Bruno's Dream

by Iris Murdoch

  ‘Goodbye, Will. Mind you ring me up! And don’t get any more of that paint in your hair.’

  Lisa and Diana began to walk away down the street in the direction of Cremorne Road. Diana had hoped that Danby might walk along with them, but no doubt he had decided that there was no point in it since Lisa was there.

  Diana had been shocked and sickened by the dreary little room and its awful occupant. What she had seen seemed more like flesh, living flesh as one rarely sees it, in extremis, than like a person. She had expected something quite other: a silvery haired old gentleman, with an evident and affecting resemblance to Miles, whom she would coax along and charm into paying her compliments. She had expected something a little peppery and difficult, also frail, but eminently conversible. She had felt moved by the idea of the embassy once Lisa had suggested it, and she had seen herself in the rather touching role of reconciler and flower-bearer, undoing by her graciousness the harm which her husband had done. But on arrival she had realised at once that this was a case for the expert, for the professional. Familiar words like ‘old gentleman’ could not come near touching that reality. Lisa was good in these extreme places, she had a knack. Diana felt here, as she had felt on her few visits to Lisa’s East End haunts, upset, embarrassed, and alarmed. She was glad for the old man’s sake that Lisa was there.

  Diana went straight out into the street to escape from the awful impression of that pathetic length of flesh, and while she was flirting more or less mechanically with the handsome dark-haired painter lad, her thoughts had already reverted to Danby. In these days Danby quietly filled her mind in a way that she was determined not to find alarming. Her nerves were calmed by the dear man’s own insouciance and ease, an ease which she did not see as frivolity but rather as a kind of sincerity. With someone like Danby one knew exactly where one was. He did not pretend to the disrupting violence of absolutes. His cheerful way of asking for an affair had exhilarated her. It was easy to refuse, while at the same time one was in no way cheated of a compliment. Nor was she at all afraid that a baffled Danby would ‘turn nasty’. Of course he would try, perhaps for a long time, to persuade her. But she did not on reflection really think that the argument would end in bed. There must be nothing dreadful, nothing frightening, here. The argument would have to take place, and she rather looked forward to it. But in the very length of the argument would lie the makings of the lasting sentimental friendship which Diana felt she now so very much wanted and needed to have with Danby. After all, as he was pre-eminently a happy-making man she had only to convince him about where her happiness lay. And with this thought Diana had come, over the last few days, to realise that for all the excellence of her marriage she was not by any means entirely happy.

  She had mentioned both Danby’s visits to Miles but had kept silent about the dancing. That episode had indeed become so dreamlike, so strangely formally romantic, in her memory that she scarcely felt guilty of any falsehood in suppressing it. That would not happen again; she could find all that she needed in a set of arrangements which would involve no falsehood. In fact even by the truth Miles was likely to be more than a little misled at present, since he could not conceive of anybody enjoying Danby’s company. He had commiserated with his wife upon his brother-in-law’s visitations. ‘That oaf!’ Diana smiled, and her smile had tenderness for both men. She did not want to deceive Miles. She would give him, in time, enough intimations of the real state of affairs. ‘I like him, really.’ ‘He’s rather sweet.’ ‘Guess who I’m lunching with? Danby!’ Miles would get used to it, and if he could never wholly believe in Diana’s predilection, in spite of her most careful factual statements, then, so much perhaps the better. So she would stretch the situation, a little from Danby’s side, a little from Miles’s side, until she could achieve what now her whole nature craved for, another harmless love. She would love Danby, and no one would be any the worse. As she resolved upon this she felt her heart swell again with the imperative need to love, and she sighed deeply.

  ‘What is it, Di?’

  It had come on to rain a little and the two women, their scarves pulled well forward over their heads, were walking briskly along Edith Grove.

  ‘That poor old man–’

  ‘Poor Bruno, yes.’

  ‘In that sort of state they become so–repulsive and horrifying. It must be terrible to be human and conscious and utterly repulsive. I hope he doesn’t know what he looks like.’

  ‘We all interpret and idealise our faces. I expect Bruno has some idea of his appearance which is quite unlike what we saw.’

  ‘I hope so. I can’t think how Danby can manage it. Treating like a person–what isn’t a person any more.’

  ‘Bruno’s not so far gone. He talked sense after you’d left.’

  ‘You’re so good, I wish I had your knack.’

  ‘I’m more used to it.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He said to tell Miles he didn’t mean what he said at the end.’

  ‘You know, I think he thought you were Miles’s wife!’

  ‘I don’t know who he thought I was.’

  ‘He seemed to think you were somebody, he certainly took to you.’

  ‘I do wish we’d known him earlier.’

  ‘Well, that was Miles’s fault. God, I hope I’ll never get like that, I’d rather be dead. Don’t you think there’s a lot to be said for euthanasia?’

  ‘I’m not sure. It’s so hard to know what’s going on inside a very old person.’

  ‘No wonder Miles was stumped.’

  ‘Miles will have to try again.’

  ‘Well, you tell Miles that. You’re good at being firm with him. Wasn’t he cross this morning?’

  ‘Guilty conscience!’

  ‘Danby was thoroughly fed up with him.’

  ‘Yes.’

  The two women turned into the Fulham Road, their heads bowed to the light rain.

  ‘Lisa.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘There’s nothing special going on between me and Danby, you know.’

  ‘I didn’t think there was.’

  ‘He’s a thoughtless impetuous chap but he’s really very sweet. You mustn’t be hard on him.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about him.’

  ‘You’re like Miles, you’re so uncompromising. I think it makes you just a little too severe sometimes.’

  ‘Sorry!’

  ‘Danby’s a very affectionate person and I think he’s a bit lonely. I suspect he hasn’t really talked to a woman for ages. He imagines he’s a bit keen on me, but I can manage him. It’s just the first shock! I know he plays the clown a bit but he’s not a fool. There’s no drama.’

  ‘I didn’t think there was, Di.’

  ‘That’s all right then. You worry so, Lisa, and I know you don’t suffer fools gladly. You and Miles are so alike. I can’t think why you’re both so fond of me!’

  Lisa laughed and thrust her arm through her sister’s and gave it a quick squeeze. A little later as they were taking the short cut through Brompton cemetery Lisa said, ‘Seeing Bruno like that reminded me of Dad.’

  ‘Oh God. Lisa, I’ve thought about it sometimes, but I never liked to ask you. Were you actually with him when he died?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘One hates to think of these things. I’m such a coward, I was very relieved it happened when I was away. Was it rather awful?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I think one almost absolutely forgets the quality of scenes like that.’

  ‘Was he–frightened?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That must have been terrible for you.’

  ‘It’s like no other fear. It’s so deep. It almost becomes something impersonal. Philosophers say we own our deaths. I don’t think so. Death contradicts ownership and self. If only one knew that all along.’

  ‘I suppose one is just an animal then.’

  ‘One is with an animal then. It isn’t quite
the same thing.’

  ‘He was so good earlier on in the illness.’

  ‘He didn’t believe it earlier on, any more than we believe it now.’

  ‘We did try to deceive him.’

  ‘We were trying to deceive ourselves. It was terrible to see him realising–the truth.’

  ‘Oh God. What did you do?’

  ‘Held his hand, said I loved him–’

  ‘I suppose that is the only thing one would want to know.’

  ‘What was awful was that he didn’t want to know. We’re so used to the idea that love consoles. But here one felt that even love was–nothing.’

  ‘That can’t be true.’

  ‘I know what you mean. It can’t be true. Perhaps one just suddenly saw the dimensions of what love would have to be–like a huge vault suddenly opening out overhead–’

  ‘Was it–hard for him to go?’

  ‘Yes. Like a physical struggle. Well, it was a physical struggle, trying to do something.’

  ‘I suppose death is a kind of act. But I expect he was really unconscious at the end.’

  ‘I don’t know. Who knows what it is like at the end?’

  ‘What a gloomy conversation. Why, Lisa, you’re crying! Oh stop crying, darling, stop crying, for heaven’s sake!’

  16

  DANBY WAS STANDING in the long grass in Brompton cemetery. It was Wednesday afternoon.

  He had gone through the day, indeed the last few days, at the works in a kind of dream. There had been the usual round of small crises which he normally rather enjoyed. The big Columbian press used for printing small issues of posters had broken down and one of the apprentices had tried to mend it with terrible results. The bingo people had changed their mind about the format when the cards were already printing. The safety hand of the guillotine had gone wrong so that they were breaking the law now every time they used it. The lorry delivering the lead had backed into a stack of paper and ruined it. A reproduction of a modern picture in a local magazine had been printed upside down. The expensive new type had arrived for one of the composing machines and the bill was exactly twice the estimate. One of the girls in the packing department had fallen off the ladder into the storeroom and broken her ankle. The elderly eccentric for whom they printed woodcuts had rung up five times about the Japanese paper. The art school from which Danby had been trying to buy an old Albion had sent a representative to discuss the sale. Danby had left early, handing everything over to Gaskin with a preoccupied indifference which amazed the latter, who thought that Danby would at least be cock-a-hoop at the prospect of getting the Albion, a very beautiful early model which he had long coveted.

  Danby had been tempted to have an encouraging quick one at the Tournament or the Lord Ranelagh which had just opened their doors, but it was better to remain sober and for once he had no difficulty in doing so. Drunk or sober was much the same now. It had been raining and now a faint evening sunlight was making everything glitter. On the other side of the tall iron railings the rush hour traffic was travelling steadily, hypnotically, along the Old Brompton Road. Inside the railings the uncut grass made the cemetery look like a field, or more like a ruined city with its formal yet grassy streets and squares: Ostia, Pompeii, Mycenae. Big house-like tombs, the dwellings of the dead, lined the wide central walk which showed in a cold sunny glimpse the curve of distant pillars. In quieter side avenues humbler graves were straggled about with grass, with here and there a cleared place, a chained space, a clipped mound, a body’s length of granite chips, a few recent flowers wilting beside a name. Above the line of mist-green budding lime trees there rose far off the three black towers of Lots Road power station. Ye are come unto Mount Zion and the city of the living God.

  It had come as no surprise to Danby when Bruno had said to him after she had gone, ‘That girl looked a bit like Gwen.’ Danby had taken in the resemblance earlier, when he had seen Lisa’s head so close to Bruno’s. He had noticed the heavy mane of dark hair, the brooding heaviness of the long face, the rapt wide-eyed attentiveness, the shaped thinking mouth with the deep runnel over it. He had gazed and brooded upon that face in the evenings that followed when Lisa had come to Bruno, and Danby had sat silent, apparently unnoticed, in the corner, occasionally moving to pour champagne, while Lisa led Bruno through mazes of self-revelation in a kind of unfaltering converse such as Danby had never heard before and which he felt that he scarcely comprehended. He had expected to be told to go. But no one suggested it, so he stayed. After she left he and Bruno looked at each other in puzzlement, in amazement. Bruno seemed sometimes on the point of asking a question. Perhaps he wanted to ask who the woman was. Or perhaps he assumed that she was Miles’s wife. Perhaps it was some quite other question. In fact they said nothing to each other.

  When Danby understood the troubling resemblance, he recalled at once the curious fright which he had experienced when he had seen Lisa looking at him out of the upper window at Kempsford Gardens, and he then realised what it was that he had been afraid of. It was not just of a very serious girl with a fine mouth and a formidable power of attention. Now throughout each day at the works he tried hard to scatter his thoughts, to act mechanically, not to think, not to look forward. With an intensified self-consciousness he cherished his so long accustomed being. He chatted carefully with Adelaide but told her he was ill. When Diana rang up he made an appointment and then cancelled it. He was glad that Bruno continued to be in a rather inward state and showed no signs of wanting to discuss the phenomenon on which he had commented. Danby hoped that it would all somehow fade and blow away; and yet he also knew that it would not.

  Danby’s relationship with Gwen had seemed to him, even at the time, something that was not quite himself, but more like a visitation from outside. He had perfectly understood Miles’s looks of incomprehension and amazement. Such a conjunction was so improbable. Gwen was not his type and he was not hers. Gwen had had a kind of authority over him which seemed more an attribute of her sheer alienness than the result of any rational effect of persuasion. Perhaps it had simply been the authority of a terrifying degree of love. And in retrospect Danby saw his marriage as a pure celebration of the god of love, something almost arbitrary and yet entirely necessary, invented and conducted at the whim of that deity without the help of any mundane basis in nature. Of course Danby, though he had never opened a textbook of psychology in his life, knew that the working of nature is very often hidden and that what had so powerfully brought him and Gwen together could well be, after all, something natural, but he did not want to know. He preferred to believe in the action of the god in his life, an action which he took to be entirely sui generis and unique.

  After Gwen’s death, as he very slowly recovered himself, he felt a sense of reversion, of a return to a very much easier and more natural and Danby-like mode of existence. This was accompanied by no relief. Gwen had been a source of joy and indeed of surprise so continual that the sort of strain upon his nature of which he became so conscious afterward could not then be apprehended as a discomfort. But in settling down to being once again himself Danby had felt as it were the pull of gravity which, after some years, had something rather reassuring about it. This was a matter which Danby had got as far as discussing with Linda, and their conclusions about him, arrived at together, had been a positive solace. It was not that Gwen had come to seem like a dream. Danby held it for gospel that Gwen had been reality and his subsequent life had been a dream. But, and especially with Linda’s help, he had decided that, like most other people, he was not made for reality. In any case he had no alternative. He could not now, without Gwen, even conceive of any possibility other than the dream life of the homme moyen sensuel which to the tips of his fingers he so absolutely was.

  Indeed, as the years went by, when after Linda, who had done him so much good, he so sensibly and quietly took up with Adelaide and felt the smooth weighty powers of initiative of one who is entirely assembled inside his own nature, he began, without in any way thinki
ng it to be sacrilege, to doubt whether he had ever truly been awakened even by Gwen. Gwen had been a sort of miracle in his life the nature of which he would never entirely understand. Such a thing could only happen once, and it had left him a sacred relic upon which he could meditate with profit until the end of his days. But had he ever really existed in the world of which his love for Gwen had given him intimations? As time went by he began to doubt it. Not that he doubted Gwen’s value. But he began, as with middle age his exploration of his own nature became more confident, to wonder how far a person like himself had genuinely participated in that feast of love. Danby was aware that one forgot things. But on the whole he felt that the god must have found him, for all the frenzy of his enthusiasm, something of a disappointment. He had loved whole-heartedly but with too ordinary a heart.

  The appearance of Diana had in no way startled Danby. Diana was a kind of mixture of Linda and Adelaide and in a way more attractive to him than either of them. She had Linda’s coolness and Adelaide’s peculiar kind of animal sweetness and charm. He had loved talking to her as much as touching her. Her delightfulness had reminded him how unambitious he had lately become about women and how few of them he took the trouble to meet nowadays. She had also reminded him of his power to attract. He had enjoyed dancing with her more intensely than he had enjoyed anything for years. Naturally he would have liked to go to bed with her. However she was married to Miles, and though at first it had seemed a rather jolly idea to cuckold Miles, a more extended reflection suggested snags.