Nuns and Soldiers

by Iris Murdoch

  Anne got up from the bed. There was no ease. She decided she would go out and walk. She walked so much now, especially at night, especially along the river. Late dusky summer evening filled the little flat with dusty floating shadows. She turned the lights on. She went into the sitting-room. She looked at it with amazement. Chairs, lamps were overturned, books and cushions strewed the floor. She thought, did I do that, I, calm rational Anne Cavidge? The effect of the aspirin had worn off and her toothache had come back. She began slowly to pick up the debris. She found herself holding a stone. It was the chipped grey stone which he had given her and which, she remembered now, she had laid on top of some books: the stone in which he had shown her the cosmos, all that exists, and how small it is. She held it against her torn dress. Her tooth was aching, her burnt finger was hurting. She began to cry again quietly. She had cried so much in these last days. Yet she had left the convent almost without tears, left even forever that most beloved one. ‘Good-bye,’ Anne had said, and she ‘God bless you,’ passing in a garden, on an evening in autumn, not yet a year ago.

  ‘Well, I think they’re ideally suited!’

  ‘Veronica!’

  ‘Yes, I do,’ said Mrs Mount.

  It was drinks night at Manfred’s. This ceremony had succeeded to the old Ebury Street gatherings, which now seemed to everyone present to belong to the remote past. Of course Tim and Gertrude were invited, but so far had not turned up.

  ‘It’s a foolish marriage,’ said Janet Openshaw. ‘Why couldn’t she just have an affair?’

  ‘Why didn’t you stop her from marrying the fellow, Manfred?’

  ‘My dear Ed, I can do nothing with Gertrude.’

  ‘She was wearing her mourning like a nun’s veil, and now this!’

  Stanley Openshaw said, ‘Gertrude couldn’t have an affair, she’s too serious and moral.’

  ‘Is it serious and moral to get married to -’

  ‘She loves him. That’s the explanation.’

  ‘Stanley! Guy died in December.’

  ‘Or e’er those shoes were old . . .’

  ‘I mean, Gertrude couldn’t do anything frivolous, so she must be deeply in love.’

  ‘Just what I think,’ said Mrs Mount. ‘They both are.’

  ‘I see Gertrude as a rather virginal person,’ said Manfred, ‘sort of chaste and solemn. I agree with Stanley.’

  ‘Guy cornered her early in life.’

  ‘Then it’s a late case of wild oats.’

  ‘Put it this way, Gertrude is the sort of woman who has got to love somebody.’

  ‘Well, it won’t last. He’s such a lightweight. She’ll regret it.’

  ‘I don’t think I agree,’ said Gerald. ‘I like Tim.’

  ‘He’s an adventurer, he’s just after her money.’

  ‘You’re a cynic, Janet,’ said Manfred. ‘Romance is a complicated business.’

  ‘Romance!’

  ‘I think we’d better go,’ said Stanley. ‘I must anyway. I’ve got to get back to the House.’

  ‘The House isn’t sitting.’

  ‘I am though! I’ve got to see a man about a tax.’

  ‘Tim Reede has never had a thought for anybody but himself.’

  ‘Which of us has any other thought, Janet dear? Mother love doesn’t count.’

  ‘I think they’ll be happy,’ said Gerald. ‘I’m prepared to bet on it.’

  ‘Gerald is starry-eyed.’

  ‘What do you think, Moses?’

  ‘I would view the situation with caution,’ said Moses.

  ‘Moses would view the situation with caution!’

  ‘I think they’re both in love and I think Tim is capable of loyalty.’

  ‘My dear Veronica, no one’s suggested he’s a rotter,’ said Ed Roper.

  ‘I think he’s capable of loyalty and seriousness.’

  ‘She’ll keep him up to the mark,’ said Manfred.

  ‘We’ll keep them up to the mark. Gertrude needs us as a chorus.’

  ‘Gertrude would hate to lose face. She’ll do her damnedest to make it work.’

  ‘Well, Gertrude is high-principled and he’s timid, so their chances are good.’

  ‘They’ll keep each other up to the mark, up to different marks. They’re so unlike, they’ll expand each other’s worlds. Tim has an instinct for happiness.’

  ‘Moses says Tim has an instinct for happiness!’

  ‘But really - Tim after Guy!’

  ‘Happiness is not to be despised.’

  ‘No one here despises it, I assure you.’

  ‘Janet -’

  ‘Yes, yes, Stanley.’

  ‘Gertrude has an instinct for happiness too,’ said Mrs Mount. ‘She has an instinct for getting herself into the right place, like a cat. She was jolly lucky to get Guy. We all thought so at the time, well I did anyway, and then everyone got used to it. I think none of you see how clever she’s been. You say “Tim after Guy”. Precisely. Gertrude had an older man when she needed one, now she has a younger man when she needs one. She married her father, now she’s married her son.’

  ‘The result is certainly rejuvenating,’ said Gerald. ‘Gertrude looks much younger.’

  ‘Janet will say “mutton dressed as lamb”!’

  ‘Don’t be beastly, Veronica. I just hope she’ll be all right. If that man lets her down -’

  ‘It’s certainly a change,’ said Moses Greenberg, ‘and why not? She married the man who had everything. Now she’s married the man who has nothing.’

  ‘Materially or spiritually?’

  ‘I see Veronica’s point.’

  ‘Janet -’

  ‘Yes, yes, yes, Stanley, I’m coming.’

  ‘You can stay, but I must take the car.’

  ‘I’ll come - you can drop me off. I’ve got to entertain Rosalind’s string quartet.’

  ‘How are the boys?’

  ‘Ned’s in California, William’s digging in Greece.’

  ‘Your children are so talented.’

  ‘Gerald, I must have a talk with you about Ned. I’m so afraid he’ll become religious. You must tell him mathematics is the road to freedom. Well, we must go.’

  ‘Good-bye -’

  ‘Oh hello, Victor, we’re just going. Here’s Victor.’

  ‘Hello, doc. Good-bye Janet, good-bye Stanley.’

  ‘Janet has just been deploring the married pair.’

  ‘Which married pair?’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Victor.’

  ‘Janet is fed up à cause des chères têtes blondes.’

  ‘What on earth is Veronica talking about?’

  ‘Naturally Janet’s cross about the money.’

  ‘The money?’

  ‘The Openshaw children were to have Guy’s money.’

  ‘So Janet thought, anyway.’

  ‘Nothing on paper.’

  ‘Now Tim will gamble it all away, after all he’s Irish.’

  ‘Bound to.’

  ‘He’ll get rid of it in two years.’

  ‘Gertrude won’t let him.’

  ‘That young fellow has more sense than you think.’

  ‘Janet was so sure Gertrude would never marry again.’

  ‘Janet thinks it’s damned unsporting of Gertrude to marry.’

  ‘Guy ought to have divided the spoil up a bit.’

  ‘She might have married someone who could treble the cash.’

  ‘Someone not a hundred yards from here could have done it, if I may say so.’

  ‘Don’t let’s keep discussing Gertrude,’ said Manfred.

  ‘I agree,’ said Mrs Mount. ‘Let’s wish them well and help them in any way we can.’

  ‘No Count today.’

  ‘No Count at all.’

  ‘He’s moping.’

  ‘We wouldn’t talk like this if the Count were here,’ said Gerald.

  ‘You’re right,’ said Manfred. ‘Someone give Victor a drink, he’s fainting.’

  ‘Thanks, I’ve had an awfu
l day. Hello, Ed, how’s your you-know-what? ’

  ‘What’s Ed’s you-know-what?’

  ‘Never you mind.’

  ‘It’s better, but please don’t talk about it.’

  ‘What’s happened to the nun?’ said Moses Greenberg. ‘I can’t remember her name.’

  ‘Anne Cavidge, Gertrude’s old school pal.’

  ‘Anyone seen her? You ought to invite her, Manfred.’

  ‘Oh I have, but she doesn’t come.’

  ‘Desperately shy, poor thing.’

  ‘They never recover.’

  ‘Well, I must be off.’

  ‘Good night, Moses dear.’

  ‘Moses is so censorious.’

  ‘Do you see him as disappointed?’

  ‘About Gertrude? No.’

  ‘Perhaps he had his dreams, who knows.’

  ‘Well, I love Moses,’ said Mrs Mount.

  ‘Any Balintoy news? Has Gerald been favoured with a letter?’

  ‘Yes, he’s in Hawaii.’

  ‘Gerald’s the favourite as usual.’

  ‘Where on earth does he get the money?’

  ‘No holiday for me this year.’

  ‘I hope to get to Eastbourne,’ said Mrs Mount.

  ‘I suppose Manfred’s jaunting off on business to Zurich as usual.’

  ‘My business doesn’t take me any farther than Fulham.’

  ‘And Ed’s off to Paris.’

  ‘I work in Paris,’ said Ed.

  ‘There’s no business like art business.’

  ‘I suppose Gerald’s going to a jolly conference in Sydney or Chicago or somewhere?’

  ‘No, no farther than Jodrell Bank.’

  ‘Made any discoveries lately, Gerald?’

  ‘Well - yes -’

  ‘Gerald’s made a discovery, quiet everybody.’

  Gerald, burly and sweating, put down his glass. ‘I-I couldn’t - explain it -’

  ‘There’s probably only two people on the planet who’d understand. ’

  ‘That’s about it,’ said Gerald.

  ‘Gerald seems quite upset.’

  ‘So am I. Is anything going to happen, Gerald?’

  ‘Well - it could do -’

  ‘Gerald says something’s going to happen.’

  ‘Does he mean a cosmic disaster?’

  ‘This is a morbid conversation,’ said Mrs Mount. ‘Give me another drink, please.’

  ‘Moira Lebowitz was here last week, she’s become so beautiful. ’

  ‘ “Women are trained everywhere to please, so any party is dull without them”.’

  ‘Who said that?’

  ‘Guy, oddly enough.’

  ‘I am here!’

  ‘Sorry, Veronica. Have a cigarette?’

  ‘Have a what?’

  ‘Victor says he’s going to make us all jog round the park every day.’

  ‘Is he hell.’

  ‘By the way, I’ve got a spare ticket for Aida. Anybody? Veronica? ’

  ‘I hate Aida.’

  ‘You were talking about Gertrude and Tim,’ said Victor. ‘Any news?’

  ‘I had a drink with them,’ said Manfred.

  ‘Anyone else there?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s funny,’ said Victor, ‘but Tim Reede doesn’t seem to have any friends.’

  ‘He doesn’t want Gertrude to meet his boozy drinking companions, now he’s joined the bourgeoisie.’

  ‘After all we never met any of his friends.’

  ‘We didn’t try very hard to,’ said Gerald.

  ‘I asked Gertrude about that,’ said Manfred. ‘She said he mentioned a chap called Jimmy Roland. Gertrude hasn’t met him -’

  ‘Jimmy Roland?’ said Ed Roper. ‘I used to know a Jimmy Roland. He used to sell brass ornaments to pubs, things like that.’

  ‘Talking of girls, anyone seen Sylvia Wicks?’ said Victor.

  ‘She seems to have sunk without trace. Manfred says he invited her.’

  ‘She’s probably invented an illness for herself, leukemia or something.’

  ‘Oh shut up, Victor, I know you’ve had a bad day -’

  ‘All right, Veronica, to return to Tim and Gertrude -’

  ‘We can’t - Manfred won’t let us - he thinks it’s in bad taste.’

  ‘Oh I don’t mind,’ said Manfred. ‘I just wanted an interval.’

  ‘Well, I think that pair is unpredictable.’

  ‘That’s what makes them so endlessly interesting.’

  ‘Anne-I have just heard something extraordinary - and terrible.’

  So spoke the Count.

  Two weeks had passed since the visit of Jesus Christ, two weeks in which Anne had been intensely busy in her mind. She had during this period seen the Count twice, once on the occasion of her attack on her sitting-room and once, uneventfully, a week later. She had also seen Tim and Gertrude once, and Gertrude alone once. She had seen no one else except for Mr Orpen the dentist. She had sat alone in her flat and walked immensely in the streets of London.

  Mr Orpen had filled her tooth which ached no more. She had almost enjoyed talking to him. He was a cool man and, though a cousin, pointedly detached from the Ebury Street set. Anne intuited that he regarded them as snobbish. It emerged that he was a Roman Catholic. He knew of Anne’s defection. He said, ‘You’re famous.’ Anne did not pursue the matter. They discussed some Vatican politics of which Mr Orpen knew a surprising amount.

  With Tim and Gertrude Anne had been merry, this was now quite easy. Tim exerted himself to please her and she found him quite amusing, though she was constantly irritated by the warm loving glances which Gertrude darted to and fro between her husband and her friend. Alone with Gertrude it was harder. Both of them knew that at some deep level all was well between them, but ordinary communication was destroyed in ways which neither could fully grasp. Gertrude half wanted and half did not want a heart-to-heart talk with Anne. Anne could see Gertrude, almost from minute to minute, calculating her moves. Gertrude was wondering whether it was too early, too soon after the recent shocks, to draw Anne close to her. She was estimating Anne’s attitude to Tim and whether it was changing and how fast. Meanwhile a sort of wry formality reigned between them over which, so obvious was it, they could almost at times smile at each other.

  Anne was wrapped in her terrible secret. She too was busy calculating. Her mind had never felt more like a computer, a computer conscious of time limits and of possible deep mechanical faults. A number of things had become clear to her in the last fortnight. If her enterprise with Peter failed, Gertrude must never know. Part of the hell of the personal into which Anne had fallen back was this: that she felt that if Gertrude knew that Anne had loved Peter in vain, Anne’s relation to Gertrude would become intolerable. Perhaps, for the sake of something, the intolerable could be tolerated, the unendurable endured, but Anne could not see that far. Nor could she see what Gertrude would feel or do should Anne’s enterprise succeed; but about this she remained agnostic and worried less. That outcome was concealed in a blaze of light, and if Peter could love her all else would fall into place.

  Meanwhile Anne watched Peter lynx-eyed, considering him in her soul, meditating upon him and bending her will upon him. She invited him, for the present, with a studied rarity. He did not invite her, but then he invited no one. She felt that, at their last meeting, she had discovered some slight change. He seemed a little less obsessed, a little less unhappy and she allowed herself to think in her dark secret heart, he is recovering. But she did not yet dare to stretch out towards him the hand that would change the world.

  She meditated too, of course, upon her other visitor. She inclined now to think that she had received some kind of ‘genuine’ visitation. That is, she had not been dreaming or having some kind of chemically-induced hallucination. The source of the thing was a spiritual source. This however left much unclear. Anne was experienced enough (after all she had spent many years as a ‘professional’) to be willing to let the nature o
f her revelation declare itself slowly. The way it had lasted, even strengthened, in her mind and her heart made her feel a kind of faithful patience concerning its reality. This did not indeed exclude the possibility that her visitor was, or represented, the Other, or some ambiguous spiritual intermediary, some detached and wandering quasi-magical figment. Anne knew how terribly close, for human beings, all things spiritual lie to the deep fires of the demonic. Concerning this, she waited, she cultivated still the metaphysics of waiting. And she noticed in herself, like the slow growth of an innocent indifferent plant, a renewed impulse towards worship and towards some kind of prayer. What kind of prayer this new prayer would turn out to be she did not yet know. Sometimes, alone in her room, she knelt down, remaining quiet, wordless and blank. She was grateful to her visitor. And in some way, whatever his identity, she asked his pardon for the violent preoccupations and fierce desires which carried her continually away from a calm and humble attention. That must be settled first, she kept saying to herself and to anything which lay beyond. Sometimes she felt so unhappy that she wanted to die in some holocaust of doomed endeavour. Sometimes, when she felt quieter and calmer, she reflected that this calm was simply a disguised form of a wicked fantasy hope that pictured her safe at last in Peter’s arms. There can be no compromise, no muddle. He will, when the time comes, hold me entirely, or else I will automatically be thrust away into empty space. Would there then be any home for her in that emptiness?

  The Count had spent the interim in great misery. What Anne had interpreted as signs of recovery were better perhaps described as impulses of rational despair. He had applied for a transfer to the north, but had as yet told no one. He now wanted intensely to leave London, he pictured himself alone in some quite other scene, in some other little secretive flat with his books and his radio set. Although warmly invited by them, he kept clear of the ‘Ebury Street mob’ who now met at Manfred’s flat. For the first time, he felt his nickname as a mockery, as a mark of genial contempt. It was time to go away and be among people who knew it not. In the north he would be ‘Peter’ from the start. He was, for them all here, a figure of fun. Any invitation offered by Gertrude he felt bound to accept. These invitations amounted to a drink with her and Tim every five days or so. The Count too could see Gertrude calculating, and he too was irritated, indeed maddened, by the way her affectionate gaze moved from him to Tim and back, and by the incoherent shy appeal which her looks expressed. Gertrude wanted him to do the impossible: to accept her marriage to Tim and to go on loving her all the same.