Authors: Iris Murdoch

The Good Apprentice (47 page)

BOOK: The Good Apprentice

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‘Neither Stuart nor Meredith will tell Thomas.’

‘Won’t they?’

‘I don’t want anything to happen yet — ’

‘But, Midge, think what’s happened already!’

‘Not yet — I don’t
know
yet — not like this — ’

‘Do you want to wait for him?’ said Bettina.

‘We can’t take Stuart, I won’t have it!’ said Midge, stamping her foot.

‘Yes, we’ll wait,’ said Harry to Bettina. He said to Midge, ‘Look, he’s my son — ’

‘You say this
now,
to
me
— ’

‘He doesn’t seem to be
persona grata
here, I’m not going to leave him behind in this hell hole — ’

‘You want to take him so as to compromise me further, so as to have a witness, so as to ruin everything — ’

‘You call it ruin, I call it liberation! It doesn’t
matter,
don’t you see — ’

‘He hates us, he’ll bring us misfortune.’

Stuart appeared with his coat and suitcase. He said apologetically, ‘So sorry to keep you all waiting.’

‘Come on then,’ said Bettina, and led them out onto the terrace, illuminated by the outside light, and across to the car.

‘So it wasn’t Chloe — ’ said Jesse. He spoke quietly, dreamily. He was lying on his bed, in his shirt, holding Edward’s hand.

Mother May was standing on the other side of the bed holding a glass of brown liquid.

‘No, my darling,’ said Edward. This mode of speech seemed suddenly natural. Of course Jesse was his father. But he was, as if now filled up to the brim, so much more: a master, a precious king, a divine lover, a strange mysterious infinitely beloved object, the prize of a religious search, a jewel in a cave. It was as if, in this sudden limp quietness, Jesse had gently, almost imperceptibly, imparted himself. Edward felt his heart bursting with reverence and love. ‘But don’t you worry, don’t you grieve. That was Chloe’s sister. Chloe is dead. She died long ago.’

‘Of course,’ said Jesse, ‘I remember. She looks so very — so very like Chloe.’ He was calm, more lucid, and peacefully rational than Edward had ever seen him. This change filled Edward with hope and joy.

‘She did tonight. She looked just like pictures of her.’

‘You can’t recall your mother?’

‘Not very well, hardly — ’

‘I can see her face in my mind so clearly. I loved her very much.’

Edward heard the car start. The sound diminished down the track and disappeared into silence. He said to Jesse, ‘Oh don’t be sad, dear dear dear Jesse. It matters so much that you shouldn’t be sad. I’m with you, I’ll look after you. I’ve found you for ever and ever. I love you.’

‘They’ve gone,’ said Mother May.

Edward began kissing Jesse’s hands. Jesse smiled a little as if touched and embarrassed.

‘Leave off,’ said Mother May. ‘Go along now Edward. I want Jesse to rest. I’ll sit with him. He’s had a shock. He’s given us all a shock.’

‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ said Edward. He had such a strange feeling, the feeling of being terribly in love. The prospect of leaving Jesse was agonising. He stood up. ‘Dear Jesse, dear sweet good Jesse, think of me in the night. I’ll think of you.’

‘I’ll dream of you — Edward — ’

‘Tomorrow.’

‘Yes, tomorrow.’

Mother May opened the door and Edward ran out.

The Atrium was empty, the table untouched except for Harry’s empty wine glass. Edward hurried on into Transition and sped up the stairs into West Selden. He hurried to the end bedroom, knocked and went in. No sign of Stuart. Then he saw that the room was cleared, all Stuart’s things had gone. Stuart had gone. This came as a weird unnerving surprise. He had, at that moment, depended on Stuart, wanted to talk to him about what had happened, wanted to know what Stuart thought, what to think himself. He felt frightened and alone. He went back to his own room and lit the lamp and sat down on the bed. So Stuart had gone off in the car. Actually it was just as well. Seegard was Edward’s place and Edward’s problem, Stuart was not a help, he was simply dangerous. Edward wondered if he was hungry and should go down to the kitchen and find something to eat, but he had not the will. He felt a bit sick and intensely upsettingly excited. And there was nothing left to do now but to go to bed.

Or was there? He went into the darkened bathroom and looked out. East Selden was dark except for a little lamp light showing from Ilona’s bedroom where the shutters had been half closed. Ilona was over there, by herself. Mother May was with Jesse. Bettina was out with the car. Edward felt, I must talk to somebody, I couldn’t
possibly
sleep. What on earth happened this evening, what did it mean, how does it affect me, ought I to do something about it? Why were they there, was it because of me, will they say it’s my fault, what
have
they been doing, whatever will Thomas think? Does Harry need me, does Midge need me, ought I to have gone with them, ought I to go tomorrow? But of course I
can’t
go, I
must
stay. As he reflected, the whole background of his life now seemed in chaos. Midge and Harry turning up together, whatever did it mean? Perhaps it was all an accident, it needn’t mean anything special. Yet why were they there, had they come to fetch him away, they didn’t say so. Or did they? He couldn’t remember. And Josse calling Stuart ‘a dead man’ and ‘a white corpse’. And Jesse thinking Midge was Chloe, and Midge kissing Jesse. It was all a nightmare. That image of her holding Jesse in her arms and kissing him so passionately upset Edward very much indeed. That would travel with him like a sinister icon.

Edward thought, I must see Ilona, and now’s the perfect chance. He carried the lamp into the bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror. He needed a shave and a little impulse of vanity made him, before he checked himself, reach for his razor. He combed his hair, patting down the long dark front lock, and after reflection took off his jacket. He adjusted his shirt, opening another button. He thought he looked older, more gaunt and hawkish. He narrowed his eyes. Then he sprang long-legged out of the room and down the stairs.

The connecting corridor was pitch dark, with no light visible at the other end, but Edward had often looked along it in daylight and he strode confidently forward. At the end he touched the wall, pivoted around, and felt for the curve of the stairs which would, he imagined, duplicate his own stairs. He was right. His foot found the first stone step, and he silently padded his way up. At the top there was a faint sense of light, and after a moment his darkened eyes made out the dim smudgy streak of light at the base of Ilona’s door. The silence, as he stood there, daunted him. Arms outstretched he tiptoed to the door and listened. No sound. He tapped softly on the door. Then again. He listened to his own fast breathing. Then he carefully turned the handle and moved the door.

Ilona was asleep. The faint lamp was upon a table beside her low bed. She lay on her back upon a reddish brownish surface which Edward took at first to be a sheet or quilt, but which he now saw to be her undone hair. The ribbons which she had woven into her plaits earlier in the evening also appeared here and there among the tresses. Her head was a little turned to one side and tilted back, with a hand and forearm twisted in behind it, in an attitude which might have expressed anguish had not her sleep set a seal of peace upon it. The other arm lay outstretched upon the disordered blanket with the palm open in a gesture of acquiescence or submission. Ilona’s lips were open and her low slow breathing just audible. The closed eyes exhibited the long eye-lashes whose light colour had made them, before, less conspicuous. In repose her small face had lost its animal pertness, the cheeks less prominent, the mouth without animation, childish, gentler. The sheet and blanket had been thrust down to reveal the delicate skin of her vulnerable stretched neck, the rounded embroidered collar of her blue nightdress and the shape of her small breasts. She looked, lying there, so helpless, so fragile and frail, as if it could hardly be imagined how she stayed in being at all.

Edward had closed the door and approached. For a moment he towered beside her, huge as his shadow. He felt amazement, then a deep pang of some sort of ashamed humility, and a new different chaste fear. His presence seemed dangerous to her, and he wondered if he ought not immediately to creep away. The bed, set against the wall, was small and narrow, low down, a divan, not a fine upstanding bed like his own. It was almost as if Ilona were lying upon cushions and coloured cloths piled upon the floor. Edward adjusted his own breathing and then very cautiously fell upon one knee beside her. Now he wanted to come closer, if possible to feel the waftage of her breath. His open anxious lips approached her lips. He paused, then drew back, and very quietly brought his other knee down to the floor and sat back on his heels. He felt an excitement composed of power and gentleness, conscious of their solitude together, of the house round about them silent and dark, and the dark clouded night outside the half-shuttered window.

Then Ilona awoke. He saw her eyes flutter open, close, then open again. She lay quiet a moment gazing upward. Then with a movement as swift as a leaping cat she sat up, recoiling against the wall. Edward quickly sat back upon the floor farther from the bed. Ilona’s face, glaring at him, expressed intense fear.

‘Ilona — dear — it’s only me — don’t be frightened — forgive me — ’

She clutched her niglitdress about her neck in a terrified movement, then tossed back the bed-clothes and thrust out her slim legs and bare feet. Edward rose and stepped back. Hastily she thrust her feet into slippers, then reached for a red dressing gown which was lying on the bottom of the bed and began awkwardly to drag it on. All this time her face was distorted in a grimace of mingled fear and annoyance. She buttoned the dressing gown with clumsy incompetent fingers and then stood up. She
whispered
to Edward, ‘You
mustn’t
be here, you must go
at once.’

Edward got up too and said, softly but not whispering, ‘Look, Ilona don’t worry. Your mother is with Jesse, she said she’d sit with him, and Bettina has gone off with the others in the car. Stuart went too. There’s only us.’

‘They could come at any moment. How could you do this! You know you mustn’t.’

Edward said, ‘I don’t know any such thing!’ This was not true, he was intensely aware of being on forbidden ground. ‘Anyway, why should we live by rules, who made these rules? I’m your brother. Haven’t I any rights?’ No, none, he said to himself.

‘What do you want?’

‘I just want to talk to you, do sit down for a moment, I won’t stay long, Ilona,
please,
I’m feeling so upset and lost, I want you to help me just by letting me talk, I’ll go soon I promise you. We’ll hear the car, and Bettina will come in by the front door and if Mother May isn’t with Jesse she’s sure to be waiting for Bettina in the Atrium. They wouldn’t want to talk up here.’

This entirely impromptu reasoning seemed to calm Ilona a little though it was probable she hardly understood it. She sat down on the bed and Edward sat, curling his legs, on the floor, not near her. Ilona gathered her hair carefully and stowed it behind her. She turned upon Edward a face of entire distress and said, ‘You aren’t going away?’

‘No, what made you think that?’

‘What happened tonight.’

‘Well, what did happen tonight? My stepfather and my aunt suddenly materialised together. Bettina says they said they were Mr and Mrs Bentley.’

‘I don’t understand. That was Chloe’s sister, who’s married to — ’

‘Thomas McCaskerville.’

‘And the man was Chloe’s husband.’

‘Yes, Harry Cuno.’

‘Their car broke down.’

‘Yes, but they were obviously together secretly. They must have turned up here by accident in the dark. If there is such a thing as accident.’

‘I thought they’d come to fetch you.’

‘So did I, till I started thinking. Never mind. I mean, never
you
mind. I just feel in such a mess as if I can’t rely on anybody, and
that’s
only just starting.’

‘Jesse kissed her — I’ve never seen anything like it — he kissed her so much — ’

‘Yes He did. Didn’t he?’ Edward felt strangely deeply upset, hurt, as if his mother had actually been present at the scene, as if her poor helpless ghost had been trying, in the person of Midge, to kiss Jesse, to touch, to embrace her precious faithless beloved. Edward had not, even now, reflected upon how his mother had been ‘treated badly’ by her lover. He did not want to have to think about all that. That kissing had been awful. It was exciting too. It was exciting in an awful way. And somehow it was all connected, connected with him, and through him with Ilona, with Brownie …
Brownie.
Tomorrow.

‘Ilona, can I tell you something. You know about Mark Wilsden, don’t you?’

‘Your friend who fell out of the window.’

‘Yes. Did Mother May tell you?’

‘Yes, and we saw it in the paper.’

‘You don’t have newspapers here — ’

BOOK: The Good Apprentice

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