffy gilded clouds now sailed, was gleaming with a cold northern blue which Tom loved. He felt so happy all of a sudden. He thought, I’ll write a pop song about that. ‘Jesus was here, he was here, he was here, didn’t you know, oh, didn’t you know.’ The combination of the child Christ in England, the familiar poem, Emma’s beautiful strange high voice, and the blue-enamel sea made a huge complete perfect present moment.

  It had been a wearisome run for Gabriel on the loose sand to reach her handbag and she had been sweating and panting. She took out the two pounds and threw off her cardigan. She ignored Alex who called to her, and ran back, climbing up again on to the higher rocks. The boys were still there. Then it proved very difficult to catch the fish, and Gabriel kept crying ‘Let me, let me!’ because she was afraid the boys would hurt its fins or pick it up roughly and drop it on the hard rock. At last one of them got hold of the slippery darting fish and somehow (Gabriel closed her eyes) stepped to the rock edge and dropped the fish into the deep water. Gabriel saw it enter the water and swim away and a great burden slipped from her heart. The boys laughed and said, ‘If we catch another, will you buy it?’ Gabriel began to walk back, happy, but feeling cold without her cardigan.