The Good Apprentice

by Iris Murdoch

  ‘I think you’re not worrying enough about Edward,’ said Midge.

  ‘What’s the use of my worrying?’ said Harry. ‘I could upset myself by imagining it all, but why should I? It won’t help me to help him, quite the reverse. You’re all crowding round him and saying “Oh, how terrible”. He needs to be made to feel it isn’t terrible, it’s ordinary, like what happens to all of us. He needs casualness, not all this portentous caring. He needs to get over it, to cover it with a healing skin of indifference, to forget it. And if I forget it for him, that helps him on. Anyway Thomas has got him now, he’ll be in love with Thomas, he probably is already. Thomas will make him feel guilty instead of saying it wasn’t his fault. God, how I loathe that idea.’

  ‘Thomas is so sort of romantic about death, he wants people to confront things even if it kills them.’

  ‘Thomas is a voyeur, he lives off the miseries of others. But it’ll all slide off Edward. He’s got what we haven’t got which will make him recover.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Youth.’

  Midge considered this idea for a moment. It came to her with a hint of the gratuitous barbed bitterness which she now increasingly perceived in her lover. She sighed. ‘Haven’t we got it? Well, I suppose not.’

  ‘Don’t cry about it.’

  ‘I’m not crying. I just want to feel we have endless time.’

  ‘We have endless time, my queen, my Cleopatra. He lives eternally who lives in the present.’

  ‘I wish that was true.’

  ‘We live in a golden time, not in mean ordinary time.’

  ‘Yes, but we are surrounded by ordinary time.’ That was true enough. Their great deception, which had lasted now for nearly two years, was like a vast mathematical calculation, a jigsaw puzzle of days and hours and minutes, of patterns which varied and patterns which remained the same. It was as if they were astrologers or physicists. Now, for instance, Meredith was safe at school, Thomas was safe at the clinic, where Midge had telephoned him to make sure, Midge and Harry were safe in the spare bedroom of the house in Fulham, our bedroom as Harry called it.

  ‘We live in an impossible way,’ said Midge, ‘but at least that proves one can!’

  ‘Impossible situations can continue, but that doesn’t mean they should!’

  ‘Don’t needle me. I wish we didn’t have to be here.’

  ‘So do I.’

  ‘It’s not that I think Thomas might find out — ’

  ‘I suppose you’d know if he found out.’

  ‘Of course.’

  They looked at each other. Neither was sure. Thomas was capable of anything. Perhaps ‘Midge was too. Lying was so infectious. Sometimes Harry wondered whether Thomas hadn’t known all the time, informed by Midge right at the start, forgiven, licensed, at the start. Perhaps they had discussed it. But Harry did not really think this. He said, ’I’m sorry. My place is hopeless now with those two wretched boys at home. They may be there forever. I’m going to get us that little flat.’

  ‘No — ’

  ‘You think it’s a “step”. Well, it is a step. But consider how many steps we’ve already taken.’

  ‘It would be so expensive. And the idea of a love nest — ’

  ‘Well, this is a love nest! We may as well have a comfortable one! Besides I want to cook for you. This isn’t just unsafe. It’s appallingly bad form.’

  ‘Oh — bad form — !’

  ‘When we’re criminals anyway, in blood so steeped — Have some whisky.’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  ‘Of course, you don’t want Thomas to smell it on your Judas kisses!’

  ‘Don’t. I wish, oh I wish, I wish — ’

  ‘That everything was different. But it isn’t. You mustn’t wish, you must will. I wish you’d waited for me, and not married Thomas. God, why didn’t you wait!’

  ‘I wish you’d noticed me when Chloe died.’

  ‘All right, all right!’

  Harry, dressed but open-shirted, bare-chested, was moving restlessly about the room holding a glass of whisky, now standing near the window looking at the rain falling on roofs and chimney pots. Midge, sitting on the bed watching him, was wearing a huge-sleeved robe of red and purple silk which Harry had had made for her and which she wore for him after love-making and only then, and which he now brought with him to their trysts and took away again afterwards.

  ‘We weren’t ready for each other then,’ said Midge. ‘Still it could have happened. I never got on with Chloe, she never invited me or wanted to see me, I didn’t live in London. But we did literally see each other. Of course I looked like nothing at all. I had to make myself. You were made by your father, your childhood, your school, your education, your money — I had to invent myself out of nothing. Perhaps that’s why I’m so tired now.’

  ‘It’s true,’ said Harry, ‘you were invisible. The little sister who lived down in Kent. And when Chloe died I was crazy. Poor Chloe, she must have been one of the last people to die of TB — she looked — so beautiful, so frail with big sad eyes — ’

  ‘While I’m so healthy and fat.’

  ‘Don’t be envious!’

  ‘Jealous. She was your wife.’

  ‘Well, what’s stopping you being my wife?’

  ‘When she died I was busy inventing myself’

  ‘And the height of your ambition was to be a fashion model!’

  ‘Don’t sneer. You don’t know what a long way I had to go. Chloe and Dad always told me I had no talents. But when I was a model everyone in England had heard of me. No one ever heard of Chloe.’

  ‘Oh stop it, Midge — ’

  ‘I was a clerk in an office — ’

  ‘And then you donned beauty like a robe. Who was the first person who told you you were beautiful?’

  ‘Jesse Baltram.’

  ‘But you never met him!’ said Harry. ‘You said Chloe took you to Seegard once, and left you in the car!’

  ‘Well — I did meet him — ’ said Midge. ‘I never told you this. Perhaps I shouldn’t. Some memories are like lucky charms, talismans, one shouldn’t tell about them or they’ll lose their power.’

  ‘Tell, tell!’

  ‘Chloe left me in the car like a dog. I was still at school. She was Jesse’s model, she always said she was his pupil, that business was just starting up I suppose. She said she wouldn’t be long, but she was ages, and at last I went into the house. It’s a very strange house.’

  ‘And you met Jesse?’

  ‘Then Chloe said I could stay for lunch. Nobody talked to me at all. I sat at a long table. There were some girls and young men who I thought were art students, and some children, I didn’t even identify Mrs Baltram, everyone was rather good-looking and dressed in sort of smocks and robes and things.’

  ‘And Jesse?’

  ‘He sat at the head of the table. He had a great narrow nose and a pointed chin and a lot of straight dark hair like a crest. Everyone was talking loudly and ignoring me and I felt very frightened and miserable. Then suddenly Jesse pointed at me with his knife and called out, “Who is that girl?” And there was a silence.’

  ‘Yes — and then?’

  ‘Well, someone said I was Chloe’s sister, and Jesse went on looking at me for a moment. He didn’t smile. Then he went on with his lunch and everyone started chattering again. Then after lunch we went away.’

  ‘But didn’t you see him again, didn’t you talk to him?’

  ‘No. That was all.’

  ‘But you said he said you were beautiful.’

  ‘He didn’t say it,’ said Midge, ‘but I knew that he thought it. He could really see me.’

  ‘This, makes me jealous,’ said Harry. ‘That look of Jesse’s was probably your sexual awakening. That’s why you think it’s a talisman.’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘I’m sure you weren’t beautiful then. He might have thought you looked like Chloe. That’s why he noticed you.’

  ‘You like to th
ink I didn’t exist until you noticed me!’

  ‘Of course. God, I’ve had enough trouble with that man in my thoughts!’

  ‘I’d like to see him again. I’d like to see Seegard again.’

  ‘I see little chance of either of us being invited, I’m glad to say,’ said Harry. ‘I’m never going near that place, and I forbid you to.’

  Midge smiled. She liked it when Harry asserted authority over her.

  ‘He’s old now,’ said Harry. ‘He got married late. He had hundreds of girls before, and probably after.’

  ‘He’s not all that old, he’s still working, I read in a magazine.’

  ‘He’s old. Well, he saw more than I did. He only stared at you because of Chloe.’

  ‘I didn’t look much like her then. I do much more now. He saw the future. He was a great dominating powerful man, everyone in that room felt his power. I thought he was rather weird.’

  ‘You mean sexy. I detest dominating powerful men. It’s true I never thought you looked like your sister. Now sometimes you do.’

  ‘I know I’m just a shadow of her in your life, a substitute, a second-best,’ said Midge. But she didn’t believe this.

  ‘Don’t provoke me! You’re utterly unlike her, you’re a completely different person.’

  ‘Yes, but when I was young she was everything and I was nothing.’

  ‘All right, now she’s nothing and you’re everything. I’ve cast her out of my life and out of my heart too. I can’t love a ghost, I love life not death, flesh not earth. Christ, I think more about Teresa than about Chloe! God rest her soul, she’s gone, as if she’d never been. Be content with that and let her be.’

  ‘Oh I do, I do,’ said Midge, huddling into her silk robe. They were silent, both fearing the wrong word, the wrong move, which would suddenly though only briefly (but they had so little time) set them apart in other perspectives, with other judgments, other possible courses of action. They were there, Midge in her red and purple and Harry heroic in his wild shirt, a long spear of blond hair adorning his open chest, like a king and queen, glowing fateful and majestic in the intense rainy light of the room.

  ‘I want a weekend,’ said Harry, ‘I must have that.’

  ‘The next step.’

  ‘It’s ridiculous, we’ve loved each other for two years, and we’ve never spent two whole consecutive days and nights together. When Thomas goes to that conference in Geneva, we’ll find a hotel — ’

  ‘It’s too dangerous.’

  ‘Oh, dangerous! I’m hungry, I’m starving, I want you in my home, I want it to be your home, I want you forever — and now I’m asking you so bloody little. You drive me mad! What does danger matter to us!’

  ‘You know it matters,’ said Midge. ‘You agreed there should be no letters. You were the one who told me to invent all those old friends I was supposed to be lunching with — ’

  ‘Yes, but that was at the start. We’ve spent two years getting over the big bang, recovering from the first shock, settling in and realising it’s forever — ’

  ‘We are well as we are, we could lose each other — ’

  ‘Midge, darling, we can’t lose each other, if there were a showdown I’d just take you away, I’d never let you go back to Thomas and leave me, never. So you can dismiss that from your mind!’

  ‘Don’t be impatient with me,’ said Midge, looking at him with her painful face. ‘It’s harder for me. We can’t solve this by planning it or just wild decisions. Fate will solve it, and time, a way will be opened, we shall receive a sign — ’

  ‘OK, so long as we can’t lose! I’m just getting a bit fed up with fate and time!’

  ‘But we have good time, beautiful time, the eternal present like you said, and whenever we part we know that we shall meet again, and we can look forward — I’m so happy with looking forward — ’

  ‘My dear heart, stop evading the issue, you know you’re evading it — ’

  ‘Even if for all our lives we had only what we have now, living quietly together and harming no one — ’

  ‘Oh shut up!’

  ‘I don’t mean this will happen, I just mean we needn’t hurry.’

  ‘You said that when Meredith went to boarding school we could be more together. Well, he’s going to boarding school in the autumn. And he’s nearly grown up. Isn’t that a sign?’

  ‘He’s going to boarding school,’ said Midge, ‘and Thomas is talking about leaving London and living in the country!’

  ‘And giving up his patients and surrendering all that power? He never would. Why should his plans interest us anyway! We’re made for happiness, he isn’t, he belongs to a different race. It’s that ancestral rabbi speaking in that prissy Edinburgh voice. I used to think you married Thomas for security and status and because he was an older man and to get even with Chloe. Now I see you married him for his power.’

  Midge made a dismissive gesture but said nothing. Her face was calmer now and she looked upon him with large gentle loving eyes.

  ‘Midge, oh my sweetheart, my angel, I love you so much, I feel your kisses all the time, all our touchings, all our joys, are about me like a net, I nearly swooned with desire during that dinner party, when I sit alone at home and think about you I could bite my hands off. You said wait and we’ve waited, we must think now, we must think about how to do ourselves justice, do our love justice, and be really together and really happy — oh such happiness, Midge, it’s possible, it’s near, we have only to stretch out our hands …’

  Midge turned away her face which for a moment wore a look of evasive hunted irritation which Harry knew and dreaded. She smoothed her cheeks and brow with soothing hands. ‘We said once that if Thomas ever found out we’d have to stop.’

  ‘You said that once, on the second day, even then you didn’t believe it!’

  ‘You said it was a precious compact, and if we could just have what we have now and belong faithfully to each other we’d be in paradise.’

  ‘I said that to persuade you, and you know that I did!’

  ‘I thought you rather liked the secrecy. You said once that our getting away with it was what was so wonderful.’

  ‘If I said that, which I don’t remember, I spoke like a vulgar fool, I never thought that. Why do you argue so, you keep bringing up these little hurtful stupid lists of objections — ’

  ‘Perhaps I want you to clear them all away. I want to hear you say it’ll be all right.’

  ‘My darling, it’ll be all right. Just trust me and let me lead. You keep talking about things being dangerous — yes, Thomas could find out, and we must be prepared, and now we can be prepared. It’s time to nerve ourselves to see the necessity of being really and openly together. We’ll look back and think we were crazy to live like a couple of frightened animals in a hole! You know how much I hate it. You’re thinking about Meredith, but Meredith will be all right, he’s such a calm grown-up child, and he loves me, I think he loves me more than he loves Thomas. You said I was his hero. Thomas is a cold fish, he’ll survive anything, he may even get satisfaction out of pretending to be a victim! He’s fey and elvish and secretive, and he’s so dignified, there’s no fun in him. And he’s getting old, you must feel it, you must see it now, the romance of the older man is over. You say he hates social life, and wants to stop at home and read, and doesn’t talk to you. We talk all the time, we get on with each other, we make each other exist, we give each other more being. You never really got on with him, you just pretended to. You admired him, you revered him. He’s never regarded you as a real person, he’s never known you, he’s superior, he directs you, he pities you — ’

  ‘I couldn’t bear a scandal,’ said Midge, who had put on a vague faraway look during Harry’s speech.

  ‘That’s a paltry reply, refusing so great, so perfect a happiness for fear of a scandal! Everyone does such things these days, there’s no such thing as scandal. We must live with the truth of our emotions. A love like ours is self-justifying. Believe in
it, give yourself to it. A love like ours is rare, it’s a marvel upon earth.’