The Good Apprentice

  Thomas had made his bonfire and the wind was blowing the smoke into the kitchen. Midge came out. Thomas’s pile of weeds and winter cuttings had been rather wet, and Thomas had poured some paraffin on to encourage the now too violent blaze. Midge retreated from the heat. ‘Keep back!’ Thomas shouted to her, and to Meredith who had just come out of the wood. Meredith, who seemed to have grown several inches in the last week, stood by with his hands in his pockets with a slightly smiling supercilious expression, as of sympathy with childish antics. A little while ago he would have been dancing round the fire and rushing about to find things to burn. Now Thomas did the dancing. Red-faced, in an old threadbare suit and a flat cap, armed with a pitchfork, he circled the blazing fire, catching up mounds of falling burning twigs and hurling them back into the centre. A pillar of grey ash rising from the blaze was distributing itself, falling upon Thomas’s cap and his clothes and his spectacles and his glaring sweaty face. What is he burning, she wondered, what is he destroying with such a fierce enthusiasm? She winced as she saw the force of the thrusting fork. What would happen if — ? If what? If the customary modes of gentleness and concern and ordinary instinctive communication and politeness were ever, between her and Thomas, to break down? He was such a gentle polite man, so careful and so kind. Oh why can’t I be happy, thought Midge. Isn’t that the centre of the problem? I’m not happy, I’m miserable, I’m in hell, and that’s all wrong, it isn’t me. I must be happy, it’s my nature, it’s my right. That’s what maddens me, what goads me almost into insanity, the feeling of that happiness, my happiness, existing so near, so very near, and I just … somehow … cannot‘… reach it …

  ‘How’s the poor knee?’ said Thomas.

  ‘Oh, better.’

  ‘Let me look.’

  They were sitting out in a moment of sunshine, their garden chairs with sagging canvas seats tilting a little on the uneven stones.

  Midge displayed her bare leg with the scarred knee. Of course Thomas had fussed over her wounds, applied disinfectant, expressed sympathy. Now he was peering over his glasses in the way that irritated her. He placed his hand caressingly on the glossy unseamed skin above the scar.

  ‘It’s all hot,’ said Midge, ‘should I cover it up?’

  ‘No, better leave it, it’s clean. Poor darling, what a nasty fall.’

  ‘It was stupid.’

  ‘You are a juggins, you shouldn’t walk in those high-heeled shoes, they’re only fit for drawing rooms!’

  ‘Yes — oh — all right — ’

  ‘Are you feeling well — I mean generally?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘It’s not the end of the month?’

  ‘No, I’m fine.’

  ‘You sometimes seem so — ’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘Absent.’

  ‘Perhaps I’m losing my identity. I never had much anyway.’

  ‘An overrated commodity. Do I exasperate you sometimes? Sometimes I feel I lose you.’

  ‘No, no. It’s just that sometimes we seem to talk like strangers. I wonder do other married couples do that?’

  ‘Never mind them. We have our way of talking.’

  ‘I wonder how Harry and Chloe talked.’ The urge to speak his name was suddenly irresistible.

  ‘Oh those two — ’

  ‘You sound contemptuous.’

  ‘Good heaves no. Other people’s lives and a fortiori their marriages are great mysteries.’

  ‘Even to you?’

  ‘Especially to me — I’ve run through all the easy explanations.’

  ‘But Harry — ’

  ‘Harry could have been a fascist — ’ ‘You just see him as a bully?’

  ‘I was going to say but actually he’s a romantic. Well, I suppose fascists were, but he’s a decent romantic. He’s a disappointed leader. Of course he suffered from a famous father. It’s like Willy’s camel. He was romantically in love with Chloe and I’m sure they both played that for all it was worth. I don’t mean this cynically. So much of life is acting — it can be disastrous, but sometimes it’s a way of extracting some reality from a situation which would otherwise be beyond you.’

  ‘So they were happy?’

  ‘Yes, in their restless way. Don’t you think so?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose — Chloe was certainly a romantic. She’s so remote now, poor girl.’

  ‘Poor because she died young?’

  ‘She never really loved anyone but Jesse Baltram. After all, after that man everyone else would seem tame. She never got over being dropped by him.’

  ‘Of course you never saw Jesse did you? I’d like to inspect that man some time.’

  ‘Naturally she was grateful to Harry.’

  ‘Well, he married a girl pregnant with another man’s child.’

  ‘Typical,’ said Midge. ‘He’s so generous — chivalrous — wild-a bit stupid perhaps — ’

  ‘Self-destructive,’ said Thomas. ‘He wedded her remorse and shame and vindictiveness and self-hate. That was the smell that attracted him.’

  ‘Don’t be so psychological. She was very attractive in her tragedy-queen way. Why did he marry the other one then?’

  ‘Because she was empty and virginal. Through her pure clear loving eyes he saw the great seas of the Antarctic and the circling albatross.’

  ‘That’s romantic enough. It’s funny, I always think of Edward as Harry’s son. Stuart is like a man with no father.’

  ‘Immaculately conceived. A sinless absent mother, a virgin. A way of disposing of your father.’

  ‘You think that explains it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Is Stuart really going to be a probation officer, is that the latest? Turn all the criminals into a lot of Stuarts? I can’t understand him.’

  ‘Neither can I. He has a metaphysical urge. There are people who can only do one thing by running through everything. He’s like a composer who has to invent the whole of harmony for himself. Stuart sees the machine of life that hardens the ego — sex, drink, ambition, pride, cupidity, soft living — he sees it as one big unitary trap, and his simple plan is just not to enter it at all. He dimly sees that this is a cosmic task. That’s why he has to specialise in it.’

  ‘He’ll have a breakdown and cause a lot of trouble or become a psychopath.’

  ‘Every nice girl loves a psychopath.’

  ‘I wish he’d leave Meredith alone. I had that dream again last night about the white rider who turns to look at me. Or perhaps the horse is white. You said it was an image of death.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with that, life is an image of death. It is a study of dying.’

  ‘I know you’re awfully keen on death. I wish Edward would take more interest in Meredith. How is Edward, where is he? Everyone thinks he’s here, where have you hidden him?’

  ‘He has gone upon a pilgrimage to face an ordeal, his very own. He will be all right.’

  ‘You aren’t a scientist, you should have been some sort of romantic poet. I want to see Edward, I want to comfort him.’

  ‘Shall we go for a walk?’

  ‘Isn’t it time for a drink?’

  ‘No, not yet.’

  ‘I’m too tired.’

  ‘You need occupation.’

  ‘So you keep saying, what am I supposed to do!’

  ‘Why not pick bluebells.’

  ‘You’re a pixie, you’re not human, you’re elvish!’

  While they were talking Meredith had approached, coming across the grass between the monstrous rhododendrons, his feet, dewy from walking in the wood, making plimsoll marks upon the dry round stones. Yes, he has grown, she thought, he looks older, like he will look when he is twenty, when he is a student and has a girl friend. How terrible. Meredith, sun-bronzed, his clean white shirt open at the neck, came and stood behind Thomas’s chair. He had combed down his neatly cut hair into straight lines and checked his fringe. He looked straight at his mother with his cool abstract blue eyes.

&n
bsp; Thomas was cleaning the bonfire ash off his glasses with a handkerchief.

  Then Meredith, unsmiling, keeping Midge’s gaze, put one finger to his lips.

  Thomas had put his glasses on and was looking across the garden. Suddenly he leapt up with a cry and began to run across the stones and across the grass. ‘Look, look!’

  Midge, her face burning with distress at the dreadful gesture, ran after him. Meredith followed slowly.

  An air balloon with blue and yellow stripes was silently, slowly, quite low down moving along just above the trees of the wood. The basket was clearly visible and the people in it.

  ‘Oh look!’ cried Thomas again, excited, as he had been beside the bonfire.

  Midge looked up at the beautiful balloon. Happiness. That was what it was. What she would never have. So lovely, so close, so out of reach. And Meredith had hurt her so cruelly, so much. She stared up at the moving balloon and the blue radiant sky beyond it through starting tears. The people in the balloon were waving. Thomas waved back. Midge and Meredith did not wave. Meredith was watching his mother. Midge turned away and went into the house.

  ‘Have we convinced you?’ said Mother May.

  ‘Yes,’ said Edward.

  Jesse was lying on his back with his eyes open, breathing slowly and deeply, his red lips slightly parted as if about to speak. His plump arms and shoulders, visible above the sheet, were bare, his arms white and hairy, his shoulders white and hairless. His eyes, now looking entirely round, were protruding, showing, it seemed, almost the whole of the orb, as if it were lightly resting upon the surface of the face. But these were not seeing eyes, or if seeing certainly seeing what was elsewhere. They were glazed, seeming a little crackled. Jesse’s arms were stretched out relaxed upon the coverlet, the hands close, the fingers almost touching. Mother May took hold of one arm, pinching the flabby flesh, lifted it up and let it drop. The calm face did not alter. Edward shuddered.

  ‘How long will he be like that?’ said Edward.

  ‘It’s hard to say,’ said Bettina, who was standing on the other side of the bed. ‘It could be hours, it could be days, even weeks.’

  ‘You don’t try to wake him?’

  ‘Of course not!’

  ‘We don’t let Ilona see him,’ said Mother May, ‘it upsets her. I mean, she knows it happens, but please don’t talk to her about it.’

  ‘I won’t.’ I wonder if they’ve drugged him, he thought, to prevent my talking to him? All conjectures seemed equally crazy. ‘I’ll go and finish my jobs,’ he said, and went away down the spiral staircase, leaving the two women still looking at Jesse.

  Edward did not however go to Transition, where he knew Ilona was. It was late afternoon, and some of the lunch things were still lying about on the table in the hall, things which Edward ought to pick up and carry. But he did not touch them. The routine at Seegard had, in the last day or two, quietly and imperceptibly, begun to break down. At any rate, Edward’s part of it had, and Ilona had become, according to Bettina, ‘even more scatter-brained than usual’. Saucepans were perfunctorily rinsed, not scoured, laundry failed to reach its destination, peelings lay undisturbed on the kitchen floor; strangest of all, two bottles of wine had appeared and stood shamelessly open upon a shelf beside the glass cupboard. At lunch, without comment, everyone had had a glass of wine. So was it now a festival time?

  Edward had decided, since it was impossible to talk to Jesse at present, to go for a long walk. Jesse had entered his ‘trance’ on the previous evening, the evening of the day of Edward’s early morning conversation with him; but the women had only now yielded to Edward’s scepticaL questioning by giving him a sight of the spellbound sage. The door of the tower had, during the evening and the morning, stayed locked, and the key was not to be found. What Edward wanted now was to get out of the house, to get, for a while, right away, and if possible to reach the sea. He paused in the Interfectory, opened the drawer where he had tucked away the map, spread it out upon the table and studied it more carefully. The railway was clearly marked, crossing the tarmac road two or three miles beyond the Seegard turning, and veering toward the sea. Beyond where it crossed the road there were actually two stations upon it, one inland called Smilden Halt, the other upon the sea called Efthaven, no doubt the abode of the erstwhile fisherfolk. Un petit chemin de fer d‘interêt local, as Edward thought to himself automatically. Before reaching Efthaven the railway ran for a mile or so right upon the edge of the coast. Clearly the thing to do was to find this railway and follow it. An abandoned railway usually kept its identity, raised up perhaps or in a cutting, still constituting a road, an unassimilated way through. He folded up the map and put it in his pocket where it jutted out as Ilona’s picture had done, and went out into the Atrium.

  Ilona was at the table, clearing away the lunch things which had remained disgracefully long untouched. She said, ‘You saw him?’

  ‘Yes.’ Edward did not want to see Ilona, he felt awkward with her after her outburst yesterday in the Harness Room, and he passionately wanted to be by himself.

  To his relief Ilona did not pursue the matter of the entranced Jesse, perhaps a painful one to her. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Out.’

  ‘Are you cross with me?’

  ‘No, Ilona dear, of course not. It’s just that — it’s all a bit much.’

  ‘You aren’t going to leave us?’

  ‘No. You said I couldn’t!’

  ‘I just said that. Don’t leave us. Don’t leave us yet anyway. Don’t leave me.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘I’ve got something for you.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Just some nice tea, like you had the other day.’ ‘Tea-time’ was not a Seegard custom, but Edward was sometimes given a hot cup of herbal ‘tea’ as a treat.

  Ilona left the cup and saucer on the table and went away with her loaded tray.

  Edward smelt the mixture and was about to drink it, then hesitated. Ilona’s manner had seemed a bit odd, unnaturally casual, yet pressing, she had seemed especially anxious for him to have the tea. Supposing — well, supposing what? Edward quickly turned and poured the tea about the roots of one of the potted plants, a big glossy thing with long drooping branches.

  Ilona returned. ‘Did you enjoy the tea? Why, you’ve drunk it all.’

  ‘Yes. Why not? What’s wrong with it?’

  ‘You know what that was?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A love potion.’

  ‘Don’t be silly!’

  ‘Really. Jesse made up quite a lot in a big bottle before he began to be ill. You’re supposed to love whoever you see first after drinking it. But don’t be alarmed — it was only me — and you love me already — anyway, I’m your sister.’

  ‘OK, good joke! Now I’m going for a walk.’

  ‘But you do love me, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, Ilona, I do.’

  ‘And you won’t go away yet?’

  ‘No.’

  Ilona packed her tray and departed.

  Edward looked into the cup, which he was still holding. There was a little bit of liquid left in the bottom. He looked at it for a moment, and then felt irresistibly impelled to drink it, and drank it.

  Edward donned his mackintosh, closed the outer door quietly, and set off down the track. At the tarmac road he turned right. There was no one on the road and no car passed him. The flat countryside under low silver-grey clouds looked dull and mournful, as if bored and without occupation. The wind blew steadily, damply, over small trees already bowed to its persistent direction. Beyond low scraggy hawthorn hedges Edward could see, taller and sturdier now, the wet green shoots spottily tinting the muddy earth of the fields. The rain which had been falling earlier had ceased and the surface of the road gleamed blueishly in the subdued light which the clouds emitted as they bundled along. Edward’s (Jesse’s) boots made a sticky noise as he walked. Faintly, distantly, some birds were singing and others uttering anxious low cri
es. But the effect of solitude imposed itself on Edward’s mind as a sort of silence. He walked and began to think about Mark and to try to concentrate his mind and picture again the events of that evening. What have I done, what did I do, he asked himself. But it was too difficult, and although he knew that it was possible to think in a better way, he felt too tired. He could feel his thoughts approaching some crucial, some really enlightening point, and then evading it and coming back to what was by now dull and familiar, so that he began to feel: what is this ceremony for? Then suddenly he found himself thinking about Harry, someone who had scarcely been in his mind at all since he had reached Seegard. The image of Harry rose, live and full of colour, and something stirred in Edward’s heart, gratitude, love. He heard Harry’s voice saying, Listen, you are having a nervous breakdown, you are ill, you will recover. Good old Harry, sane, beautiful, strong, real Harry, his father. Only Harry was not his father and had not cured him and could not. And Jesse, what could Jesse ever do for him? It was rather he who was now required to do something, something still shrouded and perhaps terrible. He was bound to Jesse, he loved him. And he had just said that he loved Ilona. He had new responsibilities.