The Book and the Brotherhood

by Iris Murdoch

  Yes, he understood why Crimond had had to summon him, responding to a nervous urge, an irresistible craving, like the toreador’s desire to touch the bull. The woman had gone, the drama remained between him and Duncan. Crimond had always hated the idea of being in debt, he was a meticulous payer, he was a gambler, he feared the gods. The gesture of baring his breast was natural to him – it was a ritual of purification, an exorcism of something which, like a Grecian guilt, was formal and ineluctable, curable only by submission to a god. But why did Jenkin have to die? Crimond had offered himself as victim to Duncan, but Duncan had killed Jenkin. So Jenkin died as a substitute, as a surrogate, he had to die so that Crimond could live? Had some deep complicity with Crimond brought it about that Duncan could kill Crimond without killing Crimond? By not killing Crimond he had brought about Jenkin’s death. Had he even in some sense brought it about deliberately? Duncan recalled daily the dark red hole in Jenkin’s forehead and the sound of his body hitting the floor. He remembered the special warm feel of Jenkin’s ankles and his socks, as Duncan pulled the body along the room, and how, afterwards, he had stepped to and fro over it in his frenzied hurry to tidy up the scene. He remembered Crimond’s tears. He also, in the presence of these images, asked himself, retrieving it now from the depths of memory, whether perhaps he had not always, in his play with firearms, had a fantasy of shooting someone like that through the middle of the forehead? Perhaps an old sadistic fantasy, tolerated over many years, had been there to prompt him; and had found him ready because of other ancient things, such as an old jealousy of Jenkin surviving from Oxford days. After Sinclair’s death it was to Jenkin, not to Duncan, that Gerard turned for consolation. That microsecond before he pulled the trigger: could it actually have contained a decision? Duncan had wanted to kill Crimond – but had found himself unable to – because he was afraid to – because he did not really want to – yet he had needed to take revenge on somebody, somebody had to die. It was as if, not strong enough to kill the man he hated, he had killed his dog.

  ‘Your funny eye looks better,’ said Jean, who had been staring at him. ‘Well, I suppose it isn’t actually different. Can you see better out of it?’

  ‘I think so – or I imagine I can – the clever old brain has fudged things up, it often does.’

  ‘It’ll fudge things up for us,’ said Jean.

  They smiled at each other tired complicit smiles.

  She went on, ‘I can’t remember when you first had that eye thing. You haven’t always had it.’

  ‘Oh years ago, I was developing it before we went to Ireland.’ Something about this exchange made Duncan suddenly feel that it was a good time to tell Jean about the thing with Tamar. He would be relieved to get rid of it. ‘I’ve got something to confess – it’s about Tamar – I had a little momentary quasi-sex episode with her one evening when you were away and she came round to console me.’

  ‘With Tamar!’ said Jean. ‘With that good sweet child! How could you!’ She felt an unexpected relief at this sudden utterance by Duncan, as if even some partial shabbily doctored piece of truth-telling could somehow ‘do them good’. ‘I hope you didn’t upset her?’

  ‘Oh, not at all. Nothing happened really. She just threw her arms round me to cheer me up. I was feeling miserable and I hugged her. I was touched by her affection. No harm’s done. There was nothing else.’

  What a dear old liar he is, thought Jean. I certainly won’t question him. ‘I expect she was flattered.’

  ‘Perhaps I was! She may not have thought it was anything at all. You’re not cross with me?’

  ‘No. Of course not. I’ll never ever be cross with you. I love you.’

  Jean thought to herself, if Tamar hadn’t come round to tell me about Duncan and the child I would never have thought of searching Duncan’s desk, and telephoned Jenkin and sent him to Crimond. If Duncan had not seduced Tamar Jenkin would be still alive. If I had not left Duncan he would not have seduced Tamar. Is it all my fault or his fault or Tamar’s fault, or is it fate, whatever that means? Oh how tired I feel sometimes. It’s as if Crimond devoured part of me which will never grow again. Perhaps that’s my punishment for having left Duncan. Would the results of all these things ever reach their ends? And poor Tamar, and that child. Sometimes at night Jean thought about the child, Duncan’s child, whom they might have adopted. So if Duncan could have children after all, there might yet be another child, not hers, but his, for them to cherish… But that way thoughts must not go, it was too late, it was too complicated, the time for mysteries and new beginnings and unpredictable adventures was over, their task now was simply to make each other happy.

  The breeze had moderated, the sea which had been mildly disturbed and covered with flickering points of white had become calmer. The masts of yachts in the harbour were quiet. A fishing boat was moving out, its engine uttering little rhythmic muted explosions. The diffident lazy hollow sound came pleasurably to Jean and Duncan, as if it somehow united and summarised the scene, the harbour and the sea, so beautiful, so full of secure promise. The silky light blue unscored undivided sea merged at the horizon into a pale sky which at the zenith, cloudless, was overflowing with the blue sunny air of the south.

  ‘It’s time for lunch,’ said Duncan. ‘There are other pleasures!’ Jean always argued that the most perfect time was that of the apéritif. He rose to his feet while Jean remained, listening to the parting boat and gazing at the sea.

  As he got up Duncan put his hand into the pocket of his old tweed jacket and felt something in there, something round and very light and insubstantial. He drew it out. It was a small reddish ball of what looked like interwoven silk or thread. Duncan suddenly felt himself blushing violently. It was of course that ball of Crimond’s hair which, such an infinitely long time ago, he had picked up from the floor of their bedroom in the tower in Ireland. He opened his hand and let the thing fall to the ground where it lay for a moment at his feet upon the pavement. The faint breeze moved it, rolling it very slowly against the iron leg of a coffee table. He had an impulse to pick it up again. Should something so fateful be allowed to vanish into the rubble of the world? It began to move away towards the road where it was swept into the wake of a passing car. After the car had passed he thought he could still see it lying in the roadway.

  Jean was getting up. ‘Let’s go and look at those tiles after lunch.’

  They went into the restaurant. Duncan felt pity for himself and wondered if he would soon die of cancer or in some strange accident. He did not feel unhappy, perhaps death, though not imminent, was indeed near; but it was now as if he and death had become good friends.

  ‘We never found that Stone in the wood,’ said Lily.

  ‘What stone?’ said Rose.

  ‘The old standing stone, the ancient stone. I know it’s there.’

  ‘There’s an eighteenth-century thing with a Latin in-scription but it’s quite small. I don’t think there’s anything prehistoric, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘The Roman Road runs along a ley line.’

  ‘Oh really?’

  ‘That’s why Jean’s car crashed.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Ley lines are charged with human energy, like telepathy, so they collect ghosts. You know what ghosts are, parts of people’s minds out of the past, what they felt and saw. Jean saw a ghost – probably a Roman soldier.’

  ‘She said she saw a fox,’ said Rose.

  ‘People don’t like to admit they’ve seen ghosts. They think they’ll be laughed at – and they’re afraid to – ghosts don’t like to be talked about and if you see one you just know that.’

  ‘Have you ever seen one?’

  ‘No, I wish I had. There must be ghosts as Boyars.’

  ‘I hope not,’ said Rose, ‘I’ve never seen anything.’ She did not like this talk of ghosts.

  ‘I always thought I’d see a ghost of James, but I never did.’

  ‘James?’

  ‘My husband – you know, he
died and left me the money.’

  ‘Of course you were married – I’m sorry –’

  ‘I don’t feel I was married. It was all over so quickly. And poor James was like a ghost when he was alive.’

  ‘Do you often think about him?’

  ‘No. Not now.’

  Rose felt she could not pursue this any further. She said, ‘So there’s no news from Gulliver?’

  ‘No,’ said Lily, ‘not a word. He’s in Newcastle. Anyway that’s where he said he was going. By now he may be anywhere, Leeds, Sheffield, Manchester, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Ireland, America. He’s given up his flat, he’s gone. He’s disappeared forever, that’s what he wanted to do, he often said so, to go right away and leave no trace.’

  ‘I expect he’ll write soon.’

  ‘No he won’t. If he’d been going to he would have done already. He said it would be an adventure. He’s probably met someone else by now. I’ve lost him. Anyway I don’t want him any more, to hell with him. I’ll make a wax image of him and drop it in the fire – like – like a guy I saw on Guy Fawkes day, it was like a real person, it lifted its arms up, oh it was awful –’ Tears came into Lily’s eyes and her voice gave way.

  Rose and Lily were walking round the garden at Boyars. It was evening, a damp fragrant evening, almost a spring evening, though the weather was still cold. Low storm clouds, thick, bulging, dark and yellowish, with brilliantly white serrated edges, were moving towards the east, leaving behind a clear transparent reddish sunset. It had been raining most of the day, but now the rain had ceased. Rose and Lily were wearing overcoats and wellingtons. Lily had rung up Rose to find if anyone had heard from Gull (which they had not) and had been rather tearful over the telephone. Rose, sympathetic, had invited her to Boyars. It was not in fact a very convenient time. Annushka, suffering giddy spells, was in hospital for some tests. Mousebrook seemed to be ill too, or perhaps just moping; after all he was really Annushka’s cat. Boyars had a deserted feeling, as if the soul of the house, filled with foreboding, had already fled. Perhaps it knew that Boyars would soon be empty, ruined, or changed into a quite different house with a different soul. Rose, walking about in it, had begun to wonder whether she had ever really lived there.

  The daffodils were in flower, a pale patch on the edge of the shrubbery. The crows, after spending the day in warfare with the magpies, were cawing upon the highest branch of a still leafless beech tree, outlined against the radiant red sky. Rose and Lily were walking along in the wet grass beside one of the borders where early violets stained the earth beneath the budding shrubs.

  ‘Tamar seems much better now,’ said Rose, anxious to get Lily off the subjects of Gull and the supernatural.

  The reference to Tamar did not seem to please Lily. Lily had been suffering pangs of conscience at the news of Tamar’s ‘depression’ or whatever it was, because she felt she had persuaded Tamar to take that irrevocable step. She had enjoyed taking charge of Tamar, able to put her worldly wisdom, her specialised knowledge, her money at the disposal of the much praised little angel. Only later had she realised how grave the decision was which she had so blithely fostered. With that she began, as she never had before, to grieve over her own abortion, which had been such a happy relief to her mind at the time. She even reckoned up how old the child would have been if it had lived. She had lately received a note from Tamar enclosing a cheque for the amount which Lily had lent her. The covering note was brief, curt, no sending of love or good wishes or thanks. Perhaps Tamar now hated Lily for having persuaded her. Looking at the cold note, Lily felt near to hating Tamar for causing her so much regret and remorse.

  ‘I don’t care for all that religion she’s got into,’ said Lily. ‘It’s just a psychological trick, it won’t last.’

  Rose, who thought this too, said vaguely, ‘Oh she’ll be all right – she’s a very strong girl really – she’s brave.’

  ‘I wish I was strong and brave and going to be all right,’ said Lily.’

  ‘Mind you don’t step on the snails,’ said Rose. ‘There’s a snails’ dance going on after all that rain.’

  The grass, illumined by the sunset light, was covered with glossy worms and wandering snails.

  ‘I love snails,’ said Lily, ‘my grandmother attracted them, they came into the house. Of course snails do get in everywhere, I found one in my flat the other day. My grandmother could tame wild things, they came to her. She used the snails for telepathy.’

  ‘How did she do that?’ said Rose, who had heard quite a lot, indeed enough, about Lily’s horrible grandmother who had the evil eye and whose name nobody dared to utter.

  ‘To send a message to someone at a distance, each of you has a snail, and you tell your snail what you want to say, and the person with the other snail gets the message. You have to put a spell on the snails of course.’

  Rose wondered how much of this nonsense Lily really believed. They went into the house.

  They had supper in the kitchen at the big kitchen-table which Annushka had scrubbed so much that the grainy wood had become a pale waxen yellow. Rose let Lily cook. They had an omelette, and some spiced cabbage which Lily had felicitously improvised, then cheddar cheese, and Cox’s Orange pippins whose wrinkled skins were now yellower than the table. During the two days which Lily had spent at Boyars they had eaten frugally, drinking quite a lot of wine however. Mousebrook, stretched out into a very long cat on the warm tiles at the back of the stove, watched them with his baleful golden stare. Rose pulled him out and set him on her knee, stroking him firmly, but he refused to purr and soon twisted away and returned to his warm shrine. His fur, usually so electrically smooth, had felt dry and stiffened. After supper they sat with whisky beside the wood fire in the drawing room. They were easy together. Rose felt increasingly fond of Lily, though her restlessness wearied her, and she was irked by Lily’s continual attempts to prompt confidences. Lily had talked a lot to Rose about her childhood and about Gulliver. Rose had not reciprocated. But she was glad of Lily’s company and touched by her affection. They retired to bed, at any rate to their bedrooms, early.

  Alone in her room Rose stood at the window. A sick moon had risen among the rush of ragged clouds. A car was passing along the Roman Road, its headlights creating faint flying impressions of walls and trees. Then it was gone and clouds covered the moon and the countryside was pitch dark and silent. Rose switched on the electric fire. In winter the central heating, switched off in much of the house when there were no guests, made little impression on the draughty spaces. Rose could feel the proximity of empty unheated rooms. She had been able to chatter with Lily but felt now, as she walked up and down, that the gift of speech had left her, a recurrent sensation as if her mouth were filled with stones. She was cut off, dumb, alone. The image of her stone-obstructed mouth and weighted tongue reminded her that that morning, visiting the stables to fetch apples, she had picked up one of Sinclair’s stones. It was on the dressing table, a flat black stone banded with white lines with a long crack on one side, as if it were bursting open, showing a glittering gem-like interior. She held the stone in her hand and inspected it carefully. There was so much dense individuality, so much to notice, in the small thing. Sinclair, on some very distant day, had chosen it out of thousands and millions of stones on some beach in Yorkshire, Norfolk, Dorset, Scotland, Ireland. The stone made her intensely sad as if it were demanding her protection and her pity. Was it glad to be chosen? How accidental everything was, and how spirit was scattered everywhere, beautiful, and awful. She put the stone down and put her hands to her face, suddenly frightened of the darkness outside and of the quietness of the house. Suppose Annushka were to die? Suppose she is already dead, and the house knows it? The house was creaking in the wind like an old wooden ship. There were presences, footsteps.

  I’m losing my nerve, thought Rose, I’m losing my courage, I’m losing my people. Jean has stopped loving me. How do I know that? Can it be true? Will I ever talk to Jean again, with openness and love
, looking into each other’s eyes? She said I was living in a dream world where everyone was nice and good and every year had the same pattern. I have never been deified by love. I could have married Gerard if I’d really tried. Then, as it had been suddenly sharply uttered in the room, she heard Crimond’s voice say ‘Rose!’ as he had said it and so startled her when she came to him from Jean to make sure he had not shot himself. We’ve neither of us ever been married, love has to be awakened. Supposing I lose Gerard, Rose thought, suppose I have actually lost him? Can I lose him, after so many years? This is what this is all about, this press of ghosts.

  In the last weeks, especially in the last days, it seemed that her relations with Gerard had simply broken down. Reeve, now back in Yorkshire, kept ringing up, asking her to decide about the cruise. Rose kept giving evasive answers. Yet why should she, why did she feel she must consult Gerard’s convenience, why should it matter to him if she were absent for four weeks with her family? Blood was thicker than water. But the thought of Gerard not minding what she did or where she was, touched her with deadly cold as if one of Lily’s ghosts had brushed past her. Rose had not seen Gerard since the night when the book had been delivered. She had expected the usual chats by telephone, suggestions of a meeting. He must know how interested, how anxious, she must be about his reactions to the book. But Gerard had not telephoned, and when she telephoned him he had been cold and brief, not able to see her. She had not dared to ask him anything, about the cruise, about the book. Later his telephone did not answer, and she imagined him there frowning, letting it ring, knowing it was her. Supposing – oh supposing all sorts of things – supposing he had fallen in love with that boy who looked like Sinclair, supposing he were spending all his time with Crimond discussing the book, supposing… ? I’ve lost him, thought Rose. Yes, perhaps, I could have married him if I’d been a different person, if I’d had more courage, if I’d had more luck, if I’d understood something particular (I don’t know what) about sex, if I’d become a god. But how much I love him and have always loved him and will always love him.