The Good Apprentice by Iris Murdoch
He slept, falling like an animal into its lair at night, waking occasionally for a second to hear the river sound, or what he took to be the distant sound of the sea, then sleeping again to dream of the frou-frou of dresses, the clink and swing of necklaces, long tresses unpinned and softly falling, and of women, mothers perhaps, Chloe, Midge, Mother May, even Bettina, leaning above him and merging together. The wind, which tired him so by day, came at night in regular sighing gusts, sounding like some great thing deeply and steadily breathing. The rain pattering or gently stroking the window panes was more like soft footsteps, soft surreptitious padding, not frightening really but strange, like many things that surrounded him, like Ilona’s casual reference to ‘things from the past’. He had not heard the breaking glass noise again, or the children’s running feet. Sometimes there were faint scratching sounds, rats perhaps, or what Ilona called ‘mouse-kins’. Something odd and unnerving had however happened two nights ago as he mounted the dark stairs in West Selden to his bedroom. He now knew his way blindfold about the building and preferred running nimbly in the pitch dark to the bother of carrying a lamp. As he mounted the stairs in velvet blackness of blindfold dark something passed him. It did not touch him, but he heard its faint whirring sound and felt the air of its passage. It was, as he intuited it at the time, something spherical, about the size of a football, passing him very close at waist height. Edward raced up the stairs and into his room and hastily struck some matches, dropping several before he was able to light his lamp. He stood tensely listening, hearing the river and the far off gewick gewick and ooo-ooo of the owls. In the lamplight he noticed that he was less frightened by the episode than he might have expected. Remembering Ilona’s jest, he wondered if what had passed him was a poltergeist which occupied his bed by day and had now fled on hearing his approach! He smiled. All the same, he examined the bed carefully before getting into it.
Another source of unease, felt vaguely, now perceptibly stronger, concerned the women. It had come to Edward at the start that the women were not only essentially remote from him in some quite special way, but also perfect: calm, wise, beautiful, devoid of ordinary human failings. This idea persisted, coexisting easily with Ilona’s childishness and Bettina’s brusqueness. It seemed natural that they had never kissed him. Mother May and Bettina had never touched him. Ilona had occasionally touched his sleeve, but with a puppyish gesture, devoid of emotional significance, to hurry him on or draw his attention to something. That these women actually were (how could they not be?) imperfect unnerved Edward as he became aware of it, even frightened him. For instance, they were afraid of the ‘tree men’. Perhaps this was something that came over them when Jesse was away, when they apprehended themselves as lonely and defenceless. But Edward did not like to think of a queen, princesses, elf maidens, as mere nervy women. He had not discovered any reason for this obsessive fear except that the tree men were ‘rough’, destroyed precious plants, and had once quite deliberately (they said) cut down a beautiful very old tree, a huge sycamore, on Seegard land. Perhaps some old feud with Jesse was involved. The absence of information about Jesse’s whereabouts and date of return was also, after this passage of time, disturbing in itself. His advent was constantly and confidently promised ‘soon’. Edward had not asked where he was or what he was doing; and now refrained from asking from a fear of being lied to. He sometimes thought, and hated to think, that Jesse was perhaps somewhere in the South of France with a young and pretty mistress; even had a quite other ménage. And (this thought had only lately begun to torment Edward) other children. Another son. This idea was exceedingly painful; and he was distressed, often made agonisingly nervous, by the unexplained lapse of time, the evasiveness of the women, and also of late by their relations to each other and to him which had at first had such a reassuring formality, had belonged to their ‘perfection’. Simply put, he felt jealousy in the air. He was a man among three women. Nothing palpable could suggest the vulgar idea that they were ‘vying for his affection’; but there was a certain tension. So far no one of them had attempted to establish a special relationship, to gain his confidence or examine his heart. The only ‘sorting out’ involved was the no doubt natural assumption that paired him and Ilona as the ‘young ones’. ‘Off you go, children,’ Mother May had said yesterday, despatching them to the apple store. Perhaps he imagined it, but he felt that Bettina might resent some implied relegation of herself to the older generation. She was sometimes stiff with him when they worked together, when he played plumber’s mate, or carpenter’s boy, fetched the materials or held the tools. Yet perhaps this was just her nature, a usual shyness, an admirable reserve. Mother May, so open and cheerful and busy, the Queen Bee as she sometimes called herself, also seemed to his over-stressed imagination to be watching him with some sort of concealed emotion. And though he was ‘easy’ with Ilona, they became no closer, nor could he see how this could happen. Perhaps they were all simply worrying about Jesse. As he now continually studied them he saw increasingly how different they were. The three women, always similarly dressed (to please Jesse of course) in their plain brown shifts by day and their floweredbenecklaced dresses in the evening, could still look alike, as if occluded by a powdery golden haze of similarity. Yet with sharpened perceptions Edward perceived their individual faces. Mother May’s perfect complexion was sketched here and there with a silverpoint of tiny lines, scarcely visible, not to be called wrinkles, not indeed marring but somehow perfecting her pale calm beauty. Her eyes were of the lightest softest grey. Bettina had a larger face, unlike the perfect oval of her mother’s, with darker grey eyes, an aquiline nose and strong protruding chin, and a clever reflective mouth. In repose or when concentrating upon work she could resemble a quattrocento picture of a young nobleman. Ilona had a smaller perter face, animated and peering like an animal’s, with eyes of a bluer grey, and a witty mobile mouth. They all had similar long reddish-gold hair, sometimes put up in coils or buns, sometimes hanging in long plaits. Ilona, whose hair was longest, sometimes wore hers simply tied with a ribbon at the neck and streaming loose down her back. Edward thought a lot about their hair. He had never touched it, not even Ilona’s. He imagined that he could smell their hair. It had a very delicate feral smell.
Trying to recall his previous journey, Edward had now left the river and was climbing up through the wood, where bluebells were making a hazy blue distance between the budding green of the various saplings which were grasping at his clothes. The sun, piercing down from above through the high roof of oaks and beeches, confused the woody interior with blotches of light. Edward blundered on until he came upon a small twig-strewn path, and followed it upward. Soon he could see the larger light ahead, and stepped between beech pillars over a verge of tall grasses onto the level sward of the dromos. He stopped perfectly still, breathless with his climb, and with the surprise of his arrival and the odd authoritative being of the place. He stood breathing deeply, moving his eyes, not yet daring to move his head. It was as if he expected to find some enemy there, or some possessor who should challenge his intrusion. Then he remembered the tree men who were hostile to Seegard. But all was exactly as before, the long narrow area was empty, except for the upright pillar upon its low fluted plinth. The grass had grown longer, but was still short enough to count as a ‘lawn’ rather than a ‘field’. The wood was silent, the trees motionless in the quiet afternoon. Looking now to left and right, Edward began to walk slowly out into the open space of the grove. He looked quickly behind him to see if he were being followed and to check whether his feet were leaving prints in the grass. No alien presence, no prints, only his feeling that something was going to happen. He felt excited, a bit frightened, pleased with himself, that he had found the place again. He approached the pillar which the sunlight, striking in a certain way, was making to sparkle. As he walked round it the brighter light now showed up a carving upon one of its faces, a rectangle with curly decoration, some kind of lettering or perhaps an animal form. As he leaned fo
Edward felt no urge to rise or call out. He felt guilty at the idea of being discovered in the place; and he wanted to see what Ilona would do. She walked into the middle of the sward, then looked around her rather anxiously and furtively as Edward had done. Then she took off her shoes and socks and stroked the top of the springy grass with a bare foot. She thrust her socks inside her shoes and laid them down, took off her brown wooden beads and put them too inside her shoes, then walked on toward the pillar. Here she paused again and looked about, then looked up at the blue sky, closing her eyes against the sun. She was wearing her plain brown day dress which Edward thought much more beautiful than her evening robe. Her hair was loose, hanging down her back, a little tangled as usual. She folded her hands, standing motionless for a moment before the pillar as if in respect. Then she produced from the pocket of her dress something which Edward recognised with surprise as a piece of string. She bound this round her waist and hitched the top part of the dress over it, thus shortening the skirt. She raised both her hands above her head, joining her fingers like a ballet dancer. The sleeves of the brown dress fell back revealing the lighter softer more vulnerable flesh of her upper arm. Then she began to dance.
That is, Edward told himself later that that was what had happened. It must have been. What it looked like was that Ilona was lifted from the ground by some superior force, a wind perhaps (only there was no wind) and was conveyed to and fro over the grass, the tips of which her feet were barely touching. He distinctly recalled seeing at one moment both of her feet, moving in slow motion, poised well above the gleaming green surface of the grass as her swaying body was carried away along the glade and then back again toward the pillar. Once or twice it seemed as if, like a leaf, she was about to be blown away altogether and to disappear floating into the wood. There was in her movement no sort of exertion, it was as if, with her hair flying round her, she were simply being carried about, conveyed through the air; and yet a sense of volition was there and the purposeful grace of her body, the patterned weavings of her arms, and of her long slim legs under the hitched-up skirt were those of a dancer. She seemed to leap and to subside, to balance, pivot, swing and turn without touching the ground. For something, with something, she performed, not seeming to move at random, but executing a choreographic pattern of ecstatic yet disciplined expression. It was a dance of joy, becoming slower and sadder toward the end, as if she felt the breath failing which had lifted her. She began to move, not exactly wearily, for the precision of the movement remained, but as if, by flowing gestures of her hands and her whole body, she were casting away something, like a garment, in which she had been briefly clothed. Her slowing feet first brushed, then entered the grass, and at last she stood, or landed, holding out an arm to steady herself, then motionless with her hands at her sides, near to the pillar. And so the dance was over; and Edward lay back hastily in the grass, from which in his wrapt excitement he had risen a little.
Ilona now looked dejected. She began to undo the piece of string around her waist. She had some difficulty with the knot at which she pulled with graceless exasperation, uttering little cross grunts. At last her skirt fell to its full length and she stuffed the string into her pocket and stood a while with head drooping, seeming bereft of purpose. Then she turned abruptly and began to walk towards Edward. Edward felt, at that moment, utterly afraid of her, afraid of having been a witness of something he ought not to have seen. He shrank down. However Ilona’s objective was not Edward. She went to the edge of the bare shady ground under the big yews, and came back holding a single white flower in her hand. She stood again before the pillar, and looked down intently at the flower for a few moments. Edward, gazing through his grassy screen, now saw with horror that glistening tears were rolling from her eyes and dripping off the curve of her cheek onto the ground. She stared at the flower as if she were pitying it, even regretting that she had picked it. Then she laid it down on the dark stone plinth and turned brusquely away. She moved now with a busy scurrying haste, like a little awkward schoolgirl, finding her shoes and socks, trying to put her socks on standing on one leg, failing, then sitting down abruptly, rather irritably, upon the grass. When she had put her shoes and socks on, and her wooden bead necklace, she got up hurriedly and scampered off into the wood.
Edward waited a while before he rose, for he feared she might return and he wanted too for whatever it was to be somewhat dissipated before he presented himself, an impious spectator and outsider. He got up at last and walked out into the open. He looked to see where Ilona had picked her flower, and saw a clump of white wood anemones, the star-like flowers displaying upon a tracery of small fernlike green leaves. He felt an impulse to pick another flower, but rejected it. He went back to the pillar and looked at the white anemone lying on the dark plinth. It seemed already to be fading. It made him think of the body of a dead girl. Edward raised his head and looked nervously about him. The scene was peaceful, empty, the shadows of the trees longer upon the grass. Nearby a blackbird began to sing, reminding Edward that during his visit to the grove the birds had been silent until now. He looked at his watch and following on Ilona’s track ran away quickly into the wood.
‘Look!’ Ilona held up a tumbler of water in front of Edward. It was before lunch on the following day and they were standing in the sunshine on the pavement outside the Atrium door.
Edward took the tumbler from Ilona and held it up to the light. The water was full of tiny almost invisible organisms, variously shaped, some idling, some purposefully roving, some motionless, some whizzing. The tumbler was absolutely crowded with them.
‘What is this, Ilona?’
‘Just a glassful of our drinking water from the rainwater reservoir!’
‘You mean we drink these? Poor little chaps!’
‘Well, we boil the water first, so when we drink them they’re already — not alive.’ Ilona, avoiding the word ‘dead’, seemed already sorry to have raised the subject. She took the glass back from Edward and poured the water on the pavement.
Edward said, ‘Perhaps we are like that, just tiny things in someone’s glass — ’
‘By the way, if you’re rescuing moths from the water butt, don’t get them on your finger, use a leaf, then leave them somewhere to dry.’
‘Hello, children,’ said Mother May, returning from the greenhouses with a basket full of lettuces. Bettina followed her, her hands large with mud held out from her sides. Both of them wore their gardening aprons. ‘Let’s sit down for a moment.’
Recently they had set out some old teak seats, pallid with age and weather, upon the pavement near to the door.
‘You all work too hard,’ said Edward.
‘Perhaps you are making us work less hard,’ said Mother May, smiling, staring at him with her gentle light eyes.
‘I’m demoralising you!’
‘No, no, you are a messenger.’
‘Mother May means you usher in a new era,’ said Bettina, smiling too but not looking, fingering the mud off each of her hands. The mud fell on the ground in lumps which she neatly gathered together with her boot.
‘Oh the birds sing so, they sing so,’ said Ilona. ‘And the collared doves, they say “Oh my God, oh my God”!’
‘The swallows will soon be here,’ said Mother May.
‘Do the swallows sing?’ asked Edward.
‘Oh yes,’ said Ilona, ‘such beautiful mad
Edward thought, will Jesse come before the swallows? Oh the anguish, oh my God —
‘And the cowslips will be in flower,’ said Mother May. ‘This place is covered in cowslips.’
‘They are becoming rare,’ said Bettina, ‘but not here.’
‘Bettina once slapped some children she saw picking cowslips,’ said Ilona.
Edward imagined that scene.
Bettina frowned. Mother May said, ‘I must admit we pick a few, a very few.’
‘Well, they’re your cowslips,’ said Edward.
‘One doesn’t feel quite like that,’ said Mother May, ‘the countryside belongs to everybody. But one does specially love what one has mixed one’s labour with, and that’s what we feel about Seegard.’
‘And one has a right to it, too,’ said Bettina.
Later Edward remembered this remark.
‘And in summer you go to the sea,’ said Edward.
‘We used to,’ said Ilona.