A Word Child

by Iris Murdoch

  All sorts of matters had been moving fast. This was in fact the second wedding to which I had been invited since the events of Chelsea. I was asked, but of course did not go, to celebrate the (registry office) union of Alexandra Marilyn Bisset (spinster) and Christopher Jameson Cather (bachelor). At the tune when I received my invitation I had not as yet realized they were acquainted. However it appeared that Biscuit, visiting the flat on various occasions in search of me, had seen and coveted Christopher. Why not? The marriage was generally considered to be her idea (I was not so sure), and had attracted, according to Arthur who was my informant, some cynical comments. I could only bow my head before another impenetrable mystery. Biscuit had found her prince, Christopher, one hoped, the ‘true lover’ desiderated in his song. Both could be lucky. Biscuit was now, it was rumoured, a rich woman as the result of Kitty’s will. The couple were honeymooning in Benares. Christopher was proposing to use Kitty’s money to launch Biscuit as a model. Nothing more had been heard of the Waterbirds.

  In so far as this could touch me I felt rather sad about Biscuit. I had somehow got used to her, there had been a sort of servants’ hall complicity, and I could not help wondering how much better things might have turned out if only I could, as befitted my station, have loved the maid and not the mistress. I would have liked to see again that sallow waiflike face raised in naive anxious questioning to my own. I had felt akin to Biscuit because we were both wanderers in society, both disinherited, both lost and both unclaimed. I would have liked to kiss Biscuit again, not passionately but with a kind of exhausted sadness. Now she was Christopher’s, she belonged to a man in whose eyes I must figure poorly, even without the information about me which Biscuit must by now have imparted. I felt sad about Christopher too. He had liked me once. We might have been friends. I had almost systematically destroyed his respect and affection and finally driven him away. I had indeed busied myself thus with most of the people whom I had known. It was the more remarkable that Clifford had hung onto me for so long. Yes, I would have liked a talk with Biscuit. I would have liked to ask her, out of the compassion of total shipwreck, whether it was she who had betrayed me. Or whether perhaps she did not even know that I had taken part in Kitty’s death. But for these questions, as for so much else, it was now too late.

  Crystal’s decision, suddenly so firm, to marry Arthur, came like a bombshell. I had completely forgotten Arthur. I thought about him, oddly enough, on that awful Tuesday night, thought how he would be waiting for me with the tongue and the potatoes and the peas and the cheese and the bananas. Would that I had been with Arthur on that night, that he had had the power to compel me. After that Tuesday he vanished completely from my consciousness until the moment when Crystal told me, with a new voice and a new face, that she had decided to get married. Why? I could not help feeling that in some blind secret way my decision not to tell her about what had happened to me had brought about her resolution to leave me. The perfect communion between us had been broken by a silence on my part which she must have felt, though she could not interpret it, and a deep fear, a sense of losing me, may have driven her into Arthur’s arms. So by my heroism perhaps I had lost her, and if I had weakly told her everything she would have pitied me and stayed with me. Or it might all have been simply the fruition of a long intent, Crystal’s desire for a child, which she knew so much annoyed me, or indeed a genuine love for Arthur, which she had not mentioned because she knew that it would annoy me even more. This was another question which would have to remain eternally unanswered.

  So now I would never live with Crystal, we two would never sing like birds in a cage. Arthur, not I, would look after her and love her and fulfil all her little heart’s desires. She and Arthur were going to move out of London, Arthur had asked for a transfer to Harrogate, they were already searching for a country cottage. They would live up there far away in the Yorkshire dales and I would visit them occasionally, more and more infrequently, and hear them call me ‘Uncle Hilary’ and see their children stare at me with hostility and incomprehension. That this would be so I of course concealed from her loving tear-filled eyes. In this time I had pretended and pretended, and the sheer rigour of the playacting had been itself to some extent a distraction from the agony which occasioned it. I feigned pleasure at the marriage, enthusiasm for Arthur, happy anticipation of my nephews and nieces (who would certainly arrive, adopted if necessary). I even spoke blithely of perhaps moving up to Yorkshire too. (I had by then left the office, and had found a job in an insurance company, duller but better paid.) Whom did these lies convince? Crystal needed to at least half believe them and perhaps she did. She clung to me till the last moment, with a face of terrified guilt and a torrent of exclamations of love. I play-acted heroically. The last thing I could do for her was to send her to her fate with some peace of mind. Callousness would doubtless have its feast day later on.

  We came out of the church (not St Stephen’s) into the extremely cold night air. There was an illuminated Christmas tree in the churchyard. I remembered that I had never taken Crystal to see the decorations in Regent Street. We walked to the car which Arthur had hired and in which tomorrow he would drive Crystal to Christmas celebrations with his cousins in Lincolnshire. Tommy and I crawled into the back. Arthur and Crystal sat in the front. Crystal turned round and gave me her hand and I heroically held it and squeezed it and smiled though I wanted to howl like a dog. Arthur drove with careful efficiency towards the wedding supper at Blythe Road. We climbed the stairs, Arthur first, Crystal still holding my hand, Tommy. The table was laid, the chicken and the plum pudding were warm in the oven. The room was decorated with paper chains. In festive mood Arthur had put little paper hats on the two ladies representing Dawn and Dusk. There was laughter and tears. We took off our coats. Arthur and I were in our best suits. Tommy was wearing a most unsuitable dress with sequins, Crystal an orange satin robe which fought with her hair. I kissed Crystal and told her to stop crying. Tommy kissed her. The women went on weeping and trying to laugh. Arthur and I began to open the champagne.

  CHRISTMAS DAY

  I WAS walking home. Tommy, whose path lay in the other direction, was still walking with me. A few snow flakes were appearing here and there under the street lamps and floating idly about before descending and vanishing upon the frosty pavements. Tommy was wearing her blue knitted night-cap and had pushed her ringlets inside it for extra warmth. We had walked for some time in silence.

  I was picturing, as I was now condemned to do for the rest of my life, Kitty floundering in the mud on the edge of the river. What had happened to the mink coat? Human beings might perish but valuable properties like mink coats had to be looked after. Perhaps Biscuit had it now.

  ‘Hilary, are you crying?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I thought you were.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Hilary, I’ve got something to tell you.’

  ‘Mr Spranger has made you pregnant. OK. It’s nothing to do with me.’

  ‘No, no. I did something awful and I feel I must tell you.’

  ‘Does it really matter?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve got to tell you. I wonder if you’ll ever forgive me?’

  ‘Time will show no doubt.’

  ‘I wrote a letter about you to Gunnar Jopling.’

  ‘You what?’ I went on walking.

  ‘I wrote him a letter about you, about you and Lady Kitty.’

  I went steadily on, not looking at her. The snow flakes were more frequent. ‘What did you write to him about me and Lady Kitty?’

  ‘I told him you were in love with her.’

  ‘What made you imagine that? Perhaps you invented it?’

  ‘I saw you kissing her in Kensington Gardens, that day when I came to tell you about Kim.’

  ‘How did you know it was her?’

  ‘I’d seen her picture, and I saw her in your office. I recognized the coat.’

  ‘It was clever of you to find us.’

  ‘I came to the
flat looking for you and you weren’t there so I went out in the park. I knew that garden at the end of the lake was one of your special places.’

  ‘How did you know that?’

  ‘You took me there once. You told me you called it the Leningrad garden. You’ve probably forgotten.’

  I had. ‘What exactly did you say in the letter?’

  ‘Just that you were in love with his wife. Nothing about her.’

  ‘When did you post it?’

  ‘Oh — after that — ’

  ‘Which day?’

  ‘I wrote it and posted it on the next day — that would have been the Monday. I did it out of — sheer jealousy and spite — it was a wicked action — I thought, you see, that there was another woman and that it was because of her you wouldn’t — I thought it was Laura Impiatt — then when I saw you with Lady Kitty I realized it was her and I couldn’t bear it — she was so lucky and rich and now she had you as well — it was too awful, I felt I’d go mad — and I thought if only she’d leave you alone I’d have some chance — at least I don’t know what I thought — because I’d sort of left you then, only of course I hadn’t — I was sort of insane with misery — it was a dreadful thing to do — and then the next day the poor lady was dead — ’

  ‘So you needn’t have sent the letter anyway.’

  ‘So I needn’t have sent the letter anyway. Well, that’s a terrible way to talk — it was so awfully unkind to him, to Mr Jopling, and so unkind to you — but I expect he didn’t believe it — I typed the letter, I didn’t sign it — and I only said about you not about her — I expect lots of people think they’re in love with his wife just because she was a famous beauty, they fall in love with her photo — perhaps he thought it was that, or else that it was a letter from a mad person — and then she was dead anyway. He never said anything to you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then I expect he thought that it was a mad letter, people like him must get lots of them.’

  ‘I expect so.’

  ‘It’s been so on my conscience, I simply had to tell you, it’s been eating me up. Can you forgive me?’

  So it was little innocent thoughtless Tommy who had brought it all about. Out of her childish resentment and woman’s spite Tommy had shopped me to fate. She must never know. Another lifelong secret. Gunnar must have got her letter on the Tuesday morning. Then when Kitty made the excuse so as not to go to the party at Downing Street he decided to test his suspicions. He came back and — what? Shook Biscuit until she told him where we were? The details did not matter. Unknowing Tommy had brought about the encounter which killed Kitty and married Crystal and brought double-intensified eternal damnation into my life and Gunnar’s. Not Clifford, not Biscuit, not, thank God, a dreadful plot of spouses to punish a detested criminal. I felt a kind of crazy relief combined with a renewed agony at the accidentalness of it all. If only I had had the sense to take Kitty somewhere else on that Sunday morning, almost any other place would have saved us.

  ‘Can you forgive me?’ Tommy repeated.

  ‘I expect so. As I said, time will show.’

  ‘You sound very cold about it. Perhaps you don’t care much what I do.’

  ‘Perhaps not. That’s your way home, this is mine.’

  ‘I’m coming with you.’

  ‘I hope you’ll invite me to your wedding with Mr Spranger. I’m getting used to weddings, I rather enjoy them.’

  ‘I’m not going to marry him, I’m going to marry you.’

  We were standing at the corner of Kensington Church Street. It was beginning to snow quite fast now. The bells of St Mary Abbots were ringing Christmas in with wild cascades of joy. Other churches nearby had taken up the chime. The Christ child, at any rate, had managed to get himself born.

  ‘Happy Christmas, Tommy.’

  ‘I’m going to marry you, Hilary.’

  ‘Are you, Thomas?’

  ‘Yes, I’m going to marry you.’

  ‘Are you, Thomasina?’

  A BIOGRAPHY OF IRIS MURDOCH

  Iris Murdoch (1919–1999) was one of the most influential British writers of the twentieth century. She wrote twenty-six novels over forty years, as well as plays, poetry, and works of philosophy. Heavily influenced by existentialist and moral philosophy, Murdoch’s novels were also notable for their rich characters, intellectual depth, and handling of controversial topics such as adultery and incest.

  Born in Dublin, Ireland, Murdoch moved to London with her parents as a child. She attended Somerville College in Oxford where she studied classics, ancient history, and philosophy. While at Oxford, she was a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain (which she later left, disillusioned) and, in the 1940s, worked in Austrian and Belgian relief camps for the United Nations. After completing her postgraduate degree at Newnham College in Cambridge, she became a Fellow of St. Anne’s College, Oxford, where she lectured in philosophy for fifteen years.

  In 1954, she published her first novel, Under the Net, about a struggling young writer in London, which the American Modern Library would later select as one of the one hundred best English-language novels of the twentieth century and Time magazine would list as among the twenty-five best novels since 1923. Two years after completing Under the Net, Murdoch married John Bayley, an English scholar at the University of Oxford and an author. In a 1994 interview, Murdoch described her relationship with Bayley as “the most important thing in my life.” Bayley’s memoir about their relationship, Elegy for Iris, was made into the major motion picture Iris, starring Judi Dench and Kate Winslet, in 2001.

  For three decades, Murdoch published a new book almost every year, including historical fiction such as The Red and the Green, about the Easter Rebellion in 1916, and the philosophical play Acastos: Two Platonic Dialogues. She was awarded the 1978 Booker Prize for The Sea, The Sea, won the Royal Society Literary Award in 1987, and was made a Dame of the British Empire in 1987 by Queen Elizabeth.

  Her final years were clouded by a long struggle with Alzheimer’s before her passing in 1999.