The Good Apprentice (29 page)

Authors: Iris Murdoch

BOOK: The Good Apprentice

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Fleeing from these images he made his way to a fine very ornate spiral staircase which he climbed to the first floor. Here again the room occupied the whole of the hexagonal space, but was separated into different levels according to the position of the windows and the irregular formation of the ceiling below. Where he stepped off the staircase there was what appeared to be an old nursery, absolutely crammed with dusty toys, dolls, animals, puppets, miniature furniture, rather eccentric dolls’ houses, tiny pairs of scissors, little hands. As Edward hurried past these and up some steps into what was clearly an artist’s studio he thought how odd it was for Jesse to have children playing just where he was trying to work. Then he realised that of course the toys were
Jesse’s
toys, the ‘nursery’
his
nursery, ancillary to his imagination and his art. Looking back he now noticed some Australasian and African masks propped against the wall, and little gaudily painted figures of Indian gods. The studio, where there was also a large desk, looked reassuringly ordinary since it looked just like an artist’s studio with an easel set up, canvases stacked, jars full of brushes, tubes of paint together with a palette lying on a chair. There was no picture on the easel, but a scattering of pen and pencil drawings on the floor. The ‘game’ played with the ceiling had been modified at this level, where only two steeply slanting shafts accommodated windows which exceeded the general height of the room. All the windows, six of them, were masked by a variety of shades and blinds to modify the light. Here it at once occurred to Edward that out of one of these windows he ought to be able to see the sea. He crossed the room, uncertain of his orientation. There was a fine view inland, along the track to the tarmac road and showing a church on the far side of the road which Edward had not discovered and upon which the sun was now shining. But when he went to the opposite window the mist again obscured the view and he could see only as far as he had already walked, scarcely beyond the line of willows.

He turned to look at the drawings lying about on the floor. These, looking rather old and faded, were mainly of nudes, and he picked up one, representing a nude woman with longish tangled hair and large sad eyes. Edward wondered who the woman was, Mother May perhaps. He realised he had never thought of Mother May as Jesse’s model, the idea seemed quite improper. But it did not at all resemble her. It then flashed upon his mind that this might be, then he felt must be, a picture of his mother. He promptly dropped it. Looking more closely at the scatter of drawings, they all seemed to be of the same woman. He picked up another one, and looking at the sad face felt suddenly a unique and special feeling of guilt and sorrow. He had never known his mother, he had never worried about her, she never appeared in his dreams. Chloe had been Harry’s wife. He had never thought of her as Jesse’s mistress. With an instinctive desire not to be hurt and saddened he had early banished Chloe’s ghost. Harry had never wanted Edward to mope or feel deprived, but to be happy, as he, Harry, always contrived to be. How good Harry had been to him, how much Harry’s love had protected him, came to Edward in the same thought and he said to himself: Harry was my father, and my mother too. Who then was Chloe, and who was Jesse? Would he ever discuss Chloe with Jesse? Was it possible that Jesse had taken out these old drawings of Chloe when he knew that Edward was coming? Edward laid the faded piece of paper on the floor. He thought, Oh God, I’ve got enough troubles — and he turned away.

He now looked at the big flat-topped desk. He felt uneasy as he did so, realising fully for the first time since his adventure began how improperly he was acting, doing exactly what Jesse had wanted him not to do, prying into Jesse’s own private place, looking perhaps at his letters, or possibly worse at his unfinished work. The desk was untidy, scattered with sheets of paper, pads, notebooks, ink bottles, trays full of pens, pencils, crayons. Edward then noticed that it was dusty,
very
dusty. The desk, like the loom, was covered in dust. The desk was dusty, so was the easel, and chair beside it, and the palette and the pile of sketches on the floor. The pictures propped against the wall had high crests of dust upon them. The paint on the palette was hard and discoloured by dust. The studio was desolate, unused, abandoned. Edward, wanting to sit down, found another chair beside the wall, removed a sketch-book from it, and sat. He felt sick with fear and amazement. So Jesse was not only not here, but
had not been here
for a very long time. So Jesse had left them and they dared not tell him? Jesse was not the longed-for father, the healer, the hero-priest, the benevolent all-powerful king — he was indeed the devil, as Edward had been taught as a child. In any case he was not here, Edward had been deceived and made a fool of, Seegard was no longer Jesse’s home, the palace was empty. Jesse had mocked
them,
and had now mocked
him,
Edward, coming so far on this vain pilgrimage from which he had hoped so much. Jesse was
really
elsewhere, in some quite other house, with other women, perhaps other children. Only his ghost was left at Seegard. But then why had
they
set up such a deception? It then occurred to Edward
they were all three mad.
Could that be? Or was
he
mad? He sat, holding the sketch-book in his hand. Looking down at it he saw a drawing, a beautiful calm not at all sinister drawing of a girl, fully clothed, standing beside an open window. She looked a bit like Ilona. It was then that it occurred to Edward that it was he who was mad. The deserted studio didn’t mean no Jesse. Jesse had simply gone to paint elsewhere, perhaps moved his studio higher up in the tower, into a room above where the light was better, or different, where he felt different, starting a new phase, making a change. He jumped up, put the sketch-book back on the chair and made for the spiral staircase.

As his head emerged at the next level he saw at once that here everything was indeed different, the space had been partitioned, and what Edward could see had the air of the entrance hall of a flat. The floor was carpeted and an open door revealed a bathroom. There was a small table between two closed doors. The carpet was clean, the table dusted. Edward opened a door into a kitchen, and another into a sitting room. The next door which he tried refused to open. Edward pushed it and rattled it a little, then saw that there was a key in the keyhole. The door was evidently locked on the outside. He turned the key and opened the door. The room was a bedroom. The bed was opposite to the door, and lying upon the bed, propped up on pillows, was a bearded man, looking straight at Edward with dark round eyes.

Edward thought later on that in that second of utter shock he had understood everything. He certainly came, very soon after, to understand much. He moved into the room, closing the door behind him. The man on the bed kept staring at him intently and moving his lips. His face expressed an intense emotion which Edward thought of afterwards, perhaps at the time, as a kind of apologetic distress, a kind of frustrated politeness, which was also expressive of deep grief. Edward, shuddering with emotion, approached the bed and stopped. The red lips, a little frothy, moved, but no sound came. The large eyes besought Edward to hear, to respond. At last a sound came out which, heard together with the pleading expression, seemed like a question. Edward grasped the sound. It was an attempt at his own name. He said, ‘Edward. Yes, I am Edward. I am your son.’ The helpless lips moved, adumbrating a smile, and a shaking hand was outstretched. Edward took the weak white hand in his. Then he knelt down beside the bed and buried his face in the blanket. He felt the other hand touch his hair. He burst into tears.

‘Please try to
understand,
Edward.’

‘But why didn’t you tell me — ’

‘We wanted you to feel at home here, to be quiet, to be peaceful, to be with us, to see what Seegard
was,
what it
stood for
— ’

‘We wanted the house to make its impression,’ said Bettina, ‘we wanted to establish you here first of all.’

‘We wanted you to be
ours,’
said Ilona. ‘We thought you might run away.’

‘Why ever — ?’

‘If we had confronted you with it at the start,’ said Mother May, ‘it might have been too much for you. We were afraid you’d leave at once, simply hate the place and never find out how good it could be for you.’

‘Is it true,’ said Bettina, ‘that you found the key yourself? Are you sure Ilona didn’t let you in?’

‘Of course I found it myself! Ilona has told you she didn’t let me in!’

‘Ilona doesn’t always tell the truth,’ said Bettina.

They were sitting in the hall at one end of the long table, near to the forest of potted plants. Edward had not spent long with his father. Jesse had not spoken again. Edward was still kneeling beside him when Mother May burst into the room, gorgon-faced with anger, and ordered Edward to go.

‘And we didn’t want you to see him like that,’ Mother May went on. She was calm now, her face gentle and lucid. ‘We wanted him to be more presentable.’

‘You mean you’d have dolled him up like some sort of idol and let me catch a glimpse through the door — ’

‘No, no,’ said Bettina, ‘the point is he’s not always like what you saw — ’

‘What we so much wanted you not to see,’ said Mother May.

‘Sometimes he comes to himself.’

‘So it was true what we said,’ said Ilona, ‘when we told you he was away, but was coming back.’

‘He has had absences all his life,’ said Mother May, ‘as long as I have known him.’

‘You mean times when he’s deranged?’

‘No,’ said Bettina, ‘Mother May means — it’s hard to explain — ’

‘He knows how to rest from life,’ said Ilona, ‘so his life can go on and on.’

‘It’s simply this,’ said Bettina, ‘sometimes he can talk perfectly well, and walk too. He walks about outside by himself — ’

‘And you let him?’

‘He could go away, he could go anywhere.’

‘But he’s an ill man, he must be looked after — ’

‘He shams it now and then,’ said Bettina. ‘It’s hard to say how ill he is.’

‘Jesse was a conqueror of the world,’ said Mother May, ‘he was — ’

‘He is,’ said Bettina.

‘He is a great painter, a great sculptor, a great architect, a great lover of women, a supreme artist, a great human being. He cannot be as less than that either for himself or for us.’

‘But if he’s ill, and old — ’

‘He has his teeth,’ said Ilona, ‘and his hair, and his hair isn’t grey.’

‘You can’t accept that he’s old, that he’s not as he was,’ said Edward. ‘But surely — ’

‘He isn’t old,’ said Mother May. ‘At least he is, and he isn’t.’

‘You’ll see,’ said Ilona.

‘How did he become ill, what is it, did he have a stroke or what?’

‘Did he have a stroke?’ said Ilona to Mother May.

‘God, don’t you
know?’

‘Illnesses have conventional names — ’ said Mother May.

‘But something happened, he became different, and helpless,
when
— ?’

‘It was on a Tuesday,’ said Ilona, ‘I know because — ’

‘But
when,
years ago?’

‘Some while ago,’ said Bettina.

‘But when — not that it matters I suppose — ’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Mother May, ‘he has always been estranged.’

‘All right, he’s an artist — but this is
illness.
What does your doctor say?’

‘We have no doctor,’ said Bettina.

‘A doctor has seen him of course,’ said Mother May. ‘But — of course — could do nothing. The condition is in some sense self-induced and beyond the understanding of — ’

‘But surely he can be treated, it looks to me like a stroke or a heart thing, blood not getting to the brain, not that I know anything, but I’m sure he could be helped, there are pills — he should come to London and see a specialist, they keep finding out new treatments — let me take him to London — ’

‘Indeed you do not know anything,’ said Mother May.

Edward stared at the three faces confronting him. Once more they looked so similar, and in their concentration, older. Were not their fine blooming faces subtly wrinkled, wizened like apples lying long in store become golden and a little soft? How old were they? Ilona did not always tell the truth.

‘He doesn’t need doctors,’ said Bettina. ‘Mother May is the best doctor. What she gives him does him good, it make him calm.’

‘You mean she drugs him!’

‘You can call any food a drug,’ said Mother May. Her face was intensely, radiantly, almost hypnotically composed and bland.

‘He isn’t always calm,’ said Ilona. ‘He can scream.’

‘So that’s what I heard in the night, which you said it was wild donkeys — ’

‘There are wild donkeys,’ said Bettina.

‘Of course he gets frustrated and angry sometimes,’ said Mother May, ‘and we have to restrain him. Once we had to get the tree men in to help us.’

‘Oh,
no
— !’ said Edward.