by Iris Murdoch
Thursday afternoon went slowly, slowly by, and Tom continued to hide. The telephone rang but he was afraid to answer it. His days had already lost their sense, he could not read, he could not sit, the concept of ‘having a meal’ no longer existed. He drank a little whisky and tore bits off a stale loaf. He considered going to London, but he could not leave Ennistone without somehow removing these agonizing hooks and thorns from his heart. He had to ease the misery, though since he scarcely knew what it was he could not think clearly what to do about it. At last he suddenly thought, I’ll go and see William Eastcote, I’ll tell him everything and ask him what I ought to do. After all, Bill the Lizard is John Robert’s friend, he’s the only person in Ennistone that John Robert can tolerate! He might even explain to John Robert, intercede for me. Why ever didn’t I think of this before? It was evening, not yet quite dark. Tom selected one of Greg’s overcoats and one of Greg’s tweedy hats and slunk out into Travancore Avenue.
At Eastcote’s house, number 34 The Crescent, there seemed to be something happening. A number of lights were on and the door was open. A car was parked outside. Tom thought, oh hell, he’s got visitors. I must go back. Feeling intensely disappointed, he stood uncertainly at the bottom of the stone steps which led up to the door. Then he saw Anthea passing across the hall. At the same time he realized that he was standing in the light from the door and might be recognized by someone passing by. He went up the steps and into the house, closing the door behind him.
The hall was empty, full of the coloured beautiful things familiar to Tom since his childhood, when he had felt that these rugs and these tapestries and these huge bowls which Rose Eastcote used to fill with flowers existed somehow of necessity, composing an exotic place where very gentle tigers lived. The scene reassured him with a whiff from a safe authoritative world. But he felt at once that something was wrong. There was an odd silence, then lowered voices and padding. Anthea Eastcote came out of her uncle’s study. She was crying.
She saw him and said, ‘Oh Tom, how wonderful of you to come.’ She came up to him and put her arms round him, pressing her face into Greg’s coat.
Tom put his arms round her shoulders, pressing her against him, and moving his chin about in the mass of sweet-smelling brown-golden hair. He stared over her shoulder, feeling her heart beat and his own.
Dr Roach came out into the hall. He said, ‘Oh Tom, dear chap, you’re here, that’s good, that’s good.’
Dr Roach came forward and detached Anthea, who was now quietly sobbing, and propelled her into the drawing-room. She sat down on the sofa covering her face. He said to her, ‘Sit quiet with Tom. I’ll bring you a draught.’ He said to Tom, ‘He went off peacefully about an hour ago. He didn’t suffer at the end. He knew us. He said, “Pray always, pray to God.” Those were his last words. A saint if ever there was one.’ There were tears in the doctor’s eyes. He went out of the room.
Tom sat down beside Anthea. He knew now that William Eastcote was dead. He hugged Anthea, murmuring, ‘Oh darling, darling, don’t grieve so, I love you so much — ’
The doctor came back and gave Anthea a whitish drink in a glass. She stopped sobbing and moved a little away from Tom and drank the white stuff down slowly. Dr Roach, with a hand on Tom’s shoulder, said, ‘I’m glad you got to know so soon. I made several telephone calls - the news must be flying around. What a wonderful life, that’s what we must say to ourselves, mustn’t we. How terribly we shall all miss him. But what a wonderful life, what a wonderful man, not just a comforter but a living evidence of a religious truth. Anthea dear, hadn’t you better lie down upstairs for a while?’
Anthea, raising her face all reddened and swollen by weeping and brushing back her hair which was wet with tears, said, ‘You must go now, you must go to Miss Dunbury, I would be so glad if you would go to her. I’ll be all right now Tom has come.’
‘How good of you to remember Miss Dunbury. Well, I will go. Tom will look after you. And I’ve asked Dorothy to come in.’ (Dorothy was Mrs Robin Osmore.) ‘I’ll come back later this evening.’
When the doctor had gone Anthea said, gabbling as if there were something she had to explain or apologize for. ‘You see, I went back to York on Sunday and I didn’t know how ill he was, I mean, I knew he was very ill, but I didn’t expect this, and then the doctor rang up, and thank God I arrived in time to - to say goodbye.’ Tears overwhelmed her again and she leaned against Tom’s shoulder.
Dorothy Osmore came in. Even at this moment she could not see Anthea without thinking with exasperation of Greg’s failure. She was an upright good-natured woman but she could not help also, with a quick flicker of her thought, reflecting that Anthea must now be very rich.
Dorothy said to Tom (the sight of whom with Anthea displeased her), ‘There now, I’ll look after her.’
Tom stood up. Anthea rose with him and took hold of the lapels of the overcoat. She said, ‘Tom, I shall never forget that you came to me this evening. Oh Tom, may all be well. I’ll pray like he said, and you pray too. Let’s meet again soon. Good night.’
Anthea had returned to York full of the problem of Joey Tanner whom she vainly loved. She had not expected her uncle’s death. She had missed all the scandal about the Slipper House party and knew nothing of it. She spent much of Monday composing a letter to Joey saying that she knew he would never love her, and she would not see him again. On Tuesday she sent the letter off. On Wednesday she received the doctor’s call. Now she knew that her feelings about Joey, and indeed about everything else, were as nothing compared with the everything of William Eastcote, his goodness and the mystery of his death. She felt an intense wailing grief for which the only salve was that vanished goodness which she would now press forever to her heart.
Mrs Osmore, showing Tom out, recognized Gregory’s coat and hat. Outside in the dark street where the yellow lamps had been put on, Tom thought, Oh God, why did I not come to William Eastcote sooner, why did I not visit him and talk to him and ask him to guide me? Just telling all that stuff to him would have brought out the truth of it. Then he thought to himself, I too will never forget that I was with Anthea on this evening. Then he remembered his awful dark messy misery. He thought, I ought to see Hattie, but that’s impossible. I feel so mad, so bad, so crazy, so cast out. I won’t go to the Slipper House. I’ll go and see Diane. I’ll ask her about George, about that night.
At about the time when Tom, having braved the streets in disguise, had got so far as The Crescent, John Robert had at last made up his mind to go to the Slipper House.
Late on Wednesday he had, after all, in spite of the inadequacies of language, written an intemperate letter to George, the purpose of which was to ensure that John Robert would never have to see or hear of George again. This letter contained wild phrases such as ‘I would like to kill you’, and vituperation in the style of ‘fake fantasy villain, mean weak impotent rat, incapable of evil but spewing out the sickening black bile of your petty spite’, and ‘faux mauvais, the execrable taste of your contemptible schoolboy pranks merely expressive of your own realization of your mediocrity’ (and so on). Coldness and inattention had failed to get rid of George. The intemperate letter was to signal unambiguously that this policy had now ended. The sending of a letter constitutes a magical grasp upon the future. After completing his violent exorcism, John Robert dodged out to a nearby pillar-box and posted it. He needed to feel that he had thereby finally finished with George and could forget him.
On Thursday evening Tom and Rozanov actually passed each other in The Crescent, Rozanov bound for the Slipper House, and Tom for Diane’s flat, but both were so completely blinded by their thoughts that they failed to notice.
Nesta, who was sickened by the sight of women afraid of men, would have had a seizure had she been able to overhear the conversations which took place on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday between Pearl and Hattie.
In fact in this interim, during which neither of them left the house, a number of different theori
es were mooted by the beleaguered girls as mood succeeded mood. Hattie was often the more sanguine of the two. One reason for this was that whereas Pearl had studied the Ennistone Gazette article minutely, Hattie had glanced at it and thrown it away in disgust, and the horrible exact wording of it was not imprinted on her mind. Pearl had destroyed it promptly after it flew across the room, and Hattie’s remarks later showed that her understanding of what had been said and implied was mercifully vague. Another reason why Hattie was less perturbed was that she knew John Robert a good deal less well than Pearl did, and was inclined at more cheerful moments to think that he would ‘just find it funny’. His non-appearance (they expected him hourly) was then attributed to the fact that ‘he had forgotten about it all’. It was also of course possible that he had not seen the Gazette article, but the girls agreed that it was probable that some malicious busybody would make sure that the philosopher was informed.
Although Hattie kept saying that it would ‘blow over’, she was very anxious that Pearl should not leave her alone in the house. There was plenty of food in store and no need for Pearl to go away. As the conversations went on, Hattie was inevitably infected by Pearl’s anxiety, even though Pearl did her best not to communicate it. Then for a while she would keep asking Pearl for reassurance. ‘He can’t blame us, can he?’ ‘Of course not.’ ‘No one suggested it was our fault, did they?’ ‘No.’ Then Hattie would say, ‘He’s never coming. Let’s go to London. Come on, I want to go to the theatre.’ ‘The theatre?’ ‘Let’s go to London, and stay in a hotel.’ ‘Hattie, we can’t!’ ‘Why ever not? We’re free, aren’t we?’ The girls would then look at each other and laugh, or wail. They also discussed and dismissed the idea of writing an ‘explanatory letter’. The thing, thought of in that way, was inexplicable. Besides, there was always the small blessed possibility that he was unaware of the whole thing. The notion of walking round to Hare Lane was never seriously considered.
Pearl did not, or most of the time did not, think that John Robert could possibly believe all the awful things said in the Gazelle article. (Hattie and Pearl had not seen The Swimmer which was published on Tuesday.) But the need to be relieved of the fear that he might, took form as a most intense longing, a lover’s longing, for his presence and for the simple assurance that he still trusted her. She needed, and received, so little, but how precarious. There was of course no doubt that Rozanov would be very upset and hurt and angry. Pearl did not share, any more than Tom did, George’s illusion that the philosopher was indifferent to what people thought; he might be indifferent to hostility but not to ridicule. Her loving gaze had ‘estimated’ and ‘embraced’ the quality of Rozanov’s special dignity, his solemnity, his shyness, his particular awkward pomposity, his naïve unworldly egoism, his complete lack of ordinary social reactions, his lack of common sense, his distaste for mockery, and his inability to deal with it. All this made one. She had not often seen Rozanov in company, but had seen how, on such occasions (when talking to Margot and Albert, for instance) he imposed a seriousness which made gossip or even mildly malicious jokes impossible. Neither Pearl nor Hattie had ever teased him or seen him teased. Pearl also knew something of Rozanov’s view of George, and could measure his furious irritation at George’s intrusion into the picture. Pearl and Hattie had, as it happened, arrived to visit John Robert in California just after George’s ill-fated excursion to see his master, and Pearl had overheard John Robert say something to Steve Glatz, who was then a student. It was on that occasion too that Pearl noticed the jealous manner in which John Robert kept Hattie well away from his pupils, and his colleagues; so much so that Pearl vaguely framed the hypothesis, lately so vividly revived, that John Robert, so far from being indifferent to his grandchild, was obsessed with her.
Pearl was of course aware of John Robert’s match-making plan, since she had listened ardently at the door while it was being divulged. She had also witnessed Hattie’s outburst of distress and annoyance, and seen Tom McCaffrey’s yellow tulips fly out on to the lawn. But although the matter was no secret between them and could be referred to, they had not discussed it. Hattie retreated into the fastidious reserve and chaste mode of discourse which was so essential a part of their relation. They did not chat in a gossipy or malicious way about Tom, any more than they ever did about John Robert. This was not just an aspect of what Pearl sometimes wryly thought of as her ‘station’. It was to do with Hattie, with Hattie’s primness and still childish simplicity and dignity, and with Pearl, her particular love for Hattie and the preciousness of her trust. Pearl sometimes felt that she had been made, or remade, by that odd trust, and could not imagine what, without it, would have become of her.
So it was that, during this interim, while they waited ‘with hatches battened down’, as Hattie said, although they speculated about when John Robert would appear and whether he would be ‘awfully cross’, they did not discuss what he, or they, might or might not feel now about Tom and ‘the plan’. (Pearl mentioned to Hattie that Tom had rung up.) They did occasionally wonder ‘how the idea got around’; but Pearl steered Hattie off these topics, of whose enormity Hattie seemed not fully aware. Pearl dreaded most of all, with a dread which gradually crippled her mind, that John Robert might actually believe that she was somehow in league with George and it was she who had betrayed the secret. This dread made the days of waiting so painful that she began to want nothing more than to run straight to John Robert and babble out her explanations, and her love which she could not help feeling gave her rights, and even powers.
‘Perhaps he doesn’t know.’
‘Some kind person will have told him. If no one else, that impertinent editor will.’
‘He wasn’t impertinent. He just wrote to ask if I’d give an interview.’
‘I didn’t like his tone. Neither did you.’
‘I wish John Robert was on the telephone.’
‘You know he hates telephone calls. Anyway, what could we say just like that?’
‘It’s nothing really, it’s a fuss about nothing, we’ve made a melodrama out of it.’
‘It was a melodrama.’
‘People will forget it, they’ve probably forgotten it already.’
‘You don’t know Ennistone.’
‘Anyway it wasn’t our fault, was it, Pearlie?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘No, I know it wasn’t our fault, but I can’t help sometimes feeling that it was. Can you understand that?’
‘Yes!’
‘You don’t think John Robert could think we invited George in?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘I’m surprised John Robert hasn’t come, just to see if we’re all right.’
‘Well, perhaps he doesn’t know.’
‘You’re saying it now!’
‘After all, he may have been away.’
‘I suppose I ought to go and see Mrs McCaffrey and say — ’
‘Say what? Better say nothing.’
‘You thought we ought to see John Robert first and then see her.’
‘I thought John Robert would come at once.’
‘So did I. There’s that stained-glass window that the stone cracked. Oughtn’t we to do something about it?’
‘It was a beer can, not a stone, I heard it fall. The window’s quite safe.’
‘Yes, but it’s cracked, we ought to tell someone. Do you think John Robert’s brooding over it?’
‘No, he’s probably gone back to his philosophy book and forgotten all about us.’
‘I sometimes wonder how often he remembers that we exist.’
‘Don’t worry so, Hat dear.’
‘I wish he’d come and get it over. Why do we have to wait here? Are we slaves or something?’
‘He may have gone to London to give a lecture.’
‘Let’s go to London. We were going to go. We’ve waited here long enough.’
‘We’ve waited so long we may as well wait a little longer. You know we couldn’t enjoy
London without having seen him.’
‘We’re building it all up so, we’re making mountains out of molehills.’
‘The trouble is with him that all ordinary sense of size just vanishes!’
‘I know what you mean. How I hate Ennistone. I wish we were living in London. Let’s say we want to. We could have a flat, couldn’t we? You say, you tell him.’
‘All right.’
‘You won’t, you’ll chicken out. Oh, why on earth did he bring us here?’
‘It’s his home.’
‘California is his home. I wish we were back in America. What a crazy life we lead. Don’t you sometimes think we lead a crazy life?’ Yes.’
‘How long will it go on?’
‘Who knows.’
‘Pearlie, sometimes I feel so sad - when I go to bed - I feel like at school - just so relieved to become unconscious - it’s like wanting to be dead — ’
‘Oh don’t be silly, you’re young, you’ve got everything, when I was your age — ’
‘Yes, yes, yes, forgive me. Do you forgive me?’
‘Hattie, I shall throw something at you!’
‘I wonder who let out that story about Tom.’
‘Tom, I should think!’
‘No! Do you think so? Anyway, he can’t believe we did.’
‘No.’
‘And he can’t think you let George in, that’s absurd! Did the article say that? I can’t remember.’
‘Sort of.’
‘It’s ridiculous. He can’t blame us for anything, can he?’
‘No.’
‘Oh how I wish he’d come!’
‘Here he is,’ said Pearl.
