by Iris Murdoch
Chapter Fifteen
‘OH, I feel so happy!’
Hilda threw her gloves down on a packing-case in the hall and began with delicate exact movements to pluck the hat-pin out of her large velvet hat. She had just returned from attending the earlier part of the three-hour Good Friday service at the Mariners’ Church.
‘I’m as hungry as a hunter. I expect you are too, Andrew. I’ll bring out the cold luncheon directly. You really should have come to church, it was wonderful. Such inspiring addresses. I suppose one ought to be feeling sad on Good Friday, but I always feel so exalted, even more than on Easter day.’
Andrew looked down at her gloomily through the banisters. He was engaged in tacking down the carpet on the upper landing. ‘Yes, Mother. I’m just coming down. Where do you want the gilt mirror put? I’ve found the hooks for it.’
‘Oh, opposite the door, I think, it will enlarge the hall, and we’ll put the tropical birds in front of it. It’s going to be such a pretty house, isn’t it, Andrew? It really makes me terribly happy. Christopher is coming round to see it after luncheon. I saw Frances at church, but she said she couldn’t come as she had a Comforts for the Troops meeting. But of course she’ll have told you.’
Hilda bustled away into the kitchen, humming loudly. A moment later he heard her voice raised in rather self-conscious shrillness above the purr of the taps. ‘When I survey the Wondrous Cross…’
Claresville was indeed a charming little house, but everything about it filled Andrew with misery. It was situated in the steep labyrinthine part of Dalkey below the Loreto convent and above Bullock Harbour, convenient (as the prospectus said) to St Patrick’s (Church of Ireland) and commanding from its upper window a handsome view of Dublin Bay. It was a solid nineteenth-century villa with Gothic windows and a high-peaked lattice porch, ‘quaint’ features also commended in the prospectus. The smooth stucco was painted a dark dusty pink, except for the raised bands of white which outlined the windows. There was an extensive garden on several levels with two fine eucalyptus trees, an old ragged monkey puzzle, and a rockery made out of large sea shells which delighted Hilda. To the drawbacks of the house, obvious to Andrew, Hilda was blind. It was a long way up the hill to the shops and the tram. The road was dark and lonely at night. The steepness of the slope made the house feel precarious as well as making the garden difficult to work. Andrew was even prepared to accept Kathleen’s view, scornfully quoted by Hilda, that Claresville was damp. Exploring earlier to find Hilda’s nearest shops, he had entered a bar and for the first time since his arrival in Ireland had had his uniform sneered at. He decided that he hated Dalkey.
The inside of the house was at present in extreme confusion. The removal men had arrived on the morning of the previous day, and after hastily pushing everything in through the front door had gone away, to some religious service they said, promising to come back shortly to complete the installation of the heavy furniture. Hilda had incautiously tipped them and Christopher had laughed and prophesied that they would be seen no more. Meanwhile Hilda’s grand piano, dismantled and perched on its side, a very large bookcase and a substantial tallboy were left standing in the hall. Andrew thought that he and Christopher could probably manage the bookcase and the tallboy, but the piano would need three or four men. Hilda’s suggestion that Pat Dumay should be asked to come and help was received by Andrew with a silence so profound that even his mother quickly changed the subject.
Andrew was tormented by the fact that Hilda did not yet know. Her little gaieties, her joy in the house, her coy references to Frances, her even more coy references to ‘when we’re a bigger family’, continually beset him with detailed images of the happiness he had lost. He measured too the shock which Hilda herself was going to receive. He had not thought of it at once, but of course for her everything, Ireland, everything would be utterly ruined by this new situation. He knew that his mother was assuming that when he had to go away Frances would remain, a married, perhaps even a pregnant Frances, to be fussed over by Hilda, and that this represented a very real consolation. And then there was Christopher. Hilda was deeply attached to Christopher and relied upon him completely. ‘Christopher will know’, or ‘Christopher will arrange it’, was her answer to any practical difficulty. What would happen to her relationship to the Bellmans when she knew that her darling boy had been rejected? Would she want to stay on in the pretty house with the monkey puzzle and the sea-shell rockery? And if she did not stay on, where should she go?
The dreadful blank pain of deprivation and the frightened, miserable tenderness for Hilda did not however compose quite the whole of Andrew’s mind. There was also the thought of Millie. What this thought exactly was, was not entirely clear to him; it was persistent, significant, but veiled. At intervals, like a small spark in his memory, the events at Rathblane kept recurring to him, always with a little impetus of interest. And he recalled too, as if this were something unimportant now but which he must not on any account forget, what Millie had said about freedom and about the big unpredictable world. He had certainly not expected what had happened at Rathblane, and the mere fact that, after Frances’ rejection of him, anything at all could still happen was in itself a kind of salve. He recalled reading once in some French writer that the interpolation of anything, even if it is only a broken arm, between oneself and the experience of unhappy love, is a consolation. Andrew had been extremely shocked by Millie’s unthinkable proposal. But it was an event, it must be admitted, as momentous as a broken arm and certainly more agreeable.
Now he could hear from the sounds below that Christopher had arrived. Hilda was saying, ‘You’ve caught us just at the start of luncheon. Everything gets late on Good Friday, doesn’t it, because of the service. Will you have a bite? Oh, you’ve eaten already. Well, you’ll excuse us, won’t you? It looks as if we’ll have to eat off sheets of the Irish Times so it’s not very elegant anyway! Andrew! Christopher’s come!’
Andrew went down reluctantly. Christopher and Hilda were standing in the bright bay window of what was to be the drawing-room. Against the deep feathery leafage of the garden the sunny room floated in space, dotted with objects, not yet anchored down by the heavy significance of furniture. The keen sunlight revealed the ghosts of old pictures upon its rose-sprigged walls. Christopher and Hilda turned about with faces radiant with happiness. It was clear that Christopher did not yet know. Andrew had never seen him looking so happy.
Andrew’s boots resounded in the unmuffled space. ‘Hello.’
‘Hello, Andrew. Are you going to conscript me to deal with that piano?’
‘I’d rather not think about the piano.’ Their voices echoed like distant halloos.
‘Those men will come back,’ said Hilda. ‘They said they would.’
‘Precisely. But this is Ireland.’ Christopher laughed with the ready pointless laughter of the happy man. ‘Hilda shouldn’t have tipped them,’ he said to Andrew. ‘They went straight off to the bar. And Hilda was imagining them on their knees!’
‘Well, I thought they were very nice men,’ said Hilda complacently, pleased to be teased by Christopher.
Andrew thought miserably how pleasant to him this little family scene would have been if only all were well. He would have been glad to see his mother so happy and so befriended.
‘Don’t let me keep you from your grub,’ said Christopher. ‘The godless must not prevent the godly from eating!’
‘Andrew, would you mind lifting those boxes off the chairs? Be careful with them. The Royal Worcester dinner service is in that one, at least I hope it is. And the flower vases should be in that one. Oh, how I am longing to bring some flowers in from the garden and make it really look like home!’
Andrew moved the boxes, and Hilda seated herself at a green baize card-table, putting down the sheets of newspaper under the plates of cold tongue and salad. ‘Come, Andrew. It’s our first meal in Claresville. Isn’t that exciting?’
Andrew scraped his knife and fork on his pl
ate in a pretence of eating. He wanted to weep. He loved his mother so much.
Christopher, humming and almost skipping about the room, kept up a disjointed chatter. ‘You should lay down a pavement really. It’s not expensive. That grass is so damp and mossy. And I do think you should cut a vista through those bamboos. You might even get a glimpse of the sea from here. Oh—’
Andrew looked up sharply. In the haze of sunlight he saw Christopher suddenly stiff, looking with surprise and alarm toward the door. In that instant Andrew was sure that Frances had come herself, grim and unsmiling, to accuse him publicly of having failed her. He leapt to his feet. But the figure in the doorway was Kathleen.
Kathleen, her long coat pulled shapelessly about her like a cloak, stared into the room with a face haggard with fear and distress. The features were strained and pulled downward in a grotesque terrified leer.
Hilda, looking up short-sightedly, noticed nothing amiss. She was annoyed at Christopher’s visit being spoilt by the arrival of Kathleen. ‘Why, what a nice surprise!’
‘What is it, Kathleen?’ said Christopher.
‘I just thought I’d call,’ said Kathleen in a voice which was surprisingly calm, only just slightly too monotonous to be natural.
‘Would you like to join us? It’s just a cold meal I’m afraid.’
‘No, thank you.’
‘I expect you’d like to look round the house and garden. You haven’t really seen it except on that wet afternoon.’
‘I’ll take Kathleen round,’ said Christopher. ‘I’ll show her the garden while you’re finishing luncheon.’ He marched Kathleen out again into the hall and out through the back door.
Andrew went to the window. He watched Christopher and Kathleen walking slowly down the little pebbled path in the direction of the rockery. Something awful had happened to Aunt Kathleen, but he didn’t care. He hated them all.
* * * *
‘What is it, Kathleen?’
Christopher was in that condition of sensitive availability to the troubles of others which is produced by certain kinds of happiness. His world had been made perfect, and by that perfection he was himself increased, filled suddenly to the brim with a new abundance of free affections. He felt, positively, a better man. He longed to help others and almost felt that he could do so miraculously just by touching them.
He had not seen Millie since Wednesday when she had given him her world-changing yes. She had told him, though not at all solemnly, that she was going into an Easter ‘retreat’ at Rathblane and that she wished to be left alone. She had spoken again, with a laugh, of the ‘holiday’ which she needed before what she called, even more laughingly, ‘the fatal event’. Prayer and fasting and meditation were her programme just now. Spiritually refreshed, she would return to Christopher to celebrate the new era with rivers of champagne.
Christopher understood her wish and even welcomed it. With a slightly grim affection he appreciated her need to steel herself in solitude to carry out a plan which was not entirely to her liking. She would succeed in reorganizing her mind and even her heart to meet this new necessity. Millie was an amazingly efficient organism. Christopher had been in fact a little uneasy in case she should press him, once it was all decided, into some immediate action. He was anxious lest she should hold against him his continued silence on account of Frances. He feared the charge of being insufficiently in love to carry all before him, even the opposition of Frances. Well, perhaps he was insufficiently in love. But in any case it would all be much easier and more agreeable if Frances could first be married off and, amid the preoccupations of a newly married girl, be unable to bend her formidable will against her parent. ‘Abandoned’ by his daughter, Christopher’s act must look more understandable, more forgiveable. A married Frances would be in a less strong position to object, might indeed, Christopher suspected, not be on the scene at all: though he had not mentioned this to Hilda, he anticipated that young Andrew would promptly remove his bride to England. So, since everything pointed to silence and discretion, it was as well that the interval should be imposed by Millie herself and not by him. Thus deprived, he could by gentle complaints forestall her possible protestations about his own pusillanimity. In a more straightforward way, having achieved his end at last he was content to be alone for a little while simply to gloat. Lotus-like he floated, sufficient to himself, upon his own felicity.
‘What’s happened, Kathleen? You look quite distracted.’ He propelled her down the humpy path, between two straggling roses bushy with briars, past the chipped muddy shells of the rockery, to a wooden seat. The damp air smelt of eucalyptus.
‘Nothing’s happened yet. I’m sorry, Christopher. I looked for you at Finglas, and when I couldn’t find you I got upset.’
Kathleen and Christopher had known each other for a very long time without becoming close friends. Each accepted the other as a familiar feature of the landscape and this acceptance had become, with the years, a sort of affection. Though she was quite unlike himself, and though he found her outlook in many ways depressing, Christopher respected Kathleen as a decent independent character. In his view, most people were slaves; but Kathleen was no slave and this was noticeable. His contempt for Barney partly took the form of sympathy for Kathleen; and he liked her too because she appreciated Frances. Kathleen sometimes afflicted him, as she afflicted so many, with feelings of guilt; but since he was more rational than other persons thus stricken he understood the ailment and forgave her for it.
‘Well now, tell me all about it.’ He was rather touched that she should have sought him out.
‘I’m sorry to trouble you with this, but you’re the only man who’s near and I’ve got to talk to somebody. I said something to Barney, though I wasn’t sure then, but Barney can’t do anything and anyway he’s part of it himself.’
‘What on earth are you talking about, Kathleen?’
‘They’re going to fight.’
‘Who are?’
‘The Sinn Feiners, the Volunteers.’
‘My dear, they’re always going to fight, only they never do.’
‘But there really is a definite plan. I don’t know when it’ll be, but soon. They’re going to take over Dublin.’
‘Oh, nonsense, Kathleen. What in heaven’s name makes you think this?’
‘I broke into Pat’s room. He was so secretive and so excited about something, I had to try to find out. So I broke in and there were some plans. I couldn’t really understand them, but they were plans for a military occupation of Dublin. And there was a map of Dublin showing what buildings were to be occupied.
‘But, my dear Kathleen, they’ve been doing this for years. Don’t you know that James Connolly ‘captures’ Dublin Castle practically every weekend? They thoroughly enjoy it! I’m sure every young man in the movement has got a plan for the military occupation of Dublin in his pocket.’
Kathleen stared at the black rain-sifted earth of the rockery. Her face had lost the haggard look of terror and was stern and thoughtful. Christopher saw her old lost handsomeness. ‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s serious this time. I’m quite sure. I’m sure because of the way Pat is.’
‘Pat’s young and excitable. He might be that way for lots of reasons. Perhaps he’s in love.’
‘He’s not in love. He isn’t interested in girls.’
Christopher was about to suggest that he might conceivably be interested in boys, but decided that this speculation, which was not new to him, was not suitable for Kathleen’s ears. ‘Have you said anything to Pat yourself?’
‘No. He’s almost entirely stopped talking to me about anything. Up to now I’ve simply prayed.’
‘Shall I have a word with him?’
‘Oh, if only you would! This was really what I came to ask you. I felt I must do something. You might be able to use logic with him.’
‘Logic! How like a woman to think that logic is a kind of stuff you just apply to a situation! Anyway, I don’t know what the logic of this one is.’
‘But you might be able to persuade him that it’s mad.’
‘I doubt if anyone could persuade that young fellow of anything. Besides, it’s not clear that it is mad.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s arguable that the only way for Ireland to become really independent is to fight. England will delay Home Rule and pare it away until there’s practically nothing left. An imperialist power won’t really budge without a show of force. And a show of force is one tiling one can’t be too rational about, it comes when it has to. Anyway, Ireland’s honour demands a fight. Only I mustn’t say things like that to you.’