The Good Apprentice (35 page)

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Authors: Iris Murdoch

BOOK: The Good Apprentice
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After a paralysed moment Edward began to speak, spewing out the sudden unpremeditated words. ‘I gave him that stuff, he didn’t know, he hated drugs, I gave it to him in a sandwich, I stayed with him, I only left him for twenty minutes — ’
‘It was more than that,’ said Sarah.
‘When I left him he was fast asleep and I thought — ’
‘Oh dry up,’ said Elspeth Macran.
There was a silence during which they all stood still as if holding their breath. Afterwards Edward thought of the awful scene in that room as being like one of Jesse’s pictures, full of doom and dread and catastrophic forces held in suspense. The room actually seemed darker. Then Mark’s sister turned and went back through the door.
‘Go to her,’ said Elspeth to Sarah. Sarah disappeared and the door closed. ‘You’d better push off,’ she said to Edward. ‘Why did you have to turn up? She could have done without that. You aren’t very popular here, I don’t want to be unkind, I just wouldn’t care to be you, that’s all. You’d better run back to Mother May.’
Edward stood a moment. Then he went to the front door and emerged into the amazing outside air, seeing with astonishment the landscape, just as it had been before, sunlit now, silent, empty, the sun picking out at a distance the soft pale green of a sloping field. He walked on a little bit along the platform, the way he had come; then stopped aware of sick pain and an intensity of emotion which nearly knocked him to the ground. He turned to look at the cottage, the little station house, so trim-seeming now, beside its big yew tree. He saw the clean finish of the stone. He began to walk back and stood beside the yew where, shadowed by it, there was a small square window. He peered in. Mark’s sister was sitting in a chair, looking now not solid but like a dummy or bolster, head drooping forward. Sarah, kneeling in front of her, was twisting almost to the ground to look up into the hidden face.
Edward felt he might be going to be sick. He walked away, quickly now, along the platform and down the slope and onto the grassy track. He began automatically to walk back in the direction of the road. He felt dizzy. The sunlight kept coming in flashes and the air seemed to be full of tiny black insects.
When he had walked for a few mintes he heard someone calling his name and stopped.
Sarah was running after him barefoot upon the wet grass. She stopped a few yards from him and looked at him with an eager excited hostile face, like an animal checked in a pursuit.
‘Well, what is it?’ said Edward, in an odd harsh voice.
‘You looked in. You spied on us.’
‘I didn’t know you knew Mark’s sister,’ said Edward.
Sarah spoke quickly. ‘I knew her a bit, I knew Mark a bit, you weren’t the only one. She was in America when you — when he died. When she came back I went to her and my mother visited her mother: We wanted to help. We invited her here. Then you have to turn up.’
‘I didn’t know — ’ said Edward.
‘Well, don’t come again, and don’t ever try to see Brownie, ever. She doesn’t want to hear your excuses. She hates you like her mother does. They’ll never get over it. Just don’t persecute her with your presence and don’t write to her either. The least you can do is keep off. There’s nothing you can do for her except be decent enough to leave her alone.’
‘All right,’ said Edward. He turned away and, without looking back, walked on along the railway.
I would like to see you to talk about my brother’s death. Tomorrow at five o‘clock I will be in the fen where a line of willows runs down to the river, and there is a wild cherry tree leaning over on the other side.
Brenda Wilsden.
 
 
Edward crumpled the letter in his hand and stuffed it into his pocket. It was the day after his visit to Railway Cottage. The man who had given the letter to him stood staring at Edward with curiosity. The man was as tall as Edward, bearded and whiskered, his whole head liberally covered with an unkempt cascade of stiff weather-bleached hair out of which his ruddy large-featured face peered intently. His hair showed no grey, but he was not young, his dark eyes surrounded by deep wrinkles. His face and hair and indeed his whole person was covered with a fine fibrous dust which lodged visibly upon the shelving wrinkles. He wore a red shirt with a red handkerchief about his neck, and about his waist a wide leather belt with a brass buckle worn away and shiny with age. Edward did not need to be told that he was one of the tree men, when he had been silently accosted by him in the vegetable garden.
‘Thank you,’ said Edward.
The man still stood close, staring with evident curiosity, and Edward could smell his sweat and hear his breath.‘
‘He’s a cabbage now, in’ he?‘
‘Who — ?’
‘He’s a cabbage, a jelly, the guv’nor up there — in‘ he?’
‘No, he isn’t,’ said Edward. ‘He’s ill, but he’s not like that.’
‘Had all the girls once. But that’s finish now.’
‘Thank you for bringing the letter.’
‘Who are you?’
‘I’m Edward Baltram.’
‘You’re the son.’
‘Yes.’
‘She just said, “the young chap”, that’s you.’
‘Yes.’
‘They’ll eat you.’
‘Who will?’
‘Those bloody women. They’ll carve you up. You better scarper before they start. So you’re the son. God!’
Edward made a vague dismissive gesture with his hand, and turned away.
‘He had all the girls,’ the tree man called after him. ‘Now he’s senile, that’s it, senile, poor old bugger.’
Edward walked quickly back to the house. It had been raining earlier, but now the afternoon was warm, the sun staringly bright, a sky full of harsh light was arched over the flat land. Edward stood in the hall and drew out the crumpled letter again but did not look at it. He had of course said nothing at Seegard about his visit to Railway Cottage. He smoothed the letter out a bit, pocketed it again, and walked slowly along to Transition.
Ilona and Bettina were in the kitchen, standing at the long scoured wooden table.
‘Did you get the lovage?’ said Bettina.
‘No, sorry, I forgot.’
‘You’re in a dream. Never mind. Just chop those herbs, would you.’
‘Everything’s dying,’ said Ilona.
‘And you, Ilona, go and fetch some more onions.’
‘The swallows are dying, they don’t come back any more.’
‘I saw one this morning,’ said Edward, chopping herbs.
‘They don’t come back to us any more. They used to nest in the loft of the stables.
Our
swallows are all dead.’
‘Ilona — and take a basket, you dolt.’
‘Oh, all right.’ Ilona departed.
‘Be careful with that thing, it’s very sharp.’
There was a strong gentle sleepy smell of baking bread in the kitchen. Bettina, standing close beside Edward, was kneading cooked potatoes, rapidly making them into balls and rolling them in a circle of scattered flour. Edward saw her strong brown fingers dusted with flour crushing the soft potatoes one by one. He saw out of the corner of his eye a long strand of her reddish hair which had come down over her shoulder and curved over her bust hanging free and touching her arm. The sleeve of her brown working dress was soiled where she had turned it back at the elbow. Her arms were covered in golden down, matching the conspicuous long fine hairs upon her upper lip. As she worked she cleared her throat and sniffed in a preoccupied manner. He thought of the tree man, and wondered, why do those men not come and rape these women, how can they not? The automatic movement of the two-handled scimitar-shaped knife hypnotised him as he moved it steadily to and fro with a strong motion increasing the fragrant green mound of chopped marjoram and parsley. He let go of one handle to move the leafy stems nearer to him and suddenly felt an agonising deep pain in one of his fingers. The green leaves were instantly stained with red.
‘Oh you idiot,’ said Bettina, ‘put your hand under the tap, you’ll make a stain on the table.’
Blood was welling up and streaming out of what felt like a deep wound. Edward turned on the cold tap and watched the blood and water pouring down into the old stained porcelain sink. Bettina was already scrubbing the table. Then she put the bloodied herbs into a colander. ‘Just get out of the way.’ She washed the herbs under the tap. ‘Don’t get blood on that cloth, please.’
‘Well, what am I to do!’ said Edward. ‘It won’t stop bleeding.’ He felt like weeping. The wound was painful and felt dark and awful like a stab wound from an attacker. He could still feel the slice of the extremely sharp knife into the flesh.
‘Put it over the sink. I’ll get a bandage.’
Edward ran the water hard, trying to clear the blood fast enough to see the mouth of the wound. He thought, so I am wounded
now
, it would be
now
. But he could not make out which now it was, whether it connected with Bettina, with Jesse, or with
her
. He sat down abruptly on a chair, pulling his shirt down over his hand and watching the red stain spreading on the sleeve.
Bettina’s brown hands appeared again, winding a white snaky bandage round and round his finger. The red kept on coming through and coming and coming.
 
 
He had known at once that Bettina’s bandage was a mistake. It had come out of an old dusty battered tin marked
First Aid
which looked as if it must have belonged to the first world war. There weren’t even any proper medical supplies at Seegard. The piece of probably dirty, old-fashioned linen soaked with dried blood had simply stuck to the wound, and the finger (fortunately on his left hand) was stiff and hot and throbbing with pain. That morning (it was the next day) Edward had made an embryonic effort to pull the bandage off, but this was clearly going to be very painful and soon seemed impossible. He wondered whether the deep wound were not going septic or whether it needed stitches. Gangrene would follow, and an amputation. Should he go, but where, to a doctor? In any case today he could not go anywhere. Last night late, opening his door, he had heard the women arguing somewhere in East Selden, arguing emotionally with raised voices. He wanted to creep and listen but did not dare to. At breakfast he was informed that Jesse was still ‘absent’, unapproachably entranced. Earlier, Edward had planned, on this day, to insist on seeing him, perhaps trying to wake him. Only now, instead, he was standing beside the river, beside the line of willows, looking at the wild cherry tree.
There had been something weird, a little chilling, in Mark’s sister’s description of the place, as if it should not be possible to speak of that death, and then to follow it with a sort of poetic description. The place was easily identifiable because the line of willows was, in the area, unique, and ended at the river which, when Edward had first looked that way, had been invisible underneath the flood. This part of the fen was fairly dry now and, between intermittent pools, easy to walk on. A little beyond the willow however, scattered sheets of ready water began again and continued to the low horizon where, although it was a clear and fairly sunny day, no sea was visible. There were few trees so that the small leaning cherry tree, now coming into flower, was a landmark too. The river, broader here, contained between steep sandy banks, was running swiftly, the colour of Guinness, making, where it curved, circular eddies and little sheltered pools of more quiet water. Edward had of course been looking all about him, as, sick with emotion, he had come along, but had seen nobody. Of course he was early. But perhaps she had decided not to come, that it would be too terrible, that she felt too much hatred. Sarah had said that she hated him. Edward thought of the mother’s letters. What a dreadful thing such hatred must be, surely it must aim to kill its object. He looked at his stiff finger and the blackened bandage. He sat down on the bank where there was a patch of grass and his heart too throbbed with pain.
Immediately there was, like a small explosion just above the water, a blue flash. Edward jerked his head arid stared. There was nothing there. He saw the dark moving water and the luminous white flowers of the little cherry tree leaning downward, its branches extended over the river where at the curve they were reflected in a quiet surface. He blinked his eyes. Then appearing out of invisibility he saw, sitting upon a pendant branch, a bird, a kingfisher. At that moment the kingfisher flew again, very fast, skirting the sandy bank and dipping like a little dart into the stiller water where the river turned; then coining back to his perch on the tree. Edward could see the bird’s strong beak and the fish which was instantly gulped down. He sat still watching the motionless kingfisher upon which the sun was shining, the small bird with its vivid blue wings and soft cinnamon-brown breast, sitting above the cherry flowers.
A shadow fell beside him and he jumped up. The girl was there, with her blue mackintosh and her wellington boots, wearing, not the trousers of his first sighting, but the shapeless dress which she had had on at the cottage, a rather shabby dress with a design of blue flowers. She stared at him with her stony brownish eyes, darker than Mark’s eyes, as her brown hair was darker than his hair. Yet in her pale clear complexion and her large brow and thoughtful mouth and in some live intent expression of her face, she greatly resembled him, as if his face had been stretched into a larger mask through which, still, he looked out. The recollection of Mark’s inspired godlike drugged face came before Edward, blotting out the girl. Then she spoke, looking past him. Her first words were, ‘There’s a kingfisher.’

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