by Iris Murdoch
The front door bell rang. The priest sighed. He rose and turned off Scott Joplin. He bowed reverently and kissed the stern Buddha on the brow and the lips. Then with slow majestic tread, smoothing his hair, he went to the door. George McCaffrey was outside.
‘Come in,’ said Father Bernard. And after a glance at George he thought, this is it.
George followed the priest into the study. Father Bernard did not draw back the curtains. He switched on a lamp.
‘Sit down, George. There, on that sofa.’
George sat down, then got up again and walked to the bookcase, facing it but not looking at the books. There was something dreadful in the position, as if he were expecting to be shot in the back. Then he turned and leaned against the bookcase, facing the priest who was also standing. Love for George flooded Father Bernard’s heart.
‘What is it, my son?’
George was silent for a while, looking rather wildly about the room as if searching for something. Then he said, ‘Stella’s come back.’
‘Oh - good.’
‘Not good. I don’t want her. I detest her.’
‘Perhaps that means you love her.’
‘I suppose you have to say something stupid like that.’
‘I’m glad you’ve come, George. I thought you’d come, at last.’
‘Did you? I didn’t. Anyway it doesn’t mean anything, not what you think.’
‘Would you like a drink?’
‘No. Is Rozanov still here?’
‘So far as I know. I didn’t know he was going. I haven’t seen him lately.’
‘He’ll corrupt others as he corrupted me. Oh God, I’m so unhappy. Stella was the last straw.’
‘Talk to me, my dear.’
‘You love talks, I know, you grow fat on people’s troubles, you grow fat and sleek and purr.’
‘We are frail human creatures, all our good is mixed with evil. It is good none the less. If we sincerely pray to be made pure in heart there is a sense in which we do not pray in vain. I wish you well, oh so well. You must forgive me.’
‘Oh damn you. Listen.’
‘Yes.’
‘I want to ask you a question.’
‘Yes. Like “does God exist?” ’
‘No, not like that.’
‘“Is there life after death?” “Ought I to stay with Stella?” “Ought I to stop seeing Diane?”’
‘Don’t play the fool, stop making jokes.’
‘I’m not making jokes, I’m expressing something I feel for you, I feel concern for you, love for you, I’m very glad you’re here.’
‘I want to ask you - a question.’
‘Yes, yes.’
‘That night … when the car fell into the canal … with Stella in it … you were there … weren’t you?’
The priest hesitated. ‘Yes.’
‘That’s why you felt sure I’d come to you?’
‘That was one reason. For any spiritual event there are always several reasons of different kinds.’
‘Hang that. You were there, you were crossing the iron bridge, I saw you.’
‘Yes.’
‘Now tell me what you saw.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘What you saw, what happened.’
‘It was dark - I saw the car swerve and fall into the water.’
‘No, you didn’t see that, you liar - I, what was I doing? The car stopped on the brink and I got out of it. Did you see that, in the name of Christ? And did you see me try to push it in?’
‘No,’ said the priest, though he had had time to wonder, what is the right answer?
‘I’m trying to remember,’ said George, ‘help me.’
He came forward and took hold of Father Bernard’s arms at the elbow, glaring into his face with glittering eyes.
‘I ask you, I beg you, to tell me the truth, I must know exactly what happened, it’s important. I drove the car - the car came up to the brink and stopped and I got out - or did it stop - I got out - then what happened? I can’t see it - did I go behind the car and try to push it? Or did I imagine this? For Christ sake, tell me, I beg you for the truth, I beg you.’
Father Bernard involuntarily stepped back pulling away from the clutching hands. He said, ‘You jumped out as the car went over the edge. Of course you didn’t try to push it. It was an accident.’
‘Before God, are you sure?’
‘Yes.’
George showed no relief. A look of anguish distorted his face. He murmured something which sounded like ‘the pity of it’, then, ‘I have done something terrible.’
Father Bernard said again, ‘Please sit down,’ only George would not sit, but went to the bookcase and turned his back in the sad penitential posture, as Father Bernard with inexplicable distress saw it. He leaned against the books, rolling his forehead to and fro against them.
‘George, you haven’t hurt Stella, have you?’
George, half turning his head, said in a dull voice, ‘Stella? No.’ He turned round and put his hand in his pocket and brought out something, two small white fragments which he held in the palm of his hand. He said, ‘I broke it, I got angry, but it can be mended. See, the little Japanese thing, ivory, a man holding a fish, a fisherman with his basket, see underneath his foot and the pattern of his dress folded - his head is broken off, but it can be mended. It’s all to do, it’s to do. Oh, if you only knew how unhappy I am, how my heart hurts in my breast. It’s all so black. Oh what a burden it is— ’
Father Bernard had pictured a scene where George ‘came to him’ at last, but it had not been like this. He was upset, frightened, confused by George’s state of mind which he could not understand but about which he felt he ought instantly to be able to do something. He wished George would sit down and spill out some fairly coherent story and require to be talked to, instead of flinging himself about the room. He wanted to dominate George, to hold him and soothe him, but could not see how to do it. He asked, ‘Where is Stella now?’
‘I don’t know. At Druidsdale, I suppose. I’ve left there. I’m staying with Diane. We’re going to live in Spain.’
‘You and Diane?’
‘Yes. But it’s so terrible, so black, like a hideous dream, and I have to do it all again.’
‘Do what? What terrible thing have you done?’
‘Nothing, nothing. I saw my double carrying a hammer. How can another person steal one’s consciousness, how is it possible? Can good and evil change places? Well, well, I must go now.’
‘You are not to go, sit here.’ Father Bernard planted a firm palm on George’s chest and pushed him abruptly down on to the sofa. As soon as he touched George he felt an inrush of warm power. He knelt on the sofa, pressing his hands on to George’s shoulder to prevent him from rising. George struggled but the priest was stronger.
‘Stay. That’s right. Relax your body. Don’t look so wretched. You’re not going to cry, are you? I don’t believe you’ve ever done anything terrible or that you’re ever going to. The only person you hurt is yourself. Your mind is boiling over with anger and remorse and grief and black pain. Let it all go from you. Turn to God. Never mind what it means. Let the miracle of forgiveness and peace take place in your soul. Forgive yourself and forgive those whom you imagine to be your enemies. I want you to say the Lord’s Prayer with me.’
‘The Lord’s Prayer?’ said George and he seemed surprised and almost interested. ‘Now?’
‘Yes. You remember it, don’t you? Our Father — ’
George said, speaking quickly and looking up at the priest who, with one knee on the sofa, was still gripping him by the shoulder, ‘Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.’ Then he stopped. He said, ‘My God, you are a charlatan.’
‘Give us this day our daily bread.’
‘And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, For thine
is the Kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen.’
Father Bernard stopped holding George and sat down beside him, and they sat together in a slightly dazed silence, aware of an event which had taken place in the room.
George shuddered and got up. ‘You’ve got the old magic in working order.’
Father Bernard rose too. ‘George, don’t go away, please, sit down again and be quiet with me for a little while. You needn’t talk. Let me get you some coffee, whisky, brandy, something to eat. Let the old magic work in you, let it travail in you, let it travel with you, turn towards it. Repeat the old charms. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.’
‘Turn to it! Even if it’s all false?’
‘It can’t be. It will do good to you. It has already done good to you today. If you utter sacred words with a sincere and humble and passionate desire for salvation they cannot fail. Let grace flood your heart. Remember that nothing can separate us from the love of Christ.’
George stared at the priest for a moment or two as if he were thinking over what had been said. Then he said, ‘Oh,’ and turned suddenly and went from the room. The priest ran after him. The front door banged.
Father Bernard came back into his sitting-room and stood still for a while. It was getting dark outside and he turned on another lamp. Then he telephoned the Druidsdale number and heard Stella’s calm voice saying that yes, George had been there and was now gone, and yes of course she was all right.
He sat for a while thinking about George and feeling softened and exalted. He wondered to himself, did I give George the right answer? What did he want? He took up his Prayer Book, and remembered Miss Dunbury holding the torch so that she could read his lips during the power cut. He knelt down and read aloud the prayer for those troubled in conscience. ‘Oh Blessed Lord, the Father of mercies and the God of all comforts, we beseech thee look down in pity and compassion upon this thy afflicted servant. Give him a right understanding of himself and of thy threats and promises, that he may neither cast away his confidence in thee, nor place it anywhere but in thee. Give him strength against all his temptations, and heal all his distempers. Break not the bruised reed, nor quench the smoking flax. Shut not up thy tender mercies in displeasure, but make him to hear of joy and gladness, that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice.’
After his flight from Belmont, Tom walked slowly back to Travancore Avenue. He had to keep having to stop and gasp a little and hold his chest. He felt as if something alien and too big for him had been encased in his body and were clumsily and painfully trying to get out, as if his whole body wanted to vomit. He felt that he ought to do something difficult and awful and perhaps fatal, but he tried not to think about this. He absorbed himself in his physical feelings and the strange new pain.
When he reached Travancore Avenue he went upstairs and lay on his bed, but found this position tormenting. He sat on his bed, he sat on a chair. He said out loud in a dull echoing voice to which he listened with surprise, ‘It was here and now it’s gone, I’ve lost it, it’s gone away, I shall mourn for it and that’s all there’ll be, that’s all there’ll ever be.’
At last he did attempt to think. Today, this very afternoon, Hattie had been still in Ennistone. What did that mean? Did it mean anything that made any real difference to him, or did it only matter because it made him so terribly sick? Had he not finished with it all? It had never really been anything anyway. It was totally artificial, a maniac’s fantasy. He had rejected her, she had rejected him. Even this was too portentous. They had, to satisfy the old fool, politely said hello and good-bye, they had passed with a casual wave. It had been all over before John Robert’s anger. He must keep that clear in his head, he must keep John Robert out of it. Though how could that make sense, since it was all his idea and only his idea? Tom’s sense of time was all mixed up, he could not remember what had happened on what day, and what had happened after which. He could not recall why he had felt it so necessary to go to the Slipper House on the day of the ‘riot’. He must have wanted to go to see Hattie again. And then she was gone, she and John Robert had returned to America, and he was rid of the whole nightmare, he was set free. Had he felt relieved? That was the end of the story and he could rest at last. But what was he resting from, and into what awful renewed sense of possibility and demand and power was he now awakening? Now he was free? Was it that he felt that he still might, if he would, have it, gain it, win it, after all? But what was it, of which he had been speaking just now, this thing which evidently he desired so? Was it to do with John Robert, John Robert’s esteem or approval or even affection? Or was it his own esteem, some image of himself as a hero, which was missing? Well, it was missing, but he could have noticed that loss and regarded it as temporary. What was it about Alex’s story of Hattie running down the garden and trying to get into the Slipper House which had driven him so absolutely mad? It was not even Hattie really that he was thinking about now: that image of the running girl seemed to have usurped her real being in his bewitched mind.
The shock was partly to do with time. He had settled into thinking they were gone, into a state of protected impossibility. He felt now that he had even recovered a little as a result of William’s funeral and the phenomenon at the Baths. These had been events, barriers between him and that terrible pair. There had been, it now seemed to him, a little touch of elegiac sadness in the pain he had felt as he watched the jet d’eau, a curative energy in his thought of Hattie as removed from him absolutely, gone into the invisible world. Even remorse was a challenge to be met. Now he had been suddenly jolted back into a previous era with all his tasks undone, with it all to do again. But what were these tasks and this hideous freedom and this it with which some new sense of possibility tormented him so? The thought that she was still in Ennistone was somehow unbearable. Oh God, if only she were far away! But then perhaps she was, she could have been here in the morning and be gone now. And if so he would be back where he was, and wasn’t that where he wanted to be? All he had to do was to allow the time to pass. He looked at his watch. It was nine-thirty.
Tom now lay down again on the bed and tried to let his thoughts wander. He must not concentrate. If he did … he might be led … to decide something … John Robert had appointed Tom to be Hattie’s protector, her knight. But what was he supposed to protect Hattie from? Tom was far from guessing that the answer was, from John Robert himself. Yet intuitively he wandered round the idea at a distance. He thought, he knows he can’t look after her himself, it’s like living with a monster, a big rough animal, she might come to harm accidentally. Oh, let her not come to harm. But not to think like that, remember William dead and the water flying up and the way it had burnt his hand, he could still feel the bum. What Tom was all the time trying to keep out of his mind by the wandering of his thoughts was the terrible idea that there was nothing in the world to stop him going round to Hare Lane now and finding out whether Hattie was still in Ennistone. But, no, he thought, there is nothing I can do for them or with them now. I must simply stay quiet until it is all too late, and oh let that be soon. But how can I know, it may already be too late, they may already have gone, and I am suffering simply from not knowing. He thought, I could go round to the Ennistone Rooms and ask someone, they might know, John Robert had a room there, so someone said … And as he was thinking this he fell asleep.
‘Tom, Tom, wake up, Tom dear, wake up.’
Tom rolled over and sat up. A bright light was on in the room and a woman was standing beside the bed. Tom stared at her, not recognizing her. Then he knew her. It was Judy Osmore.
‘Greg, come here, here’s Tom, he was fast asleep. Tom, we’ve come back, did you get our letter?’
‘No,’ said Tom. He put his feet down and stood up, felt giddy and sat down again on the edge of the bed.
‘Well, we only sent it last - I forget - we did everything in such a hurry - we’ve had the most wonderful time.’
Gregory Osmore came in. He was
looking tired and not best pleased to find Tom there.
‘Hello, Tom, still here?’
‘Of course he’s still here!’ said Judy.
‘Hello, Ju, hello Greg, great to see you,’ said Tom. ‘Have you just got back?’
‘Yes, we feel terribly funny, don’t we, Greg, jet lag you know, we flew all the way from Dallas, we saw the place where Kennedy was shot, we flew non-stop and we’ve been drinking all the way, I just can’t think what time it is here, what time is it?’
Tom looked at his watch. ‘Ten-thirty.’
‘My watch says - oh I started changing it about, it’s crazy now. Whatever have you done to your eye?’
‘I suppose there’s something to eat in the house?’ said Greg.
‘I don’t think so,’ said Tom. ‘I don’t remember.’ He suddenly realized that he was very hungry.
‘Didn’t I tell you?’ said Greg to Judy.
‘We can go out to the Running Dog.’
‘It’ll be shut.’
‘Not the restaurant. Anyway let’s have a drink, I bet there’s some, where there’s a McCaffrey there’s drink.’
