A Word Child

by Iris Murdoch

  I was always profoundly relieved and glad to come to Crystal, though this never, in the harsh chemistry of my soul, set going any wish to see her oftener, and this evening I needed her with a blind passionate hunted frenzy. In the certain hope that everything would be absolutely as usual I bounded up the stairs to her room.

  Everything was absolutely as usual. The lace tablecloth was laid for two and the parchment shaded lamp with the galleon on it was switched on in the corner, for decoration only, since the bright centre light revealed the shabby room but too well. The sherry was on the table. The wine I had brought with me, bought at the usual nearby pub. Crystal was sitting beside the table and sewing. She read my face at once, threw the sewing down and came round the table. We embraced and held onto each other tightly, eyes closed. As I am six foot one and Crystal scarcely five feet two an embrace was always some sort of ingenious compromise. I sagged, she stood on tiptoe. It was very easy to sag on this occasion, I felt ready to fall to the ground as soon as her hands touched me.

  I let go of her and sat down heavily on her bed, rumpling the green satin bedspread. She stared at me for a few moments, as if touching my head with the tender sensitive antennae of her loving thoughts. Then she poured out some sherry and put it on the table within my reach. I peeled off my coat and pulled the wine bottle out of the pocket.

  ‘What’s for supper?’

  ‘Fish cakes and grilled tomatoes and chips and strawberry trifle and cream.’

  ‘Good.’

  Crystal began to open the wine bottle, as she always did at this stage, still watching me.

  ‘Are you all right, Crystal darling?’

  ‘Yes, fine.’

  ‘Have you seen Arthur?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You haven’t changed your mind about chucking him?’

  ‘No.’

  I looked up at Crystal. Her beautiful golden eyes were hidden by the thick glasses whereon all sorts of reflections were playing as she moved her head, dealing with the bottle. Her frizzy orange-tinted hair hung heavily down as if a small thick mat had been laid upon her head. Her moist jutting lower lip expressed anxiety and concern. The nostrils of her stumpy upturned nose moved in and out.

  I was drinking my sherry. I needed that drink.

  Crystal said, ‘Have you seen Tommy?’

  ‘Yes, but that’s all over, finished with.’ It seemed a hundred years since I had dismissed Thomasina from my life and my thoughts, and it only now occurred to me that I had not hitherto had time to inform Crystal.

  ‘I know. She came here.’

  ‘Tommy came here, bothering you? Blast her. What did she say?’

  ‘She cried.’

  ‘She cries everywhere.’

  Crystal was silent. She placed the wine bottle carefully upon the little decorated cork mat which awaited it upon the table. Words were not necessary to tell me that although Crystal sympathized a bit with Tommy she was glad that I was not going to marry her.

  ‘Give me some more sherry, darling.’

  For both of us, that was enough about Tommy. I had decided as I came along to tell Crystal everything. Well, almost everything.

  ‘Have you cooked the fish cakes?’

  ‘Yes, everything’s cooked. It’s in the oven. We can have it when we like.’

  ‘Good. Sit down, dear heart. Near me.’

  She sat down on an upright chair near to the bed, holding her sewing on her lap. She was wearing a shapeless old woollen dress with blue and green stripes which used to belong to Aunt Bill, and which Crystal had altered, more than once, to fit herself. Crystal’s wardrobe went on and on forever. Nothing was ever thrown away.

  ‘Crystal, listen. I have seen Lady Kitty. You know, Gunnar’s wife.’

  A dark red-purplish flush rose into Crystal’s face, making it look for a moment almost leaden.

  ‘Have you seen Gunnar?’

  ‘No. Well, literally yes, but I haven’t talked to him. I don’t know if I will — it’s all — oh it’s all so complicated — ’ It struck me now for the first time that, feeling as I did about Kitty, perhaps I ought not to see Gunnar, ought not to proceed another step along the road where a woman’s well-meaning rashness was leading me. I had accepted Kitty’s picture of the situation with naive faith. But why should I trust her judgment of what was needful?

  ‘How was it you saw Lady Kitty?’

  ‘She asked to see me. She sent her servant to me. I talked to her twice. Gunnar doesn’t know.’

  ‘Gunnar doesn’t know you saw her?’

  ‘No. You see — ’ How absurd it all seemed now that I was trying to tell it. ‘You see, she feels I might be able to help Gunnar. I mean, he’s been obsessed all these years with what happened, he’s been hating me and wanting revenge and she says it’s — it’s like an illness — and if he could just see me and — it wouldn’t really matter much what we said so long as we talked — ’

  ‘But if he hates you, if he wants revenge?’

  ‘He might stop, if he saw me. He might feel differently — anyway it might become less of a — ’

  ‘He might hurt you.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Crystal. These are mental things.’ Were they?

  ‘I don’t want you to see him,’ she said. She was pulling the piece of sewing between her two hands, pulling it apart. In the moment of silence I could hear the threads breaking. I took it from her and put it on the table.

  ‘No need to get as red as a turkey cock about it. It can’t do any harm.’

  ‘It can. I don’t want you to see him or to see her again. I don’t want you to have anything to do with them at all. We were all right. Why did they have to come? Why can’t they leave us alone? Please, Hilary, change your job, get away from him, please. Then we can be like we were before. And now there’s just the two of us again. If you see him you will be hurt, you will be badly hurt somehow, I know it, I know it — ’

  ‘Dear child, dear love, don’t be so bloody irrational. And try to think of me, well I know you’re thinking of me, but think of me a bit more intelligently. Suppose I want to see Gunnar? Suppose I feel it might help me to have a talk with him? He’s not the only one who’s obsessed, he’s not the only one who’s got the horrors about — that — ’

  Crystal was silent for a while, looking down, away from me. ‘Do you want to see him?’

  ‘I don’t know. I want to do what she wants.’

  ‘What Lady Kitty wants? Why?’

  ‘Because she’s — Because I love her — I can’t help it — ’

  This was the bit I had decided not to tell; but once I had started it was impossible to hold it back. Without it, in any case, the story scarcely made sense.

  ‘I see,’ said Crystal after a moment. She picked up her sewing again and began to fiddle with it, drawing her finger along the seam. Then she found her needle and began with remarkable neat rhythmical quickness to sew.

  ‘I love her,’ I said. ‘Yes, I love her.’ It was something vast to say it, it seemed to open up a great dark dome above me blazing with stars. ‘But of course — ’

  ‘Have you told her?’

  ‘What do you take me for? Of course I haven’t.’

  ‘Does she love you?’

  ‘Don’t be idiotic, Crystal. I’m sorry I told you, you’re getting the wrong end of the stick at once. It’s not like that. Quite probably I shall never see her again. They want to get on with their lives, I’m just a sort of instrument. She doesn’t care for me, she just wants me to see Gunnar so as to help him and she doesn’t want him to know she suggested it.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because it would make it less sort of efficient, efficacious.’ Was that the reason? I had not really reflected on the reason.

  ‘Well, he might not be pleased — ’ said Crystal, her needle flashing.

  ‘Oh do stop sewing, Crystal, my nerves are shot to pieces!’

  ‘Would you like your supper now?’

  ‘No. Give me some wine.’


  Crystal put the sewing down again, poured the wine.

  ‘Have they got children, Gunnar and her?’

  ‘No. Look, Crystal, my loving Lady Kitty is just a fact, it’s just an irrelevant fact — ’

  ‘You said it made you want to do what she told you.’

  ‘Yes, but I’d do that anyway out of a sense of duty. If there’s the faintest possibility of my being able to help Gunnar I’ve got to try, can’t you see that? This isn’t the beginning of anything I’m not going to be a friend of the family, how can I be? I’ll just see Gunnar once, twice maybe, then I’m done. I certainly won’t be seeing her again, I may not even see her again at all, as I said. Do try and understand.’

  ‘I think I’ll have some sherry,’ said Crystal. This was unusual. She said, ‘I don’t want you to see him. I don’t want there to be anything between you any more at all.’

  ‘But why? I wouldn’t have looked for him. But now he’s here. We meet on the bloody stairs!’

  ‘That’s why you must change your job.’

  ‘Oh don’t keep saying that! It’s not so bloody easy. Maybe I will later on. I can’t see that far ahead. But the immediate thing is — ’

  ‘I don’t want you to see him.’

  ‘So you’ve said six times, but why? You can’t seriously think he’ll murder me!’

  Crystal was now silent for such a long time, staring at her sherry and not drinking it, some new sort of alarm began to break in on me. She was behaving in a strange way, as if some other harder form of being were coming about within her.

  ‘Crystal, what is it?’

  At last she spoke. ‘My darling, I must tell you something.’

  ‘What, for Christ’s sake? Have you got cancer or something?’ Utter panic squeezed my heart.

  ‘No, no, it’s about the past, things that happened then.’

  ‘You swear you haven’t got cancer?’

  ‘I swear. Listen now. I never really told you about that time, about what it was like for me at that time.’

  This was perfectly true. We had never discussed the accident, what had happened before it and what had happened after it. I told Crystal enough for her to be able to make sense of the business. That is, I told her that I had been having a love affair with Anne. Apart from that she had to rely on telepathy. Neither had I ever asked what those days had been like for her, while I was lying in hospital smashed up and half dead. Silence was better. Crystal and I had been through so many horrors together in our childhood, we had formed a tacit pact never to inquire, never to ‘go over’ what had happened.

  ‘Do you want to tell me now? Why? Whatever can be the point? I’d rather you didn’t.’

  Crystal was silent again for about a minute. Then she said, ‘I think I must tell you. I think there is a point. It’s becoming too awful not to.’

  ‘What, for God’s sake? You’re driving me mad with your hints.’

  ‘Wait. I’ll tell you. Only listen. Please be patient. I think it will be easier for me if I tell it all in order so as to show the whole of it. Listen now. The first I knew was I got a telephone call from the college. They said you had had a serious car accident and you were in the Radcliffe Infirmary. That was on the Tuesday night, in fact it was very late, about midnight or after, I had gone to bed. What time was the accident?’

  ‘About ten.’

  ‘Well you were by then in the hospital and they telephoned me and of course I went at once to the railway station but there was no train until five. So I waited and I got that train to Birmingham and then I got the train to Oxford and I got to the hospital about eleven and the first person I saw was Gunnar. Anne was still alive then.’

  I poured myself out some more wine. My hand shook violently. Crystal’s face was transformed, hardened. She was looking at the floor.

  ‘Gunnar told me that you were “both” badly hurt, and I could not understand him at first, but then I gathered that Anne had been with you in the car. I tried to see you, but they wouldn’t let me, they were operating on you. Anne was somewhere else in the hospital. Gunnar came along to see how you were. I think he didn’t know then how bad Anne was, perhaps they didn’t tell him, or perhaps they didn’t know. I was sitting on a chair in a corridor and I was feeling very faint, and he said hadn’t I better come back to his house and lie down, as there was nothing we could either of us do just then by waiting, so I went back with him to his car and we went to his house which you remember it’s just — quite close — and we went there and he wanted me to eat something only of course we couldn’t either of us eat. The little boy, the child, I can’t remember his name, wasn’t there, I think he was away with some relations. And I lay down in a bedroom upstairs and he went back to the hospital, and he told me of course he would find out how you were. That must have been about two or three o’clock and I was feeling very collapsed. Then I sort of fell asleep or went into a kind of coma, I lay there and everything went strange. Then I woke up again in the most fearful terror, it was about six o’clock and I was alone in the house, and I got up and began to go downstairs, and as I was on the stairs the front door opened and Gunnar came in and said “Anne is dead”, and he went on into a room at the back and sat down at a table. I heard what he said and I took it in but I could really think of nothing but you and I asked him “Is Hilary dead?” and he said nothing, he just sat there looking at that big window and the garden and he was as still as a statue, like paralysed, and he would not answer, and I went to the telephone and I wanted to telephone the hospital only I couldn’t remember its name and I was crying so I couldn’t see the numbers anyway, so then I just ran out of the house. I knew which way the hospital was and I began to run along that way, crying. Then someone just grabbed me, it was Gunnar, and he just pulled me and led me back to the house and of course I went, I was almost hysterical with fear, and he got me inside and put me to sit on a chair in the hall and he telephoned the hospital and got through to the ward where you were and he spoke so calmly and clearly, and they said the operation had been successful and you were resting, and somehow the word “resting” was so wonderful just at that moment, but I was still shaking with fear, and Gunnar asked if I could see you, and he spoke so calmly and clearly, and they said yes maybe, and then he led me out, he really led me, and he pulled me along by the sleeve, and he put me into the car and drove me to the hospital and led me up to the ward, and I did actually see you, though you didn’t remember afterwards, you were just coming round from the anaesthetic and your jaw was all bandaged up but your face was quite all right and your eyes were open and you looked at me and somehow you looked so whole and so like yourself and I was weeping with relief and the nurse said that you’d get perfectly well again, though I don’t suppose she knew really, and then I went out and Gunnar was waiting outside and I told him, and we went down and got into his car and went back to the house, and then he sort of collapsed and we sort of changed places. And the telephone was ringing and it was Anne’s mother, you remember, well I suppose you never knew, that they couldn’t get hold of her in the morning, she was on holiday in Spain, and she rang up from Spain, and I made Gunnar talk to her, and after that he asked me to deal with the telephone or if anyone came round, and just tell them what had happened and that he didn’t want to see anyone. And a few people did ring up and one or two came to the door and I told them and all the time Gunnar was sitting in the back room again, just sitting there quite still at the table and looking at the window. And oh I felt so relieved about you, I was able then to be so sorry for him and so sorry about Anne, they had both been so kind to me, so awfully kind, kinder than anyone, and I went info the kitchen and I began to feel hungry, and that was so wonderful too, and I made some toast and opened a tin of beans, and I wanted Gunnar to eat something only he wouldn’t and he wouldn’t move, he just sat and sat, and I ate the beans, and then I found out where the drink was kept, you see he had offered me brandy in the afternoon only I had refused it, and I got out the brandy and the whisky and the g
lasses and I put them on the table, and I put out, funny I can remember it so clearly, I can see it all so clearly, a plate of chocolate biscuits. And I gave Gunnar some brandy and I drank some whisky myself, I think I felt then that whisky was somehow less extreme than brandy, and Gunnar drank the brandy and then he began to cry terribly, with huge tears on and on and still staring, and then at last he began to cry less and he ate a chocolate biscuit and then he began to talk, and it must have been about ten o’clock or later. And it was such a strange thing, he talked about his childhood and about his mother who was half Norwegian and about how he visited his grandparents on some farm near some lake and how he once went to Lappland and saw reindeer, and he talked a lot about reindeer and about how, so funny, they like the smell of human water, urine, and how they eat this special moss, and what it was like in the north where there was no night for months and then no day for months and he talked about the northern lights. And all this time we were drinking and I think he drank all the brandy in the bottle, and I drank a bit of whisky and felt very strange, and I kept saying he ought to go to bed, but in an odd way we didn’t either of us want to go to bed, we just wanted to make it go on and on and sit on and on and go on and on talking forever in that strange way, it was as if we were in a trance. And then at last we were so weary and he started to cry again and that showed that that was at an end and he got up and started to go up to bed, still crying. And I went up too and I felt so exhausted and so peculiar, and I went into the room where I had been lying down in the afternoon and I undressed and put on my nightdress, because I’d packed a little case when I came away, just night things, and then I went to see what Gunnar was doing and he was just lying down on his bed, and I told him to get undressed and get into bed, and he took his shoes off and his trousers and he was sort of falling about. I suppose it was the brandy. And I pulled back the clothes for him to get into bed and he got in and then said in such a — such a terribly sad miserable way, Don’t leave me! So I stood there beside him for a while and he was sort of moaning and then I pitied him so much I got into the bed beside him and I took him in my arms and then he made love to me.’