Free The Good Apprentice by Iris Murdoch Page A

Stuart had taken it. Damp smells of spring, of wet earth and green things growing, which would have made him happy once, came through the window which he closed with a bang. He saw the Bible on the floor and picked it up. It was a fine India paper edition which a religious cousin of Harry’s had given to Edward when he was fourteen on the occasion of his confirmation. Yes, he had been confirmed into the Church of England and had even felt a glow when the Bishop’s hand touched him. The book had opened on its fall and many of the frail pages were creased and crumpled. Edward automatically tried to straighten them out, then angrily bunched the book together. He was about to drop it again into the chaos of his strewn clothes when a superstitious idea occurred to him. The only use he had ever put the Bible to was occasionally to take a sors , to open it at random and extract a message, an absurd or ridiculously apt one, from the verses his finger lighted upon. He did this now, opening the book and pointing quickly. He held the page under the lamp and looked at what he had been vouchsafed. Destruction cometh, and they shall seek peace and there shall be none. Mischief shall come upon mischief and rumour shall come upon rumour, then shall they seek a vision of the prophet, but the law shall perish from the priest and counsel from the ancients. Edward laughed, and his laugh, like his smile, was uncanny, as if a demon within him were exulting with gloating scorn. So, he thought, it’s all ending, it’s all coming down, all rules, all law, all the old cant of civilisation. It isn’t just me who is to perish — it’s only me … first … He looked at his bottle of sleeping pills, harmless things of course, but there were many other methods. Refuge, take refuge. He took refuge in his endless conversations with Mark, his endless explanations of why he had gone away, why he had not come back, how much he suffered, with what pain he paid, how much he loved Mark and longed for him — But these conversations were one-sided, simply lonely fruitless lacerations of the soul. He tossed the Bible away and began kicking his clothes about, searching for his thriller. Then suddenly, as if magically, he saw that something had appeared , a yellow card upon which in capital letters were written simply the words DO THE DEAD WISH TO SPEAK TO YOU? Edward felt as if a dart had struck him, something piercing deeply into him from outside. He picked up the card and returned to sit on his bed. He stared at the apt and fateful message. Then he turned the card over. On the back it read: Mrs D. M. Quaid, Medium. SEANCES every Tuesday and Thursday at 5 p.m. There was an address near Fitzroy Square. Edward held the card, then laid it down carefully beside the lamp. Perhaps things connected after all.
     
     
     
    It is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the living God. These words came into Stuart’s head as he entered his bedroom. His room, directly above Edward’s, the room of his childhood, was unadorned, only lately indeed stripped of the last trophies of that time. His books, hastily brought from his digs, were piled against the wall. He had put his clothes away. He turned on the lamp, turned off the centre light, and sat down on an upright chair. He sat with his eyes open and breathed slowly and was at once rapt into a state of complete quietness. The ability to achieve, instantly, this separated stillness had come to him naturally and spontaneously at school. It had not been connected with any sort of instruction, certainly not any religious instruction. Perhaps it had struck him first simply as a method of escaping from childish misery, banishing certain unsavoury thoughts, an instant nothingness which could diminish such ailments or make them vanish. Later he had apprehended it as something more positive, a kind of lightness, an escape from gravity, an available levitation to a higher viewpoint, a removal from time, wherein huge and