The Bell

by Iris Murdoch

  The drive, during which Michael answered Toby’s questions about the countryside, took a little over an hour. Once they stopped briefly to look at a village church. Arrived at Swindon, they went straight to the shop, and found the cultivator packed up ready in the yard. With the shopman’s help, Toby and Michael heaved the wonderful thing into the back of the Land-Rover and made it fast with ropes so that it should not shift about on the journey. Michael looked upon it with love. Its great toy-like yellow rubber-covered wheels jutted out below, and its square shiny red body had burst the packing paper at each corner. The sensitive divided handle thrust its gazelle-like horns toward the front of the van, reaching to the roof between the driver and the passenger. Safely stowed, Michael admired it. He was sorry to see that Toby, whose present ambition was to drive the tractor, seemed to share Patchway’s view that the cultivator was rather a sissy object.

  ‘Now, what about something to eat?’ said Michael. By their early start they had missed high tea. Sandwiches in a pub seemed to be the solution; and Michael recalled a nice-looking country pub he had seen a little way outside Swindon on the road home.

  By the time they arrived there it was about half past seven. The pub turned out to be rather grander than Michael had thought, but they went into the saloon bar, which had kept its old panelling of much-rubbed blackened oak and its tall wooden settles, together with a certain amount of modern red leather, coy Victorian hunting prints, and curtains printed with pint mugs and cocktail glasses. The bottles glittered gaily behind the bar, against which leaned a number of cheerful red-faced men in tweeds of whom it would have been difficult to say whether they were farmers or business men.

  Michael installed Toby, to the latter’s amusement, in a big cosy settle near the window from which they could see the inn yard and keep an eye on the Land-Rover with its precious cargo.

  ‘It’s practically illegal, my bringing you in here!’ said Michael. ‘You are eighteen, aren’t you? Only just? Well, that’s good enough. Now, what’ll you drink? Something soft perhaps?’

  ‘Oh, no!’ said Toby, shocked. ‘I’d like to drink whatever the local drink is here. What do you think it is?’

  ‘Well,’ said Michael, ‘I suppose it’s West Country cider. I see they have it on draught. It’s rather strong. Would you like to try? All right. You stay here. I’ll get the drinks and the sandwiches.’

  The sandwiches were good: fresh white bread with lean crumbling roast beef. Pickles and mustard and potato crisps came too. The cider was golden, rough yet not sour to the taste, and very powerful. Michael took a large gulp of the familiar stuff; he had known it since childhood. It was heartening and full of memories, all of them good ones.

  ‘This isn’t the West Country here, is it?’ said Toby. ‘I always thought Swindon was rather near London. But perhaps I’m mixing it up with Slough!’

  ‘It’s the beginning of the West,’ said Michael. ‘At least I always imagine so. The cider is the sign of it. I come from this part of the country myself. Where did you grow up, Toby?’

  ‘In London,’ said Toby. ‘I wish I hadn’t. I wish at least I’d been away to boarding-school.’

  They talked for a while about Toby’s childhood. Michael began to feel so happy he could have shouted aloud. It was a long time since he had sat in a bar; and to sit in this one, talking to this boy, drinking this cider, seemed an activity so perfect that it left while it lasted no cranny for any other desire. Vaguely, Michael reflected that this was an unusual condition; he knew that it was one which he did not especially miss or yearn for: yet, in a little while, he was, even in his enjoyment of it, conscious too of things missed, things sacrificed, in his life. At one moment, somehow connected with this, he had a vision, which had at one time haunted him but which he rarely had now, of the Long Room at Imber, carpeted, filled, furnished, its walls embellished with gilt mirrors and the glow of old pictures, the grand piano back again in its corner, the cheerful tray of drinks upon the side table. But even this did not diminish his enjoyment: to know clearly what you surrender, what you gain, and to have no regrets; to revisit without envy the scenes of a surrendered joy, and to taste it ephemerally once more, with a delight undimmed by the knowledge that it is momentary, that is happiness, that surely is freedom.

  ‘What do you want to do after you leave College?’ said Michael.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Toby. ‘I’ll be some sort of engineer, I suppose. But I don’t know quite what I want to do. I don’t think I want to go abroad. Really, you know,’ he said, ‘I’d like to do something like what you do.’

  Michael laughed. ‘But I don’t do anything, dear boy,’ he said. ‘I’m a universal amateur.’

  ‘You do,’ said Toby. ‘I mean you’ve made something marvellous at Imber. I’d like to be able to do that. I mean, I couldn’t ever make it like you have, but I’d like to be part of a thing like that. Something so sort of pure and out of the modern world.’

  Michael laughed at him again, and they disputed for a while about being out of the world. Without showing it, Michael was immensely touched and a little rueful about the boy’s evident admiration for him. Toby saw him as a spiritual leader. While knowing how distorted this picture was, yet Michael could not help catching, from the transfigured image of himself in the boy’s imagination, an invigorating sense of possibility. He was not done for yet, not by any means. He looked sideways at Toby. Toby had put on a clean shirt and a jacket but no tie, for his trip to town. He had left the jacket in the van. The shirt, still stiff from the laundry, was unbuttoned and the collar stood up rigidly under his chin while a narrow cleft in the whiteness revealed the darkness of his chest. Michael remarked again the straightness of his short nose, the length of his eyelashes, and his shy wild expression, tentative, gentle, untouched. He had none of that look of cunning, that rather nervous smartness, that is often seen in boys of his age. As Michael looked he felt hope for him, and with it the joy that comes from feeling, without consideration of oneself, hope for another.

  ‘I can’t finish this, I’m afraid,’ said Toby. ‘It’s nice, but it’s too strong for me. No, nothing else, thank you. Would you like it?’ He poured the remains of his pint of cider into Michael’s almost empty pint pot. Michael tossed it off and got himself another pint. He saw that there was chocolate displayed on the counter, and got some for Toby. Returning to their corner he noticed with some surprise that it was quite dark outside.

  ‘We must be off soon,’ he said, and began to swallow his drink quickly while Toby ate his chocolate. How rapidly the time had passed! In a moment or two they rose to go.

  As they came out into the yard Michael felt an extreme heaviness in his limbs. It was foolish of him to have had that second pint; he was so unused to the stuff now, it had made him feel quite tipsy. But he knew he would be all right once he got into the van; the driving would sober him up. They packed in and Michael turned up the lights and set off on the homeward road, the cultivator bumping comfortably behind him, one soft rubber handle just touching his head.

  The road looked different at night, the grass verges a brilliant green, the grey-golden walls of tall-windowed houses looming up quickly and vanishing, the trees bunched and mysterious above the range of the headlights. Every now and then a cat was to be seen running in front of the car or deep in the undergrowth, its eyes glowing brightly as it faced the beam of light.

  ‘You’re a scientist,’ said Michael. ‘Why don’t human beings’ eyes glow like that?’

  ‘Are you sure they don’t?’ said Toby.

  ‘Well, do they?’ said Michael. ‘I’ve never seen anyone’s eyes glow.’

  ‘It may be that human beings always turn their eyes away,’ said Toby. ‘I remember learning at school that Monmouth was caught after the rebellion, when he was hiding in a ditch near Cranborne, because his eyes were gleaming in the moonlight.’

  ‘Yes, but surely not like that,’ said Michael. An unidentified animal faced them at some distance down the road, a pair of
greenish flashes, and then was gone.

  ‘I believe there’s something about special cells behind the eyes,’ said Toby. ‘But I’m still not completely sure that our eyes mightn’t glow too if we really faced the headlights. Let’s try it! I’ll get out and come walking towards you facing the light, and you see what my eyes look like!’

  ‘You are a scientist!’ said Michael, laughing. ‘Well, not now. We’ll wait till we arrive home, shall we? Then you can make your experiment.’

  Toby fell silent and they drove along for a while without speaking. Michael could hear him yawning. At last he said, ‘That cider has made me quite sleepy.’

  ‘Well, go to sleep then,’ said Michael.

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Toby. ‘I’m not as sleepy as all that.’ In a few minutes he was asleep. Michael could see from the corner of his eye the boy’s head hanging forward. Days of hard physical work followed by the dose of potent cider had knocked him out completely. Michael smiled to himself.

  The Land-Rover proceeded more slowly than on the journey out. Michael still felt a bit drunk though perfectly capable. The exaltation and delight which he had felt in the pub had faded into a purring contentment combined with a most luxurious heaviness of the whole body. He leaned upon the steering wheel, turning it with the length of his forearm, and singing inaudibly to himself. Toby hung forward, obviously dead asleep. Then on a corner he slumped quietly sideways and Michael could feel his weight against him. The boy’s head descended gently on to his shoulder.

  Michael drove on in a dream. He could feel Toby’s knee touching his thigh, the warmth of his lean body against his side, his hair brushing his cheek. The unexpected delight of the contact was so great that he closed his eyes for a moment and then realized that he was still driving. He tried to breathe more quietly so as not to disturb the boy, and found that he was taking long deep breaths. He slowed the Land-Rover down a little, and calmed his breathing. He could feel distinctly, as if his frame were suddenly magnified, the rise and fall of his ribs and the corresponding movement of Toby’s body. He was afraid his heart-beat alone might wake the sleeper.

  He drove on slowly now at an even pace. If he didn’t have to stop there was no reason why Toby shouldn’t sleep all the way to Imber. He manoeuvred the Land-Rover gently round corners. Fortunately the roads were clear. That Toby should just go on sleeping seemed the most desirable thing in the world. Michael felt an ecstasy of protective joy; and for a moment he remembered an old peasant he had once seen high in the Alps sitting on a green bank and watching his cow feeding. The absurd comparison made him smile. He went on smiling.

  On a piece of straight road he ventured to look down at Toby. The boy was curled against him, his legs drawn up, his hands touchingly folded, his head lying now between Michael’s shoulder and the back of the seat. The white laundered shirt hung open almost to his waist. As Michael looked at him, and then returned his gaze to the road, he had a very distinct impulse to thrust his hand into the front of Toby’s shirt. The next instant, as if this thought had acted as a spark, he had a clear visual image of himself driving the Land-Rover into a ditch and seizing Toby violently in his arms.

  Michael shook his head as if to clear away a slight haze which was buzzing round him. He began to realize that he had a headache. He really must control his imagination. He was surprised that it could play him such a trick. He was blessed, or cursed, with a strong power of visualizing, but the snapshots which it produced were not usually so startling. Michael felt solemn now, responsible, still protective and still joyful, with a joy which, since he had taken a more conscious hold on himself, seemed deeper and more pure. He felt within him an infinite power to protect Toby from harm. Quietly he conjured up the vision of Toby the undergraduate, Toby the young man. Somehow, it might be possible to go on knowing him, it might be possible to watch over him and help him. Michael felt a deep need to build, to retain, his friendship with Toby; there was no reason why such a friendship should not be fruitful for both of them; and he felt a serene confidence in his own most scrupulous discretion. So it would be that this moment of joy would not be something strange and isolated, but rather something which pointed forward to a long and profound responsibility, a task. There would be no moment like this again. But something of its sweetness would linger, in a way that Toby would never know, in humble services obscurely performed at future times. He was conscious of such a fund of love and goodwill for the young creature beside him. It could not be that God intended such a spring of love to be quenched utterly. There must, there must be a way in which it could be made a power for good. Michael did not in that instant feel that it would be difficult to make it so.

  He realized with intense disappointment that they were nearing Imber. He must have been following the road without noticing it. He wondered how drunk he still was. Thank heavens there had been no mishaps. He turned smoothly onto the main road and in a few minutes the high stone wall of the estate appeared on the right. Michael was deeply sorry to arrive. Toby was still heavily asleep. It was a shame to wake him. The Land-Rover began to slow down. Following some instinct Michael did not drive it as far as the Lodge gates. He stopped some hundred yards short of the Lodge and turned off the headlights. Then he switched off the engine. A terrible silence followed.

  Toby stirred. Then he rolled back in his seat and opened his eyes. He became at once wide awake. ‘Good heavens, was I asleep?’ he said. ‘I’m so sorry!’

  ‘Nothing to be sorry for,’ said Michael. ‘You had a good sleep. We’re home again now.’

  Toby exclaimed with surprise. He stretched, yawning. Then he said eagerly, ‘Look, we can do that thing with the headlights now. Do you mind? You turn them right up and I’ll come walking towards you looking straight into them.’

  Michael obediently turned the headlights full up, while Toby jumped out of the Land-Rover. He saw the boy running away down the road until he was nearly beyond the range of the beam. Then he turned and began to walk slowly back, keeping his eyes steadily fixed on where Michael was behind the blaze of the lights. His brightly illuminated figure approached at an even pace. His dark eyes, wide open and strangely like those of a sleepwalker, were unblinking and clearly visible. They did not gleam or glow: he walked with a graceful slow stride, very slim, the white sleeves of his shirt uncurling on his arms. He was a long time coming.

  When he reached the van he leaned his head in through the window towards Michael. Michael put one arm across his shoulder and kissed him.

  It happened so quickly that the moment after Michael was not at all sure whether it had really happened or whether it was just another thing that he had imagined. But Toby remained there rigid, where he had stepped back, pulling himself away from Michael’s grasp, and a look of utter amazement was to be seen on his face.

  Michael said, and found his voice suddenly thick and stumbling, ‘I’m sorry. That was an oversight.’ The remark was idiotic, not what he had meant to say at all, that was not the word he wanted. There was a moment’s silence. Then Michael said, ‘I’m sorry, Toby. Just come round the other side and get in and I’ll run you to the Lodge. We’re still a little way away.’

  Toby came round the front of the car, averting his face. As he had his hand on the door on the other side, someone came into view on the road, another figure vividly revealed and walking slowly up into the beam of the lights. It was Nick. As soon as Michael saw him, following an instinctive desire for concealment, he switched the lights off again. Nick’s form loomed up near the car. Toby was still standing in the road.

  ‘Hello you two,’ said Nick. ‘I thought you were never coming. What’s the game, stopping such a long way from the gates?’

  ‘I made a mistake,’ said Michael. ‘Perhaps you’d see Toby in. I’ll be off now. Cheerio, Toby.’ He put the lights up, started the car with a jolt, and moved off down the road and in through the Lodge gates which fortunately were open. He and Toby had been behind the headlights; but Nick might have seen something all the same. As he
drove up to the house, which was by now entirely in darkness, it was this thought which tormented him most.

  CHAPTER 12

  IT WAS LUNCH-TIME ON the following day. As was customary, the meal was taken in silence, while a reading was made by some member of the company. Lunch usually took about twenty minutes, during which the reader sat at a side table, while the others sat at the long narrow refectory table with Michael at one end and Mrs Mark at the other. Today the reader was Catherine and the book from which she read was the Revelations of Julian of Norwich. Catherine read well, in a slightly trembling voice, with deep feeling and patently moved by the matter of her reading.

  ‘This is that Great Deed ordained by our Lord God from without beginning, treasured and hid in His blessed breast, only known to Himself: by which He shall make all things well. For like as the blissful Trinity made all things of nought, right so the same blessed Trinity shall make well all that is not well.

  ‘And in this sight I marvelled greatly and beheld our Faith, marvelling thus: Our Faith is grounded in God’s word, and it belongeth to our Faith that we believe that God’s word shall be saved in all things; and one point of our Faith is that many creatures shall be condemned: as angels that fell out of Heaven for pride, which be now fiends; and man in earth that dieth out of Faith of Holy Church: that is to say, they that be heathen men; and also man that hath received christendom and liveth unchristian life, and so dieth out of charity: all these shall be condemned to hell without end, as Holy Church teacheth me to believe. And all this so standing, me thought it was impossible that all manner of things should be well, as our Lord showed in the same time.