by Iris Murdoch
'Oh, I like them all right, said Miranda, 'but I got bored with riding. I get bored with anything as soon as I know how to do it. I only like doing things I can't do.
Penn considered this. 'I think I only like doing things I can do. The conversation wasn't going too badly.
'What can you do?
This disconcerted him. What, after all, could he do? He was a pretty good fast bowler; but he had not been able to display this accomplishment, since although a village cricket team existed, the Peronett family had no dealings with it, and Penn, unversed in the hierarchical intricacies of English village life, had not liked to suggest himself as a possible player. He was also, of course, clever with motor bikes, and used to get into the Adelaide stadium free as unpaid mechanic to Tommy Benson. But he didn't like to mention either of these talents to Miranda as it would sound like boasting, and they weren't very rand anyway. So he said, 'I'm not much good at anything, really.
'In that case you don't like anything. Poor you!
'Oh well, I do like things, of course, said Penn, irritated. They walked on in silence.
Then Miranda said, 'Are you going to go to London with Humpo Finch?
'Yes, said Penn. 'I'm going up with him next Wednesday. He greatly looked forward to that. Humphrey Finch had called once or twice and found time to talk to him, for which he was grateful. Humphrey was indeed the only person here, except perhaps Ann, who seemed to have any serious desire to know what he was like.
Miranda laughed. 'Why do you laugh?
'Never you mind. She turned suddenly in through a gateway and Penn found that they were in the churchyard. The church had a prettily shaped plump conical spire which he could see from his window. It was a large church, built in the great days of the wool industry on the Marsh, so he had been told, and the huge plain unstained windows let in the cold Kentish light to reveal a great pillared stoneflagged space in the midst of which huddled the few chairs which accommodated the present congregation. Penn had been in once or twice to look at it, but where everything was so old he could not readily distinguish one thing from another, and it looked to him just like a lot of other churches he had seen. He was on the whole inclined to agree with his father's judgement on English parish churches: 'When you've seen one you've seen the lot.
Miranda, however, did not go into the church, but began to walk along the path that led through the old part of the churchyard between huge box-like stone tombs, yellow with lichen, adorned with crumbling angel-heads, sunk in ivy and brambles, and tilting crazily in all directions. Beyond them enormous yews, great fissured towers of darkness, flanked the churchyard wall.
Penn., trying to keep up with her and stumbling in the long grass, said, 'I rather like churchyards, don't you?
'How many dead people do you know? said Miranda.
Penn was shocked at this question. He thought one should not speak of dead people in this manner as if they could constitute an acquaintance. He said, 'I don't really know. Not many. Hardly any at all.
'I know more than twenty, said Miranda. She added, 'Grandfather must know hundreds.
Penn had not had time to think of an answer to this when they turned the comer of the church and he saw a great lawn stretching away down the hill towards a line of more recently planted cypress trees which stood out, conscious and exotic, against a grove of pollarded chestnuts. On the nearer side of this lawn, which was mown and tended, unlike the wilderness through which they had just passed, there were a few rows of shiny modem grave-stones, and here and there a long mound of earth covered with withered flowers. Penn realized with a tremor that he was now in the presence of the dead, the real dead, not those who had died long ago. He could not think of those great crumbling tombs, riding upon the undulating grasses, as having ever covered a person who was wept for. But here there were the marks of real bereavement. People one might have known were asleep here.
People one might have known. He guessed where he was going just the moment before, as Miranda halted by it, he read upon a newly cut tomb-stone the name of Steven Peronett.
'Oh, said Penn, speaking out of an immediate shock and a sort of shame, 'I didn't know he was here. .
'He's not here, said Miranda.
Penn took a moment to understand her and then was silent. He felt ashamed at not having known where his cousin was buried and ashamed of having followed Miranda without knowing whether she wanted his company; and he felt a vast distress and incoherent pity at standing beside Steve's grave. He looked at the shining ugly surface of the stone. It was odd how stone that one saw nowhere else seemed to appear in cemeteries, as if it were indeed the portal of another world. Steven Peronett. Beloved son of Ann and Randall Peronett. Aged fourteen years. He was older than Steve now. It was a strange thought.
He said to Miranda. 'I'm sorry, I didn't realize you were coming here. I'll go away at once.
But she said, 'No, don't go. Stay and see the birds.
'The birds? He turned to see that she had opened her bag and brought out another paper bag which was inside it. The paper bag was full of fragments of bread.
In front of the stone the grass was flat, mown over, and nothing marked the extent of the grave. Miranda began to strew the bread in a neat rectangle, of which she first marked out the sides with a trail of pieces, till she had covered with the white fragments an area upon which a boy might have lain down. Then she drew back a little across the grass.
Penn followed her in amazement at the strange rite. 'What is this?
'Steve loved birds, said Miranda. 'He always used to feed them at Grayhallock. He would ring a bell every morning and the birds would come. And when he was dying he said to me, «Don't bring flowers to my grave. But come sometimes and feed the birds there. I'd like to think that you might do that.
'Ah, gee — said Penn. A confusion of emotions overwhelmed him.
He felt a sudden grief which was like a kind of joy and for a moment he felt as though he might burst into tears.
Miranda sat down on a long recumbent tomb of plum-coloured marble a little bit away from the grave and Penn sat down beside her. He turned to look at her. An extraordinary dignity and solemnity had come to her from the performance of the rite. Her pale transparent slightly freckled face was serene under the jagged cap of red hair. She was serious, yet a strange smile was diffused upon her features, a light shining from within. She gazed away from him in the direction of the offering of bread, and saw that she was beautiful. Then looking down he saw her knees.
She was wearing green stockings which were pulled up to just above the calf, and her short tartan skirt lay neatly across her legs, just above the knee. Her knees were revealed, bare, white and rounded, between the two garments. Penn stared at them and some stretched cord seemed to twang far away, something gave and broke. He had never thought that he could find a girl's knees exciting. But then Miranda was not a girl. Yet she was not a little girl either. What was she then? And what was happening to him? He stared down and felt quite clearly the urge t. o kneel before her and put his head upon her knees. The distant cuckoo cried out, hesitant, melancholy and hollow. He breathed deeply and raised his gaze. The birds were beginning to come for the bread.
Chapter Ten
'HUMPHREY is so disappointed, said Mildred. 'It seems that young Penn has changed his mind and doesn't want to come to London after all. Do you think Ann is bothered? There's no need to be. Do you think I should speak to her?
She was drinking sherry with Hugh at his flat in Brompton Square.
It was raining a little and the great dome of Brompton Oratory could be seen standing out against a grey sky which intermittent sunshine made to glow with an unnerving radiance which brought the building into relief, making it suddenly delicate and Florentine, like something in an Italian coloured print. The room within was chilly and darkish, a momentary winter room in summer. The light had been turned on above the Tintoretto.
Since her remarks to Humphrey on the subject of Hugh, Mildred's imagination had bee
n active. She was indeed surprised and almost planned at the intensity of its activity. It was true that she had for years' adored' Hugh, and that if she had not had a gentle contempt for Fanny she would have been 'the tiniest bit jealous'. It was true that she had never forgotten the occasion of the kiss, and that she had, for a considerable time after that, suffered. She had certainly been ferociously jealous of Emma. She had often, somewhat vaguely, put it to herself that she 'wanted' Hugh, and had eventually taken it for granted that this was so. She coveted Hugh. And when it was known that poor Fanny was dying she had again vaguely, and a little guiltily, expected that, somehow or other, she would now 'inherit' Hugh.
But since she had, with a gay casualness which was not at the time quite misleading, summed up these ideas for the benefit of her husband, she had been startled by the growth of a much more positive need. It was as if saying these things had in itself set something off. She had, through the years, grown used to imperfect sympathies. Her intimacy with Humphrey lacked warmth, her intimacy with Felix, owing to his peculiar muteness, lacked detail. Her daughter, whom she secretly admired, was now almost a stranger. She had for long had, she reflected, no one to whom she could open her heart. And with surprise, fear and joy she noted now the extent to which, after all, she still had a heart. She, the clever, capable, sardonic Mildred Finch, the elderly philosophical Mildred, so very much the mistress of herself, the captain of her very private soul, was shaken. It was, she thought, almost as if she were falling in love. And then she thought, but I am falling in love!
When she had thus put it she felt so pleased with herself that it almost put her anxieties at rest. She had said to Humphrey that she wanted the impossible, to have her youth back. Yet in a sense these feelings were the very stuff of youth and their occurrence again, after so many years of quietness, seemed a sort of miracle. That she would, so inspired, be able, as she had put it to Humphrey, to 'bring Hugh up to it', she had little doubt, though she was cheerfully vague about what 'it' was towards which Hugh was so shortly to be elevated. For the present her own state of mental activity so much gratified her that she felt that if Hugh would only acquiesce she had love enough for both. All the same, she waited with increasing nervousness for his promised summons, and when it came; and when she stood at last outside his door, she found herself trembling like a young girl.
As she looked round Hugh's drawing-room, which she had not visited now for some time, she reflected how delicious it was to have him a bachelor once again. She had been used to come to these rooms to take tea with Fanny, sometimes glimpsing Hugh just as she was leaving. Now she was sitting behind closed doors with him and him alone, as the evening drew on, and hoping like a seventeen-year-old that perhaps he might invite her out to dinner. She laughed inwardly at these thoughts, with a laugh of exhilaration and triumph, and then guiltily, but only for a moment, remembered poor Fanny.
She felt delightfully at home in Hugh's drawing-room, and reflecting on this she felt how few places there now were where she did feel warmly and positively at home. Even her special boudoir at Seton Blaise, or the library at Cadogan Place; or Felix's rooms in Ebury Street, had not this quality of receiving her and soothing her spirit. She felt completely at ease. She felt as if, already, she a little bit owned the place. As she looked round at the familiar objects they looked at her with new obedient faces: the walnut writing-table, the oval card table with the alabaster vase, the pair of Kazak rugs, the green glass shell from Murano which Fanny would never allow to be used for flowers, the set of Wedgwood jugs, the dappled Chinese fawns. It was as if from each thing some veil had fallen and they glowed at her: now we are yours. She noted already certain changes she wanted to make. Some things must be moved: and those big ormolu vases must, she was almost certain, go.
Most of all the Tintoretto glowed upon her with a jewelled beneficence. It lighted the room now, like a small sun. It was not a very large picture: it represented a naked woman and was almost certainly an earlier version of the figure of Susannah in the great Susannah Bathing in Vienna. Only it was no sketch, but a great picture in its own right and justly of some fame: a notable segment in the vast seemingly endless honeycomb of the master's genius; and well might a spectator think of honey, looking upon that plump, bent, delicious, golden form, one leg gilding the green water into which it was plunged. A heavy twining complication of golden hair crowned a face of radiant spiritual vagueness which could only have been imagined by Tintoretto. Golden bracelets composed her apparel, and a pearl whose watery whiteness both reflected and resisted the soft surrounding honey-coloured shades. It was a picture which might well enslave a man, a picture round which crimes might be committed. Mildred regarded it now as it glowed in the darkening room and recalled with indignation that Fanny had wanted to sell it. Small, Fanny had feared it perhaps: Hugh's golden dream of another world.
'There was in Mildred's apprehension of the things about her nothing grossly predatory. They were like servants who run ahead of their master, symbols of a presence, almost sacraments. And still half amused at finding herself so elevated Mildred turned her gaze again to the worried preoccupied infinitely to-be-Iooked-after bald-headed Hugh. Slow old Hugh, she thought, and her heart dissolved in tenderness. Mine.
In answer to Mildred's question about Penn, Hugh replied vaguely, 'Oh, I don't know. I don't think Ann is worried about Humphrey seeing Penn. I imagine the boy just decided, when it came to it, that he wanted to stay in the country. He seems to be having quite a good time now. He poured out some more sherry. It was raining harder and the hiss of the water was confused with the sound of traffic in the Brompton Road.
Mildred looked at Hugh affectionately and patted her fluffy pepper coloured hair into place. Her mind reverted to Felix and his problem, a matter which had also considerably occupied her imagination. She had expressed to Felix a 'confidence' in Randall; but she had discovered nothing since to increase her hopes of Randall's positively 'going off'.
It was obvious that Hugh really knew nothing about what Ann thought about Humphrey; and equally doubtless he knew nothing of Randall's intentions. But it was worth trying, so Mildred said casually, 'Any news of Randall, by the way?
'No, said Hugh. He seemed unable to keep his mind on these topics and answered in a distracted manner. 'I haven't seen him.
'Do you think now he'll stay in London? said Mildred. 'I mean, he must have a girl friend here or something.
'A girlfriend? said Hugh. 'I've no idea. I don't know what he does. Mildred groaned to herself. Hugh was always the last person to hear the gossip which concerned him most. Yet she loved this in him, his inability to attract gossip. There was, in his obliviousness, in his litter failure to discover what was going on, a kind of positively beautiful stupidity.
The nervousness which Mildred had felt on the threshold was now quite gone. It was Hugh who seemed nervous, shy almost in a touching way and needing to be set at ease. She looked at his round wrinkled face, his round brown eyes and the bald globe above the thick tonsure of brown hair, and she wanted to take him in her Anns: such a simple and yet it had seemed all her life such an impossible wish. Just the pleasure of looking at him so unrestrainedly was considerable. One cannot, in ordinary society, so rapaciously scrutinize one's friends; she enjoyed the liberty she was taking. At the same time she observed the shabby state of the loose covers, decided that all the chairs needed re-covering, decided where this should be done and approximately how much it ought to cost.
'Never mind about Randall, she said. 'What about you? Felix probably isn't coming to India after all, so you absolutely must come. You will, won't you, Hugh?
Hugh looked uneasy and picked at the braiding of the armchair.
'I don't know whether I can, Mildred.
'What stops you?
He made a rather weary gesture, seeming a little to avoid her eye. 'Come! said Mildred. Has it lost its magic? You did want to come, although you wouldn't say so. You can't have changed your mind. Hugh was silent.
&
nbsp; 'Hugh dear, you're worrying about something, said Mildred. 'Is it those ridiculous children? They'll be all right, you know.
'Mildred, you're so sympathetic, said Hugh.
Mildred moved her chair nearer his. She wanted very much to embrace him now but feared to do it clumsily. Their two large chairs were in the way and she could hardly pull him to his feet. So she contented herself with dealing him a light blow on the hand such as might more elegantly be dealt by a folded fan. 'Now then, tell me all.
'It's not the children, he said. 'It's just that I'm in a foolish state of mind.
'So am I! thought Mildred. Ah, Hugh, if you only knew how foolish! She said nothing, but advanced her hand to the Ann of his chair, ready to seize his hand in a friendly clasp when the next opportunity offered.
Hugh turned now and looked into her face and the shock of the straight gaze almost made her gasp. She had no expression ready for so direct a glance and with a sense of failure she fluttered and dropped her eyes. She wondered if she were blushing. She had forgotten what it felt like inside when one blushed.
'Mildred, said Hugh, 'we have known each other a long time. He said it solemnly.
'Yes. Her nervousness returned. She had not expected such a sudden, such a wonderfully rapid, approach to seriousness between them. 'I hope that I may speak to you from my heart, said Hugh. Mildred nodded mutely. She took his hand, pressed it, and laid it back on the Ann of the chair.
'I hope too, said Hugh, 'that you won't think I'm being terribly disloyal to poor Fanny.
Mildred didn't know whether or not to say no she wouldn't, so she simply approached her hand until, without grasping it, it was touching his. His big worried round face was close to hers. With very little movement she could have kissed him. Now it would come soon, the second kiss, to which the first kiss had so long looked forward. Lips parted, as she looked tenderly at him, she could feel her face moulded by the warm mobility of the feelings within.