by Iris Murdoch
After a few moments they stepped back, closed the window and drew the curtain. Gull put the lights on again and they looked at each other.
Gulliver, fortunately informed beforehand by Gerard that he need not bring evening dress, was wearing his best dark suit, white shirt, and soberly spotted bow tie. He had not been too drunk to comb down his sleek oily dark hair surreptitiously as he came up the stairs. This sleekness gave him a slightly sinister look (which pleased him) but also (he did not realise) made him look older. He looked thin, thin-faced, sallow, hungry and tired, like a minor character playing an unsuccessful lawyer or ill-intentioned priest. Only his pure brown eyes (like a pond of obscure but fragrant water, someone in a gay bar once told him) retained a childish boyish expression of uncertainty and fear. Lily, who had been wearing at dinner a long close-fitting dress covered with green sequins, which everyone politely said made her look like a mermaid, had now changed (not caring that Gull saw her momentarily in her petticoat) into a magnificent dark blue and white dressing gown. Lily looked tired too and a little petulant. A fold of stained lizardish skin descended over one of her pale brown dark-rimmed eyes. She moistened her thin silver lips and fluffed up her scanty pale dry hair. (Gull’s hair would have looked better if he had fluffed it up occasionally instead of combing it down.) They returned to their chairs by the fire.
‘Do you believe in flying saucers,’ said Lily, ‘do you think people from other galaxies are coming here to observe us?’
‘No.’
‘I do. It’s immensely probable. There are millions of planets like ours. Of course they don’t want us to see them. They’re writing books about us.’
‘All right, maybe they’re here and we can’t see them, maybe they’re in this room. The point is they make no difference.’
‘How do you know? How do you know how different things would be if they weren’t there?’
‘They might be better. They couldn’t be worse. So they can’t care much. When they’ve finished their books they’ll wipe us out, and a good thing too.’
‘Of course the whole universe will end one day. So what’s the point, if it’s all ending, what’s the use of anything? I wonder if this house is haunted, I must ask Rose. It’s near to a ley line.’
‘What makes you think so?’
‘I feel it. Roman roads run along ley lines. What do you think about ley lines?’
‘I think they’re things that don’t make any difference, like saucers.’
‘They’re physical, you know, you can find them by dowsing, where two underground streams meet. And they’re concentrations of thought-energy too, where human beings have been, all those legions marching along, all those emotions!’
‘If the legions made the energy no wonder the ley line runs along the road.’
‘Oh, but it’s cosmic energy too, like in stone circles. A ley line runs through Stonehenge. Are there any Stones about here? They all connect, you see.’
‘I believe there’s a stone of some sort in the wood.’
‘I’ll go and look at it, if it’s charged with energy I’ll know. My grandmother used to say –’
‘Lily, this is all nonsense, it’s irrational!’
‘You’re irrational, you won’t look at evidence, you just know! I say, do you think I ought to go and see Tamar? She’s eating practically nothing and she’s as pale as a fish.’
‘She’s always pale and eats nothing, and she’ll be asleep now. Let’s have some more whisky.’
‘Poor Tamar, oh poor poor little Tamar –’
‘Lily –’
‘Rose has such a calm smooth face, and she’s so much older than me. My face looks bombed. You know, they’ve got it in for Crimond, they’re going to smash him.’
‘Who are?’
‘They, the little earthly gods, the smarties, the know-alls. I heard them talking after dinner. God, I think I’m drunk, I’m seeing double or perhaps it’s Saucer people.’
‘Lily, dear, stop raving will you?’
‘I’m on Crimond’s side, I know you hate him, but I don’t –’
‘Lily, just stand up for a moment, please.’
They stood together before the fire and Gulliver put his arms round her waist, drawing her up against him. He felt her thin hard fragile brittle body against his, then suddenly her heartbeat.
‘Now let’s sit down, over here.’
They moved to the little green sofa and Lily sat on Gulliver’s knee and buried her face in the shoulder of his best suit covering it with make-up.
‘You know, I’d better tell you, I’m running out of money, the accountant told me, God knows where it’s all gone to, people only care about my money, I’m nothing, I’m just a shell, I’m like a squashed snail –’
‘Lily, stop it! Look, can I stay here tonight?’
‘You don’t know how awful it is to be me –’
‘Can I stay –?’
‘Oh if you want to, there’s plenty of room, I don’t care, but it won’t be any good.’ She started to cry.
Tamar was being closely observed now by Rose who was sitting on her bed. Rose had brought Tamar up a chocolate drink, specially made by Annushka, which Rose knew that Tamar liked, and Tamar had drunk a little of it. Rose had also brought aspirins and sleeping pills which had been refused. Tamar had politely insisted that she was quite well, nothing was the matter, she had eaten quite a lot really, she never had much appetite, she had slept perfectly well last night and would sleep perfectly well tonight. She was enjoying the Tale of Genji, there it was on her bedside table, and she was looking forward to reading a little before she went to sleep. Then she had suddenly started to cry. The tears were brief, like the automatic opening and closing of a sluice gate, large tears, they rolled down copiously for half a minute, then ceased. Rose tried to hold her hand, the hand with which she had been wiping away the tears, but she hid it in the bedclothes. Sitting up in bed in the little round room, with her striped pyjamas and thin tear-stained face, she looked like a small boy. Rose thought, she’s ill, she may be in for a depression, I must speak to Violet, but what’s the use of speaking to Violet, oh God, if I could only get hold of this child, kidnap her, take her away, and keep her! Perhaps I should have done just that years ago. But Violet is such a savage creature, she has so much will.
‘Tamar, you’re ill. I want you to see Doctor Tallcott, the doctor here in the village.’
‘Doctor – no!’ Tamar looked quite alarmed.
‘Your mother needn’t know – Well, see your own doctor then. Of course Violet says he’s no good –’
‘I’m not ill, I’m perfectly all right, I just want to be left alone, please, Rose dear, don’t be cross with me –’
‘Darling, I’m not!’ Rose knelt down beside Tamar’s bed and captured the little thin hand which had strayed out again, and kissed it. ‘Will you really sleep now, can I do anything, bring you anything?’
‘No, no, I’m all right, I’ll sleep now I think, I won’t read Genji, I feel you’ve done me good, don’t worry about me, it’s nothing, I promise you, nothing.’
Rose had to be content with that. She left the room and stood for a moment outside. Tamar’s light went out.
Rose went downstairs to her own bedroom. This room always reminded her of her mother who had been so pretty, so anxious to please everyone, so lost after her son and her husband had both so quickly, so incredibly, so suddenly, disappeared; so much under her husband’s thumb, under Sinclair’s, later under Rose’s, even Reeve’s. Rose still missed her mother, and looked about for her. She remembered being outraged when someone, a friend of Reeve’s, had called her ‘idle’. Her mother was not idle, she was always busy, though not always with tasks which people would think had much point. The flowers were so beautifully done in her day. Rose and Annushka lacked that talent. The room, not intentionally altered by Rose, had gradually disintegrated and faded while remaining generally the same: the old-fashioned dressing table with the glass top, which used to be
dusted over with her mother’s face powder, the big ‘gentlemen’s wardrobe’, dating from the days when she and Rose’s father had occupied the double bed – how far away that seemed now, as if in another century – the shabby armchairs not suitable for guest rooms, the Axminster carpet covered with shadowy flowers, the pink and white striped wallpaper, the pink nearly invisible, the paper peeling, the ghostly rectangles of vanished pictures. The tapestry renderings of Biblical scenes had belonged to her mother’s mother, herself an expert embroiderer.
Rose sat in one of the chairs and thought a bit about Tamar. Then she thought about Jean. All these thoughts were painful, fearful, remorseful. She considered going downstairs again and joining the others, but Gerard and Jenkin and Duncan would probably be locked in some theoretical argument, and she did not feel like entertaining Lily and Gull who had been in the process of going to bed anyway. She had better go to bed and seek the silent innocence of sleep and the silly anxiety of dreams. Dear sleep, like death. She noticed Daniel Deronda lying on the bedside table under the pink-fringed shade of the lamp. She couldn’t read it. She thought, perhaps I have come to the end of reading. J’ai lu tous les livres. She knew all her favourites by heart. No novel pleased her now with that glad feeling of escape and refuge. She did not want to read biographies, or the well-informed political books which Gerard sometimes recommended. No one reads books of imagination now, one of Reeve’s friends had told her (Tony Reckitt, a farmer, the man who had called her mother ‘idle’), they want facts. Rose could not do with facts, but the other things had gone too. Was she becoming, like the century, illiterate?
Outside in the snowy darkness a fox barked. For a moment Rose took the sound to be a dog’s bark before she recognised the crazy sound of the fox. In any case, no village dog would be so near, unless it was lost. A barking dog in the country always made her remember Sinclair’s dog, Regent. He had disappeared soon after Sinclair died. For a long time Rose had expected him to return, scratching at the door, down at Boyars, or in London. Even now she expected him, a ghost dog, coming back to look for his master. Listening to the fox bark again, wildly, crazily, sadly, desperately, she shuddered. Then she actually began to feel afraid.
She thought, am I growing old at last? I must take a grip upon myself, upon my life. It’s all about Gerard, this pointless feeling, this fear. Rose had suffered anguish, terror, as she watched Gerard and Lily dancing upon the ice. That utterly unexpected intrusion, that theft, had made her want to weep and scream. She would never forget those moments and the entirely new and special and intense feelings of jealousy, even of rage, even of hatred, with which she had witnessed Lily Boyne’s triumph. She had congratulated Lily afterwards, put her arm round her shoulder, laughed and smiled with Gerard as he exclaimed joyfully. It had been a terrible portent, a warning arrow. Yet what was she afraid of, did she think Gerard would fall in love with Lily? It’s the same old trouble, she thought, it’s the same old endless illness. There were dear good men that I might have married, that I loved, but I wasn’t in love, my heart was a captive with a life sentence. I am a fool, it’s wicked to be so stupid.
As if to allay the fear, the loneliness which the fox’s cry had carried to her out of the dark, she began to feel and welcome the love-pain, the hideous desire, the longing for Gerard which came to her sometimes, which she had felt so intensely when she stood at the window of Levquist’s room at the dance and saw the tower bathed in light. Sometimes it seemed to her that Gerard had become her brother, taking Sinclair’s place. Did he feel this, had he uttered that dread word once, and then seeing her wince never repeated it? Perhaps it was a sense of her as a sibling which made him so calmly content with their deep intimate yet somehow passionless, even hygienic, relation. God, how I want to smash it all sometimes, she thought, and rush at him screaming. How displeased he would be by such a ‘tantrum’, as she could hear him call it, and how kindly he would forgive her! Her position was hopeless, however ingenious she was there was no move she could make. It was too late now to have his children. Rose averted her thoughts from these too conceivable beings. But why was she thinking of that? Marriage with Gerard had never been a possibility, she could not even accuse him of having ‘led her on’. That strange episode after Sinclair’s death was more like a kind of sacred rite, something with no consequences, to be wrapped in a religious silence. She recalled something she had heard Jenkin say about Gerard. ‘The thing to remember about him is that he is basically dotty!’ She had been annoyed at the time; later it had even brought her comfort.
But I must do something, thought Rose, who had risen now and was walking up and down, to still the pain. I must see him now, tonight, I must see him. I’ll go down soon, and if he’s in his room, even if he’s gone to bed, I’ll knock on his door, I’ll talk to him properly, now I feel so extreme, I’ll have the courage. I’ll be frank and honest, there’s a way of saying it which won’t appal him. What it comes to is that there must be a pact between us, I must be certain of him. Am I to spend the rest of my life watching Gerard in a state of terrified anxiety? Yet how, really, could she put it? Just be mine only and don’t go away. Live with me, live near me, let me see you every day, let me be closest, let me be dearest. Promise never to marry, unless you marry me. Surely these were ludicrous, even immoral, demands. I just want an assurance from him, she thought, something to live on, to take away pains like these. I must go to him now, when I see him I’ll find some words.
Rose went to the dressing table mirror and looked at her calm untroubled face and her wide open eyes which Marcus Field had called her ‘fearless eyes’. She scrubbed a little powder onto her nose and combed her hair, her blond hair which was now turning to a pallid, gilded grey. She shook out the skirt of her long dress. Then she left the room and went swiftly and silently down the stairs. Lights were on. She listened in the hall. Silence. She went into the drawing room. All the lamps were on but the room was empty, the furniture all askew, glasses and coffee cups everywhere, the fire burning brilliantly, an empty whisky bottle in the grate. Rose put the guard in front of the fire, put the bottle in a wastepaper basket, left the cups and glasses as they were, turned out the lights in the drawing room and the hall, glided up the stairs again and along the landing. She could see the light under Gerard’s door. She paused, she crept and listened. No sound. She tapped on the door and heard Gerard say ‘Come in’, and she opened the door.
Jenkin and Duncan were sitting on Gerard’s bed, while Gerard, on one knee, was rummaging in his suitcase. They all leapt up. ‘Rose darling,’ cried Gerard, ‘an angel to the rescue! I thought I’d brought some whisky but I can’t find it! Be a sweet dear and bring us a bottle from somewhere, would you?’
Gulliver’s Housman poem about ‘the head that I shall dream of, and ’twill not dream of me’ would have been suitable that night, for utterance by Rose, since Gerard, now alone, was certainly not thinking about her, he was thinking about Jenkin.
Jenkin and Duncan had gone and Gerard was sitting on his bed. He was feeling rather, unusually, drunk. Duncan had been even drunker, but he was used to it and had been drinking hard all day. He had maintained, during an excited argument, a perfect clarity of speech, but had been unable to walk straight and had departed with one arm round Jenkin’s neck. Jenkin, who had apparently drunk at least as much as Gerard, remained agile, fresh, his boyish tints unimpaired by the flush which reddened Duncan’s face and to a less extent Gerard’s. They had been arguing, not of course about personal matters, but about the reasons for the astonishing success of Christianity in the fourth century AD. I hope we didn’t make too much row, Gerard thought, touching his flushed cheek with a little shame.
Last night Gerard had dreamt of his father. His father, seated at a desk before which Gerard was standing, was wearing on his right hand a large black leather glove such as falconers use for the hawk to perch upon. The word ‘jesses’ came into Gerard’s mind and he thought, where are the jesses? Staring portentously at him, his father thrust his h
and into the drawer of the desk and brought out something wrapped up in newspaper which he handed to Gerard with the words, ‘It’s dead.’ Gerard, horrified, thought, that means the bird is dead. He began to fumble with the newspaper and managed to undo it. Inside was not a dead bird but a small live rabbit. He put the rabbit inside his coat where it nestled, making him warm. When he looked up he saw that his father had extended his gloved hand meaningfully toward him. Gerard drew off the glove – and saw with horror that his father’s hand was bleeding copiously, it was in fact a flayed hand. At that moment Gerard also realised, I was mistaken about the rabbit, it’s not alive, it’s dead. He woke up in a state of great distress. He thought about Grey opening his wings and looking at him with his wise gentle witty eyes, and all his childish imaginings of ‘where is he now’ came back with a timeless ache. He recalled his father shortly before he died with a sad pathetic frightened look which he occasionally wore for a second and then wiped away. His father was afraid of death. Gerard had enacted death when he was eleven years old. Now he felt something like death reaching out and touching him with a dark gloved finger. There were partings, there were endings, there were precious things which went away forever.
He had looked forward to feeling happy at Boyars. This ‘looking forward’ as to a ‘treat’ had made him realise how much lately he had not been happy. Was he then accustomed to being happy, had he taken it for granted as being his usual state, even his right? Of course he was still in mourning for his father. There was a direction in which he constantly turned, to be confronted by an absence. He missed something in the world, his father’s absolute love. His father was present to him now as blank pain, and he could not help attributing this pain too to the absent one. As Gerard lay in the dark morning (it was nearly seven but still pitch black) he began to think about Crimond as if Crimond too had been part of the dream. He could not remember having dreamt about Crimond and hoped he was not starting to do so now. He was certainly nervous about seeing him. He was afraid, though he did not admit this to the others, that Crimond might somehow ‘turn nasty’. The prospect of the meeting made him realise how little, now, he really knew Crimond, it would be meeting a stranger. For years they had simply avoided each other, like the two polar bears. (This was a story of Sinclair’s, which had become legendary, about someone in the Arctic who saw two polar bears walking slowly towards each other from either side of some enormous empty plain of ice. As they came near they turned, without haste, one to one side, one to the other, ignoring each other, and padded on their way.) However Gerard did not think there would be anything he could not handle, and he would see to it that the meeting was suitably short and inconclusive.
