A Word Child

by Iris Murdoch

  ‘Oh fuck little Robin. Tommy, you belong to me.’

  ‘I don’t. Face the truth. I don’t. What could that mean? Belong to you, like a possession you put away in a cupboard and look at once a week? No. It’s good-bye, Hilary. Make it easy for both of us, please, please, at least spare me now. I’m going and I’m absolutely going. I won’t write you any more of those stupid letters, you obviously hated them and you were right. People mustn’t persecute other people like that, it isn’t fair. I won’t write you any letters any more. I’m going to Kim now, I won’t be in London. I don’t want to see you or hear from you ever again. I’ve promised Kim I’m giving you up completely. That’s reason. I’ve got to be his from now on and I’m going to be his. I’m starting a new life and I want to be happy, I want to have a go at happiness before it’s too late. I loved you, but what did we ever make of it with me bleating about marriage and a home and you making sarcastic remarks? Have we ever had any happiness out of it, either of us? You felt caught and I felt excluded. It was no good, it was just no good, I see that now. Kim loves me and I can make him perfectly happy. He’s perfectly happy now, he’s singing with happiness, it’s wonderful to make somebody so happy, it’s probably the best thing I’ve ever done and I’m not going to spoil it out of any sentimentality about you. Half-in-half things are no use. He’s a fine decent man and he’s so happy he’ll make me happy soon. If I give myself to him and to his son and to his home we’ll all be happy. And that’s what I want. And that’s a good deal more valuable in the world than hanging around you and annoying you and driving myself into a frenzy. Don’t touch me, Hilary, I’m going now. I loved you dearly. I probably love you dearly, but it’s no use and this is goodbye. I wish you well and I wish you happiness, though it doesn’t seem to me very likely that you’ll get it. Anyway I wish it to you. Don’t touch me. Good-bye.’

  I stood up. The front door opened, then closed quietly. I sat down again at the kitchen table. Well, that was that. Tommy was gone. It was roses round the door for Thomasina Uhlmeister. She had vanished from my life at last.

  I sat perfectly still, not twitching a muscle, for a very long time. Some part of myself which was almost a stranger to me was very very sorry that Tommy was gone. Some little narrow deep comfort had been taken from me. Was it true that that little deep loss would prove the last straw which would break the barrier against desperation, against total reckless madness? Time would show.

  MONDAY

  ‘HELLO, darling.’

  ‘Hello.’

  It was Monday evening. I was entering Clifford Larr’s flat as usual.

  The morning post had brought a letter from the headmaster of the school to which my letter to Mr Osmand had been forwarded, saying that Mr Osmand had left the school some time ago, but my letter had been sent on to his last recorded address.

  I made a token appearance at the office. The excitement about my resignation and the accompanying rumours about me and Laura seemed to have died down. The latest wonders were that Edith Witcher was in hospital after falling off a ladder while putting up Christmas decorations, and that the pantomime had been cancelled. Instead, Finance Division were putting on a show of their own which had matured in secret, called Robin Hood in Whitehall. Reggie Farbottom was to make a guest appearance in the role of a comic taxman.

  Clifford was in the kitchen stirring some brownish mess.

  ‘What’s for din-dins?’

  ‘Veal escalope and braised endive, ice cream and fudge sauce.’

  ‘Oh goodie.’

  ‘The latter is a concession to your childish tastes.’

  ‘How kind of you!’

  ‘How are you, darling?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘How is your exciting life?’

  ‘Thrillinger and thrillinger.’

  ‘Tell.’

  I watched him stirring for a while until his quizzical cold eyes came to quest into mine. ‘Well?’

  ‘Christopher has left my little world,’ I said. ‘Perhaps he is back in yours?’

  ‘Back? That word implies a misunderstanding.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, I am going to give Christopher some substantial financial help. He is trying to get this pop group going.’

  ‘The Waterbirds?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What selfless generosity.’

  ‘What’s the matter with you, darling, are you jealous? I’m not doing it to oblige Christopher and certainly not pour ses beaux yeux. I’m simply investing my money. I like making profits. I just think I shall get a better percentage out of the Waterbirds than out of Turner and Newall. Any objection?’

  ‘No, none.’

  ‘Have I relieved your mind?’

  I smiled, watching the brown mixture thickening in the saucepan. I raised my eyes a little to Clifford’s very clean striped shirt, unbuttoned, and the glimpse of his furred front where the signet ring hung down upon the chain, slightly moving in the thickish greyish hair as he stirred.

  ‘I wonder who that ring belonged to.’

  ‘You can wonder, dear.’

  ‘I wish you’d invest in me.’

  ‘What’s the return, darling?’

  ‘Don’t forget you’re leaving me the Indian miniatures in your will.’

  ‘Tell me more things, the thrilling ones.’

  ‘Tommy’s left me.’

  ‘She’s always doing so.’

  ‘She’s getting married to a chap at King’s Lynn. We’ve said good-bye forever.’

  Clifford stopped stirring. ‘Are you sorry?’

  ‘Yes. However it certainly clears the deck.’

  ‘What for? Come, let’s sit down and drink some wine. I don’t want to eat yet, do you?’

  We sat at the table. Clifford poured out some Châteauneuf.

  ‘Have you seen Gunnar again?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s becoming an addiction.’

  ‘It was for the last time.’ Was it?

  ‘A lot of last times seem to be happening in your life. Is this the last time we shall sit together at this table?’

  ‘No.’ I stretched my hand across and he gripped it. I resumed my wine.

  ‘What happened with Gunnar? Was it the great reconciliation scene this time?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How touching. Describe it.’

  ‘We talked together quietly like two sensible decent human beings.’

  ‘Reminiscing. It must have been fun.’

  ‘Do stop mocking. You always mock. It was good. He was kind to me. He saw it was partly accident, muddle — ’

  ‘Not wickedness.’

  ‘I don’t believe wickedness in that sense exists.’

  ‘A convenient belief.’

  ‘Anyway he — ’

  ‘Forgave you.’

  ‘We forgave each other. And don’t say “how touching”.’

  ‘I wasn’t going to. I was going to say are you really such a pathetic dolt as to imagine that sentimental gestures of this kind mean anything at all?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Have some more wine.’

  ‘We talked about Anne. I told him she wanted to go back to him on that evening. We talked about dropping the burden, about how her ghost would go away — ’

  ‘Ghosts aren’t so obliging. He hates you.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘And her. Have you seen her again?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’ve had a busy week. And letters via the servant, several?’

  ‘One, two.’

  ‘How enjoyable. And what did her ladyship want you to do?’

  ‘She wanted me to make her pregnant.’

  ‘What?’

  I could not resist the temptation to startle Clifford out of his sardonic calm. Besides I wanted to rehearse the whole extraordinary business in someone’s presence, and for these purposes Clifford was my only possible confidant. Arthur would have fainted.

  �
��You’re not serious?’

  ‘She and Gunnar are childless. He can’t have children only he doesn’t know. She wants a child, so does he. I am a rather special agent in their lives — ’

  ‘You mean he’d know?’

  ‘No, of course not! It would be a secret. But — because I’m me — because I’m a sort of — ’

  ‘Priest? I see the quaintness.’

  ‘I can’t think what, a sort of dedicated instrument, a tool — ’

  ‘A tool indeed!’

  ‘Someone who owes them so much. It could be conceived of as a sort of reparation.’

  ‘I shall scream. A reparation? Did she use that word?’

  ‘No, but that’s how she sees it. It’s not so crazy as it looks at first sight, not quite anyway.’

  ‘But Hilary, darling, my friend, my dear, you are not seriously considering presenting Gunnar with a child by this time-honoured method?’

  ‘No,’ I said. And I saw that of course I could not, it was impossible.

  ‘I’m glad of that. I like my dear ones to be rational agents. So what will you do instead?’

  ‘I don’t know. She also suggested that we should all three be friends.’

  ‘Dine together and play scrabble?’

  ‘Yes. But I don’t think that’s really possible either.’

  ‘Of course it isn’t! So?’

  ‘I think I shall just clear off.’

  ‘There’s a further possibility,’ said Clifford. ‘An old-fashioned secret liaison. Just for the fun of it, not for Gunnar and his progeny. Isn’t that what the lady really wants with all this fishing about? She’s a whore like the rest of them.’

  ‘I considered this, I mean that that was what she wanted. No, I don’t think so. I don’t think she’s reflected that far.’

  ‘She must be pretty slow then. But will you?’

  ‘Have a secret liaison? Certainly not.’

  ‘So you’re having a final parting with Lady Kitty too? When is it to be?’

  ‘Tomorrow at six at Cheyne Walk.’ I had now, with Clifford’s help, seen it all. There was no other possible solution. As for Kitty’s ‘second plan’, I had simply by telling Clifford of it revealed it as a lunatic fantasy. But now my heart ached terribly, and I knew that not far away, dulled for the moment by the wine, by Clifford’s presence, by my own talkativeness, there was the sharpest and most crippling pain.

  Clifford was looking at me with his head on one side. ‘Poor child.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes. You are so simple, so stupid. I told you what that woman was like. Most women are like that, silly, destructive. I only hope the whole thing may have done you some good, knocked some sense into you.’

  ‘I’m glad I talked with Gunnar anyway. He was so wise.’

  ‘Wise! Gunnar is a pretentious self-important ass. Between you you’ve inflated something which had very much better have been left alone. All right, a tragedy, a death — but one must cut such things off and let them drift away.’

  ‘Sounds easy. Have you ever done so?’

  ‘Yes.’ Clifford’s hands were twisting the chain, his little finger passing into the ring. ‘One should at least digest one’s pain in silence and not parade it. I always despised Gunnar, ever since Oxford. He has, what I cannot forgive, a thoroughly inflated sense of his own value. We are nothing, nothing, nothing, and to imagine otherwise is moral conceit. Did he say anything about me?’

  ‘About you? No. We didn’t mention you.’

  ‘I despised him. All right, he despised me. One of his stupid rugger-playing friends called me a “bloody pansy” and he just laughed. I always regarded Gunnar as a four-letter man. You were always mad keen on him at Oxford, I can’t think why.’

  ‘So was Crystal,’ I said.

  ‘Crystal?’

  ‘Yes. She was in love with him.’

  ‘Crystal in love with Gunnar?’

  ‘Yes. She only told me just now. You know, something absolutely amazing happened. On the night of the day when Anne died, Crystal was round at Gunnar’s house and they went to bed together and made love.’

  ‘Crystal and Gunnar?’

  ‘Yes, made love — you know — ’

  ‘It’s impossible.’

  ‘No, it really happened. He talked about it too.’

  ‘He talked about it?’

  ‘Well, yes. Wasn’t it extraordinary?’

  ‘So she’s not a virgin — ’

  ‘Well, technically not, but — ’

  ‘It can’t be true,’ said Clifford. He had stood up. ‘Women invent things. It simply can’t be true. You shouldn’t have believed her. And — and — you shouldn’t have told me!’ He was stammering with emotion.

  ‘Look, don’t be — ’

  ‘Then I suppose they often — if she was in love with him — ’

  ‘No, of course not, only that once! Who’d want Crystal — ’

  ‘If she let Gunnar do that to her she’s probably been to bed with half the neighbourhood. You’ve been pretty naive about her, haven’t you!’

  ‘Clifford, wait, where are you going?’

  ‘I’m going to see her. I’m going to ask her if it’s true.’

  He was out of the flat and already clattering down the stairs before I reached the door. I grabbed my coat and cap and carrying them began to run down after him, calling his name, calling on him to stop.

  The front door of the house slammed in my face, and it took me a moment in the dim light of the hall to find the catch. As I got the door open I heard Clifford’s car starting.

  ‘Clifford, wait, stop, wait for me!’ The car moved out, then moved past me. I ran after it, pulling on my coat as I ran. I hoped that I might catch it up in the thick traffic on the Cromwell Road. However as I saw at once, Clifford had avoided the main road, his tail lights just disappearing to the right along Pennant Mansions. Here there was little hope of a traffic jam, but I followed all the same, running as far as Marloes Road, where there was of course by now no sign of his car. I ran back to the Cromwell Road and along it eastward upon the northern pavement, hoping I might meet a taxi bound for the Air Terminal. Once I saw one on the other side of the road, and nearly got run over racing across, but someone had taken it before I arrived. By the time I had reached the railway bridge I was panting painfully and had to slow down to a quick walk. Sheer emotion destroyed my ability to run, and the pavements were hard and very slippery with the remnants of frozen snow. I could have wept at my folly. By now Clifford would have been ten minutes, fifteen minutes, with Crystal, torturing her, Clifford whom she loved, and who had always been with her so miraculously gentle.

  When I got there Clifford’s car was standing outside the house. I raced up the stairs gasping for breath and burst into the brightly lit room.

  Crystal was sitting on her bed crying desperately. Clifford was standing with his hands in his pockets, frowning and watching her.

  I stumbled across the room. My fist, propelled with all my force and with the impetus of my entry caught him on the shoulder and he crashed against the wall, then sat abruptly on a chair. Crystal screamed, ‘No, no!’ I sat on the bed and took her in my arms.

  ‘Go away,’ I said to Clifford, ‘I never want to see you again, I mean that, get out unless you want me to throw you down the stairs.’

  Holding his shoulder with one hand Clifford got up rather unsteadily and, without looking at Crystal or me, made his way to the door. A moment later his car could be heard starting, then receding down the road.

  Crystal was weeping so much she was inarticulate, her face, her hands, the front of her dress, wet with tears. She was quietly hysterical, the sobs developing into wails and dying away rhythmically into gasps. I had not seen her cry like this since the caravan. After a while I stopped holding her and went and sat at the table where her sewing machine was set out. She must have been using it when Clifford burst in with his unspeakable demonstration. I watched Crystal’s tears, saying every now and then, ‘Do
stop, Crystal, my darling, do stop crying, my heart.’

  Gradually the mechanical rhythm of the hysteria gave way to a desperate soft childish sobbing which was in some ways more dreadful.