Nuns and Soldiers

by Iris Murdoch

  ‘You can get good cider in London,’ said Tim. ‘I know a place in the Harrow Road.’

  ‘Aren’t the flowers lovely? Anne did them.’

  ‘Lovely.’

  ‘She used to do the flowers at the convent.’

  ‘I was one of many people who did,’ said Anne.

  ‘They’re lovely,’ said Tim. He smiled at Anne, then turned back towards Gertrude. Gertrude moved slightly away, touching the mantelpiece with a feigning gesture, avoiding Tim’s eye. Then she looked quickly at Tim and looked away again.

  It’s true, thought Anne; and a feeling of the horribleness and dangerousness of life overcame her like a sudden nausea. This was the warmth, the mess, which she had fled from to the convent and which Guy had wanted so much to exorcize by the precise working of his own private justice.

  ‘You didn’t want him to stay to lunch?’ said Anne. ‘I was trying to intuit what you wanted.’

  Tim had gone. They had chatted for twenty minutes.

  ‘No, no, just a drink. He’s nice, isn’t he? Have we any lunch, by the way?’

  ‘Yes, there’s some of yesterday’s stuff left.’

  ‘Your masterpiece! It should be delicious cold. Or shall we heat it up?’

  ‘You stay and finish your drink. I’ll do everything.’

  ‘You’re an angel.’

  Anne had already decided not to say anything to Gertrude about the anonymous letter. She was even angry with the Count for showing it to her. Such filth should not circulate. Surely the Count could have said simply that he had ‘heard a rumour’? But that reflective evasion, that discreet lie, was not in the Count’s character. Anne’s head buzzed with angry crazy unhappy thoughts, and she found herself banging the plates about in miserable exasperation. Meanwhile the Count was sitting in his office, in torment, waiting for her telephone call. Well, perhaps her intuition had been wrong. She could only hope that now Gertrude would tell her of her own accord. But if she did not?

  ‘What’s the matter, Anne, you seem bothered?’ said Gertrude, holding her glass, standing in the doorway.

  There was something the slightest bit cold and detached about Gertrude’s tone and the way she stood. We are being separated, thought Anne. She is beginning to treat me like a servant, she thought. Then this seemed mad. Then am I not a servant? Whatever else should I be between now and the end of the world?

  ‘I think I’ll have a drink after all,’ said Anne. ‘Lunch can wait a bit. There’s nothing to do anyway.’

  They both went back to the drawing-room and Anne poured herself a glass of sherry. Gertrude took another one.

  They stood there, at opposite ends of the mantelpiece, drinking; each of them, out of a deep old knowledge and with a sensitive probing intelligence, was trying to read the mind of the other. Anne was looking at the monkey orchestra, Gertrude at Anne’s arrangement of blue and white irises with sprays of dark green box.

  Gertrude said, in a conciliatory tone, for she had understood Anne’s reaction to her last remark, ‘I hope you really liked the necklaces and things. It would give me such joy to see you wearing them.’

  ‘Oh yes - yes-I do like them - thank you -’

  ‘I mean keep them, they’re yours now.’

  ‘Oh not all those -’

  ‘I like that dress too,’ said Gertrude, ‘though you ought to iron it, it’s getting creased. I’ll iron it for you. But you need some proper summer dresses. I suppose we will have some summer, after all it’s May, we might go shopping tomorrow, would you like?’

  Gertrude’s manner was conversational, chatty, though with a little edge of deliberate gentleness. Anne thought, she just wanted Tim to show his face here. Now she wants to blur the effect, to change the subject.

  Anne said, ‘I must work, I must find regular work, I am becoming demoralized. Perhaps your social worker friends would help me. How did this morning go, by the way?’ Not till that moment did Anne realize that of course the ‘social worker’ was a fiction. Gertrude had spent the morning with Tim Reede. She looked at Gertrude, who was blushing.

  ‘Oh, OK. I’ll introduce you to those people if you like.’

  ‘Gertrude -’ said Anne.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘There’s some sort of thing between you and Tim Reede.’

  Gertrude looked at Anne. ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘Intuition. It’s true, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘OK, none of my business. I’ll get lunch now.’

  ‘Anne, don’t be a fool. Stay here please.’

  Anne suddenly did not know what to do with herself. She regretted having forced Gertrude to tell her. Now, she did not want a discussion. But Gertrude would feel bound to talk, explain. Anne pulled a chair up near the window and sat looking out into Ebury Street. It was raining again.

  Gertrude said, ‘Oh God -’

  Anne said, ‘Sorry, I shouldn’t have asked you.’

  ‘Is it so obvious?’

  ‘Well -’

  ‘Did anyone say anything to you?’

  Anne hesitated. ‘No.’

  Gertrude thought, I told no one. Has Tim told anyone?

  Anne thought, without the anonymous letter would I have noticed anything, thought anything? No. ‘I assume it’s a secret,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t mention it.’

  ‘I’m not worrying! Do as you like.’

  ‘I won’t mention it.’

  ‘I wonder what you’re thinking, Anne.’

  ‘I’m not thinking anything. It’s up to you. Nothing to do with me.’

  ‘That’s a rotten reply and you know it.’

  ‘I’m sorry, but what am I to say? I don’t understand and I’m not asking you to tell me -’

  ‘You’re angry. Why? Are you jealous?’

  ‘Jealous? You mean because you’ve got a man and I haven’t? Gertrude, we’ve never conversed at this level of stupidity.’

  ‘No, you fool. I mean - sorry, it was an idiotic way to put it.’

  ‘It was.’

  ‘You know what I mean. I feel possessive about you. Why shouldn’t you feel possessive about me?’

  Oddly enough this aspect of the matter had not really occurred to Anne since the first awful shock of seeing the letter. The aspect existed. She said thoughtfully, ‘I suppose I do feel possessive, but not in any way which would make me resent a -’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘If later on you wanted seriously to marry somebody, somebody good-I rather hoped that one day you would recover and get married-I think I said so - And if you were happy like that I’d be very glad. I love you and I want your well-being, and maybe I’m conceited and optimistic enough to think that our friendship is indestructible.’

  ‘It is indestructible, let’s regard that as fixed. But still you’re angry.’

  ‘Not angry. Startled, sort of shocked.’

  ‘Because it’s so soon?’

  ‘Yes. And because it’s - who it is. Are you actually having a love affair?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m surprised.’

  ‘We fell in love in France. It was a coup de foudre.’

  ‘Does anyone else know?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Just as well. I suppose - well, it will pass, won’t it? Anyway - I’m sorry I seemed bothered. Let’s have lunch now.’

  ‘It won’t pass,’ said Gertrude. ‘I’m going to marry Tim.’

  ‘I should wait a while, if I were you, and reflect a bit. Let’s have lunch.’

  ‘I will wait. I am reflecting. I am going to marry Tim. Why are you so cold and beastly?’

  ‘How long does a coup de foudre take?’

  ‘About four seconds. That’s how long it can take two human beings to change the world.’

  ‘You’re pleased with yourself. But it isn’t true. I don’t believe in coups de foudre and “falling in love”. Loving people is a serious matter but falling in love is just a temporary form of madness.’

 
‘Maybe you found it so. You think I should just have a secret love affair and pass on?’

  ‘Yes. I think it’s all a pity, but if it’s started I suppose it’ll go on. People in love can’t restrain themselves, so it’s said. That is why they are traditionally forgiven.’

  ‘Now I come to think of it, in the old days you never said you were in love, you said you were involved.’

  ‘Oh never mind about the old days, my darling, we were children, we were fools.’

  ‘You think I’m still a fool. You’ve been cloistered a long time.’

  ‘Let’s stop this.’

  ‘You said it wasn’t just because it was too soon - and it is too soon and I’m amazed at myself - but because it was who it was. But what have you got against Tim? You don’t know him, you don’t know anything about him. If it’s because you saw him stealing food he told me and it was because he was hungry and poor and I suppose that’s not a crime -’

  ‘No, no, that was just embarrassing. I haven’t anything against him. Or well - only -’

  ‘Only what?’

  ‘He isn’t up to you, darling, he’s a small man, you’re so much more than he is. You could choose a far better person. He seems to me flimsy and not sort of solid enough to be really trustworthy. And he’s lazy and too anxious to please - I’m sorry, I may be quite wrong. But you asked me for my impression and that’s it.’

  ‘I didn’t ask you for your impression, actually. I asked what you had against him. It seems that what you have against him is that you dislike him.’

  ‘I don’t dislike him, I just don’t see the point of him. But don’t let’s talk like this, Gertrude. It’s my fault. This sounds like an argument but it isn’t. We’re both taking up simple crude positions and uttering simple crude statements. This is not the way you and I usually talk to each other. This isn’t communication. I admit I’m upset, you are quite right, and there may be an element of what you called “jealousy” in it. But I’m mainly upset because I think you’re running straight into an act of folly which you will regret. It being “so soon” isn’t very important except in a sort of pietistic way. Time is a pretty unreal business after all. Why shouldn’t you love again now you’re alone? But it’s obvious that now isn’t a good moment to make a great decision, when your life and your mind are still so confused. This might have been a good reason for not starting an affair, but maybe the affair doesn’t matter too much either. In a way it’s just a symptom of the shock and muddle you’re in. I’m just advising you not to let words like “marriage” get into your head at all at present. Don’t promise anything to anyone. You’re not in a position to commit your future self. Say firmly that you can’t see the future, because you can’t. I don’t know how seriously you meant this about marrying, but if it was serious that’s what I think. And quite a separate point, I don’t see him as right for you. He’s not good enough. I may be wrong about his character. Maybe he wouldn’t let you down. But I’m sure he’d bore you.’

  Gertrude, who had sat down on the other side of the room, was silent. Then she said with a little sad laugh, ‘Well, if you think that, the others will think it with knobs on!’

  ‘Who cares what the others think?’

  ‘Oh I don’t care. Yes, I do care. It just makes me feel so alone in this business. And you are making me feel more alone.’

  Anne said, ‘I’m sorry. It wasn’t to make you feel more alone that I came back to you.’

  Anne was thinking, I must leave here, I must move out. If she’s having a love affair she’ll want the flat! I should have thought of that and said nothing! Yet how could I? Oh why did the Count have to show me that hateful letter! And oh my God, I must go and telephone him, he’ll be waiting and I’ll bring him such terrible news. Perhaps he could bear not to win her, but to lose her like this, how can he bear it?

  Gertrude was thinking, why does Anne have to say these dreadful clear definite things? Why does she always judge? She’s right that this is not the way to talk. Why does she talk then? And I’m sure she’ll go now, she’ll go away so as to ‘leave me to it’ and she’ll grow cold and disappear. I shall lose her. I don’t understand anything any more. I don’t understand her or myself or Tim. And it was all so clear. I ought not to have brought Tim here, I should have seen it was dangerous to him, but he wanted to come and it seemed right. I shouldn’t have let him make love to me in that horrible studio. It was a flimsy place, flimsy like Anne said Tim was, it was like lying out on a scaffolding with the wind blowing. In fact Tim and Gertrude had been unable to leave the studio without lying down together, but it had been an unhappy perfunctory love-making, Tim fretting and worrying in case somebody came.

  As tears gathered in Gertrude’s eyes and as she looked away across the room towards the door, a ghost of a feeling visited her, a shadow sensation out of the past, a little mislaid mental cluster which still hung somewhere there amid the furniture in its accustomed place; she thought, surely it will be all right, I shall tell Guy about it, he will help me, he will know what to do.

  The Count was sitting beside his radio set which he had just switched off. It was late at night. He had listened to a symphony concert, a talk on archaeology, Kaleidoscope, the news, a political discussion, a poetry reading, the book at bedtime, the Financial World Tonight, more news, some prayers with jazz music, the weather forecast for the ships. Now all was silent. Fulham and Chelsea were quiet, except for the occasional distant lonely sound of a car or a rumbling lorry. The music and voices which had kept the Count company throughout the evening were still. They had been soft voices, at the end barely audible, for he feared to disturb his neighbours and had been upset for a long time when once, years ago, a man had banged on his door to tell him to switch off. Tonight indeed he had scarcely listened to what was passing. His simple lonely pleasure in those friendly sounds was quite gone.

  He had eaten nothing. He had drunk a little whisky. Anne had rung him up about three and told him that, yes, Tim and Gertrude were having a love affair. Gertrude said they were in love with each other and planned to get married. They were keeping it secret at the moment. Anne added that she had not told Gertrude about the Count’s visit or the anonymous letter. She had simply asked a question and Gertrude had told her everything. So the Count must not only tell no one, but not reveal to Gertrude that he knew. Anne said Gertrude would be hurt if she thought the Count knew before the moment when Gertrude decided to tell him or to announce it to the world. Anne hoped the Count understood. Anne added that she thought it possible that the whole thing would prove ephemeral and fall through, but it was idle to speculate and she only told him what she knew.

  The Count of course did not entertain hope, it was not in his nature. He had imagined he knew what suffering was. He was well acquainted with sorrow, disappointment, loneliness, the remorse of one who has no real conception of his life, the homesickness of one who has no home. He had been used to saying to melancholy, even to grief, come in my friend, let us be quietly together. In this way over a long time the Count had come to think himself invulnerable. He had never been in a concentration camp or a torture chamber; but in the wear and tear of ordinary life he thought that he had tasted bitterness and accepted the diet. He had not achieved or wanted much in life; so how could he, living in between Fulham and Chelsea and travelling to Whitehall every day, be touched by any pain with which he was unfamiliar? He had been wrong. He now saw his melancholy as a bed of soft comfort and his bitterness as wine, and he wished for death.

  He thought of the night when his brother had died. This was a story not a memory, since the Count had been a small child at the time. It was just before Christmas. His father who by then had left the Air Force, was absent, probably spending the night, as he often did, at the Polish government headquarters in Bayswater. The mother with the two boys was living in Croydon. There had been an argument between his mother and another Polish woman who was lodging with them. The woman, who was very fond of the Count’s brother Jozef, wanted to
take him to the church to see the Christ Child in His stable with the ox and the ass. The Count’s mother was afraid, she wanted her sons close beside her. Jozef had cried, wanting to go to the Christ Child. The father was absent. The mother relented. The church was hit by a bomb, the boy and the lodger were killed. I wish I had died then, he thought, I wish I had gone to the church with Jozef, or instead of him. He thought of himself living on as Jozef. He would have been a strong man.

  The Count had lived almost happily with his cloistered love for Gertrude. He had lived by little anticipations and little rewards. She had, he felt, amidst all the others, a special smile, a special voice, for him. How quiet, how happy they had all been together. Thus people can pass a lifetime in silent unspoken trust, and live in peace without possessing their heart’s desire; and those who let themselves be loved can of their bounty extend, even unconsciously, a harmless radiance of affection for the salvation of the solitary. Gertrude’s marriage had made her unattainable and holy, but also safe, as if Guy were actually keeping her for the Count, the secure eternal closeted object of his secret love. Indeed upon her quietness, her immobility, the peace of his love had rested.

  With Guy’s death came the awful restlessness of hope, the cloistered passion released to wander. But the Count had never let himself hope much, and an absolute piety, the time of mourning and bereavement, had made it easy for him to inhibit, at least to delay, certain thoughts. And he had looked at Gertrude with eyes wherein he hoped that she could read his sadness. Now he wanted her to need, retrospectively, his love, and slowly, unstartled, to be comforted by it. All this, passing through the shock of Guy’s death, was one with his life as he had lived it since he first met her. Since Anne’s telephone call, only hours away in the past, the destruction had been total. It was as if a flame had licked backward through the continuum of his being, annihilating all its structures. He could have endured not to possess Gertrude if she had remained his friend unmarried. He had indeed fully imagined and envisaged, even taught himself to expect, just this. To lose her to another was a different matter, although he had dutifully, and for the farther future, attempted to school himself to the possibility. But to lose her now and to this man goaded him into a frenzy of grief and misery and rage which made the continuation of ordinary life seem impossible.