A Word Child

by Iris Murdoch

  We were sitting at dinner eating some sort of veal stew and a salad covered with oily dressing. (I had given up asking him not to put oil on my salad.)

  ‘So why couldn’t it take place?’ I said. (Crystal’s marriage to Arthur.) ‘Because of me, I suppose.’

  ‘Why do you imagine you are the centre of everything?’

  ‘I don’t. I just imagine I am the centre of this.’

  ‘He is such a nothing. Credit her with some taste.’

  ‘You underestimate Arthur. He has many good points.’

  ‘Mention one.’

  ‘He is good-natured.’

  ‘He is weak. Come, come, my dear, it is too late to start building Arthur up for my benefit.’

  ‘Marriage may transform him.’

  ‘Transformation belongs to passionate pursuit, Apollo seizing Daphne. There is none of that here.’

  ‘I don’t see why you should assume so.’

  ‘Arthur deified by love?’

  ‘Anyone can be.’

  ‘You must admit you have never hitherto had a good word to say for him.’

  ‘You mock him. You mock everybody. I just went along. I shouldn’t have. I respect Arthur.’

  ‘Nothing is more important than that everybody mocks everybody.’

  ‘I don’t think Arthur does.’

  ‘Then that’s because he’s too timid. He lacks the energy to perceive the absurd.’

  ‘She wants a baby.’

  Clifford said nothing to this, but fastidiously registered the enormity of the remark. He removed the plates. He brought in the cheese soufflé. I had been trained to sit still.

  ‘I suppose if Crystal marries her dull swain you will marry yours?’

  ‘No.’ Clifford was hateful on the subject of Tommy. I now refused to be drawn. Marriage with Tommy would mean the end of Mondays. ‘That’s another thing.’

  ‘Everything is what it is and not another thing.’

  ‘So you have observed before.’

  ‘Why not a double wedding!’

  ‘There won’t be any weddings.’

  ‘So you agree with me about Crystal and Arthur?’

  ‘Yes. It won’t happen.’

  ‘Why did you bring it up then? Just to annoy me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You said I was going to bore you, you said — ’

  ‘Oh how tedious you are,’ said Clifford. ‘You are nothing but a lout who has been taught a few tricks. You are the sort of lower class product who never grows out of his grammar school. Always the little prize boy who was top in the exam. Always envious, always anxious. You exist by excelling, by knowing just that little more than the others and understanding nothing. You haven’t even got a sense of humour. When there are no more exams and you can’t excel you cease to exist.’

  ‘Shall I go home and relieve you of my non-existence?’

  ‘Do as you please. If only you knew chess we could concentrate on that and not talk. But of course you will only do what you can win at.’

  ‘Of course!’

  ‘You conceal your inferiority from yourself, though not from anyone else, by cramming your head with foreign words which you can’t pronounce and will never use — ’

  ‘You wish you knew Russian, you said so — ’

  ‘This conversation is worthy of the nursery. Go home if you want to. I must make my will tonight.’ This was a routine remark, a sort of familiar turning post in our exchanges.

  ‘Don’t forget to leave me the Indian miniatures.’

  ‘You only like pictures that tell stories. You only like music with tunes. What did you say the Czech word for music was?’

  ‘Hutba.’

  ‘Hutba. That’s what you like. I must make my will, or else my piggish cousin will inherit. Non amo, ergo non ero. Is life a thorn? Then count it not a whit, man is well done with it. Soon as he’s born he should all means essay to put the plague away. As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods. Even Wittgenstein did not think that we would ever reach the moon. So am I a happy fly, if I live or if I die, only dying is very much to be preferred.’

  ‘Good. Just let me know when you’re going so that I can find someone else for Mondays.’

  ‘The Messiah will change only one thing in the world. If I remove myself the world will be saved. Hey presto. Yes, I must make a will. So Crystal is going to make a present of her virginity to that little worm. But it won’t happen. You won’t let it happen, will you?’

  ‘I won’t let it happen. Give me some more wine will you? Must you hog the bottle?’

  He poured the wine. ‘Your hand, please.’ This too was routine. At a certain moment during the evening he held my hand across the table. Nothing else. Sometimes this firm clasp comforted me. Sometimes it annoyed me. It annoyed me tonight. I gave him my hand.

  ‘So,’ said Clifford, in a different tone, his lips beginning to take on the pouting look, ‘they moved your desk out of the window, and you let them.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Poor little prize boy. Has anything else … odd … happened to you lately … darling?’

  I looked into the narrow clever blue eyes, a light but cold blue, like Scandinavian seas in the sunshine. I saw behind the fair pale head an Indian girl in a diaphanous sari standing on a terrace and watching a flight of birds. Some instinct had warned me earlier not to mention Biscuit. I decided again for concealment. What a strangely apt question, however. ‘No. Nothing.’

  ‘And you have not … heard anything?’

  ‘Heard anything? What should I hear? About what?’

  Clifford’s fingers closed very hard upon my hand. ‘You haven’t heard — ?’

  ‘No. What? You’re frightening me. What am I supposed to have heard?’ I pulled my hand away.

  He pushed his chair back. ‘Oh, nothing — nothing. I’m feeling rotten. I can’t sleep. The pills don’t work any more. I’m just saving them up now. It’s no good imagining gardens and garden gates, that used to help. Now I lie for hours just staring at the ceiling. Human life is a scene of horror. I hope you enjoyed the cheese soufflé. Nothing could be more important than that Mozart died a pauper, except that Shakespeare stopped writing. A scene of horror. You’d better go home.’

  ‘But what were you saying?’

  ‘Nothing. What you can’t say you can’t say and you can’t whistle it either, as my old philosophy tutor used to observe. Bugger off, will you.’

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘Good-bye, in case you should decide to kill yourself tonight.’

  ‘Good-bye.’

  TUESDAY

  I WAS in an examination hall which was also a tube station. I had finished some time ago turning a piece of Carlyle into faultless fruity Tacitean Latin. Complacently I watched the other examinees who were desperately writing. Idly I turned the examination paper over. There were a whole lot of questions on the back which I had failed to notice, and there were only twenty minutes left in which to answer them all. I began frenziedly to write, but now my pen was refusing to function, no ink was coming out of it, it was simply making holes in the paper which was moving steadily towards me over the desk off a big paper roller. With a terrible feeling of helplessness, I began to crumple up the paper. ‘You mustn’t do that,’ said the invigilator who was Tommy dressed in a black gown and mortarboard, standing on the desk in front. I was in a court room throwing balls of screwed up paper at the judge who was Laura Impiatt in a white wig. ‘He has failed,’ she said, ‘he did not answer the questions. Take him away.’ I was in a motor car driving faster and faster. A man beside me with blue eyes began to take me by the throat. I screamed. Crystal was lying dead on the grass beside the road.

  I awoke from this typical nightmare into relief that it was a dream and sadness that I was no longer a young man with an unspoilt life. I got up and began to make some tea. Then I remembered that it was Tuesday and went to see if Tommy’s usual letter had arrived. It had. Tommy spent Monday and Tuesday at King’s Lynn
where she earned her pittance teaching would-be teachers to be autumn leaves or how to make horses’ heads out of papier-mâché or puppet theatres out of tea chests. She always wrote me a letter on the Monday which I received on the Tuesday. Lately she had taken to writing on other days too. That must stop. These letters gave no pleasure. At best they could be quickly glanced through and declared harmless.

  My darling one, I am so miserable. I am so terribly sorry I came on Saturday. I felt desperate and I just wanted to see your face. My cold has come out, I do hope I didn’t give it to you or Crystal, I don’t think I can have done. It will be over by Friday. I love you so much. I waited for ages in that room as quiet as a mouse, only you didn’t come back, and then I heard Laura Impiatt talking to the boys in the kitchen. I tried to get out without her seeing me but she did. She said, ‘Where did you spring from? What have you done with Hilary?’ She always seems aggressive to me now. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t stay as I knew you wouldn’t want me to and I was starting to cry anyway. You don’t realize how I do everything you want as if I were your slave. I live a stupid life because of you, a life not worthy of a human being, and we might be so happy if only you would. It isn’t as if you were happy either, you’re wretched, I think you’re the most unhappy person I’ve ever met. Why can’t you just decide to be happy for a change? It’s that you won’t love for some reason, you hold back. You are your own worst enemy. There’s a rage in you against all ordinary joys. We could be so happy you and me and if we had a little child, living together, and you would have somebody to work for and your life would be full of meaning if you would. You can’t be waiting for somebody else. You do love me and we do understand each other and it’s rare, you said so yourself. Oh darling, don’t cast me away, don’t waste me, you can’t, you know I’m your little Thomas forever …

  And so on for several pages more. I classified it as harmless and tore it up. I dressed and drank my tea and set off for the office. The lift was out of order, so I walked down.

  Raw rainy air was waiting for me outside the swing doors, it rushed into my throat and made me feel that I had got Tommy’s bloody cold after all. The dawn was soiled and yellow, the street lights were still on, illuminating posters announcing an imminent electricity strike. What a depressing evening with Clifford. What had he meant at the end about my hearing something? He often talked wildly, picturesquely, with a kind of rhetorical over-emphasis which led straight on into pure romancing. As for Tommy’s letter with its picture of happy home life with the little ones it made me want to spew. At any rate she had not been gurgling about ‘bairns’, as she sometimes did. What a terrible dream that was about Crystal. Whatever should I do if Crystal died? But marriage with Arthur was as good as death. Did she really know how she felt? Did she really know what it would mean? Did she imagine that she could marry Arthur and still have me? Was I not being stupidly heroic about the whole business? Should I not simply, as I had said to Clifford, prevent it?

  The haze of black thoughts round my head was suddenly pierced and dispelled. What had happened? At one moment I ad been shuffling along with the crowd of other zombies, nuzzling my way through a light rain of tiny yellowish ice drops, breathing a damp air which sliced into the innards like a knife, and at the next all was warmth and brightness. It was like being lightly hit with a golden ball in a transformation scene. I had spotted Biscuit on the other side of the road, walking slowly along parallel to me, her head slightly turned in my direction. She was wearing a duffle coat with the hood turned up and it was surprising that I had been able to recognize her. Some power had felicitously led my gaze to that glimpse of a dark eye and a bony cheek. I felt sudden happiness, and with it a shock of surprise that this warm feeling was happiness, it was happiness I felt, irrational, unwarranted, baseless, doubtless quite momentary, but that was certainly what that very unusual sensation was. I walked on feigning not to have noticed her, wondering what she would do and whether she would accost me. After about twenty paces however this began to seem an idiotically wasteful procedure. I let her get a little ahead of me, then crossed the road and came up behind her, grabbing her by the wrist. I felt we had known each other for years. I squeezed the thin wrist, then pulled her arm through mine, holding her hand. She was wearing a little short woollen glove and I pulled this off and pocketed it and held her warm dry hand firmly in my cold wet one. I very rarely wore gloves. I felt the warmth of her body along my forearm and at my thigh. We walked along in the semi-darkness in the flowing rush hour crowd. I did not look into her face.

  ‘Well, Biscuit, darling?’

  ‘Good morning.’

  ‘Good morning, who?’

  ‘Good morning, Hilary.’

  ‘You’re going to have dinner with me tonight.’ Tuesday was Arthur’s day, but that could scarcely matter less.

  ‘No, I can’t, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Why not? Won’t they let you?’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Biscuit, are you married?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No ring? No, no ring. But is there some man who rules your life?’

  ‘No man — ’

  ‘Well then why can’t you? After all, dear Biscuit, you are behaving like a perfect tease. I am not going to put up any longer with not knowing all about you and why you keep following me around. It is rather odd, you know. Do you live near here?’

  ‘I cannot come tonight.’

  We had reached the tube station and I was keeping a firm hold of her hand which had shown a little fluttery inclination to escape as we came to the entrance. She drew away from my arm but I pulled her on, squeezing the frail knuckles between my fingers and thumb. I bought her a ticket and fumbled for my own season. We went on down the steps onto the eastbound platform. I had decided to keep her with me now until she had revealed herself and thoroughly explained her little mystery.

  ‘Please — Hilary — you’re hurting me — ’

  I pulled her along the platform. There was a dense crowd in the middle of which we were totally private. Londoners, having seen everything, live in blinkers. I pushed her back against a wall, thrusting her between two people as if into a slot, and followed her, placing my hands on the wall on either side of her shoulders. We faced each other. The comparative warmth of the station made our wet faces glow, mine red, hers a faintly rosy gold. I brushed my cheek for a moment against the folds of her hood which had fallen back about her neck. A smell of warm wet wool pervaded the crowded platform, merging into a smell rather like sweat, merging into the dark rubbery smell of the Underground. A Putney Bridge train came thundering in and the crowd began to surge forward. ‘Biscuit,’ I said in the privacy of the people and the thunder and the wetness and the wool.

  ‘Look, Biscuit, never mind about this evening. You’re here now and I’m not going to let you go. You’re my prisoner and I’m not going to release you until you’ve told me everything. You’ve bewitched me and the only thing I can do is grab you and hold on until I’ve got the truth. I warn you, I’ll hold on for hours if necessary.’ I thought, I will get her onto the Inner Circle and keep her there by force until she talks. I don’t care how many times we go round.

  The Putney Bridge train had gone. The platform was rapidly filling up again. An Inner Circle train began to draw in. ‘Come along, prisoner.’ I pulled her forward with me. The train was already full to the doors and we were the last to get on, squashing ourselves forcibly up against the reluctant crush of cringing persons within. I thrust Biscuit in front of me, and as I inserted myself, trying to find a space for my two feet on the overcrowded floor, I loosened my hold for a second. The doors began to close.

  She was outside. Quick as an eel, she had stepped off as I stepped on. The doors had closed between us. I pressed my face up to the glass. Inches away I saw her face, her mouth opening inaudibly in the clatter of the now moving train. Her frail hands lifted in an interpretative gesture. ‘I’m sorry — I’m sorry — ’ She walked beside the train and put one han
d flat on the glass. I saw the paler greyish palm and the criss-cross of lines, hieroglyph of a mystery that still evaded capture.

  On Tuesdays chez Arthur supper was always the same winter and summer. (Wittgenstein would have liked that.) It consisted of tinned tongue with instant mashed potatoes and peas, followed by biscuits and cheese and bananas. I brought the wine.

  It was the last day of the old world. (Only I did not know this yet.) Arthur and I were drunk. (Just for tonight I had brought two bottles.)

  Arthur had a two-room flat over a baker’s shop in Blythe Road. I found the smell of the bread maddening. If one was hungry it made hunger intolerable. If not hungry it made one feel sick. Sometimes it merged into a sort of yeasty fermenting smell as if the bread were turning into beer. Arthur said he was used to it and claimed he could not smell it. His flat was small, dirty and unattractive. There were various relics left by the (now defunct) person Arthur referred to as his ‘mummy’. Mummy had left Arthur a green blue and brown carpet with a pattern of wavy triangles, a sideboard with rounded corners and a chocolate brown inlay of elongated fan designs, a greenish glass firescreen engraved with a representation of the Empire State Building, an armchair with an embroidery of rather dated aeroplanes, a diamond-shaped orange rug, which fought hard with the carpet, and a pair of light green statuettes of half-draped ladies in suitable attitudes labelled Dawn and Dusk respectively. There was a sort of touching whiff of ancient joie de vivre about this stuff which made me feel a tiny sympathy though no curiosity. Arthur’s father (also defunct) had been a railway porter. Arthur, so far as he went, was another little exhibit of the liberating power of the examination system.