The Book and the Brotherhood

by Iris Murdoch

  The most important thing which Duncan did not tell Jean, and which he felt she did not guess, was the violence and ferocity of his hatred of Crimond. Of this he spoke to nobody. Of course it was taken for granted that Duncan loathed his rival. But as he and Jean gradually ‘learnt’ each other again, he felt that she, with enough to do struggling with her own darkened imagination, assumed that as Crimond receded from her, he receded from Duncan too. It was not so. Of course Duncan continued to wonder whether Jean had really left Crimond voluntarily, and whether, on any day, if he were to whistle she would run back. These were doubts and speculations which, constituting an intelligible pain, he had to live with. His hatred for Crimond was something else, obsessive, primaeval, poisonous, deep, living within him like a growing beast, living with his life, breathing with his breath. He continually rehearsed the defeat in the tower room, and his last sight of Crimond in that shameful encounter in the dark beside the river. The fall down the stairs, the fall into the river, awful images of his cowardly weakness and his stupid graceless suffering. These things must be paid for. Of course he wanted to settle down again with Jean, and his ‘let us be happy’ had come from the heart. Sometimes that future was real, and he was pleased in her pleasure when they planned their treats and consolations. But at the same time there was another event in the future over which he brooded as over a precious dragon’s egg, a dream which was becoming hideously like an intention, the moment when he would go to Crimond and kill him.

  Meanwhile, in the ordinary world, the pursuit of pleasure was taking the form of plans. Duncan still went to the office and was soon to be promoted to a high place, though not so high as that which Gerard had rejected, some said funked. But Duncan had lately decided to refuse this ‘plum’, to quit Whitehall and go and live in France with Jean, as she had always wanted to do. They agreed, for they often found relief in discussing their friends, that Gerard had been a fool to refuse the offer of great power, since he could do nothing with his leisure and was idle and discontented. They were different, they would use their freedom to manufacture happiness. Much time was spent studying maps and house agents’ brochures. They talked of old farmhouses to be restored and altered, of gardens and swimming pools and proximity to the sea. Meanwhile they ‘went out’ a good deal, to theatres and parties and restaurants. They ate and drank well. Jean bought jewellery, dresses. They saw a modest amount of Rose and Gerard, and one evening went to a dinner party at Gerard’s house, organised by Pat and Gideon, where Rose and Jenkin were present and a man from Duncan’s office and his wife. Gerard declared he had given up entertaining since Pat had taken over. Gulliver and Lily were invited, but Lily refused and Gulliver did not answer. Rose invited Jean and Duncan to lunch, but only Jean came, and talked about their recent weekend in Paris. Of course Duncan’s old friends behaved with exquisite tact and intelligence, but they could not but seem to be inquisitive observers. At the dinner party Jenkin had mentioned Tamar, and said, without details, that she had been ill, but was better. This reference gave Duncan an uncomfortable feeling. Of course he had not forgotten that episode, but he remembered it only in the way in which one recalls something whose status is that of ‘being forgotten’. He thought of it and instantly dismissed it. He had not told Jean about it. It remained put away as something he would tell her one day, in their new life, in France, telling it casually, diminished into the almost nothing which it essentially was.

  Gulliver had got as far as King’s Cross Station. It was nine o’clock in the morning and he had come to look at the timetables. He had fixed his departure for the following day. He had scrambled out of his flat the morning after his ‘despair’ session with Lily, fearing that she might turn up to dissuade him. Lily did in fact arrive just after he had left. He had now been staying for several days at a cheap lodging house, it could hardly be called a hotel, near to the station. He was encouraged to find how easily, so far, he was putting up with the being-no-one and having-nothing of this new state of affairs. He was frightened too of course. He had delayed his departure because of matters, not yet entirely complete, to be settled with his landlord, with the new tenant who had bought some of his furniture, with the man who had bought the rest of his furniture and some of his books. These latter transactions brought in a larger sum of money than he expected, so that, together with his still existent savings, he could at least start his new life without being penniless.

  He tried not to think about Lily. He felt he could do nothing about the ‘Lily problem’ and it was partly from that that he was running away. He had said sincerely that he loved her, he was exceedingly touched that she said she loved him. But he was dismayed by the talk of marriage. How could he marry somebody like Lily, generally thought to be rather ridiculous, a ‘rich tart’? He could not bear to be, and be seen to be, financially dependent on her. He could not bear not having a job, especially when ‘hanging around’ with Lily, and in the proximity of Gerard whose attempts to get work for him had so consistently failed, and who perhaps blamed Gull for this lack of success. He felt again his old childish feeling of being the outsider, the misfit, the nonentity. He was indeed truly ‘in despair’, ‘at the end of his tether’, and had to get out of London to somewhere quite else where perhaps his luck would change. Gulliver was serious in his resolve to embrace his misfit role and ‘be no one’, yet all the same he could not help glimpsing himself in the future as someone, however poor and obscure, using his talents and making a romantic marriage. Perhaps his pictures of himself as a retarded Dick Whittington did not exclude the ‘girl in Leeds’ to whom Lily had referred. The mention of Leeds had brought up the problem, then not yet solved, of where he was actually going. Coming to King’s Cross was itself an act of decision. (In the interim he had considered France, Spain, India, Africa, America and Australia.) He had decided to go to Newcastle, influenced by the idea of being, where he had always wanted to be, beside the sea. His plans were not now quite as selflessly empty as they had been at first, he had stopped enacting his departure as if it were his death. What would he do when he emerged from the station in Newcastle, a town which he had never visited before? Of course he would have to find some cheap digs where he could leave his suitcases. He had reluctantly left a lot of clothes behind, not with Lily but at a bookshop he used to frequent. It had been agony choosing which to leave. Well, then he would go to the local employment exchange, and then, or perhaps first, ferret out where the little theatres were, the theatre workshops, the pubs which put on ‘protest’ shows. His Equity card was in his pocket. People content with very little pay can sometimes turn up at theatres and get jobs. If he could get even a quarter of such a job he might also earn money as a waiter or a cleaner. All these extremities, which he had certainly considered, would have been psychologically much more difficult to face in London where he cared about appearances and had Lily to run to. In the north he could be, what he had essentially become, a poor man looking for a job, an unemployed person among others, a man in a queue. And if he was prepared to take anything surely he would find something.

  It was extremely cold in the station, but Gulliver was wearing his best thick winter overcoat, an expensive garment designed to last forever, which he now regarded as a prime piece of his equipment. Looking away beyond the vaulted roofs where the rails led on into the grey and recent daylight, he saw that it was beginning to snow. He walked a little way along one of the platforms to inspect the snow and was reminded of Boyars and the skating party and ‘well done our side’. If only that beautiful triumphant Lily could be the whole of Lily! But he knew that love was not supposed to work like that. A huge diesel engine moved slowly past him and he watched the line of carriages, people at the windows, people, people, off to the north, off to the north. A child waved excitedly to him and he waved back. The station with its sombre yellow brick and its dimmed lights beneath its high arches was like a cathedral. It was also, it occurred to him, like a huge stable where the engines, with their long yellow noses and their sad dark green e
yes looked like big gentle beasts. Yet they were lethal beasts too who would guarantee a man sudden and certain death. Gull hurried back to the timetable boards. There was a good selection of trains, and he noted down some early ones. Grantham, Peterborough, York, Darlington, Durham, Newcastle. Newcastle, Dundee, Arbroath, Montrose, Stonehaven, Aberdeen… Where might not that long-distance train carry him in the end? At any rate it was settled that tomorrow a particular train would take him away from his old life, perhaps forever. But I’m still in the old life now, he thought, I can’t yet imagine that all these great intentions, those brave gestures like giving up my flat, are real choices. It’s not too late, I can still go back, I can ring up Lily, we could have lunch together. Is my believing this what makes me able to look at a list of trains and choose one? It doesn’t hurt yet like a real decision would. I’m still weighted down by my old London life. I suppose there’ll be a moment when the balance begins to tilt the other way, and another scene and other people will be real, and London and Gerard and Lily will be a dream. When will it come? When I get on the train, when the train starts, when it arrives, when I stand in the station at Newcastle and look for the exit, when I walk out into the street and wonder which way to go? Or later when I talk to someone who attends to me, even if it is only a man in an office? Or when I find a friend? Ah, a friend… Perhaps it will take a long time for the balance to tilt from south to north – or perhaps it will happen very quickly. Perhaps I shall meet someone on the train who will change my life.

  Underneath the sibilant hum of the trains and the loud announcements of departures and the clatter of luggage trolleys and the bird-like mutter of human talk and the purposive walking of many people there was a kind of silence like a clarity under a mist. Gulliver found a seat and after sitting motionless for a time began to feel a little dazed, almost sleepy. He thought, yes, this place is like a church, a place of meditation, or perhaps it’s like a Greek orthodox church where you can walk around too and light candles. I wonder when the bar opens? He meditated for a while, watching his thoughts at first scampering, then drifting. He thought, perhaps I’m only just discovering what it’s really like to be unemployed, when you’re tired with trying and you give up and just sit about without any will to do anything or go anywhere. I suppose you’ll be watching television if you can afford it. Gull became aware that someone was sitting beside him on the seat, a man. Gulliver and the man briefly inspected each other. The man, who had no coat, was wearing ancient blue jeans and a shabby lumpy jacket over a stained jersey. His face was thin, his hair was thin but still brownish, the stubble on his face and neck was grey. He held what appeared to be a cider bottle from which he took occasional gulps. He coughed. His hands, emerging from too short sleeves, were red and crabbed and swollen, they trembled. His eyes, blue as Gulliver saw when they turned towards him, were watery and rimmed with red as if his eyelids were turning inside out. Gulliver moved instinctively away from the man. He wanted to say something to him but could think of nothing to say. He felt upset and startled and annoyed.

  At last the man spoke. ‘Cold, in’ it.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s the wind.’

  ‘Yes, it’s the wind.’

  ‘Snowing too, in’ it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  There was a silence.

  ‘Do you believe in God?’

  ‘No,’ said Gulliver, ‘do you?’

  ‘Yes, but not in logic.’

  ‘Why not in logic?’

  ‘If there’s God should be all OK, an’ it? But it’s bloody rotten. We’re rotten. You and me, sitting here, we’re rotten.’

  ‘I don’t think we’re rotten,’ said Gulliver. ‘We’re just unlucky.’

  ‘Unlucky, you can say that again. No, I’m not unlucky, I’m a right bastard. That’s why I believe in God.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘What else? Got to. Sin brings you to it. I know all about that. If I didn’t believe in God I’d jump under one of them diesels. Where you going, anywhere?’

  ‘I’m going to Newcastle to look for a job.’

  ‘Newcastle? You crazy? There ain’t no jobs up there, just a lot of bloody Geordies, they’ll knock your eyes out.’

  ‘I suppose you haven’t got a job either,’ said Gull. Silly question, but he didn’t like the man’s tone, and he had thought about those Geordies too.

  ‘Job? What’s that? All I work at is where to spend the night.’

  ‘Where do you live?’

  ‘Live, is that what I’m doing? I do it here at the moment.’

  ‘You mean –?’

  ‘Here in this bloody station. I move about, see, ’cause they get to know you. Paddington, Victoria, Waterloo, they’re all the same, they move you on and you have to walk about till something opens. Even the pubs won’t let you in if you’re filthy like me. And they call this place England!’

  ‘Have you any family?’ said Gulliver desperately.

  ‘Family? They said “get lost”, and I got lost! Once you start going down you can’t stop, you can’t ever get back where you once were. And when you get to the bottom – it’s black down there. Oh God. I’ll die of cold soon and that’ll be it. Do you believe in hell?’

  ‘Yes. It’s here.’

  ‘You’re bloody right.’

  A deadly gloom settled over Gulliver. Why did he have to meet this awful pathetic man? You can’t ever get back where you once were. Perhaps I shall be like that one day, he thought, perhaps sooner than I imagine, this must be my alter ego, something horrible and prophetic which had crawled out of my unconscious mind and is sitting beside me! Why should he fasten onto me? He’s making me feel not only miserable but bad, rotten, like he said I was. That balance that was going to tilt toward something better, at least to a decent mediocre life, perhaps that’s what it’s tilting to, hating oneself not only in oneself but in other people! He may be as innocent as Christ, but I’m making him the cause that evil is in me. Why aren’t I sorry for the bugger? I’m not, I can’t be, and of course he’s not innocent, he hates me, and I hate him. I’d like to push him under a train.

  Then a terrible thought appeared in Gulliver’s mind. He ought to give this man his overcoat! The thought, appearing suddenly, seemed like something planted by an alien force. Perhaps he was confronted by a demon in disguise. For the alien thought had nothing to do with goodness, it was an obsession, a superstition, a kind of blackmail. Unless he handed over his coat he would meet with every misfortune, he would never get a job, he would take to drink, he would end up in the pitiful condition portrayed by the hobgoblin at his side. Whereas if he gave his coat to the prophetic imp all would be well and he could live carefree ever after. The moment of choice had come. I won’t give it to him, he thought, I don’t care what happens to me! Of course I could buy another coat, but one like this would cost far too much now, far more than I can afford, besides I like this coat, it’s my coat, why should he have it, he’d only sell it to buy drink! But then suppose he isn’t a demon, or an alter ego, suppose he’s Christ himself come to test me, or damn it, suppose he’s just what he seems to be, a poor miserable unlucky sod like I might be one day, just himself, just a miserable accidental stranger? I wish I hadn’t thought of giving him my coat, I wish I’d never set eyes on the wretch, but now I’ve thought of it haven’t I got to do it?

  Gulliver stood up and unbuttoned his overcoat. He put his hand inside into his pocket and drew out his wallet. He opened the wallet and drew out a five-pound note. He handed it to the man, who seemed to be expecting it, and said, ‘Here, just a little present, good luck to you.’ Then, replacing his wallet and buttoning up his coat, he walked briskly away. He was instantly consumed by misery and rage and fear. When he had walked some distance he looked back. The man had gone, probably to get some more drink somewhere and shorten his life a little more. Gulliver wished that he had given the man his coat, or rather he wished that in some other ideal life some Gulliver, who was certainly not himself, had been able to e
nact a good action spontaneously without degrading it into a superstition. He sat down on another seat and closed his eyes and buried his head in his hands.

  After a while, retaining self-consciously the attitude of despair, he opened his eyes and looked miserably down through his fingers at a small area of the dirty concrete below him, covered with cigarette ends and chocolate papers. He stared at it for a while. Then he removed his hands and sat up a little. An odd little round thing about the size of a ping-pong ball was lying under the seat. Gulliver wondered what it was. Still sitting he stretched one hand in under the seat but could only touch the little thing with his fingertips. It rolled away. He thought, I’m bewitched today, I must get hold of that thing, what on earth is it? He got up and peered under the seat. The thing had moved again, perhaps accidentally kicked by one of the people passing by. Gulliver knelt down and tried to reach for it again, but now it was lying farther off, out in the open, likely to be stepped on at any moment. In an anguish of anxiety he pursued it, made a quick dart and seized it, then stood holding it in his hand. When he saw what it was he stared at it with disconcerted surprise.