by Iris Murdoch
‘Can it really?’
‘Yes. Did you know?’
‘No, but I can imagine.’
‘I was up on the common with Zed. We saw a white horse all by itself.’
‘Perhaps it belongs to the gipsies.’
‘It was rolling on its back. Then when it saw Zed it jumped up. When it saw a dog near it was frightened. It went away then.’
‘A big horse frightened by a little dog!’
‘It was a pony more than a horse. I saw Uncle George coming out of the library, but he didn’t see me. Once I saw Uncle George being in two different places at the same time.’
‘He can’t have been, unless you were too.’
‘I was on top of a bus, you see.’
‘Does that make it different?’
‘Yes.’
‘Perhaps there’s someone else who looks like him.’
‘Perhaps. I will just rescue that fly.’
William saw a bright-winged fly lying on top of the glossy restless water which was moving quietly about at their feet. Adam slid into the pool easily, noiselessly, like a water rat, not disturbing the glossy surface. He carefully floated the fly on to the back of his hand and reached up to tilt it on to the concrete near to William’s bare feet. The fly shook itself, drew its legs briskly over its wings, and flew away. Adam waved a little polite farewell wave and swam off into the crowding steam. William, who had forgotten about his death during his conversation with Adam, remembered it again. He thought, when that boy is twenty I shall have been dead for twelve years.
Soon after his dive which had aroused such strong but different feelings in the breasts of two observers, Tom McCaffrey ran into Diane Sedleigh. Before this encounter Tom had swum along, exercising his quiet effortless Ennistonian crawl, with a lot of unhappy muddled thoughts buzzing around inside his handsome head about which his wet darkened hair flopped or swirled. It was now two days since his extraordinary interview with John Robert. During this time Tom had done nothing, had, almost, hidden. He had made no plan. He had stayed at home, unable to read Paradise Lost, unable to work on his pop song, unable even to watch Greg’s colour television. He felt physically sick with anxiety and foreboding, alienated from himself as in a bad attack of ‘flu. The curious excitement he had felt just after the interview had faded, or been changed into some lurid less pleasing sense of being captive. He still felt it was impossible to ‘get out of it’; certainly he could not now (though, as Emma pointed out, in a way nothing was easier) simply write a letter to Rozanov saying that he had decided not to proceed. This letter would have to contain (he had not told Emma of John Robert’s terrible proviso) his promise never to attempt to come near Harriet Meynell. Never? At his age? How could he be in such a far-fetched predicament? He had to go on, he had to see the girl, although the prospect held no attraction except that of acting out a dream-like destiny. He felt now no ‘romantic curiosity’, no ardour for some challenging ‘quest’. What he did feel as he swam along so privately, so wretched, inside the steamy roly-poly, was a kind of restless, nasty erotic adventurism. He had been perfectly happy as he was. Now he was being forced to think about girls! All right! He thought to himself, yes, John Robert has changed my value. He has made me worse! At that moment he ran straight into Diane who was swimming equally strongly in the opposite direction. Emerging at close quarters into visibility, their outstretched arms entwined, then they heeled over knocking each other away.
‘Sorry.’
‘Diane!’ Tom had of course had his brother’s mistress pointed out to him long ago by someone, perhaps Valerie Cossom, who took such an interest in George’s activities. Tom had never learnt Diane’s surname and had, in so far as he ever thought of her, used her first name, which now instinctively came out.
Diane, with her dark little cap of short hair, looked much the same whether her head was wet or dry, which was not the case with Tom. With wet hair his face looked gaunter, fiercer, older. Diane did not know who he was.
‘It’s Tom, Tom McCaffrey. Don’t be afraid.’ Tom was not sure why he said this. He took hold of the strap of her blue bathing costume.
‘Oh - please let go — ’ Diane’s wet hand scrabbled helplessly at Tom’s hand. She gulped water. ‘Let go, you’re pushing me under.’
Tom let go, but barred her way, treading water and touching her arms with his finger tips. At close quarters her wet face looked childish, red, the make-up a little smudged.
‘How’s George?’ said Tom.
‘I haven’t seen him.’
‘May I come and talk to you, just talk, you know? I’d like that. George wouldn’t mind, would he?’
‘No.’
‘So I can come?’
‘I mean don’t come, please don’t come.’
‘I just want to talk to an older woman, I need advice.’
‘No.’
‘Be a sport, Diane. I say, is it true that George has murdered Stella? That’s what they’re all saying!’ Tom uttered these idiotic words as a sort of joke. He now saw Diane’s small face crumple into a grimacing animal’s mask, and in a second, she shot away from him as swiftly as an otter, her departing kick jabbing his leg. Tom did not try to follow. He felt degraded and rotten. He thought, I will go and see her, I don’t care!
‘Hello, Tom!’ It was Alex. They danced round each other in the warm water, touching each other like ballet dancers pretending to be boxers.
‘Shall we go home, then?’ said Pearl a bit crossly to Hattie.
Pearl and Hattie were still in happy ignorance of John Robert’s plan, since the sage had not yet managed to compose the letter which was to explain it. In fact he had now decided to overcome his nervous reluctance and to visit the Slipper House in person on the following day.
Pearl had at last persuaded Hattie to come to the Institute. Hattie had bought a sober black one-piece bathing suit with a skirt at Bowcocks. She had also visited Anne Lapwing’s Boutique with Pearl, and had bought a summer dress, which Pearl chose. Now today it was snowing.
Hattie and Pearl were standing in Diana’s Garden beside the railings which surrounded the pitiful jumpings of Lud’s Rill. Pearl wore a hooded anorak and trousers, Hattie an overcoat and a woollen cap and woollen stockings. They had got as far as the changing-room when Hattie suddenly funked it.
‘What was the matter anyway?’
‘It was just like Denver.’
‘What on earth do you mean?’
‘And it’s all so public, I don’t want all those women looking at me.’
‘But people have looked at you all over the place, and not only women!’
‘Yes, but it’s different here, it’s awful. And everyone swims so frightfully well — ’
‘So do you.’
‘No, not - I’m sorry.’
‘Well, shall we go or stay?’
Hattie had been appalled by the crowded and so public scene in the women’s changing-rooms, with so many women of all shapes and sizes with practically nothing (sometimes nothing) on, taking showers and standing about and chattering to each other. The place was so full and animated and noisy, and you couldn’t keep your cubicle, you had to carry your clothes to a locker and have a key to look after and so on. Hattie had pictured something much more dignified and discreet and private, and how, in her black costume, she would issue quietly to the water and slip noiselessly in. Pearl had said to her, ‘No one will bother you, no one will notice you, why do you think you’re so important!’
Hattie said, ‘I don’t, I just want to be quiet.’ There was little quietness in the changing-room, indeed it was difficult to find anywhere to stand without being jostled by wet fleshy women. And although she did not explain it properly to Pearl, the dérèglement of Hattie’s senses was increased by something quite unexpected which filled her with a terrible sick nostalgia before she could even make out what it was. The combination of the warmth, the smell of wet wood, and the snowy light outside brought back so intensely the atmosphere of skiing in the Rock
ies, at Aspen, the return from snow into the warm wooden interior with dripping skis and wet boots. Hattie had never been very happy at Denver, but this piercing reminder came with a whiff of a far-off home, a lost home, a lost childhood.
‘Let’s go back. We’ll light a fire in the kitchen like you said. Don’t be cross with me, Pearlie.’
When Tom, now dressed, approached them, Emma and Hector Gaines, having discovered each other as historians, had been talking for some time. Emma was muffled up in a long fur-collared coat and a Trinity scarf, both of which had belonged to his father. The smell of the coat had mingled disturbingly with the smell of his mother’s face powder on her letter which, just arrived, he had thrust into the coat pocket as he was leaving the house. Now, out of doors, it was too cold to smell anything. Hector had abandoned his dejeuner sur l’herbe act, and was in swimming-trunks desperately resolved to display his not inconsiderable physique to Anthea: he had been a rugger blue at Cambridge, and had a lot of red curly hair on his chest. (Anthea had not turned up, however.) He had boiled himself scarlet in the stews, but was careful not to exhibit his mediocre swimming. Now, as he glanced anxiously around, he was shivering with cold. Emma had steered him off the emotive topic, on which Emma’s accent had started him, of nineteenth-century Irish history. They had been discussing The Triumph of Aphrodite.
‘Hello you two, you’ve found each other, good.’
‘He’s told me a lot I didn’t know about the relation between Purcell and Gay,’ said Hector to Tom.
‘How’s the masque going, Hector?’
‘Terrible. We’re having trouble with the chorus of animals. And we need a counter-tenor.’
Emma’s leg kicking Tom met Tom’s leg kicking Emma.
‘Oh,’ said Tom, ‘but surely there aren’t any any more? Besides, who likes that funny noise? It’s like what Shylock said about the bagpipes.’
‘I don’t care for that weird falsetto myself,’ said Hector, ‘but the music needs it. Jonathan Treece says we can make do with a tenor.’
‘You’re freezing,’ said Emma. ‘Go and dress or go back in one of those holes.’
‘Yes, well - have you seen Anthea, Tom? No? Well, I’ll stay a bit. Good-bye. We’ll settle the Irish question another day.’ Blue, he shuddered off.
‘We bloody won’t!’
Tom said, ‘Here comes my mother.’
Alex, also dressed, came brightly up.
‘Alex, this is my friend Emmanuel Scarlett-Taylor. Emma, my mother.’
‘I’m glad to meet you,’ said Alex, ‘I’ve heard such wonderful things about you, I hope you’ll come and see me, Tom will bring you. Oh hello, Gabriel. This is my daughter- In-law Gabriel. What’s the matter?’
Gabriel, distraught, her wind-chapped face rawly framed in a tight cotton scarf knotted under her chin, had found a pretext to run out to look for her Indian. It had occurred to her that she had despaired too soon. The man might not have left the Institute. He might have gone to swim. The text (a favourite of Bill the Lizard) occurred to her, ‘in so far as you do it unto the least of these you do it unto me’. The bearded Indian even looked a little like Jesus Christ. She had been tried and found wanting.
‘Yes, I know Mr Taylor, hello. I’m looking for an Indian man with a beard, have you seen one?’
No, they had not.
‘Well, I’ll run on - sorry to - well, good-bye — ’ Gabriel ran on, her medium-high heels slipping on the thin pale-greyish layer of snow on to which the small papery flakes were still uncertainly descending. She began to peer down into the stews.
‘My daughter-in-law is so quaint,’ said Alex, ‘we all love her. Well, auf Wiedersehen.’ In black boots and fur coat she strode away.
‘I wish you would tell your family that my surname is Scarlett-Taylor.’
‘What did you think of my ma?’
‘Very good-looking. What wonderful things have you told her about me?’
‘None. She seems to have taken a fancy to you.’
‘She doesn’t want you to marry,’ said Emma, whose quick suspicious mind had grasped this idea in a flash.
‘My marriage seems to be on everybody’s mind.’
‘Coo-ee, coo-ee!’
‘That’s my mother calling Ruby.’
‘You mean her servant? Why there’s that girl again.’
Hattie and Pearl, red-nosed and very much the worse for the weather, were passing by in the direction of the exit. The temperature, which had just fallen another degree, had opposite effects upon their appearance, making Pearl look about forty, and Hattie about fourteen.
‘Coo-ee, coo-ee!’
Ruby appeared, carrying Alex’s bag.
‘Hello, Ruby,’ said Tom, ‘who are those two girls who have just gone by?’
‘That’s little Miss Harriet Meynell and her lady’s maid. I must fly.’
Emma began to laugh. ‘Oh God!’ He thrust his hand into his pocket and felt his mother’s letter. He drew it forth and held its fragrance against his face while he continued to laugh.
George McCaffrey entered the Ennistone Rooms through the little octagonal ‘Baptistry’ which enclosed the big glowing bronze doors from which one descended to the source, and which also constituted the quickest direct route from the Promenade to the Rooms. The Rotunda, or ‘Baptistry’ as it was more popularly called, had two doors, one on each side, which were normally kept locked. Sometimes, however, because of maintenance work, one or the other might be found open. For George on this day (the afternoon of the day recorded above) both doors stood open so that he was able to pass from the Promenade to the Rooms without having to pass the ‘Porter’s Lodge’ or Reception at the front entrance of the Rooms. He paused in the Baptistry to inspect the big studded doors, a silvery gold in colour, from behind which steam was continually seeping. (This steam was whisked away by a fan situated above.) George felt the doors. They were hot. He turned the large brass handle and pulled. They were locked. He went on, padding quietly, into the Rooms, entering by a door marked private into the main downstairs corridor.
It was quiet in the corridor, or so it seemed to George as he stood there listening to his heart beat. In fact there was a steady background drumming sound which was the noise of the hot water eternally discharging itself into the boat-shaped baths in the bathrooms of the individual rooms. However, if the doors of the rooms were kept shut, this sound was diffused into a deep vibration which soon ceased to be consciously audible. George stood a while experiencing this vibration which seemed so much in tune with his own heart-beats and the vibration of his whole taut being.
He walked on a bit, his feet softly printing the deep furry carpet. When he reached the door of number forty-four he stood and listened. There was only water noise within. He knocked softly. Nothing. Could his knock be heard? Should he knock more loudly? Should he enter? He turned the handle very gently and pushed the door a little. Nothing, except that the water noise was louder and the sulphur smell stronger. He pushed the door a little more and peered in. The room was lighter than the dim corridor, obliquely touched by the sun, and almost dazzling for a moment by contrast, even though a curtain had been half pulled across the window. George saw first a table piled with books and papers, then the bed and the great form of the philosopher lying upon it. He was asleep.
George released his breath and quickly, after a glance behind him along the empty corridor, slid into the room. The noise inside the room was considerable since Rozanov had left his bathroom door open. George closed the outside door. He was not unduly surprised either to find Rozanov in, or to find him asleep. John Robert lived by a rigid timetable which involved early work and late work and a deep sleep of about an hour’s duration in the afternoon. (This sleep, he maintained, enabled him to live two days in the space of one.) He was lying, now, upon his back and snoring. George stood, his hand upon his heart, gazing. Then he moved quietly forward.
No young swain of twenty, as it might be Tom McCaffrey, as he approached the half-naked sl
umbering body, carelessly relaxed, of the young girl (figured perhaps as a shepherdess) whom he adored, could have felt a greater excitement than did George in thus surprising John Robert Rozanov asleep. John Robert was clothed, but with his shirt open and the waist of his trousers undone. He was not inside the bedclothes, but lay on top of them with the crumpled white bed cover pulled up roughly as far as his knees. One shoeless foot, clad in a thick blue woollen sock, protruded. One hand lay upon his chest, the other was extended, palm upward, over the edge of the bed, extended toward George in what looked like an amicable gesture. George studied the open hand. Then he looked at the sleeping face. John Robert’s face did not look calm in repose. The open moist lips, through which the slightly bubbling snore emerged, were still urgently thrust forward in the dominating moue which was their customary expression. The closed eyes, in their stained hollows, were slightly screwed up. The cheek-bones still protruded upon the flabby face, and the furrows on either side of the large hooked nose were like violent scourings. Upon the forehead, above which the frizzy grey hair had not yet started to recede, the flesh rose soft and pink in little regular pipings between the deep lines. A dirty grey stubble covered the chin and the thick much-folded saurian neck. Only the chin seemed weaker, less formidably decisive. George realized with a little shock the reason for this. John Robert had taken out his false teeth, which were to be seen glinting upwards in a shallow white cup upon the bedside table.
George gazed, conscious of his own breathing and of the strained heavings of his chest. Then he backed away and, glancing often at the bed, inspected the room. The windows of the lower rooms (which on this side of the building looked across a private lawn to the trees of the Botanic Garden) had, after much controversy, been fitted with frosted glass. George felt in no danger of being seen, other than by the terrible sleeper, as he poked about. He went to close the double doors of the bathroom in order to decrease the insistent noise, then feared that a sudden change in vibration might awaken his teacher. He sidled into the bathroom and gazed on the exotic little scene, familiar to him since he had, in younger and more carefree days, treated himself to the enjoyment of the waters in this particularly intense privacy. The taps disgorged their thick noisy jets with fast aggressive violence, and the foot or so of water which constantly surged and frothed in the bottom of the curving blunt-ended bath was covered in tumbling puff-balls of steam. The tiles gleamed and moistly ran, and the place was filled with a faint warm fog which seemed to put a film over George’s eyes as he looked with fascination upon the hot violence.
