The Good Apprentice (74 page)

Read The Good Apprentice Online

Authors: Iris Murdoch

BOOK: The Good Apprentice
6.59Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
Edward darted to the drawing-room door and closed it behind him. The man in the hall was Thomas.
Thomas looked at Edward with a strange expression, intense and searching and at the same time mischievous, as if it were Edward’s birthday and Thomas had brought a secret present for him. He did not seem to be surprised to see him. ‘Hello, Edward.’
‘Thomas, she’s in there. She asked me to find out which one it was — ’
‘I’ll announce myself. How are you?’
‘Better,’ said Edward. Was he better?
‘Good boy. Come and see me here tomorrow.’
‘I’m going to Seegard tomorrow,’ said Edward. This too had just come into his head. ‘I’ve got to,’ he said, ‘I won’t stay — ’
‘Well, come and see me very soon. Did you go back to that room?’
‘Yes — you were right — but it’s enough — ’
‘Go to Harry, he may need you. I’m glad you’ve been with Midge. Now buzz off.’
As Edward passed Thomas, Thomas’s right hand gripped Edward’s left. As he opened the front door Thomas was pausing at the drawing-room door and looking back at him. Edward went out into the street closing the front door behind him.
Seegard in the bright soft afternoon sunlight looked different again, like an overgrown parish church with its stout tower and irregular nave. The light was kind to it, smoothing in the streaky stains upon the concrete of the tower, making the soiled surface seem old, giving it a hazy golden-brown patina like lichen-covered stone. The yellow rape had faded but other fields were shimmering with barley and stiffblue-green wheat. He thought, I have seen the seasons change and the year turn in this place. Along the track wild roses were profusely in flower, some with stiff petals, large and pink, some small and frail and almost white like scraps of paper. The cow parsley was over, which Ilona called fretty chervil.
Edward stopped just before he came to the avenue of trees, and looked about and listened. He could hear a lark and a distant cuckoo, but these sounds scarcely disturbed, even accentuated, a deep warm silence which hung over the land and the house. He could not hear the river. He went slowly forward, stepping upon the pavement, until he came to the last feathery ash tree. Then he stopped again. The main door into the barn was shut. He looked at the windows of Selden, at his own window, then up at the tower. The idea of being covertly observed disturbed him. He felt guilty, an intruder, someone who might legitimately be shot at. He had prepared, even for himself, no explanation of his visit. He had now twice run away without a word. How would this be viewed? Had they noticed, did they care, were they even there any more? As soon as he had seen Thomas Edward had realised that it was
essential
to go back, not to try to find out ‘what had happened’, but simply to make peace, to establish himself as acceptable and real, and then make a more dignified and considerate departure.
They
must do this for him, be kind to him, meet him without anger, accept him as a mourner, bring a certain period of time, a certain drama, to a quiet close, set him free. After
that
the question of his further connection with Seegard and its inhabitants might become an ordinary question which could be rationally considered.
Free to do what? To return to the beginning, to his guilt and anguish about Mark, go back to that as to an interrupted task? Settle down to a lifetime of unanswered questions about Jesse? He had certainly not come to Seegard seeking some total clarification, there could be none. See Midge again and find out what she had decided? Talking to Midge had felt somehow good, perhaps simply because it had aroused some ordinary animal-like curiosity about the world outside himself which had been dead for such a long time. Look after Harry, talk to Stuart? Follow Ilona to Paris? He felt miserable about Ilona; supposing something awful happened to her in Paris? Was this yet another radiant source of guilt which would travel with him? He proposed not to think too much about that. The urgent thing, the real thing, which was now his
duty,
was to find Brownie, to be
with
Brownie, to
immerse
himself in her presence as in a healing spring. How feeble his attempts to find her now seemed, how pusillanimous, slinking about near her mother’s house, ashamed to go to Sarah’s. He had been so tired, suffering from a sort of moral lassitude. He had lacked an energy and a courage which he would perhaps regain if he could make his peace with Seegard. Then he would bang on her mother’s door, interrogate Sarah, find her friends in Cambridge, follow her to America if necessary. Then indeed nothing should prevent him from finding Brownie and
marrying
her.
Edward tried the door of the Atrium, it was open, he stepped inside. He had expected to suffer from shock, but had not anticipated the electrical wave of emotion which rushed at him and over him as he quickly closed the door and took a step into the huge room. He trembled, then sat down quickly on a chair. There were two chairs standing together near the door in an unusual position, and as he sat he realised that these were the chairs upon which Harry and Midge had sat, like disgraced prisoners, on the evening of their disastrous apparition. No one had moved the chairs. He got up at last and placing his feet cat-like upon the slates moved to the table. There were some clean plates piled upon it, and a cup with some liquid in it. He walked to the door of the Interfectory and peered in. The room was empty, sleepy, shabby, untidy, smelling as usual of decaying books and dirty ancient cushions. He went to the door into the tower. It was unlocked and he went through into the big ground floor ‘art gallery’ room. This was different. Jesse’s pictures had all been taken down and stacked against the walls showing only their backs. He hastily returned to the hall, he had begun to feel he was looking for Jesse, walking less cautiously now but still unable to break the silence with any cry of ‘Hello!’ or ‘Where are you?’ As he padded towards Transition he noticed that the tapestry of the girl pursuing the flying fish had been taken down and was folded into a thick pile beside the wall. Perhaps it had already been bought by an American. The potted plants had also been moved, pushed much more closely together in their corner so that their branches were bent and overlapping, some had been broken, they looked dusty and drooping too, perhaps forgotten and un-watered. He thought, Ilona watered them. One of them seemed to be dead; it was the one into which he had poured Ilona’s love potion, and which had grasped at him with its leafy arms when he had been about to leave the house on his first flight. He paused to pity it, then hurried on to Transition. The kitchen was untidy, some crockery left in a wash-bowl. The big stove was out, but the deepfreeze ‘large enough to contain a human body’, was purring. In the washroom there was a pile of clean towels. Edward checked his instinct to pick them up and take them to the airing cupboard. If he found no one he would not want them to know that he had passed through the house like a ghost. As he opened the door into Selden he heard a stutter of sound which he took to be a swallow singing, until he realised it was Mother May’s typewriter.
Edward sped along the west corridor and out onto the terrace by the door in the façade. The sound of the typewriter, also reminding him of what Midge had told him, made him feel unready to confront Mother May. He did not trust Midge’s account of the matter, but the idea of someone writing about his mother, perhaps about him, dismayed him very much. He recalled the way Midge had said, about Jesse and Chloe, ‘now they’re both dead’; and for a second his mother’s ghost appeared beside the path he was following, opening its arms and uttering a soundless shriek. Edward hurried on. The person he wanted to see was Bettina. But perhaps by now she too had fled. He passed the ilexes and the orchard. Here too things had changed. The poplar trees had been cut down. The felled trees lay, neatly denuded already of their branches, long smooth poles aligned in the grass. The tree men had cleared the scene. At the river the grass had grown so high along the bank that he missed the slatted bridge at first and had to retrace his steps. He crossed easily over the sunken level of the docile more gently flowing stream. The wood was darkly shaded and the saplings upon the hillside, through which he had passed so easily before, were now in full leaf, forming sticky screens which picked at his clothes and sprang back at his face. His feet discovered the little path which was overhung by plants and scarcely visible. He could feel the tree roots and little woody icons underfoot. He thrust his way in, seeing the sunlight beyond, and came out onto the level of the
dromos.
The sun, shining into his face, dazzled him as he began to look and to move toward the yellow lingam stone. Someone was sitting on the low fluted column which formed the pedestal. It was Bettina.
‘Hello,’ said Edward, ‘I thought you might be here.’
‘Hello Edward,’ said Bettina, ‘I thought you might come.’
Bettina too had cut her hair, though not so short as Ilona’s. It fell thick shaggy and uneven almost to her shoulders. She had probably cut it herself savagely, very quickly. He pictured her with angry eyes, armed with long scissors, staring into a mirror late at night. He found himself saying, ‘What did you do with your hair, all the stuff you cut off?’
‘I burnt it.’ She was wearing one of her ‘good’ flowery dresses, not woven, but made of light cotton, which she had hitched up over her knees revealing long slim brown bare legs and sandalled feet. She sat leaning forward, her long necklace swinging gently. As Edward looked she pulled her skirt down.
After a moment’s silence he said, ‘Those plants need watering, the ones in the hall.’
‘Yes. Yes.’
Bettina with short straight hair looked younger, cleverer, foxier, like some casual stylish boy who might be pointed out as a brilliant student. Edward saw her now for the first time as separate, lonely, someone with a private individual future, not part of a trio, and his heart was touched. Also he saw her likeness to Jesse, and with a strange pang her likeness to himself, as he read or conjectured a reciprocal vision in her face, as she narrowed her light grey eyes in the sunshine and thrust back her untidy hair. She did not smile, but regarded Edward with a not unbenevolent curiosity. She said, ‘You’re wearing Jesse’s ring.’
‘Yes. It’s mine. He gave it to me.’ Surely that’s true isn’t it? thought Edward. There was no other possible answer. He was not going to surrender the ring. He said, ‘I see the poplars are dead.’ He had meant to say, ‘cut down’.
‘Yes, we had them cut down.’
‘Surely you don’t need the money now?’
Bettina continued to stare at him and did not answer.
Edward sat down on the grass, it was warm. ‘Why is the grass here always so short?’
‘The tree men put sheep in.’
‘Why did May ask me to Seegard?’
‘She felt she had to, after she got Thomas McCaskerville’s letter.’
‘Thomas McCaskerville’s letter?’
‘Yes. Didn’t you know? He wrote to her about what had happened to you, saying you were depressed and needed a change. He suggested we invite you, so we did.’
‘You mean it wasn’t your idea at all?’
‘No. Did you imagine we suddenly felt we wanted you?’
‘Yes,’ said Edward, ‘I did. This rather changes things.’ So it was Thomas’s doing all along. Perhaps Thomas thought he would run away and wanted to be sure he knew where he’d run to. And Edward had so much needed, still so much needed, to feel that there was somewhere where he was longed for.
‘I don’t see why,’ said Bettina. ‘We could have said no. We welcomed you. We were glad to see you.’
‘Were we?’
‘Edward, why do you think I’m your enemy?’
‘I don’t. Yes, I do.’ He was afraid of her. Yet what could she do to him now that Jesse was dead?
Bettina did not repeat her question or deny that she was his enemy. She sighed and turned her head.
At least Jesse had wanted him. That couldn’t be taken away. ‘Jesse wanted to see me, he wanted to see me very much, he said so.’
‘He may have said anything. You probably didn’t realise how far away he was. He didn’t even know who you were. He kept saying, “Who is that boy?” and we’d tell him, and he’d forget again.’
‘No,’ said Edward, ‘he knew who I was all right. He said he wrote to me. I never got any letters. I expect someone destroyed them.’
‘He was rambling. He couldn’t have written a letter. He couldn’t paint, he couldn’t write. The only thing that really struck him was when he saw you with a girl. That upset him, it made him jealous.’
‘How do you know?’
‘He told us. Of course. He told us everything. Who was the girl, by the way?’
‘Mark Wilsden’s sister.’
Bettina did not display any interest in this. ‘Why have you come here now?’
‘To see you. And about Jesse.’
‘What?’
‘About his death. I don’t understand it. Was it suicide?’
‘What do you think?’ Bettina got up and mounted onto the fluted plinth and stood holding onto the pillar with one hand.
‘Or was he murdered?’
‘You mean by us? Edward! Why not by you?’
Edward, beginning to get up too, paused on one knee. A slight breeze was blowing Bettina’s skirt and her hair. The sun was sinking behind the trees and the air was cooler. He wondered, could Bettina have
seen
him find drowned Jesse and pass on? If that was what happened. ‘Why me?’

Other books

Valley Fever by Katherine Taylor
The Pyramid of Souls by Erica Kirov
Enid Blyton by MR. PINK-WHISTLE INTERFERES
Regreso al Norte by Jan Guillou
Ulverton by Adam Thorpe
Hush Money by Peter Israel
New West by BA Tortuga