The Philosopher's Pupil

by Iris Murdoch

  Tom was so surprised, so shocked, that he leapt backwards coming into resounding contact with the front door.

  Emma, red in the face, and breathing deeply, was equally distressed. He reached the bottom of the stairs, advanced a step or two, and stood looking sternly at Tom, his eyes narrowed without his glasses. Tom moved forward and they faced each other.

  ‘Emma! What on earth are you doing here?’

  ‘Well, what are you, if it comes to that?’

  ‘How can you speak so? Where is Hattie? Why are you intruding?’

  ‘Don’t shout!’

  ‘Is she - is she up there?’

  ‘I don’t know where she is.’

  ‘I think you’ve been with her!’

  ‘Oh Tom, stop, think, don’t be crazy! Hattie isn’t here.’

  ‘Then what — ’

  ‘There were two women in this house, though I know you only noticed one. Your lady, the mistress, has gone away. I, as befits my position as the hero’s friend, have been in bed with the maid.’

  ‘You’ve been - oh Emma — ’

  ‘You’re shocked.’

  ‘I resent your being here.’

  ‘You have no rights in this house as far as I know.’

  ‘You behave as if you have! What a charade, what an affront to - to her - to Hattie Meynell.’

  ‘All right, it takes some explaining, but if you take on so I can’t explain.’

  ‘To treat this house like a — ’

  ‘Oh come, come, Tom.’

  ‘I thought you were a serious person with decent standards of behaviour.’

  ‘Do you mean someone who doesn’t make love to maidservants?’

  ‘You know I don’t mean that.’

  ‘What did you want, if it comes to that, creeping in unannounced at this hour?’

  ‘Are you suggesting —?’

  ‘No! I’m just asking you to calm down.’

  ‘You go about it in a funny way. What else have you been doing that I don’t know about? You tried to wreck things, at any rate you did wreck things — ’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You gave away what I told you about John Robert and Hattie and me. I told it to you as a secret and you gave it away, and now it’s been all over the press, you don’t know how horrible it’s been and what awful damage it’s done.’

  ‘I did not give it away.’

  ‘You must have done. You told it to Hector Gaines.’

  ‘I did not!’

  ‘You did. You bloody liar.’

  Emma picked up a paperback book (his own copy of Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War) which was lying on a table beside the faded roses and hit Tom across the face.

  Then instantly they started to fight. Both were athletic and agile and for the moment very angry, but neither was much good at fighting. Tom gave a violent push against Emma’s shoulder. Emma lunged at Tom’s chest and sent him reeling back towards the door. Then they sprang at each other like two dogs, clutching and staggering round in a circle, Tom dragging at Emma’s shirt and Emma at Tom’s jacket. Emma tried to get a wrestling hold, one foot driving behind Tom’s leg. Tom punched him in the ribs. They crashed into the table, sending the vase of roses flying.

  This scrimmage might have gone on longer, only it was suddenly ended by a deluge of cold water which descended on the combatants, decanted from a bedroom jug by Pearl on the landing above.

  Startled, soaked and ridiculous, they drew apart.

  ‘Hell!’

  ‘Damn!’

  Tom took off his jacket and shook it. Emma wrung out the end of his shirt, which had emerged again.

  ‘Thank heavens I wasn’t wearing my glasses.’

  Tom had closed his eyes and lowered his head.

  ‘Are you all right, Tom?’

  ‘Yes, let’s go in here.’

  They marched into the sitting-room and closed the door.

  Tom said, ‘Is there anything to drink?’

  ‘No, it’s a teetotal house. There’s some Coca-Cola here.’

  ‘Give me some.’

  Emma opened the cupboard and poured out two glasses. His hand shook.

  ‘That was absurd, to fight like that,’ said Tom.

  Emma said nothing.

  ‘Emma, I’m sorry.’

  ‘OK.’

  Tom looked anxiously at his friend, then looked away. He said, ‘What’s been happening here, how long have you been here?’

  ‘I arrived this evening. John Robert took Hattie away last night.’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘Back to America. Well, I suppose first to his place here, or to London — ’

  ‘Oh -God - but I don’t understand. How did you know? I mean, did you come here looking for Hattie?’

  ‘No, you fool.’

  ‘But then why - how - you don’t know Pearl, you’d never exchanged a word with her, was it just accident, a sort of impulse, when you found her alone?’

  ‘Oh, Tom - I saw her at the Baths, and I talked to her on that picnic, can’t you remember, and again last Saturday. Last Saturday I kissed her.’

  ‘I see, so — ’

  ‘I was feeling bloody depressed. You hadn’t turned up or shown any sign of life. I thought I’d come down here, and I rang up from the station to ask Pearl to come out to a pub. She said she was alone and asked me to come round. She’s pretty depressed too.’

  ‘Emma, there’s been such ghastly stuff in the local press here.’

  ‘Yes, she told me. That brings us back to where we started.’

  ‘You mean - yes — ’

  Emma sat down and rubbed his eyes. ‘I’ve been thinking about that, of course, I didn’t tell Hector. I didn’t tell anybody. Pearl didn’t tell anybody, and I don’t imagine Hattie did.’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘But do you remember, we were both pretty drunk, in the garden that night we started talking about it, about John Robert’s idea about you and Hattie, and all sorts of people were slinking about and could have been listening.’

  ‘My God, you’re right. What we said must have sounded pretty crazy though.’

  ‘Enough for somebody to pick up an idea.’

  ‘Yes - oh Christ, we’re bloody fools. I mean I am. Oh Emma, if you only knew what a fool I am and what a muddle I’m in and how miserable I am!’

  ‘And I think I’ve given you a black eye.’

  Tom noticed that one of his eyes was closing. He touched it. It felt hot and tender. ‘Yes! Is there any more Coke? Thanks. But look, about Hattie and John Robert — ’

  ‘Do you mind if I ask Pearl to come down? This is her house in which we’ve been behaving like oafs. And she can explain, at any rate she can tell you what she knows. It’s all bloody obscure.’

  While Emma went to fetch Pearl, Tom looked at himself in the cut-glass fountain mirror. His right eye was watery and narrow and surrounded by a puffy red circle. His hair was wet from the deluge, its long curls reduced to rats’ tails. His shirt was wet too and torn at the neck.

  Emma found Pearl in the hall. She had picked up the strewn roses and the fragments of the mauve art déco vase, and was on her knees mopping up the water, squeezing a cloth into a pail. She got up slowly and looked sombrely at Emma.

  Emma reached out and took her hand and pressed it hard. He said, ‘Come in and talk to Tom. Tell him about last night.’

  Pearl said, ‘I think that water will stain the parquet.’

  ‘Damn the parquet. Come, girl.’

  Pearl was wearing a blue summer dress and a big shaggy cardigan into whose pockets she now thrust her hands, pulling the garment down. Her legs were bare above her slippers. Her straight hair had been fiercely combed and her face had its older Mexican look. Her nose was thin and sharp. She frowned and hunched her shoulders, then followed Emma into the sitting-room.

  Tom hastily put away the comb with which he had been trying to arrange his wet locks. He bowed awkwardly to Pearl, who nodded to him. Tom was now
acutely conscious of Emma’s implied condemnation of him for having failed to notice Pearl because she was classified as ‘the maid’. He was now aware of her handsomeness and the strength of her presence. Emma stood looking from one to the other.

  The room was suddenly full of jealousy, as palpable as a thick green gas. Tom and Pearl looked at Emma. All three stiffened as if to attention.

  Pearl said, ‘Do sit down.’ She sat down wearily in one of the bamboo chairs. The two men remained standing.

  Tom said, ‘I’m sorry I barged in.’ Then, ‘So John Robert took Hattie away?’

  ‘Yes. Last night. He arrived about ten o’clock and there was a row.’

  ‘A row?’

  ‘He was furious with us, chiefly with me, because of the business last Saturday and the stuff in the Gazette.’

  ‘But you’d seen him since Saturday?’

  ‘No. We were waiting for him every day. He only came yesterday.’

  ‘I had my interview on Wednesday,’ said Tom.

  ‘What happened?’ Emma asked him.

  ‘He told me to go to hell. Never to come near Hattie again. He somehow thought I was in league with George.’

  ‘He thought I was in league with George too,’ said Pearl.

  ‘He’s crazy, he’s got George on the brain.’

  ‘Pearl has got the boot,’ said Emma.

  ‘You mean he’s sacked you?’

  ‘Yes, it’s all at an end. He decided suddenly that I was a corrupt person and a moral danger to Hattie. He called a taxi and took Hattie away and said they would be going back to America at once.’

  ‘But it can’t end like that,’ Tom said.

  ‘That’s what I told her,’ Emma said.

  Pearl, looking very tired, said slowly, ‘I thought that Hattie would come today. Last night she was terribly upset and sort of dominated by him. But I thought that this morning she would come running straight back. And I waited. But she didn’t come. That means either that he’s taken her away to London or straight to the airport, or else he’s poisoned her mind against me, persuaded her I’m some sort of - degraded schemer.’

  ‘He couldn’t,’ said Tom, ‘she wouldn’t believe anything like that. They must have gone away. She’ll - she’ll write, she’ll come back.’

  ‘It’s too late,’ said Pearl. ‘He said it was time for things to change and of course it is. Things must change. Hattie must change - and go away - altogether. And he couldn’t possibly - now - bear for me to be near her — ’

  ‘Why?’ said Emma.

  ‘Oh because - because - Anyway they’re probably in America by now. She has gone.’

  There was a moment’s silence. Pearl said, ‘I’m so tired, I didn’t sleep last night, you must excuse me.’ She got up and slouched out of the room.

  Tom said, ‘Hell, hell.’ Then he said, ‘Are you staying here tonight?’

  ‘Yes, if she’ll let me.’

  ‘Well - I’ll be off - I’ll leave the door open at Travancore Avenue just in case - I’ll go back to London tomorrow - I think. And you?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Tom went out into the hall.

  ‘Damn, my jacket’s still wet.’ He pulled on his jacket and then his mackintosh. He kicked off the slippers and put on his shoes. ‘Funny, I put the slippers on without thinking. I suppose nobody bothers now.’

  He picked up Greg’s umbrella. ‘Why, there’s my umbrella in the stand, I left it here - that other time — ’ He put the two umbrellas under his arm.

  Emma was standing at the sitting-room door. He said, ‘Is it still raining?’

  ‘I think it’s stopped. Well, goodnight.’

  ‘Goodnight.’

  Tom opened the front door. He said, ‘Would you walk with me as far as the back gate?’

  They walked in silence across the wet lawn and along the soft mossy path under the trees whose wet leaves still dripped. Tom opened the gate.

  ‘Emma.’

  ‘Yes, yes, yes.’

  ‘All right?’

  ‘Yes. Goodnight.’

  When Emma came back to the Slipper House he found Pearl sitting on the stairs.

  ‘Let’s go up, Pearl.’

  ‘No, I like it here.’

  Emma sat down on the stairs below her. He kissed the side of her knee through her dress.

  ‘Perhaps sitting on the stairs suits us.’

  ‘It suits me anyway.’

  ‘You’re a funny girl.’

  ‘Almost as good as no girl at all.’

  Their unexpected love-making had come about because both were in despair. These despairs were the occasion of an untypical recklessness. Pearl had waited all day for Hattie, first confidently, then with mounting grief and surmises. She tried to occupy herself by packing up Hattie’s clothes, but kept stopping to look out of the window, expecting to see her come running with flying hair. She had seen Hattie depart helplessly in tears, overpowered by John Robert and unable to resist. She imagined (rightly) that in the morning Hattie would be in command of herself, pugnacious, rebellious, summoning up a kind of cold fierce resolve, rarely displayed, which Pearl knew she possessed. Pearl did not imagine that Rozanov would lock her up. Whatever his general intentions, he could hardly prevent her, on that day at least, from coming back. About that Pearl felt fairly certain; and she did not believe that John Robert was likely to set off for London or the airport in the middle of the night. About other things she could only try not to be too terribly wretched. She had, she realized, made a fatal mistake, indeed two fatal mistakes, in telling John Robert that she loved him, and in letting him know that she had perceived his feeling for Hattie; and she had blurted these dreadful truths out in such a crude ungentle ugly way. (In fact Pearl’s indiscretion affected her own life and the lives of others more profoundly than she ever knew, since the shock of her unspeakable knowledge of it provided John Robert with an extra, perhaps decisive, motive for telling his love to Hattie.) Pearl knew the philosopher well, his vanity, his dignity, his prudishness, his secretiveness. Against all those she had offended and could scarcely be forgiven. At hopeful moments (early in the day), she thought that she might, for Hattie’s sake, be tolerated. At less hopeful moments she got such meagre comfort as she could from reflecting that John Robert had in any case, and without her foolish words, already decided, or feigned to himself, that Pearl was ‘corrupt’, ‘no fit person’ and so on. He had decided to get rid of me, thought Pearl, and any show of loyalty to me from Hattie would make him more determined. He has suddenly come to see me as in the way. In the way of what? Here she checked her reflections, since whatever that future might prove to be it did not seem to contain her.

  Moreover, as the day went on and Hattie did not come, Pearl began to imagine how Hattie’s resistance might have been broken down, how Hattie’s mind might have been poisoned. Could Hattie be brainwashed, made to believe that Pearl had betrayed Rozanov’s plans, had plotted with George McCaffrey, had deceived Hattie and was altogether a different person from the one she seemed to be? Was such a total change of view possible? Could Hattie be thus led to think that it was time to give up a childish fancy for her old nursemaid? Hattie had never resisted Rozanov’s will. She had, it was a fact, gone away with him last night. Was not the picture of a rebellious Hattie speaking up for Pearl quite unrealistic, a wishful dream? When Pearl reflected how loyal she had been, how totally she had given over her life to those two people, she felt an anger against Rozanov which gave a little relief to her pain. But the pain was terrible. Her love for the monster raged in her heart, and the more she rehearsed his sins the more she loved him: she loved him, protectively, tenderly, forgivingly with an absolute self-breaking sweetness as if she had made him up or he were her child. She held him secretly, possessively, in her heart with such a strength of passion that at times it was hard to believe that he was a separate person with other concerns who knew and cared nothing about how she felt. The desire to tell love is a natural ingredient of love itself; love f
eels it is a benefit, a blessing, a gift that must be given. No doubt the desire to tell Rozanov, always present, had grown stronger in her heart, and with the shock of his attack on her, became irresistible: the desire by some sort of passionate magic to join together the captive loved image and the terrible free real reality. That was one pain. The other, perhaps even worse, pain was her love for Hattie, not a lurid secret devotion of the imagination, but a real bond, a daily bread love, a lived reality of family life such as Pearl had never known before: an absolute entwining of two lives, a connection the breaking of which had seemed inconceivable. This too, as the day went interminably on, she almost cursed. How could she have become so blindly attached to what she could so suddenly and so completely lose?

  When Emma rang up, about five o’clock, Pearl was sure it must be Hattie, and this disappointment made a final degree of desperation, a final signal. She had in fact become, alone in the house so long and with such thoughts, appalled and frightened. She had not thought much about Emma, she had indeed very little conception of him, but now she found herself needing his presence. She needed help, she needed somebody, and Emma, proposing himself, was suddenly clear as the only possible person. What followed was a part of her decision to abandon hope, though this did not prevent her from almost dying of fright when she heard Tom enter and thought it was John Robert.

  Emma’s despair and consequent recklessness was of dual origin. He was upset and annoyed by Tom’s failure to appear in London and his failure to write or telephone. Of course, since he had returned to London on Sunday, he knew nothing about the Gazette article and the later dramas. He did not think that Tom was ill; at any rate, if illness was its cause, Tom would surely by now have explained his absence. The silence must be hostile, it must express an alienation which was entirely unjust. Emma could have telephoned Travancore Avenue, but felt too stiff and proud to do so. Besides, a messy telephone call would leave him even more disturbed. He reflected often upon the night which they had spent together and wondered whether a retrospective disgust at that episode was what was rendering his friend absent and silent. Emma had by now firmly classified that night as, as he had put it, a hapax legomenon; nothing like that would ever happen again. And yet he could not help thinking about it and experiencing, in relation to Tom, that mysterious and terrible and well-known yearning of one human body for another, a condition which got worse as the week continued without sign or sight.