by Iris Murdoch
Gerard now took another interval. He went out into the hall, he even opened the front door and found that the rain was less, the wind as ill-tempered as ever. He closed the front door and instinctively bolted it, though he did not always do this. Then he returned to the sitting room and sat down beside the fire and read the note again several times. He sat very quiet while a storm of mixed emotions filled his head, then flew round his head, then filled the room as if with a mass of dark silent swift birds. Human thought is easily able to break the rules of logic and physics, and at that moment Gerard was able to think and feel a very large number of vivid, even clear, things at the same time. He thought chiefly about Jenkin, Jenkin’s death and the accident which had caused it, and this presented itself as a topic which he could now discuss with Jenkin. At any rate, as he put it to himself, now Jenkin doesn’t have to be a ghost, he can be himself, only in the past. His being remains absolute. He didn’t suffer, Gerard thought, I can really say this to myself now, it was sudden, he didn’t know. Gerard had been unable to look at the brief newspaper reports which described a freak mishap, but he had received an impression from hearing people talk. He felt now no urge to go further than that impression. I won’t ever ask him, he thought (meaning Crimond), I don’t want to know exactly what happened, because it doesn’t matter now. At no point did it occur to Gerard to doubt that Crimond’s sentence told the truth. To doubt it would have been to consent to soul-destroying madness, the whole of the rational world cohered with Crimond’s truth-telling. He could not write such a letter and it not be true. As Gerard took all this in he not only felt the energy which had seemed to forsake him flooding back in great calm generous waves, he also felt as if, in some way he could not yet master, the whole world had pivoted around him, being the same yet offering him all sorts of different views and angles. As he began to consider these Gerard rose and collected up the scattered sheets of Crimond’s book and replaced them in a neat pile on the sideboard. He walked to and fro across the little room, and it was as if the dark bird-thoughts which had been tearing round and round like swifts had begun to settle quietly on the furniture and regard him with their bright eyes.
He sat once more and looked at the note. It was evident that Crimond had been deeply disturbed, perhaps tormented, by wondering what Gerard was thinking about his friend’s death. He had had to remove that terrible image from Gerard’s mind. He had, equally, had no doubt that Gerard would believe him. It had evidently taken him some time to decide to write however. Perhaps he felt an interval was necessary, perhaps he had been unable to decide what exactly to say. He got it right, thought Gerard. The signature too was significant. Not C. or D.C. but D. Gerard allowed himself to be moved by this and stowed it away in his mind for later inspection. He was now able too, for the first time, to pity Crimond for the terrible thing which he had unwittingly done, and must live with ever after. At least Crimond, by writing to him, had liberated himself from one extra horror, and with that had, and much more, liberated Gerard. The liberation was something huge, but also painful, bringing back in a purer and sadder form his mourning and his loss. Here there recurred in his mind the idea, which had so much tormented him, that, perhaps in a remote past, Crimond and Jenkin had known each other better than he had ever suspected. But this speculation was now to be seen as idle and empty, it had gained its poisonous force from that other poison, which was at last utterly gone from him.
Gerard took off his shirt and trousers and gradually enclosed himself in his pyjamas. There was also the question of how to reply to the missive. That would require some reflection. Crimond would have mitigated his distress by sending it. But he would also expect an acknowledgement. An interval would be necessary, then an equally brief note. I’ll think about that tomorrow, thought Gerard. And he said to himself, of course I will write that book, I was pretending something to myself when I imagined I wouldn’t, I was sick then, I’ve got to write it. Of course I’ll be fighting not only against those insuperable difficulties, but also against time. Even to get to the start will be a long struggle. But I’ll do it, I mean I’ll attempt it with all my heart. I’ll do it for Jenkin, now things are clear between us, I can say that too. Christ, how I shall miss him as I go on alone upon that way. I’ll start reading Crimond’s book again tomorrow and I’ll remember all the things Rose said about my being ‘bowled over’ and ‘carried away’ and how if I hadn’t known the author I wouldn’t have noticed the book. I don’t think she’s right, but even if she is a bit right it won’t matter now, because I see what I have to do, what my job is. And that’s certainly thanks to Crimond.
As he sat on his bed he thought too, and the thought was disturbing: one day I shall see Crimond again. Certainly not soon. There is a strict decorum which must be kept between us. There is Jenkin’s death, of which we will not speak, and there is the book. Of course I shall want to talk to Crimond about the book, and what I have to say will interest him too. Or will he have forgotten the book, even rejected it? People who write long learned remarkable books sometimes reject them, do not want to discuss them or even hear them mentioned, not necessarily because they now think them no good, but just because quite other matters now obsess them. Crimond is certainly capable, as I said to Rose, of writing another long book to refute this one, or of writing equally passionately, equally learnedly, upon some totally other subject! Still, I shall see him again, some time – and when that time comes he will expect me.
He thought, I’ll look after Rose too, I won’t let her drift away into Curtland land, I’ll make her happy. Rose is happiness – only it’s never worked out like that. I can’t do without her. He got into bed and turned out the light. He thrust his feet and the hot water bottle down into the icy nether regions of the bed. The wind was blowing in gusts and tossing the drops of rain like little weak pebbles onto the glass. In the dark, as sadness swept over him again, he began to think about his father, and what a gentle, kind, patient, good man he had been, and how he had given way, out of love, to his wife, sacrificing not only his wishes but sometimes even his principles. All that must have caused pain, and his children too, never quite in tune with him, must have grieved him as the years went by. I didn’t try enough, thought Gerard, I didn’t visit him enough or ask him to stay, I never seemed to have time for him. I should have made him a part of my life. And my mother – but he could not see his mother, that sad shade signalled to him in vain. He thought, they are dead, my father, my Sinclair, my Jenkin, my Levquist, all dead. And then it occurred to him for the very first time to wonder if, really and truly, Grey were dead too. Parrots live longer than we do, and Grey was a young bird then. But parrots in cages are helpless, they depend on the kindness of humans, and there are other ways they can die before they are old, by neglect, by illness, they can be forgotten in empty houses, they can starve. The thought that Grey might have starved to death was so terrible to Gerard that he suddenly sat bolt upright, and there flowed into him, as into a clear vessel, a sudden sense of all the agony and helpless suffering of created things. He felt the planet turning, and felt its pain, oh the planet, oh the poor poor planet. He lay back, turning on his side and burying his face in the pillow. He let the moment pass. He thought, I’ve got to go on, or rather, if I can, up, because I’m not going to abandon my life-image, not for Levquist, not even for Jenkin. It is up there, solemn and changeless and alone, indifferent and pure, and, yes, I feel its magnetism more strongly at this moment, perhaps, than ever before, and, yes, there is an awful pleasure in that sense of distance, of how high and unattainable it is, how alien, how separated from my corrupt being. I shrivel before it, not as before the face of a person, but as in an indifferent flame. I have seen the false summit, and now as the terrain changes I glimpse more terrible cliffs and peaks far far above again. Yes, I’ll attempt the book, but it’s a life sentence, and not only may it be no good, but I may never know whether it is or not. Thoughts at peace: could thoughts ever be at peace again? This was the moment before the beginning. To
morrow, he thought, he would have to begin, to start his pilgrimage toward where Jenkin had once spoken of being, out on the edge of things. Yes, beyond that nearer ridge there was no track, only a sheer cliff going upward, and as he gazed upon that vertical ascent Gerard paled as before a scaffold.
He thought to himself now, I’ll never get to sleep. I’d better get up and do something. I wonder if I could mend that Staffordshire dog? It’s not too badly broken. But he was already drowsy and beginning to dream. He fell asleep and dreamt that he was standing on that mountainside holding an open book upon whose pages was written Dominus Illuminatio Mea – and from far far above an angel was descending in the form of a great grey parrot with loving clever eyes and the parrot perched upon the book and spread out its grey and scarlet wings and the parrot was the book.
Lily Boyne was walking, with slow haste, along a shabby decrepit street in South London. Her haste was slow because her heart was beating violently and her mouth was open and she was panting with emotion and felt as if she might soon faint or at least have to sit down. Only there was nowhere to sit except on the kerb. She was anxious to arrive, yet afraid of arriving. Although she so much looked forward, she wished it was over and she was going home. When she went home would she be going in one piece or mangled? Was she sane now and would be mad later, or mad now and would be sane later? Or had madness entirely taken her over?
Lily was going to see Crimond. She had not seen him or sent him any communication since the awful occasion of the midsummer ball. The baneful memory of that night haunted her, sometimes tormented her, although she did not really imagine that, for her, it could have been different. Well, perhaps she did imagine a little, could not altogether banish beautiful painful fantasies of how on that evening Crimond could at last have ‘found himself’ in realising how much he cared for her. She had felt, still a little felt, with a kind of pride and a kind of terror, that it was ‘all her fault’, because it was she who had brought Jean and Crimond together. If she had not told him of the dance he would not have manifested himself in that kilt, radiant with godlike power. Although she had told no one about her own crucial role in that drama, she could not help feeling that someone or something would punish her for it – perhaps fate, perhaps Crimond. Yet also it was a bond, she had played the part of Love’s messenger, and it was not because of her that Love had been, so mysteriously, vanquished. One of her present terrors, as she walked along the ragged street, was that Crimond might think that she had come to sympathise with him! This idea made her feel ready to destroy herself. In fact she knew nothing, and it seemed that nobody knew anything, about the reasons for Jean and Crimond’s second parting. The fact was that Crimond was once more alone, and no woman had yet enabled him to ‘find himself’. Of that Lily felt sure. She was going to see him because she had to.
As she neared the house and her knees were as water she began to ask herself again (for she had gone over it in detail many times during the last weeks) whether in spite of her intuitions she might be entirely wrong about Crimond, and have been wrong all along? Her impression of him as solitary could be entirely accidental and fallacious. Perhaps the ‘Jean business’, about which Gerard and company were so solemn, was just one of an endless stream of adventures? Suppose a woman were even now in possession, in the house, ready to open the door to Lily and sneer at her? It seemed madness to make this gratuitous unheralded excursion which could end with some new and more awful humiliation by which she would be scarred forever. But there was upon her a fiercer and more awful imperative, issuing from the depths of her prescient and frightened soul. She might regret having come, but would surely much more terribly regret not having come.
The sun was shining and, even in this cluttered and ramshackle part of London, there was the sense of a spring day. Windows which had long been closed were open and people, hatless and gloveless, had put on lighter and brighter clothes. In tiny front gardens bushes were budding and grass actually beginning to grow. There were, here and there, trees, slightly hazy with green, which shed an aura, even a fragrance of new life. A fresh cold sunny light announced the start of the long English spring. Of course Lily had given careful thought to what she was to wear. She had considered and rejected various smartish but simple dresses, even the black and white one with the velvet collar which was so subtly becoming. She decided on dark brown, very narrow, trousers, of unobtrusively expensive tweed, with a lighter brown leather jacket and a blue cotton shirt and a silk scarf with a blue and pink abstract design. In spite of attempts to put on weight, she was as thin as ever, her face that morning, as she put on discreet make-up, looking almost gaunt, the tendons of her long neck sturdily in view, her collar bones protruding under the soft cotton of the shirt. Her melted-sugar eyes were clear and bright, but the wrinkles increasingly massed round them collected the face powder conspicuously onto their ridges. Her thin lips, without lipstick, were almost invisible, her mouth a slit. She had unwisely washed her scanty unconvincing hair the previous night, and it was now, however much she combed it down and tucked it in behind her ears, standing up on end in dry senseless wisps. She had given up the much-advertised hair oil. She had wrapped the silk scarf carefully round her neck and that at least stayed in place. Over this gear she had put on her long green coat, and her trousers were tucked into black boots.
At last Crimond’s house was near, then in view, and Lily hurried her pace so as to preclude any sickening last-minute hesitation. She mounted the stone steps. The big door, which looked like a modern painting, patchily coloured and scribbled over with cracks, was closed. Lily tried it. It was not locked and she entered into the familiar shabby hallway, dark and smelling of old dirt and neglect. She paused in the darkness, blinded after the hard clear sunlight, and inhaled the atmosphere of silence and anticipation and fear which she knew so well. She listened. She thought, he’s out, he’s moved. She stepped forward and tripped against the bicycle and stood still again after the sound. She opened the door leading to the basement and tiptoed down the stairs. Here she listened again. Silence. She turned the handle noiselessly and slowly opened the door a little and looked through the opening into the Playroom.
She saw, as in a familiar picture, the familiar scene, the murky room, the lighted lamp, the figure at the desk writing. It was like a dream, indeed she had often dreamt it. The window onto the area, untouched by the sun’s rays, gave near the door a little dead illumination, but the other end of the room was dark except for the lamp. Crimond, his head bowed, unaware of his visitor, continued to write, and Lily inserted herself quietly into the room and sat down on a chair near the door. She breathed deeply, hoping that she was recovering and not becoming more unnerved. There was for a moment a trance-like peace as if she had been granted a timeless vision, a scene transfigured by a ray from beyond, falling upon it accidentally like the shadow of an aeroplane upon a landscape.
Suddenly Crimond lifted his head and stared down the room. He said in a sharp tone, ‘Who’s that?’
Lily thought, he thinks it’s Jean. She said, ‘It’s Lily.’
Crimond stared a moment, then lowered his head again and continued to write.
Lily came slowly forward carrying her chair. She set it down, not up against the desk, but a little way in front of it, as if she were a candidate about to be interviewed. She took off her coat and sat down. She noticed that the target, which had been on the wall behind Crimond, was gone. She waited.
After about two minutes Crimond looked up again. He was wearing rather thicker glasses of a different rounder shape with dark rims which altered his appearance. He took off the glasses and looked at Lily. ‘Well?’
‘Forgive me,’ said Lily. ‘I just wanted to see you.’
‘What about?’
Lily was ready for this question. ‘I just wondered if I could do any typing for you. Someone said you had nearly finished your book.’ In fact Lily knew quite well that the book was finished, as Gulliver had told her some time ago.
