The Good Apprentice (62 page)

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Authors: Iris Murdoch

BOOK: The Good Apprentice
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‘Would you like some Coca-Cola?’
‘No. I’m in a state.’
Stuart sat on the bed. Meredith stood looking out of the window.
‘What’s this state you’re in, tell me.’
‘It’s about you.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that — ’
‘And my mother. You know I told you she was having an affair and you said it’s impossible. Well, it isn’t impossible and it’s with your father. Did you know?’
‘Yes.’
‘So you told a lie.’
‘I didn’t know then,’ said Stuart. ‘I found out since. Does your father know?’
‘I don’t think so. He lives in a world of his own. He and Mr Blinnet sit on a cloud together and play harps. But that’s not the point, I mean about your dad. It’s about you.’
‘How, about me?’
‘My mother’s upset about you, and I don’t know what it is. What is it?’
‘I think she’s upset because I know about her and my father. I found out by accident.’
‘But what did you do to her, you must have put some sort of spell on her?’
‘What did she say?’
‘Oh all sorts of things. Something or other was all your fault. It sounded as if
you
’d been seducing her! I couldn’t make it out.’
‘But — why did she talk to you?’
‘I talked to her. I shouldn’t have, I think. But it all
hurt
me so much, it got inside my head, I couldn’t bear it. I suppose I wanted her to say it wasn’t so, even if it was. It was just hell, it is hell. You were right, it’s impossible, only the impossible is possible. I didn’t ever dream that she — it’s incredible — and so terrible. I felt cut off from her — and from my father because he didn’t know — ’
‘What did you say to her?’
‘I just said I knew and I thought it was horrid. And then I felt I’d done something so dreadful to my mother. She was so miserable and sort of — squashed — I wished like hell I’d held my tongue. And then she started talking sort of wildly-I was scared stiff — as if she’d gone mad — and then she told me I mustn’t see you again — ’
‘She said that?’
‘Yes, but that’s nothing. She said it before, and I just said, “Don’t be silly” and she took it back. But then she went on about you as if you mattered a lot, as if you’d sort of taken her over. You didn’t make a pass at her or something?’
‘No,’ said Stuart. ‘Meredith, please calm down. I just suggested to your mother that she ought to tell your father, and stop this thing with mine — ’
‘That’s all is it! But she’s in love with him, isn’t she? Or with you, I don’t know. Perhaps you’re both after her.’
‘Meredith, stop this. You know perfectly well that I wouldn’t — ’
‘How do I know? I don’t really know anything about you. Sometimes I feel you aren’t really there the way other people are. You’re a pretty peculiar chap. You’re ambiguous, or ambivalent, somebody said. My mother said you’re a bit mad, she said that earlier. Everyone says that actually. She warned me against you. She said it would end badly. You’ve led me on to be dependent on you, you’ve tampered with my affections, you want to dominate me. I’m older now, I understand. I mustn’t see you any more, I don’t want to see you any more, you’re sentimental about me — ’
‘Shut up,’ said Stuart. ‘You don’t believe any of this nonsense. I haven’t done anything to your mother except tell her what I thought. She asked me what I thought and I told her.’
‘She came to you.’
‘Yes, I wouldn’t have said anything. And I certainly don’t intend to tell your father. I just hope and believe that this deception will end soon. And I’m not sentimental about you, I love you. You’re old enough to understand that terminology. Meredith, there’s nothing wrong here. Don’t let other people — ’
‘She thinks you’re after me. I know about these things.’
‘Don’t be utterly silly. We’re free individual people not cases of something or other. We’ve known each other for a long time and we’ve trusted each other, you know I’m not — ’
‘I don’t want you, it’s all gone wrong, it’s become a nightmare, and it’s your fault.’
‘I’m very sorry about your mother — ’
‘She came to you, I hate you — ’
‘Stop being hysterical, don’t shout!’
‘You made me get attached to you, you wanted to control me — ’
‘I may have wanted to influence you, but — ’
‘I don’t want to see you any more
ever
!’
‘Meredith,
wait
— ’
Meredith’s wild tears were flowing. He threw himself across the room toward the door. Stuart tried to stop him, grasped at his waist then clutched his coat tails as he struggled free and slipped away. Stuart ran down the stairs and out into the street, but the boy, fleet of foot, was already disappearing in the gathering evening dusk. Stuart ran a little way after him then gave up. He returned slowly and went upstairs to his room and closed the door. Then he sat on the floor leaning against the bed as the room grew dark.
‘It can’t all have been smashed by that sorceress at Seegard or because Jesse kissed you and set you off, sent you off at a tangent as you said, that is made you temporarily insane? Well, I can imagine you suddenly thinking you were sort of in love with
him
, you said you’d been thinking about him all your life, and being jealous of Chloe, and — ’
‘It’s not that, I
told
you — ’
‘
That
’s the shock, that’s what’s unhinged you, but you’ll recover — ’
‘It’s nothing to do with Jesse or — it’s nothing to do with anything — ’
‘That’s impossible,’ said Harry. ‘Everything is to do with something. What I cannot and will not believe is that you can even
imagine
that you’re in love with Stuart. That
not.’
They were at Midge’s house, not upstairs in ‘their’ room but sitting in the flowery drawing-room. Thomas was safely away all day at the clinic. They sat facing each other a few feet apart, and each face was gaunt with the horror of new truth, as if blown back and bared by a great wind. They stared, sick, biting their lips and sometimes trembling. Midge was wearing no make-up except for a dab of powder on the end of her nose. Harry was wearing a dark red bow tie with his black leather jacket which, Midge had told him once, made him look young and desperate.
‘You can’t love him,’ said Harry, ‘it’s not possible, I won’t believe it. What is loving him, what does it consist in, do you want to go to bed with him?’
‘I don’t know — I suppose I do — ’
‘If you don’t know and you suppose, you’re not in love.’
‘It’s not like an ordinary thing of wanting to make love — ’
‘Wanting to make love isn’t ordinary, wanting it like
we
want it isn’t.’
‘It’s just that he’s so remote, he’s strange, I can’t imagine — I want to be with him, to touch him, to talk to him, to be — in an absolute tension — with him — ’
‘Midge, do you know what you’re talking about? Do you know whom you are talking about and
to whom?
I don’t suppose this is an ugly joke designed to hurt me, but it feels like it.’
‘You
must
see that I’m in earnest,’ said Midge. ‘I can’t help hurting you just by telling you the truth. You used to say that I evaded the facts and wouldn’t speak straight. Well, my speaking straight now proves how much in earnest I am. Only something very extreme would make me behave like this.’
‘Or a mental breakdown. I think you are literally mad, the strain of our love has made you go mad. You’d better ask Ursula for some pills! You’ll recover. Only don’t drive
me
mad in the interim. You’ve invented the one thing in the world that would hurt me most of all.’
‘I didn’t invent it.’
‘Think who this person is on whom you profess to be fixated!’
‘Who? Oh — your son — yes — ’
‘You’d forgotten? You think it doesn’t matter?’
‘Yes — but — I don’t feel him as anyone’s son, he’s just himself.’
‘Are you feeble-minded? I exist, look, I’m
here.
We’ve been happy utterly devoted faithful lovers for two years, we are planning to marry — ’
‘I feel so changed — ’
‘Midge, do you want me to hit you? There’s a whole world invested in this. We’ve been loving and truthful and tender and passionate with each other. We didn’t regard this as a casual adventure. Did we?’
‘No, but something has happened — ’
‘I still think it’s Jesse. The thing about Stuart is just a by-product, it’s
shock,
that’s what it is,
shock.
I even thought it might be a good thing, your meeting Jesse like that, even the ghastliness of Stuart and Edward being there, I thought it might
jolt
you into telling Thomas. If only you’d let me tell Thomas then, when you started talking about Stuart on that day! If only I’d been brave enough to leave you at the flat and go straight to Thomas and tell him, whether you liked it or not! I’ve let you rule me all along because I love you. Christ, I’ve been such a coward, you’ve made me a coward. If I’d told Thomas
then
you’d never have developed this thing about Stuart at all.’
‘No, I was already in love with Stuart, only I didn’t tell you, I fell in love with him in the car, when he was sitting behind us. He
made
me do so.’
‘You mean he deliberately — you said he hadn’t tried to — ’
‘No, he didn’t, he hasn’t, it was just his
being,
like a sort of radiation — ’
‘We’re getting all mystical now. You make me sick, oh so sick, as I’ve never been with you before. You are destroying it all in front of my eyes, all our precious perfect love, making yourself hate me, making me hate you. It’s like something mechanical. I feel like killing you.’
‘Harry, I’m desperately sorry. Don’t you think I’m miserable too about this?’
‘I shall certainly kill him.’
‘I’m being very brave, so brave, because of him. He made me feel how unworthy it all was, how rotten, untrue to Thomas, untrue to you — ’
‘You mean you never intended to marry me at all!’
‘I don’t mean that — ’
‘You’re in a masochistic trance. It’s the sort of thing Thomas could explain. You’ve been feeling guilty for two years and now Stuart finding out has crystallised it all into a manic fit of self-abasement. All right, feel guilty if it pleases you, only don’t call it being in love with Stuart. He occasioned it. He doesn’t have to be the love object too!’
‘That’s how it is,’ said Midge, gaunt and pale with the effort of this explanation which had been going on repetitively for some time. ‘His being so different, so separate and entire and not messed up into things, I couldn’t help it, he was a revelation suddenly just as himself-not what he said or meant-just
him
as if he
was
the truth — ’
‘Like Jesus Christ. I shall vomit. Can’t you see him as he is, a timid, pretentious, pompous, conceited, abnormal neurotic?’
‘I love him,’ said Midge.
‘And you no longer love me?’
‘Harry, I don’t know. It’s different, it has to be because everything’s changed. I feel cut off from you. You must have felt that at the flat.’
‘I did, but I thought it was a temporary thing. I still think
this
is a temporary thing. It can’t be otherwise. We’ve so tried and tested each other, we’ve
achieved
each other — Or are you going to marry him!’
‘That’s not the question. Nothing’s in question, I told you, he rejects me.’
‘Then are you not mad? What are you going to do with this alleged love? Go on loving in vain for the rest of your life?’
‘I think, later on, he might let me work with him, help him in his work — his helping people — ’
‘Midge, you’re pathetic! I can’t take you seriously.’
‘You must take me seriously, we aren’t as we were — ’
‘I can’t recognise you. Who is speaking?’
‘I’m glad you say that. I feel that I’ve changed, I’ve got confidence, certainty. I can tell the truth. I’ve always been afraid of saying what I really thought, I’ve evaded direct questions, always hidden in half-truths. All those endless lies had got into me so that I couldn’t talk properly to anyone, as if I had no truthful language at all — it made me into a puppet, something unreal,
we
were unreal, I’ve often felt that.’
‘You never felt anything of the sort. We are the reality of the world, everything else is mere appearance. Midge, we love each other, we’ve said it a thousand times, said it clear-eyed and in the truth. Don’t distort the past. Our love is eternal and forever.’
‘It seemed so. I didn’t conceive that anything could happen so fast. Now I feel a kind of relief. Though I’m very miserable too.’
‘But all this is
false,
don’t you see, this thing about Stuart, it’s play-acting, it’s dreaming, it’s wicked fantastic dreaming, Stuart is nothing, he’s a simulacrum, a corpse, like Jesse said, he’s death itself. You admit he rejects you. If you leave me now you’ll be dead for the rest of your days. You’ll crawl back to Thomas. You’ll be an object of derision and contempt. Have you no pride? Do you want to die?’

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