The Philosopher's Pupil

by Iris Murdoch

  ‘He is fully occupied with John Robert Rozanov.’

  ‘So he mightn’t notice me? I hope it’s a harmless occupation. Does that mean I can wait or that I needn’t wait?’

  ‘You don’t think George ever realized how friendly you were with Rozanov when you were a student?’

  ‘I wasn’t friendly with him. He just thought I was good at philosophy. And I — ’

  ‘And you —?’

  ‘Well, you know John Robert, or you did.’

  ‘You think you aren’t part of the Rozanov problem?’

  ‘I hope not. When I saw how besotted George was, I gave Rozanov up.’

  ‘And you gave up philosophy, in case George realized you could do it and he couldn’t!’

  ‘Don’t! That was ages ago, before we were married. I was studying George even then.’

  ‘I recall your saying once that George interested you more than anything in the world.’

  ‘Anyway I don’t want to be involved with George while he’s involved with John Robert, that would be one Chinese box too many. There is something, if I could only work it out, while I’m waiting. You can’t explain George by the old theories. You might just as well say he’s possessed by a devil. It’s more something to pity, like an illness, or an urge, like sex, like a nervous obsessive guilty angry craving. He knows now he’ll never do anything with his life. He’s a pathetic figure really. If George was in a novel he would be a comic character.’

  ‘We would all be comic characters if we were in novels. I wish you had gone on studying, philosophy or economics, not George.’

  ‘Yes. It’s part of that dream.’

  ‘Of happiness?’

  ‘I dream I’m back at the university. And don’t say “why not”, don’t say “you’re still young”, don’t say — ’

  ‘All right. Nothing ever came of those plays George was writing?’

  ‘Of course not. Didn’t he show you one?’

  ‘Yes. I’m sorry I lost George. I hate to lose anybody.’

  ‘If you could have kept him - but it’s impossible. If you had kept George he would have begun to detest you as he detests Rozanov. I think he tore up all the plays. He tore up my novel anyway.’

  ‘I didn’t know you’d written a novel.’

  ‘I might have let you see it. You’re lucky.’

  ‘I hope you’ll write another?’

  ‘It’s not being able to do anything, to impress anybody - I know you see George as a sort of “hero of our time”.’

  ‘The powerless man who becomes apathetic and then nasty.’

  ‘George as a nasty man. That sounds quite soothing. You know George lives in a sort of odd time scheme, as if he were a criminal who had already been punished and set free, although his crimes still lie ahead. He has already paid, and this sanctions his resentment.’

  ‘The justified sinner going on sinning. You said George felt like a Nazi war criminal at the end of a long sentence, purged by suffering, yet unrepentant!’

  ‘Yes. He was fascinated by those people. He read a lot of books about them. He’ll never achieve anything now, like studying or writing or anything, but he might achieve some awful act. I’m sure he dreams about it - all his little outrages — ’

  ‘Like trying to kill you?’

  ‘Well - he tried in a sense - but — ’

  ‘He pushed the car.’

  ‘Yes. I can still see so clearly his hands pressed on the back window, all pale like - like some animal’s — ’

  ‘And he kicked you after he’d got you out.’

  ‘I think I resent that more. I did provoke him. I taunted him about Rozanov. If he ever did kill me it would be accidental.’

  ‘Never mind. Go on. All his little outrages, or “pranks” as his admirers call them — ’

  ‘Are like - imagery, symbols - like a rehearsal for something he’ll do one day that will satisfy him at last - and then he’ll stop - he’ll be satisfied, or perhaps he’ll be disgusted, he’ll have destroyed something in himself, he’ll be exhausted, weak and pale like a grub in an apple, and the craving will go away.’

  ‘What stage in this process are we at now?’

  ‘That’s what I want to work out. The Rozanov thing is an interruption. It’s serious, but in a way that could be divertissement too. It’s fortuitous and can pass. Rozanov will go back to America and George will recover. Then we’ll know.’

  ‘Whether the thing he’s waiting for - the act that will cure him - has already happened?’

  ‘Yes. I thought the Roman glass was it.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Then I thought that murdering me was it.’

  ‘Except that you’re still alive.’

  ‘Yes, but it could be good enough.’

  ‘And if it isn’t?’

  ‘He might feel he had to finish me off so as to finish it off. He might see it as a fiasco, as a loss of face, as something that went wrong.’

  ‘Is that why you wait?’

  ‘No, it isn’t, that doesn’t make any difference, if I go back to George I take the risk. I just don’t want to go back in a muddle, in an undignified scramble, without a clear head and a policy.’

  ‘A policy —!’

  ‘And now I’ve delayed so long I may as well wait until Rozanov has gone back to America.’

  ‘And if George were cured, “exhausted” as you said, if he were weak and pale like a grub in an apple, docile, would he still interest you? Don’t you rather like the waiting?’

  ‘Sometimes I feel as if George were a fish I’d hooked … on a long long line … and I let him run … and run … and run … What a terrible image.’

  ‘What’s that strange music?’

  ‘There’s a fair on the Common.’

  The distant sound of fair music, distilled and sweetened in the warm evening air, faintly and intermittently drifted in the garden at Belmont. Nearer at hand a blackbird, lyrical as a nightingale, was rapturously singing. The ginkgo had on its summer plumage. Its plump drooping branches were like the rounded limbs of a great animal. The garden smelt of privet flowers. In fact the whole of Ennistone smelt sourly-sweet of privet where that valuable shrub was a popular feature.

  ‘Pearl, I feel frightened.’

  ‘What of, my darling?’

  ‘Let’s close the shutters.’

  ‘It’s too early.’

  ‘I wrote to Margot.’

  ‘That’s a good girl.’

  ‘What a nice paperweight my stone hand makes, look.’

  Hattie had placed the limestone hand which she had found in the wild garden on top of her neat pile of letters. She had written to her Aunt Margot, to her school friend Verity Smaldon, and to Christine with whose family she had stayed in France.

  ‘Did you reply to that impertinent journalist?’

  ‘Yes, I did that yesterday. Fancy that newspaper knowing that I exist!’ The editor of the Ennistone Gazette had written to Hattie asking for an interview.

  ‘I hope you said no firmly.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Hattie had had a nasty dream last night which still lingered in her head. In an empty twilit shop she had seen on an upper shelf a small semi-transparent red thing which she took to be a big horrible insect. Then the thing began to flutter and she saw it was a very small very beautiful owl. The little owl began to fly about just above her head causing her a piercing mixture of pleasure and distress. She reached up her hands to try to catch the owl, but was afraid of hurting it. A voice said, ‘Let it out of the window,’ but Hattie knew that this sort of owl always lived in rooms, and would die outside. Then she looked at another shelf and saw with horror a cat sitting there about to spring upon the owl.

  ‘You’re so restless today.’

  ‘I can’t breathe for the smell of flowers. Father Bernard said he might come.’

  ‘He won’t now.’

  ‘He might, he’s always late. You don’t like him, Pearlie.’

  ‘I feel he’s fa
lse somehow.’

  ‘That’s unfair.’

  ‘OK, it’s unfair.’

  ‘Don’t be cross with me.’

  ‘Do stop saying that, I’m not cross!’

  ‘Please don’t sew. What are you sewing?’

  ‘Your nightdress.’

  ‘You did enjoy being in London?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘I wish you liked picture galleries.’

  ‘I do like picture galleries.’

  ‘You pretend to.’

  ‘Hattie — ’

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m awful. It’s such an odd light, the sun’s shining yet it’s as if it were dark. I feel so peculiar. I hope I’m not wasting my time.’

  ‘If you read those big books you can’t waste your time.’ By the ‘big books’ Pearl meant the major European classics which Father Bernard had indicated with a flourish of his hand that Hattie ‘might as well get on with’ pending John Robert’s views on her studies. She was now reading Tod in Venedig.

  ‘Pearl, my dear, now that Hattie is safely at the university I can at last reveal how deeply I care for you. You have been a great support and a great comfort and I have come to believe that I cannot do without you. May I dare to hope that you care for me a little?’ These words, uttered by John Robert, were part of a fantasy which Pearl was having as she talked to Hattie. In the end (this obscure conception had become important to Pearl of late) John Robert would turn to her, perhaps as a last resort.

  These visions, which unfurled themselves automatically, co-existed with Pearl’s uneasy notion, which had lately grown stronger, that John Robert had a more intense interest in his granddaughter than he affected to have. Of course Pearl said nothing of this to Hattie.

  Alex had a recurring dream in which she looked out of the window of Belmont in the early dawn and found the garden, which had become immense, with a lake and a view of distant trees, full of strange people moving about purposively. A sense of impotent outrage and fear and anguish came in the dream.

  Now listening to the blackbird and gazing out from the drawing-room where she had not yet turned on the lamps, she felt a stab of this fear as she saw a motionless figure standing on the lawn. She recognized it almost at once as Ruby, but it remained sinister. What was Ruby doing, what was she thinking, standing out there alone? Earlier in the day Alex had seen the vixen lying warily, elegantly, upon the grass while four cubs played round her and climbed over her back. The sight had pleased her, but also caused her some obscure pain, as if she identified with the vixen and felt a fear which was always there in the vixen’s heart.

  ‘I can’t pray,’ said Diane.

  ‘Of course you can, silly,’ said Father Bernard looking at his watch.

  Diane had come to evensong for once, but on that evening Ruby had not come. Father Bernard had asked Diane into the Clergy House afterwards and held her hand and given her a small glass of brandy, and after that it somehow happened that they went on drinking brandy together.

  ‘You can try to pray. If you say you can’t pray you must know what trying to pray is. And trying to pray is praying.’

  ‘That’s like saying if you can’t speak Chinese you must know what trying to speak Chinese is.’

  ‘The cases are different. God knows our necessities before we ask, and our ignorance in asking.’

  ‘That depends on believing in God, but I don’t. If only he’d give up drinking.’

  ‘Anything counts now as believing in God, feeling depressed does, feeling violent does, committing suicide does — ’

  ‘Then he believes in God.’

  ‘Just kneel and drop the burden.’

  ‘That sounds like a pop song. Does he believe in God?’

  ‘I don’t know. But you do. Wake up. Invent something. Perform a new action. Go and visit Miss Dunbury.’

  ‘How is she, poor old thing.’

  ‘Ill. Lonely.’

  ‘She wouldn’t want to see me, she disapproves of me. I wish you’d see George.’

  ‘Devil take George. The sooner he commits some decent crime and gets put away the better.’

  ‘How can you say that!’

  ‘I think you should cut and run.’

  ‘Oh, you upset me so.’

  ‘Get out of this dump. Get a train; any train, going anywhere.’

  ‘Have you seen Stella?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He can’t have killed her. Where’s she gone?’

  ‘To Tokyo, go to Tokyo, go anywhere, do anything.’

  ‘I bought a new scarf.’

  ‘A new scarf can be a vehicle of grace.’

  ‘I’m drunk.’

  ‘So am I.’

  ‘I heard someone say you don’t believe in God.’

  ‘There is God beyond God, and beyond that God there is God. It doesn’t matter what you call it, it doesn’t matter what you do, just relax.’

  ‘I think George would do anything Professor Rozanov said.’

  ‘I’ve got to go to the Slipper House, I’m terribly late.’

  ‘You can’t go now.’

  ‘I can and will.’

  ‘Are you going to see that girl, Professor Rozanov’s niece?’

  ‘Grand-daughter.’

  ‘Funny little girl, little prissy white-faced thing. Couldn’t you ask Professor Rozanov to be nice to George?’

  ‘No. Come on. I’m off.’

  ‘I’ll walk with you as far as Forum Way.’

  It was nearly closing time at the Green Man. As I think I said earlier, centuries of non-conformism has left Ennistone rather short of pubs. There is the Albert Tavern in Victoria Park and a new pub called the Porpoise in Leafy Ridge. There is a rather posh establishment, the Running Dog, which is also a restaurant, in Biggins, near the Crescent, and a pub called the Silent Woman (with a sign portraying a headless female) in the High Street near Bowcocks. In Druidsdale there is the Rat Man, and in Westwold the Three Blind Mice. There are also a few tiny shabby houses of less note in the St Olaf’s area, and the ill-reputed Ferret in the ‘wasteland’ beyond the canal. The Little Wild Rose on the Enn beyond the Tweed Mill hardly counts as being in Ennistone, but makes a pleasant walk in summer. However, Ennistone is not a town for an easy drink, and a surprisingly large number of Ennistonians have never entered a pub in their lives. The resistance to serving alcohol at the Institute remains firm, though this may change in time with the altering mores of the younger generation. This younger generation in the form of the classless jeunesse dorée, who had ‘taken over’ the Indoor Pool at the Baths, had lately ‘moved in’ in a similar manner upon the Green Man, to the annoyance of Burkestown regulars like Mrs Belton.

  Tonight the cast of The Triumph of Aphrodite, many of them still wearing their costumes, were gathered there, after a rehearsal in the Ennistone Hall. The over-excited cast and their camp-followers had made a noisy procession from the Hall to the pub, and were now standing in a large chattering group spread along the counter. (The pub had lately been redecorated, abolishing the old distinctions between public bar, saloon and snug.) Tom and Anthea were there, and Hector Gaines and Nesta and Valerie and Olivia, with their pet Mike Seanu, and Olivia’s brother Simon who was to sing the counter-tenor part, and Cora Clun, daughter of ‘Anne Lapwing’, and Cora’s young brother Derek, star of St Olaf’s choir, who had the charming role of Aphrodite’s page, and Maisie Chalmers and Jean Burdett, tuneful sister of the St Paul’s organist and of Miss Dunbury’s truthful doctor, and Jeremy and Andrew and Peter Blackett and Bobbie Benning and other young persons who have perhaps not yet been mentioned such as Jenny Hirsch and Mark Lauder who were both animals, and young Mrs Miriam Fox (divorced) who worked in Anne Lapwing’s Boutique and was helping Cora with the costumes. Derek and Peter were both under age but plausibly tall. The masque was in that stage of penultimate disarray when (in any production) it becomes clear to the director that it will never be fit to be seen. The cast, however, remained carefree, filled with absolute irrational faith in Hect
or (who was now a popular figure, his vain love for Anthea being common knowledge) and in Tom, who had some vague reassuring authority as co-author. Scarlett-Taylor, after making some valuable historical pronouncements which it was too late to do anything about, had distanced himself from the operation; he was in Ennistone that weekend, but not in the pub, having declared himself for a quiet evening of work at Travancore Avenue.

  Tom and Anthea were together, with Peter Blackett who was in love with Nesta and half in love with Tom. Beside them Valerie and Nesta, both worrying about their college exams, were discussing Keynes. Valerie (Aphrodite) was still wearing the long white robe which was her under-dress. Hector came up.

  ‘The situation is hopeless.’

  ‘No, Hector, it went very well.’

  Andrew Blackett said to Jeremy, ‘Is she still there?’

  ‘Yes. Not a word to Peter.’

  ‘Of course not.’

  Andrew was wondering whether he should drive straight to Maryville that night and offer his life, his love, his honour and his name to Stella, whose dark beauty he had loved in total secrecy for many years. They would have to emigrate, of course. He pictured himself living with Stella in Australia, and for a second his head swam and he felt quite faint with joy.

  Heads of stags and dogs and great crested birds appeared here and there among the drinkers. A shaggy bear came lumbering up to Tom, and revealed Bobbie Benning.

  ‘Isn’t that thing terribly hot?’

  ‘Yes, and I’ve got a bloody cold. It’s no joke having a cold inside a bear’s head, I can tell you. Is Scarlett-Taylor here?’

  ‘No, he’s working.’

  Bobbie Benning, still tormented by his inability to teach engineering, and unable to bring himself to confide in Tom or Hector, had elected Emma, obviously a serious scholar, as his confidant but had not yet had a chance to unburden himself.

  Hector had been upset earlier in the evening by a difference of opinion with Jonathan Treece whom Hector had, unwisely he now saw, asked to help with the music. Treece had gone back to Oxford in a huff. However, this now seemed a minor matter. Hector was beginning to feel that he would go mad, consigned to his lonely lodgings at 10 p.m. and leaving Tom and Anthea together. ‘Let’s buy some drink and go on boozing somewhere else. Come to my place.’