The Philosopher's Pupil

by Iris Murdoch

  There are of course a number of factors in the case which must remain forever undecided. That John Robert should have chosen to die at the Institute is easily explained. He did not want to run the risk of being found by Hattie. But did Rozanov actually take the poisonous compound, did such a thing even exist? That it existed is, I think, given the man, simply proved by the letter, and equally I do not imagine Rozanov as one to delay or shirk, after writing the letter, the completion of the act. What caused his death? Was he, as is possible, already dead by the time George immersed him? And even if Rozanov did swallow a supposed lethal dose, would it necessarily have proved fatal? Supposing Father Bernard had arrived before George (as he might have done had he not gone first to Hare Lane)? Could the philosopher have been resuscitated? A confession by George together with the production of the suicide note would certainly have posed some interesting medical, legal and indeed philosophical problems. It is the sort of thing that would have interested John Robert, who might even have felt some odd ironical appreciation of George’s last-minute intervention in his life. That, at least, would have held his attention. What would the law have judged George to be guilty of? And what indeed, as things stand, is he guilty of? All these unanswered questions are likely to continue to disturb the minds of both George and Father Bernard. I had several talks with Father Bernard before his departure (of which I shall speak below). I have not yet been able to talk to George, but I hope that, with Stella’s help, this may prove possible in the near future.

  Hattie suffered extreme grief and shock at her grandfather’s sudden death. Love is joy, even impeded love is joy while hope remains, and of course Hattie did indeed love her ‘newly found’ grandfather and did not really believe his ‘nevermore’. The instant frightful loss was hard to bear. She felt it moreover as ‘her fault’, because she had obeyed him and gone away, and had not, by staying, altered that accidental (as she thought) chain of events which led to that senseless fall on that slippery edge. Although she knew how unhappy John Robert was and why, I do not think that, given the circumstances, she has ever wondered whether that death was other than accidental. She has not, so far as I know, discussed John Robert’s final revelation with anybody, probably not even with Tom. She has decided (here I am guessing) that this secret of the old man whom she so suddenly and strangely and briefly came to know and love is hers and hers alone. (Remarks which she made to me when very upset would have been comparatively obscure had I not had access to other sources of information.) Herein, as in other ways, she has shown herself to be a strong character. As for Tom McCaffrey, if he ever wondered whether he were not really being recruited to protect Hattie against John Robert himself, he has probably by now dismissed these speculations or indeed, in the felicity of his happy nature, forgotten them.

  When it was that Tom untied Hattie’s virgin knot is not known for certain. Perhaps it was during that first strange protected aeon of their love which lasted from Sunday morning to Monday evening, when they were told of John Robert’s death. (The news that Hattie Meynell and Tom McCaffrey were together at the Slipper House had circulated in Ennistone as early as noon on Sunday. No doubt I was not the only witness of that early morning flight.) However that may be, Tom and Hattie were married in the autumn following all these events. Perhaps a period of mourning is not a bad preparation for a marriage. The match gave universal satisfaction in the town, not dimmed by those who enjoyed asserting that he would have done much better to marry Anthea Eastcote who was now so fearfully rich. As for Hattie’s dowry, Tom did not do too badly. John Robert turned out to have saved quite a lot of money, even apart from his two houses in California, one at Palo Alto and one at Malibu.

  The marriage took place according to the Quaker rite at the Meeting House, in the course of the usual meeting for worship, with only Friends present. Here, taking Hattie by the hand, Tom declared,

  ‘In the presence of this assembly, I take my friend Harriet Meynell to be my wife, promising, with God’s help, to be unto her a loving and faithful husband, so long as we both on earth shall live.’

  After Hattie had made her answering declaration, Tom placed Feckless Fiona’s wedding-ring upon Hattie’s finger. A lot of people cried, not only Gabriel. There was a party afterwards at Belmont, instigated and, with remarkable success, organized by Gabriel who was suddenly able to put into practice a lot of her hitherto frustrated conceptions of what family life should be like. (Alex, who survived her fall, was at this time, as I shall explain later, in eclipse.) Brian walked about, saying with satisfaction, ‘What a waste of money, thank God we’re not paying.’ Pearl was present as unofficial ‘bridesmaid’ and Emma in the role of ‘best man’. Tom wanted him to sing but he refused. There were no speeches. The occasion, like that of many weddings, brought together a number of lively persons, who had not all hitherto met, and who all seemed very pleased with themselves. Milton Eastcote was present. So was Steve Glatz, who is now editing John Robert’s surviving notebooks which constitute the ‘great work’, of which so much is expected. Margot (née Meynell) Markowitz turned up with her Jewish lawyer husband, Albert (who had, Pearl and Hattie agreed, greatly improved her). Verity Smaldon, Hattie’s pretty school friend, made a refreshing dint in the grieving heart of Andrew Blackett. I had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of Stella’s father, Sir David Henriques, with whom, as she predicted, I got on extremely well. Hector Gaines, lately engaged to a well-known academic lady, came especially to show off his recovery to Anthea, but suffered, on seeing her, a regrettable relapse. (This may be the place to add that, in spite of all our various misfortunes, The Triumph of Aphrodite was successfully performed - the show must go on, as Hector said – and even attracted the favourable attention of London critics.) Joey Tanner made his first appearance as Anthea’s fiancé. He made a bad impression on the town gossips, but chiefly because they were determined to think he was marrying her for her money. Emma’s mother on the other hand, looking incredibly young, charmed everyone. Matchmakers, who abound at weddings, were certain that she and Sir David were made for each other. Gavin Oare was not invited, but Mike Seanu came under the wing of Nesta, Olivia and Valerie to ‘cover’ the event for the Gazette. Ruby, no longer employed at Belmont, came as a guest but helped Gabriel and Dorothy Osmore with the washing-up. Judy Osmore, to please Gabriel (for she was a kind-hearted girl), wore the dress which had been dyed with tea. (She did not know the details of its misadventure.) Zed, wearing a white ribbon and a red rose, was petted by many and stepped on by not a few. Adam, who in the intervening months had suddenly decided to grow considerably, wore a dark suit especially made for him by Dominic Wiggins. In this he hovered, hardly recognizable as a tall slim solemn youth with large eyes. George too was present for a while, watchfully piloted by Stella. He was generally and vaguely known to have been ‘rather ill’. A lot of people made a point of greeting him but retiring quickly.

  I must now try to give some account of what happened to George. This is difficult because, as I say, I have not yet had the opportunity of talking with him, although I have talked at length with Stella; she remains puzzled about her husband and may even still harbour long-standing misconceptions about him. It is a feature of marriages, including happy ones, that two people who live together may have quite false ideas of each other. This does not at all necessarily lead to disaster or even inconvenience. Stella, to speak of her first, has suffered from feelings of guilt which may well be a good deal more rational than those of Hattie. Her image has remained in my mind of George hooked by a long invisible line by which she held him fast while letting him run: an image which she agreed to be terrible. More simply, Stella assumed that George would somehow be restored to her ‘in the fullness of time’, that she would at last, and satisfactorily, ‘get him back’. Meanwhile she was prepared to watch and wait because, as she had put it, George ‘interested her absolutely’. This could also be put as ‘because she loved him absolutely’, which indeed she did with her whole intense almost fanatical being
. Some people thought Stella was simply afraid of George, others blamed her for ‘abandoning’ him. Rozanov’s death was counted as the event which brought her back and ‘sobered George up’, while visibly, in some sense which remained difficult to determine, changing him.

  In retrospect of course Stella blamed herself for not having, and as a matter of course, returned to George soon after the episode of the car in the canal. Indeed shortly after she had (her phrase) ‘put herself under my protection’, I advised her to go back, but she would not. Once she had formally ‘run away’ it became harder and harder to return, her pride had become involved in the matter, speculation about him had become an activity and a pleasure, being in hiding had its charm, and the interval carried an imaginary sense of healing. It must be added to this picture that Stella’s undoubted love contained ingredients of anger and even cruelty and she could not help feeling that by staying mysteriously away she was inflicting some sort of punishment upon George. Ought Stella, as she herself later believed, to have been able to foresee the extremities of which George was capable? (I should say here that George told her everything, every detail of what he had done, and as far as he could why he had done it, during the period of his blindness.) With this question she came running to me. I told her sincerely that I thought the answer was no. Stella was of course, as she came to admit, fascinated by George’s ‘violent tendencies’. But it was part of her theory that these had run their course and that, however oddly George might in the interim behave, he would before long, and harmlessly, return to her to be ‘saved’. In this connection she attached an almost magical significance to the ‘attempted murder’ in the canal, which was supposed to be the significant final crisis or turning point. Herein Stella was perhaps misled by vanity, a simple and ubiquitous failing often overlooked by those who profess to explain the mysteries of human conduct. As for the prediction, I think that homicidal or suicidal acts often depend upon contingent elements too tiny and too sheerly accidental to be discernible by the eye of science. And I have to admit that I myself did not foresee or expect what ultimately happened.

  Naturally Stella attaches great significance to the fact that George asked Father Bernard to lead him back to her after he had been struck down on the Common. Since that moment George has never once mentioned Diane. What happened to George’s brain cells in the curious episode of the flying saucer and the sunflower sun remains, in part, to be seen. The brain is a versatile organ and has an amazing capacity to repair damage. I do not, incidentally, hold Dr Roach’s epilepsy theory about George. I also take this opportunity to deny that George has had a lobotomy or any electric shock treatment since John Robert’s death. I also know for a fact that he has not, to use the rather melodramatic expression current in Ennistone, ‘been through the hands of Sir Ivor Sefton’. The mild drugs which he took in the early days of his ‘new life’ have now, according to Stella, been discontinued. Whatever the cause, there is no doubt that he is a changed, and still changing man. A stranger, meeting him now for the first time, would find him an ordinary, quiet person. (Not, as Stella put it, ‘weak and pale like a grub in an apple’.) Those who knew ‘the old George’ are amazed at his ‘reform’, though it is still true that none of his old acquaintances feels quite comfortable with him. He is gentle, polite, quietly humorous (though he smiles little), attentive to his wife, interested in the details of everyday existence. He even has a modest social life. What I cannot find out from Stella, perhaps because she is reluctant to find it out herself, is whether there are identifiable tracts of his mind, evidenced by memory or performance, which seem to have been ‘blotted out’. She insists that he seems ‘normal’. Sometimes, however, this unnatural ‘normality’ seems to her ‘too good to be true’ and she wonders if he will one day suddenly attack her with an axe. As the weeks and months go by, this idea occurs to her less and less often. George stays at home and reads a lot. He reads books on art history and even makes notes on them. One day Stella found him looking over his old plays which had evidently not been destroyed after all. He has also taken up bridge again, and goes out with Stella (who is a very good player) to bridge evenings at the Osmores’. He has not been over to Leafy Ridge to visit Brian and Gabriel, but he is polite and amiable to them if they visit Druidsdale, which they rarely do, as they think Stella is not too pleased to see them. Adam and Zed on the other hand are fairly frequent and welcome visitors. George seems to talk a lot to Adam when they are alone together, Stella is not quite sure what about. I lately expressed the hope to Stella that now that life has become (it seems) more predictable she should stop regarding George as a full-time occupation, and consider harnessing her excellent mind to some coherent and developing intellectual study. She says that no doubt she will, but ‘not yet’, that perhaps she will ‘write something’. I am afraid that at present she is more concerned about George’s mind than about her own. I also asked her, recalling a question which I put to her earlier, whether a quiet docile George continues to interest her. She says most emphatically that he does and that she loves him now in a new and better way. She was always possessively watchful, but now seems to me, when I see them together, to be more tender and ‘sentimental’, and in this sense, she is without doubt profitably ‘occupied’ with her husband. I have not inquired about their sex life. Perhaps she is right to see these developments as ‘new and better’, and it may even be that love, that old unpredictable force left out of account by natural science, will actually ‘save’, after all, not only him but her.

  I have mentioned the departure of Father Bernard. With this, and in a bizarre way, is to be associated the fate of ‘our own Madame Diane’. As may be imagined, Diane was cast into the deepest grief and indeed despair by George’s sudden and total (and inexplicable) defection. The news that he ‘was ill’ and had definitely returned to his wife flashed quickly round Ennistone, and Diane heard it from several eager sources at the Institute. She had imagined in the extremest detail their new life in Spain. With extra money which he had given her she had bought herself every sort of garment which might be required for life in a hot country and appearances on the beach. She felt for the first time in many years, perhaps ever, almost happy. Now suddenly George had been taken from her as totally as if by death, and she entertained no hope of seeing him again. Her abandonment of hope was impressively rapid and complete. Had she ever really believed in Spain? No doubt like many of those who lead precarious lives she had a good deal of ‘instant desperation’ stored up for dealing promptly with catastrophe, when the worst pain is the continuation of fruitless hope. She considered suicide but turned instead to the priest.

  People often take other people’s crises as a symbol for their own, and are guided as by a sign. Several unfortunates known to me decided, after they had become aware of George’s change of being, that it was time for them to change too. Father Bernard was one of these: one who had the additional impetus of extreme shock. With a most inconvenient and unbecoming haste, most disturbing to a hierarchy which had become more used to his eccentricities than he realized, he divested himself of his priestly power. He wrote to his bishop announcing his decision and asking to be immediately laicized, and from one day to the next abruptly ceased conducting church services. He moved out of the Clergy House into a lodging in Burkestown. In doing so he gave away most of his possessions. In this way Hector Gaines acquired a large number of books, some of them quite esoteric, on theological and religious matters, and I acquired the Gandhara Buddha, which is on my desk at this very moment. During this time, conspicuous in his shabby mufti, he went about a lot and talked a lot to the various people who visited him or invited him out of sympathy or curiosity, declaring frequently that he was going to Greece and would end his days as a servant in some remote monastery on Mount Athos. The next news was that he had actually gone and had taken Diane Sedleigh with him.

  No one suggested, nor do I think, that there was any relation between them other than tender friendship. Diane had never made any secret, amon
g those to whom she talked (and who of course talked to others), of her special affection for the priest whom she valued so much because he was ‘not like other men’. The idea of leaving not only Ennistone but England had become firmly fixed in Diane’s mind. She was maddened by jealousy of Stella, and everything she saw reminded her of George. But she had never been out of the country before and hardly ever farther afield than London. She needed a guide and escort, and the idea of ‘pairing up’ with the priest may well have been hers. Their objective was certainly Greece, though how they intended to live there was never clear perhaps even to them. The mirage was, in any case, never made trial of since, to use Father Bernard’s own words in a letter to me, he simply ‘lost her’ in Paris. After they had spent one night there at a cheap hotel near the Gare du Nord, while the priest (for so he undoubtedly and in spite of everything still thought of himself) was away buying their railway tickets Diane simply walked out and disappeared. Father Bernard waited several days and then went on to Greece by himself. He did not consider going to the police.

  What happened to Diane was something which might have belonged to her own fantasy life. The excitement of being in Paris produced a sudden wild euphoria, the more intense by its contrast with the despairing lassitude in which she had recently been plunged. She went out, I think, simply to seek her fortune, to ‘live dangerously’ and ‘have an adventure’. She made her way to a hotel in Saint-Germain-des-Prés and here she met Milton Eastcote. The meeting was accidental, and yet had also a perfectly comprehensible background. The hotel in question was one which William Eastcote had frequented in his student days (it is a good deal grander now, but still not very expensive) and George had learnt of it from William and had stayed there once or twice. He mentioned its name to Diane during one of their brief fantasies of flight together. Diane had noted the name of the hotel and used to meditate upon it as on an amorous mantra. She went there so as to set eyes on it at last, and because she thought it might bring her luck. It did. Milton Eastcote, who had also learnt of the hotel from his cousin, used it as his Paris base. Milton’s philanthropic activities were perfectly genuine, he did indeed help prostitutes and other outcasts, and his good works in the east end of London were justly esteemed. However, like many more people than you might imagine, he had a quite other and secret side to his character, and in the course of saving fallen women sometimes discreetly saved one for himself. Diane had been pointed out to him at William’s funeral, where she had attracted attention by appearing with George. He had liked her type. Now suddenly she materialized before him in Paris. He approached her courteously. Diane now lives in a pleasant airy apartment on the Quai aux Fleurs with a view of Notre Dame. I saw her there myself not long ago. Diane has invented a past for herself which is more in keeping with her present affluence, and has indeed done her very best to become a different person. She has learnt with creditable speed to speak passable French. Self- Interest can stimulate intelligence, and her wits have no doubt been sharpened by her sense of the urgency of at last grasping her future with both hands. She seems to feel quite secure. When I saw her, tea was brought in by a uniformed maid. She inquired, with an air of sympathetic concern, after ‘poor George’.