by Iris Murdoch
‘You know Henry is going to sell it.’
Gerda had not intended to broach this matter straightaway, she spoke out of sheer nervousness.
Stephanie showed agitation. ‘Is he?’
‘Yes. Didn’t he tell you? He said he’d told you. He said you were pleased. He’s going to sell everything. The Hall, everything, and give the money away. I am to live in a little cottage. Surely he told you?’
‘He said something, but I didn’t understand. I thought he was just going to sell some fields or something I didn’t realize he was going to sell the Hall. He can’t sell his ancestral home, surely that’s impossible.’
‘Not a bit impossible. But aren’t you pleased?’
‘No. I think it’s awful, awful, you must stop him.’
‘You must stop him,’ said Gerda. She added, ‘We must stop him.’ She thought, is this what I am scheming for, that this woman should be mistress of the Hall? Is this my best future, my one hope? It’s that or Dimmerstone. Out of a perverse bitterness she said, ‘But honestly I don’t think we shall persuade him. I suspect you don’t know Henry very well yet. He is extremely obstinate. I doubt if you will ever live at the Hall. Henry will be a schoolteacher somewhere in Scotland or America and you will be living on his salary. He is so idealistic and romantic.’
‘And you will be living in the cottage. I think it’s cruel.’
‘Well, when many people are very poor—’
‘I know all about that, poverty wouldn’t be any change for me. I can tell you what it’s like and having no place and nothing, and it’s not funny and it’s not romantic and I’m tired of it, I’ve had enough—’
‘Then you’d better not marry Henry, had you,’ said Gerda. ‘Have some chocolate cake.’
‘You don’t want me to marry Henry.’
‘I want Henry to be happy,’ said Gerda. ‘He thinks that he will be happy with you. He may be right. In any case, what I think is not important. I am old.’
They stared at each other.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Stephanie. She looked down at her plate. She said suddenly. ‘I’d like to see a photo of Sandy—he never gave me one—it isn’t that I’ve—forgotten what he looked like—but I would like to see a photo of him—’
Gerda drew her feet in under her and held the arm of the chair. Then she got up and went to the Chinese cabinet. She drew a bulky envelope out of a drawer and laid it on the table. ‘Here you are. There are a lot of him—’
Stephanie immediately began looking at the photos avidly. ‘Oh thank you—yes—he was so handsome, wasn’t he—much handsomer than Henry—and taller and—oh dear, oh dear—’ Her eyes filled with tears, and she began awkwardly searching in her handbag for a handkerchief.
‘Excuse me,’ said Gerda. ‘I have to go and see about the dinner. Put them back in the envelope when you’re finished. Then I’m sure you’ll find Henry somewhere outside on the terrace.’
She quietly left the room and went without haste upstairs to her bedroom. She kicked off her shoes and lay down upon the bed. She did not weep but her eyes glared. Her mouth opened. She felt that her life was over and that all she wanted now was to hide the scandal and the shame of it, the shame of being old and mad with misery and having lost her son. She would hide herself in the cottage at Dimmerstone and shut the door on the world forever.
Henry skipped along the hall leaving his mother and his fiancée thus strangely in conference. In some odd way, though he was glad that it could happen peacefully, the meeting sickened him. He noticed some letters in the cage on the inside of the front door and took them out. There was one for Lucius, he guessed from Audrey, two bills for his mother, and two letters addressed to him. He put his mother’s and Lucius’s letters on the table, and bounded up the stairs and on into Queen Anne to his room. Stephanie was to sleep in the cherry blossom room next to his mother’s bedroom. How odd, how weird. Would he visit Stephanie secretly at night, would she visit him? The sense of sacrilege excited him, the shattering of old taboos, the luridness of it all. But he felt sick too. His mother was quite noble enough to attempt to love Stephanie. Such a triumph of cosiness would not be however, Henry would see to that. He did not propose to let those two contaminate each other. He was beginning, dimly, to have a picture of the future. It did not include his mother. He determined to remove Stephanie back to London early tomorrow morning. He suddenly thought, so perhaps tonight will be my last night at the Hall, ever, ever. It was an awe-inspiring idea.
He sat down on his bed and looked at his two letters. One writing looked vaguely familiar, the other unfamiliar. He opened the familiar one first. It was from Cato and ran as follows:
My dear Henry.
I have been thinking about you and do hope to see you soon again. I expected you might turn up at the Mission. There’s a lot I want to tell you of which I can only give you the barest outline in this letter. First, and I suppose most important, is that I have definitely decided to leave the priesthood and the church. Becoming officially ‘laicised’ can take time, but that is a mere formality. It has all been, as you can imagine, painful and humiliating. I bitterly regret having to do it, while at the same time feeling certain it is right. I feel that I have possessed something precious and beautiful which has been lost by my own fault; and yet it is the truth itself which compels this severance. I cannot quite feel that it was ‘all an illusion’, even though I know now that it is not for me. Put it this way: there is no God, it’s all a story. But it’s a story which is full of spiritual power for those who think that they can honestly use it. I feel very unhappy about it and very lost. Being a priest has been the only thing which I have really learnt to be, and I find myself now quite untrained to be anything else. The order has been my family and my home. To live without Christ: I would once have thought this impossible, I would have thought that I would die.
I did not mean to pour all this out. I intended this to be a very practical letter! Well, that’s the first thing. The second thing is this. You remember that boy, Joe Beckett? (The one who discerned you as a gent!) I love him dearly and have decided to go away with him to somewhere where we can work together out of London. This statement sounds as if it covers something else, but it doesn’t. I don’t even know if I am homosexual (I suppose I must be a bit, many priests are) or whether he is or what on earth will happen to us in the long run. It is just clear that I ought now to take him away from the world of criminality which he is getting entangled in here. This is the only decent and important act which I can perform at this present! I am the only thing in his life that represents any sort of value, and though I have no merit of my own, I can (my last task as a priest?) enact a sort of symbolic role for him, I can influence him and no one else can. So we are going. He has just, miraculously, agreed to come. And I have now I hope (again miraculously!) actually got a temporary job for the summer term, teaching history at a polytechnic in Leeds. I rang up old Fitzwilliam, you remember, our history master at school, and he put me onto someone and this job has turned up, at least by telephone. I haven’t had it in writing yet. And even if this fails, I now feel more confident that I can get something or other. So I shall be able to support Joe. Now (and this is where you come in) I want the boy to get some sort of training and he says he might like to become an electrical engineer. Would you be willing to invest in him? The notion that you might give us some of the money you are so keen to get rid of somehow appeals to him—he regards you as a rather romantic figure!—and I have a little encouraged this idea though I know there is an element of bribery involved! I don’t want Joe to feel it’ll be all grinding poverty up there in the north—and of course in the long run it won’t be. I shall have a salary, he, I hope, will have a student’s grant. It’ll just be tough at first. And if you could help us over that first bit I’d be eternally grateful and I think honestly that money would be scarcely better spent. I wonder if you could let us have, say, five hundred pounds? I hesitate to call it a loan, as God knows when or how you�
�ll get it back, but I would hope to start repaying some of it within a year, according to circumstances. I really would be very grateful, and I won’t go on about that. Please send it first class post by return to the Mission address. I’m not sure how much longer I shall be here.
Forgive me for going on so long about my own problems. Now, thirdly, about yours. I don’t think you should sell the Hall. I’ve thought about it and of course I understand the good motives (as well as the bad ones!) which could lead you to want to do it. I just think it’s a mistake. It’s cruel to your mother. And I think you shouldn’t be in a hurry to shuffle off this responsibility. Developing some of the land is another matter. But you shouldn’t sell the place or give away all your money, though I certainly hope you’ll give some to me! How can I put it? You’re not up to it, Henry. You couldn’t do it properly, and as done by you it would be ill done and have bad results. In this context you don’t seem to me to understand yourself. Sorry if this sounds obscure, and not very polite! But do wait and see. And meanwhile look after your mother and Lucius, and (odd advice from a ‘priest’) try and enjoy yourself a bit!
All the above needs to be explained at greater length. Please don’t be offended by anything I have said. Let’s meet soon. I’m in a terrible state of mind, actually.
Au revoir and love,
Cato
Henry was interested moved and annoyed by this letter. What egoism! Was this what the religious life did for you? All this long spiel about his own plans, and this calm assumption that Henry would hand over the money. Of course the assumption was quite correct and Henry would send the money by return of post, but still his generosity should not be quite so coolly taken for granted. As for ‘going off’ with that striking but rather ape-like young man, Henry (who could not conceive of being attracted by a male) felt that his friend must simply have taken leave of his senses. Doubtless the aberration would not last too long. And Henry could have done without the advice at the end. So Cato thought that Henry was not worthy to perform a great moral act! Henry would show him. But what chiefly distressed him was that Cato would not be a priest any more. About this he felt a curiously deep sense of personal loss. Cato had somehow figured in his future plans as a sort of mysterious guide or sage, full of radiant certainties. Henry felt betrayed, let down. A struggling secularized Cato, no better than himself, would be of little use. However he looked forward to seeing him again. What would Cato think of Stephanie? Yes, he would show Cato how radically he could change his life.
Dreamily Henry put Cato’s letter aside and took up the other letter. He opened it and began to read it. It was a little while before he could take in whom it was from.
Dear Henry,
You will think me mad, but I must write to you just like this out of the blue. I have to write. Since the idea came to me that I might it has been agony not to. I feel so sure, my heart is so clear and so entire, it just seems absurd not to speak out, and there is no question of any stupid ‘pride’ or ‘modesty’ which should make me keep quiet. I won’t keep quiet!
Henry, listen, I love you. Are you surprised? I wonder. It must have been awfully obvious when we met lately, especially that time in the greenhouse with the fish. But the point is that it isn’t new at all. I loved you a long time ago when I was a child, when you and Cato used to run and run and I would try to run after you when I was very small. Loving someone is just a fact. I don’t mean by that that there were, and are, no reasons why I love you. I could think of thousands. But about the past, the always-has-beenness of this love, it’s just there and I think I can scarcely remember a time when I didn’t love you. As if I was asleep, and I just opened my eyes and there you were. Of course this was just a child’s love and when you went to America though I did miss you I recovered and got to think you wouldn’t ever come back. At least, I say I recovered, I mean I wasn’t pining for you, but I went on thinking about you, you are, you were my first man, apart from Daddy and Cato, and so you were my first real separated man, if you see what I mean. You were a sort of ideal figure, and when I grew up and got to know men I never thought they were as good as you, or as good as the dream you, and by now I did regard it as a dream since I thought I would never see you again. Then when I heard you were coming home after all I could think of absolutely nothing else. That was why I left the college. At least I would have left anyway, but that was why I left then. I couldn’t bear it, it would have been a physical torment, to be away there while you were here, though of course I thought that when I saw you it might all break and fade away. Well, it hasn’t. Of course you’re not the dream figure, nobody could be. (Actually you’re funnier and nicer!) But somehow the you, the Henry that I always wanted, has remained there safe inside you—the you which I feel has always belonged to me, though I know this is a kind of blasphemy and you can’t own somebody else like that, I doubt if you can even if you’re married to them. And I was so frightened in case you’d be married or engaged or something and I was so relieved when you weren’t. Well, Henry, that’s the story. I know girls aren’t supposed to tell, but I’ve got to tell—just in case you should fail to love me because you never knew how much I loved you. I want not to have to say later—I wish I’d told him. I want you to be able to see me, and as my love for you is so much of me (all of me, making me more than myself) then you must see that too. Not to see it would be not to see me, and not to tell you of it would be to deceive you. I haven’t told anybody else, not even Daddy or Cato, they have no idea. And I want to tell you this, that I’ve never been to bed with anybody. I thought I’d wait, though I never dreamed that it was really you I was waiting for. I don’t know, and I shake and tremble when I think about it, how you feel about me. Your mother has said more than once how much you like me—but that may have been just politeness or a mistake. Henry, I love you, and I want to marry you and live with you forever and be happy and make you happy and be entirely and absolutely yours, that’s what I want. And don’t think it’s a silly young girl’s infatuation or just because of my childhood, this is deep true love and not a fantasy. Of course I want to say, tell me at once, write to me at once, ring me up—but also, because I’m so frightened, I want to say, don’t. Think it over. Consider what I say. Consider what you feel. There is plenty of time. You may feel that you don’t know me enough. Please, please don’t drive me away because you want to spare my feelings. I would a thousand times rather suffer from being known and rejected than from being kindly set aside without being known at all. So don’t be in a hurry to reply, there is no need to write any big letter, let us just meet in ordinary ways and I will not pester you with my emotions.
Forgive me.
So lovingly,
ever yours
Colette
Henry whistled. Then he lay back on his bed and found that he was laughing. He stopped laughing. This was no laughing matter. Poor little Colette. But how immensely sweet and touching it was that she loved him, and he could not help being pleased, though he felt sad too to think he would have so soon to render her unhappy.
Cato Forbes, looking around guiltily, pressed the bundle well down into the pile of old bricks and cracked cement in the rubbish tip. He had wrapped the cassock up carefully in newspaper and tied it with string but the paper had burst now and the powdery cement was whitening the black cloth. He pulled more of the rubbish over it until it was hidden. A horrible smell rose from the cassock and mingled with the rotten and limy odours of the rubbish tip. Had he been going around smelling like that? Had he smelt like that in the presence of Beautiful Joe? When he had completely buried the bulky parcel he felt wicked and relieved, as if he had been burying a dead baby. No one had seen him. He dusted off his hands against each other and began to walk back across the waste ground.
Then he saw the kestrel. The brown bird was hovering, a still portent, not very high up, right in the centre of the waste, so intent yet so aloof, its tail drawn down, its wings silently beating as in a cold immobile passion. Cato stood looking up. There
was no one else around upon the desert space where already, after the rain, upon the torn and lumpy ground, spring was making grass and little plants to grow. The kestrel was perfectly still, an image of contemplation, the warm blue afternoon spread out behind it, vibrating with colour and light. Cato looked at it, aware suddenly of nothing else. Then as he looked, holding his breath, the bird swooped. It came down, with almost slow casual ease, to the ground, then rose again and flew away over Cato’s head. As he turned, shading his eyes, he could see the tiny dark form in its beak, the little doomed trailing tail.
‘My Lord and my God,’ said Cato aloud. Then he laughed and set off again in the direction of the Mission.
He wondered what Joe would think of him in mufti. It felt very strange to be in ordinary clothes after wearing the black gown. Cato was transformed. He was dressed in a dark grey corduroy suit, and red and white striped shirt and red silk scarf, the property (temporarily borrowed) of Gerald Dealman, which he had found under some paper in the bottom of a wardrobe during some final tidying up operations at the Mission. Cato, in the unfamiliar garments, felt as if he were in fancy dress. He felt a kind of lurid shameless relief, more deeply a sense of guilt and shock. He was surprised to find how instantly eager he was to get rid of the old cassock and never see it again. Henry’s precious cheque, now in his pocket, had arrived, but thanks to Gerald he need not immediately waste any of it on clothes.
At moments now Cato felt as if he must have gone mad. He had at last brought himself to write his formal letter of ‘resignation’ to the head of his order. It had been extremely difficult and painful to bring himself to sit down and actually compose the letter. When it had been written he posted it quickly without re-reading. The technicalities of laicisation could wait. As far as he himself was concerned he was out. The matter was settled now between himself and ‘God’ and the formalities would merely be a matter of courtesy to his former colleagues. What made him feel that he must be crazy was this: he had given up the most precious privilege in the world and he could not determine exactly when or exactly why he had decided to do it.
