by Iris Murdoch
Humphrey Finch, who had been 'very nice to him last Sunday, had said he'd be glad to have him to stay in London and show him round. Everyone had seemed rather dubious about this, which was odd, as they'd been saying for ages, though without doing anything about it, that it was a pity he wasn't seeing anything of London. Humphrey Finch was nice, but Penn was sorry he hadn't been able to talk more to Colonel Meecham who had an M.C. Seton Blaise was nice too, but it hadn't got towers like Grayhallock. What he had liked best was the lake where, while Humphrey questioned him about his family, he had seen a kingfisher cross the water like a metallic blue bullet.
, Yes, I'd love to go, if that's all right.
'Well, yes, fine, said Ann. She still lingered. 'Ah well. I must go and do the bonfire.
Penn closed the door firmly behind her. He was not at an age to be indifferent to loot. He felt, in any case, moved and excited, indeed thrilled in a dark way, at the idea of looking at Steve's things. His cousin whom he had never met, nearly two years his senior, had been an object of veneration to Penn from long ago, filling in his thought the place of the elder brother for whom, over-provided as he was with younger siblings, he frequently yearned. He had so much looked forward to meeting Steve one day, upon the constantly talked-of but constantly deferred, English visit. He had imagined that, somehow, they would do remarkable things together. He had been exceedingly shaken by his cousin's death. It had been, indeed, his first experience of mortality.
He decided to look at the books first. The results were disappointing. Besides Shakespeare and all that, there were a large number of books on birds, but nothing about aeroplanes or ships or motor-bikes. Well, there was one book about sailing ships. And there was a book on veteran cars which looked promising. He put that on one side. Books about climbing there were, only Penn who had no head at all for heights was not interested in climbing. There were some boys' school stories and adventure stories, but no science fiction. There were two rather technical books about horses, but Penn, to the scandalized amazement of his English relatives who imagined Australians were always galloping across endless plains, was not able to ride a horse, and had no desire to learn, in spite of the offered loan of the Swanns' pony. The rest seemed to be mainly text-books, Latin grammars and such. There were a few Penguin novels, but they looked dull English teaparty stuff.
He turned his attention to the contents of the cupboard. Steve had evidently not shared Penn's passion for electrical gadgets. There was nothing electrical to be seen at all, except for an electric train set of very simple design. There were several mouth organs and several sorts of pipes of different sizes, but Penn had no musical talents. There were number of teddy bears and things which he treated with stiff detachment, and quantities of board and counter games. There was a chess set, but Penn was not acquainted with chess. A box full of whistles and screws puzzled him until he decided they were devices for imitating bird calls. There was a big electric torch, but the battery was dead. There really seemed to be nothing at, all that was worth taking away as loot. He opened a final big wooden box. It was full of the largest number of lead soldiers he had ever seen.
Penn had always had a passion, never by his impecunious family anything like fully indulged, for lead soldiers. He had wanted to be a soldier himself until he had decided more lately that he wanted to be a motor-mechanic, or as, ashamed of his cowardice, after realizing that his English relatives for some reason disliked this phrase, he now termed it, 'an engineer'. Not over-bright at school, he had usually managed to get good marks in History because of a passionate interest ill matters of weapons, uniforms and machinery of war, to which a few other facts about what was going on managed to adhere. He delved into the box.
Black Watch, Rifle Brigade, the Blues, the Royal Marines, Gurkhas, Sappers, Scots Greys. He began to set them out on the floor. Then he stopped. 'Child's stuff, Ann had said. He looked at the soldiers and sat back on his heels. Of course, he never played with soldiers now at home. He even stood by in a good-natured way while Timmie and Bobby mis-called, ill-treated and broke up his once-precious battalions. He began to put Steve's soldiers back into the box. Then he was taken by a sudden rush of emotion as if, he didn't know why, he might even weep.
Penn had so long and so desperately looked forward to coming to England, he had scarcely admitted to himself, let alone to his family, that when the time carne to leave home he could hardly bear it. The aeroplane flight and the excitement of arriving had consoled him of course. But since then everything had been depressing and disappointing. Grandma dying had been so awful. And he found his English relatives alien to a degree which, he felt, they themselves quite failed to realize. He was perfectly aware, of course, that they all felt that his mother had married not exactly beneath her, but, well, unsuitably, regrettably. He was aware more obscurely that they were all, well, a little disappointed in him. He was not a patch on Steve, of course; he was prepared to admit this himself. And if his Uncle Randall sometimes seemed positively to dislike him; it was perhaps only natural, since Penn was alive while Steve was dead.
He had not minded, what they reproached themselves about most, their not having got him into a school. He was really rather relieved about this, since what an English school suggested to him most of all was the idea of being beaten: an experience which he had never had and the possibility of which he regarded with a mixture of fear and thrilled awe. He had not minded mooching about at Grayhallock — he was better at amusing himself than they imagined — though he would be sorry to go home without having seen a bit more of England. But he was depressed by the countryside which they all thought so pretty, and constantly exclaimed about instead of taking it for granted. He disliked its smallness, its picturesqueness, its outrageous greenness, its beastly wetness. He missed the big tawny air and the dry distances and the dust; he even missed the barbed wire and the corrugated iron and the kerosene tins: he missed, more than he would have believed possible, the absence of the outback, the absence of a totally untamed beyond.
He was not able, and this was what depressed him most of all, in any way to settle down with his English relations. Grandpa and Ann liked him of course, and he was fond of them, but it was all so awkward. He could not see into their ways. It irked him that even Ann, who was so kind, did not treat Nancy Bowshott as an equal. This instance of lass-prejudice so constantly before his eyes incited him to such a degree that he had adopted an air of ostentatious affability and mateyyness with Nancy: until he became aware that she thought he was flirting. After his planned withdrawal, coldness set in between them. This hurt him very much.
The strained and precarious relationship between Ann and Randall, which he had been quite unprepared for, was also a constant source of pain and surprise. After his own noisy argumentative affectionate family it seemed to him scarcely credible that two married people could continue on such terms, being so cold and mysterious to each other and so silent: he was shocked. Randall had now been in a state f sulky retirement in his room for about ten days, ever since they had returned from London, and no one seemed to think it particularly odd. Ann did not run to coax him out. She just accepted his sequestration. At home somebody would be laughed out of such childish conduct. It was all so irrational, he thought, using one of his father's most favoured terms of abuse. Yet whenever he thought of Randall there brooding up above in his room, he shivered. He was afraid of his uncle.
As he squatted in Steve's room in the wet green light in front of the big box of soldiers he thought with renewed longing of his own home, the lovely new-built bungalow at Marino, with its multicoloured roof under the shadow of the great dry rustling blue gum tree: so clean and airy and modem, with its floors of precious jarrah wood and its lemony peachy garden. They had only lived there a year, since his father's promotion, and he had not got used to the wonder of it yet. Before that they had lived in Mile End, nearer to Port Adelaide, and made do with a week-end shack at Willunga. But now it was like a holiday all the time, with the sea filling half o
f space, and the white sand below, and the uncleared gum above, and the rics of galahs and kookaburras to wake you up in the morning. That was a real place.
As he put a few more of the soldiers back into the box he caught a glimpse, through the interstices of the jumbled figures, of something else lying at the bottom. He unpacked again carefully until he could thrust his hand down. What he drew out was a very beautiful modern dagger, a soldier's dagger, the kind that really meant business. The leather sheath, from which two metal chains depended, was dark and supple, and the instrument came out of it with sizzling sweetness. The blade was as bright as a mirror and terrifyingly sharp. Now this was worth having, this was real loot. He stood up and brooded delightedly over the dagger, trying the edge and the point with his finger. He examined the hilt. It was black, beautifully enameled, and within a circle near the top was a small white swastika. It must have been a German officer's dagger. He let it drop from his hand and it stuck trembling and quivering in the floor boards between his feet. He restored it to its sheath and thrust it into his pocket. It was a most sinister thing, and he loved it.
He repacked the soldiers and put the other things back into the cupboard. He picked up the veteran car book. He could feel the dagger heavy inside his pocket, touching his thigh, imparting power. He felt himself lifted to a higher plane of detachment as if some little movement in the mysterious and irreversible process of growing up had become momentarily perceptible. He looked down at the wooden box of soldiers. He was a free man, his own judge, and he would do exactly what he pleased. He decided to take the soldiers to his room.
He emerged into the corridor with the box under his Ann and closed the door behind him. The long corridor, known for some reason as 'the gallery', was rather dark, since the big northern window which was supposed to light it had been walled in when 'that Orange vandal', as Grandpa called him, had built, across the once handsome stairhead, a mean draughty little room for some 'servant'. The light now came from the two extremities of the house where in a whirl of ornate white-painted metal banisters, the two circular staircases rose to the towers, and a cold light streamed down from Above. Penn could not now, as he emerged, help glancing about him a little guiltily. He saw, with a certain chill, that Miranda was sitting on the stairs which led up to her own tower.
His little cousin was an unsolved problem to Penn. He could not have imagined her beforehand, and indeed he did not try; but he had brought nevertheless in his luggage a special piece of affection labelled with her name. He was made at the first overtures to feel a simpleton, and this gift had never been delivered. Yet what in her thus defeated him he did not know, as he watched her, remote as a cat, playing with her dolls, and realized with shame that he did not even know her age and did not now dare to ask. She was certainly not a bit like Jeanie. The grown-ups seemed to expect them to play together, but her company made him uneasy, and the nearest they got to mateyness was on occasions when she teased him into excitement and then flubbed him for being rough. She was, and this he took for granted, a superior and special little girl. She was a green sprite, something unposed out of the green watery light of England. But he was not at all sure that he liked her.
She was sitting sideways on the stairs, her feet tucked under her, leaning her head against the banisters, as if she had been waiting for him to come out, while two of her dolls with legs dangling sat on the stair below. The little cold group of strange beings regarded him. Sitting there quite still, beyond the dusk of the corridor, picked out in the light from the staircase windows, they seemed like something in a play, at some moment when the main character is immobile at the back of the stage; only now their stillness in the chilly light in the dreary cage of the staircase suggested some jumbled and senseless drama in a dream.
Penn felt disconcerted, and thought at first that this was because of the soldiers. The next moment he thought that it was because Miranda had seen him coming out of her dead brother's room. The moment after he no longer knew why at all. He could not salute her as he had his hands full and speech seemed impossible. So he nodded his head to her and turned hastily in the direction of his own tower. He wished she had not seen him. He wished she had not been there.
Chapter Six
THE big brightly lit stone-flagged kitchen was silent except for the click of dominoes and the perpetual purring of the Aga cooker. The shutters were closed and barred. The long rows of blue dishes on the dresser gleamed like so many approving Dutch cherubs. Hugh calculated that tomorrow he could decently tell Ann that he was leaving on Tuesday.
It was the evening of Saturday after supper. At the long deal table, its legs half clawed away by generations of cats, its surface blanched by years of scrubbing to the colour of light sand, Douglas Swann and Penn were playing dominoes. Miranda had gone to bed. Ann was sewing. Hugh was smoking his pipe and watching the others. Every now and then Ann looked up and smiled, at anyone who caught her eye, a pale encouraging smile.
Hugh reflected that it was a peaceful scene, a scene even of positive innocence: an innocence to which Penn youthfully, Swann professionally, and Ann with some more subtle resonance of the spirit, attributed each their note. Ann was certainly being bravely cheerful in a way which both exasperated Hugh and half compelled his admiration. He himself contributed nothing, he was the spectator. But then he was always the spectator, he reflected with a sad satisfaction which was a sign of returning vitality. He puffed his pipe and contemplated the happy little family group. Randall, it was true, was still brooding upstairs like an unexploded bomb. But even the thought of Randall seemed now less alarming. By a kind of inertia things were slowly subsiding back to normal; and from that point, he obscurely felt, his own new life would begin. The danger point was passed by now. Randall had been practically incommunicado for ten days, and if one were disposed to find things odd one might find this rather odd. But why be so disposed?
Ann, who was after all the person most affected, seemed to take it calmly enough; so calmly that Hugh, who had not discussed the matter with her, suspected that perhaps after all she had some subterranean mode of communication with her husband. Perhaps, contrary to appearances, she was seeing 'something of him. Perhaps she visited him when everyone else was in bed. In any case it was clear that there was nothing he could do about it. He had visited Randall once or twice since their conversation about 'the formal world', but had found his son remote and dreamy and more than usually evasive. Randall was drinking steadily. On the other hand he seemed peaceful, even cheerful, and had an air as of one positively meditating. The Absurd siege could not last forever. The situation was too ridiculous for even Randall to sustain. He must soon return to some version of his normal condition wherein, unable to be in Ann's presence without irritation, he nevertheless followed her everywhere and could scarcely while he was in the house at all, let her out of his sight. From this irritated and obsessive state his present isolation seemed like a disciplined abstention from which some notable purging of the humours might be hoped to follow. It could even be that Hugh's departure would hasten the Armistice.
So he reasoned. But, with a pleasantly complacent sense that he was justified in cherishing himself, he was clear that whatever the outcome of that argument he would stay no longer at Grayhallock. The big indifferent house, upon which the unhappiness of him and his had made so little impression, and where the phantoms of his sadness were without a resting place, seemed a device of punishment which was not designed for him. He had not made and deserved this cage and he could and would step out of it. He would exert himself later to help those that remained behind. Meanwhile, he had had enough of Ann's worthiness, Randall’s sulks. Swann's piety, Miranda's pranks, Penn's accent, and the gawky rows of dripping rose bushes. He thought of his cosy London flat and the glowing Tintoretto, and it seemed a shrine of refuge.
He wanted too to pass another stage in the distance that separated him from Fanny. He felt pain, he missed her; but part of missing her was knowing, with a cunning of the soul which h
e could but partly sanction, by what devices he could, miss her less. He was able, he found already, to console himself; and he offered up to her, a melancholy wreath of homage, his consciousness of the inevitability of such consolation. The dead are the victims of the living, and he would live. Already he felt, from her death, obscurely more alive. She fed him. So it was, with misgivings yet relentlessly, that he wished to distance himself from her more accusing image, from the cat-hugging Fanny of the patience-cards and the swallows, the last really humanly present Fanny that he had known. At the clinic she had been frightened with a fear which he could not contemplate; and then she had put on, or had imposed upon her, the impersonality of the officially dying. With that, Hugh also wanted to escape from Ann, and from the way in which Ann's gentle, transparent, more reflective personality kept Fanny disconcertingly alive. Ann's consciousness of the matter seemed to leave no place for consolation, for that symbolic, second slaying of the dead. But then Ann was unhappy and correspondingly unfair.
Laughter and the clatter of the dominoes being piled together on the table marked the end of another game. Ann was telling Penn that it was time for bed, and Penn was arguing that it was too early, and Douglas Swann was pleading for another round, and now Ann was smiling and giving way. Yes, it was an innocent little world. It was an innocent little world, except that Steve was dead and Randall was drunk upstairs and Emma Sands was at this moment existing somewhere in London.
After the violence of death, its unavoidable shock and horror, as his disturbed spirit began to compose into a fresh pattern, as the thoughts which came to him in the early morning began to take on form and structure again, he found that Emma Sands occupied a new and significant place. It was as if she had crept up on him, and he had turned to find her, large as life, sitting there. He was haunted by the image, the snapshot vision, which he had received in the cemetery, of Emma and the girl, black rainswept figures, clinging grotesquely together. He had reached indifference, he had passed into forgetfulness: he thought. But now Emma grew in his mind; and the previous occasions of seeing her, so oddly spaced out through the past years, the bus occasion, the escalator occasion, the National Gallery occasion, fed retrospectively by the cemetery occasion, glowed and burgeoned in his memory.