Nuns and Soldiers

by Iris Murdoch

  He often thought about what had happened in France and pictured vividly in his mind the Great Face and the crystal pool, the flashing water of the canal, the terrible entry to the tunnel. He saw too the yellow beach of stones and the black and white dog climbing out of the water and shaking itself. He looked once or twice at his drawings of the rocks, and thought them good, and hid them away again. Something in his life had begun there, something which tied deeply and mysteriously together Gertrude and his art, or so at any rate he wished to believe. He felt this bond but did not reflect much upon it. He supposed that he and Gertrude would be together again in those holy places, but he did not imagine this pilgrimage and neither he nor she had yet suggested it. He felt a little frightened of going back, but he knew that when Gertrude casually raised the subject it would be easy to envisage.

  Sometimes he thought, thank heavens I went to Gertrude on that day when I had been nearly drowned in the tunnel. Suppose I had not? Suppose I had gone home and weeks and months had passed? It would have become more and more impossible to return, and this was terrible to imagine. The murderous waters of the canal and the blackness of the tunnel had beaten and baptized him back to life. Had he then returned to Gertrude purged and punished? This was romanticism. He had returned to her as a hurt child to its mother. He had come back because he was bruised and bleeding and half drowned. It was all a lucky accident. Why had he ever gone away from her anyway and what had he been guilty of? This became, as time went on, vaguer in Tim’s mind. The idea remained that he had committed some great act of treachery for which he had been miraculously forgiven, though sometimes he felt that he had exaggerated it all and that it was simply being caught out that had made him feel so stained and awful. He knew one thing, that he ought to have remained true to his original revelation, the decree of Eros which had been so indubitable when it was first made plain to him and Gertrude on that May evening in France. He ought to have trusted it throughout as he trusted it now when every day was bringing him a further proof of Gertrude’s love. But did I also marry her for her money, he sometimes quizzically wondered? Was it somehow for the sake of a haven, for a place to draw and paint in, something desired instinctively, as birds migrate and eels return to the Sargasso Sea? He did not tarry with such suppositions. Love was what mattered, and the work of love in his absolute marriage with Gertrude, which would not always be free from care.

  He said to her now, voicing a part of his thoughts, and prompting a reassurance which he knew he would receive. ‘It isn’t different is it, it’s not spoilt in any way because of what happened, what I did?’

  And Gertrude, understanding him perfectly and smiling, replied, ‘No, it’s not hurt or spoilt, but we are different because we’ve been shipwrecked and survived, so it’s better really.’

  ‘You are so good to me. But I often think, who am I, what am I? I am not like Guy. You must sometimes think -’

  Gertrude’s face changed in a way that he knew. It was not the first time that she had heard such words and she did not pick up his comparison. ‘You know the odd things that Guy used sometimes to say, like spells or charms, and he said them a lot at the end when he was ill and they upset me so much because I couldn’t understand them and I’d never asked -. He used to talk about a ring, “she sold the ring, she should have kept the ring”. Anne interpreted that for me. Of course it’s out of The Merchant of Venice. You remember the ring which Shylock’s wife gave him and which Jessica took when she ran away -’

  ‘And what happened to it?’

  ‘She exchanged it for a monkey.’

  ‘I wonder why Guy -’

  ‘He identified with Shylock. He said to me that he always felt that one day he would have to drop everything and run. I suppose it’s a deep Jewish feeling. It was as if he always had a bag packed.’

  ‘He seemed to me like a monument of security. And there was that other thing he said about the white swan -’

  ‘Yes, I can’t make that out, and the cube -’

  ‘What was the cube?’

  ‘He talked about the upper side of the cube. Touching or reaching “the upper side of the cube”.’

  ‘Striking the upper side of the cube. I can do that for you.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘How strange. You probably don’t remember, but years and years ago when Guy used to play tennis at Queen’s Club -’

  ‘He was so good -’

  ‘He invited me to play with him a few times out of sheer kindness, I was hopeless. He tried to coach me, and he repeated something which his coach used to say to him, “When you serve, imagine that the ball is a cube of which you are going to hit the upper side”.’

  ‘Good heavens,’ said Gertrude, ‘I thought it was pre-Socratic philosophy, and it turns out to be tennis! That would amuse Guy.’

  ‘You know, Gertrude, I loved Guy, I loved him. I was frightened of him, but he was like a father to me. He was a good man.’

  ‘Yes. Yes. Yes.’

  They were silent.

  Tim thought, isn’t it strange, as the months turn and the dark days come, in the years that lie ahead, we shall make the pilgrimage through the anniversary of the day when we fell in love and then when we lost each other and then when we met again in the British Museum and our wedding day, and the awful time when we were apart again, and the festival of the leaves, and when we came together in France, and then moving into our new house, and then finally on towards the anniversary of Guy’s death. Every year, as we celebrate Christmas, we shall be remembering that anniversary. Oh my God, what will the first one be like? What will it be like as Gertrude approaches that day? What darkness must gather in her mind? Already each morning she must be thinking: today a year ago. Yet she loves me and seems able to mourn and also to have joy. Will she suddenly break down? Am I mad to think she will go on loving me?

  And Gertrude was thinking, have I run to a haven because my grief would otherwise have been too great? Am I only now beginning to mourn when I have a safe place in which to mourn? I know now that I shall survive. Yet I said to Guy that I would die with him and I believed it. I said I would be dead too, walking and talking and dead. And I’m not dead. All sorts of amazing incredible things have happened to me and I am alive. And I have found Anne and lost her again, and I thought that she was to be the priest of my mourning and that we two would walk on together so slowly into the future, but all has turned out otherwise. I have evaded the stretched-out hand of death, and I cannot think it was wrong to do so. Am I the same person, what has become of me? Yes, I will mourn in my safety, I shall shed tears, and Tim will be silent and he will comfort me, as I weep he will stroke my hair and kiss my hand.

  And Gertrude thought, it was about a year ago that Guy said to me, if you marry, marry the Count. And I worked it out that this meant, don’t marry Manfred. I don’t believe that any more. I think Guy simply wanted me to be safe and happy. He begged me to be happy. But what would he think now?

  She no longer felt haunted by Guy but neither, as Christmas Eve came nearer, did she feel at peace with him. And she thought, it is impossible to make any final peace with the dead, unless indifference and oblivion be peace. They cannot condemn us but neither can they forgive. They have no knowledge and no strength or power. They can exist only as questions and as burdens and as pains and as strange objects of love. I shall always love Guy and mourn for him and miss him and feel pain, and the question and the burden of it will travel with me for the rest of my life.

  And Tim thought, she is thinking about Guy. Oh the sadness of it, the sadness inside the miracle. And he thought, I will be faithful to her and serve her loyally and lovingly all the days of our lives. And I will never tell lies any more. Never. Never. Never? Well, hardly ever.

  Gertrude said, ‘It’s so sad, I thought Anne would be with us at Christmas time, I thought of Christmas with you and me and Anne and Peter, and now she won’t be there.’

  Tim said, ‘Let’s not play chess. Let’s go to bed.’

 
‘Yes, my darling. Do you know, I’ve been thinking. Perhaps I’ll try to write a novel, I always thought I could.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Tim anxiously, ‘will you put me in it?’

  They went to bed.

  ‘Have you got a cold?’ said Mrs Mount to Manfred.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I think you have, you got it from Janet, you always conceal your colds.’

  ‘I have no cold. I forgot to tell you, Balintoy is coming back.’

  ‘Oh good. But why just when the skiing is starting? He must have run out of money.’

  ‘I gather he’s heard a rumour that his mother intends to marry!’

  ‘Then no wonder. I expect she started the rumour herself. Of course you never met his mother.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘She’s a gorgon. They don’t make them like that any more, even in Ireland. But where on earth does Balintoy get the cash, do you give it to him?’

  Manfred smiled.

  He and Veronica Mount were drinking brandy in Manfred’s flat. It was late in the evening. Outside the pavements sparkled with frost. Snow was forecast. But inside Manfred’s flat all was warm and soft.

  The room they sat in was large and high-ceilinged, painted a pallid yellow which Manfred had not bothered to change when he moved in some years ago. In the subdued light of a few lamps, set about the simulacrum of a fire, it looked cosy enough. Manfred and Mrs Mount (they had dined out) were sitting at either end of a long shadowy sofa covered with small embroidered cushions, upon a pile of which Veronica kept peevishly trying to rest her elbow. A handsome silky rug at their feet depicted ornate mauve men in pursuit of ornate mauve beasts. Beyond, upon the pale darkened walls, hung prints and water colours, trophies of Manfred’s casual taste. He was, on the whole, careless of his surroundings, even oblivious, though sometimes, possessed by an idea, he would take pleasure in bringing home some visual treasure.

  Manfred, turning his large bland face to his guest, was formally dressed as usual in a dark suit, white shirt, and darkish silk tie upon which some red asterisk-like forms were discreetly deployed. Veronica Mount was equally formal, unambitious, in a midnight-blue woollen dress into whose neck a ruffled scarf of pale blue silk had been thrust with careful abandon. Her restless elegant legs were tucked up onto the sofa. Her shiny expensive shoes dated from the far past.

  Veronica went on, ‘The Count will be glad to see Balintoy.’

  ‘These are great days for the Count.’

  ‘Yes, what with Gertrude and the Pope.’

  ‘What has Gertrude done to him? Something wonderful.’

  ‘What she has done,’ said Veronica, ‘she has done very easily, she has stretched out her hand and tweaked him inside the magic circle of her love.’

  ‘It was a merciful act.’

  ‘You are tediously unsuspicious. It was a self-interested act. She simply didn’t want the Count to get away. Why should she lose a slave?’

  ‘Well, I suppose that’s all right,’ said Manfred, ‘so long as he doesn’t mind. I think she needed to preserve, close by, his good opinion of her.’

  ‘Yes -’

  ‘She couldn’t bear that the Count should go away carrying a blackened image of her inside his head.’

  ‘That’s true. And of course a blackened image is soon refurbished by a little petting. But if I were Tim I’d be a bit uneasy.’

  ‘I wouldn’t. There’s something childish in Tim that absolutely captivates Gertrude -’

  ‘She’s virginal and he’s raffish, as you see it.’

  ‘Yes. Even perhaps it releases her after all those years with Guy.’

  ‘Guy was above her. She married above herself. We all thought so at the time.’

  ‘Did we, Veronica? No, Tim is safe. He’s lucky actually, if he were hijacked he’d never be the one to get shot.’

  ‘He’d toady up to the hijackers.’

  ‘No, he’s just lucky, like a drunk man. He may even be glad that there’s someone like the Count to amuse Gertrude when he’s not there.’

  ‘Someone so honourable you mean! Yes, the Count is the soul of honour.’

  ‘And he and Tim like each other.’

  ‘All right, Tim is safe, but is she?’

  ‘You mean -?’

  ‘Don’t you think he’ll run off again to that mistress?’

  ‘No, why should he, he’s happy, he’s in love.’

  ‘Don’t be soppy, Manfred. It’s all too good to be true.’

  ‘I suppose Ed Roper has told everybody that story.’

  ‘About the mistress? Well, he told you.’

  ‘Yes, but I didn’t spread it.’

  ‘Oh you are so boringly discreet! It certainly had an electrical effect on Gertrude. What did happen exactly? I suppose we can’t ask.’

  ‘No. But whatever it was it’s over.’

  ‘Someone said Tim is going into business with Ed Roper, mugs or matches or something. Is that true?’

  ‘Yes, I’m even involved in a remote financial sense.’

  ‘I wouldn’t invest a penny in Tim Reede.’

  ‘Ed will see to it, he’s no fool.’

  ‘We’ve never had any evidence that Tim can paint.’

  ‘We’ve never looked for any.’

  ‘I knew you’d say that. Gertrude is planning a marvellous studio for him to play in, when they move to Hammersmith or Chiswick or whatever low-lying spot they’re crazy about now. I wouldn’t live beside that smelly river for anything. Guy not dead a year, and she’s in bed with another man discussing wallpaper! I’m sorry Gertrude’s leaving Ebury Street. It’s the end of an era.’

  ‘She’s even distributing the ancestral pictures,’ said Manfred.

  ‘Is she? She hasn’t offered me one.’

  ‘She’s going to give me that Sargent head of great aunt Judith.’

  ‘It’s rather small.’

  ‘It’s the most valuable. I’ve been telling her for years how much I like it.’

  ‘You’re incorrigible. I suppose it’s conscience-money, this picture distribution. She’s paying us off, we can’t expect any more. Do you think Gertrude will really go back into teaching?’

  ‘I think she’ll try to.’

  ‘She’s bought a lot of learned books which I bet she won’t read.’

  ‘She’s no scholar, but she’s probably a good teacher.’

  ‘She was going on about how they’d both be working. Pure romance I thought. She seems to think Tim will actually earn money.’

  ‘Why not? He did before.’

  ‘He’s more likely to get rid of Gertrude’s.’

  ‘He seems less addicted to material possessions than the rest of us.’

  ‘He’ll learn to spend. But seriously, Manfred, you wouldn’t be pleased to see Gertrude’s money melting stupidly away?’

  ‘It is true,’ said Manfred, ‘that I would be sad to see that money vanishing for which our great grandfather worked so intelligently and so hard.’

  ‘And some of us got some and some of us didn’t! At least Joseph always said he didn’t get a bean. I wonder if it was true, considering what he squandered on that bitch, and I never knew what happened to the Strad.’

  ‘Let’s not have Joseph today, Veronica. Guy was so deplorably unambitious with his money.’

  ‘At least he didn’t lose it.’

  ‘Unambitious,’ said Manfred sadly. ‘He never took my advice. More cognac?’

  ‘Thanks. I wonder where it’ll go if Tim doesn’t spend it. Do you think they’ll have any children? I know Gertrude can’t, but they might adopt.’

  ‘They might, when they get over the shock of being married. I see Tim as a father.’

  ‘Do you? Janet will be so cross. So you are at least interested in the money?’

  ‘Gertrude’s?’

  ‘Though you’ve got plenty of your own.’

  ‘When has that ever stopped a man from wanting more? It is only poor people who don’t want money, they lack the concept.�
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  ‘So you might have gone after that, even if you didn’t want her.’

  ‘What depths of cynicism you attribute to me, Veronica.’

  ‘I suspect you are insincere. You did want her. Not just the money.’

  ‘You keep urging me to admit it.’

  ‘It’s true that you didn’t try very hard.’

  ‘What could I do with you and Janet against me?’

  ‘You jest. At least you would have had some sense of responsibility and kept the money for the family.’

  ‘And increased it, so Janet would have done better with me.’

  ‘Of course Janet and I had quite different motives -’

  ‘In chaperoning me everywhere and never leaving me alone with Gertrude for a moment!’ said Manfred. ‘All the same, if I had wanted to pay court to Gertrude I imagine I could have managed it somehow.’

  ‘Janet simply wanted to prevent Gertrude from marrying.’

  ‘A cause des chères têtes blondes as you said.’

  ‘Because of the children, yes.’