The Good Apprentice by Iris Murdoch

effectively take place; and that was Edward’s trouble, was it not? So he should first have convinced Edward of his love. But how could he have done it? Edward was evidently capable, in this emergency, of regarding Stuart as an enemy. It all remained separated, ‘abstract’, a word which Harry had used, the absolute existence of his brother, his affection for him, his well-intentioned admonitions. Of course Edward was a special case; on the other hand, if he failed in this case would it not be significant? Was this perhaps a crucial test, a kind of entrance exam, the sign for which he had been waiting? Will it always be like this, Stuart wondered, and if it is, does it matter, does it matter for my plan? He could not clearly formulate this troubling query, which seemed part of the ‘narrow’ problem of his task. Supposing he were simply not gifted for his chosen mission? Was it like some totally unmusical person deciding to devote his life to music? Suppose it should turn out that he could never really communicate with other human beings at all? He had so far communicated very little. So did he now envisage himself talking to people in the future, advising them? Could something like this be learnt or did it have to be a natural endowment? Supposing he were dumb, would it be different or the same? He thought, with Ed, I’ll work on it. Stuart had of course always been aware of his father’s preference for Edward, which had left those little scars of jealousy; it had pained him, but not as much as Harry or Thomas imagined. Stuart’s capacity to detach himselfdated back a long way. ‘A cold aloof little boy,’ people had said. This coldness was part of Stuart’s problem. Was it coldness? Sometimes the very same thing seemed to him like a passion.
    I wonder if I ought to have forgiven Edward, Stuart said to himself, absolved him. Luther said all men were priests. Of course he knew that the idea was perfectly ridiculous, but it did not occur to him to think it presumptuous. After all, he had long known that life was about salvation, and had known for some time that it was his destiny to live alone as a priest in a world without God. His rejection of God went far back into his childhood. Finding himself already baptised, he had refused the sacrament of confirmation, which young Edward took with vague emotional cheerfulness in his stride. ‘God’ had always seemed to Stuart something hard and limited and small, identified as an idol, and certainly not the name of what he found within himself. Christ was different, a sort of presence, not quite a mystic person. Christ was a pure essence, something which, as it were, he might have kissed, as one might kiss a holy stone, or the soil of a holy land, or the trunk of a holy tree: something which was everywhere, yet simple separate and alone. Something alive; and he himself was Christ. The identification was unanalysed and instinctive, something obvious, where ‘not I but Christ’ was interchangeable with ‘not Christ but I’, experienced sometimes as a transparency and lightness, the closeness, even the easiness, of good. This progressive absorbing of the Holy One, as if after a while Stuart might forget his name, went on of course without reference to ‘Christianity’, and Stuart never ‘went to church’, though he sometimes sat alone in churches. It was clear that nothing was worthy of this except a total dedication, something lived and breathed, without intervals. Truth was fundamental, his life-oath. Certainty was there, honeydew was there, but meanwhile the dedication remained as a task, cumbersome, detailed, where every minute contained the likelihood of failure. How could such a paradox be lived? Not, for him at any rate, in the academic world. He needed simplicity and order, a quiet monotonous private life. He wanted to be able to be a place of peace and space to others, he wanted to be invisible, he wanted to heal people, he wanted to heal the world, and to