The Good Apprentice

by Iris Murdoch

  ‘I hope you didn’t mind the walk.’

  ‘No, not at all,’ said Edward, ‘it was a nice walk but awfully — rather — muddy, and I haven’t got any proper shoes.’ He recalled those, his first words, later as rather feeble and inane. However they served. He followed one of the women in through the door and was followed by the other two. Someone touched his coat.

  The main building into which he was now entering was indeed a hall, or rather a very large barn with a high roof with massive crisscrossings of pale wooden beams. As the door closed behind him Edward’s first searching look was for a male figure, waiting, but there was none. There were some high-up windows, a conspicuous tapestry, a group of tall glossy potted plants. The walls were of golden-yellow roughly squared stone blocks. Edward noticed a huge tiled stove, a monster such as he had seen in Germany but never in England. In spite of this presence the large space was distinctly cold. A long solid burly wooden table was laid at one end for a meal. The scene was lit by oil lamps placed upon the table or somehow suspended in distant corners. Edward put down his suitcase and again confronted the women. They still looked very young and all alike.

  ‘I am Mrs Baltram. Those are your sisters, Ilona and Bettina. This is Ilona, this is Bettina.’ The two girls curtsied, smiling.

  Edward had not of course totally forgotten the ‘horrid little girls’. Yet he had not in any way reckoned with them or wondered about them. They had been blotted out of the picture which contained his father, and as a smaller figure his stepmother. He had vaguely thought that ‘the girls’ would be away, perhaps at school, perhaps at work elsewhere, he had never even troubled to work out their ages in relation to himself, and had not, in his final turmoil, thought about them at all.

  ‘We call her Mother May,’ said one of them.

  ‘Please call me that.’

  ‘Yes — thank you — how kind of you to invite me — ’

  ‘We’re so glad that you could come. You must be tired after that walk. Bettina, would you show Edward his room? Then we’ll have supper. I expected you’re hungry. Oh, would you mind taking your shoes off? They’re a bit muddy. Just put them there, in that box by the wall.’

  Hopping awkwardly, Edward removed his wet muddy shoes and put them in one of several boxes near a row of wellingtons. The girl named as Bettina had picked up Edward’s case and would not surrender it to him. The others laughed. He followed her across the hall toward a curtained doorway.

  ‘Mind the step. It’s all a bit complicated here. You’ll soon know your way about. This is a muddly bit called Transition. You’re in Selden, that’s the old house.’

  Edward stumbled on. Bettina had picked up a lamp from an alcove and was now leading the way up some stone stairs which felt very cold to Edward’s stockinged feet. She paused, holding the lamp high so that Edward could see his way. He saw ahead of him, beyond the girl, a dark corridor and a lighted doorway, and in a moment they were in a large bedroom where another lighted lamp stood upon a table. There was an odd smell.

  Bettina put down her lamp and stared at Edward. It was hard to tell her age, she could have been eighteen or thirty. Her brow was large, her calm eyes of an exceptionally soft light grey, but her narrow aquiline nose and firmly pointed chin gave to her face an air of authority and shrewdness. With her necklaces she looked like a Renaissance portrait of a noble lady, or perhaps of a clever slightly effeminate youth. Her hair, of a rather disconcerting dark reddish colour, was elaborately pinned up, but trailing curly wisps drew attention to the transparent whiteness and smoothness of her neck. Looking at her hand, conspicuous now as she rested it on the side of the table beside the lamp, Edward saw that she had dirty fingernails. He was not sure whether this imperfection reassured him or not. He felt, in her stare, weak, undefended, confused, very tired. He said feebly, ‘I like your dress.’

  ‘We weave the cloth ourselves,’ said Bettina, conceding a smile and spreading out her mauve and white skirt. ‘We always change in the evening, we put on our prettiest dresses.’

  ‘I’m afraid I haven’t anything special to change into.’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry. There’s your bathroom. There’s hot running water, it comes up from the kitchen. There’s even electricity, we have our own generator, but we save it, we prefer oil lamps anyway.’

  ‘Is the sea near?’

  ‘Fairly, but it’s hard to get to. Will you be all right? I don’t imagine you’ll be long, will you? You don’t want to take a bath?’

  ‘No, no, I won’t be a moment.’

  ‘Have you got other shoes?’

  ‘Yes, some slippers.’

  ‘I’ll hang around at the bottom of the stairs to guide you back.’

  ‘Will I meet … my father … at supper?’

  ‘Oh, sorry, we forgot to say, he isn’t here at the moment. Leave your lamp here when you come, don’t turn it down.’

  Bettina picked up her lamp and left with a swirl of her dress. So, no father yet. Edward felt intense relief. At the same time he felt a little puzzled and disappointed.

  The room was bare and rather cold and would have looked austere had it not looked also elegant, even grand. The walls were made of pale cream blocks of rather powdery stone, not unlike the stone of the barn only lighter in colour and worked very smooth. The vaulted ceiling appeared to be made of some sort of stone compound of exactly the same colour. The floor was planks of light polished oak, and the heavy panelled door was also of oak. So was the table, round and extremely solid, with sturdy plain curved legs, and a chest of drawers and a rush-bottomed chair to match. There was a honey-brown woven rug beside the double bed, about the head of which hung a frilled white canopy and curtains of broderie anglaue. The faint warmth, which just prevented the room from being very cold, came from a paraffin stove in the corner, the source of the curious smell. There was one picture hanging from a nail driven between the stones, and surmounted by a cobweb, portraying a young girl standing with feet apart in a stream, looking at the spectator with a secretive self-satisfied expression, while on the bank a realistically rendered bicycle was lying flat on the grass, and through the spokes of one wheel a large snake was emerging and gazing at the girl. The initials J.B. appeared in the corner. Edward did not like the picture.

  The large window, behind long white curtains, was found by Edward’s exploring hand to be covered by rather dusty shutters. Unhooking an iron bar and bending one shutter back, he cupped his face in his palms and looked out at the now dark landscape. He saw, making it out as shapes of darkness against a slightly lighter sky, the irregular avenue of trees along which he had approached. He was then evidently inside the building which he had seen from outside as a ‘sort of eighteenth-century house’. He replaced the shutter and drew the curtains and went into the bathroom where he automatically turned the electric switch with no result. The lamplight came through the open door revealing a shrine of similar elegant austerity, with a bare stone wall above an extremely large bath. There was also, beside the wash-basin, a square window out of which Edward looked into a courtyard which was dimly lit by an electric light fixed high on the wall on the farther side. The courtyard surprised Edward, looking suddenly exotic, as if he were looking into somewhere far away, perhaps in the south, perhaps in the past, some chateau maybe. As he looked the light went out, and he felt sure that it had only been left on for his benefit. Feeling he should delay no longer he tidied himself, combed his lank dark hair into a neat curve and put on the slippers from his suitcase; then, before he opened the door, stood a moment and breathed deeply several times.

  Bettina, found waiting uncomfortably close on the landing, led him back through Transition which seemed to consist of a series of dark arches and alcoves, and through the curtained door into the hall. Ilona and Mother May (as he later learned to call her) came forward, and the three of them escorted him silently, like people shepherding an animal, to the long table. There was a pause as if for grace, then they sat down. Edward, obeying a gesture from Mother May,
sat at the head of the table, with Mother May on his right, Bettina on his left, and Ilona next to Bettina. Mother May said, ‘We aren’t believers, but we always stand quietly before eating.’

  At this stage Edward was still uncertain whether or not to regard the women as his enemies. Perhaps his father had wished him to come, while they, under pretend politeness, were jealous and hostile. Must he not seem, he reflected, an interloper, someone who had got on very well without them, now in trouble running to them for a support he did not deserve, featuring in the attention of the father as a favoured novelty? If this were so how easy, he felt in the strong vibration of their presence, it would be for them to take their revenge. He had heard the word ‘sister’. He thought, I have two sisters, Bettina and Ilona, Ilona and Bettina. What will they do to me? He told himself, I am here on a short visit. But what was happening, what would happen, was larger and graver and longer than that.

  Ilona spoke first. ‘Are you called Edward?’

  ‘Well — yes — ’

  ‘I mean not Ed or Ted or Eddie or Ned?’

  ‘Or Neddie!’ said Mother May with a laugh.

  ‘No, I’ve always been called just Edward.’

  ‘Then that is what we shall call you,’ said Bettina.

  ‘Now, we have made a feast for you,’ said Mother May. ‘Every meal is a sacrament, but this is a celebration.’

  ‘A festival,’ said Bettina.

  ‘But first we should explain that we are vegetarians,’ said Mother May. ‘I hope you don’t mind?’

  ‘No, no, I’m almost a vegetarian myself, I often feel I should be, I don’t mind what I eat — ’

  ‘We hope you’ll enjoy this,’ said Ilona.

  ‘Of course, I didn’t mean — ’

  ‘Shall we help you?’ said Mother May. ‘You see we always eat picnic fashion here, for simplicity. Everything is on the table, in these bowls. Or would you rather help yourself?’

  ‘Oh help me, please — ’

  ‘Later on you can help yourself,’ said Bettina, ‘we have our funny little ways here, but you’ll soon fit in.’

  Ilona laughed, or giggled, looking at Edward and covering her mouth with her hand, as he had seen Japanese girls do at his college.

  Spooning from various bowls, Mother May put upon Edward’s plate a mixture of beans dressed with oil and herbs, lentils in a sweetish sauce, a flat rissole made (as he discovered) of nuts, a concoction of scrambled egg and spinach, and a salad composed of various unidentifiable leaves. All of this (as he also discovered) was delicious. The butter was unsalted and the thick crumbly bread self-evidently home made.

  ‘Will you have wine?’

  ‘Please.’

  From an earthenware jug decorated with blue and green geometrical patterns, Bettina poured a reddish liquid into his glass. ‘Elderberry wine, last year’s vintage. We make our own wine.’

  ‘We make our own everything,’ said Ilona, and giggled. Edward was concluding that Ilona was the younger sister.

  ‘Well, almost,’ said Bettina, ‘not quite.’

  ‘We don’t usually have wine,’ said Mother May. ‘This is a special day.’

  ‘We have special days quite often,’ said Ilona.

  ‘But this is a special special day,’ said Mother May, smiling.

  The wine was delicious too, with a fragrant sweetish taste and quite strong. Edward felt he was drinking flowers. He began at once to feel a little pleasantly tipsy. He looked about the big room. Yes, it was a large mediaeval barn, up in whose shadowy roof the complex of immense beams made a beautiful architectural play, making Edward feel for some reason that he was in a big ship. The high walls of uneven stone were bare except for the tapestry, which hung opposite to the main door across which a heavy curtain had now been drawn. In the subdued light Edward could not make out the subject of the tapestry. The floor was black, paved with huge slabs of slate. The hall, like his bedroom, was sparsely furnished. There were a few large carved chairs against the wall near the stove, two small tables with lamps on, and the thicket of plants growing out of huge earthenware pots.

  Edward was now, as the conversation lapsed for a moment, quite boldly inspecting his three companions. He was suddenly, not unpleasantly, aware of himself as a man in the company of three women. Three taboo women, he thought, with an illumination of relief. This is part of it all, of the pattern or the destiny or the doom or whatever it is. Mother May’s face was markedly, quite positively, calm, as some women’s faces are. The quality of her beauty was radiantly serene. With such faces it may be difficult to tell whether this calmness is unconscious, a gift of nature, or whether it is something achieved, a result of wisdom, or is perhaps a mask of perpetual youth deliberately cultivated. Her reddish-blonde hair, lighter in colour than Bettina’s, was more neatly piled, her straight nose less assertive, her chin less sharp. Her broader gentler face was pale almost to whiteness in the lamplight, the light grey eyes humorous and kindly. Edward noticed her smiling finely shaped mouth as beautiful, then perceived her as beautiful, and decided that she was more lovely than her handsome daughters. Ilona, whose red hair, even untidier than Bettina’s, had partly collapsed down her back, had a rounder more childish pretty face, pinker plumper cheeks and a faintly upturned nose. She returned Edward’s gaze inquisitively, with an air of mischievous shy mockery which made him look quickly away. None of the three women wore make-up.

  ‘When will my father be back?’ he said to Bettina. He found that he was now eating an apple which he had no memory of having acquired.

  Bettina said to Mother May, ‘When will Jesse be back?’

  ‘Oh soon — soon — ’

  Edward found that his eyes were closing. He kept trying to open them and they closed again. The three faces flickered as he concentrated on raising his lids. The hall had become a grey sphere in which he was awkwardly swimming, drowning. He said, ‘I’m awfully sorry, I suddenly feel terribly tired.’

  Chairs scraped loudly upon the slate floor, echoing painfully inside Edward’s head. He rose, holding onto the back of his chair. ‘I’m so sorry — ’

  ‘You’ve had a big day, Edward, and the wine is soporific. Ilona, will you see Edward upstairs?’

  Still clutching his apple and carefully not falling over, Edward followed Ilona across the long empty floor and through the curtain, where she picked up the lamp which was in the alcove as it had been before. Edward staggered up the stone stairs, pulling himself up by a thick rope banister, and found himself back in his lighted room. Ilona had put her lamp on the table beside his, and was how beside his bed, neatly turning back the sheet and blankets.

  ‘There’s a hot water-bottle in the bed, we put it in just before you came, I think it’s still warm. Would you like me to put hotter water in it?’

  ‘No, no thanks — ’

  ‘The window has shutters, see. There are electric switches, but we make a rule not to use electricity except for essential things like the deep freeze and pumping the water. There’s an electric torch in the top drawer of the chest, and an extra blanket in the bottom drawer if you’re cold. I’ll turn off the paraffin heater now. Do you know how to turn off the oil lamp?’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t.’

  ‘You just turn this little wheel to the right. By the way, don’t worry if you hear noises in the night.’

  ‘Noises?’

  ‘Oh just owls — and things — I mean owls and foxes and things — and poltergeists and things — ’

  Edward giggled feebly at this jest. ‘I expect I’ll survive. Thanks so much.’

  ‘And mind the rats.’

  ‘There are no rats,’ said Bettina, who was standing outside the open door. ‘Don’t be silly Ilona. Now, are you all right, Edward? We rise fairly early. I’ll give you a knock in the morning.’

  Edward was soon in bed and fell at once into a deep peaceful sleep and heard nothing in the night.

  The next morning Edward was awakened by a curious hollow fluting sound which he thought
at first was bird song but soon realised was not. It was music. Knowing at once where he was he jumped out of bed, anxious in case he had overslept, opened the shutters and looked out blinking at the still faint daylight. The sound came from outside. He opened the window and pulled up the sash. Mother May and Bettina and Ilona, upon a pavement directly below him, were playing recorders. When they saw his head thrust out they burst out laughing and ran off. Edward withdrew his head, closed the window and leaned his brow against the glass and groaned.

  Breakfast consisted of herbal tea and fingers of hot buttered toast lightly scattered with dry oats. There was also fruit, which Edward refused. He did not feel well and the old misery was with him again. The women wore brown hand-woven dresses and wooden beads.

  As they rose Mother May said, ‘We must get to our work now. We are very busy here, you know.’

  ‘This place is a power-house,’ said Ilona, ‘isn’t it, Bettina?’

  ‘What do you do?’ said Edward. ‘I know you weave your own dresses — ’

  ‘Oh all sorts of things,’ said Mother May. ‘We are never idle. We cultivate the garden to feed ourselves, we keep the house spick and span, we make our clothes, we do carpentry, we do embroidery, we paint a little, don’t we, we make jewellery to sell, we make Christmas cards, we are not rich, you know.’

  ‘And we mend the beastly old generator when it breaks down, at least Bettina does!’ said Ilona.

  ‘We follow Jesse’s example,’ said Bettina, ‘his rule of order and industry. We have a daily routine.’

  ‘Times of silence,’ said Ilona, ‘times for rest, times for reading, it’s like a monastery.’

  ‘You must let me help you,’ said Edward. ‘I’m afraid I haven’t any skills — ’

  ‘You’ll learn,’ said Bettina.

  ‘After all, you’re going to stay with us a long time, aren’t you,’ said Ilona.

  ‘One of you girls should show Edward round,’ said Mother May.

  ‘I will,’ said Ilona.