by Iris Murdoch
Michael sustained her gaze which was quizzical rather than accusing. ‘I find him difficult to deal with,’ he said. ‘But I’ll think carefully about it.’ He felt an increased determination not to be frank with the Abbess.
The Abbess studied his face. ‘I confess to you’, she said, ‘that I feel worried and I’m not quite sure why. I feel worried about him and I feel worried about you. I wonder if there’s anything you’d like to tell me?’
Michael held on to his chair. From behind her the spiritual force of the place seemed to blow upon him like a gale. It was ironical, he reflected, that when he had wanted to tell the Abbess all about it she had not let him and now when she wanted to know he would not tell her. The fact was, he wanted her advice but not her absolution; and he could not ask the one without seeming to ask the other. Not that the Abbess would be tolerant. But he shied away almost with disgust from the idea of revealing to her his pitiable state of confusion. The story of Nick she almost certainly knew already in outline; what she wanted was to understand his present state of mind, and that would inevitably involve the story of Toby. If he began to tell the whole tale he knew that he could not tell it, now, without an absurd degree of emotion and without indulging in that particular brand of self-pity which he had been used to mistake for penitence. Silence was cleaner, better, in such a case. Looking down he saw, laid along the ledge of the grille, quite near to him like a deliberate temptation, infinitely wrinkled and pale, her hand, which had been covered with the tears of better men than himself. If he were to reach out to that hand he was lost. He averted his eyes and said, ‘I don’t think so.’
The Abbess went on looking at him for a little while, while he, feeling shrivelled and small and dry, looked at the corner of the room behind her. She said, ‘You are most constantly in our prayers. And your friend too. I know how much you grieve over those who are under your care: those you try to help and fail, those you cannot help. Have faith in God and remember that He will in His own way and in His own time complete what we so poorly attempt. Often we do not achieve for others the good that we intend; but we achieve something, something that goes on from our effort. Good is an overflow. Where we generously and sincerely intend it, we are engaged in a work of creation which may be mysterious even to ourselves - and because it is mysterious we may be afraid of it. But this should not make us draw back. God can always show us, if we will, a higher and a better way; and we can only learn to love by loving. Remember that all our failures are ultimately failures in love. Imperfect love must not be condemned and rejected, but made perfect. The way is always forward, never back.’
Michael, facing her now, nodded slightly. He could not trust himself to utter any words after this speech. She turned her hand over, opening the palm towards him. He took it, feeling her cool dry grip.
‘Well, I’ve kept you too long, dear child,’ said the Abbess. ‘I’d like to see you again in a little while, when this hurly-burly’s done. Try not to overwork, won’t you?’
Michael bent over her hand. Closing his eyes he kissed it and pressed it to his cheek. Then he raised a calm face to her. He felt obscurely that by his silence he had won a spiritual victory. He felt that he merited her approval. They both rose, and as Michael bowed to her again she closed the gauze panel and was gone.
He stood a while in the silent room looking at the bars of the grille and at the blank shut door of the panel behind them. Then he closed the panel on his side. How well she knew his heart. But her exhortations seemed to him a marvel rather than a practical inspiration. He was too tarnished an instrument to do the work that needed doing. Love. He shook his head. Perhaps only those who had given up the world had the right to use that word.
CHAPTER 20
THE WIND WAS BLOWING. Large piles of bulbous golden cloud passed quickly along the sky, obscuring and revealing the sun at short intervals. It was the sort of day which is gay in March but tiring in September. Dora was struggling with a white ribbon.
A sleepless night together with anxieties about the, it now seemed to her, colossal enterprise on which she had so rashly embarked had reduced Dora to a distracted state. The way in which, as she put it to herself, Toby had jumped upon her in the barn would at any other time have delighted her. The memory of his passionate childish kisses, still clear in her mind, moved her to tenderness, and she realized that she had not been unaware of the charms of that hard adolescent body and fresh uncertain face. But the excitement of Toby’s brief embrace was swallowed up in her larger concern about the bell. She felt herself to be a priestess, dedicated now to a rite which made mere personal relations unimportant.
The scuffle in the barn had ended abruptly at the intervention of the bell. Neither of them could make out, having been absorbed in their activities of the moment before, how loud the sound had been. They decided it was probably not very loud, a mere murmur, and not to be compared with the full voice of the bell. All the same, a murmur from such a source was noise enough, and they waited anxiously in the silence that followed for any sound from the direction of the Court. As none came, they set to work at once on the next part of the operation which was carried out with a speed and efficiency which did Toby great credit. His only regret, which he expressed to Dora, was that she could have no idea how difficult what they had just successfully done had been. The bell now hung suspended by the second hawser a few feet from the ground. The hawser passed over the beam, out of the barn door, and its ringed end, pierced by a crowbar, was secured in the fork of a beech tree. The two conspirators had disguished the scene as best they could with twigs and creepers, and prepared to return to their beds. As they went, together this time, along the concrete road towards the Court Dora had taken Toby’s hand in hers. Parting at the edge of the wood they faced each other in the moonlight. Trembling with nervous exultation, Toby took Dora by the shoulders and turned her until the moon shone upon her face. Amazed and delighted by her consenting passivity he contemplated her, and then took her in his arms, twisting her violently to receive his kiss and almost falling with her to the ground.
After these romantic adventures the next day had dawned somewhat soberly for Dora. Paul, who had searched for her in vain, and got his hand full of prickles from a gorse bush in the process, was not pleased with her when he returned to find her in bed; nor was he pleased when, after a brief sleep, they awoke at morning. He knew his wife’s tastes well enough to suspect that she was not normally given to solitary communion with nature, especially at night, and he made no secret of finding her story of a moonlight ramble unconvincing. Nor did he hesitate to mention names in framing an alternative theory. Browbeaten before breakfast, Dora was in tears, genuinely sorry for Paul’s distress, feeling herself for once unjustly accused, but unable to explain. More upsetting still, Paul then insisted on spending the morning with her: took her out for a walk which was a torment to both of them, and generally behaved to her as if she were his prisoner. This made it impossible for Dora to make contact with Toby, with whom, in the sweetness of their farewell last night, she had forgotten to make a precise rendezvous for the night to come. It also made it impossible for her to visit the bell, which she had intended to devote part of the day to cleaning, in readiness for its forthcoming dramatic appearance. The only time during the morning when Dora was left alone was for ten minutes when Paul was having a thorn removed from his finger by Mark Strafford. But Dora did not dare to look for Toby in that brief interval, and sat dejectedly in the common-room until Paul returned, still black with irritation and smelling strongly of Dettol.
Lunch went drearily. Everyone seemed to be on edge. Toby, who had clearly become aware of the waves of suppressed fury emanating from Dora’s husband, looked subdued and avoided everyone’s eye. Mrs Mark was fretting about the bishop’s arrival. Michael looked ill. Mark Strafford had been cast into a melancholy by the announcement of the auditor’s visit, to take place next week. Catherine seemed more nervy than usual, and Patchway was cross because the wind had blown down all the r
unner beans. Only James lifted to the company a serene and cheerful face, diffused an atmosphere of robust and energetic confidence, listened with devout attention to Mrs Mark’s reading from François de Sales, and seemed quite unaware that everyone else was not as carefree as himself.
After lunch Paul continued with maniac alertness to supervise his wife. Dora was by now thoroughly anxious about the night’s arrangements. Retiring to the lavatory, she contrived to write a short note to Toby, which she put in a plain envelope and concealed in her pocket, saying: Sorry I didn’t make a date with you. Meet near the Lodge at 2 a.m. This she trusted she would be able somehow to convey to the boy, pinning her hopes to Paul’s well-known inability to spend more than a certain number of hours away from his work. Towards three she was glad to see him becoming restive; and half an hour later he made off in the direction of the parlours, having handed his captive over to Mrs Mark who had requested her help in the task of attiring the new bell.
This they were now engaged in doing. The new bell, set upon its trolley, was standing on the gravel outside the refectory. The refectory doors stood open, revealing the tables, decked for once with cloths, and laid for the buffet tea which the uncertain weather made it impossible to have, as Mrs Mark had originally pictured it, out of doors. With the help of members of what James called Patchway’s village harem quite a creditable spread was toward. The bell had by this time been inspected and admired by everyone. Parked in the middle of the terrace, its smooth and highly polished bronze glowing in the intermittent sunshine like gold, it looked extremely strange, and yet charged with authority and significance. Its surface was plain, except for a band of arabesques which circled it a little above the rim, and the inscription, contributed by that zealous antiquarian, the Bishop: Defunctos ploro, vivos voco, fulmina frango. Upon the shoulder of the bell there was also written, and it gave Dora a curious feeling to see it, Gabriel vocor.
Over the bell, fitting it fairly close, was a garment of white silk. This garment had been fashioned by Mrs Mark out of some remnants of war surplus parachute material which she had in what she called her rag bag, a miscellany of vast dimensions. The material was heavy and slightly shiny. A cotton fringe, now frilled out upon the trolley, had been tacked to its lower end. At the top of the bell the white canopy, meeting at a point, turned out again and cascaded back down the sides of the bell in innumerable white ribbons which were to be tacked down, in a series of generous loops, and finally tied to each other at the bottom to form a scalloped border. Thus was simulated a bridal or first communion dress. If indeed the bell was being thought of as a postulant entering the Abbey, it was by modern standards somewhat overdressed; but at least it was customary for postulants to wear white. Dora, who thought Mrs Mark’s confection had the coy demureness of a smart nightdress, noticed with relief that the garment was all of one piece and could easily be pulled off without disturbing its frills and flounces. Beside the bell stood a table with a damask cloth, to serve as an impromptu altar. Heavy stones kept the cloth in place. A considerable quantity of white wild flowers, collected by the village children, and which no one had had time to make into garlands, lay in a pile nearby, ready to be heaped onto the trolley at the last moment, their petals meanwhile being whisked off by the wind.
The ribbons were proving more troublesome than Mrs Mark had foreseen. The weather was partly to blame. The strands of satin, attached so far at the top only, streamed gaily away, flapping against themselves and each other with almost whip-like cracks, and gave to the bell more the appearance of a maypole than of a bride. Gradually the recalcitrant ribbons were being attached to the silk, following the design of tiny crosses inscribed the night before in pencil by Mrs Mark, but even when attached the fluttering loops gave so much purchase to the wind that hasty tacking, especially if it was the work of Dora, was often pulled undone again. James had suggested pushing the trolley into the stable yard where it would be more sheltered, but Mrs Mark, now thoroughly in a panic and expecting the Bishop to arrive at any moment, preferred to have it left where it was, well in view upon the terrace.
Dora, more than usually butter-fingered with anxiety, fumbled with a ribbon. She had already had to undo it once all the way up to the top because of having inadvertently got it twisted. The ribbon was becoming slightly grey in her perspiring hands. The letter for Toby was still in her pocket and she would have excused herself from Mrs Mark for a moment in order to deliver it if she could have found out where Toby was; but this, in the hurly-burly, no one seemed to know. There was no sign of the boy. Dora trusted that he would surely turn up for the baptism service; and trusted equally that Paul, immersed in his studies, forgetting the time, would not, or at least would be late. As Dora kept looking up from her work to watch for Toby and Mrs Mark kept looking up to watch for the Bishop, things went ahead pretty slowly.
As they worked Mrs Mark was talking to Dora. It did not take Dora long, little as she attended to what was being said, to realize that she was being got at. Mrs Mark, on her own account or put up to it by somebody, was set to deliver a series of admonitions, and after a rather indirect beginning was now becoming positively frank. At another time Dora would have been furious. At present, however, the heavy responsibilities of her vatic role sufficiently distracted her, and a consciousness of innocence lent her detachment. It was true that she had let Toby embrace her, but the embrace had been incidental to a larger enterprise; and the implied charge of having actually pursued the young man did little justice to Dora’s concern with higher matters. Virtuously indignant, Dora lent half an ear to Mrs Mark’s clumsy and rather arch attempts, to make a moral point.
‘I hope you won’t mind my saying these things,’ said Mrs Mark. ‘After all, it isn’t as if we were all just on holiday here. I know you aren’t used to this sort of atmosphere. But one must remember that little escapades which would be quite harmless in another place do matter here because, well, we do try to live a certain rather special sort of life, with certain special standards, you know. We live by rules ourselves and if our guests just don’t there’ll be chaos, won’t there? It stands to reason. I know this sounds awfully dull and sober - and I’m sure your London friends would think we were a very stuffy lot. But trying to live up to ideals does often make one look ridiculous. And what I mean is this, that an inexperienced person may be quite upset by a sort of companion-ate friendliness in a member of the other sex, if he isn’t used to that sort of thing. So we must be very careful, mustn’t we? Oh dear, am I being terribly solemn?’
‘Here’s the Bishop!’ said Dora, delighted to be able to terminate these rambling admonishments by the news that would throw Mrs Mark finally into a tizzy. A car had swung round out of the avenue and was to be seen speeding along the drive on the other side of the lake.
‘Oh dear, oh dear!’ said Mrs Mark, not sure whether to go on tacking ribbons or to rush back to take a final glance at the refectory. She dithered in the doorway, took off her overall, threw it under a chair, and then hurried through to call up the stairs to James who didn’t appear to be there.
Dora stood by the bell, hands on hips, watching the car as it slowed down to cross the three bridges at the end of the lake. The car looked vaguely familiar. She supposed it was a common make. In the background she could hear Mrs Mark calling, and then moaning that just at the crucial moment everybody had disappeared; Dora watched the car serenely. She carried no responsibility for the success of the ensuing ceremonies, and indeed felt towards them much as Elijah must have felt when watching the efforts of the prophets of Baal.
The car was now coming towards them head on along the last section of the drive leading towards the house. Mrs Mark, still twittering, had emerged again onto the terrace. The car came up the slight slope towards them and stopped about thirty yards away. A figure got out. It was Noel Spens.
Dora’s hands dropped to her side. ‘Oh good Lord!’ she said.
‘It’s not the Bishop after all!’ said Mrs Mark.
‘No, it’s
a friend of mine,’ said Dora, ‘a journalist. Oh God.’ She set off at a run towards Noel.
Noel stood beside the car, one hand on the roof, smiling as if he had just called to take Dora out to dinner. She reached him, slithering to a standstill on the gravel, abrupt and savage as a small bull.
‘Go away!’ said Dora. ‘Go away at once. Get into the car, for God’s sake, before someone sees you, and go. I can’t think what’s possessed you to come here. I told you not to come. You’ll ruin everything.’
‘What a charming welcome,’ said Noel. ‘Keep your hair on, darling. I’ve no intention of going. I’ve come to do a job of work. I’m going to do a feature on this bell business. Don’t you think it’s an amusing idea?’
‘No, I don’t,’ said Dora. ‘Noel, use your mind. Paul’s here. If he sees you he’ll think I asked you, and he’ll make the most beastly scene. Please, darling, go away. You’ll only make awful trouble for me if you don’t.’
‘Look, sweetie,’ said Noel. ‘As you know, I usually behave with angelic tolerance where you’re concerned. You may even have got it into your head that old uncle Noel doesn’t mind what you do. You can just pop over to see him if you want to be consoled and pop off again when it suits you and he’ll always be there waiting for you with a gin and martini. Well, that isn’t altogether untrue; but somehow just lately I’ve found this role doesn’t suit me quite so well as it used to. I’ve always acknowledged responsibilities where you are concerned; perhaps I’ve got some rights too. As you know, I was damn glad to see you the other day; and I was more than somewhat peeved when you cleared off. I don’t usually yearn for what is not, I’m not the type. But I did feel I wanted to see you again soon - and I felt a little anxious about your curious state of mind. I thought those nuns might have been getting inside you. Then, oddly enough, my editor who knows the old Bishop who’s coming down to bless your bell, got wind of this business quite independently and asked me to come. So I felt that in the circumstances it would be positively frivolous not to!’
