A Word Child

by Iris Murdoch

  ‘He made love to you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What on earth do you mean, Crystal?’

  ‘Just like that, like it is.’

  ‘Do you know what you’re talking about?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You mean that on the night of Anne’s death Gunnar fucked you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s not possible.’

  ‘Yes. But try and understand what it was like. It was not like — it was not like for real — I mean it was real — you see he didn’t know I was a virgin — well, I suppose he must have done but he seemed surprised — but it all happened — as if it were in a dream — somehow as if it had to and without talk — and yet it was not a dream, and I was very awake, very conscious, and — ’

  ‘And you let him?’

  ‘Yes, of course. I would have done anything for him on that night — I felt so — you see, you were alive and Anne was dead — and in some strange awful way the fact that she was dead made you that much more alive — I felt somehow I owed something to Gunnar. I owed him the world — and I was so sorry for him, I wanted to hold him and hold him, and he had been so kind to me, so awfully kind — and of course it was the brandy and the shock and — of course it wasn’t me just as me, he — it was like for absolute forgetting, for blindness — it was like someone might look at an awful dirty magazine because it sort of takes the attention away from everything else — I don’t think in a sense he knew what he was doing, though in a sense of course he did — ’

  ‘Wait a moment, Crystal, describe this properly. Oh God, oh God! He made love to you. How long for, and what happened afterwards, and did you stay the night in his bed?’

  ‘I don’t know — how long for — ’ she said. ‘I don’t know. I was — After it he fell asleep and I went away to my own bed and I went to sleep too. When I woke up in the morning he was already up and dressed and downstairs and talking on the telephone. He was arranging about the funeral.’

  ‘Christ. Christ. What did you do then?’

  ‘I dressed and packed up my things and I went downstairs and he put down the telephone, and do you know he had already earlier rung up the hospital to find out how you were, and he said you had had a good night. And I asked him if I could help him and he said no and we were standing there in the hall, and I said could I make him breakfast and he said no, and he offered me some and I said no, and I had put on my coat, you see, and I had my case. And I thanked him and said I would go to a hotel, and he said he would drive me, and I said no and he didn’t insist and he opened the door. And I said good-bye to him and I stretched out my hand and he kissed it and I went out and after that I didn’t — see him — any more at all.’

  ‘Do you think he remembered what happened in the night?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I suppose so. Otherwise he would not have kissed my hand, would he?’ She added after a moment, ‘You know, he is the only man who ever did that, kissed my hand.’

  ‘Crystal, I wonder if you know what this is doing to me?’

  ‘I had to tell you,’ she said, still not looking at me.

  ‘Much better not.’

  ‘I had to. If he had not come back I shouldn’t ever have told you. But with him there, so near, and now — you’ve seen her — and you asked me why — I didn’t want you to see him — ’ Tears suddenly broke out of Crystal’s bent face.

  ‘You’ve changed the past,’ I said. As I moved away from her and sat at the table opposite to her, watching her cry, I felt that hundreds of things had changed which I had not yet had time to notice. ‘Oh why did you, why — ’

  ‘I loved him.’

  ‘What on earth do you mean.’

  ‘He was so kind to me, and that day at the party, he treated me — like someone important — ’

  I recalled the day of the party, the day which Crystal had said was ‘the happiest day of her life’. Was that because Gunnar had been kind to her?

  ‘You don’t have to love everyone who’s kind to you,’ I said. And I thought, well, why not, when there have been so few? Gunnar. Clifford. Arthur. ‘You never told this to anyone else, did you, Crystal?’

  ‘No, of course not, of course not! I broke off with Arthur because I knew I could never tell him.’

  And I had thought she had broken with Arthur because of me, to support me, to be with me, to be entirely beside me in my ordeal. But in reality she had broken because of Gunnar, because — ‘Crystal, you don’t still love Gunnar, do you?’

  ‘Yes.’ She was still weeping, but quietly, mopping her eyes rhythmically with a handkerchief.

  She had broken with Arthur so as to be alone, to be there, ready, waiting, in case Gunnar should remember her, should need her, should want to see her. What a pathetic illusion! She had broken with Arthur for the same reason that I had broken with Tommy, to be available. But even as I thought these vile lunatic thoughts I knew that they were mad. Crystal could not seriously think that Gunnar could need her any more than I could seriously think that, except as a mere device, Kitty could need me.

  ‘You’re insane,’ I said. ‘You’re behaving like a hysterical unbalanced woman. It’s meaningless to go on “loving” somebody like that, somebody you’ll never see again. Anyway, you don’t love him. You don’t know what the word means in that sense. I don’t exactly blame you for what happened, it was like a sort of brainstorm — but you must have wits enough to imagine how Gunnar must have felt afterwards, how he must nave hated himself and you. For him it’s just a terrible disgusting memory. You don’t imagine he’s going to come round again to kiss your hand, do you?’

  Crystal just shook her head, still mopping steadily at her steadily weeping eyes.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. I knew I was being cruel, but it was such an unexpected blow, I felt sickened, frightened. The idea of this curious, weird relationship, which for Crystal at least was still alive, between her and Gunnar made me feel some awful primitive pain. (Jealousy?)

  Crystal was making an effort to compose herself. She said, now looking at me timidly, ‘Dear — it doesn’t make any — difference — does it? I mean you aren’t so shocked and so — that you hate me? It is all right, isn’t it, as it’s always been? I thought I just had to tell you because — But it is all right, isn’t it?’

  I thought, no, it is not all right, it will never be all right again, something is lost and spoilt and ruined forever. Oh Crystal, Crystal, my pure darling, how could this awful thing have happened to us? I said, ‘Yes, it’s all right, of course.’

  ‘You don’t hate me, do you? I shall die.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Crystal.’

  ‘Well, will you — please — have your supper — we could have supper now, couldn’t we? It’s fish cakes like you like — and nice — tomatoes and — ’

  ‘Supper after this! No thanks. I couldn’t eat anything.’

  ‘Oh, please, please — ’ She began to cry again.

  ‘Oh stop it, Crystal! I’ve got enough without your tears.’

  ‘I don’t want you to see him.’

  ‘I don’t see why not, if you’re still in love with him!’

  ‘He might think — ’

  ‘Might think what? Do stop blubbering and talk clearly. Might think I wanted to bring you together or something? Oh Crystal darling, return to reality! Gunnar isn’t interested in you. You’re just a nasty obscene incident in the remote past. It’s me he’s interested in. And I’ve got to see him. I’ve got to. What you’ve told me makes me feel absolutely sick, but it doesn’t alter the situation, it doesn’t alter my duty.’

  ‘Are you going to see her again?’ Crystal was sitting upright, staring at me, squeezing her handkerchief which was now so soaked with her tears that drops of water were falling from it onto her woollen skirt.

  ‘I don’t know, I told you, I don’t know, you’re tormenting me!’

  ‘You said you were in love with her.’

  ‘I was raving.’

  ‘You’l
l hate me now, you’ll hate me because I told you, I won’t be able to be any more a place for you to come to, we can’t be together any more like when we were children, it’s all gone, it’s all gone, oh why did I tell you, oh why — ’

  ‘Don’t, Crystal, you’re killing me.’ It was indeed as if some bond with childhood had been broken, some bond which had lasted crazily preternaturally long, some innocence. ‘Look, I’m sorry, I’m going now.’ I felt I wanted to get out, I wanted to breathe purer air, to run. ‘Don’t be upset, nothing’s spoilt or changed, it can’t be, it’s just that I’m under such awful pressure. Forgive me. You eat the fish cakes. Don’t worry, don’t worry.’

  I was pulling my coat on. She said nothing more and did not try to stop me, but watched me quietly, her face swollen and almost unrecognizable with weeping. I stopped on the way to the door.

  ‘Crystal — there hasn’t ever been anybody else — ever — like that, has there?’

  Her cry of denial was like the wild scream of a bird. I stumbled out of the door and down the stairs, and when I reached the street I began to run.

  SUNDAY

  IT WAS Sunday morning. It was raining, and a rackety wind was sweeping the rain in little wild gusts across the windows, as if bombarding them with tin-tacks. I was lying (fully clothed) upon my bed, and Tommy was sitting on a chair beside me, knitting.

  Sunday had of course brought Tommy, who was at last lucky in finding me at home. With an exercise of the considerable intelligence of which she was capable, she had taken in immediately that I was abstracted, obsessed, miles away, scarcely able to apprehend her, and she had refrained from tears or questions, had gone into the kitchen and made some coffee, which she also distributed to Christopher, Mick, Len and Jimbo. She tidied things, washed things, and watered the gloomy plant which Jimbo had given me.

  Kitty had said, ‘Oh, you have a sister?’ So (unless she was deliberately deceiving me?) Gunnar had not told her about what happened on the night of Anne’s death. This was not improbable. She had said they had never discussed that time in detail and Gunnar might well have felt this piece of nightmare reminiscence to be unnecessary. He must simply detest the memory of it. That is, if it really happened. But had it happened? Hysterical middle-aged women, especially virgins, sometimes imagined such tales, that a man had broken in, that they had been seduced, raped, something perhaps which they both feared and wanted? I could not see Crystal in that light. Yet how far, for any purpose, could I see her objectively? Had she really got her head screwed on? Had she not every sort of reason and excuse for being, in lonely middle age, rather dotty, a somewhat peculiar virgin? And yet if it was true, so strangely not one. There was indeed something here which I could not bear. The loss of Crystal’s innocence, a tie with childhood, a refuge, a pure unsullied place? Crystal mixed up with Gunnar, tied right into the middle of that hellish business, no. Gunnar had not told. Did this mean that it had not happened, or did it mean that it was for him too potent a source of nightmare?

  Tommy was knitting because I had once said to her, just in order to utter some vague sugary nonsense, ‘I love to see you knit, it looks so domestic.’ This was not even true. I hated to see her or anybody knit. It reminded me of foul Aunt Bill. It made me feel wolfish. It conjured up images of complacent family life which made me want to vomit. Tommy was knitting an obviously large jersey, designed obviously for me, only I had not given her the pleasure of answering a question about what it was she was knitting. Today, Tommy sitting there quietly click-clicking with those needles while I stared at the ceiling gave me a sense of being an invalid. I was ill and Tommy was my nurse. I was in prison and Tommy was visiting me. Tommy had kidnapped me and was waiting for me to confess. Getting rid of Thomas was proving embarrassingly difficult. I had not the strength or the will to decide even how to get her to leave me now, to get her out of the room, let alone how to induce her to go away and stay away forever. However it did not seem urgent since this was another interim. About Tommy, for the moment, I felt conscienceless. I had told her to go often enough. If she still stayed, her suffering was her affair. She had timidly suggested that we should go to the Round Pond. I had simply shaken my head.

  I knew that I ought to go and see Crystal again. That was important. What was she doing now, crying, regretting? I had trained her so well that I knew she would not communicate with me, would not alter the routine one iota. But I ought to go and see her, I ought at least to ring her up. I had left her in the midst of desolation. I had felt, I still felt, a horror of her which I could not control and which I had been unable to conceal. The picture of her stay in Gunnar’s house had added a new dimension of horror, a great room, a great space, to my memory of that awful time. Gunnar coming in and saying, ‘Anne is dead.’ Crystal getting into her nightdress. I would have to live with these images forever and I could not forgive Crystal for imparting them to me. There was only one thing now which seemed to prevent utter misery and ferocious madness from overwhelming me (the sort of ferocity, for instance, which could send Tommy running away screaming) and that was my attentive agonizing anxiety about Kitty and when I should hear from her and when if ever I should see her. Until that awful pain, in which there were deep mysterious grains of joy, was altered by certainty into some other pain (for there was no escape from pain) I had no time to deal even with Crystal and with the urgency of her despair. My whole occupation was waiting.

  The front door bell rang. Laura? Biscuit? Kitty? I was off the bed in a single spring and reached the door. It was Biscuit.

  Without interrupting the movement of opening the door I emerged onto the landing, closed the door behind me, and strode towards the stairs. Biscuit followed. I went down the stairs two at a time and on through the hallway and out into the street. The wind was propelling a fine rain. I had neither hat nor coat. I began to walk on down the street, not looking back. I turned the corner and stopped. Biscuit caught up with me. ‘Well?’ I said.

  Biscuit was wearing her duffle coat with the hood pulled over her head. Her little sallow thin face inside looked like a boy’s face, a child’s face. She fumbled in her pocket and brought out two letters. I took them, the soft flung rain already blurring the writing. My name was written on each envelope. One letter was from Kitty, the other from Gunnar.

  My head was bursting with anxiety and terror. I wanted to get rid of Biscuit with a violence which could have made me strangle her. I said, ‘Good. Now clear off.’

  I turned from her and began to walk along fast in the direction of Bayswater station, holding the two letters in my hand in my jacket pocket.

  When I reached the station I went to the door of the bar, but it was not yet open. I leaned against the door, my wet shoulders glued to the glass.

  Biscuit came in. She saw me, threw back the hood of her coat, took a ticket from a machine, and went on towards the ticket barrier. As she passed me, without turning her head, she said, ‘Good-bye’. She passed the barrier and disappeared down the stairs towards the westbound platform.