by Iris Murdoch
Violet returned to the kitchen. ‘Uncle Matthew has passed away.’
‘Oh – I’m so sorry,’ said Tamar, ‘Oh dear – I wish I’d gone to see him – I wanted to – only you wouldn’t let me –’ She began to cry, not the storm of tears which must soon begin, but sad unhappy guilty special tears for Uncle Matthew who had so shyly and so kindly wanted to be her friend, and whom she had so rarely visited because her mother did not want her to be beholden to Ben’s family.
‘And if you’re wondering,’ said Violet, ‘whether he’s left us anything in his will, let me tell you he hasn’t.’
Matthew Hernshaw had failed to carry out his intention to ‘do something’ for Violet and Tamar because of an indecision which was characteristic of him. He could not make up his mind how much to leave them, knowing that if he did not leave them enough Gerard would disapprove and if he left them too much Patricia would be annoyed. What he did firmly intend to do was to leave a letter, addressed to both his children, asking them to look after Ben’s granddaughter. He several times began to draft his letter but could not decide exactly what he wanted to say. This unformulated request was what he attempted unsuccessfully to communicate to Patricia when he was dying. Oh if only he had spoken sooner! That was Matthew’s last thought.
Tamar, who had not been wondering about Uncle Matthew’s will, replied, ‘He’ll expect Gerard and Pat to help us.’
‘Pat will decide,’ said Violet. ‘She’ll send us a cheque for fifty pounds. We don’t want their mean charity! What Gerard might be able to manage is to find you a job – that’s it, he’ll fix you up, that’s the least he can do! So that’s settled! It is – settled – isn’t it?’
Violet was gazing at Tamar with a tense beseeching stare, ready to dissolve into joy or into anger. Tamar, looking at the jam jars and mustard pots, could picture her mother’s face. She bowed her head and the storm of tears began. Violet, beginning to cry too, came round the table, moved a chair up beside her child, and hugged her with gratitude and relief.
At about the time when Violet and Tamar were crying in each other’s arms, and Gerard, who had stopped crying, was lying on his bed and thinking about his father and about Grey, and Duncan was lying on his bed and trying to cry and not succeeding, Jean Kowitz, faint with an inextricable pain of joy and fear, had reached the house south of the river where Crimond lived. His address was in the telephone book. Jean had not needed to consult this volume however. She had regularly checked his whereabouts, without any intention of going to see him, to know where he was as a place to avoid – and perhaps simply to know where he was.
The address materialised as a shabby three-storey semi-detached house with a basement. It was faced with grimy crumbling stucco dotted with holes showing the bricks, also damaged, beneath. The window frames were cracking and almost bare of paint, and an upstairs window appeared to be broken. The house, though dirty and neglected, its scars searched out by the brilliant sunshine, was somehow solid and more imposing than the rat-hole in which Jean had imagined Crimond to be living. It and its neighbours were evidently divided into rooms and flats. Many of the houses had a row of names beside their doors. Crimond’s house had only two, his own and above it some sort of Slavonic name.
The big squarish front door, scrawled over with fissures and reached by four steps up, was ajar. Jean pushed it a little and peered into a dark hallway containing a bicycle. There was a bell beside the door, but by itself, not related to the names. Jean pushed the bell but there was no sound. She stepped into the hall. It was hot and stuffy and the dusty air entered from outside with no hint of refreshment. The uncovered unpainted floorboards creaked and echoed. Some stairs led upward. The door of the front room was wide open and Jean looked in. The first thing she saw, spread out on a chair, was the kilt which Crimond had been wearing at the dance. The walls were entirely covered with bookshelves. There was a television set. She backed out and investigated the two rooms at the back, one book-filled, with a narrow divan bed and door to the garden, the other a kitchen. The garden was small, tended, Crimond liked plants. Jean put both her hands onto the handlebar of the bicycle to stop them from trembling. The metal, greyishly shiny, was cold and sickeningly real. She removed her hands and warmed them against the hideous beating of her heart. She noticed on the floor near the bicycle her suitcase and her handbag which she must have put down when she came in. Suppose Crimond were not there. Suppose he simply told her to go away. Suppose she had entirely misinterpreted the wordless time they had spent dancing together.
She was incapable of calling out. A glass door, locked, closed off the stairs to the first floor. She was trembling and shuddering, her hands compulsively fluttering, her jaw jerking. She saw under the stairs an open door which must lead to the basement. She began slowly to descend, her feet cautiously testing the hollow treads. A closed door faced her at the bottom. She touched, but did not knock, then opened it.
The basement room was huge, occupying the whole floor space of the house. It was rather dark, with one window opening onto the sunless area below the front of the house. The wooden floor was bare except where in a corner a rug lay beside a large square divan bed. The walls were bare except for a target which hung at the far end opposite the window. There was a large cupboard against one wall and beside it two long tables covered with books. Near to the target was a large desk with a lighted lamp upon it where Crimond, wearing his narrow rimless spectacles, was sitting and had been writing. He lifted his head, saw Jean, took off his spectacles and rubbed his eyes.
Jean began to cross the long stretch of the floor towards him. She felt as if she would fall before she reached him. She picked up a chair which was standing nearby and dragged it to the desk and sat down facing Crimond. Then she uttered a little bird-like cry.
‘What’s the matter?’ said Crimond.
Jean did not look at Crimond, was indeed incapable of looking at anything in particular, since the room, the dull pale window, the lamp, the door, the bed with an old wrinkled rug beside it, the target, the white paper on which Crimond had been writing, Crimond’s face, Crimond’s hand, Crimond’s glasses, a tumbler of water, the kilt which had somehow made its way downstairs, were all composed into a sort of vividly illuminated wheel which was slowly turning in front of her.
Crimond said nothing more, he waited, watching her while she gasped, shook her head to and fro and opened and closed her eyes.
‘What do you mean, “What’s the matter”?’ said Jean. Then after a few more deep breaths, ‘Have you had any sleep?’
‘Yes. Have you?’
‘No.’
‘Then hadn’t you better? There’s a divan in the back room upstairs. It’s not made up, I’m afraid.’
‘So you weren’t expecting me.’
‘Pure carelessness.’
‘Were you expecting me?’
‘Of course.’
‘What would you have done if I hadn’t come?’
‘Nothing.’
There was a pause. Crimond regarded her shrewdly, a little wearily. Jean looked down at Crimond’s feet, in brown slippers, under the desk.
‘So you possess a kilt.’
‘I hired it. One can hire kilts.’
‘I see you still have your target.’
‘It’s a symbol.’
‘And the guns. You’ll say they are symbols too.’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you plan this long before?’
‘No.’
‘How did you get a ticket for the dance, they were all sold out.’
‘I asked Levquist.’
‘Levquist? I thought you quarrelled with him years ago?’
‘I wrote and asked him. He sent the ticket by return with a sarcastic note in Latin.’
‘What would you have done if he hadn’t sent it?’
‘Nothing.’
‘You mean, oh never mind what you mean. How did you know I’d be at the dance?’
‘Lily Boyne told me.’
; ‘Did you think that was a message from me?’
‘No.’
‘It wasn’t.’
‘I know that.’
‘What about Lily Boyne?’
‘What about her?’
‘You came with her.’
‘It is customary to arrive with a woman.’
‘Was it to save face in case I ignored you?’
‘No.’
‘You knew I would not ignore you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh, Crimond, why – why – why now?’
‘Well, it’s worked, hasn’t it?’
‘But look, about Lily –’
‘Let’s stick to essentials,’ said Crimond. ‘Lily Boyne is nothing, she tried to make my acquaintance and I noticed her because she knew you. I like her.’
‘Why?’
‘Because she is nothing. She values herself at nil.’
‘You find her despair amusing?’
‘No.’
‘All right, forget her, I see why you used her. What were you writing when I arrived?’
‘A book I have been working on for some time.’
‘You mean the book?’
‘A book, the book if you like.’
‘It is nearly finished?’
‘No.’
‘What will you do when it is finished?’
‘Learn Arabic.’
‘Can I help you with the book, do research like I used to?’
‘That stage has passed. Anyway you should do work of your own.’
‘So you used to tell me. Are you glad to see me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Let’s stop messing about in this conversation. I’ve left Duncan. I’m here. I’m yours, I’m yours for good if you want me. After last night I assume you do.’
Crimond looked at her thoughtfully. His thin lips were drawn into a straight line. His longish very fine pale red hair had been carefully combed. His light eyes which so often gleamed and glittered with thought or sarcasm, were cold and stilled, hard as two opaque blue stones. ‘You left me.’
‘I don’t know what happened,’ said Jean.
‘Neither do I.’
‘It shouldn’t have happened.’
‘But it showed something.’
‘That doesn’t matter now. It can’t matter. If it mattered you wouldn’t have come to the dance.’
‘Oh that. It was on impulse.’
‘Oh that! Crimond, understand, I have left a husband whom I esteem and love, and friends who will never forgive me, in order to give myself to you entirely and forever. I hereby give myself. I love you. You are the only being whom I can love absolutely with my complete self, with all my flesh and mind and heart. You are my mate, my perfect partner, and I am yours. You must feel this now, as I do, as we did last night and trembled because we did. It was a marvel that we ever met. It is some kind of divine luck that we are together now. We must never never part again. We are, here, in this, necessary beings, like gods. As we look at each other we verify, we know, the perfection of our love, we recognise each other. Here is my life, here if need be is my death. It’s life and death, as if they were to destroy Israel – if I forget thee, O Jerusalem –’
Crimond, who had been frowning during this declaration, said, shifting in his chair and picked up his spectacles, ‘I don’t care for these Jewish oaths – and we are not gods. We’ll just have to see what happens.’
‘All right, if it doesn’t work we can always kill each other, as you said then! Crimond, you’ve produced a miracle, we’re together – aren’t you pleased? Say you love me.’
‘I love you, Jean Kowitz. But we must also recall that we have managed without each other for many years – a long time during which neither of us made any signal.’
‘Yes. I don’t know why that was. Perhaps it was a punishment for our failure to stay together. We had to go through an ordeal, a sort of purgatory, to believe we could deserve each other again. Now the appointed time has come. We are ready. I have left Duncan –’
‘Yes, yes – I’m sorry about Duncan. You also mention your friends who will never forgive you, or me.’
‘They hate you. They’d like to thrash you. They’d like to humiliate you. They felt like that before – and now…’
‘You sound pleased.’
‘It doesn’t matter about them, compared with us they don’t exist. Can we go and live in France? I’d like that.’
‘No. My work is here. If you come to me you must do what I want.’
‘I’ll always do that,’ said Jean. ‘I thought about you every day. If at any time you’d made the least gesture – but I imagined –’
‘Enough of that. Never mind what you imagined, here you are. Now I must get on with my work. I suggest you go upstairs and lie down. Have you eaten, would you like anything to eat?’
‘No. I feel I shall never eat again.’
‘I’ll fetch you later. Then we can both sleep down here where there’s room for two. Then we’ll discuss what we’ll do.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘How we’ll live together. How what must be will be.’
‘Yes. It must be. All right. I’ll go and rest. This is real. Isn’t it?’
‘Yes. Go now.’
‘I want you.’
‘Go now, my little hawk.’
Jean rose promptly and went upstairs. She thought, we haven’t touched each other. That’s as it should be. That’s his way. We haven’t touched each other yet, but all that we are has sprung together into one substance. It’s like some great atomic charge, we are each other. Oh thank God. She went into the back room and pulled the curtains and kicked her shoes off then crawled onto the divan drawing the blankets up over her head. In an instant she was asleep, tumbling slowly over and over through a deep darkening air of pure joy.
PART TWO
Midwinter
‘I think there’s some beer somewhere,’ said Jenkin.
‘Don’t worry, I’ve brought some drink,’ said Gerard.
‘Sorry.’
‘This has happened before.’
‘I believe so.’
‘God, it’s cold!’
‘I’ll turn on the fire.’
Gerard was, after an impromptu telephone call, visiting Jenkin at Jenkin’s little terrace house off the Goldhawk Road near the Arches. Jenkin had lived in this house for many years, ever since the polytechnic days before he returned to school-mastering. Jenkin’s road was still very much as it had been, full of what Jenkin called ‘ordinary blokes’. Neighbouring areas were however becoming ‘gentrified’, to Jenkin’s disgust. Gerard often came to this house. Today he came without warning, not because anything particular was, but because an awful lot of things were, on his mind.
The momentous Commem Ball was now months away in the past. It was a foggy evening in late October. Jenkin’s house, which had no central heating, was indeed cold, a house which let all weather come inside. Jenkin in fact welcomed the weather at all times of year, the sight of a closed window made him uneasy. Whatever the temperature he slept in an unheated bedroom with a breeze blowing. He allowed himself a hot water bottle in winter however. He hastily now, to please his friend, closed several windows and turned on the gas fire in the little sitting room. Jenkin lived mainly in the kitchen and did not occupy this ‘front room’ or ‘parlour’, which he kept for ‘best’. The room was, like everything in Jenkin’s house, very neat and clean, and rather sparse and bare. It was not without some pretty objects, mostly donated by Gerard, but the spirit of the room resisted these, it failed to merge them into the calm homogeneous harmony which Gerard thought every room should possess, it remained raw and accidental. The faded wallpaper, light green with shadowy reddish flowers, was varied here and there by patches of yellow distempered wall beneath, where Jenkin had carefully removed areas of paper which had become torn. The effect was not unpleasant. The very clean carpet was faded too, its blue and red flowers merged into a soft brown. The green tiles
in front of the fire were shiny from regular washing. The wooden-armed chairs, ranged against the wall until company arrived, had beige folk-weave upholstery. The mantelpiece above the fire was adorned by a row of china cups, some of them gifts of Gerard’s, and a stone, a grey sea pebble with a purple stripe, a present from Rose. To these Jenkin had just added, brought in from the kitchen together with two wine glasses, a green tumbler containing a few red-leaved twigs. The gas fire was purring. The thick dark velveteen curtains were pulled against the foggy dusk. A lamp, a long-ago present from Gerard, was alight in a corner. Gerard rearranged the cups, turned off the centre light, and handed over the bottle of Beaujolais Nouveau to be opened by his host. Jenkin, when nervous, which he often was, had a habit of making little unconscious sounds. Now as, watched by Gerard, he manipulated the corkscrew, he uttered a series of throaty grunts, then as he poured the wine into the glasses and set the bottle down on the tiles, began to hum.
