A Word Child

by Iris Murdoch

  ‘Hilary, I know you think I lead a silly empty social life, yes, you do. And it’s perfectly true that though I have lots and lots of dear acquaintances I haven’t got many friends and I need friends. We know each other well, you and I, but we’ve never really talked, never really looked, and my God as one grows old it’s important — ’ Laura’s hand came across the table and pounced on mine. I looked down at the plump red wrinkled ageing fingers, the wedding ring, sunk into the flesh. I looked up at Laura’s eager ruddy face and her wide-apart mesmerizing brown eyes.

  ‘Hilary, listen. I need a friend now. I need help. I need you. I need you as a dear close secret man. I must have one. Don’t be afraid. There’s something I want to ask you. There’s something urgent that I want to tell you, only I can’t tell you now — ’

  ‘Wait a bit, waterbird, do do do. Let’s not be, little bird, through through through.’

  ‘Oh shut up, Christopher, for Christ’s sake, stop that bloody caterwauling!’

  ‘Sorry, Hilary — ’

  ‘Laura, I — ’

  The front door bell rang. With a sigh of relief I withdrew my hand from Laura’s firm warm clasp and got up. Christopher had already danced to the door and opened it for Jimbo who entered bearing a bunch of white chrysanthemums. Jimbo was hatless and soaking wet. I had not heard the rain. I heard it now.

  ‘Laura, your coat — it’s pouring — you’ll need an umbrella — here, take mine.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She had followed me out and let me help her on with her coat. ‘You can have it back tomorrow.’

  ‘Tomorrow?’

  ‘Thursday. Our day. Have you forgotten? Good night, Jimbo. Good night, Christopher, I’ll call again about the songs. Hilary, would you come outside for a moment?’

  I went out with her, closing the door and we walked as far as the lift. Laura was wearing a bulky camel hair coat. The sleeves, damp and steamy, were suddenly wrapped about my neck. Laura sighed into my mouth and kissed me on the lips. Then she pushed me away and turning her back rang for the lift. I returned to the flat.

  Christopher and Jimbo were kneeling in the hall, arranging the chrysanthemums in a vase. Christopher looked up with an interested questioning expression. I went on into my bedroom and shut the door and turned off the light and lay down on the bed.

  I had not written my letter to Lady Kitty. The encounter with Gunnar had temporarily blotted her out of my mind. What I could not decide now was whether the next move was mine or his. But perhaps there was no next move, perhaps it was all over? Perhaps everything needful had been done, perfected, finished in that little scene wherein he had waited and looked at me and I had said his name? Was this what reconciliation was like, a meeting of eyes, the utterance of a name? Might not more talk simply spoil this thing which had come to be? The relief, the visionary joy which I had felt in the morning with the St James’s Park ducks had seemed like a guarantee that something good had happened. Later however his optimism began to seem absurd, the scene which prompted it a good deal more ambiguous and meagre. Gunnar had simply glared at me. Perhaps he had led me to his room with no friendly intent. The man had brooded on revenge for years. I did not know what he might do. Perhaps he did not.

  And then, like the steadily rising moon, came the image of Lady Kitty. After all, this was her enterprise, her show. It had not been set going in any way for my benefit. I, and my satisfactions and my reliefs and my absolutions, must be nothing here. What mattered was Gunnar’s state of mind, his ‘cure’, and on that she must pronounce. This view, obvious enough when it came, inspired new anxiety and also a kind of interim calm and the renewal of my intention to write to her. But not yet. Let me rest now, I thought, for at least a day or two. Enough has been done. If Gunnar decides to move then I must meet his move. If he does not, I must wait for Lady Kitty’s instructions, and meanwhile I must write to her and tell her the many many things which I knew that I had to tell. I had a feeling, which I deliberately kept as vague as possible, of amelioration, of a new power to formulate and confront horrors which had remained for so long unapproachable in my mind. Yes, the prospect of an interval was consoling, and the sense of resting once more upon Lady Kitty’s will.

  I did not think about Laura. I thought about Tommy, but as if she were a historical problem separated from me by aeons of time and matrices of theory and research. It’s not so easy to find a true lover, you may search everywhere and not find another. Possibly, but now I was dedicated to higher concerns. Perhaps ‘love’ had always been for me an ignis fatuus. I felt limp and wearied out. I crawled into bed without undressing. It was still raining. I slept and dreamt that Tommy, or was it some other woman, in the guise of a waterbird with beautiful eyes was battering battering battering on the glass trying to get in.

  THURSDAY

  ON THURSDAY evening I did not go home and change as usual, but sat in the Sloane Square bar until it was time to go along to Queen’s Gate Terrace. I thought now about Laura Impiatt and the ‘something urgent’ which she wanted to tell me. Could it be that she was in love with me? At another time this idea would have amused and even touched me, on the assumption that nothing in the least dramatic was likely to come of it. Laura was a great one for high ideas. Now, however, this extra complication would be far from welcome. It was a time for keeping away from women. And I recalled with a pang the horrible glimpse of me feuding with Tommy which Lady Kitty had obtained upon the stairs of the office. What would Lady Kitty think of me if she got the least whiff of an impression that I was trifling with Freddie’s wife? This possibility made me feel very sick indeed. It was all-important that Lady Kitty should see me, as far at least as the present was concerned, as a clean man. I must, I now realized, also somehow tactfully convey to her that I had broken off relations with Tommy. What an idiot I had been to say that Tommy was my fiancee. It was scarcely even true.

  Later on in my reflections about Laura a new possibility came up. Suppose Laura had somehow found out about my past, about the whole business? It did not seem, from her remarks, very likely, but she might have found out something. She had said she wanted to ask me a question. In any case, sooner or later a being so consumed with curiosity was likely to sniff out something odd about me and ‘the Joplings’. This was another reason for keeping aloof from Laura. Yet also of course I wanted to see her in order to find out what it was she wanted to ask and to tell.

  It had been a strange day at the office. The weather was cold and raw, a little misty, a fine rain fell, was still falling. I sat at my desk, doing my work, wondering whenever the messenger entered the room whether he might be bringing me a note written in that tiny handwriting which I had last seen saying Please leave Anne alone. Please. But no note came. Contrary to custom I had lunch in the office canteen. I met Clifford Larr on the stairs and he ignored me rather more pointedly than usual. Tommy rang up three times and on each occasion I put the ’phone down.

  Now feeling very wet and cold I was approaching the Impiatts’ door. Laura had bagged my umbrella, I was in a fair way to being soaked through. Full of thoughts, I had walked all the way from Sloane Square without noticing until too late how copious the downpour had become. My cap was a soggy mass upon my head, my overcoat was heavy with water and an ominous clammy penetrating dampness was spreading upon my shoulders and my back. I was looking forward to the bright fire in the Impiatts’ drawing-room and a large beaker of gin.

  Freddie opened the door and welcomed me, exclaiming suitably about my bedraggled appearance. I was about to make some facetious remark about his wife having stolen my umbrella when it occurred to me that perhaps Freddie did not always know when Laura paid me visits. The idea was disagreeable. I spotted my umbrella in the hall stand, however, and resolved to remove it quietly at the end of the evening. I was talking to Freddie, who was laboriously hanging my soaking coat up on a hanger, when I heard in the drawing-room the booming voice of a man, followed by a woman’s voice, and realized with a crippling spasm of anguish that my fellow guests
for the evening were Gunnar and Lady Kitty.

  I sat down on a chair in the hall, in order to breathe, pretending to wring out the wet ends of my trousers. I quickly considered whether I had not better leave the house instantly on some pretext? Nothing would be more calculated to put Laura’s bright curiosity onto the right track. Did Gunnar know I was coming? How was I to greet them? How would they behave? Would concealment be possible? Then with a jolting shock I remembered, only just in time, that I was not supposed ever to have met Lady Kitty before!

  ‘Come on,’ said Freddie. ‘Come and bake yourself at the fire.’

  I rose and slowly followed him into the bright drawing-room, very conscious that I looked like a drowned rat and lad not only not changed but had slept in my clothes last night.

  The first thing I saw was Laura’s face and it seemed to me fairly to shine with knowledge.

  Laura was all streaming hair and streaming gown. She was wearing a garment rather like the one Christopher had been wearing yesterday, together with a lot of jangling ornaments made of what looked like polished steel. As she approached me with both arms outstretched, I saw over her shoulder the suddenly frozen faces of my fellow guests. It was evident that Laura had planned a jolly surprise for all concerned.

  ‘Hilary! How splendid!’ She kissed my cheek with possessive ostentation. ‘I believe you and Mr Jopling are old friends. Have you met Hilary Burde?’

  The latter question was addressed to Lady Kitty, who made a vague gesture and shook her head.

  ‘Hilary Burde. Lady Kitty Jopling. I expect you two have met in the office?’ This question, another poser, was addressed to Gunnar.

  ‘We just said hello,’ I said. ‘It’s been a long time.’ These just adequate words were uttered rather wildly.

  I felt my face burning, blazing. I had, as I entered the room, had place for the hope that Gunnar would not perceive his wife’s distress. I need not have worried. Lady Kitty had already recovered, perhaps a little too rapidly on the assumption that she had just been unexpectedly confronted with her husband’s famous enemy. Her reactions should of course have been the other way round, first blandness, then amazement. However Gunnar’s own agitation seemed great enough to preclude any observation of his wife’s behaviour.

  Gunnar’s big frame had run to fat but still towered, topping six feet, the slight stoop making him seem now about the same height as me. What chiefly made him unlike his old self was the podginess of the face, the cheeks plumped out and with a ruddiness which was not that of youth, the brow fleshy with some wrinkles. His fair hair had become a sandy grey hinting at baldness, but there was still plenty of it, and the mottled blue eyes, between tired stained lids, remained clear and bright and brought back the clever attractive athlete who had been loved by Anne. It was strange how between us at that moment her name was suddenly there like a flash, like a physical manifestation. It rang out, and our former selves appeared like ghosts and her ghost was with them. Perhaps it was simply being able to see his eyes. But Gunnar now reminded me so intensely of Anne that it was as if the physical scene was darkened and nothing was there between us except the flame of her presence, her radiant face, beautiful and young. Between us: for I knew for certain that Gunnar in that same instant was thinking of her too.

  All these apprehensions however lasted only a moment or two, during which time I did not look at Lady Kitty. Laura had bustled towards me, now back again. Freddie was coming up from behind exclaiming, ‘Hilary’s soaked.’

  ‘Why so he is!’ cried Laura. ‘He’s been walking in the rain again, the bad thing. Look at his trousers, and look at his back all dark with wet, just feel that!’ And she began patting my back as if inviting the others to do so too. ‘Hilary, take off your jacket at once! Freddie, get him one of yours. Hilary, let go! Don’t be naughty or we shall take your trousers as well! Now sit down here with your back to the fire. Why look at him, he’s steaming!’

  Rather than indulge in the playful scuffle which Laura doubtless wanted I did as I was told and sat down on the floor with my back to the fire. My vest and shirt were adhering damply to my shoulders from which steam was indeed rising up. Cool drips of water from my wet streaky hair were now finding their way down my back. I realized with dismay that below the statutory two top buttons my shirt was buttonless and also had a conspicuous tear which, stuff it downward as I would, I could not conceal inside my trousers.

  Freddie had left the room. Laura was fussing round, petting me and calling me ‘Hilo’, a name which she had never used before and which even as an office usage was, thank God, rare enough. Lady Kitty had moved aside and sat down on my right in a chair remote from the fire. She was wearing a green silk evening dress with a lot of white embroidery. Her long nose and long, full, now pouting, lips gave to her face an animal-like intensity, the sort of unnerving ‘brilliance’ which a fox’s face possesses. Gunnar, opposite, had leaned back against some bookshelves and was staring not exactly at my face but at the whole of me, his eyes turned almost into blue rectangles by an intent fastidious frown. Then Laura stopped feeling my hair, and saying ‘I must fetch a towel’, vanished from the room.

  There was a perceptible almost audible gasp as the three of us were left suddenly alone together. To decrease the tension I shifted, knelt, then sat cross-legged gripping my trouser ends. I felt an agonizing desire to make some sound, to groan softly since I could think of no possible words. I also very much wanted to turn to look at Lady Kitty whose gaze I could feel burning my right cheek, but I kept my face resolutely towards Gunnar.

  Gunnar kept on looking at me with the intent yet somehow sightless, somehow horrified, glare. He was holding in his hand a copita of sherry, now almost empty. Then as he looked he tilted the glass, spilling the remains of the drink upon the carpet, and bringing up his other hand he snapped the glass in two at the stem.

  I got up. So did Lady Kitty. With a quick singing flurry of the green dress she came forward between us. She put her own glass beside Gunnar upon the shelves. She took gently out of his hands the two halves of the broken glass and retreated, releasing them into the folds of her skirt with a gesture of extraordinary deliberate grace. As Freddie re-entered the room Lady Kitty was picking up the broken glass from the carpet. ‘I’m terribly sorry I have broken it.’

  Freddie told her not to worry and began to help me on with a voluminous jacket of his own. Laura arrived crying ‘A table!’, screamed at my ludicrous appearance and would have towelled my hair briskly only I snatched the towel from her in time. Lady Kitty passed me without a glance, moving away into the hall in obedience to Laura’s summons. Laura followed. Freddie said to Gunnar, ‘This is Hilary’s day for seeing us, you know. Did Hilary have “days” when you first knew him?’ Gunnar said, obviously not having the faintest idea what he was being asked, ‘Oh yes.’ As he turned to the door our eyes, drawn irresistibly, met for a second only. Gunnar’s face contracted and he turned his head abruptly away. I went last from the room.

  As I came into the hall, where the others were still talking, the front door letter-box was pushed open and a letter flew in and landed with a plop upon the mat. Laura went to pick it up. ‘Why, Hilary, it’s for you. Oh dear me, it’s from her!’ She put the envelope into my hands and I saw my name in Tommy’s writing. ‘Don’t mind us, my dear, you just read it now.’

  The Impiatts’ dining-room was in the basement next door to the kitchen. Freddie was already leading Gunnar down. Laura went on after, ushering Lady Kitty to follow her. I tore open Tommy’s letter. Oh my darling, I can’t bear it, I am dying of pain. Please please see me. I will wait for you tonight at the flat. T.

  ‘I must just fetch my bag. I left it in the drawing-room.’ Lady Kitty’s voice.

  I lifted my head and looked straight into the brilliant dark slaty-blue eyes. The shrill singing of the frou-frou passed me as she entered the drawing-room, pounced on her bag and emerged again. As she passed me the second time she murmured, ‘Biscuit will come on Saturday morning.’ />
  I followed her down the stairs to dinner. (Watercress soup, bauf Stroganoff and crêpes Suzette.)

  FRIDAY

  Dear Lady Kitty,

  I hope that you will think that I have done right. As Gunnar will have told you, I spoke to him on Wednesday. I had intended to wait longer but I met him on the stairs and suddenly I could not bear to pass by without a word. I went to his room, but we had no time to talk as someone came. To be precise, I said his name, once on the stairs once in the room. He said nothing. I would so much like to know, only I realize I have no right to ask questions, what he felt about this encounter. I felt then that it was good, that it was like some sort of parley. Now this idea seems absurd. And I don’t just mean because of the incident with the sherry glass in which you intervened. The talk at dinner, our awful juxtaposition, my sense then of Gunnar’s mind, made peace between us seem inconceivable. One does not suddenly get over hating somebody, people do not forgive, it is impossible. I cannot tell you how clear this became to me at that dinner which was, though I am sure Mr and Mrs Impiatt noticed nothing, a time of horror. I am sure you understand. I felt then and feel now how hopeless it all is, and have considered whether the best thing for me to do would not simply be to vanish. I shall certainly see to it that you are never again embarrassed by my presence as a fellow guest. As I trust you realized, I did not know beforehand that you would be there. However, having spoken of vanishing let me assure you at once that I have no immediate intention of doing so. The time for vanishing will come, that I understand, and when it does you will hear of me no more. But meanwhile I recognize my plain duty to stick it out and to try my best. If my trying can in any smallest way help Gunnar, ease any tension or soothe any pain, then I am obliged to persevere and I will do so. And let me say: I would and will do anything that you ask of me.