The Book and the Brotherhood

by Iris Murdoch

  ‘Thank you,’ said Crimond, ‘the book has been typed. I don’t need any assistance.’ However he did not seem to expect her to go, but continued to stare at her. He waited for her to speak again.

  ‘So it’s finished?’ said Lily.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So what are you writing now?’

  ‘Another book.’

  ‘Is it like the first one, a sequel?’

  ‘No. It’s quite different.’

  ‘What’s it about?’

  Crimond did not answer this question. He rubbed his long nose where the new spectacles had made a red line on the bridge. Then, not looking at her, he busied himself cleaning the spectacles with a handkerchief, then refilling his fountain pen at an ink pot and wiping it on a piece of blotting paper. She thought, feeling a little calmer now, that he looked older, his pale face a little puffy, his faded red hair a little thinner.

  Lily said, ‘What else are you doing?’

  ‘Learning Arabic.’

  ‘Why Arabic?’

  ‘Why not.’

  ‘So that’s what that is. I thought it was shorthand.’ Some handwriting at the edge of the desk had caught her eye. She moved her chair forward.

  Crimond, who had given her his attention for a moment, was now looking down at the loose-leaf book in which he had been writing when she came in. The Arabic was in an open exercise book. Lily peered at it. ‘Did you write this?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is it difficult?’

  ‘Yes.’

  There was a moment’s silence. Crimond then said, ‘As we have nothing more to discuss, and I am very busy, perhaps you could go away.’

  Lily suddenly blushed. She could feel the blush running up her long neck and through her cheeks to her brow. She felt that she must now say something striking or be banished forever. It was like the moment in the fairy tale when one must answer the riddle or die. Unfortunately Lily could not think of anything striking. She said lamely, ‘I very much want to help you.’

  ‘I need no help, thank you.’

  ‘I could help you in your political work –’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I could type, I could run errands, I could fetch books, I could do anything.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I know you’re a lion and I’m a mouse, but a mouse could help a lion. There’s a story of a lion who’s kind to a mouse, and the mouse says I’ll help you one day, and the lion laughs and then the lion is caught in a trap and the mouse gnaws through all the ropes and sets him free.’

  This little speech at last showed some sign of amusing Crimond and attracting his attention. He said, but unsmiling, ‘I don’t like mice.’

  ‘Then I’ll be anything you like,’ said Lily. ‘That’s what I came to tell you. I love you. I’ve always loved you. I know I’m a little worthless person, but I want to be in your life. For all I know you have hundreds of Lilies, little people who want to serve you, all right, but I’m me, and I exist for you and I know that I do. I told you about that dance last year. Whatever happened you know I meant well. I feel I’m a sort of messenger in your life. After all I’ve known you a long time. I’d do anything you wanted, I’d be your slave, I want to give myself to you as a total present, I don’t care what might happen, all I want is to know that you accept me as someone you could rely on for ever and use in any way you pleased. I feel this as a vocation, as if I’d been told by God, you are an absolute for me, I can’t do anything but give myself. If you can only accept me I’ll be silent, I’ll be invisible, I’ll be as quiet as a mouse – sorry, you don’t like mice – but I just want to be there, like something in the corner of the room, waiting for anything that you want me for –’

  Crimond, who had been listening to this with a slight frown, holding his spectacles against his lips, said, ‘I don’t like this stuff about little people and your being a little worthless person. You are a person, not a little person. I don’t like that terminology.’

  Crimond seemed to be making a general point, and nothing to do with her personally, but she said eagerly, ‘I’m glad you don’t think I’m worthless – I’d study, you could teach me –’

  ‘Oh Lily, just get back to reality, will you.’

  ‘You are my reality.’

  ‘You know you’re talking idle nonsense, just something that you want to get off your chest even if it makes no sense. Now you’ve said it perhaps you’ll kindly go away.

  ‘I can’t go away,’ said Lily. She had been talking fast and eagerly, but calmly. Now her voice sounded in her ears with that dreadful hysterical edge to it. ‘I won’t go away. I’m sure you have some special feeling about me. You must be kind to me. Can’t you even be kind when I love you so much? How can there be so much love and it simply go to waste? I must have something from you, like a pact, a kind of status, anything, even a very very small thing, which is between us for always.’

  Crimond, his gaze straying from her as if wearily, gave a sigh. ‘Lily, I can’t attach any sense to what you ask. You speak as if I could easily give you something very valuable –’

  ‘Yes, yes, easily, you could, you could!’

  ‘But I haven’t got this thing, this special feeling, I don’t want you as a slave –’

  ‘Then I wouldn’t be –’

  ‘Or an invisible object in the corner of the room, or a mouse, I don’t like things like that, I couldn’t have such a person near me, and I can’t give you any sort of “status” as you put it, I just don’t have any special feeling for you or any special role for you – I’m sorry.’

  Lily, controlling tears, got hold of her coat which had been lying on the floor and pulled it up onto her knees. ‘All right. I understand. I’m sorry. I had to see you and I had to say what I’ve said.’

  ‘Now do get back into real life. What are you doing now in the real world?’

  ‘I’m getting married. To Gulliver Ashe. Tomorrow.’

  Crimond did then actually smile, in fact he laughed. ‘Oh Lily, Lily – so you were ready to run even from under the wedding crown?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Or would I have had to put up with a married slave?’

  ‘No, no – if you’d wanted me none of that would have happened, none of that would have existed.’

  ‘Oh you silly – silly – girl.’

  Lily smiled through tears then dashed the tears away and stood up and put on her coat. She said, ‘I can see you though, sometimes in the future, call in, you won’t say never?’

  ‘Not never, but I’ve got nothing for you.’

  ‘Then I’ll come for nothing.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Lily,’ said Crimond, ‘just clear off and be happy, can’t you, and make someone else happy, and forget all this dream stuff. Go on, go away, get out and be happy!’

  ‘Rose and Gerard have invited us to dinner, for after when they came back from Venice,’ said Lily.

  ‘At their new house?’ said Gulliver.

  ‘No, silly, they’ve only just bought it, at Rose’s place.’ Rose and Gerard had bought a house in Hammersmith near the river.

  ‘I thought Gerard would never stick it out in Jenkin’s foxhole,’ said Gull, ‘it’s definitely not his scene.’

  ‘What about our scene?’ said Lily. ‘I think we should buy a house soon, a nice small one in Putney or somewhere, with a garden. The children will like that.’

  ‘The children?!’

  ‘Now you’ve got a job and I’ve got a project we can afford it. I believe I’ve still got some of that old money left too, God knows what happened to most of it.’

  ‘Let’s not be in a hurry,’ said Gulliver. ‘I like it here. And we aren’t even married yet!’

  ‘We will be this time tomorrow!’ It was evening, late evening, of the day of Lily’s visit to Crimond, and Gull and Lily were still sitting at the table after a lengthy celebration dinner including numerous toasts in vodka, wine and later cherry brandy, wishing themselves happiness and success in the future. They
were both drunk but feeling exceptionally alert, clear-headed, argumentative and witty.

  ‘We will be,’ said Gulliver, ‘unless one of us funks it – or both of us!’

  ‘Running away from under the wedding crown.’

  ‘That’s a phrase out of Dostoevsky,’ said Gull, ‘I thought you hadn’t read him.’

  ‘Oh. I thought it was just a general expression. I heard it somewhere.’

  ‘Well, I won’t run away!’ said Gulliver. ‘Look, here’s the ring!’ He showed Lily the golden ring nestling in its little furry velvet box. He also, in an instant, pictured the dreadful goings-on in that Dostoevsky novel. What a business it was to deal with women. One just had to take the risk.

  ‘You’ve told Leonard what to do?’ Leonard Fairfax was to be best man, and Angela Parke, Lily’s old art school friend, was to be bridesmaid.

  ‘At a registry office, there’s nothing to it!’ said Gull. ‘I’ll give Leonard the ring so he can give it me back at the crucial moment. I bet most people don’t bother even with that. Anyway, you’ve done it before!’

  ‘Yes but – there wasn’t a ring – I can’t remember –’ Lily had refused to wear a wedding ring. It seemed incredible now that she had once been married. Gulliver didn’t want to hear about her shadowy husband, and she could not now remember his face – poor James, oh poor James. ‘I do like a bit of ritual.’

  ‘It’ll all be over in four minutes.’

  ‘My God. Then we’ll be stuck for life!’

  ‘I certainly hope so. Maybe we can arrange a match between Leonard and Angela?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ said Lily. ‘Angela’s older than me and she’s got fat. Anyway Leonard seems to be getting off with Gillian Curtland. Now she’s an eligible girl.’

  ‘She’s awfully pretty,’ said Gulliver, quickly banishing the image of that eligible nineteen-year-old.

  ‘I still can’t decide what to wear.’

  ‘I’m going to wear my pale grey check suit with the pale pink over-check. You won’t wear trousers, will you, please?’

  ‘Of course not. I think I’ll wear that black and white dress with the velvet collar.’

  ‘So we just invite Angela and Leonard back here afterwards? It’s almost a clandestine wedding! I forgot to tell you I saw Tamar round at Leonard’s place. Conrad Lomas was there and that trendy priest from Boyars.’

  ‘All religion did for her was get rid of her mother.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Gull, ‘I think it was something deep.

  Anyway she and the priest were having a jolly good laugh together! And Violet’s rumoured to be happy.’

  ‘That’s impossible, she can’t be happy.’

  ‘Well cheerful or gleeful or something. Pat and Gideon don’t know what to do with her, Leonard says she’s eating them!’

  ‘They’re not edible,’ said Lily, ‘not like Tamar was. Gideon will pension her off.’

  ‘I say, look at us, we’re gossiping about our friends just like in real life.’

  ‘Are they our friends, have we friends?’

  ‘Yes, and we’ll have lots of new ones too, and we’ll invite them to dinner, just like ordinary real people do!’

  ‘But do we want to be ordinary real people?’

  ‘Are we capable of it?’

  They both looked doubtful.

  ‘I wonder if Gideon will invest in our Box Shop?’ said Lily.

  Lily and Angela Parke had decided to set up a shop, well to begin with a stall, selling matchboxes. It had been Angela’s idea, though Lily had supplied the managerial enthusiasm and financial backing. It was, according to Lily, bound to succeed. Every tourist will buy a pretty matchbox, the cheapest and most picturesquely ‘typical’ of all gift souvenirs. From matchboxes the idea spread to other boxes, hand-painted wooden boxes in the Russian style, carved boxes with Celtic designs, boxes charmingly decorated with images and designs stolen from museums and art galleries all over London, attractive arty stuff not pretentious and not kitsch. Angela was sure she could collect together a lot of unemployed talents. ‘Art students aren’t all grand,’ she said, ‘they don’t all think it’s beneath their genius to make pretty things!’

  ‘I hope so!’ said Gulliver in answer to Lily’s question. He had not yet met the formidable Angela Parke, and he feared that ‘the project’ would simply swallow up the rest of Lily’s money. As soon as they were married he would see Lily’s accountant, he would ‘go into the matter’ and if necessary ‘put his foot down’. After all, he had to play the husband! ‘I look forward to meeting Angela!’

  ‘Yes, and I’ll meet your miracle-working Newcastle friend, Mr Justin Byng!’

  This was a young American stage-designer who had promised Gulliver a job in a stage design studio he was hoping to set up in London, where Gulliver was to be his secretary and guide to the London theatre. ‘You still haven’t told me how you met him,’ said Lily, ‘or what really happened in Newcastle. We’ve been in such a state since you came back.’

  This was a moment which Gulliver had been putting off. He was suddenly full, choked, with all the fears which the excitement of his new relation with Lily, much of which had taken place in bed, had temporarily eclipsed. Lily would lose her money, Gulliver would lose his job, he was tomorrow to take on a wife whom he would have to provide for; and there was now the more immediate anxiety about how Lily would receive what he was about to tell her.

  ‘Lily, I’ve got to tell you something. I never went to Newcastle.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I didn’t get farther than King’s Cross station.’

  ‘Then where were you all that time?’

  ‘To begin with in a cheap hotel near King’s Cross, and then – staying with Justin Byng.’

  ‘Oh God,’ said Lily, ‘that’s started already!’ She got up from the table and marched to the mantelpiece where she picked up a jade tortoise, considered throwing it across the room and decided not to. Gull was looking so attractive tonight, recent events had improved, even beautified him. He was wearing his pale brown corduroy trousers, resplendently cleaned after the skating disaster, with a new aquamarine sweater from Simpson’s, and new dark brown leather boots.

  ‘Don’t be so bloody,’ said Gull, ‘nothing’s started! Justin lives with a beautiful girl from Michigan who’s married to him! He took me in out of kindness and because he wanted to work with me. And I didn’t tell you sooner because I wanted to be sure it was all real and I really had a job.’

  ‘All right, go on, tell me, and tell me everything.’

  ‘A most extraordinary thing – well, an odd thing – happened to me at King’s Cross station. I know this is absurd, but this is how it is. I found a snail.’

  ‘A snail?’

  ‘Yes. Wasn’t it peculiar? Well, I suppose snails are everywhere but one doesn’t expect to find one in a London main-line station.’

  ‘Good heavens! Go on.’

  ‘I was just checking the trains to Newcastle and I saw this thing on the ground, it was rolling about, someone must have kicked it, I didn’t know what it was, I thought it was something quite peculiar, I picked it up. Of course the little fellow was well back inside his shell, but I assumed he was alive and I sat down with him on a seat, and sure enough after I’d been holding him in my hand for a moment he came right out and unrolled his eyes and started waving his front part about and I put him on the back of my hand and he walked and – do you know – he looked at me.’

  ‘Oh Lord!’ said Lily.

  ‘What’s the matter? Anyway I didn’t know what to do with him. I couldn’t just leave him there, or keep him in my room at the hotel and take him with me to Newcastle, and as I’d developed this sort of personal relationship with him I felt I had to look after him properly. I’m sorry, this sounds daft–’

  ‘It doesn’t,’ said Lily.

  ‘So I set out with my snail, I felt by then he was my snail, to find somewhere safe to put him. But, honestly, round about King’s Cross –’


  ‘I can imagine.’

  ‘I walked about a lot of streets looking for a decent park or garden but I couldn’t find one. So I went back to the station and took the tube to Hyde Park Corner.’

  ‘Well done.’

  ‘I put the snail inside my handkerchief in my trouser pocket and I kept my hand over him all the time, fortunately the train wasn’t crowded. Anyway I set off into the park – but you know, even there, at that end of the park it’s all great vistas of trees and grass and I couldn’t just put him down in the open where a blackbird might scoff him, so – I was pretty obsessed by this time – I went on walking until I came into Kensington Gardens. I knew it was no good in the flower-beds where he’d be unpopular with gardeners. I thought of the Peter Pan area but of course lots of people come there to feed the ducks and there are a lot of birds about. So I fixed on a place beside the Serpentine, nearer the bridge, you know, where there’s a low railing, and I got over the railing and started looking about to find a really bushy place to hide him. Well, while I was ferreting about among the shrubs, holding the dear old snail in my hand, a tall chap stopped on the path and started watching me, he couldn’t think what on earth I was doing. Then he got over the railing and came down and asked me. And then, there was really no other way of explaining it, I told him the whole story. And do you know, he was so nice, he was so amused and quite delighted, he said he cared about little animals too. Then he helped me to find the absolutely ideal spot and we left the snail there with our best wishes and went back to the path and began to walk toward the bridge.’

  ‘That was Justin Byng.’

  ‘Yes. I’d told him I was just going to Newcastle to look for a job and he asked what sort of job and did I know anybody there and where was I living now and lots more questions, and then we went and had a drink at the Serpentine restaurant, and then we had lunch and he told me the story of his life and I told him a lot of mine, and then he insisted I forget about going north and get out of my mouldy lodgings and come and stay with him and Martha while we discussed the job –’