by Iris Murdoch
‘Barney, I’m so worried.’
‘What about, dear?’ Had Kathleen found out something?
‘About Pat.’
‘Oh, about Pat. I shouldn’t worry about Pat.’
‘Barney, do you know of anything—anything Pat’s going to—do?’
‘No, nothing at all. Funny, I saw Pat today by Liberty Hall. He was just going inside.’
‘Liberty Hall? But that’s not his headquarters. His headquarters is in Dawson Street.’
‘I know. But I expect they were just planning a joint march or something with the I.C.A. boys. We’re great pals with them these days.’
‘Yes, I’ve noticed that. So you don’t know anything about it, Barney? I really think you ought to tell me if you do.’
‘Honest, Kathleen, I don’t know anything. I just don’t know what you’re worrying about.’
‘Oh, well—they wouldn’t tell you, anyway.’ She came and sat down by the untidy hearth, and crumbled a piece of half-burnt coal with her boot.
Barney was a bit annoyed by this. He got off the reluctant chair and came over to the mantelpiece. ‘Of course I’d know if anything was on. I don’t understand what you’re imagining anyway. What makes you say that about Pat?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Nothing definite. He’s been two days away from his job without giving any explanation, and Mr Monaghan called in last night to see him. He asked me if Pat was ill and of course I told him he wasn’t. It’s so discourteous. And when I said Mr Monaghan had been Pat just laughed and said something about not going back at all. He seems to be living in another world.’
‘Oh, I shouldn’t worry,’ said Barney. He was relieved that what troubled Kathleen was not something about himself. He shuffled his feet to produce an atmosphere of departure.
‘And now every time he goes out he carries a gun. And he was wearing that uniform again today. And he seems terribly excited and unnatural, and Cathal’s excited too.’
‘Cathal’s always excited.’
‘He spends so much time out. What’s he doing all day? And he simply ignores things I say to him, he doesn’t even bother to reply. Barney, couldn’t you say something to him?’
‘Good heavens, what could I say?’
‘Well, ask him if they’re thinking of—’ Kathleen stopped, and Barney suddenly realized that she was in some state of extreme emotion. She did not weep, but her white face puckered blindly and she covered her mouth with her hand.
‘Come, come, Kathleen,’ he said, touched and infected by her agitation. ‘You know nothing will happen. Nothing ever happens in Ireland.’
‘Please speak to him, Barney.’
‘I have no authority over Pat.’
‘Just to find out. Oh, it’s so wrong —’
‘What is?’
‘This hatred, these guns—’
‘You don’t understand,’ said Barney. ‘Women don’t understand.’ Did he understand himself? He was flattered by Kathleen’s appeal, but he was also frightened by it. Could her intuition have told her of something which was really the case? But that was impossible.
‘You see, it is sometimes right to fight—’ Barney began. His words sounded blundering and childish in the cold darkened room. Was he only now trying to think about those possibilities which the sheer physical infection of Kathleen’s fear had conjured up? He felt sudden fear himself, coldness.
‘I’m so frightened about Pat—’ Kathleen had turned back to her particular concern. She murmured it as if she knew that there was no help and that she was alone again. Barney saw that she was shivering.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said in a loud voice. ‘I’ve seen these young people getting excited. It comes to nothing.’ He felt he would have to get out of the room quickly. He began to move away. ‘Shall I light the gas? It’s gloomy in here.’
‘And that rifle of yours upstairs—’ Kathleen went on, suddenly addressing herself to Barney as she saw that he was going to go. ‘You oughtn’t to have that rifle, it’s wrong, it’s a wrong thing. You older men should set an example. What can you expect of the young? You should get rid of that rifle. One can’t live by violence. The whole world is mad with violence.’
‘Oh, well, that’s just an old thing—’ said Barney. In fact it was a new Lee Enfield in beautiful condition.
‘All the guns ought to be dropped into the sea. It’s a man’s world, a world of hate. Why do you always lock your door now? You’re getting as bad as Pat.’
Kathleen had an intuitive gift, a sort of artistic talent, for jumbling together the personal and the impersonal into a sort of inconsequent yet compulsive ensemble. This, Barney often thought, was what made her so good at making people feel guilty. All Kathleen’s complaints were threaded together and then somehow attached to her interlocutor. ‘Well, you see—’ Barney, who now locked his door because the Memoir had reached such monumental proportions that it was impossible to hide it, fumbled for an invention.
Fortunately Kathleen went straight on. ‘Must you wear that ridiculous little hat in the house? It makes you look like a Jew.’
‘I like looking like a Jew.’
‘Have you been to confession?’
‘No.’
‘Oughtn’t you to go?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Will you go?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘It’s nearly Easter.’
‘I know it’s nearly Easter. I’ve been thinking about Easter.’
‘Won’t you go to Father Ryan?’
‘I don’t like Father Ryan.’
‘Confession isn’t a personal thing.’
‘I know it isn’t.’
‘Well, go to some other priest. Go to some priest that you don’t know somewhere in town.’
‘Perhaps I will, perhaps I won’t,’ said Barney. There was something timeless about his quarrels with Kathleen. It was as if it was always the same quarrel. She reduced him to the status of a petulant child and then goaded him to naughtiness. Helplessly on each occasion he watched himself move from a condition of humiliated stupidity to a condition of spiteful rage.
‘Go to Tenebrae. You always like going to Tenebrae.’
‘I will if I choose.’
‘We are all sinners. At this holy time of all times we must remember it.’
‘I know I’m a sinner.’
‘We are in Lent, and that speaks of austerity. Religion is a great simplicity, Barney. Is not that what your life needs, simplicity?’
‘It’s simple enough already if by simple you mean dull!’
‘You know I don’t mean that. What troubles you is that you are ashamed.’
‘I’m damned if I’m ashamed!’ Of course the central trouble of his life was that he was ashamed, but that meant to him something that Kathleen would never never understand, so that he was right to reject her words which had a meaning so far away from the truth. He was not ashamed in her way. He writhed before her, half turning towards the door but unable to escape. She was looking up at him. He could not see her face in the gloom but he somehow felt the naked careworn piety of her expression. It drove him mad.
‘Sometimes I think you’re just going to pieces, Barney.’
‘Well, if I am going to pieces whose fault is that?’ If he had not married this women he could have been a good man. If he had not married he would have known how to perfect himself and how to achieve that simplicity which Kathleen was quite right to say was the essence of religion. It was she who prevented him from being simple.
‘What’s to stop me going to pieces?’ said Barney. ‘No one looks after me or loves me. And you go round looking like an old hag just to spite me. Why don’t you get yourself some proper clothes? You go round looking like an old hag from the tenements. Cathal said the new people down the road thought you were my mother. You’re punishing yourself just to punish me. You even use your religion to spite me.’
‘That’s a wicked thing to say,’ said Kathleen quietly.
‘Well,
you do. You’re eating me up. And I’m not looked after. No one does my room upstairs—’
‘You lock your door.’
‘And the house is a shambles. Look at this room with the fire not even cleared out. And there’s dust everywhere. What does Jinny think she’s doing? She’s a single girl, she hasn’t got a place of her own to look after, you’d think she’d have enough time in the day to dust the place a little. You haven’t trained her properly. You should be getting after her with a stick.’
‘Jinny’s away.’
‘What’s the matter with her?’
‘She’s pregnant.’
‘Oh—’ This sudden intrusion of someone else’s troubles into the recital of his own left him for the moment confused.
‘Didn’t you see her crying the other day on the stairs?’
‘No.’ In fact Barney had noticed Jinny crying on the stairs, but he had been hurrying to see Millie at the time and he had forgotten her tears the moment after. The lie was too base. He put his hand to his cheek and muttered, ‘Yes, I did see her crying, but I was in a hurry and I forgot.’
‘You’re always in a hurry. You’re always forgetting. You’re only half here.’
‘Poor Jinny. What can we do?’
‘Very little. But you might go and see her for instance. The doctor’s told her to stop work. And you know what that place she lives in is like.’
‘Go and see her?’ Barney was about to pronounce it impossible. Then he sat down abruptly in the nearest chair. He had been ready in imagination to open his compassionate arms to the whole world. And now he was scarcely able to bring himself to visit a poor servant girl who was in trouble. He said aloud, ‘What is the matter with me?’
‘You know what’s the matter with you. You’re so sunk in yourself you hardly know that anybody else exists at all. Why don’t you this Easter—’
‘Well, and what about you?’ said Barney raising his head. He forgot all about Jinny. ‘Aren’t you sunk in yourself? Do you know that I exist? You don’t seem to. All you—’
The door of the drawing-room swung silently open and a figure appeared. It was Cathal, carrying a tray. He circled Barney adroitly and put the tray down on one of the brass-topped tables with a light clatter. ‘Why, Mother, how dark it is in here! It’s raining cats and dogs outside. Shall I light the gas?’
A match flared at once in his hand, and Cathal was moving along the wall lighting up the gas mantels. Each mantel flickered a pale orange under its silk beaded shade, and then as Cathal turned the tap glowed into a globe of brilliant white. The room lightened and the rainy window darkened as the gas hissed quietly.
‘I just wet the tea,’ said Cathal, returning to the tray. ‘I thought I’d bring some up. Oh, I wish I’d remembered to light the fire, I meant to now poor Jinny’s away. There, Mother.’ He poured out a cup of tea and handed it to Kathleen.
Kathleen looked up at him, smiling. Her face, pearly-golden in the soft glow of the gas, seemed still a little tearful and puckered, as if it had been lightly plucked at, but her features drooped with a calm, loving weariness, the brow bland and the big eyes bright with affection as she lifted an almost ecstatic gaze upon her son. Cathal, with his gauchely deliberate grace, trampled about her for a moment as if he were weaving some invisible protective cocoon. He pressed his dark hair back behind his ears, giving his mother his intense close-eyed stare. His whole figure was sharp with youth and brilliant with consciousness. Then he turned to Barney.
‘Here, for you,’ he said. He never called Barney by any name, but he spoke now in a low coaxing voice as if to an ill person. He handed him the tea. ‘And look, I’ve got you your biscuits. Those special biscuits you like. The lemon creams. I got them at Upton’s. I had to queue up.’
Barney looked at the tray. He saw the plate with his special biscuits, the lemon creams, which Cathal had queued up to get at Upton’s.
He felt the tears rising to his eyes. He saw Cathal close to him and saw as if it were a separate thing, a passing bird, Cathal’s hand moving in a gesture towards the tray, urging him to eat. He took hold of the boy’s hand. Some sort of confused words seemed to be coming up with the tears. ‘You are so good to me. You are innocent and pure in heart. Oh, remain so always. Do not ever let evil into your life. Forgive me.’ He lifted Cathal’s hand to his lips and kissed it.
There was a moment of silence and immobility. Then Cathal stepped back, a little confused and embarrassed. He hesitated, and then put his hand on Barney’s shoulder, squeezing it slightly. He turned quickly to his mother. ‘Well, I’ll go and get the sticks to light the fire—’ He was gone from the room.
Barney stood up. His sudden consciousness of Cathal’s goodness, his equally sudden and automatic unconsciousness of himself, made him light and bouyant. He felt he had had a revelation.
‘So you’re drunk,’ said Kathleen. ‘I hadn’t realized it. But I might have known.’
‘I’m not drunk!’ Was he? Did he always know now whether he was drunk or not? He turned his back to her and the tears spilled out on to his cheeks. It was unjust. He had, for one good moment, spoken to his stepson with the voice of pure love, and all his wife could think of to say was that he was drunk. All right, he was drunk. The tears seemed uncontrollable. They were drunken tears.
He saw through a haze the crucifix upon the wall. He said, ‘Where did we lose the way, Kathleen? Can we not find some love for each other?’
His wife was silent.
Barney blundered to the door. He did not want to meet Cathal again. And as he went up the stairs to his room the awful black consciousness of Millie returned to him. He unlocked his door. There was the Lee Enfield rifle leaning in the corner. He sat down at the table and rubbed his tears away. Then he gathered together the scattered pages of his Memoir and began quickly to write.
Chapter Eleven
The misty rosary of morn, my fair,
Marks me your footprints in the holy dew.
Daylight is amethystine where you are
And every floweret of the dawn is you!
Such festal favours feed the sanguine day,
Our plighting day that blushes graciously!
You are its glow, its glimmer and its ray
Which falls from far into the deeps of me.
Now as you trip with little tiny steps,
Your petal hands and water-crystal voice,
Your flower-fragrant, oh-so-sighed-for lips
Make my dull essence tremble and rejoice.
Oh thou my dawn, in thee my noonday glints,
In thee my sun sets with a million tints.
It was early on Thursday morning and Andrew had at last decided that it was time formally to propose to Frances. He was glad that he had waited. He knew now that he had not been idly prevaricating. They had been parted, after all, for a matter of over a year, since Frances’ visit to England early in the war, and there was a little strangeness to be got over. He had been upset by his return to Ireland, upset by the fuss and flurry of his mother, upset by his relations. Only now had he, with a certain cool relentlessness, calmed himself and begun to favour Frances with his complete attention.
He had penned the sonnet late last night at Claresville, where he had been camping out with his mother for two nights now, doing the innumerable jobs which had to be finished before the furniture arrived. He looked his effort over with satisfaction. He was pleased with ‘amethystine’, which provided just that vivid dash of colour which Andrew, a disciple of Gautier, knew that any poem must have. ‘Amethystine’ emphasized and developed the image of the sparkling dew in which Frances’ footsteps, from which of course the epithet ‘holy’ was transferred, were spread out like a rosary or rosy necklace. ‘Little tiny steps’ was not perhaps quite realistic as Frances rather tended to stride along, but it was symbolically right, expressing the tripping, gliding motion of the beloved compared to the slow breaking of the dawn. The half-rhymes which he had failed to eliminate troubled him a little, but a friend a
t Cambridge who published poetry in the Cornhill Magazine had told him that half-rhymes were now an allowable device. Andrew himself had once nearly had a poem in the Cornhill. The Editor had sent it back with a very friendly note.
The thought that he was shortly going to make himself and Frances so extremely happy made Andrew quite dazed with pride. Suddenly he was omnipotent, the benevolent despot of his little world. He would make everybody happy. He would lay an egg of pure good which would nourish them all. Humility followed pride. He did not deserve this sweet clever girl. A sort of laughing rapture followed the humility, because of course he knew he did deserve her, or rather knew he didn’t really feel he didn’t! This peculiar private exultation merged into a diffused physical desire. His physical feelings about Frances had always been muddled and fluctuating. He had never really wanted any other girl. Yet he had not always sharply wanted her. Now it was as if his desires were coming into focus and revealing Frances unambiguously as their object. In this self-finding and self-defining Andrew more plainly realized how much he had been afraid of physical love. He had not shared the obvious and obsessive fears which drove his brother officers to places he would shudder to visit. But he had deep deep fears all the same. And with a calmness of resolution it occurred to him that if he could properly conquer those fears all other fears would be conquered too; or if not conquered, at least they would receive an intelligible place. The blind black hole in his consciousness which was the awful prospect of returning to France would be lightened, filled with manageable items. Once married there would be no more nightmare.