by Iris Murdoch
Tamar had handed back, washed and ironed, the big white handkerchief which she had carried away with her on the last occasion, and had resisted a temptation to keep. They were now sitting on the sofa which had been drawn up near to the fire, Tamar was sitting with her feet tucked under her, one thin ankle and a buckled shoe visible from under her dress, and Duncan had given her to read a letter from a solicitor, acting for Jean, who requested Duncan’s cooperation in the arrangement of a divorce.
On the previous night Tamar had had a curiously vivid dream. She dreamt that she was lost in an enormous circular hotel, ‘as tall as the Tower of Babel’, and could not find her room or even remember which floor it was on. In a desperate and distressed state of hurry, she kept rushing up and down staircases and round circular corridors, staring at numbers and trying locked doors. At last she found a door which seemed like the right one and opened it. It opened into a small bathroom. Lying in the bath, which was dry, was a woman in a long red dress with a black network mask over her face. Sitting beside the bath and staring at Tamar with intense silent hostility was a woman with brown hair and glasses, dressed as a nurse. Tamar understood at once that the woman in the bath, who was unconscious or possibly dead, was the victim of some terrible infectious plague, the existence of which was being hushed up by the hotel authorities. Starting back from the door in horror she became aware of a tall thin figure standing behind her, a man with blond almost white hair and very light blue eyes. Tamar thought, he’s a doctor, then he’s my father and he’s an Icelander! The next moment the tall figure moved away and with a ritualistic deliberation laid the palm of his hand against the wall of the corridor. The wall slid aside, revealing what Tamar recognised as the interior of a very big steel safe. Her father walked into the safe, the wall slid back into place, and Tamar beat upon it with her hands in vain. Trying to interpret the dream, Tamar decided that the nurse was, of course, Violet, and the woman in the bath, dressed as she had been at the dance, in red and black, was Jean. These two were sinister, heavy with the horrid unreality and (as Tamar felt it) unclean ambiguity of dream images. Her father was different; he very rarely appeared in Tamar’s dreams, and when he did his apparition carried with it a kind of clarity and certainty, a kind of innocence, as if it were indeed no mere delusive ectoplasm from the unconscious, but a periodical visit from another plane. He was always tall (though never hitherto Icelandic), and always a benevolent though elusive figure. The memory of this dream suddenly, and with an extra vividness, recurred to Tamar as she sat on the sofa beside Duncan and read the momentous letter. She thought, perhaps he is an Icelander, an idea which had not occurred to her before. He had appeared as a doctor beside a dying, perhaps dead, patient. Tamar then thought, perhaps he is dead. In the dream he had entered into a steel box and the door had closed. She had entertained the possibility, but never before thought as a deep emotional thought, that he might be dead. She had so much needed and wanted to believe that he was still living and still somewhere. Perhaps he had come to her to say goodbye. That strange gesture of laying his palm upon the wall had some sort of mysterious finality. Now she thought, he is dead, and her hand holding the letter trembled, and with her other hand she touched Duncan’s sleeve, and she turned her troubled face towards him.
Duncan took the letter from her and put it on the floor. He had received it that morning. He had of course known that among the variety of Jean’s possible moves this was one, but he had not really expected it. He had found himself unable to face the office and had spent the day at home engaged in, as he put it to himself, remaking his mind. He kept repeating, as he had done earlier, I’ve got to survive, I won’t let those two kill me. But now the image of Crimond, which had somehow protected him from the utterness of loss, giving him the occupation of anger, faded; and he saw only Jean, Jean gone, Jean, his dear Jean, coldly effecting the legal and absolute end of her connection with him. At the same time some little air of warmth which knew nothing of the death of love seemed wafted from her towards him, waking all sorts of little innocent expectations and memories, the way she ran to him when he returned in the evening and put her arms around his waist, how they told each other their day. They had been happy. He kept trying to ‘face it’, to ‘realise it at last’, to see it as ‘true’. How was this to be done? He measured now how much, when he had thought all hope was gone, he had still hoped. He would have to answer the lawyer’s letter, to make hideous assertions, to assent to hideous arrangements, in order to help Jean never to have to see him or think of him again. He thought, I’ll do it for her and then I’ll kill myself. About Crimond he ceased thinking. The fact of irretrievable loss, now before him like a black cliff, annihilated Crimond as it would soon annihilate Duncan.
Duncan had taken hold of Tamar’s hand at the Guy Fawkes party out of a sense of gratitude and because he wanted to reassure her about the teapot. The feel of her warm hand in his cold hand (neither was wearing gloves, but Tamar’s hand had been in her pocket) gave him an unexpected shock and reminded him of how they had sat together on the sofa and looked at each other after the teapot disaster. He had written to invite her again because he had now resolved to ask her if she had seen Jean. He also invited her because she was harmless and he could bear her sympathy and because her visit was an incentive to tidy the flat. After the arrival of the letter he forgot Tamar and only remembered her just before she came.
Tamar, still dazed by the sudden recall of her dream, tried to concentrate upon what she had read in the letter. ‘Do you think she means it, do you think it will happen? Perhaps –’
‘Yes,’ said Duncan, ‘it will happen. Tamar, I’m a mad man, I’m mad, I’m dangerous, don’t torment me.’
‘Oh if you only knew how much I want to help you, I’d do anything if I could only make all well –’
‘You can’t. All well would be Jean back again as she once was, and that can never be, never, never – this is the end.’
‘It’s not the end, you’ll go on living, people love you –’
‘That’s a fiction,’ said Duncan, swallowing some more of the whisky. Tamar was sipping her second glass of sherry. ‘I can see a lot of things now in this awful light. I doubt if Jean ever really loved me, I doubt if anybody has ever really loved me. What’s certain is that nobody can come near me now. Oh, a lot of people are interested, a few are kind, but nobody loves me. Don’t mock me with those empty conventional clichés.’
‘Don’t say such bad untrue things! People’s love may not help you, but it’s there. You say they can’t come near. All right, but I’m here, I’m near, and I love you!’
‘Don’t, Tamar, please –’
‘I love you!’ As she said this Tamar turned towards him and stretched out her arms, slipping her hands round Duncan’s thick bull neck and thrusting them under the heavy cool mass of his dark hair. Taken by surprise Duncan put his arm round her shoulder, Tamar knelt and drew herself towards him, then twisting, still holding on by her hands now locked under his hair, found herself sitting on his knee. They both gasped. Tamar stayed awkwardly in position, her head against the rough tweed of his jacket collar. Then something in their attitude horrified them both, the sense perhaps, never clarified, of her as a child and him as a father, and she sprang back, propelling herself like a startled animal into the farther corner of the sofa, where she gazed at Duncan with her cheeks flaming and one hand containing her beating heart.
She said, ‘I’m so sorry. I just felt – I do love you, and so do other people, and I wanted to tell you so.’
‘Tamar, come back,’ said Duncan, ‘come here.’ He had taken off his glasses.
The note of command was new and Tamar felt its novelty and understood its sense even though it was only later that she reflected upon the seemingly inevitable stages of their movements, plotted as in a strange game. She rose to her knees, then sat again beside him, tucking in her legs as she had before, holding one of her thin ankles in one hand. She turned her head against his nearer shoulder, str
etching out one arm along the sofa behind him. He now put both arms around her, gentling her into an easier position, capturing the awkward stretching arm, supporting her as she now was, half kneeling, with her face in his hair and mouth against his hot neck. They stayed thus for a moment with two accelerated hearts beating violently against each other. Then with closed eyes they found each other’s lips and kissed carefully twice. After that Duncan pulled her along so that she was leaning against the end of the sofa and drew his legs up so that they, again awkwardly, were half reclining side by side and face to face.
‘I love you, Duncan,’ said Tamar. ‘I love you. I’m sorry. Don’t be angry with me.’
‘I’m not angry with you, how could I be. Oh Tamar, if you only knew what an absolute hell I’m in.’
‘I so much want to help you, but I can’t, I know I can’t, and I shouldn’t have come but I did want to say that I love you. Oh, don’t be in hell –’
‘Get that woollen thing off, I want to put my arms round you properly.’
Tamar slithered out of her cardigan which fell on the floor and Duncan’s arms came round her and the buttons of his jacket pressed into her breasts. A moment later he too had slipped his jacket off and gathered her against his stout chest which was bursting out of his shirt, while one hand undid the buttons on her high-necked blouse. A great heat came out of Duncan’s body, so that Tamar, pressed against it, felt almost scorched. Her love and her pity for him merged into a swift dizzy physical joy of self-giving as she felt herself strongly enclosed by his arms, his faintly rough cheek scraping hers and his large hot hand laid upon her throat.
After a few moments of this Duncan sat up, pulling her with him. ‘This is absurd, there isn’t room for us on this sofa, would you mind if we went and lay on my bed? I just want to hold you and be comforted by you. It’s for me to say, don’t be angry!’
Tamar’s hands were clasped round his neck and she hung from his neck as, not waiting for an answer, he rose, then stooped and lifted her up in his arms. Tamar had never been carried by a man before. He said, ‘How light you are, you weigh nothing.’ He carried her into the guest room, which Duncan had occupied since Jean left, and laid her down on the bed. He unlaced her shoes and removed them, holding her warm feet for a moment in his hands, then removed his own shoes, and undid the buttons of his shirt. He lay down beside her, occupying himself with undoing the remaining buttons of her blouse. Tamar lay on her back. Duncan lay against her with his big heavy dark head between her breasts. He said, his moist breath muffled against her, ‘Forgive me.’
‘I love you,’ said Tamar, ‘I love you absolutely. I’ve loved you ever since – ever since teapot –’ She was going to say ‘ever since the dance’, for it came to her that even then she had been ready to give to Duncan all that great store of love which she had put in readiness for someone else. But not wishing to remind him of the dance, she said, ‘Ever since forever.’
Duncan, kissing her breasts, murmured with his wet mouth against her smooth skin, ‘Good old teapot.’ Then he said, ‘Do you mind if we undress a bit more?’ They undressed a bit more, quickly, but not completely, flinging garments away and clinging desperately together, warm flesh seeking warm flesh.
‘You’re not angry with me? No, I know you’re not. You’re an angel. You’re the only thing in the world that isn’t made of evil and darkness and hell. You’re saving me, it’s a miracle, I couldn’t have believed it, you’ve made me come alive again, I’m back in the world, I can imagine not dying of grief, I can imagine wanting to live. I feel something again, love, gratitude, surprise. Do you understand?’
‘Yes, but it’s only for a moment,’ she said. ‘I mean, with us, it’s only for a moment. I’m so glad and so grateful – I’d do anything for you, anything, so that you could live and be happy. This moment will pass. But you must go on living and feeling things and knowing that it’s not all hell and you won’t die of grief.’
Duncan was silent. Then he said, ‘I love you, kid, I’m so grateful to you – I didn’t expect this –’
‘You’re grateful and I’m glad, I’m so glad. This will pass. Jean will come back, I know she’ll come back. That’s what I want for you more than anything, that’s why I came, that’s what I’m for –’
Duncan’s hand that was holding one of hers squeezed it with violent force. Then he took her hand to his face and kissed it and laid it on his cheek. A little later he said, ‘Do you mind? Just roll over for a moment, I’m going to pull off the counter-pane and the blankets. I want us to be more completely together. Don’t worry, I can’t make children, I probably can’t make anything with you now, I just want to hold you entirely in my arms. Oh pardon me, Tamar, help me, help me, help me –’
Gerard had found a parrot. It was in a pet shop in the Gloucester Road. It was very like Grey, but was certainly not Grey. Gerard, who had been passing, was outside the shop, the parrot was in its cage in the window. They gazed at each other. The parrot was shy, then coy, then grave, very conscious of being closely observed. It stood attentive, head on one side, one foot raised. Gerard did not smile. He looked at the parrot with a tender melancholy stare, a reverent humble stare, as if the parrot were some sort of small god, yet at the same time he wanted to say, ‘I’m sorry, oh I’m so sorry,’ as if to a pitiable innocent victim. He even murmured half aloud, ‘I’m sorry,’ meaning, he supposed, that he was sorry that the parrot was a captive, in a cage in London, and not flying about in the tall trees of the rain forests in central Africa where grey parrots come from.
It was a very cold afternoon and a little snow was falling in small frail flakes between Gerard and the parrot. The snow fell slowly like a visible silence as if it were part of the ritual making a private place wherein Gerard and the bird were alone together. Gerard’s reflections and feelings expanded about him into a stilled thought-chamber wherein he ceased to hear the traffic or be aware of the passers-by. He thought of his father lying dead with his waxen alienated face, his high thinned nose and sunken chin, and pathetic open mouth, his poor defeated dead father, whose image was now and forever connected with the ghost of the grey parrot. Perhaps, indeed it was very likely, that Grey was alive while his father was dead. Gerard wanted to tell this, felt he was somehow telling it, to the parrot in the shop. The cage was hung quite high up, so that the parrot and Gerard were eye to eye. There were no other creatures in the window. The pity and love which Gerard felt for the parrot, the tender sad guilt, were very like the feelings which he had when he thought about his father, about the things which ought to have been said and the affection which ought to have been more openly expressed. Do the dead know how much we loved them, did they know, for they know nothing now? As Gerard was thinking these thoughts, he found that he had instinctively moved his hands, beginning to lift them towards the cage. He recognised the movement as the shadow-start of one he had so often performed of opening the door of Grey’s cage and putting in his hand and watching the bird climb onto his fingers, feeling the cool scaly clutch of the feet, then lifting the little oh so light almost weightless living being out of the cage to cradle it against him while he stroked the soft feathers. At this remembrance tears came into Gerard’s eyes.
And it was as if the parrot now before him understood, and felt sympathy and sorrow, while remaining, like a close but calm friend, detached, surveying but not swept into the dark pool of grief. The bird was now moving to and fro, rhythmically from one foot to the other, exactly as Grey used to do; then arresting its dance it spread its wings revealing the sudden ordered fan of grey and scarlet feathers. The movement could not but seem to be a cordial gesture. Then the wings closed and were fussily adjusted and settled. The parrot was staring intently at Gerard with its wise yellow eyes framed in ellipses of white dry skin. It stared at him firmly, purposively, as if to keep his attention and preserve their telepathic communion. Then it bent forward, seizing the bars of the cage in its strong black beak, turned upside down and began a slow clambering circumnaviga
tion of the cage, all the time turning its head so as to continue to gaze at Gerard. This was just what Grey used to do. When he saw the parrot upside down engaged in its laborious climb Gerard, in spite of the memory, smiled, then became grave and sad again.
He entertained, then banished, the awful tempting idea of going into the shop, buying the parrot, carrying the heavy cage away carefully, returning home in a taxi, putting the cage upon a firm table in the drawing room and opening the cage door, for after all he and the parrot were friends already… It was impossible. It was only later that he remembered that his sister was in the house to which he was bringing back a dream parrot. He put his hand against the glass near to the parrot’s upside-down head and pressed the glass hard to convey, in the form of a frustrated caress, a sort of blessing. Then he looked quickly away and set off down the street where the snow was just beginning to be seen upon the pavements.
Gerard was going to the much-discussed and frequently put off committee meeting of the Gesellschaft at which they were to decide ‘what was to be done’ about Crimond and the book. The meeting was to take place, unusually, at Rose’s flat in Kensington. It was normally held at Gerard’s house, but the presence of Patricia and Gideon made this now impossible. Gerard had refused to pursue with his sister the question of her and Gideon joining the group to replace Matthew. He said he would raise the matter at the next meeting. He was reluctant, not perhaps for very clear or good reasons, to let those two join in, though of course their financial contribution would be welcome. Gerard was feeling generally nervous and irritable about the meeting. He had had the awkward task of ringing up Duncan to make sure that he did not want to attend. Duncan certainly did not want to attend, but said that of course he would continue to subscribe. There had been an awkward moment of silence, after which Gerard said he hoped to see Duncan at the Reading Party, and Duncan said ‘maybe’ and rang off, leaving Gerard feeling he had been inadequate and unkind. He often of course invited Duncan to his own house, but Duncan never came, perhaps because of Pat and Gideon, whom he did not like, perhaps because he now found Gerard’s company painful.