The Bell

by Iris Murdoch

  ‘Why, here we are!’ said Toby.

  ‘Where?’ said Dora. She came up beside him. The trees stood back from the water and the moonlight clearly showed a grassy space and a sloping stone ramp leading down into the lake.

  ‘Oh, just a place I know,’ said Toby. ‘I swam here once or twice. No one comes here but me.’

  ‘It’s nice,’ said Dora. She sat down on the stones at the top of the ramp. The lake seemed quite still and yet made strange liquid noises in the silence that followed. The Abbey wall with its battlement of trees could be seen on the other side, some distance away to the left. But opposite there was only the dark wood, the continuation across the water of the wood that lay behind. It seemed to Dora that the wide moonlit circle at the edge of which she sat was apprehensive, inhabited. An owl called. She looked up at Toby. She was glad she was not there alone.

  Toby was standing quite near at the head of the ramp, looking down at her. Dora forgot what she was going to say. The darkness, the silence, and their proximity made her quite suddenly physically aware of Toby’s presence. She felt a line of force between his body and hers. She wondered if at this moment he felt it too. She remembered how she had seen him naked, and she smiled. The moon revealed her smile and Toby smiled back.

  ‘Tell me something, Toby,’ said Dora.

  Toby, seeming a little startled, came down the ramp and squatted beside her. The cool weedy smell of the water was in their nostrils. ‘What?’ he said.

  ‘Oh, nothing in particular,’ said Dora. ‘Just tell me something, anything.’

  Toby sat back on the stones. After a pause he said, ‘I’ll tell you something very strange.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Dora.

  ‘There’s a huge bell down there in the water.’

  ‘What?’ said Dora. She half rose, amazed, scarcely understanding him.

  ‘Yes,’ said Toby, pleased with the effect he had produced. ‘Isn’t it odd? I found it when I was swimming underwater. I wasn’t sure at first, but I came back a second time. I’m certain it’s a bell.’

  ‘You saw it, touched it?’

  ‘I touched it, I felt it all over. It’s only half buried in the mud. It’s too dark to see.’

  ‘Had it carvings on it?’ said Dora.

  ‘Carvings?’ said Toby. ‘Well, it was sort of fretted and worked on the outside. But that might have been anything. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Good God!’ said Dora. She stood up. Her hand covered her mouth.

  Toby got up too. He was quite alarmed. ‘Why, what is it?’

  ‘Have you told anyone else?’ said Dora.

  ‘No. I don’t know why, but I thought I’d keep it a secret till I’d visited it once again.’

  ‘Well, look,’ said Dora, ‘don’t tell anyone. Let it be our secret now, will you?’ Dora, who felt no doubts either about Toby’s story or about the identity of the object, was suddenly filled with the uneasy elation of one to whom great power has been given which he does not yet know how to use. She clutched her discovery as an Arab boy might clutch a papyrus. What it was she did not know, but she was determined to sell it dear.

  ‘All right,’ said Toby, rather gratified. ‘I won’t utter a word. I suppose it is very odd, isn’t it? I don’t know why I wasn’t more thrilled about it. At first I wasn’t sure - and, well, a lot of other things distracted me since. Anyway, I might be wrong. But you seem so specially excited about it.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re not wrong,’ said Dora. Then she told him the legend which Paul had told her, and which had so much seized upon her imagination, of the erring nun and the bishop’s curse.

  By the end of the tale Toby was as agitated as she was. ‘But something like that couldn’t be true,’ he said.

  ‘Well, no,’ said Dora, ‘but Paul said there’s usually some truth in those old stories. The bell probably did get into the lake somehow, and there it is.’ She pointed at the smooth surface of the water. ‘If it is the medieval bell it’s very important for art and history and so on. Could we pull it out?’

  ‘We, you mean you and me?’ said Toby amazed. ‘We couldn’t possibly. It’s a huge thing, it must weigh an immense amount. And anyway, it’s sunk in the mud.’

  ‘You said only half sunk,’ said Dora. ‘You’re an engineer. Couldn’t we do it with a pulley or something?’

  ‘We might rig up a pulley,’ said Toby, ‘but we haven’t any power. At least, I suppose we might use the tractor. But what do you want to do?’

  ‘I don’t know yet,’ said Dora. Her face was cupped in her hands, her eyes shining. ‘Surprise everybody. Make a miracle. James said the age of miracles wasn’t over.’

  Toby looked dubious. ‘If it’s important,’ he said, ‘oughtn’t we just to tell the others?’

  ‘They’ll know soon enough,’ said Dora. ‘We won’t do any harm. But it would be such a marvellous surprise. Suppose - oh, well, I wonder - suppose, suppose we were to substitute the old bell for the new bell somehow, you know, when the new bell arrives next week? They’re going to have the bell veiled, and unveil it at the Abbey gate. Think of the sensation when they find the medieval bell underneath the veil! Why, it would be wonderful, it would be like a real miracle, the sort of thing that makes people go on pilgrimages!’

  ‘But it would be just a trick,’ said Toby. ‘And besides, the bell may be all broken and damaged. And anyway it’s too difficult.’

  ‘Nothing is too difficult,’ said Dora. ‘I feel this was meant for us. I should like to shake everybody up a bit. They’d get a colossal surprise - and then they’d be so pleased at having the bell, it would be like an unexpected present. Don’t you think?’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be - somehow in bad taste?’ said Toby.

  ‘When something’s fantastic enough and marvellous enough it can’t be in bad taste,’ said Dora. ‘In the end, it would give everyone a lift. It would certainly give me a lift! Are you game?’

  Toby began to laugh. He said, ‘It’s a most extraordinary idea. But I’m sure we couldn’t manage it.’

  ‘With an engineer to help me,’ said Dora, ‘I can do anything.’ And indeed as she stood there in the moonlight, looking at the quiet water, she felt as if by the sheer force of her will she could make the great bell rise. After all, and after her own fashion, she would fight. In this holy community she would play the witch.

  CHAPTER 16

  ‘THE CHIEF REQUIREMENT OF THE good life’, said Michael, ‘is that one should have some conception of one’s capacities. One must know oneself sufficiently to know what is the next thing. One must study carefully how best to use such strength as one has.’

  It was Sunday, and Michael’s turn to give the address. Although the idea of preaching was at this moment intensely distasteful to him, he forced himself dourly to the task, thinking it best to maintain as steadily as possible the normal pattern of his life. He spoke fluently, having thought out what he wanted to say beforehand and uttering it now without hesitations or consulting of notes. He found his present role abysmally ludicrous, but he was not at a loss for words. He stood upon the dais looking out over his tiny congregation. It was a familiar scene. Father Bob sat in the front row as usual, his hands folded, his bright bulging eyes intent upon Michael, devouring him with attention. Mark Strafford, his eyes ambiguously screwed up, sat in the second row with his wife and Catherine. Peter Topglass sat in the third row, busy polishing his spectacles on a silk handkerchief. Every now and then he peered at them and then, unsatisfied, went on polishing. He was always nervous when Michael spoke. Next to him was Patchway, who usually turned up to hear Michael, and who had removed his hat to reveal a bald spot which although so rarely uncovered contrived to be sunburnt. Paul and Dora were not present, having gone out for a walk looking irritable and obviously in the middle of a quarrel. Toby sat at the back, his head bowed so low in his hands that Michael could see the ruff of hair at the back of his neck.

  Michael was aware now, when the knowledge was too late to do him any good, that it
had been a great mistake to see Toby. The meeting, the clasp of the hands, had had an intensity, and indeed a delightfulness, which he had not foreseen - or had not cared to foresee - and which now made, with the earlier incident, something which had the weight and momentum of a story. There had been a development; there was an expectancy. Michael knew that he ought to have managed the interview with Toby differently, yet, that, being himself, he could not have done so: and since this was the case he ought to have written Toby a letter, or better still done nothing whatsoever and let the boy think of him what ill he pleased. He was ready to measure now how far the interview had been necessary to him in order that he might somehow refurbish Toby’s conception of him, so rudely shaken by what had occurred.

  The trouble was, as Michael now saw, that he had performed the action which belonged by right to a better person; and yet too, by an austere paradox, a better person would not have been in the situation that required that action. It would have been possible to conduct the meeting with Toby in an unemotional way which left the matter completely closed; it was only not possible for Michael. He remembered his prayers, and how he had taken the thing almost as a test of his faith. It was true that a person of great faith could with impunity have acted boldly: it was only that Michael was not that person. What he had failed to do was accurately to estimate his own resources, his own spiritual level: and it was indeed from his later reflections on this matter that he had, with a certain bitterness, drawn the text for his sermon. One must perform the lower act which one can manage and sustain: not the higher act which one bungles.

  Michael was aware that to over-estimate the importance of what was going on was itself a danger. He sighed for some robust common sense which should envisage his action as deplorable but now at least completed without disastrous consequences. He felt, rather pusillanimously, that a sturdy, even cynical, confidant could have helped him to reduce the power which the situation had over him, by seeing it in a more ordinary and less dramatic proportion. But he had no possible confidant; and he remained continually and miserably aware of one consequence which his action had had. He had completely destroyed Toby’s peace of mind. He had turned the boy from an open, cheerful hard-working youth into someone anxious, secretive, and evasive. The change in Toby’s conduct seemed to Michael so marked that he was surprised that no one else seemed to have noticed it.

  He had also destroyed his own peace of mind. An unhealthy excitement consumed him. He worked steadily, but his work was bad. He found now that he awoke each morning with a feeling of curiosity and expectation. He could not prevent himself from continually observing Toby. Toby, on his part, avoided Michael, while being obviously extremely aware of him. Michael guessed on general grounds, and then read in the boy’s behaviour, that a reaction had set in. When he had spoken with Toby in the nightjar alley he knew that the emotion which he had felt had received an echo: the memory of this moved him still. The sense that Toby’s feelings were now ebbing, that he was perhaps deliberately hardening his heart and regarding with disgust that impulse of affection drove Michael to a sort of frenzy. He longed to speak to Toby, to question him, once more to explain; and he could not help hoping that Toby would sooner or later force such a tête-à-tête upon him. He wished that somehow he could pull out of this mess the atom of good which was in it, crystallizing out his harmless goodwill for Toby, Toby’s for him. But he knew, and knew it very well, that this was impossible. In this world, it was almost certain, Toby and he could never now be friends: and hardening of the heart was perhaps indeed the best solution. He prayed constantly for Toby, but found that his prayers drifted into fantasies. He was tormented by vague physical desires and by the memory of Toby’s body, warm and relaxed against his in the van; and his dreams were haunted by an ambiguous and elusive figure who was sometimes Toby and sometimes Nick.

  The thought, when he let his mind dwell upon it, that Nick and Toby were together at the Lodge, added another dimension to Michael’s unrest. He returned, fruitlessly, again and again, to the question of whether Nick could possibly have seen him embracing Toby. On each occasion he decided that it was impossible, but then found himself wondering afresh. Such a cloud of distress surrounded this subject that he was not sure what it was, here, that he was regretting: the damage to his own reputation, the possible damage to Nick, or something far more primitive, the loss of Nick’s affection, which after all he had no reason to think he still retained and certainly no right to wish to hold.

  The only result of these agitations was that it became more impossible than ever to ‘do anything’ about Nick himself; though he was still resolved to speak to Catherine. When his imagination, with its cursed visual agility, conjured up possible scenes at the Lodge, he was tormented by a two-way jealousy which also prevented him from reconsidering his plan, so desirable from many points of view, of moving Nick or Toby or both up to the Court. His motives, he felt, would be so evident, at any rate in the quarters which at present concerned him most, nor could he bring himself to act on such motives, even though supported by other good reasons. His only consolation was that Toby would be leaving Imber in any case in another couple of weeks; and Nick would probably leave when Catherine had entered the Abbey. It was a matter of hanging on. Afterwards he would, with God’s help, set his mind in order and return to his tasks and his plans, which he was determined should not be altered by this nightmarish interlude.

  Michael was continuing with his address. He went on, ‘It is the positive thing that saves. Can we doubt that God requires of us that we know ourselves? Remember the parable of the talents. In each of us there are different talents, different propensities, many of them capable of good or evil use. We must endeavour to know our possibilities and use what energy we really possess in the doing of God’s will. As spiritual beings, in our imperfection and also in the possibility of our perfection, we differ profoundly one from another. How different we are from each other is something which it may take a long time to find out; and certain differences may never appear at all. Each one of us has his own way of apprehending God. I am sure you will know what I mean when I say that one finds God, as it were, in certain places; one has, where God is concerned, a sense of direction, a sense that here is what is most real, most good, most true. This sense of reality and weight attaches itself to certain experiences in our lives - and for different people these experiences may be different. God speaks to us in various tongues. To this, we must be attentive.

  ‘You will remember that last week James spoke to us about innocence. I would add this to what he so excellently said. We have been told to be, not only as harmless as doves, but also as wise as serpents. To live in innocence, or having fallen to return to the way, we need all the strength that we can muster - and to use our strength we must know where it lies. We must not, for instance, perform an act because abstractly it seems to be a good act if in fact it is so contrary to our instinctive apprehensions of spiritual reality that we cannot carry it through, that is, cannot really perform it. Each one of us apprehends a certain kind and degree of reality and from this springs our power to live as spiritual beings: and by using and enjoying what we already know we can hope to know more. Self-knowledge will lead us to avoid occasions of temptation rather than to rely on naked strength to overcome them. We must not arrogate to ourselves actions which belong to those whose spiritual vision is higher or other than ours. From this attempt, only disaster will come, and we shall find that the action which we have performed is after all not the high action which we intended, but something else.

  ‘I would use here, again following the example of James, the image of the bell. The bell is subject to the force of gravity. The swing that takes it down must also take it up. So we too must learn to understand the mechanism of our spiritual energy, and find out where, for us, are the hiding places of our strength. This is what I meant by saying that it is the positive thing that saves. We must work, from inside outwards, through our strength, and by understanding and using exactly tha
t energy which we have, acquire more. This is the wisdom of the serpent. This is the struggle, pleasing surely in the sight of God, to become more fully and deeply the person that we are; and by exploring and hallowing every corner of our being, to bring into existence that one and perfect individual which God in creating us entrusted to our care.’

  Michael returned to his seat, his eyes glazed, feeling like a sleepwalker in the alarming silence which followed his words. He fell on his knees with the others and prayed the prayer for quietness of mind, which was at such moments all that he could compass. Laboriously he followed the petitions of Father Bob Joyce; and when the service was over he slipped quickly out of the Long Room and took temporary refuge in his office. He wondered how obvious it had been that he was saying the exact opposite of what James had been saying last week. This led him to reflect on how little, in all the drama of the previous days, he had dwelt upon the simple fact of having broken a rule. He recalled James’s words: sodomy is not deplorable, it is forbidden. Michael knew that for himself it was just the how and why of it being deplorable that engaged his attention. He did not in fact believe that it was just forbidden. God had created men and women with these tendencies, and made these tendencies to run so deep that they were, in many cases, the very core of the personality. Whether in some other, and possibly better, society it could ever be morally permissible to have homosexual relations was, Michael felt, no business of his. He felt pretty sure that in any world in which he would live he would judge it, for various reasons, to be wrong. But this did not make him feel that he could sweep, as James did, the whole subject aside. It was complicated. For himself, God had made him so and he did not think that God had made him a monster.