by Iris Murdoch
The walkers heard behind them an outbreak of giggles and fou rire.
‘There’s a happy man,’ said Father Bernard. ‘Happy because innocent, innocent because happy.’
‘Who?’
‘Tom McCaffrey, the one with the long hair, didn’t you recognize him? I don’t know who the other boy is.’
They walked on in silence. The level crossing was in sight. Father Bernard felt a strange pang, a contraction of the heart like an onset of disease. He felt there was something he ought to do while there was still time. He wondered if he would ever talk to the philosopher again. He said, ‘I wish you would do something to help George McCaffrey.’
‘I want to ask you one thing,’ said Rozanov. ‘I will make it a condition of our having any further conversations that you do not mention the name of that young man.’
‘Oh, as you will.’
As they walked on into the town Father Bernard wondered to himself, do I like him, do I love him, do I hate him, is he mad?
It was Sunday morning again. In St Paul’s Church Father Bernard was leading the faithful in telling God that they had erred and strayed from His ways like lost sheep, had followed too much the devices and desires of their own hearts, had offended against His holy laws, had left undone those things which they ought to have done, and done those things which they ought not to have done, and generally had no health in them.
In the Quaker Meeting House a profound silence reigned. Gabriel McCaffrey loved that silence, whose healing waves lapped in a slow solemn rhythm against her scratched and smarting soul. The sun was shining through wind-handled trees outside, making a shifting decoration of yellow spear-heads upon the white wall. The room was otherwise bare of adornment, a big handsome highceilinged eighteenth-century room, with tall round-headed windows. The benches were arranged in three tiers, forming three sides of a square, of which a plain oak table occupied the fourth side. The party who wanted flowers on the table were regularly defeated by those who felt that God’s spirit was embarrassed by corporeal charms.
Present were Brian, Gabriel and Adam, William Eastcote and Anthea, Mr and Mrs Robin Osmore, Mrs Percy Bowcock, Nesta Wiggins, Peter Blackett, Mrs Roach the doctor’s wife, Nicky Roach the doctor’s son, now studying at Guy’s Hospital, Rita Chalmers, wife of the Institute Director, Miss Landon who was a teacher at Adam’s school, Mr and Mrs Romage who kept a grocer’s shop in Burkestown, and a Mrs Bradstreet, a visiting friend who was staying at the Ennistone Royal Hotel and taking the cure for a condition in her back. The attendance varied, being today rather sparse. A week ago Milton Eastcote the philanthropist, William’s cousin, had been present and had given an address about his work in London. Dr Roach was often kept away by professional duties, too often said those who thought that the doctor was more attached to the natural light of science than to the illumination from above. Nesta Wiggins was a recruit of several years standing, having abandoned the paternal Catholic fold for the douce blank Quaker rites. She esteemed the Friends, who were active in good works in Ennistone, and was particularly attached to William Eastcote. Peter Blackett, whose parents were ‘humanists’, came out of curiosity and admiration for Nesta. Nesta was sorry she could never persuade her friend Valerie Cossom to come along, but Valerie regarded all religious observances as superstitious opiates. Percy Bowcock, who had used often to accompany his wife, now came no more, and Gabriel had heard someone say that he had become a Freemason. Gabriel knew little of Freemasonry, and whether it was compatible with the ideals of the Society of Friends, but she was sorry not to see her cousin (to whose house she was rarely invited). She was fond of him and admired him very much and only coveted his wealth a little, and could not help feeling a bit censorious about the Freemasons, since they were secretive, and Friends did not approve of secrets.
But what about her own secrets? She stole a glance at Brian (she was sitting as always between her husband and her son) and saw the usual look of strained brooding anxiety. She looked across at the calm pale face of William Eastcote who was sitting opposite to her. Eastcote smiled. The silence breathed with long slow soundless exhalations, with slower deeper rhythms, seeming ever more unbreakable and profound, as if everyone in the room would soon come to some absolute stop, perhaps quickly peacefully serenely die. Sometimes during the whole meeting no one spoke. Gabriel liked that best. Human speech sounded so petty, so unforgivably stupid, after that great void. Some people spoke with piercing exalted voices. Today, however, her own trivial thoughts were bubbling in her ear. She was thinking about a cracked jug which she had seen in a junk shop in Biggins. She had said to Adam, who was with her, ‘What a pretty jug, but it’s cracked.’ Adam had immediately taken the side of the jug. ‘He wants someone to love him and look after him, we’ll love him and look after him, we’ll take him home and wash him and dry him and find him a place to sit.’ Sometimes Adam’s determination to personify his surroundings upset Gabriel to the point of wild annoyance. Adam seemed to be deliberately playing upon her tortured sensibilities. ‘That jug, he’s saying to himself, will that nice lady buy me.’ Gabriel said, ‘Don’t be silly, it’s all cracked, it’s no use,’ and hustled him on. Now it had become clear to her that nothing in the world was more important than going back to that shop and buying that jug. She would go early tomorrow morning. But, oh, suppose it had gone! Tears rose up behind Gabriel’s eyes. All these things were somehow images of death. Adam had such awful dreams sometimes. She encouraged him to tell his dreams. Gabriel had once heard Ivor Sefton lecture at the Ennistone Hall. He said that children should tell their dreams and join the symbolic dream material to their waking life. But Adam’s dreams frightened Adam and Gabriel, and surely telling them would make him remember them. Adam dreamed so much about drowning. I am a silly woman, thought Gabriel, and Brian blames me for losing Stella, as if I had made a mistake, as if I had opened the door and let her run out! I couldn’t comfort Stella, she is so hard and silent and superior. She is an opposite woman to me. But I should have done better, I didn’t look after her properly; and where is she now, has she killed herself? Is she with George? Brian had telephoned and called round but got no answer. At the thought of Stella comforting George, forgiving him, holding him in her saving arms, Gabriel felt nothing but pain, and she knew that it was a wicked pain. Her feelings about George were part of her silliness, part of the stupid feeble sensibility which made her encourage Adam’s funny soft porous attitude to the world, and be hurt by it at the same time. Brian thought she was making Adam weak and dreamy. But it was all to do with feeling so sorry for everything. Her feeling for George was like that, feeling very very sorry for him, feeling oh so much protective possessive pity-love, a sort of desperate sorry-for affection. It’s so private, she thought. But then all my love is private, as if it were a secret.
Adam was conscious of a ball of slightly mobile blazing warmth up against his side which was Zed curled up in the pocket of his duffle coat. Zed was not allowed in the Institute but he was allowed to come to Meeting. Why should not dogs be present, since the waves and particles of the Inner Light flowed through them too? Besides, there were precedents. Mrs Bowcock’s mother’s corgi had attended for years. Zed’s little delicate head with its black-and-white domed brow peered from the top of the pocket. After looking about for some time with an alert critical air, he had fixed upon Robin Osmore, staring intently at the legal man with an expression of amazed quizzical curiosity. Osmore, aware of the scrutiny, became uneasy, disconcerted, fidgeted, looked elsewhere, then looked back to find the little beast still staring, its clever humorous gaze giving an extraordinary impression of a judging intelligence, a strange little spirit, not really a dog at all. Adam touched the silky fringy end of Zed’s long ear with his finger tips. He was thinking about Rufus. When he thought about Rufus it was as if a kind of lurid gap appeared in the world through which something red and black kept flashing out at him. He knew instinctively that these thoughts were dangerous, perhaps bad. He never told his mother the very s
trange weird things he dreamed about Rufus, and about Zed. Sometimes in dreams he was Rufus. Adam never mentioned Rufus, and his parents imagined that Adam had forgotten that Rufus ever existed. Sometimes Adam wondered whether he himself were not really George’s son, and had been exchanged for Rufus when he was in the cradle. They were almost exactly the same age. It was as if Rufus by dying had laid a kind of debt upon him. He had to grow up for Rufus, to carry him along like an invisible twin. Yes, he thought, I’m growing up for Rufus, in a way I am Rufus. And this thought led him back to George and to the way George had winked, and the way George had stared at him when they saw each other that day at the Institute, when Adam had sat down among the potted plants.
Anthea Eastcote was sitting next to her great-uncle. There was a bond of love between these two, though they were shy with each other. William was childless and awkward with children. Anthea, who turned so many heads and always looked so radiantly pleased with herself, had had her troubles. Her father, a talented mathematician, had run away to Australia with one of his students, her brother had emigrated to Canada and was no more seen, her beautiful mother had died of a wasting illness three years ago. Now, supported by a lifetime of such Sunday mornings, she sat quiet with folded hands, gazing with large wide-open pensive eyes above the heads of the McCaffreys opposite. Her smooth sweet face, luminous like a pale lighted lantern, glowed with health, her soft lips were pursed in a little bud of reflection, and her brown-golden curly rumply hair arched on her head, electric as silk. Used to employing such times for self-scrutiny, she was ruefully examining the way in which she was leading poor Hector on, while all the time she was vainly in love with a fellow student, one Joey Tanner, at York University where she was studying History.
Brian McCaffrey was thinking to himself, when I consider how much rage and spite and malice and jealousy and envy and lust I carry around inside myself, how can I blame anybody for anything? He inspected a tiny almost invisible dot-like insect which was walking slowly across the back of his hand, crushed it with a fingertip, then cast an anxious guilty look in Adam’s direction. He raised his gaze once more, focusing on a point between William Eastcote’s chin and Anthea Eastcote’s mouth. He thought to himself, Christ, Tom could have that girl if he wanted to. He’s only got to try, he could have that handsome clever sweet girl just by stretching out his hand. Well-off too. He must be mad. Why is he so bloody lazy and careless and stupid? If he exerted himself the least little bit he could get her, he could marry her. Oh God! She’s so beautiful, she’s so intelligent, she’s so angelic, she’s got everything, oh if only I were young again, if only I were free and young, as now I shall never be. I wonder if I should say anything to Tom? No, certainly not, I should go crazy if Anthea were my sister- In-law. Let her go away, since I can’t have her, let her go away, I don’t want to know she exists. Curse her, curse everything. My bloody job is on the rocks and I haven’t even told Gabriel yet. Oh damn, damn, damn, he said to himself, as Alex used to say when he was a child, bending down awkwardly with her dustpan and brush. Anyway I’m getting old. Thank God I shall be out of the future of this rotten old planet. As everything is going to be blown up, what does it matter what I do? One gets bloody tired of morality. I would do what I want at last, except that I can’t. Oh hell. Roll on nuclear war.
At this moment there was a commotion at the back, behind where Mrs Roach and Nicky were sitting, and Tom McCaffrey and Emmanuel Scarlett-Taylor came in rather out of breath. They sat down noisily, audibly panting, then quickly composed themselves and put on solemn expressions. Several people smiled at Tom. Silence reigned again. After a suitable interval of glazed contemplation, Emma began to look about him with surreptitious curiosity. He had never been to a Quaker meeting before, and his historian’s instincts were aroused. He adjusted his glasses and gazed about, impressed by the dense atmosphere of repose and feeling suddenly rather happy. Then Tom felt a little tickling and shuddering sensation beside him and heard a slight noise as the bench began to vibrate. Emma was silently laughing. He had noticed Zed peering out of Adam’s pocket. He pointed, nudging Tom. Zed transferred his stare from Mr Osmore to Emma, gazing with an air of amused and rather impertinent attention. Tom began to laugh too. He stuffed his handkerchief into his mouth and closed his eyes upon happy tears. The next moment he was praying, as if he were lifted up and carrying others with him. Love flowed in his soul. He would love them all, save them all: Alex and Brian and Gabriel and Stella and Emma and George and … oh especially George.
Nesta Wiggins was blushing scarlet as she always did when it occurred to her that it was her duty to rise and speak. She was a nervous public speaker, but, driven by conscience, a frequent one. She had realized that she ought to get up and suggest that the money voted for the repainting of the Meeting House ought instead to be donated to the recently opened appeal for the new community centre on the wasteland beyond the canal. (The treasurer, Nathaniel Romage, who loved the fabric of the House, was secretly hustling on the painting since he feared exactly this conscience-searching for worthier objectives on the part of some members of the Meeting.) However, as Nesta’s breath came quick and she leaned forward to get up, William Eastcote rose to his feet. Nesta relaxed, satisfied. No one at Meeting ever spoke after William Eastcote had spoken. Bill the Lizard had been thinking about his wife Rose, and how Rozanov had remembered her as presiding over their ‘wholesome feasts’ of long ago. He had been thinking too about something which Dr Roach had lately said to him. He had given himself a dispensation to lie to John Robert about his health. Something was wrong, but perhaps not cancer. He was to go to the hospital tomorrow. He thought about his father, who had used the Quaker ‘thou’ and who now seemed to belong to an infinitely remote past, as if William’s own life were itself being quickly transformed into history, and as if those who had formed him and taught him and given him their precious stainless examples, his parents, his teachers, his friends, were already gathering round.
When he felt the urge to rise, his heart, like Nesta’s, beat hard. He was always a diffident speaker. He said, ‘My dear friends, we live in an age of marvels. Men among us can send machines far out into space. Our homes are full of devices which would amaze our forebears. At the same time our beloved planet is ravaged by suffering and threatened by dooms. Experts and wise men give us vast counsels suited to vast ills. I want only to say something about simple good things which are as it were close to us, within our reach, part still of our world. Let us love the close things, the close clear good things, and hope that in their light other goods may be added. Let us prize innocence. The child is innocent, the man is not. Let us prolong and cherish the innocence of childhood, as we find it in the child and as we rediscover it later within ourselves. Repentance, renewal of life, such as is the task and possibility of every man, is a recovery of innocence. Let us see it thus, a return to a certain simplicity, something which is not hard to understand, not a remote good but very near. And let us not hesitate to preach to our young people and to impart to them an idealism which may later serve them as a shield. A deep cynicism in our society too soon touches old and young, forbidding us to speak and them to hear, and making us by an awful reversal ashamed of what is best. A habit of mockery destroys the intelligence and sensibility which is reverence. Let us prize chastity, not as a censorious or rigid code, but as fastidious respect and gentleness, a rejection of promiscuity, a sense of the delicate mystery of human relations. Let us do and praise those things which make for a simple orderly open and truthful life. Herein let us make it a practice to banish evil thoughts. When such thoughts come, envious, covetous, cynical thoughts, let us positively drive them off, like people in the olden days who felt they were defeating Satan. Let us then seek aid in pure things, turning our minds to good people, to our best work, to beautiful and noble art, to the pure words of Christ in the Gospel, and to the works of God obedient to Him in nature. Help is always near if we will only turn. Conversion is turning about, and it can happen not only every
day but every moment. Shun the cynicism which says that our world is so terrible that we may as well cease to care and cease to strive, the notion of a cosmic crisis where ordinary duties cease to be and moral fastidiousness is out of place. At any time, there are many many small things we can do for other people which will refresh us and them with new hope. Shun too the common malice which finds consolation in the suffering and sin of others, blackening them to make our grey seem white, rejoicing in our neighbours’ downfall and disgrace, while excusing our own failures and cherishing our own undiscovered secret sins. Above all, do not despair, either for the planet or in the deep inwardness of the heart. Recognize one’s own evil, mend what can be mended, and for what cannot be undone, place it in love and faith in the clear light of the healing goodness of God.’
William sat down and found his heart still beating hard. He bowed his head and folded his hands, which were trembling. He wondered to himself, whatever possessed me to utter all those high-flown words, wherever did they come from? Then the memory piercingly returned to him of what the doctor had said, and he shuddered with weakness and fear.
The silence continued, ringing now with the echoes of what William had said, and each person present promised himself some amendment of life. Brian thought, what a skunk I am, and how lucky I am to have such a dear good sweet wife and such a marvellous son, I must go and see Alex soon, and bloody stop hating everything and everyone. Gabriel thought, dear, dear William, how much I love him, yes, I must stop being so feeble and silly, and I must not think those mean spiteful thoughts about Stella, and I must think differently about George, but how? Adam thought, I must stop imagining those funny things about Rufus and I must be kinder to my father and talk to him and not tease him. Anthea Eastcote thought, I must be frank with Hector Gaines and I must give up Joey Tanner. Nicky Roach thought, I must work harder and not go to bed with girls all the time (but he felt rather sad about this). Mrs Roach thought, I must stop spending these crazy amounts on clothes. I must be mad! Nathaniel Romage thought, perhaps I ought to reconvene the committee before I have the house painted? Mrs Romage thought, I had better stop cooking the books. Ought I to confess to Nat that I’ve been cooking the books? No. Miss Landon thought, I must prepare my lessons better and, quite simply, stop loathing the children. Nesta Wiggins thought, I ought to go to Mass now and then to please my father and stop being so ridiculously pleased with myself. I’m just a stinking sinner. Well, I am, aren’t I? Mrs Bradstreet had a very serious sin, not unconnected with her late husband, upon her conscience. Sometimes she felt she was damned, sometimes she felt she should tell everything to the police (how much did they know?). She decided that for the present she would follow William Eastcote’s advice and lay it all before God. However, she had done this before to no avail. Emma thought, I must go and see my mother, I must go and see my singing teacher, and I must … just somehow … try to become .. less awful. Tom thought, I’m innocent, I’m good, I love everybody. I shall go on being innocent and good and loving everybody, oh I feel so happy! What Zed thought is not known, but as his nature was composed almost entirely of love, he may be imagined to have felt an increase of being.