by Iris Murdoch
Now they were downstairs in what Crimond called the Playroom, Rose sitting on her coat, which she had slipped off, on the divan, and Jean, facing her, on a chair drawn over from the desk. Their meeting at the door had been emotional but not effusive. They gripped each other’s arms, turning quickly away without an embrace.
The Playroom was darkish except for two shaded lamps, one on the desk, the other perched on a pile of books on one of the tables. The room was cold and smelt of paraffin. Jean looked thinner, looked tired, seemed to be wearing no makeup, was dressed in a dark blue woollen dress and a brown cardigan and had just taken off an apron. She looked well however and beautiful, her dark hair more shaggy, longer, less neat, her dark eyes fierce. She had what Rose had once called her Jewish heroine look. Rose now felt, confronting her, almost afraid, at a loss, ready to cry, afraid too that Jean might suddenly weep angry ferocious savage tears. It had proved so far difficult to make conversation.
‘I was at Boyars in the snowy weather. The meadow was frozen.’
‘Did you skate?’
‘Yes. Lily Boyne was there. She skates very well. I was surprised.’
‘I don’t see why you should be surprised.’
‘No – I suppose not – I just didn’t expect it.’
‘How’s Tamar?’
‘Not well. She’s eating very little and looks unhappy.’
‘Can’t you do anything?’
‘I try. She came to see you, I believe.’
‘I assume you arranged it.’
‘Well – would you like to see her again?’
‘No.’
‘She’s very fond of you. Doesn’t he like you having visitors?’
‘Why did you come?’ said Jean.
‘To see you. And to see if there was anything in the world I could do for you.’
‘There is nothing.’
After a moment’s silence Rose said, ‘Will he come straight back after he leaves?’
‘Will who come straight back after he leaves where?’
‘Will Crimond come straight back here when he leaves Gerard?’
‘Is he with Gerard?’
‘Yes! Didn’t you know?’
‘He doesn’t always say where he’s going,’ said Jean, ‘I don’t ask. I don’t know whether he’ll come straight back.’
‘You don’t seem to know much about him.’
‘I don’t know everything about him.’
Jean, her hands on her knees, sat staring at Rose, waiting for the next question, as in an interrogation.
‘Does Crimond shoot at that target?’
‘He used to.’
‘I remember he was a marksman, he won some prize. I hope he’s not preparing for a revolution.’
‘I think he’s amusing himself.’
‘What do you do?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean both of you, what do you do all day, do you stay here, do you travel, do you entertain, do you visit people, do you go to concerts, are you happy?’
‘We’re mostly here,’ said Jean, ‘we don’t “entertain”, people sometimes come.’
‘Do you discuss his work?’
‘We discuss all sorts of things, but if you mean the book, no, not that.’
‘The book really exists?’
‘Of course. It’s over there. You can look at it if you like.’
Rose looked toward the desk, where the lamp showed a pile of different-coloured notebooks, one open. She felt a superstitious aversion to looking at the book. ‘No, thank you –’
‘You imagine I’m unhappy, perhaps you hope I’m unhappy.’
‘No,’ said Rose, ‘I just thought you might be bored.’ She had begun to feel they were talking in their sleep, not communicating at all, wasting precious time. Now Jean frowned and the atmosphere became tenser and more alert. Rose went on, in the new tension and sense of closeness, to say something which she had resolved to say, felt she must say, even rehearsed. ‘Duncan loves you. He wants you back. We all love you, we miss you. I wish you’d come back.’
Jean seemed to reflect on these words but replied only, ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you all, I’m not bored and I’m not unhappy. I have never been more completely happy in my life. If you want a message to carry back, there it is.’
‘You left Crimond last time, there must have been reasons.’
‘I have a kind of happiness which I think you’ve never known or dreamt of.’
‘Have you forgotten your love for Duncan? You did love him, surely you do love him?’
‘Last time was different. I wasn’t then able to conceive of a complete removal of my being, a complete change. I’ve grown into that ability in the time between. It’s a meeting with an absolute. When you can see what is perfect, what is imperfect falls away, it withers. Now, it’s face to face, not in a glass darkly. One cannot dispute, one cannot resist.’
‘And apparently one cannot explain.’
‘One cannot explain.’
‘Forgive me,’ said Rose, ‘I wanted so much to talk to you, and there’s so little time, I’m saying a lot of things very badly. I must go before Crimond comes back. Gerard said he’d give him an hour –’
‘Give him an hour!’
‘I don’t know how long it will take him to get back, if he comes back at once – you see I’m trying to say what matters, what matters to me, God knows when I’ll see you again. You know that I love you, we’ve been friends forever, I must say things. I think you’re living inside an illusion. It’s all so one-sided, so unfair. You don’t know where he goes and what he does, you’ve given him over your whole life, you’ve given up your friends and your world, and you don’t meet his friends or inhabit his world. He has not shared his things with you. You don’t even share in the book. As far as I can see, you have no relationship now except with him, a sexual relation which is part of his life and all of yours! I’m sorry – if I’m saying crude emotional things it’s because I’m angry on your behalf –’
‘Oh don’t be, don’t be,’ said Jean, who had listened to this tirade with a weary air of absent indifference. She sighed and got up again and went behind her chair and tilted it a little towards her. ‘Would you like some coffee? I’m afraid there’s no alcohol in the house.’
‘Of course I wouldn’t like some coffee!’ said Rose, exasperated. ‘Oh Jean –’
‘I don’t deny our love,’ said Jean, ‘our love, I mean, between you and me, I have no doubt that it will survive forever, even if we were never to see each other again, which of course we will, it is something unique and uniquely durable. But you must take it that we inhabit two absolutely different worlds. You rely on continuity, you live by a certain quiet seamless order in your life, it suits you, you’ve lived and thrived on it, whereas it has gradually suffocated me.’ She let the chair fall back with a jolt.
‘Oh well, if it’s just desire for change – If you’ve chosen discontinuity that implies that you don’t entirely believe in Crimond’s love, you can’t see your future together, you are insecure.’
‘I am the only woman he has ever loved or could love. I believe in his love and our future is together whatever happens. But of course, unlike you, we can’t foresee what will happen. There is insecurity, not in our love, but in the world. Crimond is brave and he has made me brave. You live in the old dreamy continuum where everyone is nice and dependable and good and every year has the same pattern. I have left that place, with him I am outside, in the dangerous contingent real world, love is dangerous, absolute and dangerous, one lives with death – and to live so is really to live. You don’t understand what being deeply in love and being deeply loved is like, how it brims over one’s whole existence and sanctifies and glorifies everything one does or thinks or touches, how it makes the world immense, as huge as the universe and full of light – you don’t really know anything about sex and the way one can live and breathe it, when it’s a total occupation, something which is everywhere, in everything, and makes
you into a god! When that happens one doesn’t worry about rights or shares or the little mean petty calculations which belong in the old small anxious selfish life. Self is obliterated. You’ve never had that experience, you’ve never been deified by love, you’re a quiet girl, you’re a puritan really, in the depths of your heart you feel that sex is wrong. Why didn’t you get married? Why did you attach yourself to a hopeless proposition like Gerard? Why didn’t you marry one of the others? Marcus Field, for instance, he was madly in love with you –’
‘Was he? He never said so.’
‘He thought Gerard owned you, he thought Gerard would marry you. You could have had children –’
‘Oh stop it!’ said Rose. ‘You’re just – just hopelessly romantic! Did you ever seriously think of marrying Sinclair?’
‘Yes. But – I don’t know that I would have done – even if he’d wanted it –’
‘If you’d married him he’d be still alive.’
‘Because I’d have stopped him gliding?’
‘Because the causal chains would have been different.’
‘Anything could have made the causal chains different.’
‘I know.’
Rose, realising that she would soon be in tears, looked away down the room toward the far end where the target in the dim light looked like a mandala. She felt very cold and pulled her coat on. Leaning back a little she felt the rough prickly material of the old quilt under her hands. She thought, after I go Jean will smooth out the quilt. I wonder if she will tell Crimond that I was here? I must go, I must go now before he comes back. I’ve lost Jean, we’ve lost each other, I’ve said all the wrong things. I’ll regret it all so much, so much.
‘I must go, darling.’
‘Yes. I’ll see you out. Wouldn’t you like to see the book? Come.’
Rose fumbled with her scarf and gloves and followed Jean, her booted feet striking an echo on the bare floor, Jean’s slippered feet soundless.
The book lay open underneath the lamp, the right-hand page written in Crimond’s small neat scarcely legible writing, the left-hand page blank except for a sentence or two and a question mark. Jean turned the leaves back, showing other pages, the text varied here and there by capital letters and things written in red, then set the book back as it had been, when Crimond had finished writing that morning. It was like being shown a holy manuscript or rare work of art, something to be marvelled at, not, by the uninitiated, actually studied. Jean then indicated piles of similar notebooks beside the desk containing the massive completed parts of the work so far. Rose, who had not wanted to see the thing, did not feel any instant hostility to it, as if she might wish to tear it up. What struck her, with a kind of surprise, was its inert separateness, its authoritative thereness, its magnitude. Feeling she ought to say something, she said, ‘What a long task.’
‘Yes.’
‘When will it end?’
‘I don’t know.’
They went upstairs to the hall, and stood and looked at each other by the unopened door. Rose’s tears spilled over and they embraced, closing their eyes.
‘Why didn’t you tell me you were going to see Gerard?’ said Jean.
They were sitting on the divan in the Playroom. Jean had smoothed it out where Rose had been sitting Crimond was still wearing his overcoat.
‘I would have told you if you had asked me where I was going. I would have told you now anyway. That’s not important. I was irritated about it beforehand, I didn’t want to talk about it.’
‘Was it all right?‘
‘Not very.’
‘If he was rude I hope you told him to go to hell.’
‘Oh he wasn’t rude. I was foolish. I haven’t talked to anyone about all that for a long time. I said too much and I was incoherent.’
‘Rose said he’d decided to give you an hour!’
‘I had decided to give him half an hour. But when I saw him –’
‘When you saw him –?’
‘Well, I’ve known him even longer than I’ve known you. It wasn’t a proper argument, I’m afraid he’ll have rather a poor impression –’
‘He’ll see, one day!’
‘Oh – one day – And you, my queen and empress, my little hawkling, tell me, why did Lady Rose Curtland come to see you?’
‘Curiosity,’ said Jean, ‘and to tell me Duncan still loves me.’
‘And so, are you going back to him?’
‘Crimond, don’t hurt me.’
‘Rose has upset you.’
‘Oh all right, and Gerard has upset you! Actually she annoyed me, that’s all. You don’t feel she’s unsettled me?’
‘I feel precisely that.’
‘You go on and on tormenting me. Why do you do it? You can’t believe –’
‘Oh I don’t believe – we are talking of feelings. If one had the most precious diamond in the world in your pocket wouldn’t you be afraid of losing it, wouldn’t you keep putting your hand in to be sure it was still there?’
‘Yes. I feel like that too. But I don’t keep persecuting you with my terrible fear.’
‘I tell you of my fear so that you can instantly reassure me. Jeanie, my life rests upon your love, you must take my fear away at ever second, my consciousness depends on yours, I breathe with your breath –’
‘Oh my love – pride, rose, prince, hero of me, high priest.’
‘Tell me something that Rose Curtland said to you, something about us, she must have said something about us, something to persuade you to go back.’
‘Oh, just idiotic things.’
‘Like what?’
‘She said she thought I might be bored!’
‘And are you?’
‘She said I didn’t seem to know much about you.’
‘What made her say that?’
‘The fact that I didn’t know you’d gone to see Gerard.’
‘You told her that I hadn’t told you.’
‘It came out. I’m sorry. And when she asked if you’d mind her having come, I said I didn’t know. I suppose I shouldn’t have said that.’
‘It doesn’t matter. You don’t have to conceal anything. I should be angry if I thought you’d lied to her. Whatever you say, she will think we are unhappy, and hope we are doomed. But are you bored?’
‘Crimond, don’t go on like that! What about our lunch? I’ve got that vegetable soup that you like, and I’m making a stew for this evening.’
‘You’re making a stew for this evening. That sounds like real life. Sometimes I think we’re playing at it.’
‘At what?’
‘Real life.’
‘Crimond,’ said Jean, ‘my sweet dear love, sometimes a devil gets into you that wants to undermine us. You say such destructive things, and almost as if you wanted to bring it all down. You negate our reality, and you do it wantonly.’
‘Oh Jeanie, I’m so tired, I’m so tired, I can’t rest, I can’t rest –’
Jean put her arms round him, round the bundle of his shoulders and his overcoat, and drew his head down to her shoulder and stroked his hair over the crown of his head and down onto his neck under the coat collar, and looked away over his head across the chill room to the open door. His head was cold. ‘You work too hard,’ she said, ‘I know you have to. I wish I could make you rest. I so often want to. You must teach me how. I know we rest in bed. But you don’t rest any other way – and neither do I.’
Crimond lifted his head and put his cold lips gently to her cheek. ‘What do people do who can rest, my angel of peace?’
‘I wish I were an angel of peace.’
‘You are, you are my peace, I have no other.’
‘People who can rest read books and go for walks and arrange flowers and weed their gardens and wash their cars and listen to music and rearrange their possessions and have their friends to informal suppers and have lots of general conversation.’
‘At least we read books.’
‘You read work books, and poetry. I c
an’t read at present. It’ll come back.’
‘Perhaps your friend Rose is right. She wants us to fail. She isn’t really your friend. She’s spiteful, as women are.’
‘And irrational, I suppose! You want to liberate the world but you still think in your heart that women are inferior, you think they aren’t quite real.’
‘All men think that,’ said Crimond, raising his head from where it had been resting, and thrusting her away a little. ‘And most women too. Why deny it, women are different, their brains are different, they’re weaker, women cry and men don’t, that symbolises it.’
‘Have you never cried?’
‘Not that I know of.’
‘Perhaps you will one day.’
‘Perhaps, when the world ends.’
‘You’re certainly not very sound on the liberation of women. Maybe after all Islam will rule the world.’
‘It is a possibility I have considered.’
‘So you think me irrational and inferior and unreal?’
‘Not you, little one. You are not a woman. You are an errant spirit. We are both from elsewhere, we are visitors here, aliens, and by a happy chance we have met each other.’
‘No wonder we think everyone else we know is half alive.’
‘You must find something to do, something to study, you are wasting your talents.’
‘I will find something, I will, don’t worry about that!’
‘I believe you are bored sometimes, you must be, Rose is right. You’ve given up so much, all your friends, your social life –’
‘What I’ve given up is worthless to me. You’ve given up your solitude. I wonder if you sometimes regret it?’
‘No, no, my heart and my soul – it was fated. You won’t leave me, will you, little falcon?’
‘How could I leave you, I am you, I cannot tear myself out from the sheath of my limbs.’
