A Word Child

by Iris Murdoch

  I took the Inner Circle to Westminster and went to the office.

  SATURDAY

  ‘I THINK it was perfectly bloody of you,’ said Christopher. It was Saturday morning, about nine o’clock. The weather had changed. It was a clear frosty day with the sun shining. I was shaving. I had spent Friday night at the same hotel, returning home only on Saturday so as to be in position for Biscuit. I could not have endured a meeting with Tommy. Or rather, in my present state of mind Tommy simply did not exist, a tornado was blowing through my life which had swept poor Tommy right away. I reckoned that she would not turn up at the office, nor did she. She rang up once, but I put the ’phone down. I returned to an unexpected barrage of moral criticism from Christopher.

  ‘She stayed here on Thursday evening from nine-thirty until one in the morning, and last night she was here at six and stayed till two. She sat on your bed and cried. I’ve never seen a woman cry so.’

  ‘Tough on you,’ I said, scraping away.

  ‘How can you treat a poor bird like that? And you were in bed with her last week.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘You made such a bloody row, the place was rocking.’

  ‘Have you never left anybody? Tears must flow.’

  ‘Tears must flow, but you might at least do it honestly, not just fail to turn up when you know she is waiting.’

  ‘I have done it honestly. I’ve told her a hundred times over that it’s no good. I wrote her a long letter about it. Is it my fault if she hangs around and gets in a frenzy?’

  ‘Yes, it is your fault. You ought to have seen those tears and not just run away from them. Her tears are a fact. And you caused them.’

  Another fact. Only I was not interested. I had no intention of feeling guilt about Tommy. ‘We’re all sinners. We all hurt each other just by existing.’

  ‘That’s right, blame God or the cosmos or something. You said you’d marry her.’

  ‘She dreamed it. Losing me is something a girl should be congratulated on.’

  ‘Sure losing you is something a girl should be congratulated on. But somehow all that crying, it just bugged me. It suddenly seemed like the rotten way it all is, people homeless or hungry or half mad, or lying on the pavement outside Charing Cross Station — ’

  ‘Look, Tommy isn’t lying on the pavement outside Charing Cross Station — ’

  ‘OK, we’re all sinners and we cause it all the time, but we can avoid being bloody cynical and bloody cruel. She expected you, she couldn’t believe you wouldn’t come — ’

  ‘More fool she.’

  ‘She sat waiting for you like a little child and when you didn’t come she thought you’d been run over. Jesus!’

  ‘No such luck.’

  ‘You’re bloody lucky to be loved by that nice girl, you don’t deserve love.’

  ‘You’re telling me.’

  ‘No one does, I mean. Of course there are muddles but it was so cruel just to let her wait, you knew she was there — ’

  ‘I didn’t — ’

  ‘Well, you didn’t bloody think then. The trouble with you is you’re a snob, it’s all that rat race competition, all you can think of is getting away from your working-class background, you hate yourself so you can’t love anyone else — ’

  ‘Oh shut up, will you.’

  ‘That poor girl — ’

  ‘Well, why didn’t you console her yourself? Or do you only like scraggy boys in tight jeans?’

  ‘That’s a lousy thing to say.’

  ‘If you want to stay in this house you can bloody well hold your tongue. I’m fed up with being lectured by a yapping little drop-out who can’t do anything but smoke pot.’

  ‘At least I haven’t given up. I try to be kind. You’ve just given up. You simply tread on people. You’re a destroyer, a murderer — ’

  I had put the razor down. Christopher, still in pyjamas, was standing in the door of the bathroom, his golden hair in a frizzy globular tangle, his light blue eyes screwed up with passion. I clenched my right fist and grasped Christopher’s shoulder with my left hand, digging my fingers violently into the flesh. He remained perfectly still. His face relaxed into a sudden mildness. I let go of him and took the tumbler from the bathroom shelf and hurled it past him into the hall where it broke into fragments. Christopher continued to look at me mildly for a moment; then he turned and began to pick up the pieces of glass and drop them into a waste-paper basket.

  I leaned over the basin closing my eyes. I was so frightened. I was frightened in case Biscuit should not come, I was frightened in case she should bring a message which would terminate my quest, I was frightened of myself and of the impossibility of what I wanted to do and of the horrors which awaited me if in the tiniest way I failed or slipped. There was no clarity now, no exhilaration, no hope, only dread. And Christopher’s words, presenting facts, accusing me of murder. And my violent desire to hit him, to hurt him, to trample him under foot. And Gunnar breaking the sherry glass. And women’s tears.

  ‘Sorry, Hilary — I’m sorry — I shouldn’t have — I’m sorry.’

  ‘I’m sorry too,’ I said. ‘Better use a brush to sweep that stuff up, you’ll cut yourself.’

  I went into the bedroom and put my tie on and looked at myself in the glass. I was glaring like a madman. I lay down on the bed, and I thought about Kitty’s green silken thigh inches away at the dinner table. My mind surged and boiled and I lay there rigid and clenched my fists with the force of blind inner violence. Time passed. The bell rang.

  I was with Biscuit in the park. When she arrived I came out to her at once. I said, ‘Wait till we’re in the park.’ We entered near the Broadwalk and I turned to the left, striking out across the grass in the direction of Speke. The sun shone from a brilliantly blue sky and the thick crystalline tufty hoar frost was piled high upon the motionless boughs of the bare trees. Smoke from a bonfire of leaves rose straight upward in an unswaying column. There was not a breath of wind. It was very cold.

  I led Biscuit across the grass into the middle of nowhere, a space between huge trees, then turned and faced her. I feared that her message would be in some way fatal, in some way good-bye. I touched in my overcoat pocket the long letter which I had written to Kitty and for which now there might be no place.

  ‘Well, Biscuit?’

  Biscuit was wearing blue tweedy trousers and black lace-up boots and the shabby blue duffle coat with her plait tucked in behind. The cold air made her sallow-golden cheeks glow with a strangely darkish red, making her cheek bones stand out as blobs of colour. For a moment her huge dark eyes gazed up at me with an unsmiling intensity which was almost hostile. Then she drew an envelope out of her pocket and held it to me in silence with a gloved hand.

  I could not conceal my emotion. I had no gloves, and my hands, red and moist, bitten to the bone by the cold air and trembling into the bargain, fumbled clumsily to open the slim missive. I got it open at last. There was a very short note. Hold fast and don’t worry. Could you see me at Cheyne Walk at six this evening? I shall be alone. K.J.

  This was so unexpected and so perfect, so wonderful, so beyond my dreams, so filling the future with joy, that for a moment I simply did not know what to do with myself. I wanted to shout or caper or spin like a top. I did not want Biscuit to see my face, so I turned abruptly and began to walk in the direction of the Serpentine. The grass was thickly encrusted with frost, laid out in an elaborate flattened crisscross pattern of spidery glassy fibres which took our footsteps with a crisp dry sound. The distant traffic was a quiet murmur. Beneath the cloudless sky and the almost translucent frosty plumage of the trees a great winter silence possessed the scene, in which I could hear Biscuit’s light footsteps as she followed after me.

  I stopped and let her catch up and we faced each other again. ‘Biscuit — ’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Tell Lady Kitty that I will come this evening.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And — will you — give
her this.’ I took my plump letter to Kitty out of my pocket and handed it over. Gazing up at me expressionlessly Biscuit put it away.

  ‘Biscottina.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Look at our footprints in the frost.’

  We looked back at our two tracks, absurdly wavering, stretching away behind us across the frost-lacquered grass, my large feet and Biscuit’s little feet.

  ‘Biscottinetta.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Can you play leap-frog?’

  ‘Yes!’ She loosened her duffle coat.

  I moved a few paces farther on and leaned over to make a ‘back’. A moment later I heard the crunch crunch of her running steps and with the lightest possible tap of her fingers upon my spine she soared lightly over me and bounded onwards, her toes dabbing the frosted grass in a line of little round holes. She leaned over for me. I ran and went over her with a light spring, touching the stuff of her coat with the gentlest flying caress of one hand. There seemed to be no gravity in the park that morning. I ran on and leaned again for her. I pumped in hope and happiness with the cold air. Kitty’s note had released me into a carefree world.

  Her words could scarcely have been more reassuring and had the wonderful effect of creating another interim. I seemed to live in these days by interims. Until this evening I had nothing to fear, no decisions to make, nothing to do but enjoy myself. The prospect of seeing Kitty at six turned the universe into a glorious mish-mash of sheer joy. No wonder I could fly like a bird. Moreover this was not just a private selfish delight at the thought of being with Kitty, it was a sort of spiritual bliss, an explosion of confidence. Somehow the whole plan would work. I would do what Kitty wanted, I would help Gunnar, I would help myself, there would be reconciliation and tears of relief. I would be able to change my life after all and live like an ordinary man. I would educate Crystal and take her to Venice and make her laugh with happiness. I would at last be able to do all the things which had seemed impossible. All would be well and all would be well and all manner of thing would be well. More strangely still, this great hope of good coexisted, without losing a tittle of its power, with all the old realistic terrors, the fears of a false step, the fears of Gunnar’s anger and Gunnar’s revenge; it even coexisted, strangest of all, with my perfectly commonsensical awareness that Kitty was not really a saint or a prophetess, but an ordinary and possibly rather silly woman who liked a mystery and the exercise of power. Such are the remarkable faculties of the human mind, such was my mind that morning in the park as it expanded and rejoiced.

  By now our leap-frogging had brought us near to the Serpentine and we stopped breathless and laughing. I took Biscuit in my arms and hugged her as one child hugs another, feeling the frailty of her thin body inside her bulky coat.

  The frost, which had so mysteriously appeared during the night, had balanced itself inches high upon the branches of trees, upon the iron railings and the backs of seats. It seemed indeed organically connected with these terrestrial surfaces, as if the world had begun, during the hours of darkness, to exude a minutely complicated crystalline plumage which, precariously still, rising high upon the thinnest topmost twigs of the immobile trees, appeared a silvery grey against a sky by contrast so blue as to seem indigo, to seem almost brilliantly leaden.

  We had come out into the open beside the water. Not at Peter Pan, my carefree running steps had had the awareness to avoid that; we were in the next bay, the nearest one to the bridge. The Serpentine was frozen along its edges and the thick dust of the frost upon the ice was crisscrossed already with the footprints of waterbirds. Some ducks, in single file, were walking on the ice as if for a wager and finding it quite hard to keep their feet. We came to a seat and I dusted the frost off with my sleeve and we sat down and I put my arm along the back of the seat, knocking off a solid little wall of frost, and drew Biscuit up close against me till I could feel her warmth through the surfaces of two very damp overcoats.

  ‘Well, Lady Alexandra Bissett, and how are we today, Lady Alexandra?’

  ‘All right, Hilary. It’s such a lovely day.’

  ‘It’s one of the great days. Tell me something, Alexandra. Was your father really a British colonel?’

  Biscuit pushed me a little away so that she could look up into my face. I contemplated her reddish-black eyes, the refinement of her long thin wary mouth.

  ‘No.’

  ‘A private?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Was your mother a Brahmin?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Were you born in Benares?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Were you born in India?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you a dreadful little liar?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I shall be jolly sorry if it turns out that your name isn’t even Alexandra Bissett.’

  ‘Oh it is, it is!’ she said eagerly. ‘My name is Alexandra Bissett. I was called after Princess Alexandra.’

  ‘So even if you aren’t a princess you were called after one. I thought you couldn’t possibly really come from India.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because of your voice. You’re a little Cockney girl, aren’t you? You were born in, let me see — Stepney?’

  ‘East India Dock Road.’

  ‘Not Benares.’

  ‘Not Benares.’

  ‘My dearest little London Biscuitula.’ I kissed the thin intelligent mouth. It gave a little responsive motion but did not try to detain my lips. It was very cold. I thought, here I am kissing Lady Kitty’s maid, and not for the first time either. That seemed all right. As I would never kiss Lady Kitty I might as well kiss her maid. After all I too belonged to the servants’ hall. It did not even make me feel sad. In the pure interim of today nothing could make me feel sad.

  ‘Was your mother English?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you had an Indian father? Who was he?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘My father was a mystery man too.’

  ‘I think he only knew my mother for a short time. She said he was a Pakistani, but she called everybody a Pakistani.’

  ‘Milk chocolate Biscuit. Here, give me your hands.’ Biscuit had taken her gloves off and now her two little skinny warm hands had burrowed into the sleeves of my overcoat and were holding onto my wrists. ‘And your mother?’

  ‘She died. She was a waitress.’

  ‘And how did Lady Kitty manage to acquire you?’

  ‘I was a cleaner, I did cleaning in houses, I did in her house when she was a young lady. I was fifteen. She thought I was pretty and she wanted me.’

  ‘She saw you and she wanted you and she got you?’

  ‘Her parents gave me to her as a Christmas present — ’

  ‘Dear Biscuit!’

  ‘To be her little maid, like giving her a toy or something to play with.’

  ‘A playmate.’

  ‘A plaything.’ She spoke entirely without irony, without bitterness or any intent to wit, in the curious objective open truthful-sounding manner which I now seemed to know so well and in which she could utter both truth and lies. Her voice had indeed the flat twang of east London, but her speech had some more ancient simplicity or perhaps it had just been in some way maimed or gutted as a result of living for so many years among educated people without being one of them.

  ‘But you don’t mind, Biscuitine, you aren’t unhappy? You must be devoted to her — ’

  ‘Of course I am devoted to her,’ said Biscuit, in the same even oddly authoritative voice, and she withdrew her hands from my sleeves. ‘She does with me what she will.’

  ‘I expect she does that with most people.’

  ‘But one day I shall go away.’

  ‘How will that be?’

  ‘I will meet a man who will take me away.’