The Book and the Brotherhood

by Iris Murdoch

  It was a long cold journey home. The heating in the train had broken down, but he managed to get a taxi from the local station to Foxpath instead of having to walk. When he had got inside his little cottage he closed the shutters and lit a wood fire. Then he knelt down and prayed for some time. After that he felt better and heated up a saucepan of stew which he had kept in the fridge. His Master, handing back the problem to him, had informed him that his next task was Violet Hernshaw.

  Altogether elsewhere in the early spring sunshine Jean and Duncan Cambus were sitting together at a café restaurant in a little seaside town in the south of France. They both looked in good health. Their brows were clear; Duncan had lost weight. They had found, and bought, just inland from where they now were, exactly the old picturesque stone-built farmhouse for which they had been searching. Of course it needed a lot to be done to it, renovating it was going to be so exciting. At present they were staying in a hotel.

  The sun was warm, but there was a chill breeze from the sea and they were wearing warm clothes, Duncan an old jacket of Irish tweed, Jean a vast fluffy woollen pullover. They were sitting out, under a budding vine trellis, on the terrasse, drinking the local white wine. Soon they would go inside and have a long very good lunch, with the local red wine, and cognac after. From where they sat they could see the little sturdy harbour with its short thick piers and wide quays, made of immense blocks of light grey stone, and broad gracious fishing boats full of rumpled brown nets, and the gently rocking masts of slim yachts.

  Jean and Duncan were looking at each other in silence, as they often did now, a grave serene silence punctuated by sighs and slight twitching movements like those of animals luxuriously resting, pleasurably stretching their limbs a little. They had escaped. They were able to feel, now far away from them, superior to those who might have judged them or been impertinently curious about their welfare. Their love for each other had survived. This, which must be thought to be the most important part, indeed the essence, of their survival, was something they both thought about incessantly, but expressed mutely, in silent gazing, in shy sexual embraces, and in their satisfaction, in their new house, in being in France, in eating and drinking, in walking about, in being together. They constantly pointed out to each other what was interesting, charming, beautiful, grotesque, in what they daily saw; they made many jokes and laughed a lot.

  An aspect of their silence was that neither of them had told the other everything. There were things which were too awful to be told; and for each, the possession of such dreadful secrets provided, besides intermittent shudders of fear and horror, a kind of deep excitement and energy, an ineffable bond. Jean had not told Duncan why her car had crashed on the Roman Road, nor about Tamar’s revelations concerning her evening with Duncan, and the existence, then non-existence, of the child, nor about how Jean had found Crimond’s note about the duel and telephoned Jenkin. So Jean knew what Duncan knew but did not know she knew, and also knew what Duncan did not know. Duncan had not told Jean about what happened that evening with Tamar, which she knew, nor had he told her about the circumstances of Jenkin’s death, which she did not know. It did not occur to Jean that Duncan might have gone, after all, to see Crimond, nor to Duncan that Jean might have discovered Crimond’s note. Jean thought it very unlikely that Tamar would ever decide to tell Duncan about the child. She believed that Tamar would wish to put the hideous experience behind her, and would be decent enough to spare Duncan a gratuitous pain. She was also certain that Crimond would never open his lips about what happened on the Roman Road. Duncan too thought it impossible that Crimond would ever reveal how Jenkin died. Crimond was someone pre-eminently able to keep silent, and who would take it as a point of honour not to seem to accuse Duncan of something of which he himself was more profoundly guilty. Crimond had set up a death-dealing scene and lured Duncan into it and thus occasioned Jenkin’s death. For his own sake, as well as out of a proper regard for Duncan, he would keep his mouth shut. The fact that only one gun had been loaded was, very often, a subject of meditation for Duncan: of meditation rather than speculation. Duncan took the curious fact as an end point. Crimond had not planned to kill Duncan, he had planned to give Duncan a chance to kill him. Crimond had put the guns in place after the positions had been decided. Duncan dismissed the possibility of their disposal being left to chance. He recalled Crimond’s saying, ‘You have to be used to firearms to be sure of killing somebody even at close range.’ Crimond was ready for it and wanted it properly done. Perhaps he reckoned he would win either way. If he died he would be rid of his life, which perhaps he no longer valued now the book was finished, and would leave Duncan to explain away what would look like a highly motivated murder. If he lived he would, according to some weird calculation made in his weird mind, have got rid of Duncan, made them eternally quits, and so henceforth strangers to each other. Duncan understood this calculation; indeed it had proved, it seemed to him, effective for him too. The unfinished business was finished. He even woke up one morning to find that he no longer hated Crimond.

  In spite of all their motives for keeping off the subject, in an almost formal sort of way, as if it were a game they had to play not against each other but together, Jean and Duncan talked frequently about Crimond. This, they tacitly knew, was a phase they had to go through. Later on his name would not be mentioned. About Jenkin they thought a good deal but did not talk. It was a strange aspect of their mutual silence that they both blamed themselves for Jenkin’s death. Jean’s telephone call had sent Jenkin to the Playroom, Duncan’s finger had pulled the trigger. This was an irony which they would never share.

  ‘One trouble with Crimond was that he had no sense of humour,’ said Jean. They always used the past tense when speaking of him.

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Duncan. ‘He was terribly intense and solemn at Oxford. He and Levquist got on famously, Levquist had no sense of humour either. I think he got completely soaked in Greek mythology and never recovered. He lived all the time inside some Greek myth and saw himself as a hero.’

  ‘Perhaps the Greeks had no sense of humour.’

  ‘Precious little. Aristophanes isn’t really funny, there’s nothing in Greek literature which is funny in the way Shakespeare is. Somehow the light that shone on them was too clear and their sense of destiny was too strong.’

  ‘They were too pleased with themselves.’

  ‘Yes. And too frightened of the gods.’

  ‘Did they really believe in those gods?’

  ‘They certainly believed in supernatural beings. In a dignified way they were fearfully superstitious.’

  ‘That sounds like Crimond. He was dignified and superstitious.’

  ‘The first thing he published was on mythology.’

  They were silent for a moment. When they talked of Crimond they never mentioned the book.

  ‘When Joel comes over, let’s go to Greece,’ said Jean.

  Joel Kowitz had discreetly, in his travels, and he loved travelling, avoided London during Jean’s second ‘Crimond period’. It was not that Joel held any theory about the permanence or impermanence of Jean’s new situation. He knew when he was wanted and when he was not; he studied Jean’s letters (for she wrote to him regularly during that time) waiting for a summons which would be sent the moment, the second, she really desired to see him again. Jean’s letters made, to his loving eye, terrible reading. They were, almost, dutiful, saying she was well, Crimond was well, he was working, the weather was awful, she sent her love. They were, he thought, like letters from prison, like censored letters. He replied, tactfully, describing his doings in his usual witty style (he was a good letter writer), asking no questions. In fact he wanted very much indeed to visit, not only Jean, but Crimond, whom he regarded as a remarkable and extraordinary being, far more worthy and interesting than Jean’s husband. There came a significant gap in communication. Then a quite different letter arrived. Jean was with Duncan again, they were going to live in France, she hoped he would come ove
r soon. Joel, who thought and worried about his daughter all the time, gave a brief sigh for Crimond (if only she’d got together with that fellow at Cambridge), and rejoiced at the signs of life, of hope, of direct speech, in the new style.

  ‘We must be sure the workmen know exactly what to do when we go away.’

  ‘I still haven’t chosen the tiles for the kitchen,’ said Jean.

  ‘Joel mustn’t come here, I don’t want him to see the house till it’s finished. We could meet in Athens, just for a week or so, and go on to Delphi.’

  ‘It would be lovely to be in Athens again.’ Duncan was not so sure about going to Delphi. That dangerous god might still be around there. Duncan had his own Scottish streak of superstition. He did not want any more strange influences bearing on their life, he did not want Jean to be disturbed by anything. He felt for her health as for that of someone recovering from a fit of insanity.

  ‘You put Rose off, I imagine?’ said Duncan.

  ‘Yes.’ Jean and Duncan had stayed briefly in Paris with some old friends from diplomatic days, and from there Jean had, on a sudden impulse, written an affectionate letter to Rose. It had been a very brief untalkative letter, serving simply as a signal, a symbol or secret emblem, a ring or talisman or password, signifying the absolute continuation of their love and friendship. Rose replied at once of course, asking whether she might drop over. Jean and Duncan had left by then and Rose’s letter, equally brief, equally significant, followed them to the south. Jean replied saying not to come. Of course their friendship was eternal. But she was not sure when and where she would want to see Rose again. They had survived Ireland and presumably would survive this. But Jean felt no desire for straight loving looks and intimate conversation. Later, of course, later on when their lovely house was ready, people would come. Rose and Gerard, their old friends – how few – their new friends, if any, their clever and amusing acquaintances.

  Can we, with our souls so harrowed, find peace now, she wondered, is it all real, our house, Duncan sitting there so calm and beautiful, so like a lion, just as he used to be. Thank God he’s drinking less, French food suits him. When the summer comes we shall swim every day. Will it be so? Have I really stopped loving Crimond? She asked herself this question often, not really in any doubt, but rather to insist upon the reality of her escape. It was sad, too, so sad. Jenkin’s death had broken some link, killed some last illusion – or one of the last illusions. Of course Crimond didn’t murder him. But he caused his death. Jean did not allow herself to brood upon that utterly impenetrably mysterious scene, something which, although she believed Crimond’s account of the accident, remained a mystery. It was as if Crimond had killed himself. So in a sense Jenkin achieved something by dying, he died for me, she thought. Of course it’s mad to say this, but all Crimond’s surroundings are mad. And somehow too I killed him, not just by the telephone call, but because I failed to kill Crimond on the Roman Road. How strange to think how nearly I am not here. What did he intend? Would he have swerved at the last moment, did he think I would? Did he want to test himself by an ordeal he would be liberated by surviving? Was it just a symbolic suicide pact because he knew she would funk it and so bring their relationship to an end by the failure of her love, a way to be rid of her mercifully, a symbolic killing? If I pass the test I die, if I fail it he leaves me. Yet he might have died, perhaps he wanted to die, he offered himself to me as a victim, and I did not take him. He was really gambling, for him a gamble was a religious rite, an exorcism, he wanted to end our love, or end our lives, and left it to the gods to decide how. He had said often enough that their love was impossible – yet he had loved her in and through that impossibility. Sometimes she dreamt about him and dreamt that they were reconciled – and in the moment of waking when she knew it was not true her eyes filled with tears. When in that field he had said, go, take your chance, I shall not see you again, his love had spoken, his fierce love that had been ready to will both their deaths. Could such a love end? Must it not simply be metamorphosed into something quiet and sleepy and dark, like some small quiescent life form which could lie in the earth and not be known whether it were alive or dead. It is over, she thought, banishing these sad images, it is finished. I have a new life now under the sign of happiness. I never stopped loving Duncan – and now there is our house and I shall see my father again. Oh let our souls, so harrowed, find peace now.

  Duncan was thinking, we are so quiet together, so peaceful – but is that because we are both dead? Duncan could not make out whether he had survived it all better than would be expected, perhaps even, of all concerned, best of all, or whether he had simply been obliterated. He felt, often, as if he had been entirely broken, smashed, pulverised, like a large china vase whose pieces clearly, obviously, could never be put together again. More often he felt that a stump of himself had survived, a sturdy wicked ironical stump. What was left of him was not going to suffer now! Callousness would be his good. He had suffered so much because of Jean, now he would opt for no more suffering. Perhaps the world had already ended, perhaps it had ended with Crimond in that basement room, or on the night in midsummer when he had seen Jean and Crimond dancing. Perhaps this was an after-life. Vast tracts of his soul no longer existed, his soul was devastated and laid waste, he was functioning with half a soul, with a fraction of a soul, like a man with one lung. What remained was darkened, shrivelled, shrunk to the size of a thumb. And yet he could still plan and ruthlessly propose to be happy, and, necessarily, to make Jean happy too. Perhaps there had always been in him a wicked callous streak which had been soothed and laid to sleep by his love for Jean, his absolute love which had so seemed to change the world, and his success in marrying rich beautiful clever Jean Kowitz whom so many men desired. Perhaps it was this small parcel of vanity in his great love that he was paying for now? He loved Jean, he ‘forgave’ her, but his stricken vanity cried out to be consoled. Would he become, at the last, a demon set free? Oddly he sometimes felt Jean respond to it, this demonic freedom, unconsciously excited by it, as if taught by his new bad self.

  At other times he was amazed at his calmness, his gentleness, his efficiency, his cheerfulness even. He loved his wife and was happy in loving her. He felt tired, but with a relaxed not frenzied tiredness. He was pleased with the new house and able to concentrate on the location of the swimming pool, even to think about it when he awoke in the night. Still he was aware of ghosts and horrors, black figures which stood beside him and beside whom he felt tiny and puny. Perhaps they would simply thus stand with him for the rest of his life without doing him any other harm – or would their proximity drive him mad? Could he go on existing knowing that at any moment… What did the future hold of intelligible misery? Would Crimond recur in his life, coming back relentlessly, inevitably after a period of years? Jean had even said to him – but she had said it, as she also told him, because she felt she must be able to say anything: ‘Supposing I were to go off with Crimond again, would you forgive me, would you take me back?’ ‘Yes,’ said Duncan, ‘I would forgive you, I would take you back.’ ‘Seven times?’ ‘Unto seventy times seven.’ Jean said, ‘I have to ask this question. But my love for Crimond is dead, it is finished.’ Was it true, could she know, would Crimond whistle and she run, Duncan wondered, but with a sort of resignation. Seventy times seven was a lot of times. If they were left in peace would he before long grow tired of worrying about Jean and Crimond? He had his house to think about, where he would sit and write his memoirs and Jean would create a garden and write the cookery book she used to talk about, and perhaps they would drive about the region and write a guide book, or travel and write travel books. He still thought but not obsessively, almost coldly, about what was known only to Crimond and himself, Jenkin’s death. He felt not the slightest wish or obligation to inform anybody about what really happened. If people cared to think that Crimond had murdered Jenkin it was their affair, and not very far from the truth either. He had only lately performed a curious little ritual. Whe
n he had left Crimond to deal with the body and the police, he had carried away in his pocket the five dud leaded cartridges which he had removed from the gun with which he had killed Jenkin. He could not decide what to do with them. If ever connected with him, those odd little things could prove awkward and suggestive evidence. He had to get rid of them, but in London it had proved absurdly hard to decide on any really safe method. He took them with him to France and eventually, stopping the car in a wild place far from their farm house, while Jean was unpacking a picnic lunch, he strayed away and dropped them into a deep river pool. The feel of the smooth weighty objects in his hand made him think of Jenkin’s body. It was like a burial at sea.