by Iris Murdoch
The ‘stews’, as I explained earlier, are round holes about twelve feet deep and fifteen feet across, with a seat around the edge at the bottom. An iron staircase winds down into the water, which is just deep enough to allow the head and shoulders of the seated hedonist to emerge. The temperatures, at different graded levels in the different stews, are considerably higher than that of the pool, and in cold weather the atmosphere below is thickly and breathlessly steamy. Ruby peered over the side, but could see nothing of her hero.
John Robert was saying in his rather hard decisive voice to William (Bill the Lizard) Eastcote, as they stewed at 45°C, ‘Thank God there’s still no piped music here.’
‘Yes, some people wanted it, but it would make the whole scene quite unreal, and the great thing about the Baths is it’s such a real place, if you see what I mean.’
‘I see very well.’
The only other inhabitant of the stew, recognizing Rozanov, moved away at once and climbed the steps in shy confusion. (He was in fact Nesta Wiggins’s father, a ladies’ tailor in a small way in Burkestown.)
‘So the Rooms have been done up again,’ said John Robert, ‘and you can book in like a hotel.’
‘Yes.’ Eastcote added, ‘You could be peaceful there, you could work undisturbed.’
John Robert was silent.
At that moment Adam came down the iron steps into the steamy hole. He stood on the steps with the very hot water up to his knees and looked to see who was there. He hoped the stew would be empty. He recognized Eastcote, but not Rozanov whom he had never seen.
William said, ‘Hello,’ but Adam had already turned and skipped back up the steps.
Rozanov said, ‘How very like his father Rufus has become. That was Rufus, wasn’t it?’
‘No. Don’t you remember. I told you ages ago, Rufus died as a child. That is the other boy, Brian McCaffrey’s son, Adam.’
‘Oh yes - you told me in London.’
The old friends had met occasionally over the years in the metropolis when Rozanov made philosophical visits.
‘He does resemble George, or rather Alan.’
‘I’m sorry Alan’s not still around; an interesting man, though I scarcely knew him. You tell me Hugo’s gone too.’
‘Yes, Belfounder died several years ago.’
‘What about all those valuable clocks?’
‘He left them to that writer, I forget his name.’
‘I’d have liked another talk with Hugo.’
‘There must be someone here for your purposes.’
‘For me to make use of!’
‘I don’t mean it like that.’
‘Of course not, Bill. Damn it, there’s you!’
‘I still play bridge, but that’s not your scene! What about N?’
‘No.’
‘George McCaffrey, you said — ’
‘No.’
‘Well, there’s the priest. I told you — ’
‘A Jew?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s good.’
‘Shall I —?’
‘Don’t do anything. I want everything to happen slowly.’
‘Are things going to happen then?’
‘Perhaps only in my mind.’
‘Will you come to Meeting with me on Sunday?’
‘I love your Quakerish Meeting and your Quakerish ways, but it would be false.’
‘You mean it would seem false.’
‘You should have been a philosopher. How is your cousin Milton, still busy saving people?’
‘Yes, he’s very well.’
‘How are you, Bill? You’ve got very thin.’
‘I’m fine.’ But Eastcote had just had some disturbing news from his doctor.
‘I wish I was thin, I feel lean and hawk-like. May I have lunch with you? What a pity Rose has gone, I loved to see her at your table, it was like visiting some wholesome past.’
‘Well, she has gone too.’
‘Don’t say “soon it will be our turn”.’
‘I wouldn’t say that to you!’
‘You can say anything to me! Come, let’s go, I’m boiled.’
They clambered up the steps, holding hard on to the iron rail, and emerged into the cold air, coming out of the steam into the sunshine.
‘There’s the priest,’ said Eastcote.
Not far away Father Bernard, not yet immersed, stood looking down at the water. He sported a certain peculiarity, not wearing swimming-trunks but a full-length black costume, rather loose and rumoured to be made of wool, as if it might be a bathing-cassock.
‘He looks a clown,’ said Rozanov.
‘He is not that,’ said Eastcote, ‘but he is an odd man.’
‘Why does he wear that costume? Is he scarred?’
‘I don’t know.’
At that moment Father Bernard sat down on the edge of the pool and let himself slide down gingerly into the water, then swam away with an awkward breast-stroke. He was not a good swimmer.
‘Can’t he dive?’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Eastcote.
‘He doesn’t look as if he can swim either. He’ll be in difficulties directly.’
‘Some non-swimmers are not fools.’
‘Do you tell me so? I live so out of the world! Where did I leave my glasses?’
As John Robert turned he came face to face with Ruby, who was still standing near the railed top of the stew. He recognized her.
‘Why, Miss Doyle. It is Miss Doyle, isn’t it?’
The recognition, without his glasses, was something of a feat, since John Robert had not seen Ruby for some years.
Ruby smiled her wide rare huge smile. She was overjoyed at being recognized by Rozanov. She hoped that one or two people whom she knew who had been standing nearby were still there to witness the scene. She nodded her head. She stared rapturously up at the philosopher. It did not occur to her to speak.
At this moment Ruby heard, from across the steam-covered expanse of the Bath, the voice of Alex calling her. ‘Coo-ee, coo-ee.’ This, very high-pitched, was Alex’s special call for Ruby, which she used, regardless of surroundings, in all sorts of situations, in shopping centres, swimming-pools, parks, as well as in the garden at Belmont. Ruby ignored the call.
‘Now wait a moment please, Miss Doyle,’ said John Robert. ‘Bill, where are my glasses?’
‘Here.’ William Eastcote fetched the glasses, in their case, from a seat.
John Robert opened the case and drew out a sealed envelope folded in two.
‘Coo-ee, coo-ee!’
‘Now would you give this - is she still in service with Mrs McCaffrey?’ He did not seem to expect her to speak.
‘Yes,’ said Eastcote.
‘Would you give this to your mistress, please? I thought I would probably run into one or other of you at the Baths.’
‘Coo-ee!’
Ruby nodded and took the letter.
John Robert said, ‘It’s quite like old times, isn’t it?’
He smiled, and Ruby, smiling again, turned quickly away. Ruby, unknown to Alex, had carried the correspondence of lovers between John Robert and Linda Brent.
‘Wherever did you get to?’ said Alex as they left the Institute. It was not a long way to Belmont and they always walked. Ruby carried the bag with the swimming-things, now wet and heavy.
Ruby did not respond to these words which were not intended as a question. The two women walked along together in the bleak spring sunshine, dressed in their winter overcoats. They did not walk fast.
Ruby touched John Robert’s letter in her pocket. She drew out the seconds and the minutes. It was like waiting for a natural function, like waiting for a sneeze, pleasurable. At last she produced the envelope.
‘He gave me this for you.’
Alex did not know Rozanov’s writing, which she had not seen since he wrote to thank her for the expensive wedding present which she had sent to him and Linda. But of course she did not need to be told who ‘he�
�� was. She said nothing and put the letter into her handbag. She and Ruby walked on together, stony-faced, like two marching goddesses. Robin Osmore, raising his hat unnoticed on the other side of the road, turned and stared after them.
Stella McCaffrey, née Henriques, was lying on the sofa in the sitting-room at Brian and Gabriel’s house. Brian and Gabriel lived in the sober and not very new housing estate called Leafy Ridge. Their house had been called ‘Como’ by its previous owner, and although (since Brian despised such pretensions) the name was not used as an address (the address being simply number 27), it lingered on as a family nickname.
Stella was lying back propped up on cushions. Her legs were extended and covered with a blue-and-white chequered rug. Adam had just placed Zed on top of her, positioning him carefully just below her throat. The little dog had stretched his front paws forward in a gesture which seemed protective. She could feel his blunt claws against her neck. He looked into Stella’s face with a mixture of curiosity and affection which she found quite unbearably touching. Afraid that tears might come, she coughed and lifted the little creature up, feeling the frailty of the skeleton which she could almost have crushed between her hands. Adam came forward and took Zed back. He stared at Stella unsmilingly but with concern. Then he went out through the glass doors into the garden.
At the foot of the sofa stood Brian. He also, with an expression resembling his son’s, looked at his sister- In-law with grave concern. He admired and valued Stella. He could not put a name to his feelings for her; of course he loved her, but ‘love’ denotes many things. There was a mutual shyness between them. Sometimes when he kissed her, as he did rarely, for instance at Christmas, he squeezed her hand. He would have liked to be sure that she understood his esteem. His hostility to George was partly compounded of his sense of how unappreciated Stella was. He wished he could have an easy family comradeship with her. He imagined a happy family life in which he would effortlessly enjoy Stella’s company, chat with her, make jokes with her, work with her, have supper with her, play bridge with her (Stella was a good player). None of this happened. Now that Stella was suddenly away from George, in Brian’s house, he did not know what to do with her, he did not know what it meant or what it would bring about.
Gabriel, also gazing at the phenomenon of Stella lying on the sofa, was also at a loss. It had been her idea to bring Stella here; she had wanted it very much, she could not now remember exactly why. She too loved Stella. She wanted to help her and protect her and spoil her, to tend her and cherish her. She wanted to touch that proud head with a sympathetic hand. She wanted to rescue Stella, at least for a while (or perhaps, why not, forever) from her dangerous life. She wanted to give Stella a holiday from being bullied, a holiday from fighting. She wanted to get Stella right away from George. She wanted George to be isolated and accursed. She wanted Stella to be vindicated and rescued. She wanted to condemn George to loneliness, she wanted to think of George as being alone, she wanted to think of him as absolutely shut away in that tragic solitude which she had so much felt when she last looked down at his dark unconscious wet swimming head which scarcely broke the surface as he turned. Such thoughts and feelings, half-conscious and thoroughly mixed up together, conflicted in Gabriel’s bosom as she gazed at her handsome clever afflicted sister- In-law. Gabriel was of course aware of Brian’s admiration for Stella, and it caused her a very small local pain, but there was nothing dark or ill in her sense of this connection, and she too would have liked an ordinary happy family life wherein Stella would come to supper and talk and play bridge while Gabriel made sandwiches in the kitchen and listened to them all laughing.
Standing watching Stella from near the door was Ruby Doyle. Ruby had been ‘sent over’ by Alex to ‘help out’ in ‘settling Stella in’. Alex might have been expected to come herself, but she did not want to and did not. Instead (as on other comparable occasions) she sent Ruby, as a monarch might send a diplomat or a valued craftsman. In fact Ruby, at Como, was rarely of any use at all and Gabriel did not know what to do with her. Gabriel had no servant, no maid, no char; she was temperamentally incapable of having an employee, she did everything herself. She did not want help. Brian sometimes vaguely and insincerely exhorted her to improve her mind: ‘Take up some study,’ ‘Do a degree or something.’ Nothing came of this, and to persuade herself of its impossibility Gabriel liked to be fully occupied. She enjoyed housework. She had enjoyed preparing and arranging Stella’s room and putting in daffodils. There were three bedrooms at Como, two middling-sized ones and one little one. Adam occupied the little one so as to leave a decent ‘guest room’, and because he preferred it. Although they hardly ever had guests, since Brian detested them, Gabriel had taken pleasure in making the guest room attractive, choosing ‘guest books’, arranging reading-lamps, writing-paper. When Ruby arrived, there was nothing relevant to Stella which Gabriel could think of for Ruby to do. Gabriel had already washed up breakfast and cleaned the bathroom. She could not ask Ruby to weed the garden. She made Ruby a cup of coffee.
Ruby liked Gabriel, though mutual shyness made them speechless with each other. She did not like Brian, since she regarded him as hostile to George, and she had ‘taken over’ Alex’s view of Brian as somehow not quite a member of the family. Ruby liked Adam, with whom she had a silent semi-secret friendship. As a small child he had held on to her skirts, and sometimes still touched or twitched her dress as a remembrance of old times. She did not like Zed, a tiresome yappy little rat-like thing upon which she was always in danger of treading (she was short-sighted); but she inhibited her irritation for Adam’s sake. She did not like Stella, whom she regarded as the sole cause of George’s misfortunes.
Stella, lying on the sofa and looking at the way her upturned feet made a bump in the chequered rug, felt altogether alienated from her customary reality, or was perhaps realizing that she had not, and for some time now had not had, any customary reality. She looked past Brian at the tiny garden, the overlapping slats of the fence, some horrible yellow daffodils jerking about in the wind. She very much wanted to cry. She lifted up her head and hardened her eyes and wondered what on earth she, she, was doing in this place among these people.
Vanity, she thought, not even pride, vanity. I am stiffened by it, it is my last shred of virtue not to be seen to break down. I married George out of vanity, and I have stayed with him out of vanity. Yet she loved George. She had often wished George dead, painlessly removed, blotted out, made never to have been. Her father was right, George was a vast mistake, but he was her mistake, and in that her was all her vanity and all her love, jumbled together into something mysterious and valuable. If she could have done so she would have taken him away, would even now take him away, to some other place where no one knew the old George, where he was not surrounded by people who licked their lips and thought they understood him better than his wife did. Stella would like to have been alone, shipwrecked on a desert island with George, amid dangers.
Stella felt her particular Jewishness as an alienation from English society, as a kind of empty secret freedom, as if she were less densely made than ordinary people. She had perceived, but had never understood, George’s alienation, which she had seen first as a virtue, later as a charm. He had charmed her, he charmed her still. But what an ugly graceless mess it all was, and what a doom was upon her. She lifted up her handsome Jewish head and smoothed down her strong dark hair which grew up like a crown or turban above her brow. Her father had made her feel like a queen. Why on earth had she talked to dear well-meaning Gabriel and allowed herself to be brought to this house?
For the first time in her life Stella was feeling really ill and tired. She must be unusually weak to be, as she now was, afraid of George, afraid that he might actually kill her, of course by accident. He might, on seeing her, become, for an instant, mad with rage because of the car accident, which had been her fault, because she had needled him into a frenzy, because she had survived. Disgust at what had happened might work in George as
a sudden irresistible urge to ‘finish it off’, and by this well-known method to destroy himself. Stella felt too weak and too confused to go back, too weak to fight George physically as she had sometimes done in the past, to hold him off until the impulse of rage should fall back into dull self-hatred. People who thought that Stella lived in hell were not wrong; but like all those who do not, they failed to understand that hell is a large place wherein there are familiar refuges and corners.
Lately a new and poisonous growth had developed in Stella’s mind: jealousy. Of course she had known for years that George ‘frequented’ Diane Sedleigh, and some ‘well-wisher’ had made it her business to inform Stella that George had ‘set up’ the little prostitute in a flat for his own exclusive use. Something of Stella’s own original respect for George had made her virtually ignore these tidings. She knew how low George could sink, but there were ways and ways of sinking, there were styles of it. She saw George as proud, even in his own manner fastidious, and with this she connected her own conception of how high, in spite of everything, he placed his wife. (Some of those who intuited these thoughts of Stella’s considered them completely daft.) He and she remained, Stella felt, above and apart from anything which George might do with a whore. Now, perhaps as a result of physical shock and debility, this agnostic magnanimity was shaken. Stella began, like any crude ordinary person, to imagine George with another woman. That way real madness lay, and a kind of ignoble detestation of her husband which she had never yet allowed herself to feel. When she felt this poisonous pain she became weak, with the weakness which had made her come to Gabriel to be safe and looked after: the weakness which made her sometimes yearn to take a taxi to Heathrow and a ticket to Tokyo. She pictured her father’s wise clever gentle loving face, and she felt the accursed wild tears again trying to flood her eyes out.
