by Iris Murdoch
I wish I had a goddess to grab me by the hair and tell me what to do, thought Henry. It was eleven o’clock. He had breakfasted in bed. (Gerda brought the tray this time.) He had asked to see Merriman, and his mother, who regarded the family solicitor as a servant, had summoned him to come at once. Henry’s purpose in seeing Merriman was simply to discover whether the will was clear and sound. It was. Dutiful Sandy had left the estate in its entirety to his brother. So that was all right. Henry did not want to hear about the farms or about the investments, which Merriman thought were so good, or about how Merriman had advised against the sale of the Oak Meadow, or how he had with apt prudence persuaded Gerda to insure against death duties. Henry was still feeling extremely odd, a little giddy, very tired, with a sort of scraped obfuscated vulnerability to light and sound which made him think he might be better off going to bed again. A log fire was burning in the big grate, murmuring, then falling into itself softly like snow. Henry wondered if he could get as far as the sofa. He got up and then instead went to the door intending to return to his bedroom. An old familiar smell of smoky toast was still emanating from the dining-room. He saw in the hall some rather good eighteenth-century water-colours which must always have been there. He was about to peruse them when he heard voices from the open door of the drawing-room opposite.
The drawing-room, similar to the library, with three tall sash windows, faced south across the descending terraces towards the lake, and enjoyed the complete formal view of the river valley, the obelisk, the woods beyond, and on the extreme right the little green-domed Greek folly perched upon its hillock. There was a brightness now, an almost sunshine, against a darker sky, and the budding trees of the woodland were intensely green. The drawing-room was all white and yellow and rather sparsely furnished, with long mirrors and console tables in between the windows. There was a round marquetry table in the centre of the room, an enormous Chinese cabinet at one end, and a set of canary-coloured Louis Quinze chairs scattered about which were never used, the velvet having been expensively treated so as to look old. There were some nineteenth-century family silhouettes upon the walls and a French ormolu clock supported by sphinxes upon the chimney piece, underneath a portrait of an ancestor with a dog which now looked to Henry’s dazed eyes remarkably like a Stubbs. A fire was burning here too, and round it on a crumpled rug there was an encampment of easy chairs, but the room was cold and smelt unoccupied. Probably he had turned his mother and Lucius out of their accustomed haunt.
Lucius leapt up as he came in and with an ungainly awkwardness which also managed somehow to express self-satisfaction began at once to move smiling towards the door.
‘Well, Trundle, slept, yes, I bet?’ Lucius’s enthusiastic tones betrayed an uncertainty about his own role. Was he a paternal figure, a jolly uncle, or just a slightly older contemporary? Lucius looked younger this morning, moderately bright-eyed and boyish. He tossed his white hair then drew it back from his brow with a slow long-fingered hand, twinkling and smiling.
Henry was not going to help him to solve the difficulty of tone. ‘OK.’
‘He’s got an American accent,’ said Gerda.
‘No, no, surely not, we can’t have that, can we—Though in fact—Ah well, I must get back to my book. Tempus fugit, eh.’
‘I can’t remember what your book’s about,’ said Henry. ‘Or rather, I think I never knew.’
‘Oh politics, political stuff, abstract you know, concepts. Gerda thinks it’s like Penelope’s web. I think it’s hard work. Are you writing a book?’
‘Yes,’ said Henry.
‘Have you published any books?’ said Gerda.
‘No.’
‘What’s your book on?’ said Lucius.
‘Max Beckmann.’
‘Who?’
‘Max Beckmann. A painter.’
‘I’m afraid I’ve never heard of him,’ said Gerda.
‘Oh, Max Beckmann,’ said Lucius. ‘Well I must get back to my toils. Arrivederci.’
Henry watched Lucius frisk out of the door, then sat down opposite his mother.
He said. ‘It’s cold in here. In America we don’t let the weather come inside the house.’
‘How are you feeling?’
‘Terrible.’
‘It’s the flight.’
‘Yes.’
They looked at each other in silence which although it expressed every awkwardness, almost the total impossibility of communication, was not exactly embarrassing. Gerda saw the dark curly-headed neat-faced youth with the small pretty mouth and round bob of a chin who seemed to her now not to have changed since he was twelve. Even the long dark suspicious glowing sulky eyes were the same, expressing resentment, self-pity. Henry saw his mother, older certainly, fatter, but still handsomely carrying that old air of a beauty’s confidence, her rather large broad pale face seeming without make-up, her large fine brown eyes seeming without concealment. Her dark silky hair was loose today and made her look girlish. She was wearing a smart plain tweed dress with a pink Italian cameo brooch pinned onto the collar.
Henry felt satisfactorily hard and cold, like an athlete. No danger of blubbering today. ‘How long has Lucius been living here?’ he said, realizing that he was speaking rather sternly and involuntarily frowning.
‘Oh—two or three years—you don’t mind, do you?’
Henry cleared the frown away with his fingers, and said nothing.
‘You’re not engaged to be married, are you?’ said Gerda.
‘Me, engaged? No, of course not. I’m not married either, if it comes to that.’
‘But you don’t mind about Lucius? He’s a sort of shipwrecked person.’
‘Is he?’ said Henry.
‘One can’t help feeling sorry—’
‘Why should I mind?’
‘Because it’s your house.’
Henry was silent again, as if pondering this, still giving his mother the unembarrassed slightly dazed stare.
‘You are—going to stay here—aren’t you?’
‘Here? Do you mean here in the house or here in England?’
‘Either. Both.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Henry. He had noticed behind his mother on a little table a photograph of Sandy. No photograph of himself. Of course she had not had time to put it out yet. He felt a nervous compulsion to say something about Sandy. ‘This must have been rotten for you.’
‘This—?’
‘This—bereavement.’
Gerda was silent. She pressed her lips together and looked at Henry with a kind of desperate stoical intentness which made her look ugly. She said nothing.
‘I’m sorry about it,’ said Henry insistently, saying what had to be said and willing his mother not to cry.
They went on staring at each other.
He got up, intending to go out of the room, but misunderstanding his movement she stretched out her hand. Henry took it briefly and squeezed it, his face wrinkled with annoyance.
‘Mother, I’m going out for a walk.’
‘Yes, that’s right,’ she said in a low tone.
Henry made almost a dash for the window, fumbled with the catches, pushed up the window, and stepped out onto the terrace.
A large low chubby dark grey cloud was being carried by the wind away over the house, leaving a bright blue sky behind it. The sun was shining and making the watery earth sparkle in all its recent raindrops. Henry moved along the side of the house away from the front door, trailing his hand along the big squared ironstone blocks of the wall, which were variegated with white curling patterns of crushed fossilized shells. He came to the steps and began to run down them, where the hillside descended in a series of stone terraces, until he reached the mown grass which curved more gently downwards towards the lake. Up the hill to his left were the eighteenth-century stable block and the cast-iron arches and glittering glass of the huge Edwardian greenhouse. Beyond, were the walled garden, the tennis courts, the orchard, and the Dimmerstone road. Panting Henry conti
nued to run.
The lake, not very large, was fed by a little stream which rose in the orchard, entered the lake on what was known as ‘the obelisk side’ of the garden, and left it again on ‘the folly side’, where there was a small stone bridge with two arches. The obelisk, made of black granite, commemorated the Alexander Marshalson who had, early in the nineteenth century, created the lake and the folly, and, by timely speculation, much increased the family fortunes. The folly was a small empty stone building, with a green copper dome and pillared pediment, standing on a hillock and facing towards the beech grove or ‘big trees’. Henry running, stopped on the bridge and looked towards the lake. In the vivid rainy sunlight the water was black, the wide girdle of reeds, which had so much terrified him when as a tiny child his father had attempted unsuccessfully to teach him to swim, luxuriant with new growth, green and russet. At the far end an ancient blue-nosed punt projected a little from an arch of foliage. The lake, so lately agitated by the rain, was very still now and glossy, reflecting the top of the obelisk in a sliver of enamelled blue laid, at the far side, on top of the blackness. There was a scattering of quiet coots. Henry held onto the faintly crumbling stone of the bridge, limestone here, not ironstone. Because of that muddy reedy horror he had never learnt to swim properly. Visiting California with the Fischers he had sulked upon the shore while they were being dolphins in that blue ocean.
He walked on slowly towards the edge of the wood. The trees were mainly small, birches and hazels, ash and wild cherry, and here and there a taller oak. The cherry was already in flower, a greeny whiteness spread among the still budding tree tops. The oak was just in leaf, the ash still hard and black. Within the wood there was a haze of bluebells and, growing among them, starry masses of creamy white stitchwort. There was a smell of wet earth and pollen and the birds were singing crazily. A muddy path, fringed with nettles, wound away among the trees, bound for the further boundary of the park, for tiny Dimmerstone village and the church, and the churchyard where Henry’s ancestors were buried. Where Burke was buried. Where presumably Sandy was buried. Henry had not inquired about the funeral.
He turned, receiving the shock of the appallingly pretty view of the lake, the gracious green hillside, and the house. Another chubby grey cloud had moved to cover the sun. Henry gritted his teeth. He would not think about Sandy and he could not think about his mother, though her presence was suddenly everywhere in the overcast scene. He walked back towards the bridge, blind with misery. He felt panic, terror, a kind of nebulous horror as if he were a man destined by dark forces to commit a murder for which he had no will and of which he had no understanding.
‘Lucius, I do wish you wouldn’t cut off little pieces of cheese and then not eat them.’
‘I’m sorry my dear.’
‘They just get dry and go to waste.’
‘I’m sorry.’
It was after lunch. Henry had gone off to lie down. Rhoda had cleared away and Gerda and Lucius had moved with their coffee cups into the drawing-room. It was somehow clear that the library was henceforth Henry’s.
‘That went quite well, didn’t it?’ said Lucius after a moment.
‘What went quite well?’
‘Oh, lunch time. Trundle talked quite a lot, didn’t he.’
Henry had been polite.
‘You speak as if he were a guest.’
‘Well, he’s been away so long, it is worth a comment, isn’t it, if we’re all so sort of relaxed together after all?’
‘Relaxed?’
‘Well, you know—and he asked those questions about the property. I thought that was a good sign.’
‘What do you mean by a good sign?’
‘A sign that he’ll stay. You want him to stay, don’t you?’
Gerda was contemptuously silent.
‘I thought Trundle might sort of reject the place and go and live in London. I jolly well would if I was him.’
‘Am I stopping you from living in London?’
‘No, no, I just said if I was him. But I’m not him.’
‘Please don’t chatter idiotically, I’ve got a headache.’
‘I mean, after all, young Trundle—’
‘And please don’t call him Trundle, he doesn’t like it.’
‘Young Henry—’
‘It’s time for you to go and have your rest.’
‘Yes, yes, I’ll be off. My dear, don’t—don’t—’
‘Don’t what?’
‘Don’t grieve so.’
Gerda made a gesture of exasperation and Lucius got up. He touched her shoulder gently though he knew that she would wince, which she did. He moved towards the door.
‘I say, Gerda, we will be able to watch television tonight, won’t we? I mean, Trundle won’t mind if we drift in?’
When he had gone Gerda, rigid in his presence, got up and went to the window. It was raining again. She looked at the rain rebounding from the terrace and fretting the little pools. A silver fold of rain dimmed the view of the lake and the wood. Her grief absorbed her, as if she were holding close against her breast a great basin into which her life was draining away. Had she hoped something from Henry’s coming, some hitherto unconceived of kind of consolation? Scarcely, though she had somehow hoped, and still did so blankly almost because it was her duty. If she could even come to see Henry as a task, that might give a little sense to the world. But she had not anticipated how deep the instinct would go, or how violent it would be, to grieve, so that she could have wailed and cried, that Henry was alive while Sandy was dead.
Soon thinking about himself, Lucius went up the stairs to his big low-ceilinged room on the second floor which was above Sandy’s bedroom which was above the drawing-room. No Bach night or morning, since Sandy hated music just as much as Gerda did. He sat down on his bed and took his shoes off. He clicked his teeth a little. They still felt enormous. He knew that the great grief of the house passed him by, simply missing him entirely. He felt useless and sentimental and sad. He wished that Gerda would break down so that he could console her. He had expected to console her, and this expectation had sustained him amid the shock of Sandy’s death. In the end there’ll be me, he thought, and she will understand everything. But she had not turned to him; and if, with a full heart, he came to her, she grimaced with irritation. Surely, surely they should both, no doubt all three, be embracing each other and comforting each other and weeping. But human beings are endlessly ingenious about promoting their own misery. Even in catastrophe mysterious barriers can isolate them, barriers of fear and egoism and suspicion and sheer stupid moral incompetence. What was Henry thinking about him and Gerda? How he had resented Henry’s obvious oversimplification of him when they had met in New York. Was Henry capable of mastering that much complexity, would Henry bother, would Henry ever manage to see Lucius at all? He must find out, simply find out, how to make friends with Henry. That was his task; as it was perhaps Gerda’s to learn to love Henry as a substitute for Sandy. Ultimately, she would work on Henry and try to perfect him. But supposing Henry refused to be friends with Lucius? He suspected that Henry was capable de tout.
Lucius moved to his record player and put on the Goldberg Variations softly, then a little more loudly, conscious of the emptiness of the room below. He sat down at his table. It was littered with verses. What a blessing it was that he had had the sense to come back to poetry at last! A failed poet, that was what he was, it was quite the best thing to fail at. And why, indeed should he necessarily fail? There was still time for greatness. ‘After long years of abstract thought, the revisionist renegade returned to poetry in his later years. The sentimentality of youth was vouchsafed to him again, irradiated now by the calm wisdom of age. Always young at heart, laying down the pen of the historian, gave himself at last to the genius of poetry.’
The thing about poetry, thought Lucius to himself, is that you can remain inside yourself all the time, the whole world is there inside, it’s safe. All you have to do is just record your thought
s one by one, like bats emerging from a hole. Of course I’ll finish my political book, I’ll shorten it and cut out the history and make it into an autobiography, a sort of spiritual odyssey. Yes, I’ll do that, and I’ll publish a book of poems as well. He sat with glowing almost tearful eyes. He had lately discovered the haiku, and flattered himself that he had mastered the form. Instant poetry. He had written nearly a hundred about Gerda alone. Dully her feet call up Echoes that each time remember less. Clump, clump. The old girl.
He took up his pen.
Oh cruel daffodils.
Each spring commits some murder.
Now the young master.
He began to wonder if Henry were to buy a house in London would he let Lucius come and stay in it?
