A Word Child

by Iris Murdoch

  ‘Fine.’ Full fathom five my father lies, of his bones are coral made.

  ‘What did he do?’

  ‘He was a diver.’

  ‘A diver?’

  The front door bell rang. I went to the door, stepping over the wreckage of the telephone. I wondered if it was the Indian girl.

  It was Mick Ladderslow and Jimbo Davis, both carrying cushions. Mick was a burly chap with reddish hair and huge glowing drugged eyes. He had great prestige because he had once got as far as Afghanistan where he contracted jaundice and was returned to England at Her Majesty’s expense.

  He marched into the flat without the ceremony of words. Possibly he grunted. Jimbo was slim and wriggly and apologetic with a long-lashed gentle expression. He rarely spoke beyond murmurs of ‘yes … yes …’, and confronted with human beings would drop in a bow, sagging a little at the knees, expressive of a sort of surprised respect. He now, whispering to me ‘Yes, yes, Hilary, hello, yes’, took hold of my hand (he always did this) and drew it downwards in an intimate sort of way as if he were about to press it against his thigh, more like a holding of hands than a shaking of hands. I suspected him of being sorry for me. I did not mind this in Jimbo. The two boys and their cushions (I suppose they were making some kind of nest in there) disappeared with Christopher into Christopher’s room, and I returned to my ironing.

  The front door bell rang. I went to the door. I wondered if it was the Indian girl. It was the porter, who said that the rubbish chute had been cleared at considerable expense to the management and that I would not be able to imagine the filth some people thought fit to pour down it and did I know that plastic bags had been invented just for this purpose to prevent rubbish chutes from becoming jammed and stinking because people with no more sense and manners than pigs threw their potato peelings down them without even the benefit of a bit of newspaper? I replied with suitable spirit to this rhetorical question. The Saturday wrangle with the porter was mechanical and regular and today neither of us had our heart in it. I went back to my ironing, completed it, and began rather feebly to sweep the kitchen floor. The floor was coated with grease and needed washing, indeed scraping. I propelled a cluster of bread crumbs over the greasy surface. When opening time came I would be off to the pub, possibly to the bar at Sloane Square (the Liverpool Street one was closed at weekends), if I felt like riding the trains for a while, or eke to one of the locals, where I would spin out my drinking time, have a late sandwich and face the horrors of the afternoon. I could do my weekly shopping, buy a few tins and some sliced bread. Then in summer I often dozed in the park. In winter I might return to the Inner Circle, or eke go home and to bed and to sleep until the pubs opened again, a device which appalled Christopher who felt a genuine moral horror at this wilful waste of consciousness.

  The front door bell rang. I went to the door. I wondered if it was the Indian girl. It was a strange thin young man with long straggly hair and an orange moustache, wearing faded jeans. I said, ‘You want Christopher?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You want Christopher?’

  ‘Do I?’ A comic.

  ‘Well make up your mind.’

  ‘What do you mean, make up your mind? Who is Christopher anyway?’

  ‘My lodger.’

  ‘What are we talking about?’

  ‘Good-bye,’ I said, beginning to close the door, only the young man had put his foot in it.

  ‘Wait a mo, wait a mo. Are you Mr Burde?’

  ‘Yes.’ Another mysterious person looking for me.

  ‘Well, just think. I’ll let you guess who I am. Just guess.’

  ‘Look,’ I said, ‘I don’t like guessing games and I don’t like people who put their foot in my door, it’s a nasty habit. Either explain yourself or fuck off.’

  ‘Dear me, what naughty language! Now just think. Did you or did you not ring up yesterday to ask if somebody could come round to remove your telephone?’

  ‘Oh — why didn’t you say so?’

  ‘I didn’t have a chance, did I ? You were on about Christopher as soon as you opened the door. Hello. Are you Christopher?’

  The telephone engineer greeted Christopher who had just emerged, opening a vista of Mick and Jimbo reclining.

  ‘My name’s Len.’

  ‘He’s the telephone engineer,’ I explained.

  ‘Now, what’s your problem. Bless me, look at that, it looks as if you’ve had the IRA in here, what a shambolic scene, whatever occurred?’

  ‘I pulled it out,’ I said.

  ‘Pulled it out! I’ll say you did. An unprovoked attack on a poor little defenceless telephone that was minding its own business and not harming anybody. The junction box busted, the handset smashed into little pieces. You realize you’ll have to pay for all this, don’t you? It’s not your property you know. Kind old Mother Post Office only lends you these gadgets, my, my! And think of all the poor people wanting telephones. Wilful damage to a perfectly good up-to-the-minute handset, why it’s a crime, makes me feel quite faint. Do you think I could have a cup of tea?’

  I retired into my bedroom. By this time Mick and Jimbo had emerged from the nest. All four boys went into the kitchen and I heard animated voices and the clatter of crockery. They were at once a fraternity. Here at any rate class no longer existed. The Beatles, like Empedocles, had thrown all things about. At their age I was a fierce tormented solipsist. I lay down on my bed and wondered if I should try to sleep until they were open. By some miraculous retardation of the pace of the expanding universe it was not yet ten o’clock. So far so good, however. I had not yet pulled the curtains back and the bedside light was still on. I switched it off. I closed my eyes and an awful cinematograph show of events out of the past started up automatically. I tried as usual to preserve myself by thinking about Crystal the way some people with such problems think about the Virgin Mary. Only now the saving image did not rise alone, another rose with it. Arthur.

  The front door bell rang. I got up and went to the door. I wondered if it was the Indian girl. It was Laura Impiatt.

  This was unusual but not totally unprecedented. ‘Come in, Laura. The place is almost full but there’s room for you.’

  Laura was looking her most energetic and eccentric, her greyish hair streaming back and front onto her shoulders from under a beret which had been pulled down well over her ears. Beneath a voluminous grey cloak a tweed skirt reached her ankles. ‘I say, Hilary, it’s cold out, winter has come. Oh it’s warm in here, oh how nice!’

  ‘Come in. Unfortunately the only place where I can entertain you is my bedroom. The boys have jammed the sitting-room with furniture, there is no room for human beings.’

  Laura followed me into my darkened bedroom. I switched on the light and kicked a lot of clothing under the bed and drew the crumpled coverlet up over the crumpled sheets and blankets. I felt no embarrassment. Why? Because I was depraved, saintly? Or because of some sort of merit, decency, calm, warmth of heart in Laura? I recalled Tommy’s idea that Laura was ‘after me’. Nonsense.

  ‘Hilary, could we have some daylight? There is some you know.’

  ‘Not much here.’ I pulled back the curtains and the grey light of the dark inner well sheeted the windows like gauze but did not enter. ‘Is it raining?’

  ‘No, rainy and cold but quite bright. Do turn off that lamp, it looks awful. May I put my cloak here? Who’s chattermagging in the kitchen?’

  ‘Christopher, Mick, Jimbo and one Len, a telephone engineer.’

  ‘How young they are. It makes one feel ancient.’

  ‘Golden lads and lasses must like electricians come to dust. You however are eternally young. I love that swirling skirt. You look like Natasha Rostova just in from a brisk walk along the Nevsky Prospect.’

  ‘Silly dear Hilary.’

  ‘What a nice party on Thursday.’

  ‘Did you think so? I find Clifford Larr a bit depressing. We’d have had more fun by ourselves.’

  ‘Fun? What’s that?’


  ‘Hilary, you’re not to go off into one of your things. I know you want me to mother you, but I won’t.’

  ‘Aaargh.’

  ‘Yes, you do. I understand you better than you imagine. I can read you like a book. You lead a selfish shut-in life. You’re afraid of anything new. You ought to try and do things for others now and then instead of just expecting people to look after you.’

  ‘You’ll always look after me though, won’t you? Take me out of myself. Just grab and pull.’

  I was sitting on the bed. Laura, dressed in a high-necked white blouse and the ankle-length brown skirt (she was too plump for this gear) was sitting in an upright chair, her tweedy knees about nine inches from my knees. Her face was rather indistinct in the murky gauzy light, but I could see her brown eyes glowing, even moist perhaps, with fearful sympathy. Why did I automatically, by stupid flippant badinage, evoke these feelings in Laura? I did it every time. That fearful sympathy, that frightful energy. Yet I felt at home with her, that was the trouble. She calmed me.

  ‘I wish you’d really tell me about yourself sometime, Hilary.’ Laura often expressed this wish.

  ‘I thought you could read me like a book.’

  ‘I can’t see your past. How did you get that scar on your chin, for instance? I feel sure there’s something which it would do you good to tell me.’

  ‘My past is boring. No sins or crimes. Only the selfishness upon which you kindly animadverted.’

  ‘And I’d like to talk to you about Tommy. Oh if I could only get you talking!’

  ‘I chatter artlessly in your presence.’

  ‘You do nothing artlessly. You use words as a hiding place. You’re always hiding. But what from? Anyway I didn’t really come to see you at all. I came about the panto. I want to talk to Christopher. I wonder if we could persuade him to write us a song? And Freddie thought he might invent a sort of happening for the finale.’

  ‘Like setting fire to the theatre. Excellent.’

  (Example of one of Christopher’s happenings designed for a garden party. Each guest was enclosed in a huge brown paper bag and told to stay quiet until a trumpet blew and then tear his way out. The point was that there was no trumpet and after a long and agonizing silence the guests began to react in a variety of ways. There was a lot of embarrassment and annoyance and impromptu play-acting. The event ended in a most appropriate manner when the paper bags blew away across the main road and stopped the traffic and the police arrived.)

  ‘I want to talk to the boys anyway about the drug scene. I’m writing another article. I feel like a probation officer to these kids.’

  The front door bell rang. Closing Laura in, I went to the door. I wondered if it was the Indian girl. It was Tommy.

  Tommy in a red mackintosh and matching hat, her dark ringlets unravelled into rats’ tails by the wind, opened her little mouth in a beseeching prayerful O. ‘Hilary, I know I’m not supposed to — ’

  There was an absolute rule about no visits at the flat. And Tommy would arrive when Laura was in my bedroom. I felt blind exasperated head-mislaying rage. I pulled her inside and we both stumbled over the trailing telephone wires. I pushed her in through the door of the sitting-room and squeezed in after her and closed the door. There was just space enough for us to stand hemmed in by the furniture. My shoulder grazed a table which was standing on another table and there was a small crash. I pinned Tommy against the door, gripping her by both arms and pressing her violently back, squeezing the flesh as hard as I could and I whispered, ‘I told you — never to come — never to come like this — I told you — ’

  Tommy’s small mouth remained open and her long innocent grey eyes filled instantly with tears. Her hat was tilted awry by the pressure of her head against the door. I thrust her back, pressing upon her arms, as if I wanted to drive her body back through the wood or flatten her like an insect. She uttered a little whining gasp of pain. I went on whispering, ‘I told you never to come here, I told you — ’

  The front door bell rang. I released Tommy and sidled out of the room and closed her in. I went to the front door. I wondered if it was the Indian girl. It was the Indian girl.

  I did not hesitate for a second. One hand reached for my overcoat, the other drew the front door to behind me. I did not even look at my visitor, nor did I wait for the lift. I passed her, crossing the landing to the stairs, and as I did so I plucked peremptorily at the sleeve of her blue jacket. I began to run down the stairs, hearing the light patter of her feet running behind me. In less than a minute after the sound of the front door bell we were outside in the street, where by some miracle a great bright blue rainy light was shining.

  We were walking along the northern walk of Kensington Gardens in the direction of the Serpentine. I wondered briefly how long the two women, like the people in Christopher’s paper bags, would stay quietly in their rooms, unaware of each other’s presence. I had still not looked at my mysterious pursuer. Crossing the main road I had held her sleeve, not her arm. Not a word had been said, we walked onward in silence.

  No sun was shining but there was a great diffused brightness over the park. The asphalt paths, wet from earlier rain, shone with a blue glow, full of shadowy reflections. The damp light bestowed a faintly lurid clarity. To our right the russet vistas disclosed Watts’s Bronze Horseman, Speke’s obelisk. A chill wind moved the brown leaves in steady droves, then plastered them flat upon the asphalt. Most of the trees were bare now, only a few oaks retained their withered foliage. Looking like huge vines, the plane trees held up their bobbled fruit against the radiant clouded sky. Excited by the damp electrical atmosphere, distant dogs ecstatically raced.

  I felt detached, extraordinary, as if a calm doom had come. I now looked at the Indian girl and she looked at me and smiled. Today she was wearing a black mackintosh and black trousers. A sodden blue scarf (she must have been walking in the rain) which had covered her head, had been pushed back onto her shoulders. Her long plait was inside her mac. Her face and hair were damp. Her features, though more irregular, less spiritual, than they had seemed in my first vision, had the bony refinement of her race. Her eyes were very dark and luminous and expressed some emotion. (Surely not pity? Simply a desire to please?) Her mouth, rather thin, rather long, was almost abstract in its delicacy, and hardly more highly pigmented than its surroundings. The whole face was pale, pale, the palest creamy brown, with that uniform pallor which far outpales the banal pink and white of coarser races.

  As we neared the Serpentine I said, ‘Well?’

  She simply smiled again.

  I said, ‘Look here, you started this. Hadn’t you better explain yourself, Miss Mukerji, or whatever your name is? You came to me, not I to you. You were looking for me, weren’t you? Hilary Burde is my name.’

  ‘Oh yes — I know.’ Her voice was something of a surprise. I had expected the chi-chi accent, so unmistakable, so indelible, so charming. But this was an English voice, even, as I later discovered, with traces of London vowels.

  ‘Well, what do you want?’

  She smiled, flashing excellent teeth, and made a sort of helpless gesture, raising her eyebrows, as if my question were unexpected, complex, difficult.

  ‘I mean,’ I said, ‘I don’t want to be tiresome, but if, out of all the men in London, you sought for me there must have been some reason, maybe something which I can do for you. But if you won’t tell me what it is I can do I can’t do it, can I ?’ I wondered if she was a little deranged, a mad girl. The speculation was uncanny.

  ‘I just wanted to know you.’

  ‘But why? Why me? How did you even know my name?’

  ‘I knew it. I wanted to see you. To talk to you. That’s all.’

  I said, ‘Are you a tart?’ This was a little abrupt, but her vague smiling replies were unnerving me.

  She seemed upset at this suggestion. ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘Well I can’t make you out. Do you want money?’

  ‘No, no.’
r />   ‘What do you want then?’

  ‘To know you,’ she said again.

  We had now passed the little fountain of two bears embracing (which Crystal so much liked when I brought her there once) and reached the mysterious stone garden at the end of the lake which always seemed to me to be part of some other city (Leningrad?) or else a camouflaged entrance to some strange region (Acheron?). Urns enclose five octagonal pools and a little stone pavilion faces between more distant nymphs the tree-fringed curve of the lake. In summer fountains play. In winter the place is pleasantly derelict. We crossed the slippery pavement and sat down on a rather damp seat. Some pigeons and sparrows approached with desultory hope.