Nuns and Soldiers

by Iris Murdoch

  Stroking Perkins, Anne began now to listen to the sounds round about her to which she had been oblivious. A group of people at the next table were having an animated conversation. Suddenly Anne was rigid with attention.

  ‘Daisy Barrett’s gone, you know.’

  ‘Yes, to America.’

  ‘She’s gone to join some women friends, Libbers you know.’

  ‘Where ?’

  ‘California, where else! Santa Barbara or something.’

  ‘That should suit her.’

  ‘She led a pretty crazy life here.’

  ‘You don’t know the half of it.’

  ‘At any rate she got rid of that awful red-headed creep who was always after her.’

  ‘I can’t think how she stood that chap so long.’

  ‘You heard what happened to him?’

  ‘What ?’

  ‘He married a merry widow.’

  ‘Rich?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Daisy was too good for him.’

  ‘Yes, Daisy’s someone, she’s a real person, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘Well, God bless her, wherever she is. The sight of her boozy old painted face always made me feel better.’

  ‘She hadn’t an ounce of spite in her, she shouted and screamed but she forgave everybody and everything.’

  ‘The Prince won’t be the same without her.’

  ‘What did she do with all those awful potted plants?’

  ‘Gave them to Marje.’

  ‘Oh, yes of course.’

  ‘Did she tell you about the ghastly nun who was chasing her?’

  ‘Daisy would be chased by a nun!’

  ‘She was an unfrocked nun, actually.’

  ‘What’s more exciting, an unfrocked nun or an unfrocked priest?’

  ‘Beautiful word, “frock”.’

  ‘Apparently this nun was a raving lesbian and had been chucked out of her convent for seducing the novices.’

  ‘Darling, have you got her address?’

  ‘How was Daisy when you saw her?’

  ‘Oh in fine form. She said she was going off in search of her innocence. ’

  ‘Perhaps we should all do that.’

  ‘But not tonight. Let’s have another round. It’s Piglet’s turn.’

  Anne stroked Perkins who was now purring, gently stroking the cat’s black nose where the fur grew downward. Perkins looked up at Anne with her intense sinless passionless green eyes. For the first moment Anne felt shock and distress at the image of her which had escaped somehow and was wandering abroad, bandied about over the drinking glasses. Then she relaxed and smiled. It was funny really. And by what privilege could she be exempt from so general a human fate? We are all the judges and the judged, victims of the casual malice and fantasy of others, and ready sources of fantasy and malice in our turn. And if we are sometimes accused of sins of which we are innocent, are there not also other sins of which we are guilty and of which the world knows nothing?

  So Daisy had gone to America, she had preceded Anne into the New World. She is another wanderer, she thought. Well, I shall follow after and carry my cross and my Christ with me. She had found, in that scrap of conversation, the relief of anxiety for which she craved. Daisy had set off ‘in fine form’. Anne agreed that Daisy was ‘someone’. And so she was seeking innocence. It was a quest suited to human powers. Perhaps after all, Goodness was too hard to seek and too hard to understand. Anne did not now feel it her duty to search further. But she thought in an odd way that if Daisy ever terribly needed her they would perhaps meet again.

  Anne put Perkins down gently on the floor. She finished up her glass of wine and began to pull on her overcoat. Suddenly there was a commotion at the other end of the bar.

  ‘Look, look who’s here!’

  ‘It’s Barkiss, Barkiss is back!’

  ‘I just opened the door and he walked in!’

  Anne’s neighbours leapt up and ran towards the shouting. People crowded round.

  ‘It’s Barkiss, he’s come back to us!’

  ‘Look how thin he is!’

  ‘Quick, a ham sandwich for Barkiss!’

  ‘He’s been away a whole year!’

  ‘Look at his poor old paws, he must have walked from Land’s End!’

  ‘I just opened the door and he walked in!’

  ‘Good old Barkiss, dear old Barkiss, he’s come back to the Prince of Denmark.’

  Peering, Anne saw a big yellow Labrador frisking and wagging its tail amid the cries of joy. She watched for a little, smiling, then left the pub.

  ‘Time, please. Closing time. Time, gentlemen, please.’

  Outside, the shock of the cold blanched her face and the cold finger of her indrawn breath reached down into her shrinking body. She buttoned up her coat and pulled on her gloves.

  It was still snowing and the roads and pavements were dark with running water and brown slush. The whitened cars moved slowly with a soft hissing sound. Anne looked upward. The snow, illuminated by the street lamps, was falling abundantly, against the further background of the enclosing dark. The big flakes came into view, moving, weaving, crowding, descending slowly in a great hypnotic silence which seemed to separate itself from the sounds of the street below. Anne stopped and watched it. It reminded her of something, which perhaps she had seen in a picture or in a dream. It looked like the heavens spread out in glory, totally unrolled before the face of God, countless, limitless, eternally beautiful, the universe in majesty proclaiming the presence and the goodness of its Creator.

  Anne stood there for a while. Then she began to walk through the snowy streets at random, feeling lightened of her burdens. Tomorrow she would be in America.