A Word Child

by Iris Murdoch

  ‘Oh no!’

  ‘Here.’ She brought the envelope out of her pocket and thrust it into my hand. Kitty’s writing.

  ‘Look, Biscuit, you stay here, will you? I’ll just take a turn and read this.’

  I left her and walked away along the path. Big Ben’s bright hazy face said five-twenty. I stopped beside some gloomy bushes with seemingly black leaves which stirred a little in the wind, dripping water. A lamp across the garden gave a little light. I opened Kitty’s letter.

  That meeting you had with Gunnar was no good at all, it was worse than useless. I listened at the door, I hope you don’t mind. It has not helped him at all, he is absolutely wild as if he might go mad. You must see him again, you simply must, and you must not let him run the conversation, you must somehow break him down. I am very upset. I will explain. Please come to Cheyne Walk at six on Thursday. Gunnar will be elsewhere. Do nothing until you have seen me.

  K.J.

  I put the letter away and raised my face to Big Ben, and Big Ben shone upon it. London, which had been an inert listless noisy mass of senseless dark misery about me was suddenly taut, humming, clarified. There was a road again from me to Kitty. She needed me. I would see her again. I would see Gunnar again. All would yet be well.

  I walked slowly back to where Biscuit was sitting, legs outstretched, hands in pockets, gazing expressionlessly at the moving mass of passing cars. She turned and looked at me as I sat down. She had put her hood up again. ‘You are pleased with your letter.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You look quite different.’

  ‘Yes. Tell her — just — that I will come.’

  She began to get up but I pulled her back, and thrust the hood away from her face. In the light of the distant lamp, in the light of Big Ben I saw her pale little face looking up, all wet and glistening with the damp fog. And now suddenly she looked so tired, almost old, a little old woman from the East. I put my arms round her and laid my lips against her cold mouth. Then the next moment she was struggling fiercely in my grasp like a wild animal. Her feet slithered on the wet pavement, she got up, thrusting me away, then as I began to rise and she turned to go she hit me hard across the face. Something struck my coat and fell to the ground at my feet. Then Biscuit was gone.

  I sat down again. The blow, though perfectly deliberate, had been mainly the swinging impact of damp duffle coat sleeve, rather resembling the proverbial slap in the face with a wet fish. I began to peer at the ground to see what it was that had fallen. There was nothing there but a stone. I picked it up. A blackish smooth elliptical stone. I stared at it. It was the stone which I had given to Biscuit in the Leningrad garden, years and years ago, on the first occasion when we met. I put it in my pocket. I pondered. I found myself, for some reason or other, thinking about Tommy. There was no doubt that I was a failure. I had been cruel to Tommy. I had lost my job. Biscuit had slapped me. Possibly, to leave aside more serious failings, I was a cad. But at six o’clock on Thursday Kitty would be waiting for me at Cheyne Walk. I got up and made my way slowly to the station and took the train to Sloane Square and sat in the bar. After a whisky and ginger ale peace descended. I had an occupation: counting the hours till Thursday evening. I felt almost happy.

  It was a little more than an hour later and I was inserting my key in the door at the flat in Lexham Gardens. The heavens might be falling and the earth cracking but it was Monday and Clifford Larr would be waiting for me and the table would be set for supper.

  I opened the door. The table was set. Clifford was in the kitchen stirring something.

  ‘Hello, darling.’

  ‘Hello,’ I said, taking off my overcoat.

  ‘Is your cold better?’

  ‘What cold?’

  ‘The one you allegedly had last Monday.’

  ‘Oh that. What’s for supper?’

  ‘Lentil soup. Chicken casserole. Stilton cheese.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Tell me something.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Anything. I’m bored.’

  ‘A girl just slapped my face.’

  ‘Excellent. Tommy?’

  ‘No. Lady Kitty’s maid.’

  ‘You are in, aren’t you, having your face slapped by the maid. I suppose you tried to kiss her?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You behave like a lout. I suppose it is early conditioning. What does Lady Kitty think?’

  ‘She doesn’t know.’

  ‘What makes you imagine that?’

  What indeed? Did Biscuit tell Kitty of my stupid kisses? I was surrounded by terrible dangerous mysteries. I felt exasperated, frightened shame. ‘That’s all I’m fit for, kissing maids behind bushes and getting slapped. I’ve resigned my job.’

  Clifford whistled thoughtfully on three notes, still stirring. ‘Why?’

  ‘Gunnar.’

  ‘You’ve seen him again, since our talk in the park on Wednesday.’

  ‘Yes. I saw him yesterday.’

  ‘And he told you to leave the office?’

  ‘More or less. It’s not a bit like you thought.’ I poured myself out a glass of sherry and sat down on my usual chair.

  ‘Didn’t you have a touching reconciliation after all?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘A fight?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then what on earth?’

  ‘We had a clinical interview.’

  ‘I am fascinated. Describe it.’

  ‘Never boring, am I. Can I have some of those nuts?’

  ‘Yes, but not too many. Go on.’

  ‘He hates me,’ I said, ‘and it’s, for him, not part of the treatment to stop doing so. That’s just the thing I didn’t foresee. Like you, I thought it would be either a reconciliation or a fight. And as I don’t think he’s a complete fool I imagined that if he asked to see me it would be for some sort of reconciliation.’

  ‘You didn’t say that on Wednesday.’

  ‘Like you, I don’t always say what I think.’

  ‘I didn’t know you were so optimistic.’

  ‘I wasn’t. But I suppose I hoped — I don’t know what I thought — ’

  ‘Your behaviour is so unlike mine that sometimes understanding simply fails. You hoped, did you? Can you still do that? Surely you saw that it was totally naive to expect reconciliation — humility, sincerity, all play-acting of course, but still a lot to ask from a successful man of the world like Gunnar?’

  ‘But on Wednesday you said you thought there would be just that, that I’d be shown off as a sort of prodigal son, you said “I can see it all”.’

  ‘As you recently observed, I do not always say what I think.’

  ‘Ah. You feared it?’

  ‘You are a slow man, but you sometimes arrive.’

  ‘Well, you needn’t have feared any friendship between me and Gunnar. Nothing could be more impossible.’

  ‘I find that satisfactory. But you have not described this clinical scene.’

  ‘It was all set up by one of Gunnar’s analysts. He just wanted to see me to sort of get rid of emotions, like making a bomb safe by a controlled explosion. Only there was no explosion. We were both as cold as ice.’

  Come on, this is getting dull again. Tell me something that he said.’

  ‘He said it did him good to utter Anne’s name in my presence. He said his hatred of me had sort of kept her going as an awful ghost.’

  ‘Ah yes’ — said Clifford thoughtfully, staring at me. ‘That makes sense. I can understand that.’

  ‘I’m not sure that I can. That was about it. He did all the talking. I behaved like an exceptionally stupid and callous zombie. He made me into one.’

  ‘I can understand that too.’

  Then he said good-bye forever and told me to go.’

  ‘After having instructed you to resign your job.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘However you saw him again today.’

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘I
followed you back down the stairs. What happened today?’

  I was certainly not going to tell Clifford that dreadful story about Crystal and Gunnar. ‘Nothing much.’

  ‘You lie. Does he know you’ve seen his wife?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Have you seen her again, since Wednesday?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you in love with her?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Of course you would be. You really are stupid. You are an absolute novice about human nature. A woman like that could do anything with you. And she isn’t even clever. She’s simply spoilt and confident. She’s a silly romantical female who likes involving men in little mysterious plots. Have you kissed her?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Only the maid.’

  ‘Only the maid.’

  ‘How do you see the maid, incidentally?’

  ‘The maid brings the letters.’

  ‘Typical. I expect she spends all her time trotting round London delivering secret notes. You don’t imagine you’re the only one, do you?’

  ‘Yes, I do,’ I said. ‘In this sense. No one else is related to Gunnar and to his wife in the perfectly extraordinary way that I am related.’

  ‘You sound quite proud of it. When are you going to kiss Lady Kitty?’

  ‘Never! Look, you haven’t understood. I may see Gunnar once again, I may see her once again. But neither of them wants me around. I’m just a curative agent, a catalyst. Lady Kitty isn’t interested in me, she’s interested in curing her husband’s obsessions.’

  ‘You could be very wrong about that,’ said Clifford thoughtfully. ‘And how about Crystal?’

  ‘How do you mean, how about Crystal?’

  ‘Crystal must fit in somewhere.’

  ‘Crystal doesn’t fit in anywhere. Crystal is as unconnected with real life as a saint on a pillar.’

  ‘Quite a nice image. But no. Perhaps there will be cosiness. I should like to think of Lady Kitty going to visit Crystal with a canikin of hot soup in a basket.’

  ‘Shut up, Clifford, will you.’

  ‘Can’t you see that you’re being entangled?’

  ‘I wish I was being entangled! I’m not, I’m being amputated! Christ, I’m leaving my job, I’m moving right away into a different world. What more can they want? I’ll have served my purpose and I’ll go.’

  ‘What is your new job?’

  ‘I haven’t got one! I only resigned today! I don’t know if I’ll be able to get one! I’ll probably end up on National Assistance or selling matches. I’m really done for now, can’t you see that, I’ve been going steadily down hill, now I’m really heading for the gutter, where, as you so often point out I began and belong!’ I had not, till this moment, seen it so clearly myself. I would see Kitty once again. And after that, absolute smash.

  ‘How interesting,’ said Clifford. ‘Perhaps you will take to drink and become a familiar shambling figure, sitting on the steps of the Whitehall offices, begging your ex-colleagues for pound notes.’

  ‘Little you bloody care.’

  ‘Is that a personal appeal?’

  ‘You’ve done nothing but needle me since I arrived, you never do anything but needle me.’

  ‘Don’t break that glass, it’s one of my better ones.’

  ‘I’m going. As you so clearly suggest, it’s time for me to disappear from your elegant set-up. And you can find some nice quiet little queer to visit you on Mondays henceforth. All right, I’m not going to break your fucking glass. Goodbye.’

  I jumped up. Clifford moved quickly between me and the door and took the glass out of my hand. He held my hand. ‘Darling. Stop it. Darling.’

  I sat down again.

  He said, ‘Can’t you understand human conversation? Can’t you read it, can’t you read me? I should have thought it would be easy enough.’ He touched the side of my head gently.

  ‘All right. Sorry.’ This sort of thing had happened before.

  We went into the dining-room and started on the lentil soup. It was excellent.

  TUESDAY

  My dearest, it is me again. I feel I am such a drag in your life. I waited on Sunday till five and Christopher was so tired of me then and I was so tired of myself, I went away. I suppose you left like that again on purpose to hurt me and make me realize at last that you really don’t want me. And yet when I was sitting beside you and I was knitting and you were lying on the bed, we were so quiet and peaceful together like two married persons and I could not out believe that I was a comfort to you. I know you are in trouble, but it seems that I cannot help. I can only annoy you, and this grieves me so terribly. I am in such pain. And it can’t be very nice for you to love another man’s wife, surely you see there is no future in it. I expect the rumour must be all over the office by now. I told Freddie definitely that I would not play Peter, so you are free of me on that score. Only I cannot cannot believe that things are over between us. I feel as connected with you as if I were your mother. You cannot get rid of me. You will recover from your trouble and you will find me waiting. I love you. Forgive all my mistakes. I will expect you on Friday as usual.

  Your loyal loving Thomas.

  It was early Tuesday morning and I was sitting at my desk in the office, the others having not yet arrived, and reading Tommy’s usual Tuesday morning letter from King’s Lynn. The reference to ‘another man’s wife’ turned me cold with horror until I realized that of course poor Tommy meant Laura Impiatt! This belief was something of a convenience and I had no intention of dislodging it from Tommy’s silly little head. The notion that I loved Laura was an innocent blind, a trivial tepid cover-up of the dreadful truth. Let it stand. The fact that Laura, in her dotty way, loved me, or thought she did, would help to make the useful fiction more plausible, and may even have led Laura to hint to Tommy that I loved her! No harm would be done. Whereas the monstrous fact of my love for Gunnar’s wife would, if it ever emerged, wreck my mind, wreck the universe. Would I see Tommy as usual on Friday? It seemed very doubtful. Friday was very far away and huge events loomed between.

  I had come to the office, although I knew I would not be able to work, because it was my obligation to turn up for a further month and also, and more terribly, because I could not think what else to do. I must find other employment. But how? How was this done? I had never greatly enjoyed my job, but it had been safe and mildly amusing. Could I now sell myself outside the Civil Service in the wicked world of free enterprise where a brilliant Oxford ‘first’ would cut no ice? Should I try something quite different, such as school teaching? Perhaps it was not necessary to resign from the Service at all, would it not do if I simply got a transfer to another department? Why had I been in such a desperate hurry to resign? Reflection told me however that I had been right. To negotiate a transfer might take months and months, during which time I would every day be running the risk of offending Gunnar with the sight of me.

  Had Kitty’s note of yesterday altered the situation? No. I might talk to Gunnar once again, or I might not. But I did not think that another talk with him would make any difference to our relations or to the advisability of vanishing. Herein I differed from my darling. Kitty, whose silliness, as delineated by Clifford, I could perfectly credit, though I loved her, still imagined that Gunnar would ‘break down’, that he would need, to put it crudely, to forgive me for the sake of his own peace of mind. Kitty still believed in the ‘reconciliation scene’. I had stupidly, surreptitiously, self-deceivingly believed in it, until lately, myself. But now no more. In fact, my attitude to Gunnar was in process of hardening a little. I had been ready to enact my guilt for his benefit. He was not interested. All right. If he could play it cool, so could I. We could, at any rate, feign a coolness which would leave the deep things untouched and enable us to disengage from each other without hideous drama. Was this after all the shabby best? I did not know nor did it just now concern me. Two things, for the moment, dominated the world: that tomorrow Gunnar would see Crystal, a
nd the day after I would see Kitty.

  The more I thought about it the more I detested the idea of Gunnar going to see Crystal. Why had I agreed to it? I had still felt, even then, as if I were somehow under Gunnar’s authority, under his orders, bound, because of the past, to do his will. Today I felt rather less subservient. I could simply have said no to him. There was no need to slavishly report his wishes to Crystal, or to comply with her nervous desire to meet him once more. What good could come of it? Crystal, whose serenity was as precarious as my own, might be deeply, permanently, upset by this encounter. And the idea of it horrified me in deep places, as if I actually feared (only this was insane) that Gunnar might make love to Crystal again. Had he ever really done so? The fact that he had asked so improbably to see her was evidence in favour of her story. Perhaps he wanted — what? To beg her pardon, once more to kiss her hand? The whole idea filled me with disgust and the wish somehow to spoil his enterprise. I felt it was too late now, now that Crystal was expecting this weird visit, simply to forbid it. Should I insist on being present myself when Gunnar came? That would certainly wreck things. I decided however upon a milder form of sabotage. So when I had finished tearing up Tommy’s letter I wrote a note to Crystal, to reach her by post tomorrow morning, which ran as follows: