The Book and the Brotherhood

by Iris Murdoch

  ‘And one day you suddenly turned up here and said you’d been in Newcastle!’

  ‘I never said I’d been in Newcastle,’ said Gull, ‘I let you think so. I’m sorry. It was a kind of lie. But I was in such a daze and I wanted to be sure about the job before I – and then we –’

  ‘Yes, yes.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I hope it doesn’t make you feel I’m no good – you were a bit romantic about my going all the way to Newcastle and coming back with a job.’

  ‘What you’ve told me,’ said Lily, returning to the table, ‘is far far more romantic and far more to the point. But this Byng sounds too good to be true.’

  ‘Well, you see he’s a Baptist.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A Baptist. You know what that is. So is Martha. He’s a good egg, he’s one of the nicest men I’ve ever met, he’s very high-minded.’

  ‘We seem to attract high-minded people, I hope he can make money too. Does he know that I exist?’

  ‘Of course, I’ve told him all about you.’

  ‘Oh! What did you say?’

  ‘I said there was a girl I wanted to ask to marry me as soon as I got a job.’

  ‘Oh Gull – Gull –’ Lily wiped confused tears from her eyes, tears of laughter, of joy, and of some deeper mystical emotion. ‘I can imagine how touched Justin was! Of course you didn’t do it on purpose.’

  ‘No, I didn’t – but naturally he was interested, and so was Martha. She keeps referring to you as my bride.’

  ‘They’ll be disappointed,’ said Lily. ‘They probably think I’m a fresh young thing!’

  ‘I’ve told them you’re eccentric.’

  ‘Thanks!’

  ‘But, Lily, they’re so nice. They’re not frightening people at all! You’ll like them and they’ll like you. And isn’t it strange, it all depended on an extraordinary series of coincidences, if the snail hadn’t been there, if I hadn’t seen it, if I hadn’t failed to find anywhere to put it, if I hadn’t gone exactly to that place in Kensington Gardens, if Justin hadn’t happened to be passing at exactly that moment – Chance is really amazing!’

  If it was chance, thought Lily to herself. ‘So,’ she said aloud, ‘we shall have some new friends to show off to our old friends – when we are married – after we are married – tomorrow.’

  Gulliver was thinking, it’s all worked out marvellously. All the same, I wish I had been to Newcastle, as I pretended to Lily I had. It was such a brave exciting idea, and anything might have happened up there, awful disasters or else wonderful things, even better than Justin, if one could see the future. My God, there’s the future too! I wonder if I’ll ever regret meeting that dear old snail? That idea of just walking out and going away meant a lot to me, it was a kind of ordeal, a trial of strength, a test of courage which now I’ll never have – not that particular one anyway – and I was ready for it. Of course I didn’t funk it, it was all an accident, that I didn’t go, and that I’ll never know. I might even have met a girl up there… But Gulliver soon checked this treacherous and disturbing line of thought. Then he thought, well, I never got to Newcastle and poor Jenkin never got to South America. Were these good dreams that we had or bad dreams, I wonder? And what about that man at King’s Cross station, where is he now, and will I have to go and look for him?

  Lily was reflecting that Gulliver might have told her everything but she had not told him everything! She had not revealed that that very morning, when she had said she was going shopping, she had run to offer herself body and soul to another man. She had indeed never revealed to him, or to anyone, that she loved Crimond. He might have gathered, she thought, that I was proud of knowing Crimond, but I’m sure it never occurred to him that I was mad about him. And I was mad about him at the start, and then I cooled down and he was simply the most important person in the world, and then just now I’ve become mad again, I’ve fallen in love again because – because of Gull and because of marriage and the marriage bond and that sense of an irrevocable change. As soon as I saw that ahead of me, as soon as I had settled down to loving Gull, I realised how terribly much and differently I loved someone else. Perhaps that often happens to people. I had to go to him, I had to try. If I hadn’t gone to him on my last day of freedom I would have regretted it ever after. I’d have grieved forever thinking how perhaps, after all, he might have needed me and wanted me, and I’d been afraid to try. Other people are so mysterious, and who knows? As it is…

  As it was, she felt that a great weight had been taken off her mind, and that she had been liberated into a new space of peace and freedom, which was also a serene surrender to fate. Now what would be, would be, and she could hope to meet it bravely and without mean remorse. Of course Crimond must remain for her, as she had told him, an absolute, and for his sake she would perhaps carry round her neck a little painful amulet. But she knew, even now, that it was a harmless dream object which would fade with the years, and that she had received a freedom which only he could give her. Now it was time to become real and be happy. I think I’m happy, she thought, but am I real? Anyway Gull is real and I really love him, so I suppose that’s a good start.

  As for that extraordinary story about the snail: could that be just a chain of coincidences? Why not, were not human lives just chains of coincidences? But really it was too odd. Lily too had, as she had told Rose on the evening of the snails’ dance at Boyars, found a snail in an unusual place, inside her flat, in fact walking upon her dressing table. As she took it out into the garden, worrying about Gull, she had mumbled to it some words from an old snail-charm which her grandmother used to recite. Of course telepathy was something real, but how could one snail instruct another snail –? I’ll swear there’s something in it, she thought, something strange happened and I brought it about! How utterly mysterious the world is! She was on the point of telling her thoughts to Gull but decided not to. It sounded too mad. Besides, in the vicissitudes of family life, a little extra secret power might come in handy sometimes; and as her grandmother had told her, power depends on silence. I’m a witch, I’m a witch! thought Lily – grandma did say it was hereditary! But somehow I know that if this was a trick, it worked through love, and if I ever have any magic it will only work through love, and I’ll be that kind of witch. Oh what a mysterious world we live in!

  ‘Gull darling, look at the time, it’s our wedding day! Here’s to us – and to snails!’

  ‘To us – and snails, God bless them!’