A Word Child

by Iris Murdoch

  ‘Crystal, stop, just for my sake. I can’t bear it. Stop.’

  ‘I’m so sorry. Oh you hurt him, you shouldn’t have hurt him — ’

  ‘I wish I’d pitched him down the stairs.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have hurt him, it wasn’t his fault.’

  ‘What wasn’t his fault? He came rushing round here on purpose to upset you, didn’t he? What was he saying?’

  ‘He called me a bad name.’

  ‘Then I wish I’d lolled him.’

  ‘Oh no, it wasn’t his fault — but oh it was so terrible, so terrible — ’

  ‘Stop it, Crystal. He doesn’t matter. He’s a poor fish, a poor wretch, he’s half crazed up himself. I only wish I could have arrived sooner. How can I not be angry when I see you crying like this? But it’s over now. There, there. We’ve had a hard time, we mustn’t mind a few rough words at our age. Forget him. He hates Gunnar. It was his own misery speaking, he was just raving.’

  ‘He was so unkind. And he was always so kind. And I loved him so much. And when he came into the room tonight just for a second I felt such joy — and then — ’

  ‘Let it go, Crystal. It’s over. Better not to think about it. Maybe you’re right that it wasn’t his fault. Let’s say that anyway. He’s a lonely man who lives in his mind with his own strange fancies. He’ll be sorry. If you like I’ll make him beg your pardon on his knees.’

  ‘No, no — ’

  ‘Let him go, let him go. Oh Crystal mine, I’m so glad to see you, I’m so unhappy.’

  I came and sat beside her again and we hugged each other in silence for a while.

  ‘Did you see her?’ said Crystal into my overcoat.

  ‘Yes.’ I pulled the coat off and got up and began to look for some wine. There was a little left in an old bottle. I poured out a glass for myself. Crystal shook her head. ‘And will you see her again?’

  ‘Yes, tomorrow. But that will be the last time.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Crystal, I mustn’t see her any more. I mustn’t see him any more. It’s clear at last. You were quite right. It was wrong of me to see her in secret. I’ve done all I can for him. He’s done all he can for me. After this it might all go terribly wrong.’

  ‘I’m so glad. I don’t want you to go to them. I’m so afraid for you. Oh darling, need you see her tomorrow?’

  ‘I must just see her to tell her, to say good-bye. And I said I’d come.’

  ‘Can’t you write her a letter instead?’

  ‘Letters are dangerous, and — No. I must see her.’ That too was clear. I had said that I would see her tomorrow at six and I just had to be there. And there was the terrible terrible fact that only the idea that I would see her tomorrow was now keeping me sane.

  Crystal, with her telepathic knowledge, saw this too. She was almost calm, uttering long weary sighs of physical recovery. ‘You want to see her. You don’t really believe you’ll say good-bye. Please write to her. Please don’t see her. I feel she’s a terrible woman.’

  ‘She isn’t terrible, Crystal mine. No one is terrible. Well, hardly anyone. We’re all muddlers. The thing is to see when one’s got to stop muddling. I can see what I’ve got to do, don’t worry. And I have to see her tomorrow, I just have to.’

  ‘Please — ’

  ‘No more of that, Crystal, I don’t want to talk to you about her. She’s almost gone, and I’ll live without her, you’ll see.’ I sat down beside her once more and she leaned against my shoulder.

  ‘Hilary, I want to tell you something.’

  ‘You’re engaged to Arthur again.’

  ‘No. I haven’t done anything about Arthur. I’ve decided I won’t. It’s too late, I’m too old, I don’t want to, I’m better as I am. I wanted to tell you that I’ve absolutely decided not to.’

  ‘Oh good. I mean — Crystal, dear little one, I want to tell you something too. I saw Tommy yesterday. She came to say good-bye, she’s marrying someone at King’s Lynn.’

  ‘Oh, she’s marrying Kim? I’m so glad!’

  ‘Christ, did you know all about it?’

  ‘Yes. She asked me not to tell you. And I didn’t tell you because I thought you’d be jealous and you might marry her out of jealousy. I kept praying and praying that she’d marry Kim.’

  ‘Well, well, well. So we’re both back on the shelf, my darling.’

  ‘I like being on the shelf with you. Oh I’m so relieved — Please don’t be angry with me — ’

  ‘Crystal, you’re right, we ought to leave London. Let’s go right away and live somewhere together. Not in the north. We could live in Wales or Bristol or somewhere.’

  ‘Or in Dorset or Devon, I’d like that. Oh Hilary, I’ve always so much wanted to live in the country. Do you think we could?’

  ‘Why not? I could get some sort of job in local government or as a clerk somewhere. We’re used to roughing it, aren’t we, darling?’

  ‘I’d find a little room — ’

  ‘No, Crystal,’ I said, ‘no. No more little rooms.’

  ‘You mean — ?’

  ‘We’ll live together.’

  ‘Oh my darling — ’ Crystal’s tears flowed again. ‘Oh I feel so happy,’ she said, and burrowed her funny frizzy head of hair against me. I put my arm around her.

  ‘There, my chicken, there, my little one.’

  ‘We’ll live in the country, in a country cottage.’

  ‘And you shall be my little housekeeper.’

  ‘I’ll work so hard, I’ll keep the house so nice, I’ll do dress-making too — and we could have animals, couldn’t we, some chickens and a dog?’

  ‘Of course. And at weekends I’ll dig the garden and we’ll grow all our own vegetables. And we’ll have a log fire and on winter evenings when the wind is whistling round the house we’ll sit and listen to the radio.’

  ‘Oh yes, yes! And you’ll learn Chinese.’

  ‘Yes.’ Would I, as the wind whistled round the house? How much of me would be left by then?

  ‘And you’ll teach me French, like we said long ago.’

  ‘Yes, yes. It will be so, Crystal, my darling, it will be so, and we’ll be happy, yes we will, just you wait and see.’

  TUESDAY

  TUESDAY dawned at last. I had hardly slept. The unusualness of insomnia was a physical torture. The house seemed empty and sad without the boys. I heard the lift rattling in the night and it had such a lonely sound. I rose early and made tea and sat over it shivering. They seemed to have turned the heating off completely.

  The first post brought a letter in an illiterate hand with a _______ postmark. Deciphered, the letter read as follows.

  Dere Sir,

  I got yr letter to Mr Osmand as was here, he was my loger, he died last week, it was his sleepin pills the doctor said, I have sold his bokes to pay the rint, he ode me fir months rint and is still owin, the bokes was nothing the shop man said, and there was the expins of the funerel, the assistins grant went nowher, I pade up from my own pockit and did it proper too, and there was a wash basen as he broke fallin agenst it, cost pounds to repare and the carpit made filthy, it went to his stummick, as you are some sort of relativ and he has none other, no one visited him, I make bold to sind you the bill for outstandin rint and cost of funerel and the carpit and basen as here enclosed, hopin to here from you by retern post, I am takin legil advise,

  Yrs truly

  J. Parfit (Mrs)

  I screwed up this missive and kept my thought resolutely away from the picture of Mr Osmand’s end which it conjured up. What desperate last minute dash for help had his visit to me represented? Better not think about that.

  There was no question of going to the office. I just had to get through the day. I paced around for some time, then went out for a walk. The frozen snow had made slippery iron grey ridges upon the pavements. I went into the park but the image of Kitty with her rosy face inside her dark fur hood was waiting there for me and I wanted to go to the Leningrad garden. The brown l
eaves were frozen into what was left of the snow making the grass jagged and brittle. I walked about slowly and aimlessly. Doubtless the park was spoilt for me forever. It was just as well I was leaving London.

  The intense cold drove me home at last, and I tried dutifully to eat something, but the act of opening a tin of beans conjured up so much of the ordinariness of life, just when there could be no more ordinariness, I nearly wept. I had not wept for years and years and years, and I did not then. But such a sadness flooded me, such a sense of wasted life and happiness which might have been and could not be. And very strangely in the midst of this utter desolation of soul there remained the glow of Kitty’s once more and for the last time approaching presence. Or was it for the last time, some insane voice murmured every now and then very far away.

  About three o’clock the front door bell rang. I could hope nothing from a visitor, but some sort of idiotic hope bounded for a second. It was Jimbo Davis.

  I stared at him. ‘Christopher’s gone.’

  ‘I know. I’ve come to see you.’

  ‘Me? Why?’

  ‘Just to see that you’re all right.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I be?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. I thought you might be lonely. Chris said you’d left the office. Can I come in?’

  I let him in and went mechanically into the kitchen and put the kettle on. I made some tea. Jimbo stood and watched.

  ‘Do you want anything to eat? There’s beans and bread and butter. And some chocolate wholemeal biscuits, only they’re rather old.’

  ‘Thanks. I’ll have some biscuits.’

  We sat down. I had never had a conversation with Jimbo. He sat sipping his tea and looking at me with big rather brilliant brown eyes. His hair was a matching brown and fairly short, presumably so as to keep it out of the way when dancing. He sat with rubbery grace, like an eastern god, one knee up, one foot upon his chair. I sat and let him look at me. Did he think I was going mad or what?

  ‘You heard Mick is back inside.’

  ‘Is he? Good.’

  ‘He got picked up for another job.’

  ‘How are the Waterbirds?’

  ‘Fine. Chris and Len have taken on Phil instead.’

  ‘Phil?’

  ‘Oh you haven’t met Phil. They’ve moved into his house. He’s got a house.’

  ‘Lucky Phil.’

  ‘Chris felt bad about you.’

  ‘I felt bad about him.’

  ‘Is it true Tommy’s getting married?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What will you do?’

  ‘Continue the daily round and the common task.’

  ‘Have you got another job?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you believe in astrology?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’m not sure if I do. But it seems to me there must be something in it. I mean it stands to reason, everything’s caused. Otherwise they wouldn’t be able to send space probes to Jupiter. Think of it. They send up this thing and it goes all the way to Jupiter and takes photographs. They couldn’t do that if everything wasn’t fixed, it would all get lost, wouldn’t it. And they can predict eclipses centuries ahead. Do you believe in flying saucers?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I think I do. Think of it, all those millions of planets just like ours, somebody must be there, but such a long way away they’d have to be terribly clever to reach us. I’d like to think we were being looked at by sort of superior beings, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘I hope whoever’s looking has a sense of humour.’

  ‘Do you believe in God?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’m not sure if I do. My father was a preacher in Wales, well he still is. We lived up this valley. He used to preach to the sheep. He was a bit odd. They seemed to like it though. They let him stroke them.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The sheep. They had such lovely eyes. We used to have home prayers and kneel at the sofa, and my father would hide his head in a cushion and groan.’

  ‘I must try that sometime.’

  ‘Hilary, don’t be sad, life is good.’

  ‘Jimbo, just go away, will you, dear kind boy?’

  ‘Hilary, you will be all right, won’t you? Shall I come in tomorrow?’

  ‘No, just go away. But thank you for coming.’

  ‘I wanted to give you something.’ He brought a little package wrapped in tissue paper out of his pocket and laid it on the table. Then in a second he was gone upon his light noiseless feet.

  I stayed in the kitchen and opened the package. It contained a cheap metal cross on a chain, the sort of thing which hucksters sell in Oxford Street for fifty pence. I swept it into the kitchen drawer. As I did so I saw a black shrivelled object on the window ledge: it was the potted plant which Jimbo had given me and which of course I had forgotten to water. I hoped that he had not noticed it. I could see that Jimbo’s silly visit and Jimbo’s silly cross were a little piece of the purest kindness; but it could not touch me. Christ himself, I felt, could not have touched me then, not because I was so wicked, but because I was so mortally sad. I sat for a while. I recalled that it was Tuesday and Arthur would be expecting me. I left the house at about half past four.

  Kitty came out at ten minutes to six. I was frozen and all jumbled up with misery and a black awful joyless excitement at the thought of seeing her. I had gone out almost to the end of the jetty. The night was extremely dark, a little foggy, but more as if the fog itself were black, thickening and coagulating the air, as in Pliny’s description of the eruption of Vesuvius. At the end of the jetty all was dark. The lamp half way down gave a little enclosed baffled blurry glow. The river was obscure, the lights all veiled which might have touched it, the tide half down and running out fast, the emergent mud banks invisible. I could hear the very faint sibilant murmur of the snow-fed Thames and a faint tap now and then as some piece of driftwood struck against the wooden supports of the jetty.

  Kitty came quickly and in a second I had my arms about the mink coat. Her head was bare, I could feel her hair soft and cold upon my cheek.

  ‘Oh my darling, my sweet, my dear love.’ My body worshipped her, seared with love and tenderness and desire, my mind shuddered, tottered. The sense of rightness and properness, her belongingness just here and now, the perfection of the present moment, the cosmic achievement of our meeting and our love and my arms being about her, overwhelmed me. Could I commit, against that, the crime, as it seemed, which I had coldly meditated?

  ‘Hilary, my dear, I’m so glad to see you! You’re so cold. Won’t you come inside?’

  ‘No. Where’s Gunnar?’

  ‘At a cocktail party at number ten.’

  ‘Oughtn’t you to be with him?’

  ‘I made an excuse, I don’t always go to these things. Then he’s going on to a city dinner. Oh Hilary, I’m so terribly glad to see you, let me touch your face, you’re icy, I must warm you. Oh I do love you, I just do, it’s so simple, it must be simple. I looked up Hassan.’

  ‘Hassan?’ I had forgotten about Hassan, I was miles beyond that, Hassan was child’s play.

  ‘About the poor lovers who have to choose, I do see. But I think that we — ’

  ‘Listen, my darling,’ I said.

  The tone of my voice silenced her. I could feel her anxiety, her intaken breath, her heart.

  ‘Kitty, I’ve got to leave you.’

  She was silent, trembling in my arms.

  ‘Kitty, we can’t continue this any more, you know it and I know it. You can’t belong to me. This seems, perhaps it is, a great thing between us, it’s certainly a great thing for me, but all human emotions are full of illusion and the years and the time we would need for trying this, for making it real, don’t exist. We are in a false place and our love is all shot up with falsity. You say you love me but what does it mean, what can it mean, reality rejects it, you know it does. It’s not your fault, it’s not even in a way mine. We’ve run into this so fast. The world i
s full of causes, otherwise they wouldn’t be able to send rockets to Jupiter. But from here another step and we are destroyed. We mustn’t let irresistible forces make us destroy and be destroyed. We must resist the irresistible and we can. We shall survive. You have had a mad generous fancy, but it will pass as fancies pass. You know, you must have known, that your second plan was absolutely impossible. And the first plan is impossible too. How could we, after we have held each other like this, meet in Gunnar’s presence and deceive him with ordinary smiles? We can’t do it, Kitty, we’re done for. I can’t deceive Gunnar a second time. If I’ve helped him, and if this is a service to you, I’m glad and joyful and this is a kind of blessing I never thought I’d have in my life any more. I must be content with that. And I’ve held you and kissed you and that is a gift from the universe which will bless and gladden me forever. And you will realize that you’ve just had a dream, and for you it will all pass quickly away. I’ve got to go, Kitty, absolutely and forever, and I’ve got to go now. You must have expected that I’d say this.’