by Iris Murdoch
Dora was wearing a mackintosh and a scarf, but she was already wet through. Her sandalled feet were cold and muddy and the water had splashed up over the end of her dress which now clung damply to her knees, impeding her movements. She stood shivering in the barn, frightened by the darkness and the close blanket of the rain, awed by the proximity of the bell, and feeling increasingly sure now that Toby would not come. She wondered whether she should go and look for him at the Lodge.
It had not escaped Dora that Noel Spens must obviously have imagined that the letter which she had dropped was intended for him; indeed its contents were perfectly framed to sustain this illusion. It was therefore probable that Noel would present himself near the Lodge at two; and this thought had deterred Dora from going earlier to search for Toby. By now, however, Noel would have got tired of waiting and gone to bed. It was surely safe to go to the Lodge; and in any case anything was better than hanging round in the barn frightened out of her wits and chilled to the marrow. Dora set out along the path.
The moon was obscured and the path was full of obstacles, but Dora knew her way pretty well by now and was indifferent to the briars and brambles which dragged at her legs. She could feel the warmth of blood about her ankles. When she emerged from the wood she did not go round the house to the ferry but turned right across the causeway. The two lights were still on; and as she looked ahead of her across the water she saw that there was a light in the Lodge too. This made her extremely uneasy.
Dora began to run now, passing under the Abbey walls and away diagonally across the grass towards the Lodge. When she got near it she slowed down, avoiding the crunchy gravel of the drive and approached cautiously, laying her sodden feet quietly on the wet grass. She saw that the light came from the living-room of the Lodge; there was no light in Toby’s room. She came cautiously up toward the window; it was a modern casement window set with small leaded panes and it was slightly open. Dora heard a murmur of voices. She fell on her hands and knees and crawled toward the window until she was almost underneath it. The voices could be heard clearly now, together with a clink of glasses.
‘It would be hard to say whether or not it’s supposed to be a joke,’ Nick’s voice was saying. He sounded drunk. ‘With people like that you can never tell.’
‘I’m sorry, Mr Fawley, but I still don’t understand,’ said another voice.
Chilled as she was Dora went a degree colder. The voice was Noel’s. Incautiously she lifted her head to the level of the sill. Noel and Nick were sitting together at the table with the whisky between them. There was no one else in the room. Amazed and horrified Dora sank back and settled herself on a cushion of wet grass.
‘You see,’ Noel went on, ‘this is in the technical sense such a good story that it would be a pity not to get it absolutely correct. And in any case I have a certain preference for getting things right. Even we newspaper men have our morals, Mr Fawley. Thanks, I will, just a little.’
‘I’ve told you all I can,’ said Nick. ‘As for getting it right, who ever gets any story right? All you can do is mention a few facts, I don’t suggest any more than that. What will happen tomorrow is anyone’s guess. All I can promise you is a spectacle. I hope you’ve got a camera with you?’
‘I’m sorry to keep on bothering you,’ said Noel in the slow patient voice of a sober man talking to a drunk, ‘and I know you must be frightfully tired, but do you mind if we go over it again? I’d like to check the notes I’ve made. You say that two members of the community, identity not disclosed, have found an old bell which used to belong to the convent long ago. And these two are planning what you call a miracle - the substitution of the old bell for the new bell. But what do they expect to achieve by this? After all, this is England, not Southern Italy. It sounds more like a practical joke.’
‘Who knows what they expect to achieve?’ said Nick. ‘I’m sure they don’t know themselves. Publicity perhaps. I told you this place was appealing for funds. And if you think it sounds mad, it’s no more mad than believing that Jesus Christ was God and died to redeem our sins.’
‘I can’t agree,’ said Noel. ‘Belief is a highly selective business. And people will believe that who otherwise don’t part company with common sense. But never mind, let’s get on with the story. You say that the plan won’t now be carried out?’
‘Unfortunately not,’ said Nick. ‘It was a beautiful plan, but one of the parties has lost his nerve.’
‘I must say, you intrigue me,’ said Noel. ‘As you may have guessed, I feel no sympathy with an outfit like this. I don’t think these peoples are consciously insincere, but they’re just born to be charlatans malgré eux. I’m sure there are all sorts of little feuds and delusions in this crackpot community and I’ve certainly no objection to reporting them, without comment. If people want to stop being ordinary useful members of society and take their neuroses to some remote spot to have what they imagine are spiritual experiences I’m certain they should be tolerated but I see no reason why they should be revered. But as I say, I want to report and not to malign. What I was wondering, if I may ask it off the record, is what your motives are in telling me all this. Thanks yes. But fill up yourself.’
‘There are moments’, said Nick, ‘when one wants to tell the truth, when one wants to shout it around, however much damage it does. One of these moments is upon me. And now I shall go to bed. I advise you to do the same. You will have a strenuous and amusing day tomorrow.’
Noel began to reply. Dora got up hastily and started to run back the way she had come. The rain, heavier now, deadened the sound of her footsteps as she squelched through the grass. When she was nearly at the causeway she looked back. There seemed to be no one emerging from the Lodge; but as it was hard to see or hear anything except the rain she couldn’t be certain. She ran across the causeway gasping for breath and turned along the lakeside path towards the barn. As she slowed to a walk she began to think. There was no mystery about how Noel was led to the Lodge and into the clutches of Nick Fawley. Her own letter had brought him there. As for how Nick knew about the bell, there need be no mystery about that either: she and Toby had made so much noise on the previous night, anyone might have heard, though in their excited optimism they had reckoned it as unlikely. Nick was, in any case, as she might have remembered, a bad sleeper and a night wanderer. He could easily have found his way to the barn and overheard herself and Toby running over the details of the plan just before they left the scene. Or he might just have seen Toby creeping out and followed him out of sheer curiosity. All that made sense; and by now it was hardly news to her that the plan would fail because one of the parties had lost his nerve. What appalled her was the idea, coming to her now fully for the first time, that this abortive fantasy would be reported, or misreported, in the newspapers and perhaps do great harm to the community.
Dora knew that if she had reflected more carefully on her plan she would have seen that it was bound to get publicity and bound to look, to the outsider, ludicrous or sinister. Its triumphant witch-like quality existed for her alone. Even Toby, she realized, had cooperated to please her rather than because he liked the plan. How could such a thing be understood by the outside world? Dora had become used to thinking of Imber as utterly remote, utterly cut off and private. Imber had retired from the world, but the world could still come to Imber to pry and mock and judge.
Dora reached the barn. She looked and listened. All was silent, all was as she had left it. She switched the torch on to the bell. It hung there, huge and portentous, motionless with its own weight. She switched the light off again and waited, wondering what to do. She came near to the bell which seemed now more and more like a living presence. She put her hand on its rim and felt again the rough encrusted surface and the strange warmth in it. She drew her hand up on to the squares, trying to tell by the feel which picture she was touching. Toby would not come. Should she carry out the plan by herself? She could not do it alone, and in any case her desire to do it had vanished. The enterp
rise now seemed as cheap to her as it would shortly seem to the readers of the sensational press: at best funny in a vulgar way, at worst thoroughly nasty. Dora’s heart swelled with remorse and rage. Why did Noel have to come here? The story would ‘come out’ in any case, but Noel’s presence on the spot would ensure that it would be misreported in thoroughly picturesque detail. Dora knew what Noel could make of a story. She knew too the evasive mockery with which Noel would meet any plea for silence. More obscurely she grieved that Noel had been foolish enough to pursue and intrude in a way which seemed now to make it impossible for her to regard him as a place to escape to. In London his judgement of Imber had eased her heart. Here it was he who was under judgement.
But her more immediate thoughts concerned the bell. It was too late now to hope to keep everything dark. Was there any way of making the revelation less absurd, less damaging to Imber? Nick had told the story as if the projected miracle were the work of someone within the community, and this would probably be how it would appear: a crackbrained stratagem arising out of some schism in a society of lunatics. Yet it was she, and she only, who was responsible. How could that be made clear? Should she make a statement to the press? How did one make a statement to the press? She turned to the bell for help.
She pressed her palm gently against it as if supplicating. The bell moved very slightly. She steadied it and stood with both her hands upon it. Attending to it, she was struck again by the marvel of its resurrection and she felt reverence for it, almost love. When she thought how she had drawn it out of the lake and lifted it back into its own airy element she was amazed and felt suddenly unworthy. How could the great bell have suffered her to drag it here so unceremoniously and make it begin its new life in an outhouse? She should not have tampered with it. She ought by rights to be afraid of it. She was afraid of it. She took her hands off it abruptly.
The hissing of the rain continued all round her, very soft, making an artificial silence more deep than real silence could be. The floor of the barn about her feet was sticky with the water that was still steadily dripping from her garments. Dora stood tense and listening. She put her ear near to the bell as if she half expected to hear it murmur like a shell that holds the echo of the sea. But from all the sound that lay asleep in that great cone not the faintest sigh was audible. The bell was quiet. Fascinated, Dora knelt down on the ground and thrust her arm inside it. It was black inside and alarmingly like an inhabited cave. Very lightly she touched the great clapper, hanging profoundly still in the interior. The feeling of fear had not left her and she withdrew hastily and switched the torch on. The squat figures faced her from the sloping surface of the bronze, solid, simple, beautiful, absurd, full to the brim with something which was to the artist not an object of speculation or imagination. These scenes had been more real to him than his own childhood and more familiar. He had reported them faithfully. They were familiar to Dora too, as in the light of the electric torch she looked at them again.
When she had walked slowly all round the bell she switched the light off. She was ready to drop with tiredness, chilled and stiff with the rain. It was all too difficult; she must go back to bed. But she knew this was impossible. She could not leave things wretchedly like this, unsolved and unmended; she could not leave the bell ambiguously to be the subject of malicious and untrue stories. As if it alone held the solution she could not bring herself to leave it, though tears of exhaustion and helplessness were warming her frozen cheeks. She had communed with it now for too long and was under its spell. She had thought to be its master and make it her plaything, but now it was mastering her and would have its will.
Dora stood beside it in the darkness breathing hard. A thrill of terror and excitement went through her, a premonition of the act before she consciously knew what the act would be. Vaguely there came back to her a memory of something that had been said: the truth-telling voice that must not be silenced. If it was necessary to accuse herself, the means were certainly at hand. But her need was deeper than this. She reached her hand out again towards the bell.
She pushed it a little and it moved. It was not difficult to move it. She felt rather than heard the clapper moving inside the cone, not yet touching the sides. The bell oscillated faintly, still almost motionless. Dora took off her mackintosh. She stood a moment longer in the darkness feeling with her hand how the great thing was shuddering quietly before her. Then suddenly with all her might she hurled herself against it.
The bell gave before her so that she almost fell, and the clapper met the side with a roar which made her cry out, it was so close and so terrible. She sprang back and let the bell return. The clapper touched on the other side, more lightly. Taking the rhythm Dora threw herself again upon the receding surface and then stood clear. A tremendous boom arose as the bell, now freely swinging, gave tongue to its utmost. It returned, its great shape scarcely visible, a huge moving piece of darkness. Dora touched it again. It was only necessary now to keep it swinging. The thunderous noise continued, bellowing out in a voice that had been silent for centuries that some great thing was newly returned to the world. The clamour arose, distinctive, piercing, amazing, audible at the Court, at the Abbey, in the village, and along the road, so the story was told later, for many many miles in either direction.
Dora was so astounded, so almost annihilated at the wonder of it, and by the sheer noise, that she was oblivious of everything except her task of keeping the bell ringing. She did not hear the sound of approaching voices and stood dazed and vacant when some twenty minutes later a large number of people came running into the barn and crowded about her.
CHAPTER 23
BY THE TIME DORA ARRIVED the first part of the ceremony was over and the procession was about to start. It was about twenty minutes past seven. The rain had stopped and the sun shone through a thin curtain of white cloud, diffusing a chilly pale golden light. A white mist curled upon the surface of the lake, concealing the water, the top of the causeway just visible above it.
Dora had slept. Hustled back to the Court by Mrs Mark she had fallen into bed and become instantly unconscious. She woke again about seven and immediately remembered the procession. As she listened she could hear the distant sound of music. Things must have begun already. Paul was not to be seen. She dressed hastily, scarcely knowing why she felt it so very important to be present. Her memories of the night were confused and dreadful, like drunken memories. She recalled being dazzled by the light of torches, and seeing the bell, still swinging, revealed in their beams. A lot of people had surrounded her, pulling her, questioning her. Someone had put a coat over her shoulders. Paul had been there too, but he had said nothing to her, he was too transported at seeing the bell. He had not come back to their bedroom, so she assumed that he was still in the barn. They had divided the night’s vigil between them.
Dora felt stiff and unspeakably hungry and miserable in a blank exhausted way. The air smelt of disaster. She put on her warmest clothes and went out onto the landing from which a window on the front of the house would command a view of the proceedings. An astonishing scene awaited her. Several hundred people, all completely silent, were standing in front of the house. They covered the terrace, crowded on the steps and balcony, and lined several deep the path towards the causeway. They had the expectant silence which falls during a ceremony when singing or speaking has momentarily stopped. They stood there silent in the early morning, giving to the scene that sense of drama which is always present when many people are ceremonially gathered in the open air. They were all looking towards the bell.
The Bishop, dressed in full regalia, with mitre and crook, faced the bell which was still in place on the terrace. Behind him a number of little girls, clutching recorders, were trying to get out of the way of a number of little boys, wearing surplices, who were being hustled forward by Father Bob Joyce. The Bishop stood with evident patience, like a kindly man interrupted, and without turning round while the silent scuffle continued. The Bishop, as it turned out afterwa
rds, knew nothing of the night’s events. With his good ear plunged deep in the pillow he had not been rousted by the clangour, nor had anyone chosen to tell him, so early in the morning, so improbable a story.
The little boys had by now successfully ousted the little girls, who were scattered along the edge of the crowd, casting anxious glances at their teacher. The situation of the Morris dancers was, however, even less to be envied. They had pressed forward in the wake of the choir under the impression that this was their moment. Complete with hobby-horse, tophatted Fool, and fiddler, armed with sticks and handkerchiefs, their legs decorated with bells and ribbons, they were conspicuous and self-conscious, not yet liberated and made triumphant by the Morris music and the dance. They had been told to start dancing shortly before the procession moved off and accompany it still dancing down to the causeway. But the great crowd had not been foreseen, and it was now plain that there was no room to dance on the terrace, nor could a space be cleared without asking several elderly ladies, who were pinned against the balustrade, to climb over and jump on to the grass. The Fool pressed forward through the choir boys to consult Father Bob. Father Bob smiled and nodded, and the fiddler who was standing at the back and reduced to a frenzy already by feeling that everyone was waiting for him immediately struck up with Monks’ March. Some of the dancers began to try to dance, while others cried sssh! Father Bob frowned and shook his head and the fiddle music tailed away. The Fool fought his way back and gave some instructions, evidently discouraging ones, to his men. Father Bob tapped the Bishop, now looking more patient than ever, upon the shoulder, and the Bishop began to speak.
Dora could not hear what he said. Desperately anxious not to be left out she ran down the stairs and came out on to the balcony which was already black with spectators. She pushed her way towards the steps and managed to find a place from which she could see. The Bishop had stopped talking, and very slowly the bell was beginning to move. The trolley was pulled from the front and controlled from the back by two pairs of workmen, the men who had come with the bell and who would be permitted to enter the Abbey to put it up. They pulled solemnly on ropes which by an afterthought Mrs Mark had whitened with whitewash. The bell began to move across the terrace towards the slope that led down to the causeway. Immediately after the bell walked Michael and Catherine, followed by the Bishop, and then by the choir. Next, materializing from here and there in the crowd, came members of the brotherhood, all, as Dora observed, looking extremely haggard. After them came the disgruntled Morris dancers, walking not dancing, their bells jingling and white handkerchiefs trailing. After them came the recorder band with their teacher. After them the Girl Guides and after them the Boy Scouts. The tail of the procession was taken up by one or two minor dignitaries of the village church, who felt it their duty to process, and by those members of the general crowd who preferred the privilege of being in the procession to the excitement of seeing it. As they moved off people were clambering on to the balustrade or struggling up the steps to take photographs, cannoning into those who were rushing down the steps, or jumping off the terrace so as to get good places on the slope or the edge of the lake from which to see the next stage of the proceedings.