The Good Apprentice

by Iris Murdoch

  ‘Excuse me, are you Mr Barnswell?’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I believe you used to handle Jesse Baltram’s pictures.’

  ‘Who says so?’

  ‘Some people at the Royal College of Art.’

  ‘How did you find this place?’

  ‘I looked you up in the telephone book.’

  ‘Are you a dealer?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What do you want then?’

  ‘I’m looking for Jesse.’

  ‘I haven’t got him. I hope he’s dead. What do you want him for?’

  ‘I’m just a friend of his.’

  ‘Does he owe you money?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you one of those toughs who go round collecting debts?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Pity. If you were I’d put you onto him, if I knew where he was. He owes me plenty.’

  ‘Have you any idea — ’

  ‘I imagine he’s still rotting in the country, in that ugly nasty monstrosity he put up in those marshes, why don’t you go there?’

  ‘I think he’s in London.’

  ‘I wrote him enough letters there, he never answered.’

  ‘What money does he owe you?’

  ‘I paid him for some pictures he never delivered.’

  ‘I’m sure he — ’

  ‘I took him up when no one ever heard of him, I made his reputation.’

  ‘I’m sure he never meant — ’

  ‘He ruined my business. I used to be in Cork Street. Look at this dump.’

  ‘I’m sorry — ’

  ‘I’ve still got some early Jesses. You interested in buying?’

  ‘No, I’m not, actually — ’

  ‘They’re not too pricey. Be a good sight pricier when he’s dead. You could have a real bargain.’

  ‘No, I — ’

  ‘Come on, it’s an investment. I need the bloody money.’

  ‘No, thanks — I wonder if — ’

  ‘Please yourself, if you don’t want to be rich.’

  ‘I wonder if by any chance you know his old address in Chelsea?’

  ‘In Flood Street. I should think so. I was there all the time.’

  ‘Could you let me have it?’

  ‘Yes, on condition you let me know where he is when you find him.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘What are you up to anyway? As if you’d say. Here’s the address.’

  ‘Thank you — ’

  ‘If you catch up with him you might just push him in the Thames. That stuff will be really up-market when the old swine is dead. Roll on that day.’

  ‘Excuse me, I was wondering — ’

  ‘Come in.’

  ‘I just wanted to — ’

  ‘Come right in. Drop your coat here, come into the drawing room. This is the drawing room. It used to be upstairs.’

  ‘Thank you, I’m sorry to bother you — ’

  ‘No bother at all. Have a drink, sherry, whisky, gin? There’s some Campari somewhere.’

  ‘Well, thank you, sherry, but — ’

  ‘I hope you don’t mind a dry sherry? I can’t abide sweet ones.’

  ‘No, fine, thank you. This is Number 158 Flood Street, is it?’

  ‘Yes, sure. Sit down on the sofa.’

  ‘Thank you — ’

  ‘How did you find my address?’

  ‘I got it from Mr Barnswell in Ealing.’

  ‘I don’t know anyone in Ealing. I don’t know any Barnswells either if it comes to that.’

  ‘I wonder if you think I’m someone else?’

  ‘How could you be someone else? I’m quite content that you should be you. Why want to be someone else?’

  ‘I don’t, but — ’

  ‘Are you at the university?’

  ‘Yes, in London — ’

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘French — ’

  ‘Don’t you just adore Proust?’

  ‘Yes — ’

  ‘I’m going to college in London too, next fall. I’m going to do psychology. How old are you?’

  ‘Twenty.’

  ‘Why, so am I, what a coincidence! What’s your name?’

  ‘Edward.’

  ‘Mine’s Victoria. Don’t you think it’s a pretty name?’

  ‘Yes — but, look — ’

  ‘If you have a short surname you must have a long first name. My surname’s Gunn. What’s yours?’

  ‘Look, I must tell you — ’

  ‘Do you know, I own this house!’

  ‘You must be rich.’

  ‘My pa is. He’s given it to me, It’s something to do with tax. Have another drink.’

  ‘Look, Victoria, I just came to ask if anyone here could tell me where to find Jesse Baltram.’

  ‘Never heard of her.’

  ‘It’s a he. He used to live here.’

  ‘Sorry, lost in mists of past.’

  ‘Would anyone else — ?’

  ‘Pa’s only just bought the house. This ghastly wallpaper isn’t our idea. The other people have gone. I reign in their stead. You are my very first visitor!’

  ‘Where is your pa?’

  ‘In Philadelphia making more money. I’ll be living all alone here, except for Stalky.’

  ‘Oh. Who’s Stalky?’

  ‘My grey pussy cat, he’s still in quarantine, I miss him frightfully.’

  ‘Could you give me — ’

  ‘He’s all grey except for a little white spot on his front. He’s cute. He thinks he’s a human being.’

  ‘Could you give me the address of the people who used to live here?’

  ‘They left a bank address, their name’s Something-Smith, I’ve got it upstairs somewhere.’

  ‘Thanks, if you — ’

  ‘Why do you want to find this Baltram?’

  ‘He’s my father.’

  ‘Why is he lost?’

  ‘It’s a long story.’

  ‘Sorry. You must think I’m a funny lady.’

  ‘I think you’re a very nice lady. But you shouldn’t have let me in. I might have been a rapist.’

  ‘Well, there are rapists and rapists. Kiss me, Edward.’

  Edward, nearly mad with remorse and grief, was kept going by hope. He kept picturing how wonderful it would be when he found Jesse. He kept praying, oh let me find Jesse, let me only find him and all will be well. He pictured himself telling Jesse about his adventures, and hearing Jesse laugh. In these visions Jesse was better, cured, rejuvenated, glowing with power and beauty. He had indeed metamorphosed himself, taken on another form to renew his strength. Sometimes Edward felt that this must be so, and that Jesse must be, not only alive, but somewhere very near. Jesse was simply teasing him by his absence, perhaps even watching him. He kept seeing ghost Jesses in the street, sometimes pursued them. Once he got off a bus and ran back having seen Jesse on a crowded pavement. The hope provided occupation, a programme for every day. Edward left early on his travels, came back late. He avoided Harry who was, he imagined, blaming Edward for what he had seen at Seegard, though of course no word was exchanged on the subject.

  He had come back to a pile of letters, most of them from Mrs Wilsden. He glanced at each to satisfy himself that they were still simply hate letters, and threw them away unread. There were also two letters, dated some time ago, from Sarah Plowmain complaining about various things, which he also did not read. Stuart had left a note with his address. Thomas had written asking him to come and see him. Edward did not feel ready to see either of these mentors. He wanted to find Jesse first and relieve his mind of the horror. If that really was Jesse, and not some dream or simulacrum, which he had seen in the river, he was guilty of a murder. A second one. He had left Jesse, as he had left Mark, to see a woman. The similarity of the two betrayals could not be accidental; and the torturing pain of these two crimes now mingled in his mind, each intensifying the other. He kept trying to make it less by telling himself th
at if he had really seen Jesse down in that brown water, then he had certainly seen a drowned man, a corpse, and not someone who could have been rescued. Jesse had looked so quiet, so strangely remote as if calm, not like a half asphyxiated struggling victim. Yet suppose he had not been dead, but in one of his trances? Suppose he had just fallen in and, when Edward turned away, been instantly swept downstream and drowned later? The curious calmness of the image had contributed to Edward’s immediate idea that it was an illusion, and to that he sometimes clung. He had at once taken it to be unreal, and did not that prove something? Alas, nothing except Jesse himself would ever be a proof; and without proof Edward would be condemned to eternal torment. Perhaps this was a punishment for what he did to Mark? He had, before, wanted a punishment, but not like this. He had envisaged a redeeming penance, not an intensification of guilt. Sometimes his only solace was the idea that he could always kill himself.

  Edward was also torn by an intense desire to tell somebody about what had happened; and by the knowledge that if he told anyone, any single person, he would alter the entire world. He could then be accused. Well, was he not sufficiently accused by himself, would not other accusers all be less vindictive? Though he was demented by his secret and his solitude, the idea of anyone knowing was intolerable to Edward, as if with this the disgrace came: not only eternal pain, but eternal loss of honour. God, and he was still so young, bound to so long a suffering! He did not want to spend his life being pitied. He did not want to give away to any other person the power to reveal this second crime. No other person could be trusted. He could not now inform the police, he would be convicted of immoral and criminal concealment. He could not talk to Stuart, or to Harry or Midge or Ursula or Willy. He considered talking to Thomas; but Thomas would be so interested, so fascinated, Thomas would pursue the matter, making of it something more, something else, something (however long Thomas was silent) public. Edward could not let this terrible thing belong to another. His only hope of survival, if Jesse never came back, was to live with it and hope that it would somehow crumble. By imparting it, he would give it more life.

  He thought of course, and all the time, about Brownie. He did not want to tell Brownie either, though it would at least serve as an explanation of his boorish departure if he could tell her the reason. If he confessed to her that would make an extra bond, between them; yet the revelation could not but be ‘too much’. Brownie had perhaps, though he might never know, forgiven him for what he did to Mark. How could he be forgiven? At any rate she had put her arms around him. If he told her he had done this thing as well, she would shudder away from him as from some damned and mutilated outcast. With all this however, in the poor confusion of his mind, he yearned for Brownie, he pictured her sitting in a chair while he laid his head on her knee and she gently stroked his hair. At times he desired her fiercely and embraced her in waking dreams, feeding on her kisses. But these desires were terrible to him, as glimpses of an inaccessible paradise. He did not know where she was, and his present task was to find Jesse. He could not go round to Mrs Wilsden’s house. He thought of writing to Brownie there, but could not bring himself to compose the letter, which in any case her mother would probably intercept. What could he say about their last meeting? And if he wrote, he would dread receiving no reply or else a cool polite one. At present, it was better to wait and to keep even hope upon a leash. Brownie’s emotion and her kindness were perhaps momentary impulses which later she would be glad to leave behind, together with her sense of having done enough for the man who had killed her brother. Yet hope, in the guise of faith, remained to him, and he felt sure that Brownie would not abandon him, and that soon somehow they would be together again. Soon, after he had found Jesse, he would find Brownie.

  Anxiety does strange things to time. Every day dawned as the day when his uncertainty might end, so the end was kept near. Yet that would still be so if he had the peculiar doom of having to spend the rest of his life searching for his father. Ilona had said that she would ‘let him know’, but would she? She was probably angry with him, she must feel that he had betrayed and denied the love which he once said he felt for her. This thought hurt Edward with a special separate pang of guilt and sadness. In any case, could she write, get hold of a stamp, post the letter? And if he wrote to her would she get his letter or would they seize it first? Edward now regretted that he had not told Mother May and Bettina that he was going, thanked them for their kindness. He ought to have put on a pleasant and courteous demeanour instead of running off like a thief. He should not have appeared to treat them as enemies. His flight must suggest desperation, perhaps arouse suspicion. But what could they suspect him of? Even more terrible and dark thoughts had already begun to breed in Edward’s mind as he went over and over the events of that dreadful day. As he had been going through the door Mother May had tried to stop him, she had cried ‘Edward!’ Did she know that Jesse had walked out? Were they hoping that at last … he had gone out to dire …? Were they afraid that Edward might find him before he had had time to …? Or, where was Bettina? Was she perhaps at that very moment drowning him, holding his head down under water like someone drowning a big dog? When Edward had come back Mother May had said, ‘He is all right. He is sleeping.’ Did she mean — dead? After all they must have wanted him to die, because of the horror of his continued being. These thoughts were so sickening that Edward tried to bury them. He detested and feared them especially because he might be tempted to believe in them in order to exonerate himself. If that was how it was, then Jesse would have died anyway. He felt such awful pity for his father, and the pity was almost worse than anything. It was somehow in association with these nightmarish speculations, as it were as something of the same sort, that it bccurred to Edward that he might go again to see Mrs Quaid. But he had lost the card with her address, she was not in the telephone book, and although he walked more than once round the streets near Fitzroy Square he could not at all remember where her house had been.

  ‘Look,’ said Harry, ‘let’s not keep going round in circles. I’m not against your telling Thomas, I’m longing for you to tell Thomas, so long as it’s part of your getting a divorce and coming to live with me at once. You must set the whole thing up together, say it all in the same sentence. I keep suggesting this and you keep hedging. I know you’re frightened of telling him. If you like I’ll tell him. Of course we can’t go on justdepending on the discretion of those two boys! But that brings out the absurdity which has been in this situation all along. When we fell in love I wanted to have it out with Thomas at once, only you wouldn’t. You said you weren’t sure. But you’re sure now, and you still won’t make up your mind — you’re driving me mad!’

  ‘I’m sorry — ’

  ‘Of course what happened at that ghastly house which you would go to — it’s all your fault — ’

  ‘If you hadn’t got so bad-tempered with the car and backed it into that ditch — ’

  ‘All right, my fault too, we’ve gone over all that. I know what happened, and Stuart being there, Edward wouldn’t have been so bad, has been a frightful shock. I can see it’s made you feel guilty! Pretty crazy reasoning to start feeling guilty when you’re being found out! Well, I daresay that’s not uncommon!’

  ‘I’ve felt guilty all along.’

  ‘Yes, but you’re making a crisis out of it now, and I can’t see why! Midge, your marriage is over. It was never what you really wanted.’

  Harry and Midge were seated at a table opposite each other in the little flat, the ‘love nest’ which had so happily occupied Harry’s time and thought, and was to have been a present for Midge, a joyful surprise. They were together in the tiny sitting room. They had not yet been together in the tiny bedroom. It was the afternoon of Midge’s first London day since her return from the country. Harry had been out that morning discussing how to rewrite his novel with a publisher who had shown some interest. He had been annoyed and upset by Midge’s disappearance to Quitterne which he felt she could have
avoided. But his brief unavailability had other reasoning behind it, he had not studied Midge for so long in vain. He knew how awful she must feel about the Seegard drama. Of course he felt awful too, but had already put it behind him except in so far as it concerned his immediate strategy. The shock would make Midge retreat, want to tend and soothe her wounded consciousness, repair her lost face, rethink it all into some less disastrous perspective. Whereas what Harry wanted was yet more chaos, more violence, a final advance through the carnage. In all this he would have to manage Midge: to alarm her a little, then to force her. So he felt it would do her no harm to come back to London and not to find him waiting for her telephone call. The abstinence hurt him too of course, as he longed desperately for her company, and even now as they argued felt that deep rhythmic heartbeat of perfect joy which comes from being in the one right place, the presence of the beloved. Midge was looking, today, tired, worried, older, with a sad moving beauty which he knew that certain gestures of his, which he purposely withheld, would change into a happy beauty. She had her ‘smart woman’ look, in the plainest most expensive dark grey coat and skirt, covered with the tiniest faintest black check, and a blue silk blouse open at the neck and a narrow very dark green silk scarf. How long had she spent choosing it all that morning? Ages, he hoped. Her stockings were black with an open-work diamond design, her black high-heeled shoes shone as if her feet had never touched the ground. She was hitching up her skirt and crossing her legs and looking round the room. Harry hoped that she would start to make plans for the flat, adopt it quickly as theirs, their first home: a very temporary one, of course, representing an essential intermediary stage.

  ‘What curtains should we have,’ he said, ‘plain or with flowers and things?’

  ‘Plain,’ said Midge, ‘if we’re having pictures. I like the brown carpet and the wallpaper. We could have a nice rug.’

  ‘Oh Midge, I’m so glad you say that, you believe in the place! Darling, just believe a little bit more and we’ll be home, safe in harbour. All that dreadful mix-up was a good thing really, it’s moved things on a stage. It means we’ve got to go forward. It’s a challenge, it means life, it means force, it means avanti! We must advance with our banners high! Oh Midge, what’s the matter with you, you look so quiet and melancholy.’