A Word Child

by Iris Murdoch

  ‘Clerk in his office.’

  ‘No, no. Just a human being, an ordinary person, not a sort of ghost or demon — ’

  ‘An ordinary unhappy unsuccessful man. Yes, indeed. But look, even if I were to, somehow, approach Gunnar, why should he talk to me at all if he feels like you say? Won’t his response be just rage? I don’t mean that he might attack me physically, though I suppose he might — but he hates and detests me, so how on earth can he get any profit out of talking to me?’

  ‘Because he wants to. He never says so. But he terribly wants to. We’ve almost stopped talking about it, but I know. Only you must be careful and ingenious — ’

  ‘I think this requires more care and ingenuity than I’m capable of. After he saw me — in the office — when I didn’t see him — did he say anything then about talking?’

  ‘No, no, no, of course not, he just set his teeth, it was impossible even to — oh you’ve no idea — But he needs you. That’s why it will work in the end, I’m sure it will. Only it was necessary for me to have — nerve enough — to approach you.’

  ‘You have plenty of nerve. He needs me, you think. Perhaps I need him even more than he needs me.’

  ‘I’ve thought of that too,’ she said. ‘Of course I’m doing this for Gunnar and myself. But I have thought a little — about your situation — as well.’

  ‘Kind of you.’

  ‘I know it’s a bit impertinent — ’

  ‘No, I’m not being sarcastic. And when I said “nerve” just now I meant “pluck”. And I think you are being very kind.’

  ‘You say you’ve thought about him — and about all that — too.’

  ‘I’ve thought of nothing else ever since. That’s hardly an exaggeration. I have lived and breathed it all these years.’

  ‘And you’ve felt guilt?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you’ve been unhappy?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you feel it has ruined your life?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then you need help too.’

  ‘Of course. But who can give it to me?’

  ‘Gunnar can. Even this conversation with me can. Oh I’m so glad I saw you and didn’t just write that letter! I thought at first, really until I’d actually written the letter, that I would simply ask you to see him, just like that in the letter, and then leave it all to you and do nothing more. Only the letter seemed so scanty, it explained so little — I felt I must see you — and oh how glad I am that I have!’

  She was sitting very upright, the cape now thrown back, one leg tucked under her, a blue woollen dress drawn tight across her knee. The shining dark hair tumbled in a carefully contrived swirl of many-layered confusion almost to her shoulders. She was looking at me, but I did not want to meet those murky eyes, did not want my face to speak to her at all. I looked down, inspecting a nyloned ankle and a smart highly-polished but now rather muddy high-heeled shoe.

  ‘Thanks. You are full of excellent projects. I just doubt whether any of them will work.’

  ‘You mean you won’t see Gunnar?’

  Too much was happening all at once, as if destiny, having let nothing occur for years, had been storing up the events of my life. I did not want this disturbance, these decisions. I did not want to be ‘used’ and ‘helped’ by this powerful intruding ridiculously well-dressed woman. I said, ‘Where does Gunnar suppose you to be at this moment? People don’t usually leave their houses and stroll about at eight in the morning.’

  ‘Gunnar is in Brussels. But even if he weren’t — I often go out riding early with Biscuit. That was what the horses were about, not to impress you.’

  Her trustfulness, her little eager air of truth, were irresistibly touching, shaming. I knew I should be behaving in some quite different way. I ought to have the grace to feel and express gratitude. But I could not. I felt a kind of exasperated terror, I wanted to get away. I could not bear the degree of exposure which so many hidden things had suddenly undergone. I knew too that later on I would detest this conversation and find in it endless occasions for remorse.

  ‘I think we have said enough.’

  ‘But you will see Gunnar?’

  ‘Yes, I expect so. But I’ve got to think how — ’

  ‘You must help us. You must now, after I’ve talked so much, after I’ve said things to you which I’ve never said to anyone. Only you can help us. And now I see, only we can help you. I mean, Gunnar can. Why should you be unhappy? As things are you’re losing both ways, you’re being miserable and you’re solving nothing, you’re doing nothing about it. Don’t you want to change your life?’

  ‘I’m not sure. It could change for the worse. I can see that Gunnar might feel better after he’d talked to me. I doubt if I’d feel better after I’d talked to Gunnar. Gunnar can’t “forgive” me, I doubt if God could, what’s done is done. I don’t mean anything very dramatic by that. There just isn’t any psychological or spiritual machinery for removing my trouble. Gunnar feeling a bit better won’t help me, it won’t even, if you see what I mean, cheer me up. And seeing him will just bring it closer, drive it deeper. Death is my only solution. And I don’t mean suicide. Do you understand?’

  ‘Oh — I understand — but no — you mustn’t think like that, you mustn’t think like that — ’

  ‘You are very kind. Yes, I daresay I will talk with Gunnar, or at least try to. My own arrangements don’t matter much one way or the other. I don’t actually think they could become worse. Anyway, it doesn’t matter, it isn’t for me to try to get anything out of this. And now I’m sorry I must leave you, I have to go to the office. Thank you for talking to me.’

  ‘You must never never let him know — ’

  ‘Of course not.’

  We stood up. Behind her upon his wet pedestal of beasts and fairies, polished and sanctified by the hands of children, towered beyond their reach the sinister boy, listening.

  ‘Who was the woman you were with in the office?’ Lady Kitty asked.

  ‘My fiancée. Now I must go. I’m sorry. I’m glad to have met you and I’m — very grateful. I’ll go quickly this way across the park. I’ll say good-bye to you here.’

  The presumption that we would not meet again hung between us, but we could neither of us comment on it.

  I intended to say good-bye. Instead I quickly said, ‘May I write to you about all this?’

  ‘Yes. I’ll send Biscuit.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  I turned abruptly away and walked fast and then ran across the wet grass in the direction of Kensington High Street.

  Dearest Hilary, my usual letter, but oh how different now that we are to be married. There was always such pain in writing to you before, I felt always as if I were being sulky and importunate. My love for you, which was so pure and clean in me, became something muddy and nasty when I tried to give it to you. I could not give it, and that was so terrible, like a curse in a fairy tale. I felt so often that my love just irritated you. When you really love somebody you can’t help feeling that you do them good by loving them. And yet I know that things between us were twisted, so that my love could not succour you. Now all is changed. We have looked into each other’s eyes and known each other. I felt on Wednesday that pure undoubtable communication at last. It was so different, wasn’t it, from the first days when you wanted me? We never looked so then. You hid from me, you hid from yourself. Now you have found me and found yourself too. I knew on Wednesday that all was well and that what had been twisted was untwisted at last. I’m almost glad you didn’t come on Friday because Saturday was so perfect, such a sort of seal on it all. I felt so happy beside the Round Pond. I’ve never seen things so vividly in my life, those dogs, those boats, all existing because of you, the world existing because of you. You make me to see and to be. Oh Hilary, I will behave so well, you’ll see. I won’t dispute about anything ever! You shall decide when we get married — only let it be soon — perhaps on the day when Crystal marries Arthur? I a
m so happy too in her happiness — we shall be such a joyful quartet! I will (bold me!) ring the office on Wednesday morning and ask you to see me on Wednesday evening! And you will be kind to me — you will be kind to me, won’t you — now and when I am your wife. I am only your little harmless Tommy. You must love me and look after me for I am so completely yours. God bless you and keep you. My love to you, oh my dear. Now and forever your

  Thomas.

  Tommy, my dear, I got your sweet letter this evening. I had to leave early and so missed it in the morning. Tommy, don’t ring tomorrow. I’ll deliver this by hand tonight. Tommy, I cannot marry you. You can’t really have believed I would. Your letter sounds like someone whistling in the dark. Oh God, I’m sorry. What happened on Wednesday wasn’t true. Neither was what happened on Saturday. I was living a lie then. I can’t explain. Nothing is your fault. What is true is what I was saying earlier, what I’ve been saying for months, that it’s just no good between us. As you so cleverly said, your love just becomes something different when it gets to me, and something which I just don’t want. I exploit your sweet kindness by seeing you at all. Of course you want to be exploited, but that isn’t the point. It’s all bad for me. I cannot tell you how I despise myself for letting you console me. Tommy, it mustn’t be any more. I feel some sort of crisis in my life is approaching and I have to face it alone. You cannot really help me. You’re just like endless cups of tea. I’ve got to be alone now. Tommy, I can never marry you. I must tell you the truth. I’m a sort of separated cursed man. And you are not the person who can save me. You can only prevent me from being saved by preventing me from being ever really serious. That is why our marriage, if it were ever conceivable at all, would be the end of me. I should die in my soul and I should hate you for it. Please believe what I say and forgive me. Don’t try to see me, it would just make us both more miserable. Just please don’t come near me any more. Accept a clean decent break and make yourself some other better life elsewhere. I hope you’ll be happy, and you’ll have a far far better chance away from me. By the way, Crystal has broken with Arthur. Only that is not the reason for this. Oh forgive me — and for Christ’s sake keep away.

  H.

  I wrote this missive on Tuesday evening and walked to Tommy’s place and dropped it through the letter box. I had already cancelled my appointment with Arthur. I gave him no reasons. He assumed, I saw it in his sad eyes, that this was the consequence of the break with Crystal. But he asked no questions. He did not ask about next Tuesday. He asked nothing. Poor Arthur. I spent the later part of the evening wandering about London, dropping into various bars. I walked as far as St Paul’s and back. I came home late and went to bed. I slept well.

  As I walked about in the cold yellow night I hardly thought about Tommy at all. I wrote the letter to her in a frenzy of fierce certainty after reading her letter. During the day, as I sat in the office looking at Big Ben and doing, in fact, some work, Tommy simply ceased to exist for me, she fell to pieces. How flimsy Tommy’s hold upon me was had been proved by half an hour of Lady Kitty. Tommy just had to go. There was nothing crude or vulgar about this. It was not that I wanted to cashier Tommy so as to be able to think about Lady Kitty. I thought it quite possible that I would not see Lady Kitty again. (Though it was important to me that I had her permission to write her a letter.) It was just that Lady Kitty’s message belonged to the deep business of my life with which poor Tommy had simply nothing to do. I now had a task, I was like a knight with a quest. I neeeded my chastity now, I needed my aloneness; and it seemed to me with a quickening amazement that I had kept myself for just this time. I could not confide what I had to do to anybody, and fortunately there was nobody who had any claim to know it, nobody who had any claim upon my spirit and my hours. Crystal I would perhaps tell later. No one else mattered. The half-lie of my relation with Tommy must certainly go. As I had told her, my earlier desire to end it was my true desire. And now, thank God, Lady Kitty had given me the motive power necessary to move into the truth, into my own truth, my own place, my centre from which I would be able to act.

  But what exactly was I going to do and what would be, for me, the consequences? Of course, in spite of my defensive replies to Lady Kitty, there could be no doubt that I must do what she asked. What would it be like? Suppose it were simply awful? Suppose it just ended in some terrible display of Gunnar’s hatred and anger? My position was indeed not as bad as it might be, I still had much to lose. I had never seen Gunnar unmasked, never seen his horror of me, the horror from which he could not escape and which made him brood upon revenge. What sort of Gorgon might I now, by meddling, unveil, which should appal me and drive me at last into madness? Only I had to meddle. There was no indecision in me at all. And as I thought about what I must do I wavered between this fear and a crazy tormenting hope that all might yet be well. Of course the past could not be undone. But, yet, there could be deep change. How deep that change could be I felt in myself more and more as the day went on, as if Lady Kitty had shaken me and broken something inside and I was now seeing the pieces make a new pattern and offer a new way. Lady Kitty had spoken of cure, and of Gunnar’s cure, not mine, though in her grace she had glanced at mine too. She had been practical, not high-minded. It was for me to supply the rest: to give, to her practical shake-up, its spiritual sense. Why should Christ’s blood stream vainly in the firmament? I could climb out of the pit in which I had elected to live and in which I had also incarcerated Crystal. I could climb up and see the light again.

  What a stupid coagulated mass of indistinguishable guilt and misery I had become. How perfectly futile all my sufferings had been. If only I could separate out that awful mixture of sin and pain, if I could only even for a short time, even for a moment, suffer purely without the burden of resentment and self-degradation to which I had deliberately condemned myself, there might be a place for a miracle. And I reflected too, as I walked and walked about London, on the absolute doneness of what was done. I saw Anne’s face as I had seen it that evening in the car, not glorified, not the face of what had once seemed our heroism, but muddled, guilty, frightened. If I had not killed her she would have stayed with Gunnar. Did I kill her for that reason or was it all just chaos and accident, and did it matter that I could probably never answer that question?

  WEDNESDAY

  ON WEDNESDAY morning I woke up exhausted and frightened. The exhilarated energy had gone. What had I got to be so animated about? A feeling of, in both senses, determination remained however. I had, it occurred to me, at last, got a job to do. Since the catastrophe I had declared myself jobless. I recalled with dull pain my brutal and as it had then seemed inspired letter to Tommy. Why on earth had I described her to Lady Kitty as my fiancée, out of some sort of instinct of self-destructive pique? Had I actually now got rid of little grey-eyed long-legged Tommy, excised her from my life after all? I had decreed for myself a sort of loneliness, but whereas the loneliness might be long, the task for which it was essential might prove very short. Gould a fresh era which began thus with my violence to Tommy be in any sense a hallowed time? Did the idea of truth really cover me where Tommy was concerned? Was Tommy indeed a lie which I had to abjure, an encumbrance which in my new dedication I was bound to shed? It did not, in the morning darkness as I rose, seem so clear.

  What was clear was that I needed to write that letter to Lady Kitty. Thank heavens I had had the quick wit to ask her if I might write to her. That at least, amidst all the dread, presented itself as a humane and consoling operation. I did not try myself with ideas of seeing her again. But I did so much want, and felt I somehow deserved, the relief of writing to her and explaining myself to her before I decided what my plan of campaign should be in regard to Gunnar. There was a kind of strange holy safety, as if I were in ‘retreat’, in the existence of the interval, the interval between my receipt of Lady Kitty’s instructions and the unpredictable battle scene between me and Gunnar. The shake which I had received, the depth to which I had been as it wer
e cracked, gave me for the present work enough. I felt I needed to brood, even to rest for a while, upon what had already happened before I ran rashly on into whatever was to come. I wanted very much now to meditate and to wait, and meanwhile take my time over the invention and writing of the permitted letter.

  The tube train was even more crowded than usual that morning. I had done the walk to Gloucester Road passing the now forever numinous place where I had met Lady Kitty, and had at first rejected her. The dawn, which had been a pale glowing primrose yellow behind the bare trees of the park, was already clouding over by the time I reached the station. Jammed body to body, we yawned and swayed, breathing into each other’s expressionless faces, like forms packaged up for hell. I kept, as always, a sharp lookout for people with colds. I breathed nervously, consciously, feeling the elasticated in and out of the warm intrusive bodies of my fellow passengers. Reggie Farbottom often lauded the pleasure of being crushed against a bosomy typist. This could not please me. Female forms and faces were, in this stuffy insipid proximity, if anything more terrible. The tired heavily made up faces of girls, thrust up against mine, smelling of cheap cosmetics and expressing the vacancy of youth without its joy, seemed simply to declare the poverty of the human race, its miserable limitations, its absolute inability to grasp the real. Or were these spiritless surfaces simply the mirrors of my own mediocrity? I thought about Tommy sitting in her dressing gown over her cup of coffee. No glove puppets this morning. No joyful quartets.