Nuns and Soldiers

by Iris Murdoch

  As soon as he came in Tim had started, as he always did, to tidy up. He picked up Daisy’s clothes off the floor and folded them and put some in the armchair, others into drawers. He picked up plates and glasses from various surfaces and took them through to the sink and put them in a basin to soak. The sink smelt of sour milk. The room smelt of alcohol and dirty clothes. There was no hot water.

  Daisy was dressed in a shirt and a housecoat. She had, before Tim’s unheralded arrival, made up her face, accentuating her dark brows and reddening her drooping mouth and making blue rings and black lines round her eyes. She looked, though grotesque, rather pretty. She had combed her short shiny dark hair, there was not much grey in it. Her eyes sparkled. She was glad to see Tim.

  And in spite of everything, in spite of heaven and hell, Tim was glad to see her. A habit of speech is a deep matter. Years and years and years of talking to Daisy lay behind him. He could not help feeling, separately in the midst of everything else, a familiar reassuring sense of return. He had come back to tell Daisy his adventures, as he had always done after an absence. But oh Christ he thought, whatever shall I do! He had made no plan. He had intended to put off seeing Daisy until after he had seen Gertrude. Supposing Gertrude sacked him? Then he need never tell Daisy anything. Everything would be as before. Or would it be, could it be? In any case it would be wise not to tell Daisy anything now. Who knew what the future held? He had come to Daisy stupidly, weakly, just out of misery, just to have a drink with her, just because he was in London and London meant Daisy. Just because the way to her door was a known magnetic way.

  ‘You’re fatter,’ said Daisy, ‘it suits you. I mean, you’re still like a little bean pole but you’ve lost that gaunt undernourished look. And, my, you’re brown, I’ve never seen so many freckles, you’re like a spotty dog! What was the weather like?’

  ‘Pretty good.’

  ‘It’s been foul here, fucking awful as usual. Can’t stop raining and it looks as if it’s doing it again, God’s blood! Oh shit, I’ve knocked the blasted glass over. Fill me up again, there’s a dear boy, and give yourself another. I’ve missed you. Have you missed me?’

  ‘Yes -’

  ‘I wish it had worked out. Fuck France, but all the same, I could do with a bit of sunshine and we could have had some fun, bit of a change from trudging along to the Prince of Denmark.’

  ‘Any news of Barkiss?’

  ‘No. Your feline friend is lording it. Well, it’s back to the mogs, isn’t it? Jesus, how are we going to last the summer on no money? Back to square one. Seems like we live at square one!’

  ‘Seen Jimmy Roland?’

  ‘No. He’s in America, according to that blithering idiot Piglet. Or Australia. Could we get an assisted passage to Australia? After all we’re white. Trouble is I suppose we’re hooked on London.’

  ‘Yes -’

  ‘Oh do stop tidying, don’t bother with all that stuff, what a fusspot you are!’

  ‘What did you get up to when I was away? Were you OK?’

  ‘What did I get up to? Nothing. Was I OK? No. What damn silly questions you ask. It was so bloody cold I had to stay in bed.’

  ‘How’s the novel?’

  ‘Stuck. Writing’s harder than painting, I can tell you.’

  ‘I expect it is.’

  ‘Painters can just look. They don’t need minds. A writer has to have a mind.’

  ‘I’ll never be a writer.’

  ‘What’s the matter with you, Blue Eyes? You seem awfully in the dumps. Not that I blame you, coming back to this sodding island. ’

  ‘Daisy -’

  ‘Wait a mo, just pass me my slippers, I must go to the loo, then we can go down to the old Prince.’

  Tim passed the slippers and Daisy got out of bed and flip-flopped out of the room. Was he going to tell her?

  When she came back and was reaching for her jeans, he said, ‘Daisy, I must tell you something.’

  ‘What? Dear old thing, don’t look like that!’

  ‘I’m going to marry Gertrude.’

  ‘Gertrude who?’

  ‘Gertrude Openshaw.’

  ‘Sorry, I’m making a joke. You made a joke, so I thought I must too. Two bad jokes. Christ, these jeans are splitting.’

  ‘But I am. Daisy, I am going to marry her.’

  Tim thought, I can’t lie to Daisy, so why did I come here? Perhaps for that reason. I’ve got to tell her. It’s something I’ve got to do for Gertrude, or to Gertrude. I’m making Gertrude true by telling Daisy. Oh let it be true. But oh Christ, how awful all this is. And how real and true Daisy is somehow.

  ‘Get along wid ya. Is it raining outside?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why are you saying this about Gertrude, is it part of some game? Jesus fucking Christ, haven’t I enough troubles? Don’t irritate me with your nonsense.’

  ‘I am going to marry her. I proposed. She accepted. At least she sort of accepted, because it’s too soon. No one knows yet, it’s a secret, and -’

  ‘Sit down, Tim.’

  He sat on one of the upright chairs. Daisy, in shirt and jeans, sat on another.

  ‘Now just what is this bloody rubbish, are you drunk already?’

  ‘Daisy, it’s real, it’s happened, please believe me -’

  ‘Tim, you must have gone off your chump, or else you’ve been taking drugs or something. Just stop it, will you? I know we said that one or other of us must make a rich marriage but that wasn’t serious, at least I thought it wasn’t. Dear boy, I know you haven’t much in the upper storey, but if you’re developing this fantasy for my sake -’

  ‘I’m not -’

  ‘If you want to ditch me, dear fellow, you don’t have to make a funny story about it.’

  ‘I don’t-I mean -’

  ‘I should just think not! But you mustn’t get all mixed up about Gertrude. Gertrude’s a fiction, she’s nothing to do with us at all. Being in France must have disturbed your mind! Do you really imagine we can live on Gertrude’s money? What would she think? Or have you told her?’

  ‘No -’

  ‘Look, you’re sillier than I thought, and that’s saying a lot. I know we said that one of us must make a rich marriage and support the other, OK? But that was just being funny, OK? It was a joke, you know what a joke is, for God’s sake. If dear old Gertrude would give you the money for your birthday or obligingly die and leave you a fortune, that’s great. But you can’t get it for me by marrying the old cow, though I must say I’m touched by the lengths you suggest going to, would you really do this for me? I know it’s all in your mind, but really - look, are you drunk or am I?’

  ‘Daisy, I’m serious.’

  ‘You’re pottikins. Come on, let’s go to the pub.’

  ‘I am going to marry Gertrude.’

  ‘And we live on the proceeds, fine! Except that you’re not and we won’t. Do stop raving, dear old thing.’

  ‘Daisy, will you listen -’

  ‘No I won’t, not while you go drivelling on like some poor old loony repeating the same crazy bit of nonsense over and over again. Dear boy, we cannot live on Gertrude’s money, not even if you marry her, well, especially not if you marry her, I know we said it would be a good idea, we even said it several times over, or I said it, I suppose it was my fault, I thought it was funny, I didn’t know this dotty notion would lodge in your idiotic little pinhead. I think this is the pottiest conversation I ever heard, I must be sozzled to be engaging in it!’

  ‘I am not suggesting we live on Gertrude’s money!’

  ‘OK, so what are you talking about, fuck you!’

  ‘Something happened in France, I fell in love, I fell in love with Gertrude, Gertrude fell in love with me.’

  ‘Oh go jump in the Thames. And Manfred will be best man and the Snake will be bridesmaid.’

  ‘They weren’t there. I told you a lie. They just dropped Gertrude and went off. Gertrude and I were alone together and we fell in love.’

  ‘And
swooned in each other’s arms.’

  ‘Yes -’

  ‘Oh tell me another. You’re such a liar, Tim Reede. You live in a fantasy world. I ought to be used to it by now. What I just can’t see is why you’re telling me this lie. I thought you were serious about our living on Gertrude’s money -’

  ‘I’m not, I never said a word about it, it was you -’

  ‘Good - but then why this tale of romance? If you want to plague me and make me jealous why not invent something more probable?’

  ‘I know it’s improbable. It just happens to be true!’

  Daisy stared at him. Tim felt frightened of the stare but he gave it back. He felt the deep foundations of his life moving, moving gently as if on ball-bearings, shifting as if by chance, and yet also somehow in the darkness propelled by his will. In those amazing hours with Gertrude he had never felt like this. He had felt then the trance-like power of the inevitable. He felt now that he was acting, crushing something, breaking something, bringing about a different future, different futures, deliberately, irrevocably, altering his own being, and Daisy’s. In fear, he reached out a hand. The hand happened to be holding a wine glass. Daisy hit the glass and it fell and broke upon the floor.

  She said, ‘I can just, just, understand that silly bitch imagining she was in love with you. She’s not very intelligent and she’s suffering from shock, though I should have thought she could have found a better man in her extensive entourage. But that you should imagine you’re in love with her - is just - impossible - unless you really are after her money. Are you?’

  ‘No.’ Tim rolled up his sleeves, shaking the wine off his wrist.

  ‘What are those scratches on your arm? The clutch of love, or were you fighting?’

  ‘I fell in a bramble bush.’

  ‘You would. Poor little boy, poor little Blue Eyes, he looks ready to weep. He fell in a bramble bush, and he’s so sorry for himself. I’d push you in another if there was one handy. Let’s have some more wine. Here’s another glass. Fucking arseholes, we’ve finished the bottle. I hope I’ve got another. Yes, I have.’ Daisy opened the bottle and poured the wine and they resumed staring at each other.

  Tim thought, it’s like falling in love again, only it isn’t love, it’s death, it’s love in reverse. But it is love. Oh God, I can’t be losing Daisy, that can’t be what’s happening. I can’t lose Daisy, can I? After all the years and years. He gulped some wine, hoping to feel drunk. He felt drunk.

  ‘Tim, just start again and try to tell me what this thing is about you and Gertrude.’

  ‘We fell in love in France.’

  ‘And made love?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where is she now?’

  ‘I don’t know -’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘She’ll be here soon. We left separately. It’s a secret -’

  ‘What’s a secret?’

  ‘That we love each other. That we plan to marry. But of course it’s too soon - and I don’t know if it will happen at all-I don’t know what will happen-I don’t know -’

  ‘You don’t know much it seems. That’s better. OK, something happened in France, but it’s over now. And you expect me to forgive you. I’ll think about it.’

  ‘It isn’t over -’

  ‘If I thought you were really capable of marrying that stuffed partridge I’d pitch you out of the window.’

  ‘Daisy, it’s a secret, and -’

  ‘Oh don’t bother me with your secrets! As far as I’m concerned it’s so secret it doesn’t exist! I was rather touched at the idea that you’d marry the bitch so that we could live on the proceeds. Now you boast you had her in France -’

  ‘I’m not boasting, and please don’t -’

  ‘And you rave about marrying her. Well, don’t rave here. Good Christ, are you really that keen on her money, has it come to that?’

  ‘It’s not the money!’

  ‘Of course it’s the money! What else is there to her? What else made you hang around Ebury Street with all those fucking awful bourgeois creeps? Of course money’s nice. And Gertrude is money, she and her money are one, she looks money, she smells money -’

  ‘It’s not the money!’

  ‘Don’t shout at me, tu veux une gifle? Did you tell her about us? Silly question. Of course you didn’t. Poor little orphan boy wants a rich mummy and a nice house!’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with wanting a wife and a house -’

  ‘I shall be sick! Well, what’s stopping you? Are you blaming me now because you hadn’t the guts to leave me years ago and find yourself a little bourgeois wifie! God, you’re feeble. And you whine now! I used to think it was nice that you weren’t a big bullying strapping male, but to be as wet as this -’

  ‘Daisy, let us stop, let us be quiet -’

  ‘And you made love to that fat old bitch! I’m surprised she didn’t kill you by rolling on you, the old sow!’

  ‘Daisy -’

  ‘Let me know when the wedding is. I love a good laugh - we’ll have an outing from the Prince of Denmark!’

  ‘It isn’t going to happen -’

  ‘You’ve had her and you won’t marry her? Isn’t that just like a man!’

  ‘It won’t happen - it was a dream-I mean we did make love - but that was just in France -’

  ‘Oh we know what happens in France!’

  ‘She won’t remember, she won’t want to -’

  ‘When she gets back home? I daresay she won’t. But I’m not interested in this story any more. I’m not interested in you any more. Go to your rich widow, and if she won’t have you find another one!’

  ‘Daisy, please don’t be angry, please talk to me quietly, I can’t bear this -’

  ‘Oh fuck off, you horrible little man, and don’t come back, get out, get out!’

  Daisy’s brown eyes were rectangular with rage. She leapt up and Tim sprang back knocking over his chair. A glass flew past his head and smashed against the wall. Daisy ran round the lattice into the kitchenette. Tim made for the door. A plate crashed on the floor around his feet. A cup struck him on the hand. As he crossed the landing he heard the sound of more smashing crockery and then a loud splintering noise as Daisy reeled back against the wooden partition. He raced down the stairs.

  Once in the street he kept on running until he was out of breath. He slowed to a walk, glanced round, and walked on briskly until he reached the Brook Green Hotel. Here he entered and ordered a double whisky. His pockets were full of money. He thought instinctively, I ought to have remembered to give Daisy some. He was extremely upset, but he thought, that’s not the end of Daisy. That was not how the end of Daisy would come, if it ever did come. When he saw Gertrude, if he saw Gertrude, would he at once tell her about Daisy? Well, not at once. He must be able to speak of Daisy as something belonging to the past, and so he had better wait until she was past, or rather more past than she was now. But when was this pastness going to begin? Oh God what a bloody mess!

  As he sat over his drink he pictured Daisy and was filled with a deep protective love-pain. Compared with sleek well-cared-for Gertrude, Daisy was a shaggy ill-fed beast who wintered in the open. Well, did not he himself belong ‘in the open’? He did not want to be a guilty secret at Ebury Street. Would that, in the end, prove to be the best that he could hope for from Gertrude? Not the ‘new start’ but a messy dwindling clandestine love affair. He thought these things, but at the same time he felt himself helpless. He knew that the categorical imperative of Eros lay upon his love for Gertrude.

  There was a telephone in the pub. He went to it and dialled the Ebury Street number. Anne Cavidge answered. He put the receiver down.

  ‘We’re the official reception committee,’ said Anne. ‘We’ve kept all the others out!’

  She and the Count, standing in the drawing-room, were looking down at Gertrude with bright loving eyes. Gertrude, still with her coat on, lay sprawled in an armchair. It was six o’clock in the evening.

  ‘I lef
t Manfred and Mrs Mount in Paris,’ said Gertrude. ‘I wanted so much to get home.’

  ‘Oh - I’m so - it’s so - happy that you’re back!’ said the Count.

  ‘We’ve worked so hard,’ said Anne. ‘Haven’t we? Ever since we got your telegram. Of course Mrs Parfitt has been in, but we wanted the place to look perfect. The Count took a day’s leave and we’ve polished and tidied everything and shopped for you and done the flowers-I hope you like the flowers-I used to do the flowers in chapel sometimes.’

  ‘It’s wonderful,’ said Gertrude, ‘wonderful.’ She thought, Oh God, I don’t even know Tim’s London address!

  Gertrude had arrived at Ebury Street to find Anne and the Count in charge. The Count had carried up her suitcase and put it in her bedroom. Faced with their glowing eyes, their love, their concern, their welcome, she felt weak and almost excluded as if the flat no longer belonged to her. It did not feel like a home-coming, which was odd since that was just what those two dear ones were so devotedly organizing for her. Anne had put an arrangement of foliage and irises on the mantelpiece and a lovely vase of red and white tulips upon the marquetry table.

  The Count thought, Gertrude looks tired and worried. Why does she sprawl so? She doesn’t usually sit like that. How touching and helpless she seems. She looks like a refugee. How beautiful her hair is, all brown and gleaming and untidy. How much I should like to touch it. He looked down at her, beaming with love. The precise desire to touch, together with the impossibility thereof, filled him with a tender excitement. The Count had been curiously happy and unworried during Gertrude’s absence. He did not even mind her being with Manfred. Nothing, as yet, could happen to her. He felt her to be safe, sacred, reserved, and he had been able to give himself up, as never before, to dreaming about her and loving her and looking forward to her return. Such un-threatened looking forward is perhaps one of the happiest of all human occupations.