by Iris Murdoch
‘I don’t know. As soon as I saw that I ran to wait for you. I didn’t want you to miss it.’
‘Kind of you to drag yourself away,’ said Gerard with a slight edge.
Jenkin ignored the edge. ‘Shall we separate and look for Duncan? I can’t see him here.’
‘It looks as if –’
‘As if things have gone too far already.’
‘I don’t think Duncan would be pleased to see us.’
‘You don’t think we should sort of shadow him. Keep an eye on him?’
‘No.’
Gulliver was suddenly accosted by a woman.
He had, after eating almost all the cucumber sandwiches, begun to feel miraculously better, not really drunk at all, and with that came a frenzied desire to dance. He had wandered about, not looking for Tamar (he had forgotten about her) but for some girl whose man had perhaps felicitously passed out and lay somewhere under a bush in drunken slumber. However the girls, though looking themselves rather the worse for wear, or even positively sozzled, seemed still to have their man in tow. It was impossible now to deny that the dawn was breaking, that the light which had never really gone away all night, was declaring itself to be day. Some terrible birds had begun to sing and from the woods beyond the meadows came the intermittent chant of the cuckoo. Hastily seeking some continuation of night time, Gull had been drawn to the pop tent where, in spite of the lightening canvas, darkness still seemed to reign amid the dazzling flashes and the noise. The pop group had gone and their music, continuing, was now machine-made. Here the capering was at its wildest, resembling acrobatics rather than dance, a kind of desperation overcoming the young people as they scented the morning air. The men had abandoned coats, occasionally shirts too, the girls had hitched up dresses and undone fasteners. The effect, after earlier formality, was oddly like fancy dress. Staring at each other, wild-eyed and open-mouthed, the couples leapt, squatted, rotated, grimaced, waved their arms, waved their legs, expressive, thought Gulliver, of a scene out of Dante’s Inferno rather than of the vernal joy of careless youth.
‘Hi, Gull, dance with me! I’ve been dancing by myself for at least an hour!’ It was Lily Boyne.
Her frail arms were instantly about him, seizing him at the waist, and they whirled or rather whizzed out into the centre of the deafening maelstrom.
Of course Gulliver knew Lily through ‘the others’ but he had never felt any interest in her, except briefly on one occasion when he heard someone refer to her as a ‘cocotte’. She had seemed to him a pathetic figure whose importunate pretensions were merely embarrassing. Lily now looked like a rather small crazy pirate, perhaps a cabin boy on a pirate ship in a pantomime. Her orange trousers were rolled up revealing thin bare legs, her white blouse was unbuttoned, sash, silver scarf, golden chains had all vanished, dumped with her evening bag Lily could not remember where. Her face, red with exertion and earlier potation, was covered in a multicoloured grease of smudged cosmetic, making her resemble a melting wax image. Her silver lips were grotesquely enlarged into a clownish mouth. But as they danced, not touching each other, now near, now far, jumping violently about, cannoning into other dancers of whom they were entirely unconscious, grinning, glaring, panting, bound together by their crazed eyes, Gulliver felt that he had discovered a perfect partner. Lily, as she swayed away, pirouetted, leapt, circled him about, waving her arms hieratically like an ecstatic priestess, appeared to be saying something, at least her mouth was opening as if in speech, but he could not, because of the din, hear a word. He nodded his head madly, uttering into the storm of marvellous noise a stream of senseless exclamations inaudible even to himself.
Tamar had not found Conrad but she had found Duncan. Duncan had lost track of Jean earlier on, lingering to drink while she set off into the fray. He was soon informed, by a helpful well-wisher, of Crimond’s presence. Perhaps the same man had already alerted Jean; or perhaps Jean had known all along, he conjectured later? After some searching he witnessed, unseen, the end of the eightsome reel also witnessed by Gerard and Jenkin, and saw Jean and Crimond disappear together before the next dance. After that he took himself off to one of the bars to get as drunk as possible, and to nurse, almost as a consolation, his pain and anger, and his fear that everything would turn out for the very worst. He did not, at this stage, want to find his wife; and when, later still, in the ‘old-fashioned’ tent, he saw Jean come in with Crimond and join the dancers, he sat hunched up in the comparative obscurity at the back, deriving an agonised satisfaction from being invisible while he feasted his eyes.
Tamar, still seeking Conrad, but now very tired and cold, and additionally miserable because she could not find her cashmere shawl, entered the tent and at once saw Jean dancing with Crimond. Tamar knew that there had been some sort of ‘thing’ about Jean and Crimond a good many years ago, but she had never reflected on it, and regarded it as ancient history. What she saw now made her feel surprise, shock, and then a kind of fear and jealous pain. Jean had long been a very important person in Tamar’s life; she might even have been said to have a ‘crush’ on Jean, to whom she had, in adolescence, brought problems which she could not discuss with her mother, or even with Rose or Pat. She was fond of Duncan too, and was regularly invited to tea, later to drinks. After a moment or two Tamar, glancing round the marquee, saw Duncan sitting with his arm on the chair in front of him, leaning his chin on his arm, and intently watching the dancers. A number of people passed between them, a dance ended and another started, and Tamar, alarmed at what she was seeing, decided to withdraw. Duncan had seen her however and waved to her, beckoning her to join him. Tamar now felt she could not depart and threaded her way past sitting and standing people, overturned chairs, and tables loaded with empty bottles, reached Duncan and sat down beside him. As she sat down, glancing back at the dance floor, she saw Jean and Crimond leaving the tent on the other side.
Duncan was a huge man, said to be ‘bear-like’, or sometimes ‘leonine’, stout and tall with a large head and a mass of very dark thick crisply wavy hair which grew well down onto his neck. His big shoulders, habitually rather hunched, gave a look of retained, sometimes menacing, power. He seemed not only clever but formidable. He had a long wavering expressive mouth, dark eyes, and a strange gaze since one of his eyes was almost entirely black, as if the pupil had flowed out over the iris. He wore dark-rimmed glasses, had an ironical stare and a giggling laugh.
‘Hello, Tamar, having a lovely time?’
‘Yes, thank you. You haven’t seen Conrad have you, you know, Conrad Lomas? Oh – perhaps you haven’t met him.’
‘Yes, I met him at Gerard’s, he’s a friend of Leonard’s, isn’t he? No, I haven’t seen him. Is he your swain? Where’s he got to?’
‘I don’t know. It’s my fault. I left him for a moment.’ Feeling she might be going to cry, she closed her eyes hard against the tears.
‘I’m sorry, little Tamar,’ said Duncan. ‘Look, let’s go and get ourselves a drink, eh? It’ll do us both good.’ However he did not get up yet, just replanted his feet and leaned a little more upon the chair in front of him. He was suddenly not sure that he would be able to rise. He gazed at Tamar, thinking how pathetically thin she was, almost anorexic, and how with her hair done like that, cut in a straight bob and parted at the side, she looked like a girl of fourteen. The white ball dress did nothing for her; it looked like a sloppy petticoat. She looked better in her usual rig, a neat blouse and skirt.
Tamar looked anxiously at Duncan. She had taken in the scene and could now receive some vibrations of his suffering, which made her feel embarrassed rather than sympathetic. Also, it was clear that Duncan was very drunk, he was red-faced and breathing heavily. Tamar was afraid that at any moment he would fall flat on the ground and she would have to do something about it.
At that moment Duncan heaved himself to his feet. He stood for a moment swaying slightly, then put his hand onto Tamar’s thin bare arm to steady himself. ‘Let’s go and find that drink, shall
we?’
They began to make their way toward one of the exits, passing as they did so near to the dance floor. The band was playing ‘Night and Day’.
Duncan said, ‘Night and day. Yes. Let’s dance. You’ll dance with me, won’t you?’
He swept her onto the dance floor and, suddenly surrendered to the music, found that his legs had lost their stupidity and like well-trained beasts were able to perform the familiar routine. He danced well. Tamar let herself be led, letting the sulky sad rhythm enter her body, she was dancing, it was her first dance that evening. Some tears did now come into her eyes and she wiped them away on Duncan’s black coat.
In the jazz tent Rose was dancing with Jenkin. Jenkin had accompanied Gerard back to Levquist’s rooms off the cloister where it occurred to them that Duncan might have taken refuge. ‘He won’t want to see us,’ said Gerard. ‘If he’s there it proves he does,’ said Jenkin. But there was no one in the room. Gerard elected to stay there just in case, while Jenkin, still full of his idea of becoming Duncan’s invisible bodyguard, had set off again. Soon after that he met Rose and felt obliged to ask her to dance. They went to the jazz sound, which was nearest, and Jenkin was dutifully propelling her round the circuit, through the increasingly dense and unbuttoned crowd who, aware of the dawn, had reinvaded the floors. Dancing with Jenkin was a simple and predictable matter since he danced in the same way whatever the music. He had of course told her what he and Gerard had seen. He had even suggested that they should go and have a look in case the performance was being repeated. But Rose had evidently felt this to be bad form, and Jenkin, dashed, had recognised it to be such.
Rose, feeling perhaps that she had expressed too much emotion upon the subject earlier in the evening, was now trying to play it down. ‘I expect Crimond has sheered off and Jean and Duncan have been together for ages. There’s nothing to it. Only you’d better not say you saw her with him!’
‘Of course I won’t, and of course you’re right. But, my God, what cheek!’
‘What are you going to do about the book?’ said Rose, changing the subject, as Jenkin stepped on her foot.
‘We, Rose. You’re on the committee too.’
‘Yes, but I don’t count. You and Gerard must decide.’
‘We can’t do anything,’ said Jenkin. He was worrying about Duncan wandering around like a miserable dangerous bear.
Conrad Lomas appeared from nowhere, making his way across the dance floor, thrusting the insensate couples aside.
‘Where’s Tamar? Have you seen her?’
‘We should be asking you that!’ said Rose.
Gerard, alone in Levquist’s rooms, where the curtains were still pulled against the light, looked gloomily at the chaotic scene, used glasses and empty bottles perched everywhere, on the mantelpiece, on the chairs, on the tables, on the bookcases, on the floor. How can we have used so many glasses, he thought. Of course one loses one’s glass oftener and oftener as the evening goes on! And damn it, there are no sandwiches left, or only one and it hasn’t got any cucumber in it. He ate the limp piece of bread, then poured himself out some champagne. He was tired of the stuff, but there was nothing else to drink. Jenkin had claimed to have hidden a bottle of whisky in Levquist’s bedroom ‘for later’, only Gerard did not feel strong enough to search for it.
He fervently hoped that Levquist’s scout would be able to clear up the mess before Levquist returned after breakfast. He must remember to tip the man. Then he recalled with anguish that he had, in the electric storm of his visit to Levquist, forgotten to thank him for the loan of the room, a notable privilege since other distinguished old pupils were certainly also in the field. He began to plan a gracefully apologetic letter. Levquist would of course have observed the omission and probably derived malicious pleasure from it. He then reflected upon the interesting fact that ever since ‘that business’, now so far in the past, Levquist had never, in meetings with Gerard or Jenkin, mentioned Crimond’s name, although he usually referred to the others, and Crimond too had been his pupil and one of the group. Someone must have told him. Gerard then wondered, not for the first time, whether Crimond kept up any sort of friendship with Levquist. Perhaps he had been to see him this very evening! How horrible, how somehow poisonous it was, Crimond being here. Gerard shared Rose’s reaction of: how dare he! To which Jenkin had rationally replied: why not? But dancing with Jean… Gerard had noticed with displeasure how the whole episode, in so far as it could be called that, seemed to have excited Jenkin. Gerard found it shocking, sickening, thoroughly ill-omened and bad. He wondered if he were drunk, then, how drunk he was. The telephone rang. He lifted the receiver. ‘Hello.’
‘Could I speak to Mr Hernshaw, if he’s there?’
‘Pat –’
‘Oh Gerard – Gerard – he’s gone –’
Gerard reassembled his thoughts. His father was dead.
‘Gerard, are you still there?’
‘Yes.’
‘He’s died. We didn’t expect it, did we, the doctor didn’t say – it just happened – so – suddenly – he – and he was dead –’
‘Are you alone?’
‘Yes, of course! It’s five o’clock in the morning! Who do you think I could get to be with me?’
‘When did he die?’
‘Oh – an hour ago – I don’t know –’
Gerard thought, what was I doing then? ‘And were you with him –?
‘Yes! I was asleep with the doors open – about one or so I heard him moaning and I went in and he was sitting up and – and mumbling in a ghastly high voice, and he kept jerking his arms and staring all round the room, and he wouldn’t look at me – and he was white, as white as the wall, and his lips were white – and I tried to give him a pill but – I tried to make him lie back, I wanted him to sleep again, I thought if he can only rest, if he can only sleep – and then his breathing – became so awful –’
‘Oh God,’ said Gerard.
‘All right, you don’t want to know – I’ve been trying to get hold of you for ages, ever since, the porter kept telephoning various rooms, I just got a lot of drunks. Are you drunk? You sound as if you are.’
‘Possibly.’ He thought, of course Levquist has no telephone over there – but that was earlier anyway – what was I doing? Watching Crimond dance? Poor Patricia. He said, ‘Bear up, Pat.’
‘You are drunk. Of course I’m bearing up. What else can I do. I’m just half mad with grief and misery and shock and I’m all by myself –’
‘You’d better go to bed.’
‘I can’t. How long will it take you to get here, an hour?’
‘I can do it in an hour,’ said Gerard, ‘or less, but I can’t leave immediately.’
‘Why ever not?’
‘I’ve got a lot of people here, I can’t just leave them, I can’t go without telling them and God knows where they all are at the moment.’ He thought, I can’t go without seeing Duncan.
‘Your father’s dead and you want to stay on dancing with your drunken friends.’
‘I’ll come soon,’ said Gerard, ‘I just can’t come at once, I’m sorry.’
Patricia put down the receiver.
Gerard sat with closed eyes in the silence that followed. Then he started saying, ‘Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God’, and hid his face in his hands and panted and moaned. Of course he had known it was coming, he had calmly mentioned it to Levquist, but this was unlike anything which cowardly imagination could have schooled him with beforehand. He had known what he did not will to imagine, the fact, the irrevocable fact. Love, old love, sensibilities and dimensions and powers of love which he had forgotten or never recognised, came speeding in from all the far-spread regions of his being, hot with pain, crying and wailing with the agony of that severance. Never to speak to his father again, to see his smiling welcoming face, to be happy in his happiness, to experience the absolute comfort of his love. He felt remorse, not because he had been a bad son, he had not, but because he was no longer
a son, and there was still so much to say. A place wherein he himself was as in no other place had been struck out of the world. Oh my father, oh my father, oh my dear father.
He heard steps upon the stairs and hastily rose to his feet and rubbed his face although there were no tears on it. He turned a calm gaze to the door. It was Jenkin.
Gerard decided instantly not to tell Jenkin about his father. He would tell him later when they were driving back together to London. He did not want to start to tell and then be interrupted by one of the others. Better to say nothing. Jenkin would understand.
Jenkin, who constantly read Gerard’s mind, had been aware that Gerard disapproved of what he might have thought of as Jenkin’s excitement, even glee, at the little bit of drama promised by the evening. He also felt that Gerard had thought poorly of Jenkin’s appreciation of Crimond’s flying kilt. Jenkin was bothered too by his gaucherie with Rose, his inability to dance well, and his abrupt dismissal of her question. He too was not at all sure how drunk he was. When Rose declined the next dance saying she was tired, Jenkin made a quick circuit looking for Duncan but did not find him. He pursued a white-clad figure who looked like Tamar, but who vanished on his approach. Tamar had by this time finished her dance with Duncan and been sent away by him with a vague, ‘Well, off you go, and enjoy yourself.’ She did not feel any urge or duty to stay with him, he was clearly very drunk and either did not want her to continue seeing him in this condition or had quite forgotten that she had no partner. She started to walk about aimlessly in conspicuous spaces hoping that someone she knew would see her. About the cashmere shawl, she had given up hope, perhaps someone had stolen it.
Gerard, who constantly read Jenkin’s mind, was aware of the little cloud that hung over his friend and hastened to dispel it. ‘My dear fellow, do you think you could find the whisky you alleged you hid? I’m fed up with this stuff.’
They went into Levquist’s neat student-like bedroom with its narrow iron bedstead and washstand with basin, water jug, and soap dish, and Jenkin began foraging in Levquist’s bedclothes. The bottle of whisky was found, and a carafe of water on the bedside table, handy because there was of course no bathroom or running water. Gerard tidied the bed. They took these trophies back into the main room and dosed two champagne glasses with whisky.
