The Good Apprentice (20 page)
Read The Good Apprentice Online
Authors: Iris Murdoch
Walking down the hill, Edward could see through the trees the turret of the stables and the golden weathercock fox turning in the wind, not very far away. His geographical misfortunes were not over however. He came suddenly upon a river, a racing substantial river whose sound no doubt he had heard yesterday and in the night. This must be the river which was responsible for the flooded water meadow and whose channel he had crossed on the half-drowned bridge. Here the river ran deeply and swiftly between high steep banks, churning and foaming along with a humming hissing sound of which Edward realised he had been aware for some time. There was no walking through that torrent, or leaping over it. Vexed and frustrated Edward began to hurry along the bank, anxious now about being late for lunch and finding that Jesse had returned. The power was withdrawn from him, he moaned and cursed audibly as he stumbled along, realising that he might have to run all the way back to the drenched meadows and the submerged bridge. Then, round a curve, where the river narrowed, there appeared suddenly, not exactly a bridge, but a sort of rickety wooden structure, rather like a slatted fence or long hurdle, leaning over at an angle and spanning the waters which bubbled huskily through its many holes. It might have been part of some old vanished lock or sluice, or more likely designed simply as a precarious walkway. Edward saw at once that by placing his feet upon the horizontal beam that held the slats together and holding onto the top of the rather jagged and broken ‘fence’, he could edge his way across. He slithered down the bank and mounted the thing, which swayed unpleasantly as if about to fall over into the stream, and began to move across by cautious steps, the water running over his feet. Almost at the other bank his bridge came to an end, leaving a small gap where deep waters ran swiftly through agitated reeds. He crossed with a long stride, slipped, grasping at long grasses, then squirmed up the wet slope like a snake, plastering his front with mud. He got to his feet and running now upon a grass path passed through the grove of poplar trees and saw the vegetable garden, the greenhouses and the orchard, and the brown walls of Selden made creamy by the sun. He slowed down and cleaned the more evident lumps of mud off his clothing.
‘Oh, you’re back,’ said Bettina, as he came through the main door into the Atrium. ‘Take off your shoes, please. I hope you had a nice walk. I looked in your suitcase, I hope you don’t mind, you don’t seem to have much in the way of clothes, so I’ve looked you out some old clobber of Jesse’s, I’ve left it upstairs. Lunch is in twenty minutes. We make our own beds here, by the way.’
‘Thanks, sorry — Is my father back?’
‘Not yet.’
Passing through Transition, which was always rather dark even by daylight, Edward met Mother May.
‘Hello, Edward. Have a nice walk? I forgot to tell you that we rest here from three-thirty to four-fifteen every day, we lie on our beds. You don’t have to of course, but I tell you in case you start wondering where everyone is!’
‘Thanks. When will my father come?’
‘Won’t you call me Mother May?’
‘Mother May, when will my father come?’
‘Oh quite soon. Don’t worry. We want you to feel that this is your home. Lunch in about fifteen minutes.’
At the bottom of West Selden stairs he met Ilona who was coming along the corridor from East Selden. ‘Oh, hello, how was your walk? Could you take these towels to the cupboard next to your sitting room? Lunch soon, so don’t be long.’
Edward went upstairs, put the towels in the cupboard, and returned to his room. His bed had been made, his own few belongings unpacked and neatly put away in drawers. Upon the bed were laid out two jackets, two jerseys, an overcoat, a woollen scarf, an old worn pair of corduroy trousers, a flat cap and a woollen beret. Upon the floor stood two pairs of ancient well-polished leather boots. Edward picked up an armful of the strange clothes. They smelt of father. How was it that he had had this need in his heart all these years and had only now discovered it? Still holding the clothes he sat down on the bed.
Edward was awakened in the middle of the night by a very loud and very unusual sound. It was as if a large amount of glass, say indeed many tin trays loaded with tumblers, had been hurled down a flight of stone steps. He sat up rigidly in the dark, reached out for his bedside lamp, realised there was not one, and closed his fingers on the electric torch whose proximity he checked each night on retiring. He sat a moment upright, breathing fast, then got out of bed. He shone the torch about the room, then went to the door, cautiously opened it, then listened again. He even went to the top of the stairs and shone the torch down, though by now he was fairly sure he would see nothing. Nothing. Silence. No one stirring. A broken window? An accident in a greenhouse? No. Not that sort of thirig. He walked quickly back and instinctively turned the electric light switch in his bedroom, though he knew the current was cut off. How he longed for that comforting revealing blaze of illumination as again he searched the room with the small ray of the torch. He did not attempt to light the oil lamp, he still found it difficult. Edward had now been at Seegard for several days, and tonight’s disturbance was not his first experience of the oddity of the place. Two nights ago he had heard a different sound, the unmistakable sound, quite nearby, of children’s leather-shod feet running upon linoleum. How he knew that was what the sound was, he was not sure. He could not recall any dream which would explain the impression, and he was sure too that he had heard, and not dreamt, the running feet and now that vast noise of smashing glass. He sat on the bed for a while, holding the torch in one hand and containing his violently beating heart with the other. He had not said anything about the feet. Would he now say nothing about the glass, the vibration of which was still ringing in his ears? It was as if he were ashamed of these experiences. His watch said half-past two. He got up all the same and opened one section of the shutters hoping to see the dawn. The moonless night was silent and very dark. Bettina had taught him to distinguish the
gewick, gewick
of the female owl from the long
000-000
of the male, and he would have welcomed now a sound that he could recognise. But there were no owls, not even a patter of rain, only a powdery velvety silence. He switched off the torch. He did not want to
be seen
— from outside. He waited awhile, and had put his hand upon the sash window, which he kept a little open behind the shutters, intending to close it, when he did again hear something, very softly at first, then louder, a sort of pitiful wailing, or as it increased almost howling noise, passing him by as if borne on the wind, and quickly ceasing. Edward abruptly closed the window and the shutter and got into his bed and pulled the bedclothes up around his head.
gewick, gewick
of the female owl from the long
000-000
of the male, and he would have welcomed now a sound that he could recognise. But there were no owls, not even a patter of rain, only a powdery velvety silence. He switched off the torch. He did not want to
be seen
— from outside. He waited awhile, and had put his hand upon the sash window, which he kept a little open behind the shutters, intending to close it, when he did again hear something, very softly at first, then louder, a sort of pitiful wailing, or as it increased almost howling noise, passing him by as if borne on the wind, and quickly ceasing. Edward abruptly closed the window and the shutter and got into his bed and pulled the bedclothes up around his head.
In the past days, and although Edward expected him at every moment, Jesse had still not returned.
How
would Jesse return, how would Edward first sight him? He would not arrive by car, since the track was still very muddy with the intermittent rain. Perhaps Edward would see him walking toward the house, his tall vigorous figure appearing in the distance, an authoritative figure, a king returning to his kingdom. Or perhaps he would be quietly present one evening, appearing for supper, materialising, a threat kept secret by them all to surprise Edward. Or Edward might be suddenly told, quick Jesse is here, he’s in the Atrium and wants to see you, run, don’t keep him waiting. Or perhaps during a storm he might come in across the fen, coming up from the sea like a fisherman, like a marine monster. The idea of Jesse’s
coming
was frightening, sometimes seemed, in the lengthening interval, unthinkable, impossible. Meanwhile, as he waited, Edward had become used to the routine of steady ceaseless work punctuated by strictly timed periods of rest, as in a religious order, a monastery, where a good innocent quiet life goes steadily and monotonously on. Breakfast was at seven, work continued until lunch at two (‘Jesse likes a long morning’), then work till three-thirty, then rest till four-fifteen (‘Sleep twice a day, and get two days for the price of one, Jesse says’), then work till six-thirty (‘We don’t have teatime’), then ‘leisure’, then supper at eight, then ‘leisure’ again till ten-thirty, then bedtime tasks (washing up supper, laying breakfast, tidying, locking doors). Then the longed-for loss of consciousness. Edward could not say that he had yet acquired any skills, but he had learnt to perform a variety of unskilled tasks with some imitation of the quiet swift efficiency of which the women everywhere gave him an example. He endlessly, unconsciously, carried things about, knew all the ‘leaving places’ where things (plates, linen, clothes, tools) were put when they were on the move. He meticulously obeyed Bettina’s precepts: never walk empty-handed, always use two hands (after she saw Edward lifting things from one plate to another while holding one of the plates in one hand), carry plenty, but not too much (after Edward had come to grief through excess of zeal). He washed dishes, he worked the washing machine (powered by the precious generator), he dug and weeded the vegetable garden, he filled the oil lamps, he watered the potted plants, on one occasion he helped Bettina to cement cracks in the wall of the stables, he fetched rain water for drinking and cooking (’The spring water is full of nitrates‘), he peeled onions and potatoes, he chopped herbs with very sharp knives, he sawed and carried wood, he fed the stoves, he swept the vast slated floor of the Atrium. He dusted. He was touched and secretly gratified to find how extremely
dirty
Seegard was in spite of the ceaseless activity of its inmates. It was full of blackened wainscots and fluffy floors and spiders’ webs and bits of vegetables and corners full of old nails and scraps of wood and miscellaneous balls of dirt. Once when Ilona found him eagerly washing some woodwork in Transition she said, ’Oh don’t bother, we haven’t time for things like that.’ The huge construction (Edward could not quite think of it as ’a house‘) also exceeded human efforts by remaining, in spite of the slightly warmer weather, extremely, almost mysteriously, cold. The big Germanic tiled stove made little impression on the Atrium, and the open fire in the Interfec was never lighted before six-thirty. Edward, soon used to the temperature, did not attempt to animate the paraffin heater in his bedroom. Bettina had promised to teach him the mysteries of the electric generator and of the pump which brought the spring water up out of the well, not the ornamental well in Selden courtyard, but a secret domestic well under the floorboards of the kitchen, where the great cast-iron stove, as long and bulky as a rhinoceros, was continually burning the wood which Edward brought in; this was the only warm room. Bettina had however not yet had time to teach Edward anything, and he was rather relieved about this. In the Seegard city state he preferred the comparative irresponsibility of an unskilled artisan; besides, Bettina might well prove to be a rather exacting teacher. The ’machinery‘ was said to be ’always going wrong‘, and Edward did not fancy having to share the blame. Not that anyone had yet blamed him for anything; but the slightly taut atmosphere suggested to him the possibility of failure, of not, after all, ’coming up to scratch’.
How
would Jesse return, how would Edward first sight him? He would not arrive by car, since the track was still very muddy with the intermittent rain. Perhaps Edward would see him walking toward the house, his tall vigorous figure appearing in the distance, an authoritative figure, a king returning to his kingdom. Or perhaps he would be quietly present one evening, appearing for supper, materialising, a threat kept secret by them all to surprise Edward. Or Edward might be suddenly told, quick Jesse is here, he’s in the Atrium and wants to see you, run, don’t keep him waiting. Or perhaps during a storm he might come in across the fen, coming up from the sea like a fisherman, like a marine monster. The idea of Jesse’s
coming
was frightening, sometimes seemed, in the lengthening interval, unthinkable, impossible. Meanwhile, as he waited, Edward had become used to the routine of steady ceaseless work punctuated by strictly timed periods of rest, as in a religious order, a monastery, where a good innocent quiet life goes steadily and monotonously on. Breakfast was at seven, work continued until lunch at two (‘Jesse likes a long morning’), then work till three-thirty, then rest till four-fifteen (‘Sleep twice a day, and get two days for the price of one, Jesse says’), then work till six-thirty (‘We don’t have teatime’), then ‘leisure’, then supper at eight, then ‘leisure’ again till ten-thirty, then bedtime tasks (washing up supper, laying breakfast, tidying, locking doors). Then the longed-for loss of consciousness. Edward could not say that he had yet acquired any skills, but he had learnt to perform a variety of unskilled tasks with some imitation of the quiet swift efficiency of which the women everywhere gave him an example. He endlessly, unconsciously, carried things about, knew all the ‘leaving places’ where things (plates, linen, clothes, tools) were put when they were on the move. He meticulously obeyed Bettina’s precepts: never walk empty-handed, always use two hands (after she saw Edward lifting things from one plate to another while holding one of the plates in one hand), carry plenty, but not too much (after Edward had come to grief through excess of zeal). He washed dishes, he worked the washing machine (powered by the precious generator), he dug and weeded the vegetable garden, he filled the oil lamps, he watered the potted plants, on one occasion he helped Bettina to cement cracks in the wall of the stables, he fetched rain water for drinking and cooking (’The spring water is full of nitrates‘), he peeled onions and potatoes, he chopped herbs with very sharp knives, he sawed and carried wood, he fed the stoves, he swept the vast slated floor of the Atrium. He dusted. He was touched and secretly gratified to find how extremely
dirty
Seegard was in spite of the ceaseless activity of its inmates. It was full of blackened wainscots and fluffy floors and spiders’ webs and bits of vegetables and corners full of old nails and scraps of wood and miscellaneous balls of dirt. Once when Ilona found him eagerly washing some woodwork in Transition she said, ’Oh don’t bother, we haven’t time for things like that.’ The huge construction (Edward could not quite think of it as ’a house‘) also exceeded human efforts by remaining, in spite of the slightly warmer weather, extremely, almost mysteriously, cold. The big Germanic tiled stove made little impression on the Atrium, and the open fire in the Interfec was never lighted before six-thirty. Edward, soon used to the temperature, did not attempt to animate the paraffin heater in his bedroom. Bettina had promised to teach him the mysteries of the electric generator and of the pump which brought the spring water up out of the well, not the ornamental well in Selden courtyard, but a secret domestic well under the floorboards of the kitchen, where the great cast-iron stove, as long and bulky as a rhinoceros, was continually burning the wood which Edward brought in; this was the only warm room. Bettina had however not yet had time to teach Edward anything, and he was rather relieved about this. In the Seegard city state he preferred the comparative irresponsibility of an unskilled artisan; besides, Bettina might well prove to be a rather exacting teacher. The ’machinery‘ was said to be ’always going wrong‘, and Edward did not fancy having to share the blame. Not that anyone had yet blamed him for anything; but the slightly taut atmosphere suggested to him the possibility of failure, of not, after all, ’coming up to scratch’.
It suited him to be told what to do, to be so much employed that he could exist unthinkingly like a slave, like a working animal. At moments when he was tired, when his strained body resented an exertion to which he was unused, he experienced a welcome sense of degradation, as if he were about to escape from his burden of consciousness. He would become a beast, a four-legged thing that faced the earth and humbly offered its bared back to be ridden upon, he would shrink into a rat, a mouse, a beetle, become a dried-up husk like the little tree fruits he had crunched underfoot on the hill, he would crumble to dust and thus escape the torture of being. Yet would not every grain of dust be cursed with a memory? He would become an atom, an electron, a proton — but these were thoughts which led back again into the quivering pain of the reflecting self. Sitting in the Interfectory during his enforced ‘leisure’ he ached with misery as he covertly watched the women who, when they caught his guilty look, smiled at him encouragingly but did not speak. Silence was not exactly enjoined but was customary. After the urgent purposeful ‘powerhouse’ activity of the day, leisure seemed deliberately purposeless. Embroidery frames were in evidence, but not much embroidery was done. Mother May often passed the time mending clothes, but leaving off at intervals to relax, her body becoming limp, her beautiful grey eyes vacant, her lips faintly smiling. Edward, stiff in his chair, wished he could emulate this absence. Ilona drew dreamily with pastels on sketch pads of various sizes. Bettina was studying a volume about African crafts. The bookshelves contained, together with a variety of works upon architecture and design, a number of English nineteenth-century novels, all dusty and undisturbed. What indeed could the women have made of these tales of violence? It would have been like watching savages pretend to read. Edward himself beguiled an appalled boredom by trying to write poetry, but could not concentrate, and concealed his enforced idleness by doodling on the paper or writing nonsense.
After the first morning Edward had not again been serenaded under his window, though he occasionally heard, as he worked in the garden, a brief distant sound of a recorder rather unskilfully played, he imagined by Ilona. There was an old gramophone and some classical records in the Interfec, but Edward had not yet ventured to ask for music. He was also tacitly excluded from another rite, the early ‘exercises’ which occurred before breakfast on the grass beyond the stables, and which, as he covertly observed them, looked to him more like dancing. ’It’s Chinese,‘ Ilona told him, ’sort of swaying movements, rather slow and rhythmical.’ ’It’s the natural rhythm of the body,‘ said Bettina, ’not like the violent jolting most people call exercise.‘ ’We follow Jesse’s rule,‘ said Mother May, ’he is a mystic. Eastern wisdom teaches the unity of body and spirit, how the outer is the inner, the inner the outer.‘ This information was not conveyed solemnly but with a kind of friendly levity, and when Edward said he would like to join in he was laughed at. ’It takes ages to get the hang,‘ said Ilona. Meanwhile there had been no recurrence of the festive wine-drinking of his arrival night, but Edward, tired and hungry at meal-times, did not miss the alcohol. He had also become used to the very simple monotonous vegetarian fare. The evening meal was nevertheless, even on ordinary days, something of a formality, with the women in their pretty dresses and Edward in a long oatmeal smock-shirt belonging to Jesse which Mother May had offered him as ’evening dress’ and in which he felt uneasy, although he now wore Jesse’s boots without anxiety. They fitted him well. He had established, or been given, a singular right, that of ‘taking a walk’ during the afternoon rest time, even prolonging it a little. He treasured this aloneness. He had once tried to return to the
dromos
or, as he thought of it, the ‘sacred grove’. He wondered if there would be fresh offerings of flowers. Who came there? But the river had swollen a little, the stone bridge was scarcely visible and traverse across the wooden ‘bridge’ looked too hazardous. He had, out of a sort of shyness or reverential unease, not yet mentioned his discovery of this place. He wondered how it related to Seegard. He had also not mentioned the night noises. Nor had he or the women said anything about Edward’s ‘mishap’ which they had ‘read about’ and which had evidently prompted their invitation. In spite of their continued almost effusive friendliness and evidences of concern and affection, he still felt a little nervous of the three of them, a nervousness quite distinct from his fear of Jesse, and indeed different in quality in relation to each. With Ilona it was easiest, and yet, just because he was closest to the ‘young one’, he felt anxious, as if some power coming from him might harm or taint her. He was conscious of a diffident withdrawal on both sides. Bettina was sometimes, during work, brusque with him, critical, and yet also there was some vibration of a strong emotion, perhaps simply his sense of her intense self-absorbed inwardness. Mother May, being older, had the clearer role, of a benevolent motherly figure. She expressed her affection for Edward in a more direct way, teasing him, moving round him, making a space where he was
with
her. She had not yet kissed him however, and neither of course had the other two. Kisses, so cheap in Edward’s student world, were highly priced at Seegard. Mother May’s fine transparent calm face, revealing by daylight some tiny line-thin wrinkles, was amazingly youthful yet expressed a confident reserved authority. Sometimes when all three women plaited their hair in the evening, wearing ribbons into the plaits, and letting the long heavy ropes hang down behind, they looked like three young mediaeval princesses. Three cloistered princesses in a castle waiting for a knight, Edward thought with a shudder. He could feel Mother May watching him, as if
waiting.
Waiting perhaps for some assessment which she would make jointly with Jesse. They would discuss Edward, weigh him, sum him up. The queen was waiting for the king. What would she be like, what would she become, when he came back?
dromos
or, as he thought of it, the ‘sacred grove’. He wondered if there would be fresh offerings of flowers. Who came there? But the river had swollen a little, the stone bridge was scarcely visible and traverse across the wooden ‘bridge’ looked too hazardous. He had, out of a sort of shyness or reverential unease, not yet mentioned his discovery of this place. He wondered how it related to Seegard. He had also not mentioned the night noises. Nor had he or the women said anything about Edward’s ‘mishap’ which they had ‘read about’ and which had evidently prompted their invitation. In spite of their continued almost effusive friendliness and evidences of concern and affection, he still felt a little nervous of the three of them, a nervousness quite distinct from his fear of Jesse, and indeed different in quality in relation to each. With Ilona it was easiest, and yet, just because he was closest to the ‘young one’, he felt anxious, as if some power coming from him might harm or taint her. He was conscious of a diffident withdrawal on both sides. Bettina was sometimes, during work, brusque with him, critical, and yet also there was some vibration of a strong emotion, perhaps simply his sense of her intense self-absorbed inwardness. Mother May, being older, had the clearer role, of a benevolent motherly figure. She expressed her affection for Edward in a more direct way, teasing him, moving round him, making a space where he was
with
her. She had not yet kissed him however, and neither of course had the other two. Kisses, so cheap in Edward’s student world, were highly priced at Seegard. Mother May’s fine transparent calm face, revealing by daylight some tiny line-thin wrinkles, was amazingly youthful yet expressed a confident reserved authority. Sometimes when all three women plaited their hair in the evening, wearing ribbons into the plaits, and letting the long heavy ropes hang down behind, they looked like three young mediaeval princesses. Three cloistered princesses in a castle waiting for a knight, Edward thought with a shudder. He could feel Mother May watching him, as if
waiting.
Waiting perhaps for some assessment which she would make jointly with Jesse. They would discuss Edward, weigh him, sum him up. The queen was waiting for the king. What would she be like, what would she become, when he came back?
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