The Good Apprentice

by Iris Murdoch

  He returned to the car with a bag full of goodies and two wine bottles.

  ‘Have we got a corkscrew?’ said Midge, who had been studying the map.

  They had not. Nor had they got a tin opener, knives, forks, spoons, plastic cups and plates, or paper napkins. After another cruise in search of these Harry was feeling very hungry and on the point of being cross.

  ‘Harry — ’ said Midge, as they drove out of the town.

  He knew from her tone that she was going to ask a favour, and he tried to swallow his crossness.

  ‘Yes, my darling, my dear — ?’

  ‘I’ve been looking at the map, and, you know, the motorway passes quite close to Seegard.’

  ‘To where? Oh that place where Jesse lived.’

  ‘Lives. You can’t have forgotten its name.’

  ‘No. I just blotted it out of my consciousness long ago.’

  ‘Would you mind if — ’

  ‘Yes, I would!’

  ‘I don’t mean call on them! I’d just like to drive somewhere near arid see the tower. You can see it for miles across that flat land. I’d like to see that countryside again.’

  ‘No, Midge.’

  ‘Why not? We’ve been to your place and spent hours there. Why can’t we just go round through that bit of country? We needn’t go near the house, I’d hate to anyway, but I’d just like to look at the region.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I’d like to! You said this morning lovers give each other each other’s past. Well, I want to give you this piece of mine.’

  ‘You’ve never got over Jesse looking at you and saying “Who is that girl?’”

  ‘Don’t be silly. All right, I haven’t! Good heavens, you’re jealous!’

  ‘Of course I am. It’s ironic, I could die of it. Only I’m planning not to. Do you realise how much I suffer every day, every moment, at your being with Thomas? And now you’re going back to him, back to your husband. Midge, we must decide. Listen, I’ve got a flat for us.’

  ‘A flat?’

  ‘Yes, a place where we can be entirely on our own, where there’s no Thomas at all, where I can cook for you. We’ll stay there tonight. Thomas won’t be back till tomorrow. Meredith will still be in Wales — ’

  ‘I said I’d ring him.’

  ‘You can ring him from the flat.’

  ‘Harry — do be careful — ’

  ‘I won’t be careful, I’m fed up with being careful, God, how pathetic, as I listen to myself, begging you to come to that little flat in the intervals of your life with Thomas. Midge, we love each other absolutely. Yes or no?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You know about those tigers — what we said — the tigers of desire — ’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We’re closer now than we’ve ever been. You know that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then have courage, my angel, my dear, it’s all so near now, our happiness, one more move and we’re there and forever. We must stop pretending. We aren’t happy and that’s a scandal. You say you hate telling lies and you’ve been bothered by people looking at you and about my calling you my wife, all right, let’s stop it all, clear it all away and get in the clear. Please, darling, sweetheart, if you like I’ll stop the car and go on my knees. Midge, you know it’s going to happen, just stop putting it off, you know it’s got to happen.’ He stopped the car. In the sudden silence the sun shone upon a field of damp pliant green grass and a group of dozy meditative black and white cows and the blue sign for the motorway. A church tower rose beyond some trees. A distant dog barked.

  Midge said, ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, don’t look so grim and stony about it!’

  ‘It’s easy for you. I’ve got to wade through blood.’

  ‘Whose blood? Thomas won’t mind much, you know he won’t. He’ll arrange to recover! Anyway he has no blood. And Meredith is ours.’

  ‘Yes. I love you. And it’s got to happen.’

  ‘So there.’ Harry started the engine. He did not want now to press her further. He was feeling his way, oh so delicately, through the maze of her emotions, of her terrible dangerous hidden pain. He thought, she will come to the flat tonight. He said, ‘My dear heart, we’ll go anywhere you like, just show me the map. Where’s that place?’

  Midge pointed. ‘About there, I think.’

  ‘It’s not exactly close to the motorway. About thirty miles. I don’t call that close.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘If it were a straight road — but look at the way those little roads wind about. Never mind, we’ll go and take a very distant view.’

  ‘I just want to see that flat land again, it’s very strange and special.’

  ‘It’s funny, you look like Chloe today, perhaps it’s the local air!’

  ‘We could have our picnic there.’

  ‘Oh we’ll want to eat long before that!’ Only Harry found that he was no longer hungry. He smiled as he drove along. He was feeding upon Midge’s wonderful affirmatives.

  At that very moment Edward Baltram was experiencing a miracle. (The second one that day.) He was holding a letter which had been put into his hand by one of the tree men, the man whom he had seen before. Edward had spent the morning in bed, giving himself over with a kind of relief to feeling ill. To his visitors, who appeared separately, Stuart, Mother May, Bettina, Ilona, he had enacted illness. He had not come down for lunch. Mother May had brought him a tasty anonymous soup which he had quite enjoyed. After lunch, surreptitiously, he got up, dressed, and sorted out his things, dividing his own clobber from the borrowed stuff. He did not know what to do with Ilona’s necklace and put it inside a pair of socks. He looked at his suitcase, which now appeared so alien and old, but did not pack it. He sat on his bed. He was only playing with the idea of leaving. For how could he leave Jesse? The idea of kidnapping Jesse and taking him to London recurred, but with no picture of how it was to be done.

  He went downstairs and into the Atrium. Here, near to the potted plants, stood the family group, Stuart, Mother May, Bettina and Ilona. They were looking up at the tapestry and Bettina was explaining it to Stuart. ‘The fish represents a spirit which has escaped from its natural element — ’

  What rubbish, thought Edward.

  They paused when they saw him.

  ‘How are you feeling, old man?’ said Stuart.

  ‘A bit better. I think I’ll just sit and read for a while in the Interfec.’ It occurred to him that all four of them were gazing at him with meaningful looks. Well, not Bettina. Her look was unfathomable. They had clearly been talking about him.

  Stuart and Mother May both started to say something at once.

  ‘Sorry — ’

  ‘No, you go on — ’

  Mother May said, ‘Jesse’s a bit under the weather too. We thought you’d better not see him. He wouldn’t want your virus as well.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s the same virus,’ said Ilona.

  ‘He’s not seeing anybody at present,’ said Mother May. She added, ‘He hasn’t seere anybody. We think it’s better.’

  ‘Much better, I’m sure,’ said Stuart, staring at Edward.

  Clumsy ass! thought Edward. But he was glad to know that Stuart had not seen Jesse; it was humane of them to inform him. He went on across the hall to the Interfectory. They watched him until he had shut the door. Then he heard Bettina’s voice resume.

  He had spoken of reading simply as a ruse to get away, intending to go out through the back door and go walking by himself. He paused however, looking round the shabby room, so awkwardly full of a past the more distant and alien for being also fairly recent, the past of Jesse’s youth and his prime. I am here … Edward automatically tried the tower door (locked) and did not trouble to look for the key (which would be absent). He wandered over to the fireplace and looked at the photograph of himself as Jesse. He wanted to cry. Then he began to look vaguely at the bookshelves which he had never entirely searched. It occurred to him that he had
not, since arriving at Seegard, opened any book or even considered reading. Gazing dully at the shelves he suddenly saw the name of Proust. There before him was a volume of A la Recherche in French. He pulled it out. He looked into the front of the book and found Jesse’s signature in what looked like a youthful scrawl. For some reason it surprised him to learn that Jesse knew any French. His heart began to beat with a new note, differently, as he opened the book at random. S‘il pleuaait, bien que le mauvais temps n’effrayât pas Albertine, qu‘on voyait parfois, dans son caoutchouc, filer en bicyclette sous les averses, nous passions la journee dans le casino où il m’eût paru ces jours-là impossible de ne pas aller. This sentence staggered Edward so much that he nearly fell down. It was a perfectly ordinary run-of-the-mill sentence in the midst of the narration describing some quite ordinary day’s routine at Balbec, not particularly dramatic or significant, an ordinary day at Balbec — but Edward might just as well have been looking at the weightiest lines of a holy text or the climax of a great poem. Those nouns, bicyclette, averses, caoutchouc, those verbs, those tenses, that nous, that impossible, Albertine filant in the rain … Edward’s stomach heaved with emotion and he sat down abruptly in one of the long low armchairs of slippery leather. The French sentence came to him with an extraordinary freshness, like a breath of clear air to a man just out of prison, like a sudden sound of a musical instrument. Intimations of other places, of elsewhere — of freedom. He felt as he read it a kind of invigorating self-reproach and a new sort of power. There too he lived, he himself. He was there.

  He suddenly recalled someone saying about Willy Brightwalton that he believed in salvation by Proust; and for a moment Willy too, that old fat shabby figure of fun, appeared in the shed light as a messenger, a representative of something better. Better than what? He could rise, he could get up, he could get out. For there was elsewhere, as proof of it, this something else; and the unexpected emotion which had made him, a moment ago, nearly faint was, he now realised, pure joy.

  He got up slowly. He had no desire to look at the book any more and he put it back in the shelves. All that belonged to the future. He went, as he had intended, to the door and along the back of the house. Now, after rainy weather, the sun was shining on the fen, making it steam slightly. The sky beyond was clear. From higher up one would be able to see the sea. It occurred to Edward that he had only seen the sea once since his arrival, on his second visit to Jesse when he had seen the boat with the white sail. On other visits there had been mist or low cloud. Surely the sea would be visible now from upstairs in East Selden; only East Selden was out of bounds. He considered another attempt to get across the fen, then decided to go toward the river, cross it, which should now be easy, and go up to the dromos. He went on past the ilexes and the greenhouses and the vegetable garden. He could now see the poplar grove covered in flickering golden leaves. The orchard was just coming into flower, the tight white buds edged with scarlet. It was here that he met the tree man who put Brownie’s letter into his hand. The man, after handing it over, hung around in a pointed manner until it dawned on Edward that he wanted a tip. As Edward hastily handed it over, he thought how much more he would have been ready to give, had it been asked, for this letter.

  Railway Cottage

  Dear Edward,

  I have been thinking about our talk. I am afraid I may have seemed rather hard and hostile. I needed so much to receive the truth about what happened, to know exactly what happened, the details, so that I could add it to the mass of that awful event, and see it, and take it in as much as I could. I had to feel I’d done my best to get it all and to live it all. Of course it’s also a mystery and has to be lived with as a mystery. But it would have been unspeakably painful for me not to know, in some ordinary sense, as much as can be known about the events of that evening, and to hear it from you, in your words, in your presence. As you may imagine, I have heard some different accounts and speculations. I hope you understand. When we talked I was thinking of myself, and you may have thought me very selfish, as if I didn’t realise how absolutely awful it had all been for you. I have at least gathered that you and Mark were very good friends, and that gives me a special feeling for you, I mean a kind feeling. It was good of you to be so frank and to answer all my questions. It must have been hard to do so — yet perhaps too it was a relief. You said you needed me, and I think it would be valuable if we talked again. Actually there’s something else I’d like to ask you. But I really have no idea how you might feel about this. I can a little imagine what a dreadful time you must have been going through, not only with people blaming you, but with you blaming yourself. You may feel, in spite of what you said at the river, that really our talk was enough and you don’t want to see me again and be reminded or accused by my being me. You may wish in this matter to be by yourself. You said my mother had been writing you terrible letters. I’m very sorry about that. Please don’t blame her but see that she needs help too. She needs to stop hating you — that hatred is taking over her life. It’s possible that, indirectly, you could help me to help her. I don’t quite see how, but it might be. I feel rather desperate sometimes. This note is also to say that tomorrow (Tuesday) morning I will be alone at the cottage. The others have gone to London and I’m leaving too on an afternoon train. If you felt like coming over, not too late, in the morning I’d be in. But if you don’t want to, or perhaps can’t, come I shall quite understand.

  With good wishes,

  Yours

  Brownie Wilsden.

  When he had read this letter through Edward became almost insane, overwhelmed by an intense emotion which was so mixed of pain and joy that for the second time that day, and much more intensely, he felt quite sick and faint. He ran, holding the letter, past the orchard in among the poplars, and pressed his forehead hard against the smooth bark of several of the trees. He laughed and groaned. He threw himself on the ground and rolled about, then lay on his back and looked up through the glittering twisting leaves at the blue sky. Then he sat up panting and read the wonderful letter again. It read to him like the order of reprieve. And yet at the same time he was remembering the event, summoning all his guilt, his deepest sense of his crime, all that mess of resentful misery which was still with him, unabated and un-healed. What he had taken for works of redemption had all been illusions, effects of magic. This was the real thing. The sense of a return to reality was so strong, like a fast translation, that he felt positively giddy. Here at last was a pure authentic voice, a good voice, speaking to him with authority. But he must not, and this was capital, expect too much, expect, indeed, for himself, anything. He must abide by the dry precise exactitude of Brownie’s letter as by a legal document or deed of trust which said simply so much and no more. Yet he could not help, as he so chided himself, glorying in the letter. There was a sentence which he liked best and read oftenest. ‘I feel rather desperate sometimes.’ Did not that sound, the very least little bit, like an appeal? He thought, how can I be so meanly selfish as to let that please me! But he thought too, I’ll put it all on to her, she will deal with it all. And he thought, and this thought began to blot out all other pains and speculations, I shall see her again tomorrow.

  ‘The left wheel is still spinning,’ said Midge.

  The car had, ridiculously, become stuck on a grassy verge in one of the narrow lanes where they had again lost themselves after leaving the motorway. The earth had not seemed particularly damp or muddy when Harry had irritably backed onto it to turn, but grass had concealed a shallow ditch. Now they had spent nearly an hour trying to move the car, putting newspapers, stones, twigs, even one of Harry’s old jackets, underneath the wheels to make them bite. The car simply refused to budge. Midge was exhausted, red in the face from pressing things in under the wheels and pushing while Harry revved the engine, and helping him to dig away the earth which was like sticky toffee in the deepening ruts. It was now late afternoon and the sky had become overcast and the whole landscape darkened.

  The picnic h
ad been a great success. They had set off into the flat land intending to go to the sea. It turned out that Midge had no clear idea of where Seegard was, so there seemed no point in looking for it in what now seemed a large and thoroughly confusing area. It was always possible that they might spot the tower in the distance, but so far they had not done so. They had eaten the picnic on a little eminence, sitting on dry sheep-nibbled grass with a view of a large distant church which, without a guide book, they could not identify. Harry had bought sandwiches, salami, pork pies, tomatoes, cheese, biscuits, apples, bananas and plum cake. They ate a great deal of this and drank both the bottles of Spanish wine, pouring it into the glasses which Harry had bought at the corkscrew shop. Then they lay about on the grass for some time embracing each other. They had never made love out in the open before and the experience made them both very proud and happy. The landscape seemed to be entirely deserted. Then they fell asleep. After that they set off ‘towards the sea’, but were soon arguing about where it lay. Harry, who prided himself on his sense of direction, was reduced to driving at random looking for signposts, of which there were very few. Then after taking a turning down a road which degenerated into a farm track they had turned round, or tried to, and had thus become embedded in the grassy verge which had looked so reliably solid. Fortunately there was no urgent hurry about returning to London since neither Thomas nor Meredith would be home. Harry even thought privately that an accidental revelation might now do no harm at all. But he was affected by Midge’s increasing distress and unnerved by her obvious fear; and the episode was now becoming thoroughly tiresome, with the darkening landscape and the lack of any signs of possible assistance.

  ‘I’d better start walking,’ said Harry.

  ‘Yes, but which way!’

  ‘I don’t know! We haven’t the faintest idea where we are. I wish to God we’d never set out over these God-forsaken mud flats. I’ve never seen such an utterly pointless landscape.’