Iris

by John Bayley

  Why I was so convinced at first that there was nothing sexually attractive about Iris is a complete mystery. Other people, of both sexes, certainly didn’t think so. It was my naive and now inexplicable assumption that she could only appeal to me, and to no one else, that stopped me seeing how fearfully, how almost diabolically attractive everyone else found her. They knew more about such things, I suppose.

  ‘Ah there you are, John. I may call you John, mayn’t I?’ Miss Griffiths gave a characteristic small giggle. ‘Meet Miss Ady, and Miss Murdoch. Iris, this is one of the more promising young ones in the English School. Very good results in Finals. I caught him out over Old English grammar, his weaker side I fear, but he did a beautiful piece on the Knight’s Tale.’

  That bloody Knight’s Tale. Was I never going to hear the end of it? Iris Murdoch gave me a kindly look, said ‘Hullo’, and continued talking to Miss Ady. Miss Griffiths handed me a glass, from which I at once took a desperate swig. I coughed, and felt myself going scarlet in the face. It was a strong gin and french, the English equivalent of an American martini – no ice in those days of course. Although I had become accustomed to strong drink in the army I had barely touched it during my student days. I had lost the taste, and besides it was too expensive. Iris and her friends drank a lot of it, and for me that was the first of many.

  I resented Miss Griffiths referring to me as one of the ‘young ones’ in the English school. I was not particularly young. Were these women so much older? – for I now saw, and with a certain satisfaction in spite of my embarrassed state, that I was the only man in the room. There were four or five women at the party, and as a result of my confusion and fit of coughing they were all looking at me in a kindly way. Obviously they took it for granted that I was a clueless young creature, and that it behoved them, as sophisticated women of the university world, to be nice to me.

  But they all seemed to want to talk to Iris. I was left with Miss Griffiths, who was herself looking at Iris with a wistful expression which even at that awkward moment surprised me.

  What I had not the slightest idea of was that St Anne’s, at that time, was a hotbed of emotion. The dons in general were not, so to speak, professional lesbians. Many were, or had been, married: they led domestic as well as academic lives. They were nice clever donnish women, hard-working and conscientious, but a lot of feelings ran beneath the surface, and I had the impression later on that they seemed to catch such emotional intensities from each other, like germs or fashions. Some time afterwards I heard the novelist Elizabeth Bowen, who had become a great friend of Iris’s, describe an acquaintance as ‘an oldfashioned lesbian of the highest type’. Elizabeth Bowen’s inimitable stutter on the ‘L’ made this sound both grand and comic. The ladies of St Anne’s were not grand exactly, but their type, I’m sure, was both high-minded and sound. Whatever they felt among themselves was never communicated to their pupils, nor were their pupils ever roped in. I had Iris’s word for that, much later on. Any suggestion that one of their girl charges had been made advances to, or encouraged in a crush for one of them, would have been universally frowned upon.

  In any case I had simplistic ideas about sex at that time, supposing that everybody must be either one thing or the other. When it dawned on me, a short time after the party, that they had all seemed to be in love with Iris, I had a sensation of despair. If they all felt like that about her, didn’t it follow that she must feel the same about them? – at least about one or two of them? Iris was, as I realised later, much too kind to discourage affection, even yearning affection, but she was apt to draw a line if a woman expressed it too physically. She never went to bed with any of her colleagues, or indeed with any other woman, although the novelist Brigid Brophy tried very hard indeed to persuade her. That was both before and after we were married.

  Miss Griffiths seized her colleague in the English department, a lady with a resounding Polish surname, introduced me to her, and made thankfully off to join the little group around Iris. I saw the dashing Miss Ady, dark-haired and with beautiful eyes, tap Iris playfully on the wrist while emphasising some point to her, perhaps about their teaching: for Miss Ady, as I afterwards discovered, taught politics and economics, while Iris handled the philosophy. The Polish-sounding lady, who wore a black coat with a scarlet lining and seemed to me equally dashing, departed from the party’s air of cheerful frivolity by asking in an intense and as I thought foreign tone a serious question about my ‘research’. My reply failed to carry conviction to myself, or, it seemed, to her. Her gaze was forgiving but also I felt a little reproachful.

  Instead of talking to the person I had fallen in love with, or even meeting her properly, I seemed destined as a result of Miss Griffiths’ heaven-sent invitation only to make a decidedly mediocre impression on another of my senior faculty teachers. I discovered afterwards that Miss Griffiths’ colleague was well known for her air of severity among pupils and colleagues alike, but that she was in fact a kind as well as a devoted teacher, married to a Polish officer during the war. She was herself from Yorkshire and bore some sturdy name like Sidebotham, but preferred to retain the more romantic patronymic she had acquired from a husband, now absconded.

  I never managed to talk to Iris at that party, although at a later stage, and after two or three other men had arrived, I hovered vainly near her, seeming to exchange words with every other person present. After a few of those gins and frenches I felt I could have made a good impression, but no opportunity arose, and Iris excused herself and departed well before the gathering dispersed, amid much conviviality.

  The god of chance seemed however to be in a long-suffering mood. After seeing me fail to make anything of the unexpected coincidence he had arranged, he patiently set to work yet again. Asked to supper three weeks later by a couple who knew a friend I had not seen for years, I discovered that Iris was my sole fellow-guest. But I soon felt that I was failing again. Although friendly and not at all shy Iris was not a helpful conversationalist. I offered openings and raised points in what I hoped was an interesting way, but she smiled kindly and did not respond. Like many philosophers in Oxford she had the habit of considering what was said in a silence that was judicious, almost sibylline. She turned my poor little point over as if asking ‘What exactly does this mean?’ and if she decided it indeed meant very little she was too polite to say so. Mutual enthusiasm failed wholly to take fire. I was comforted to observe that our host, a lively law fellow who was clearly hoping to pump Iris about the fashions and topics of contemporary philosophy, fared no better than I did. At the same time I resented his air of knowing her so well that he could often appeal to jokes or thoughts they had in common, or jolly times she had shared with him and his family. My solitary bicyclist, I felt, should not have been happy to go on holiday with these people. I became prey to the retrospective jealousy I was often to suffer from in the months to come. I began to see that there was a lot that Iris had done – must have done, during the long years I had not known her – which I could not approve of, which was not suited to the image my fancy had officiously formed of her.

  Quite abruptly, and early, Iris said she must go home. Our hosts looked disappointed. For the first time I managed to seize the moment, and I said regretfully that I must go too. Our hosts looked more philosophical about that: it was Iris they had wanted, and almost greedily, to stay; and I was surprised by this, because as a guest she had seemed to take very little trouble, if any, even though she had disseminated around her what seemed an involuntary aura of beneficence and good will. But she had not risen at all to the law fellow’s blandishments, his attempts to interest her in his ideas and persuade her to set forth her own. To have observed this gave me some satisfaction.

  Goodnights being said and the front door closed we unlocked our bicycles and set out together into the damp mild Oxfordshire night. My lights were in order; her front one dimmed and wavered on the verge of final extinction, and I respectfully urged her to bicycle on the inside, and to keep as close as
possible to my own illumination. Then we rode in silence, and I assumed it was to break it that she asked me in her friendly way if I had ever thought of writing a novel. It was a wholly unexpected question, but for once I had an answer ready. Yes, I had: indeed I was writing one, or trying to write one, at that moment.

  This was not strictly true. It was nearly true, and I determined on the spot and as we rode to make it true that very night. The wife of my professor, a sweet tremulous woman whose father had been a well-known critic, had asked me the same question about a month before. I had given her much the same disingenuous reply; and by way of encouragement she had suggested with a gentle smile that we should both try to write one – she wouldn’t mind having a go herself. With some laughter we had made a pact to see who could finish first. I had since attempted to have a few ideas, and I had thought of an opening for the first chapter, but I had done nothing.

  But why should Miss Murdoch ask me about novels? It must be to indulge me and get me to talk about myself, for clearly she, a philosopher, could have no interest in the matter. She probably never read them; far too busy with higher things. I made some deprecating comment to this effect, and the next moment could hardly believe my ears. Miss Murdoch said that she herself had written a novel, which was shortly to be published.

  I felt overwhelmed with awe and admiration. So this extraordinary creature had thrown off a novel, as if negligently, in the intervals of a busy life of teaching and doing philosophy. What could it be about? I ventured to ask. ‘You mustn’t tell anyone,’ she said, stopping her bicycle and putting a foot to the ground. She looked straight at me, speaking lightly but also very seriously. ‘I don’t want anyone to know.’

  I gave a fervent undertaking. I would not reveal her secret to a soul. I was overwhelmed with joy that she could have confided this secret to me. She must for some extraordinary reason not only have complete trust and confidence in me, although we had scarcely met each other, but with swift and masterful decision have concluded that I was just the right person – the one who ought to know. Why? I could only marvel, and be aware that my heart was bounding with gratitude and joy. As well as with love of course. I really felt as we stood there in the dark road, half on and half off our bicycles, that this wonderfully intuitive and perspicuous being had seen right down inside me, liked what she saw, judged it worthy of her fullest trust. Perhaps even loved what she saw? Could she have known that I had fallen in love with her, and had decided like a philosopher, on a ground of reason and good sense, that she was also in love with me?

  As I came to know her it soon occurred to me to wonder if she had not in fact revealed this secret of her novel to quite a number of people. Maurice Charlton seemed to know about it: so did the Johnsons – the law fellow and his wife. Most of her many friends in London must have known about it too. What is more some of them had even read it – in manuscript, in Iris’s own handwriting. The Johnsons had read it, as they took good care to let me know when they saw that I was becoming friendly with Iris, and met her at other places than their own house. For of course there is something highly displeasing about one of our friends getting to know our other friends without telling us, as La Rochefoucauld might have said.

  Iris’s instinct here was essentially a kindly one. She wanted to have her friends, each of them, for themselves; she wanted them to know her in the same pristine way. No groups, no sets. No comparing of notes between two about a third. This desire that each of her relationships should be special and separate, as innocent as in the garden of Eden, was of great significance with Iris. Since what she felt about each of them was totally genuine and without guile it could have no relation to any other person. There was no graduation among her friendships, no comparisons made. Each was whole in itself.

  I had, in fact, misunderstood her. No doubt because I was in love with her. Like all lovers, I suppose, I wished to be a special case in quite the wrong sense. To be ‘the one’. By telling me she didn’t want anyone to know of the novel’s existence I felt she was singling me out. But it was a routine precaution, almost a formula. Her friends could know, should know. But she didn’t want the matter talked about, either among them or in a wider context.

  Naturally enough the precaution functioned only on the higher level: as a practical measure it was ineffective. That was brought home to me when I realised that many people who knew Iris were talking about her novel. I did not resent the fact, nor did I feel in the least disillusioned. I was so much in love (or so I told myself) that I saw clearly and without dismay that Iris was not in the least in love with me. She had told me about her novel as an act of kindness, seeing that I was interested in such matters. She had told me precisely because she was not in love with me; not because she was, or was beginning to be. We had become friends: that was all.

  Friendship meant a great deal to her. It was a sign of how much she valued her friends that she kept them so separate. To me it meant nothing, or at least very little. For me friendship was a question of contextual bonding, as I believe psychologists call it. I had met people at school and in the army whose company was agreeable at that time and in that place; it did not occur to me to ask whether or how much I valued them as friends. When the situation changed, so did my acquaintance, so that I retained nobody who could be called ‘an old friend’. The idea of Iris wishing, or at least being prepared, to regard me as one of her friends did not appeal to me in the least.

  None the less that was the way it had to be. We met about once a fortnight. We both disliked the telephone – that was something about her I found out early on – so communicated by note. Such notes were exchanged via the college messenger, by what was known as pigeon post. I disliked pubs, but there was no alternative to suggesting we should meet in a pub. Iris liked them and had her favourites among them, as I soon found out. I also disliked eating out, which in Oxford at that time was expensive, at least in terms of my slender income, and usually bad. We sometimes ate at cafés or in bars. I became a gloomy connoisseur of their shortcomings.

  I suppose we got to know each other, and talked a good deal, but I don’t remember what about. I know there was never anything so electrifying as the pause on our bicycles had been, when we confronted one another in the darkness and she told me not to mention the existence of her novel. After we remounted and rode slowly on I enquired diffidently about the content of this work. What was it about? How had she come to write it? She made no direct reply, but much more excitingly she said with emphasis how important it was for any narration to have something for everybody, as she put it. This was a discovery she had made. I was surprised but also impressed by the simplicity of the idea, and the force with which she spoke of it, slowly and reflectively.

  ‘A bit like Shakespeare,’ I suggested.

  ‘Well perhaps, yes.’

  I have often pondered that moment, and whether her words really meant anything very much, or were they for me part of the unmeaning electricity of falling in love? Falling in love on my side, that is. For her, it was obvious, and still is; the words were grave, sober, and true. She wanted, in her novels, to reach all possible readers, in different ways and by different means: by the excitement of her story, its pace and its comedy, through its ideas and its philosophical implications, through the numinous atmosphere of her own original and created world: the world she must have glimpsed as she considered and planned her first steps in the art of fiction.

  *

  In the early summer St Antony’s College gave a modest dance, a much simpler affair than the big college dances – ‘commem balls’ as they are called – which are held after the end of the summer term and go on all night long. A double ticket for such an elaborate affair might then cost as much as thirty pounds, and nowadays is of course far more expensive. The St Antony’s hop was not much more than a couple of guineas. Although I was not by training or by temperament a dancing man I determined to go none the less, and to ask Iris if she would come with me. I bought the tickets, with the reflection that I
could probably resell them if I had to. But to my astonishment, and not altogether to my delight, Iris accepted the invitation with alacrity. This caused a further range of complications in my heart. There were also practical problems which might well follow. Other people, my colleagues at St Antony’s, would ask her to dance, and suppose one of them were to fall in love with her, or she with him? (It did not then occur to me that she might equally well become attached to one of the girls who would be present.)

  There were other and even more pressing practical considerations. Where would I take her to dine before the dance, which was a simple nine to midnight affair. I had no money to spare, but I felt it must be somewhere reasonably ‘good’, not just a pub or a café. In the end I chose the Regency Restaurant, which advertised itself in the Oxford Mail as serving ‘probably the best food in Oxfordshire’. This Delphic pronouncement could hardly be discredited, if one came to think about it, but naturally enough I did not think about it. At half-past six I went to collect Iris in her college room, waiting outside the door after I had knocked, and a voice from within had requested me to hang on a minute. While waiting I speculated on what she would look like, what she would be wearing. I assumed and rather hoped it would be something dark, preferably black, suited to the person of mature years and sober disposition which I still assumed and hoped her to be. Was it not these imagined qualities in her which had attracted me so strongly when I first saw her on her bicycle?