The Good Apprentice

by Iris Murdoch

  The wood, clearly the work of nature not of man, was a wonderful mixture of every sort of tree. There were oaks and ashes and beeches and larches and firs and wild cherries and some of the largest yews Edward had ever seen. It was an old wood. The old tall trees made a labyrinth of colonnades and archways and vaulted halls and domed chambers, and if Edward had not entrusted himself to the little path he would soon have been lost. Some birds were singing, nearby a blackbird and a loud wren. Distant rooks cawed sadly. Occasionally, some sunlight fell upon the path, which was dry and brown, crisscrossed with ridgy tree roots, almost like steps, and scattered with the mysterious dried-up fruits of various trees fashioned into little brown toys and emblems, which crackled pleasantly underfoot. All round about the antique carpet of fallen leaves stretched far away. The path was steeper now and there was a larger light ahead. Edward began to walk faster and after a minute or two he came to a place.

  Of course the wood was full of places, celebrations and juxtapositions, mossy alcoves, primroses showing off in the dead bracken, circlets of greenery where the sun managed to shine, long fallen trees as clean as bones. But now Edward, coming out into a larger clearing, stopped as one who, exploring the palace, accidentally opens the door of the chapel. The elongated oval sward, though shorter, not two hundred yards in length, curiously reminded Edward of the stadium at Delphi. He shivered. The birds were silent here. The grass was short and fine as if prepared for some game. The spreading branches of two enormous yews at the far end framed a black tunnel. Nearer, round the edges of the space, rows of very tall beech trees soared in smooth shafts. The regularity of the trees and the perfect shape of the level grass suggested some work of human intelligence, something perhaps made very long ago, but certainly tended or renewed in recent years. Following the Greek idea, he saw it as a dromos or temenos, a sacred area. The most striking feature of the scene however, and the one which in a mysterious way identified it, was a large vertical stone rising from a circular stone base which, standing near to the far end of the glade, was framed in the black archway of the yews. Edward began to walk towards it over the short grass, emerging now into sunshine. He stopped close to the object. The lower broader part, which was about three feet high, made of some dark stone, appeared to be a section of a fluted column. The vertical shaft above, of a lighter greyer stone which glittered with points of light, was more roughly cut, a single battered erection, tapering slightly toward the top. It stood, with its base, a little higher than Edward. He came closer, and touched the pillar, stroked it, it felt warm. Looking down he noticed at the foot, where it fitted into its pedestal, cement had been added, perhaps lately, to keep it firm. The surface round about the fluted column was smooth and polished and looked to Edward like marble. As he now walked round the thing he saw something else, something yellow, lying upon the pedestal, a bunch of celandine, the flowers only a little wilted. He looked round at the silent empty grass and at the shadowy wood and at the black cavern under the yews, and began to walk away. Then, yielding to a superstitious craving, he returned and taking from his pocket the celandine he had picked earlier, threw it down near the other flowers. He walked quickly and then, avoiding the yew trees, ran out of the glade.

  The path which had led him to the place was now not to be seen, but trusting to his sense of direction he went on downhill making a slower pace through the undergrowth of the wood, ash saplings and hazels and little thorn trees. As he went, plunging downward, treading upon brittle bracken and dead leaves, he felt something like a physical change, as if a cloud of gas or pollen or some intense infusion were blowing into his face and enveloping his body. His head seemed to be opening up into a vast area, as if it were literally painlessly splitting and being joined to some enormous pale cloudy sphere up above. Thoughts then came in a rush. Of course as Edward had been looking at the house and walking through the celandine and struggling in the fen and making his way to the wood, he had been thinking not only about what he saw and where he was going, but about Mark Wilsden, and more vaguely about Jesse. Whatever Thomas McCaskerville might think about it in terms of ‘a change doing him good’, Edward had not imagined that coming to Seegard would alter in any way his awful guilty loving mourning for Mark. That must remain private and untouchable and secret. To imagine that some new scene would automatically banish the dark burden which he carried was to be unworthy of the gravity of what he suffered. He merely found some relief in running away and being somewhere quite else where, in a place unknown to those closest to him, he could hug his misery. The ‘connection’ he had spoken of to Thomas had seemed just that of a continued doom. The idea of Jesse, certainly striking, seemed in that context accidental. Now with an equal obviousness, streaming into him through the top of his head, came the insight that here was no accident, and that he had come to Seegard as to a place of pilgrimage, carrying his woeful sin to a holy shrine and to a holy man. He had never thought of Jesse in such terms before, had indeed avoided thinking of him at all, nor had he seen this in his first hours at the place or in connection with the women. The women, though amazing, were minor figures, not even acolytes. They were another thing. Mother May’s letter with its postscript about their having ‘read about his mishap’ was another thing. Jesse had not summoned his son out of some vague kindly impulse to cheer him up. It would not be like that between them. They were being drawn to a fated meeting at a crossways. Jesse might well be unconcerned with Edward’s needs, but Jesse was Edward’s fate and his answer. That it might be a dark answer seemed a little less terrible, now that the element of accident was removed.

  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 lef
t 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.

  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 irres
ponsibility 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’.