The Good Apprentice Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  PART ONE - The Prodigal Son

  PART TWO - Seegard

  PART THREE - Life After Death

  PENGUIN TWENTIETH-CENTURY CLASSICS

  THE GOOD APPRENTICE

  Iris Murdoch was born in Dublin in 1919, grew up in London, and received her university education at Oxford and later at Cambridge. In 1948 she became a fellow of St. Anne’s College, Oxford, where for many years she taught philosophy. In 1987 she was appointed Dame Commander, Order of the British Empire. She died on February 8, 1999. Murdoch wrote twenty-six novels, including Under the Net, her writing debut of 1954, and the Booker Prize winning The Sea, The Sea (1978). She received a number of other literary awards, among them the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for The Black Prince (1973) and the Witbread Prize for The Sacred and Profane Love Machine (1974). Her works of philosophy include Sartre: Romantic Realist (1953), Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals (1993), and Existentialists and Mystics (1998). She also wrote several plays and a volume of poetry.

  By the same author

  Philosophy

  SARTRE, ROMANTIC REALIST

  THE FIRE AND THE SUN

  ACOSTOS: TWO PLATONIC DIALOGS

  METAPHYSICS AS A GUIDE TO MORALS

  EXISTENTIALISTS AND MYSTICS

  Fiction

  UNDER THE NET

  THE FLIGHT FROM THE ENCHANTER

  THE SANDCASTLE

  THE BELL

  SEVERED HEAD

  AN UNOFFICIAL ROSE

  THE UNICORN

  THE ITALIAN GIRL

  THE RED AND THE GREEN

  THE TIME OF THE ANGLES

  THE NICE AND THE GOOD

  BRUNO’S DREAM

  A FAIRLY HONOURABLE DEFEAT

  AN ACCIDENTAL MAN

  THE BLACK PRINCE

  THE SACRED AND PROFANE LOVE MACHINE

  A WORD CHILD

  HENRY AND CATO

  THE SEA, THE SEA

  NUNS AND SOLDIERS

  THE PHILOSOPHER’S PUPIL

  THE GOOD APPRENTICE

  THE BOOK AND THE BROTHERHOOD

  THE MESSAGE TO THE PLANET

  THE GREEN KNIGHT

  JACKSON’S DILEMMA

  Plays

  A SEVERED HEAD (with J. B. Priestly)

  THE ITALIAN GIRL (with James Saunders)

  THE THREE ARROWS and

  THE SERVANTS AND THE SNOW

  THE BLACK PRINCE

  Poetry

  A YEAR OF BIRDS

  (Illustrated by Reynolds Stone)

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane,

  London W8 5TZ, England

  Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood,

  Victoria, Australia

  Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue,

  Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2

  Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road,

  Auckland 10, New Zealand

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:

  Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England

  First published in Great Britain by Chatto & Windus 1985

  First published in the United States of America by Viking Penguin Inc. 1986

  Published in Penguin Books 1987

  This edition published 2001

  9 10

  Copyright © Iris Murdoch, 1985 All rights reserved

  eISBN : 978-1-101-49570-4

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  To Brigid Brophy

  PART ONE

  The Prodigal Son

  I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father I have sinned against heaven and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son.

  These were not perhaps the actual words which Edward Baltram uttered to himselfon the occasion of his momentous and mysterious summons, yet their echo was not absent even then, and later he repeated them often.

  The story begins however at an earlier point, on the evening in February when Edward played a disgraceful trick upon his friend and fellow student Mark Wilsden. The magisterial drug which transports its initiates to heaven or to hell had been surreptitiously administered. Mark, who had so loftily disapproved and so peevishly refused, now lay a helpless victim, giggling and babbling upon the lamplit divan bed in Edward’s small bedsitter upon the second floor of a shabby terrace house in Camden Town. Edward, no trip for him that evening, clad in his magician’s robe of sober power, stood looking down. He had concealed the drug in a sandwich, and watched the metamorphosis with wicked triumph. His sole anxiety vanished as soon as it became clear that Mark was destined to have a happy journey. If he had sent his friend even temporarily to hell he would have felt most uncomfortable. As it was, Mark’s face, beautiful at any time, was transfigured by a luminous ecstasy. His brown eyes were large, his full, eloquent lips were red and moist, his skin glowing as if illumined from within. The drops of sweat upon his forehead, the hairs of his elegantly clipped moustache and beard, stood out and shone as if his face had become a priestly mask inlaid with precious stones. With his longish head he looked like an Egyptian king. He looked like a wide-browed, huge-eyed god. He was a god, he had become divine, he was experiencing the Good Absolute, the vision of visions, the annihilation of the ego. Edward had heard of this. Such insights could last a lifetime. Mark would be grateful to him later. Edward’s own experiences, though picturesque and thrilling, had not been mystical. Mark, whom Edward admired and loved, was a mystical type. Edward, contemplating the transfiguration of his friend, felt quite faint with joy.

  Mark, who had been laughing continuously in a low undulating rhythmical giggle which sometimes sounded like a sob, now began to concentrate. He thrust his lips out as he often did when he was thinking.

  ‘Edward.’

  ‘Yes, Mark.’

  ‘How things are.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How they are. They are in themselves, they are, I say, in themselves, that’s the — the secret.’

  ‘Yes, indeed they are.’

  ‘No. They are not just in themselves — they are — themselves. Everything is — itself. It is a — itself. But, you know, there’s — there’s only one — ’

  ‘Only one what?’

  ‘Anything. Everything is — all together — like a big — it’s shaggy — ’

  ‘Shaggy?’

  ‘Edward — ’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No — it’s all scales, millions of scales and — gills — I can see it — breathing — it’s a fish — I mean — everything is — it’s all one … big … fish …’

  Edward tried to imagine the big shaggy scaly fish that was everything. But now his own visionary drug images, stirred up by sympathy, began to float by him as if the little room had become a deep lake full of waving reeds and quaking amoebas with big eyes and dark swollen forms bound in white ribbons, the raising of Lazarus, the creation of the world.

  ‘Oh now it’s pingling,’ said Mark suddenly. He tried to rise a little, but fell back on the divan. ‘It’s pingling, I can see the sky — beyond — oh the light — all made of angels’ heads, like pins, pinheads, all shining, all together, all — unfolding, like a long long — scroll — and the light — it’s laser beams — the spears, the spears — hurt so — oh I’m so happy — I’m rising up, I’m flying — And God-is coming — ’

  ‘Can you see God? What’s he like?’

  ‘He’s coming — like a — like a lift.’

  Mark lay for a while in silence, gazing away into the distance of h
is vision, smiling, his parted lips bubbling a little. Then he raised his hand solemnly as if blessing Edward. Then quite suddenly he fell into a deep calm sleep.

  Edward was disappointed. He considered trying to wake him but decided he had better not. Such sleeps could last a long while however, and by the time Mark awoke the fun might be over.

  The telephone rang.

  ‘Edward?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s Sarah.’

  ‘Hello, Sarah.’

  ‘Could you come and see me? I’m low. Come across and have a quick drink.’

  ‘Oh — all right — just five minutes.’

  Edward returned to look at Mark. He looked like a sleeping knight in a picture; or the dead Christ, so handsome, unsullied and unhurt. He pulled a rug over his sleeping friend. Then he put a newspaper over the lamp to shade the light and left the room, locking the door behind him.

  Edward’s visit to Sarah Plowmain (who lived very close by) that evening was not entirely impromptu. He had recently met her in college, in a ‘set’ which included Mark, and after her casual ‘Let’s meet, I’ll ring’ had been expecting her summons for some days. Sarah was cool. She had waited exactly the right length of time before inviting him for (right again) a ‘quick drink’. Edward could not resist such elegant discretion, and he was flattered. It was time to establish this girl; after that they could see, it was not an urgent case. For this move however this was the moment, and Edward believed in fated moments. Besides, Sarah had said that her mother had met or known Edward’s mother, and any signal, however faint, from the dark lost planet of his parents disturbed and interested Edward very much.

  What young Edward (he was twenty) had not expected was that young Sarah (she was nineteen), who was small and dark and agile like a Russian acrobat, would immediately (how had it happened?) undress him (his clothes had seemed to melt away) and introduce him into her bed, in her little cave-like candle-lit room where a stick of incense was burning in a Chinese vase on the mantelpiece.

  Now they were clothed again (had he been asleep?) and they were talking and drinking whisky, which was it seemed the only drink Sarah had in stock. Sarah was smoking, she was always smoking.

  ‘You said your mother knew my mother?’

  ‘They were together at the polytechnic. Your mother was doing art and mine was doing sociology. So that was it, was it?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You just came to talk about your mother!’

  ‘I want to talk about you too.’

  ‘And my father used to teach your brother. We’re connected. It’s fate.’

  ‘I’m so sorry about your father.’

  Sarah’s father, the mathematician Dirk Plowmain, had committed suicide not long ago.

  ‘Yes. But we weren’t close. He behaved so badly to my mother, they separated quite a long time ago. Your father behaved badly to your mother too, didn’t he?’

  Edward was hurt by the allusion which, he felt, went too far for this early stage of acquaintance. He had a strict sense of decorum. He said nothing.

  ‘You’re the son of Jesse Baltram, aren’t you, not of Harry Cuno? Some people are a bit confused about it.’

  Edward disliked the tone, but replied amiably enough. ‘Yes, but I’ve never known Jesse, I only saw him once or twice when I was a kid. He dropped my mother before I was born, he was married to someone else anyway — ’

  ‘Yes, I bet your ma kept you well clear of horrible Jesse! Except that she made sure you had his name!’

  ‘Then my mother married Harry Cuno and then she went and died. I’ve always regarded Harry as my father.’

  ‘And Stuart is your brother? He’s not Chloe’s child, is he?’

  ‘No, he’s not my mother’s child. He’s the son of Harry’s first wife, she died before Chloe took over, she came from New Zealand.’ For some reason Teresa Cuno, when she was referred to, which happened rarely, was always thus labelled.

  ‘So Stuart and you aren’t really brothers.’

  ‘Not blood relations — but, well, we are brothers.’

  ‘You mean you’re like brothers. I’d like to meet Stuart. Someone says he’s given up sex before he’s even tried it!’

  ‘So that was it, was it? You just wanted to get to know Stuart!’ Edward was fond of his elder brother, but they did not get on too well.

  ‘No, no, I want to know you, I’m studying you, can’t you see? And then there’s your aunt, Chloe’s little sister, the fashion lady who married that Scotch psychiatrist. He’s miles older than she is, isn’t he? I suppose she was a mother to you?’

  ‘Midge McCaskerville, no, not at all.’ Certainly not Midge, his charming young aunt, whom Edward remembered kissing so passionately at a dance when he was seventeen. Margaret McCaskerville, née Warriston, his mother’s younger sister, was always known by her nickname ‘Midge’, which she had used during her short career as a fashion model.

  ‘Not a maternal type,’ said Sarah. ‘I’m told she’s changed a lot. She’s got fat. How do you get on with Harry Cuno?’

  ‘Fine. Maybe you’d like to meet him too, I’ll give a party!’

  ‘Oh good! He’s a real adventurer, like an explorer, I’ve seen his picture, like a pirate, a buccaneer, fearfully talented, a hero of our time!’

  ‘Yes, but not exactly a successful one.’ Why did I say that, thought Edward. This smart little girl will think I don’t like him. She’ll repeat it too. And he is wonderful.

  ‘I tell you who I’d most like to meet.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Your real father, Jesse Baltram, now he’s a great man.’

  ‘You said he was horrible.’

  ‘I was taking you mother’s view. Anyway he can be both, can’t he? Lots of men are!’

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t arrange it,’ said Edward.

  ‘A painter, an architect, a sculptor, a socialist, and a Don Juan! My mother met him ages ago. She used to know his wife, May Barnes, before she married him. They’ve shut themselves up in that grotesque house in the marsh. I know that bit of coast, my ma’s got a cottage — ’

  ‘Isn’t your mother famous for something?’

  ‘Women’s Lib Journalism. She’s a fire-eater.’

  Edward was stirred and upset by this display of irreverent curiosity about his family. Almost any reference hurt. He looked more critically now at Sarah’s clever sallow face, devoid of make-up, her cropped hair and ragged dark fringe, her shaggy jersey and narrow dirty jeans, her big glass beads and noisy Indian bangles, her bitten finger-nails and little strong hand, smelling of nicotine, which intermittently squeezed his knee. She was less beautiful than the last girl he had made love to (a tall American just returned to Boston) but was more attractive, gipsyish, cleverer, nastier, more unpredictable, dangerous. Was this perhaps the beginning of it, the serious business for which his love life had been waiting? The way she had undressed him had been so deft, like knitting, her soft accomplished body so tactful and authoritative. She was certainly experienced. Was that good or bad?

  One of the candles guttered out. ‘Can’t we have a lamp?’ said Edward. ‘And need we have the incense? I don’t like the smell.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say?’ Sarah sprang up and turned on a lamp and pinched out the incense. ‘I like the darkness. Have you ever been to a seance? Would you like to go? It’s an experience. Shall we go together?’

  Edward suddenly remembered Mark Wilsden. How had he managed completely to forget his friend? The sudden love-making, the weirdly concentrated talk about his family, had translated him utterly. And perhaps the use of drugs affects the memory? This was a sober thought. He stood up.

  ‘Do you believe in life after death? I don’t, but I believe in psychic phenomena. All right, Edward, you’re going, I’ll find your coat.’

  ‘I must rush,’ he said.

  ‘Haven’t you got a scarf? I could lend you a woolly cap. It’s getting awfully cold. I wonder if it’ll snow?’

  Of course Mark
was perfectly all right, would be still asleep. Edward looked at his watch, amazed and relieved to find that his eventful little visit to Sarah Plowmain had taken little over half an hour. He came out into the clear frosty very cold night, gulping in the cold and seeing with satisfaction his deep breaths turned into steamy clouds. Running the short distance between Sarah’s lodgings and his own he levitated several times upon the glittering pavement. He had wanted to be a ballet dancer once.

  Edward panted up the narrow flight of stairs. Putting his key in the door he realised that he was drunk. The key skidded over the painted surface seeking the hole. He found it and opened the door, entered and closed the door. The darkened room with its one shaded lamp was curiously cold. Edward saw at once that the newspaper he had put over the lamp was brown and scorched. He quickly removed it, then turned to the divan. The divan was empty. Edward looked quickly about the room, there was nowhere to hide, nowhere to go. There was no one there. Mark was gone. Then he saw the chair drawn up beside the window and the window wide open.

  So it was that Edward Baltram’s life was profoundly and permanently altered. At the police station, and again at the inquest, he described how he had climbed on the chair and leaned out of the window and seen Mark’s body lying in the area below the street, illumined by a light from a basement room. Nobody had seen or heard him fall. He described how he ran moaning down the stairs, out onto the pavement, and down the steps to the basement. Mark’s body lay there, huge in the small space, stretched out and broken, a blood-stained sack. The blood smeared Edward’s shoes. He knocked at the lower flat. The people there telephoned the police. A fruitless ambulance arrived. Someone went to break the news to Mark’s mother. ‘What happened?’ everyone asked Edward. At the inquest he was asked more detailed questions. Yes, he had given Mark the drug. At Mark’s request? Yes. Why had he left him alone? He went out for a breath offresh air. How long was he away? Ten minutes. Drugs, which he had not had the presence of mind to remove, were found in Edward’s room. It emerged that he had, on one occasion, casually sold some of the stuffto a fellow student. Mark’s mother, a widow, a powerful and frightening woman, terrible in her grief, declared that Mark abominated drugs and would never have taken any of his own accord. She accused Edward of having murdered her son. The authorities were merciful to Edward. His college suspended him until the next academic year. He saw a hospital psychiatrist who bullied him. He was let off on condition that he gave up drugs and agreed to receive regular psychiatric treatment. This his uncle by marriage, Thomas McCaskerville, who also gave evidence at the inquest, agreed to arrange or provide. The newspapers lost interest in him. Thus Edward passed out of the public eye into his private hell.