The Philosopher's Pupil Read Free

somewhere by a violent effort. He jumped up and ran to the edge of the quay. The lamp light showed the canal waters, black with mud, foaming and churning and boiling as if the devil himself were rising up to the surface like a black whale. In the midst of this turmoil was a gleaming pale expanse which it took George a moment to identify as the roof of the car. George executed a sort of dance upon the edge of the quay as if he were about to walk straight out into the air; then he began to run along the edge and to descend a flight of slimy greenish stone steps of whose existence he had somehow known. He even put his hand confidently on to a great iron ring which was hanging from the wall half-way down the steps. The cold water took hold of his trouser legs.
    George was a good swimmer. Yelping with fear and horror and the cold he reached the car. Down in the canal everything was confused and dark and terrible. No light seemed to come from above. He felt he was about to lose his senses. He had no conception of the shape of the car or what to do with it. He could not make out how high the water had risen inside. He held on helplessly to the rim of the roof. Even as he touched the car he could feel it sinking, slowly settling down into the mud. His knee touched something. A door was open. With what he remembered as a curious blind slowness George fumbled at the black aperture, holding on to the door with one hand and trying to bring his legs down at the side of the car. The end of the door struck him in the face. Stella came out like a creature sliding from a chrysalis, like a moist dark bat from a cranny, like a dream of a child being born. It seemed to George as if he had then led her back to the steps; he could not recall pulling her through the water. On the steps it was different. She was a heavy inert dripping sack which had to be hauled up step by step; and at that moment it occurred to him that she was dead. Up on the quay it was at once apparent that she was not. She lay on the stones, moving, gasping, writhing like a worm. George recalled without surprise what he had done next. He had kicked her soggy limp body, shouting, ‘You bitch! You bitch!’
    An ambulance came. The police came. Stella was taken to the hospital. George was taken to the police station where he made a confused statement and sat moaning while it was established how drunk he was. He had not recalled then, but he recalled now the identity of the black-clad figure who had been passing across the bridge. It was the priest, Father Bernard Jacoby. He must have raised the alarm. He must have seen George pushing the car. Did that matter? Christ, what a mess.
    â€˜How are we feeling?’
    The questioner was Gabriel McCaffrey, Stella’s sister- In-law.
    Stella continued to cry, saying nothing.
    Gabriel herself often cried. Not that she had anything very terrible to cry about, since she was happily married and had a lovely son, but she cried often for the anguish of the world because of its little vulnerable places, or because of the frailty of everything she loved. Stella on the other hand had always plenty to cry about. However, Gabriel had never before seen her crying or even imagined her crying.
    The two women were not intimate friends and not allies but they liked each other. Stella might well suppose that Gabriel pitied her because Gabriel was married to nice Brian while Stella was married to awful George. On the other hand, Gabriel might well imagine that Stella thought that George was interesting, whereas Brian was boring. The relations of Stella and George were a mystery to Gabriel and Brian. Of course, Stella had been to a university and was educated and clever. Yet she had made nothing of her cleverness, while Gabriel, who had not been to university, had a more successful ‘life’. Gabriel was happier. But was not battle-scarred Stella ‘more real’? There were, indeed, further complexities, of which they were both aware