The Bell

by Iris Murdoch

  Toby said nothing. They were well into the wood now, and although it was still daylight outside, here it was already quite obscure. The weakened light of the setting sun could not penetrate the trees, which seemed to generate their own darkness. They turned into a wide grassy alley where many coniferous trees had been planted among the oaks and elms. Here it was a little lighter, but still shadowy, and even as they looked growing darker. The alley led towards the wall of the Abbey which could be seen in the distance, pierced by a small gate, the sun still lingering upon it.

  Near the middle of the alley Michael stopped under a tree. They stood there in silence, listening to the inaudible yet somehow living and stirring quietness of the darkening wood. They stood there for a long time, not looking at each other, lulled at last in a kind of coma. Then from nearby among the trees, seeming like a signal, there came a hollow clapping sound. The clapping was followed shortly by a low bubbling churr, then by more clapping; and in the thickening twilight of the alley the birds were suddenly present. They flitted to and fro between the trees, turning and returning in an insistent bat-like circular dance. It was impossible to see how many there were, but it seemed like a multitude as they fluttered and poised in the granular darkness, making a very soft whirring noise with their long pointed wings. Deep in the wood the hollow clapping continued.

  Soon it was almost too dark to see. The birds could still be vaguely apprehended, close overhead, like great leaves that fluttered but never fell, until at last they disappeared, gathered up into the obscurity of the coming night. Michael began to pace slowly back down the middle of the avenue. He did not turn towards Toby, who kept step with him, putting his feet down softly in the longish grass. Michael felt now an extraordinary peace in which he felt sure that Toby shared. It was as if they had been present together at some esoteric and liberating rite. In a way, it was a pity to break the spell by vulgar explanations. But at last he spoke, seeming to utter something that he had learnt by heart.

  ‘Toby, about what happened yesterday evening. I did something foolish and wrong - and something I assure you that I’m not at all in the habit of doing. I was almost as surprised at it as you were. I don’t want to make a drama about this. I won’t say “forget it” because we can’t do that; but I suggest we set it aside and don’t brood on it or give it an exaggerated importance. In so far as it was a wrong action, that concerns me and not you. I just wanted, well, to apologize to you and to ask you to bury the matter. I know I needn’t appeal to your discretion. But I was anxious in case you should be worrying about it. I’m deeply sorry that you’ve been upset and bothered in this way - and I hope you’ll make a real effort not to let this thing spoil your time at Imber.’

  They stopped and turned to face each other. It was almost completely dark now, even in the more open space of the avenue, and the trees were almost invisible, opaque presences of deeper black on either side. Toby looked at the ground and then with an obvious effort raised his head to look at Michael. He said in a low voice, ‘Of course, it’s all right. I’m sorry. It’s all right. It was good of you to talk to me like this. I quite understand. As far as I’m concerned, I’ll bury the matter completely.’

  Looking at his darkened countenance Michael had suddenly a strange sense of déjà vu. Where had this scene, with its inevitable ending, happened before? And even as he spoke and moved he remembered the fading light in his room at school when he and the boy had sat for so long quite still and face to face.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Michael, also very softly. No power on earth could have prevented him at that moment from touching Toby. He reached his hand out blindly toward the boy - and as if drawn magnetically Toby’s hand met his in a strong grip. They stood silently together in the darkness.

  CHAPTER 13

  IT WAS THE NEXT MORNING. The sun was still faithfully shining, but a certain chillness and bleakness in the air at breakfast-time made known the season, and then the eye was more quick to see the signs of autumnal decay. Toby spent the earlier part of the morning with Patchway, who was anxious to teach him how to use the cultivator. Toby found himself surprisingly uninterested in the thing and clumsy with it. After eleven he was dispatched, as usual, to the packing shed, but found there was nothing for him to do there. Mrs Mark, rushing off herself to the house to do the laundry, told him to go back to the garden. But instead Toby slunk away by himself. He wanted to think.

  He decided to go and sit for a while in the visitors’ chapel, and crossed the causeway, careless of observation. He had never been in the chapel except during Mass, and he found it now, empty and silent, an awe-inspiring place. The curtains were drawn back and the altar and the dim sanctuary light could be seen through the grille. The visitors’ chapel was lighted by two small windows of greenish glass and was rather dark. The nuns’ chapel, or what could be seen of it, was darker still, lit no doubt by late Victorian stained-glass windows. Inside there it was desperately silent and yet somehow attentive.

  Toby stood for a while near the door of the visitors’ chapel, listening. He had been told that, between the hours, day and night, there was always a nun at prayer in the main chapel. He could hear nothing. He advanced on tiptoe towards the grille and stopped at the low communion rail which was about three feet in front of it. There was something very odd about being placed sideways on to the altar and not being able to see the body of the chapel which faced the altar. He did not venture to step inside the communion rail; but, looking nervously behind him, he edged up as far as he could toward the left wall of the chapel, and peered through the bars from there. He could see very little more of what lay beyond: only the altar steps, some coloured tiling on the floor, and a further piece of the opposite wall. The nave remained relentlessly hidden.

  Looking through into the greater darkness Toby was suddenly reminded of the obscurity of the lake, where the world was seen again in different colours; and he was taken with a profound desire to pass through the grille. When he had had this thought he was immediately shocked at it and rather frightened. Here he stood, and in a way, nothing prevented him from opening the little gate in the grille and walking through into the chapel and standing there, just for a moment perhaps, looking down the nave. He wondered what he would see. A great expanse of empty benches and a solitary nun, perhaps, kneeling somewhere near the back, regarding him sombrely; or, and the thought made his flesh creep, perhaps the entire community was in there at this moment, a few yards from him, sitting in complete silence. In a way nothing prevented him from going through. In a way it was something entirely impossible, and he could not even bring himself to step over the rail.

  He retired quickly to the back of the visitors’ chapel, feeling shame at the idea of being caught peering, and sat down. He felt irritated and confused and upset. Yesterday he had felt shock and a sort of horror, and then that feverish need to talk to Michael. But at least yesterday he had felt detached, yesterday he had been a spectator. Today he felt involved. He had suffered violence and then somehow been made privy to it; he was no longer a victim but an accomplice. He realized that in a way he was being unfair to Michael. What Michael had said yesterday had been perfectly sensible and cool; and after that very brief conversation in the alley they had walked back to the house, talking with careful casual-ness about other matters. But what lingered chiefly in Toby’s mind was the way in which Michael had seized his hand, and the long moment when they had stood with their hands tightly clasped. If only it hadn’t been for that; for the fact was that Toby knew that he himself had been just as anxious for the contact as Michael had been. He too had been brimming over with emotion. In spite of the words, it had been like a scene between lovers; and looking back, it seemed as if the words were merely straw, flying upward to destruction in the fierce heat of the encounter. Toby felt himself caught in something messy and emotional and he hated it.

  He felt however no dislike for Michael. Even the sense of physical disgust with which the whole business filled him remained turned against hims
elf. What Michael had done was to Toby a tremendous revelation. His whole conception of human existence was become in a moment immensely more complex and even in a brief space had made progress. Toby was already less inclined to label Michael or to circumscribe what he was. He was filled rather with an immense curiosity. Whatever could it be like to be an almost priestlike figure and yet go round kissing boys? He wondered if, in spite of what he had said, Michael did this often? Perhaps he just had sudden irresistible inclinations of this sort. Did he suffer torments of remorse? The sense which Toby had had of the agreeableness of knowing the sordid side of so venerated a person was with him still. For all his distaste for the situation he was sensible of a sort of pleasure in having gained power over Michael: power which in his mind he scarcely distinguished from an instinct to protect. He found himself dwelling with tenderness upon the idea of Michael’s frailties.

  Toby was not in the habit of sitting and brooding. Usually, he was active, practical, and without a care in the world. With the simplicity which goes with a certain sort of excellent up-bringing he had regarded himself as not yet grown up. Men had never troubled him nor women neither. ‘Falling in love’ he regarded as something reserved for the future, for that, it still seemed to him, fairly remote future in which he would become acquainted with the other sex. It was a shock to him now to find how rapidly his vision of the world had altered. He felt an extreme reluctance to work. He wanted most of all to do as he was doing now, to sit and think, remembering endlessly things that had been said and done and conjuring up continually in his mind the pale golden head and narrow worried hawk-like face of his friend. He wondered with alarm if just this was falling in love.

  Toby was far from the sophistication of holding that we all participate in both sexes. He believed that one loved either men or women, and if one was unfortunate enough to develop homosexual tastes one would never be able to live a normal life thereafter. This thought filled him with an insidious fear. Michael had told him not to exaggerate the importance of what had happened; but what had happened had happened to him and was still going on happening, and he had as little control over it as over the progress of digestion. He wondered, and the thought, after last night, had more substance, whether he was a natural homosexual.

  Was he attracted by women? The fact that he had not so far been had bothered Toby, till this moment, not a whit. Now it worried him and he began to want to be immediately reassured. Toby had one brother, much younger than himself, and no sisters. He had scarcely met any girls of his own age. Images he had none to conjure up to test his inclinations. He pondered for a while rather generally upon the conception of Woman. A shapely yet maternal being arose before him. Shyly he began to unclothe her. And as he contemplated the vision, slyly observing his own reactions, he gradually became aware that this immense incarnation of femininity was taking on the features of Dora Greenfield.

  Toby was both surprised and gratified at this development. He had not been especially conscious of finding Dora attractive, but now that he positively searched his mind, encouraging declarations which he would before have regarded as improper, it seemed to him that he had for some time been sensitive to her charms. She had, certainly, a magnificent head, with those flat tongues of golden brown hair shaping it, like something in an Italian picture; and for the rest, she was well rounded, buxom you might say. Toby’s imagination shied for a while about the more expansive image of Dora. But most of all he saw her face, with its full mouth and gentle features and that maternal and encouraging look in the eye. Whereas from the colder image of Catherine, for all its sweetness, Toby’s thoughts fled as from the figure of Artemis, he found in his memories of Dora’s mien and gestures a warm encouragement and an invitation.

  These imaginings were interrupted by the sound of movement within the nuns’ chapel. Soft footsteps were heard and the froufrou of heavy skirts. Toby jumped up in alarm. It must be time for sext. He stood listening to the footsteps and the suggestive rustling. They continued for some time; and then there was a subsiding sound as of a great bird settling into its nest. Silence followed, and was ended at last by a single soprano voice breaking into a plain song chant. Toby was shaken. There was something monstrous, provocative almost, in the invisible and impregnable closeness to him of so many women. The taboo quality of the enclosure could no longer be taken for granted—he found it now irritating, tantalizing, exciting. The nun who was chanting had a very thin true voice, not unlike Catherine’s. The chant continued until the hideous purity and austerity of the song became intolerable to him. He turned and stumbled out of the chapel.

  Out in the dazzling sunlight he felt unutterably sick and disconsolate. He was conscious of an obscure wish to do something violent. The knowledge that he was playing truant from the market-garden troubled him and yet pleased him too. With deliberation, he turned away from the causeway, following the wall of the Abbey in the direction of the still distant main road. He walked close to the wall, trailing his hand against it. It was a very high wall built of small square stones, granite and ironstone, and had a mottled golden appearance. The dust from the dry surface came off on Toby’s hand like pollen. He walked on, head down, thoroughly cross with himself and the world.

  The wall, turning away from the lake, was soon fringed on both sides by tall trees and Toby found himself in the wood. A little further on he realized that the scene was familiar. A wide coniferous alley opened out to his left, leading towards the lake, and at the far end of it he could see the sun shining on the open ground not far from the Lodge. Memories of the previous evening returned to him vividly, and he had a curious sense of being unfaithful, followed by a feeling of the utter messiness of everything. Violence is born of the desire to escape oneself. Toby looked up at the wall.

  A day or two ago he would not even have conceived of the possibility of climbing the Abbey wall. Now suddenly it seemed that since everything was so muddled, anything was permitted. The sense of this was not altogether unpleasant. An enormous excitement filled Toby and he realized then how much he had been, for the last half-hour, physically upset. He moved back into the cover of the trees and looked about him. His heart struck fiercely in his breast. He remembered the little gate he had seen leading into the alley; but that would certainly be locked. He examined the wall. It was a very old wall, loosely put together, full of irregularities and projections. He chose a place where the stones jutted and receded in an inviting way and began to mount, his hands searching for holds in the crevices towards the top of the wall.

  It was harder than it looked. The soft stone crumbled at the edges and with grazed wrists Toby fell back to the ground. He was now frantic. The desire to see inside the enclosure had taken violent hold upon him. He had once more, and to an unprecedented degree, the disturbing sense of being about to pass through the looking-glass. The wall presented just the right degree of difficulty. It was an obstacle but not an insuperable one. Toby tried again.

  This time he found a strong foothold, and spread-eagled halfway up the wall explored above him for a reliable place for his fingers. He found one, and edged one foot up further. He reached out blindly over his head, hoping now to get a grip upon the top. His groping hand encountered the clear edge, and thrusting his fingers through a soft fringe of moss and stonecrop he held on. The other hand followed as his foothold below began to give way. He got one elbow over the top of the wall and his feet scrabbled for holds on the crumbling surface. In another moment, panting and straightening his arms, he pulled himself up until, leaning on his front, one leg could be curled over the top. He rested, astride the wall.

  Exhausted and triumphant, Toby surveyed the scene. He saw, rather to his surprise, that the alley of conifers continued on the other side. He could not, from where he was, see down it. Within the enclosure the wood was just as thick, and no buildings were to be seen, except for a glimpse of the Norman tower far away on the right. Toby felt immediate disappointment. After all, it looked pretty much the same inside as outside. He swun
g his legs over onto the inside of the wall and sat looking about him. Perhaps something would happen, perhaps a nun would pass by. But he sat for a while, and the wood remained impenetrable and silent.

  When climbing the wall Toby had not meant to do more than look into the Abbey grounds. Now that he was on the wall he began to feel, tickling and torturing him as a physical urge, the desire to jump down into the enclosure. A moment or two after feeling the urge he knew it to be irresistible. He might delay, but sooner or later he must jump. When he realized this he became so agitated that he jumped immediately, landing with a good deal of noise and damage to his clothing among some brambles. He picked himself up and stood still, breathing hard and listening. As everything remained quiet he moved cautiously away from the wall and walked softly towards the alley where he hoped he might get a view of the Abbey buildings.

  Trembling a little and feeling that at any moment a stern voice might call him to account, Toby came into the open ground at the end of the alley. The alley was smooth and well kept. It led however not to a building but to another smaller wall in which there was a door. Nothing more could be seen. Toby stood still for a while looking. He wondered what would happen if he were found; and his imagination hesitated between a picture of nuns fleeing from him with piercing screams and nuns leaping upon him like bacchantes. He did not know which picture was the more alarming; or indeed, he was amazed to find himself reflecting, the more delicious. Gradually as he stood there in the unnerving silence of the place his dismay at what he had done increased. He decided he had better start climbing back again. However the repetition, further down the alley, of the wall and the door constituted too fascinating a challenge. He could not take his eyes off the door; and in a moment he found himself gliding between the trees towards it.