The Bell

by Iris Murdoch

  Eventually a kind of quietness came over him, as of a hunted animal that crouches in hiding for a long while until it is lulled into a kind of peace. The silent days passed like a dream. After his work he sat in the refectory with Dora, drinking innumerable cups of tea, while the petals of fading roses fell upon the table, diffusing a sweet weary smell of potpourri, and they talked of Dora’s plans. He watched Dora, turning towards life and happiness like a strong plant towards the sun, assimilating all that lay in her way. And all the time he thought about Nick until it was as if he spoke to him endlessly in his thought, a continual beseeching wordless speech like a prayer.

  Very slowly a sense of his own personality returned to him. The annihilating sense of a total guilt gave way to a more reflective and discriminating remembrance. It was indeed as if there was very little of him left now. He need not have feared to grow, to thrive upon disaster. He was diminished. Reflection, which justifies, which fabricates hopes, could not do so now for him. He pondered without intensity on what he was: his general grievance against nature, his particular wrong choices. One day no doubt all this would seem charged again with a vast significance, and he would try once more to find out the truth. One day too he would experience again, responding with his heart, that indefinitely extended requirement that one human being makes upon another. He knew this abstractly, and wondered if he would, in that time, do better. It seemed to matter very little. Nothing could mend the past.

  No sharp sense of his own needs drove him to make supplication. He looked about him with the calmness of the ruined man. But what did, from his former life, remain to him was the Mass. After the first weeks he went back to it, crossing the causeway in the early morning through the white fog, placing his feet carefully on the bricks which seemed to glow beneath him in some light from the hidden sun, answering the summons of the bell. The Mass remained, not consoling, not uplifting, but in some way factual. It contained for him no assurance that all would be made well that was not well. It simply existed as a kind of pure reality separate from the weaving of his own thoughts. He attended it almost as a spectator, and remembered with surprise the time when he had thought that one day he would celebrate the Mass himself, and how it had seemed to him that on that day he would die of joy. That day would never come, and those emotions were old and dead. Yet whoever celebrated it, the Mass existed and Michael existed beside it. He made no movement now, reached out no hand. He would have to be found and fetched or else he was beyond help. Perhaps he was beyond help. He thought of those against whom he had offended, and gathered them about him in this perhaps endless and perhaps meaningless attention. And next door, as it were, to total unbelief there recurred to him the egotistical and helpless cry of the Dies Irae. Quaerens me, sedisti lassus;

  Redemisti, Crucem passus;

  Tantus labor non sit cassus.

  They got out of the taxi. Michael paid the taxi-driver for the double journey and asked him to wait to take Dora back to the Court. They went into the station.

  It was yesterday morning that the letter had arrived for which Michael had been waiting. Mrs Mark informed him that Catherine was a great deal better. She seemed, in fact, to be more or less normal, though at this stage one could never say. Of course he must expect to find her much changed. She had not yet asked after her brother; it had been judged wise that Michael should be the one to tell her about Nick’s death. His presence was therefore urgently requested in London.

  Michael was at once eager to be off. His work was done now at the Court. Nothing detained him. He spent the day packing and making telephone calls and arranged to leave next day on the early train. Dora was to leave by a later train which would take her, with only one change, to Bath. She telephoned Sally to expect her late the following evening.

  Dora, who had watched with anxiety the arrival of any letter from Mrs Mark, knew by Michael’s excited agitation, even before he told her, that this must be the one. She had waited sadly, but with a sense of the inevitable, for the ending of her time with Michael. She loved him with a quiet undemanding hopelessness. After so much pain and violence his very inaccessibility was consoling. And she could not bring herself to be jealous of a being so rare and so unfortunate as Catherine.

  She had not regretted her decision not to return to Paul. With immense relief, and the sense of a load taken off her, she welcomed Michael’s support. She wrote long explanatory letters to Paul. Paul replied with angry screeds, telegram ultimatums, and telephone calls which always ended abruptly with one or other of them banging down the receiver. Paul had, for some reason perhaps connected with Michael, spared her his arrival in person. He announced to her, more clearly than ever before, his philosophy. There were no two ways about it. She was the type of woman who was made to vacillate between teasing and submitting. He had had enough of her teasing. It was time for her to submit. This was in fact what she really wanted to do, and she would find that this was where her true happiness lay. Independence was a chimera. All that would happen would be that she would be drawn into a new love affair. And was it right, because she knew that he would wait for her indefinitely, that she should inflict upon him, indeed upon both of them, these continual and pointless sufferings? He was aware that when she had some new fantasy in her head she was cold and ruthless, but he appealed to her common sense and to any remembrance that she still had of how much she had loved him. And by the way, could he now have back those two letters he had given her?

  Dora was moved but not profoundly shaken by these communications. She pondered over them and answered them with clumsy attempts at argument. She also replied at length to a letter from Noel. Noel apologized for having bothered her by appearing at Imber. He realized now that it had been unwise. He was sorry, if she was sorry, that the place had been made to look so ludicrous in the press. But there it is, facts will speak. His own article had been fairly moderate. He was sorry too, subject to the same proviso, to hear that Imber was folding up. However, it was also good news since it meant that Dora would soon be back in London, and when, oh when, should they meet? She owed him a lunch. He had meant it when he said he missed her. He was missing her at this moment.

  Dora replied that she was not coming to London. She would see him at some later time. For the present she wanted to be left alone. She felt a nostalgia for the ease of his company; but she no longer had the feverish urge to escape into his world. She attempted to turn her thoughts away from Paul, away from Noel, away even from Michael. It was not easy. She packed her things and collected together the paintings she had made in the last few weeks. She went to bed exhausted. She imagined, as she imagined every night, Paul sitting alone in his beautiful Knightsbridge room, beside the white telephone, wanting her back. But her last remembrance was that on the morrow Michael would be leaving her, and when they met again he would perhaps be married to Catherine. She wept herself to sleep, but they were quiet and comforting tears.

  The morning was foggy as usual. They walked along the platform and sat down on the seat. The fog curled in slow tall breakers across the track and the fields opposite were invisible. The air was damp and cold.

  ‘Have you got a winter coat?’ said Michael.

  ‘No. Well, it’s at Knightsbridge,’ said Dora. ‘It doesn’t matter. I’m not a cold person.’

  ‘You’d better buy one, you know,’ said Michael. ‘You can’t get through the winter in that mackintosh. Do let me lend you some money, Dora. I’m not short.’

  ‘No, of course not!’ said Dora. ‘I shall make out very well on the grant, now I’ve got that part-time teaching job as well. Oh dear, I wish you weren’t going. Anyway, your train’s sure to be late with this fog.’

  ‘I hope it won’t be too late,’ said Michael. ‘Margaret’s meeting me at Paddington.’ He sighed deeply.

  Dora sighed too. She said, ‘You packed my pictures all right?’ She had given him three of her sketches of Imber.

  ‘They’re flat on the bottom of my case,’ said Michael. ‘I do like them so
much. I’ll have them framed in London.’

  ‘They’re not worth it,’ said Dora, ‘but I’m glad you like them. I can’t really paint.’

  Michael did not contradict her. They sat silently for a while, looking into the fog and listening for the train. The day was blanketed and still.

  ‘Don’t forget to give the key to Sister Ursula when you go,’ said Michael.

  ‘What will happen to Imber, anyway?’ said Dora. ‘Who does it belong to? Funny, I never wondered this before. It seemed as if it just belonged to us.’

  ‘Well, in fact, it belongs to me,’ said Michael.

  ‘To you?’ said Dora, turning to him. She was amazed. And in the instant her quick imagination had seen it changed, the garden radiant with flowers, the Long Room decked and carpeted, the house filled and warmed and peopled, made into a home for Michael and Catherine and for their children. It was a painful vision.

  ‘It’s the old home of my family,’ said Michael, ‘although we haven’t been able to live there for a good many years. What will happen to it? It’s going to be leased indefinitely to the Abbey.’

  ‘To the Abbey?’ said Dora. She drew a small sigh of relief. ‘And what will they do with it?’

  ‘Live in it,’ said Michael. ‘They’ve needed more space for a long time.’

  ‘So it’ll actually be inside the enclosure, the whole thing, the house, the lake, everything?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so.’

  ‘How perfectly dreadful!’ said Dora.

  Michael laughed. ‘It’s a just reversal of roles,’ he said. ‘In the old days the Abbey used to be a curiosity in the grounds of the Court. Now the Court will be a curiosity in the grounds of the Abbey.’

  Dora shook her head. She could not think how Michael could bear not to live there even if the place fell down about his ears. The distant sound of the train was heard booming through the fog. ‘Oh dear,’ she said, ‘here’s your train.’

  They got up. The train came into the station.

  Not many people were travelling, and Michael soon found an empty carriage. He stowed his suitcases and opened the window, leaning out and looking down on Dora. She seemed ready to burst into tears.

  ‘Come, come,’ said Michael, ‘cheer up!’

  ‘I know I’m silly,’ said Dora, ‘but I’ll miss you so much. You will write, won’t you, and let me know your address?’

  ‘Of course I will,’ said Michael. ‘I’ll be in London till January, and then in Norwich till the summer. Anyhow, I’ll let you know where I am.’ He had taken a temporary job at a Secondary Modern school for the spring and summer terms.

  ‘I’ll write,’ said Dora. ‘I may write, mayn’t I?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Michael.

  ‘Do give my love to Catherine,’ said Dora. ‘I do hope she’ll be all right.’

  ‘Surely I will,’ said Michael.

  ‘They remained looking at each other, trying to think of something to say. Dora was aware of his hand on the edge of the window. She wanted very much to cover it with her own hand, but did not do so. She wondered if she would dare to kiss him when the train was leaving.

  ‘I never thanked you properly about Bath,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t have managed it without you.’

  ‘Oh, that’s all right,’ said Michael. ‘I’m so glad it worked out. Give my greetings to Sally!’

  ‘I will!’ said Dora. ‘You know, I quite look forward to it. I’ve never been in the West Country. I wonder how I shall get on. What does one drink there?’

  Michael made a wry face. ‘West Country cider,’ he said.

  ‘Isn’t it nice?’ said Dora.

  ‘It’s nice,’ said Michael, ‘but very strong. I shouldn’t take too much of it, if I were you.’

  ‘I shall telephone Sally to get in a large jug,’ said Dora, ‘and tonight we shall be drinking your health in West Country cider!’

  The whistle blew, and the train gave a preliminary jolt. Blushing violently, Dora stood on tiptoe, drew Michael’s head down gently, and kissed him on the cheek. He looked surprised. Then he kissed her forehead in return. The train began to move, and in a moment he had disappeared, still waving to her, into the fog.

  Dora drew out her handkerchief and walked slowly back to the taxi. She shed some tears and a sweet sadness pierced her heart. Anyway, the kiss had gone off all right. She got into the taxi and told the taxi-man to drop her at the entrance gates.

  As she walked down the avenue of trees the fog was clearing, and the Court became visible opposite to her, its pillars and copper dome clear-cut and majestic in the sunshine, a light radiant grey against a sky of darker moving clouds, rising above the still misty levels of the lake. Only the windows seemed to Dora a little dark and blank, like the eyes of one who will soon be dead.

  When she got to the ferry, the boat was still on the other side and invisible in the fog. She drew upon the line and felt it coming heavily and sluggishly towards her. It emerged into view and came bumping up against the landing-stage. Dora got in and was about to propel herself across. Michael had taught her how to use the single oar. Then a new idea occurred to her. A second oar was always kept for emergencies, upon the landing-stage. Dora picked it up. She fitted the two oars into the rowlocks, and then undid the painter that joined the boat to the two sides of the ferry. No one would be coming across that way now.

  She got in and sat down, trying the oars gingerly. She used to know how to row. After a certain amount of splashing she found that she still knew. The oars dipped and the boat moved away slowly over the surface of the water. Delighted, Dora released her breath and sat enjoying the gliding motion and the silence of the misty lake, broken only by the dripping of water from the blades. The mist was becoming golden. Now it began to clear away, and she saw the Court and the high walls of the Abbey toward which she was drifting. Behind the Court the clouds were in perpetual motion, but the sky was clear at the zenith and the sunshine began to warm her. She kicked off her sandals and trailed one foot in the water over the edge of the boat. The depths below affrighted her no longer.

  She looked at the Court. She could not help being glad that Michael and Catherine would not live there, and their children and their children’s children. Soon all this would be inside the enclosure and no one would see it any more. These green reeds, this glassy water, these quiet reflections of pillar and dome would be gone forever. It was indeed as if, and there was comfort in the thought, when she herself left it Imber would cease to be. But in this moment, and it was its last moment, it belonged to her. She had survived.

  She drew in her foot and began to row slowly along the lake. From the tower above her the bell began to ring for Nones. She scarcely heard it. Already for her it rang from another world. Tonight she would be telling the whole story to Sally.

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  1 Satre, Romantic Rationalist (1953)

  By the same author

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