A Word Child

by Iris Murdoch

  It was now five past eight and the mist was thicker than ever. I had just run from the Magazine across the car park to the water. A few cold fluffed-up ducks were floating near to the bank. Beyond, the mist descended. There was a dreadful silence which muffled the sound of the more frequent, invisible, passing cars. I began to wonder if Lady Kitty had not by now come and gone, somehow missing me as I hurried desperately to and fro. I decided I had better stay still now for a while in what was probably the most likely place, beside the lake just east of the bridge. I waited and listened and looked. No one, nothing. It was nearly ten past eight. I could not bear the inactivity, and gasping with anxiety set off again to lope back towards the road. As I approached the corner of Rotten Row, where it turns round to run along the northern edge of the Serpentine, two riders materialized out of the mist. The horses, which had been trotting, slowed to a walk as they approached. I paused to let them turn and pass. I got an impression of two pairs of highly polished boots and took in that the riders were women. Then the horses stopped near me and one of the women dismounted. It was Biscuit.

  I stood there paralysed with alarm and with a sense of outrage which I could not at once interpret. I waited for Biscuit to speak to me, but she did not. Biscuit was perfectly attired as a smart groom. Her hair was neatly piled up behind a small velvet cap. I even saw a little silver-handled whip in her hand. I saw the glowing leather of the reins, the smoking nostrils of a rather large brown horse. I saw Biscuit’s face, absolutely expressionless, aloof, the face of a servant. She had already turned from me and was holding the bridle of the other horse from which the second rider was dismounting. Biscuit then withdrew, leading the two horses. She faded into the mist. Lady Kitty stood before me.

  She took her hat off. I took in her smart riding habit and well made-up face. It was a strong face with rather too long a nose, dark eyes and a tumble of dark hair which emerged now from under the hat. The perfume, seeming absurdly out of place, warred with the cold air. She began to speak.

  ‘How very kind of you to come, Mr Burde. I appreciate it very much indeed.’ It sounded as if she were welcoming an honoured guest into her drawing-room. Her voice was the sort of upper class woman’s voice which I particularly detested.

  Emotion rose up into my mouth, into my head. Rage. I suddenly felt that I was being monstrously put upon, that the whole thing was outrageous, a farce designed to humiliate me. The arrival on horses, the masquerade with Biscuit, this woman’s ghastly voice, the stupid grandness of it all. The well-cut breeches, the bloody polished boots. The elegant little leather gloves which Lady Kitty was now drawing off. I suppose (I thought of this later) that what I was feeling then was the poor man’s primeval hatred of the man on the horse. It was not that I had ever coveted a horse myself, even as a child. Crystal and I never even heard of privileged children with ponies. I never conceived of riding. But now suddenly this rich woman with her horses, and with Biscuit as her servant, filled me with a hostility which rendered me for a moment speechless.

  As I said nothing, Lady Kitty said, ‘Mr Burde, forgive me for — Do you think we could sit down somewhere and talk?’

  I said thickly, ‘No, I can’t — ’

  She said hastily, ‘I’m sorry, I quite understand, it was stupid of me to ask you — ’

  ‘No, you don’t understand. I don’t mind talking to you. It’s all this — I can’t — Look, I’m sorry, I will talk to one woman, but I will not talk to two women and two horses!’

  Lady Kitty hesitated. She looked round. There was no sign of Biscuit or the animals.

  I went on, hardly knowing what I was saying, ‘I can’t talk to you today, it’s spoilt. If you will come here at this time tomorrow alone and on foot I will talk to you. I’m sorry, I — ’ I turned abruptly on my heel and made for the bridge. When I reached the middle of the bridge I began to run. Later on, in the office (I decided to go to the office in preference to running mad on the Inner Circle) I failed to make sense of myself entirely. I sat at my desk with my head in my hands glaring at the lighted face of Big Ben, now faintly visible. Reggie and Mrs Witcher tried to attract my attention by making jokes about my having got my lady friend into the panto, and became even more sarcastic when I failed to reply. Mrs Witcher said that if I could not give civil answers to friendly remarks I ought to see a doctor. I eventually said ‘sorry’ and they left me alone.

  I could not conceive how I could have been so aggressive and so rude to Lady Kitty when it was so fantastically kind of her to be willing to speak to me at all. Why should she condescend to address a criminal like me? I ought to have been humble and grateful, even obsequious. I ought to have listened with bowed head to anything she thought fit to say to me. Who was I, after what I had done to her husband, to put on tantrums of stupid touchy pride and tell her to go away and come again tomorrow in a guise that suited me better? I must have been insane. Of course she would not come. I should never see her again.

  I could not remember the address in Cheyne Walk, I had not noted the telephone number. I wondered if I could find out, rush round at once, demand to see her, apologize. I even thought of going downstairs to see Gunnar. The idea that he was probably at this very moment sitting in that room on the first floor, that I could talk to him by dialling the number which was here before me on the office list, that I could see him by walking down three flights of stairs and opening a door, drove me into a frenzy. I sat there with my back to the room, trying to breathe inaudibly, my heart pounding, my head swimming.

  At lunch-time I walked along the embankment in a daze. It was less misty. The sun was somewhere. I walked as far as Blackfriars Bridge and back, then set off again towards Blackfriars. I could not conceive of eating anything. I could do nothing now with my life except wait in the most frightful anxiety for tomorrow morning and then, when she did not come, decide what on earth to do next. I went back to the office and resumed my sulking and glaring. Arthur, thank God, kept out of my way. At about four o’clock I remembered that it was Monday and that Clifford Larr would be expecting me. I felt unable to face Clifford. I supposed I ought to see him to find out whether he had tampered with Crystal’s engagement, and if he had, to do something (what?) about it. But I was incapable of doing what I ought. I was simply a waiting machine. I sent Clifford a note (something which he had told me never to do) by the now recovered Skinker saying that I had a violent cold and could not come that evening. I went home early and lay on my bed for hours in torment. I was back again in the park at six a.m. on Tuesday.

  TUESDAY

  IT WAS Tuesday morning, eight o’clock. It was a cloudy cold morning, not raining, a gloomy twilight but little mist. I was standing near to the bend of Rotten Row, between the sandy track and the water, just on the edge of the car park. I was feeling lightheaded with hunger and emotion and sleeplessness. I was very cold and wanting the fruitless ordeal to be over. I had decided to wait until eight thirty and then go. I was wearing a cap and gloves. I looked down at my watch. A minute past eight. When I looked up again I saw a figure coming across the tarmac towards me. It was a woman pushing a bicycle.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind a bike,’ said Lady Kitty, and she smiled.

  Suddenly everything was quite different. It was as if a huge black lid which had been pressed down hard upon the world had been quietly lifted up. I could breathe, I could think, I could speak.

  I said, taking off my cap, ‘I am terribly sorry I behaved so badly yesterday, I can’t think what came over me, you must have thought me an awful person. I do apologize.’

  ‘Not at all, it is for me to apologize. I thought about it afterwards and I saw just how sort of — I mean I’m sorry, it’s for me to be sorry — ’

  ‘Not at all, it’s for me — ’

  ‘Well, don’t let’s argue. Look, I’ll just shove this machine somewhere, where can I put it, here against the railings. I say, it is beastly cold, isn’t it.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, I — ’

  ‘No, no, this pictures
que place and time was my choice. Now where can we sit down? I’ve got such a lot to say to you.’

  ‘Let’s cross the bridge,’ I said.

  We began to walk across the bridge. The light of day now showed the slow steady movement of low grey clouds above the lake. It was extraordinary, walking with her. I felt as if I were someone in a story. It was all so strange. I kept looking about me in amazement.

  Lady Kitty was fairly tall, well up to my shoulder. Today she was wearing a sort of tweed cape and a matching hat. She had pulled off the hat to reveal the layers of falling-down hair, glossy and very dark brown. Her eyes (as I was able to observe a little later) were a dark slaty spotty blue-grey, the sort of blue-grey where the grey element is more like an injection of black. And there was the rather too long dominating nose and a large finely cut determined mouth. Not the face of a fool. Yet of her folly it was a little early to judge.

  ‘Is it going to rain?’ She uttered the question as if it were very important and as if I certainly knew the answer.

  ‘For our purposes, no.’

  ‘So kind of you to come. I hope you don’t mind the secrecy?’

  ‘Not at all. I must confess I was very mystified by Biscuit at first.’ I wanted to hear her speak of ‘Biscuit’, and have done with ‘my maid’.

  ‘Biscuit enjoyed it. It makes a change from the tedium of looking after me.’

  ‘I kept her waiting terribly on Friday.’

  ‘Yes, she told me. She loved it.’

  Mysteries, mysteries, what on earth had it been like when Biscuit told Lady Kitty how she had stood on the platform at Sloane Square station and watched me through the window of the bar as I read and reread Lady Kitty’s letter?

  We had reached my objective, the Peter Pan statue. Lady Kitty had walked obediently beside me, ready evidently to go on indefinitely until I should arrange for us to sit down. I dusted the frost off one of the seats with my glove. The trooping clouds were lighter, the lake water motionless, hung with a gauze curtain just short of the opposite bank. There was no one about, not even a duck.

  ‘Well?’ I said. I had already grasped how business-like she was, or at least managed to seem. And yet this could go with a good deal of sheer asininity. Witness the unnecessary panache of yesterday. Witness perhaps the whole project.

  ‘Well,’ she said, taking up my tone. ‘Listen. I don’t know if I can explain clearly. I couldn’t write it all. I’m not much good at writing anyway. There isn’t actually any more to it except what I put in my letter, that’s the essence of it. Only how it really is — the details — are so important. I mean — how it is with Gunnar.’

  I flinched at the name. However it was better than ‘my husband’. I said, ‘Yes?’

  ‘You see. Now let me try to put my ideas in order. It’s rather extraordinary, isn’t it, that we’re talking at all?’ She looked at me as if expecting a reply.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘and it may be rather unwise.’

  She sat turned on the seat looking at me. I looked sometimes at her, sometimes at the water.

  I regretted the remark. It was too early to insult her courage by striking a note of fear. What had I meant anyway? I meant such a lot. There was an air of sacrilege about my being with her at all. I did not express this thought however. I said, ‘I may not help Gunnar at all by speaking to him. I may just annoy him.’ That was putting it mildly.

  ‘And it could be, for you, awfully distressing. I know. That’s why it’s so good of you to be here.’ The slate-dark eyes were bright with intelligence and animation. Yes, possibly a silly woman. She found the drama interesting. Perhaps it was a change from the tedium of being looked after by Biscuit.

  ‘Never mind me. If I can help Gunnar — ’ The repeated phrase struck me as ridiculous. What was I doing discussing ‘helping Gunnar’ with Gunnar’s wife? ‘Go on,’ I said. ‘You wanted to speak to me. Please speak.’

  ‘Yes, yes. I must try to explain about Gunnar. It isn’t easy. You don’t mind if I talk about — those things — ?’

  ‘Talk about any things.’

  ‘It’s difficult to express, to tell you, how absolutely obsessed he is.’

  ‘About — ’

  ‘Yes. He thinks about it all the time and it sort of cuts him off. No one would guess, but it is so. He’s tried to stop it of course. When he was in America he tried psychoanalysis. He even went to a priest. To be dreaming about revenge the whole time — ’

  ‘Revenge?’

  ‘That’s part of it. And brooding and brooding about what exactly happened and why. To be so tied up to particular things in the past is a sort of illness. It hasn’t affected his ordinary life, of course, I mean his work. He took refuge in work, in his ambitions. But it cut him off from people. Then he married me and — ’

  ‘Well, surely you can cure him!’ I said. There was an ungracious bitterness in the interruption. Huge emotions were working inside me and I was concentrating on keeping calm, staring at a motionless misty willow, at a seagull on a post.

  ‘I thought I could — I have helped him. But I can’t cure him — there is only one person who can cure him — I think — ’

  I could not speak. I closed my eyes for a moment.

  She went on. ‘I may be wrong. But I think this. You see he is obsessed with you. He always knew where you were. He knew you were in the department. He always knew from the civil service list where you were.’

  This was staggering news. ‘But he never thought of actually trying to see me?’

  ‘Oh no. It was just part of the revenge fantasy.’

  ‘Part of the — I see — This cure you speak of — it sounds as if it might be rather drastic — ’

  ‘No, that’s a fantasy. Really, he might, he might, want to talk — I thought of this before of course — ’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘There were too many obstacles, it seemed impossible. He has such huge pride. I couldn’t, you know, suggest anything to him, and I haven’t. That’s why — But suddenly, it was like fate, there you were right in his path. Even then I didn’t do anything about it until after he had seen you again, just literally seen you.’

  I thought. ‘But he didn’t see me until — a week ago yesterday — and you put Biscuit on my trail before that.’

  ‘No. He first saw you about a month ago. In the office. You didn’t sec him.’

  ‘Oh God.’

  ‘He came home absolutely shaking. I didn’t press him to talk much and he didn’t. But it was so important that he had just seen you. You see,’ she went on, ‘it does seem providential. As things are now, you are bound to meet now and then and that makes it that tiny bit easier to imagine talking. Only he will never make a move, I’m sure. You will have to make the move. You have no idea what it’s like in his mind. You have no idea what it’s like for me to see you, to be sitting here actually talking to you. That day when I saw you in the office I thought I’d faint. I knew it was you because Biscuit had described you very carefully and because of the way you behaved. When you came back up those stairs my knees nearly gave way.’

  ‘But why—?’

  ‘There you are, you don’t understand. You’ve been a sort of huge mythological figure to both of us for years, you’ve been there, behind everything. You’ve been a sort of fate — or a kind of awful — god — in our lives — or a huge ghost that’s got to be laid, only it seemed you never would be.’

  ‘An obstruction.’

  ‘An immense obstruction. Not only for him but for me too. I don’t want my husband to be tied up to something in the past. I want him to be entirely here in the present with me.’

  Her quiet passion, her air of urgent candour, the devastating nature of her revelations, overwhelmed my mind. I was desperately trying to hold onto my wits and to carry on something like a conversation without breaking down. I said as coolly as I could, ‘I have certainly been thinking about him all these years. I had no idea he had been thinking about me.’

  ‘Well, that’s
stupid! How could you doubt it? Do you imagine you are the only person involved? He has thought about you. He has thought about her.’

  There was a pause during which neither of us could speak. For a moment I thought that she was going to shed tears. Then recovering and with that brave excited air of pouring out the truth at last, she went on, ‘Of course in seeking you out like this I am being selfish. I am considering myself and Gunnar here, not you. You are a sort of — ’

  ‘Instrument.’

  ‘Yes. I want Gunnar to be able to look at you and see that you are just a — ’