The Bell

by Iris Murdoch

  Peter Topglass had been the first to suspect that the descent of the bell into the lake had been no accident. He made his own investigations and then drew Michael’s attention to the way in which the wooden supports had been tampered with. Michael and Peter mentioned their discovery to no one, but the reporters seemed to get on to it somehow. Michael was amazed at what Peter showed him; but once convinced that the thing was indeed no accident he knew for certain who had been responsible for it. He even, in some obscure way, and with an intuition which belonged to his present state of shock, guessed at Nick’s motives. If Nick had wished to interfere with his sister’s vocation he had probably been more successful than he expected.

  The thought of Nick, once it came fully upon him, began to eat up Michael’s consciousness; and about three a.m. he almost got out of bed to set out for the Lodge. He resolved to see Nick early the next day. With a sort of relief which at a deeper level was almost pleasure he felt that the catastrophes of the last days had as it were opened the pathway between him and Nick. At moments it almost seemed as if they had been designed to do that. To be able now so dramatically to see Nick both as criminal and as afflicted made it essential at last to destroy the barrier between them. Praying for him now, Michael felt once more the elusive sense that God held them both, and held in some incomprehensible way the twisted strands of their concern for each other. Michael knew now that he must talk to Nick. In this extremity he must act fully the part of what he was, Nick’s only friend at Imber. After so much that was appalling, no harm could now come of this, and the simple duty of speaking frankly and openly to Nick was finally set before him. Michael asked himself uneasily whether this duty had not in fact been set before him for some time if only he had used his eyes; but he left the question unanswered, and suddenly secure, relieved, positively glad at the thought of speaking with Nick tomorrow he fell into a sweet sleep.

  The next morning opened with a full programme of cares and anxieties. Michael left the dispatching of Catherine to the Straffords, assisted by James, while he coped with further telephone calls, including one from the Bishop, who had been reading the morning papers and who was anxious that Michael should draft a letter to The Times designed to remove certain misapprehensions. It was nearly eleven o’clock before Michael had a moment to raise his head. When at last he felt that he could escape he left his office and set off down the steps and across the terrace. Nick had declined to travel up with Catherine. He had in fact not been pressed to by Margaret Strafford, who held a theory that Catherine was better without her brother for the moment; but he had announced in rather vague terms that he would follow her very soon. Michael expected to find him at the Lodge, probably in the company of the whisky bottle. He did not imagine that Nick would have the resolution or the sheer powers of organization required to leave Imber quickly.

  As he emerged on to the terrace and saw how blue the sky had once more become and how warm and colourful the sunshine, he felt a stirring of hope and a sense that the horrors through which they had all passed would be dissolved and blotted out. All would yet be well. And as this sense of hope and of a healing providence came upon him he recognized it, without any distress or misgiving, as inextricably mixed up with his old love for Nick and the sheer joy of being once again upon the path that led towards him.

  ‘Oh Michael, wait a moment!’ said Mark Strafford from behind him.

  Michael stopped and looked back, to see Mark leaning over the balcony above him.

  ‘James wants to see you,’ said Mark. ‘He’s in his office.’

  Michael turned about. He had no wish to see James just now but with an almost automatic reaction he put first the claim of James’s summons. The other matter was already seeming to him like a self-indulgence, a piece, after all, of his own private business. He came back up the steps. James’s summons. As Michael climbed the stair to James’s office he reflected that it was unusual for James to summon him in this way. When James wanted to see him he usually looked for him and shouted his business out wherever Michael was to be found. He reached James’s door, knocked, and went in.

  The room was not large and was practically empty of furniture. A rickety table of much scored oak was James’s desk, with two canvas garden chairs, one on each side. Letters and papers filled boxes on the floor. Behind the desk a crucifix hung on the wall. The floor was unstained and uncarpeted, and the ceiling webbed with cracks. The resonant autumn sunshine showed abundant dust.

  James was standing behind the desk as Michael came in, and running his hands again and again through his jagged dark hair. Michael sat down opposite to him, and James slumped back into his canvas chair, making it groan and bulge.

  ‘Catherine got off all right?’ said Michael.

  ‘Yes,’ said James. He avoided Michael’s eye and fiddled with things on the desk.

  ‘You wanted to see me, James?’ said Michael. He felt preoccupied and in a hurry.

  ‘Yes,’ said James. He paused and fiddled the things back into their original position. ‘I’m sorry, Michael,’ he said, ‘this is very difficult.’

  ‘What’s the matter?’ said Michael. ‘You look upset. Has anything new happened?’

  ‘Well, yes and no,’ said James. ‘Look, Michael, I can’t wrap this up and you wouldn’t want me to. Toby has told me everything.’

  Michael looked out of the window. He had again the strange sensation of déjà vu. Where had all this happened before? In the silence that followed the world seemed gently to crack about him, its appearance unchanged yet ready now to fall to pieces. Disaster is not quickly apprehended.

  ‘What did he tell you?’ said Michael.

  ‘Well,’ said James, ‘you know, what happened between you. I’m sorry.’

  Michael looked up at the crucifix. He could not yet bring himself to look at James. A quiet feeling of exasperation, which oddly accompanied his sense of total ruin, kept him sane and calm. He said, ‘Very little happened.’

  ‘That’s a matter of opinion,’ said James.

  In the autumnal distance there was the sound of a gun being fired. Michael’s mind reverted in a dazed way to Patchway and the pigeons. That real world was now very far off. He wondered if there was any point in giving James his version of the story. He decided there was not. Excuses and explanations would be out of place; and besides, he was without excuse. He said, ‘All right. You’ve learnt something about me, haven’t you, James?’

  James said, ‘I’m terribly sorry,’ twisting his things about on the table and pausing to examine his hand.

  Michael looked at James now. In spite of the cell-like appearance of the room, dear James was not well framed for the part of Grand Inquisitor. Almost anyone else would have got some shred of satisfaction or interest from the scene. James got none. Watching his expression of pain and misery and his fidgeting Michael pictured for a moment how James must see him: the enormity of the crime and the disgusting and unnatural propensity which it revealed. James was right of course. Plenty had happened.

  ‘When did Toby make this confession to you?’ said Michael. He tried to calm his mind, to think about Toby instead of himself. To think about his victim.

  ‘The night before last,’ said James. ‘He came to my room sometime after eleven o’clock. He’d been wandering round in the rain and was frightfully upset. We talked for hours. He told me all about the bell business too, I mean the other bell, and how he planned it all with Dora and how they pulled the bell out of the lake. But we didn’t get along to that until the early hours of the morning. We spent such a long time on you.’

  ‘That was good of you,’ said Michael. The exasperation was gaining ground. ‘What did you say to Toby?’

  ‘I was pretty serious with him,’ said James. He looked at Michael now with a level stare. A tiny flame of hostility flickered in the air between them and was gone. ‘I thought he’d behaved foolishly, even in some ways badly, in relation to both you and Dora, and I told him so. After all, he’d felt badly enough about it him
self to take this rather drastic step of making a confession - which I must say I thought a very sensible and admirable thing to do. And it had to be met with the seriousness which the case deserved. Anything else would have been too little.’

  ‘Where’s Toby now?’ said Michael.

  ‘I sent him home,’ said James.

  Michael jumped up from his chair. He wanted to shout and bang on the desk. He said quietly to James, ‘You perfect imbecile.’ He went and stood looking out of the window. ‘When did he go?’

  ‘He went this morning,’ said James. ‘I sent him off on the early train. The car taking Catherine picked him up at the Lodge. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to raise all this with you yesterday, but there was so damn much happening. I had to make a decision. I decided it was better he shouldn’t see you again. He obviously felt the thing was - you know, sort of messy and unclean. He’d tried to clean things up, for himself anyway, by telling about it. And I thought he should go while he felt, as it were, that he’d got back to some sort of innocence. If he’d stayed and had a talk with you he’d just have fallen back into the mess again, if you see what I mean.’

  Michael drummed on the window. James was quite right in a way. But his heart ached terribly for Toby, sent away now with all his imperfections on his head, loaded with guilt, and involved by James’s solemnity in a machinery of sin and repentance with which he probably had no capacity to deal. How typical of James to do the simple decent thing which was also so damned obtuse. By sending Toby away he had branded the thing into the boy’s mind as something appalling; almost any other way of closing the incident would have been better than this one. Yet as Michael reflected how dearly he would have liked to be able to close this drama in his own way, he was not at all sure that his method would have been an improvement.

  ‘Why am I an imbecile?’ said James.

  ‘There was no need to be so damn solemn,’ said Michael. ‘The real blame belongs to me. By sending Toby away you’ve made him feel like a criminal and made the whole business into a tremendous catastrophe.’

  ‘I don’t see why he shouldn’t take his full share of responsibility, ’ said James. ‘He’s quite old enough.’

  Michael looked away across the lake and down the great avenue of trees toward the Lodge. He said, ‘I wonder why he suddenly took it into his head to confess to you?’

  ‘Why shouldn’t he?’ said James. ‘He was worried enough. I think what immediately made up his mind were some things Nick Fawley said. Apparently Nick knew all about it and reproached him and told him he ought to own up. First sensible thing Nick’s done since he arrived, in my view.’

  Michael continued to drum on the window. The slight dazzle from the lake hurt his eyes. He moved his head to and fro, as if to help his mind to take in what he had just heard. He was too appalled to speak. So Nick ‘knew all about it’. His revenge could not have been more perfect. To have seduced Toby would have been crude. Instead, Nick had forced Toby to play exactly the part which Nick himself had played thirteen years earlier. Toby had been his understudy indeed. Michael had hoped to save Nick. But Nick had merely ruined him a second time and in precisely the same way.

  Michael turned back to the desk and looked down at James, who had gone back to ruffling his hair. ‘Well, that appears to be that,’ he said to James. ‘I’m sorry if I’ve seemed cross. I assure you I regard myself as very much to blame. There’s no point in going into it now. Of course I shall resign or whatever one does and go away from Imber.’

  James began to say something in protest.

  There was a loud knock on the door and Mark Strafford came in. He looked pale, upset, and frightened behind his beard. He said, ‘Sorry to barge in. I was down at the ferry and I heard a funny noise coming from the Lodge. I think it’s Murphy howling in a very odd way. I wondered if there might be anything the matter down there.’

  Michael pushed past him and took the stairs three at a time. He descended to the terrace, scarcely putting a foot to the ground, and began to run down the path to the ferry, his breath coming in loud gasps from sheer panic. Behind him he could hear the pounding footsteps of the other two. He reached the ferry well in advance, jumped into the boat, and cast off alone. The progress across the lake seemed to take an endless time, as the boat lazily rolled and pitched to and fro slowly propelled by the single oar, and as he dug savagely into the water Michael’s glazed eyes could see, shimmering as in a glass, the figures of James and Mark left behind him on the landing-stage. He reached the other side and jumped out, and the boat immediately shot away, pulled vigorously back towards the house.

  Michael stumbled on, still gasping, across the grass. The Lodge seemed immensely far away. He could hear quite clearly now the intermittent howling of Murphy. It was a terrible sound. He ran on, but by the time he got to the trees he had to slow down to a walk. His breath didn’t seem to be coming properly. Leaning forward in an agony of anxiety he almost fell. He had to walk the last hundred yards quite slowly.

  He was almost at the Lodge now. The door was open. Michael called Nick’s name. There was no reply. Just outside the door he stopped. Something was lying in the doorway. He looked more closely and saw it was an outstretched hand. He stepped over the threshold.

  Nick had shot himself. He had emptied the shot-gun into his head. To make quite sure he had evidently put the barrel into his mouth. There was no doubt that he had finished the job. Michael averted his face and stepped outside. Murphy, who had been standing over the body, followed him out whining.

  James and Mark were approaching down the avenue at a run. Michael called to them, ‘Nick has killed himself.’

  Mark stopped at once and sat down on the grass at the side of the avenue. James came on. He took a look into the Lodge and came out again.

  ‘You go and phone the police,’ said Michael. ‘I’ll stay here.’

  James turned and went back towards the lake. Mark got up and followed him.

  Michael started to go in through the door but could not bring himself to. He stood for a while looking at Nick’s hand. It was a hand that he knew well. He stepped back and sat down on the grass with his back against the warm stone of the wall. He had thought that Nick’s revenge could not be more perfect. He had been wrong. It was perfect now. Hot tears began to rise behind his eyes and his mouth opened, trembling.

  Murphy stood near him, shivering and whining, his eyes fixed on his face. He came up to Michael, and Michael stroked him gently. The landscape was blotted out.

  CHAPTER 26

  MORE THAN FOUR WEEKS HAD passed and there was no one left now at Imber except Michael and Dora. It was late in October. Great sheets of various coloured cloud trailed endlessly across the sky, and the sun blazed intermittently upon the thick masses of yellow and copper trees. The days were colder, beginning usually with fog, and a perpetual haze lay upon the surface of the lake.

  James and the Abbess between them had acted quickly. It had been decided to dissolve the community. James had departed back to the East End of London. The Straffords had decided to throw in their lot with a community of craftsmen who were attached to a monastery in Cumberland. Peter Topglass, urged and implored by Michael, had joined a party of naturalists who were just setting out for the Faroe islands. Patchway had returned laconically to farm-labouring on a nearby estate. Michael stayed on to wind up the affairs of the market-garden and Dora stayed on with him.

  Margaret Strafford was still in London with Catherine. Catherine had been having insulin treatment and was continually under the influence of drugs. She had not yet been told of her brother’s death. Margaret wrote that there was no point in visiting her at present. She would let Michael know when there was some improvement and when a visit might be welcome. Meanwhile, Catherine was as well as could be expected. The doctors were not unhopeful of a complete recovery. The insulin was making her fat.

  Dora, after appearing for some time to be about to go, announced, with a dignity and resolution which seemed new to her, that she wou
ld stay as long as she could be of any use. She seemed unperturbed by a large though diminishing number of long distance telephone calls. At first, everyone was far too upset and preoccupied to think of suggesting that she should depart; later, she made herself indispensable. She fetched and carried, did errands by bicycle in the village, and washed and dusted and tidied unobtrusively in the house. The time came when, with the gradual departure of the others, she did more than this. By the time she and Michael were left alone Dora was doing the cooking and catering, as well as full time secretarial duties. It turned out that she could type moderately well, and in the end she dealt entirely with the more routine correspondence, composing letters out of various formulae suggested by Michael.

  They had been alone now for nearly a fortnight. Peter was the last to go; and even his departure was to Michael a relief. As for the others, his relations with them had become irrevocably wrenched and painful. Mark treated him with a clumsy kindness, but could not help being both curious and patronizing. While James followed him about with a look of such desperate compassion that he was quite glad for James’s own sake when the latter departed to London. Although neither James nor Mark knew the details of Michael’s history their imagination had been set in motion, and he had been unable to conceal from them his violent excesses of grief during the days following Nick’s death. Their strange looks showed that they had drawn some conclusions of their own, and by the time they left their presence at Imber had become a torture to Michael. Dora’s being there, on the other hand, did not trouble him at all. She was useful, she knew nothing, she guessed nothing, and she did not judge.

  Dora, once she had made up her mind to stay, created her own role with energy; though even then there were one or two minor escapades. The beginning of October brought a spell of hot weather, and Dora announced that she proposed to learn to swim. By the time that anyone got around to telling her not to, since no one had time to supervise her and she must not go out alone, she had practically taught herself. She turned out, when put to it, to be a natural swimmer, buoyant and fearless in the water. Peter, and later Michael, went along occasionally to view her efforts and give some advice, and before the warm weather ended she had mastered the art quite adequately.