by Iris Murdoch
The headlights of the yellow Volvo rotated slowly on the gravel outside the stables, flickered on the greenhouse, the caged enclosure of the tennis court, the white-banded orchard trees, the elms of the park. It was raining slightly. As they passed over the cattle grid and turned left onto the Dimmerstone-Laxlinden road, Colette said in a tired dead voice. ‘I’m not going to tell my father.’
‘About our lake exploits? O.K.’
‘I feel such a perfect idiot.’
‘I daresay you do,’ said Henry, keeping his eye on the golden ironstone wall of the park. The wall was in excellent condition. Henry was not yet quite used to driving on the left.
‘Is your father expecting you?’
‘No. That’s another stupidity.’
‘What are you doing?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean are you a student, a teacher, a housewife, a ballet dancer—’
‘I’m not married. Of course.’
‘Of course.’
‘I was a student but I’ve chucked it.’
‘But why?’
Colette was silent for a moment. ‘It’s not my way.’
‘Oh you’ve got one have you, lucky you.’
‘Do you think I’m wrong?’
‘I’ve no idea. Education is so easy nowadays, they cut out all the hard bits, it’s just a form of entertainment. I should have thought it would have suited you all right while you were waiting for the lanky long-haired boy who is your natural mate.’
‘You could drop me here.’
Henry stopped the car at the corner of the lane which led to Pennwood. ‘You promise you won’t be molested and raped before you reach home?’
‘I’ll be all right. Thank you very much.’
‘What for? Good night.’
Colette got out, slammed the door, vanished.
Henry drove on a bit, then pulled the big car onto the grass beside the wall, switched off the headlights and got out. He was back at the padlocked iron gate where he had stood in the twilight days ago, months ago. He spread out his arms again upon the wet iron bars, grasping them, shaking them a little. He forgot Colette. Meditating a crime, he looked into the blackness of the drive, overhung by the conifers and the low clouds of the moonless night.
It was very dark and muddy in the lane. Holding her suitcase out awkwardly away from her legs Colette ran. She could now see a light on in the kitchen. Her homecoming fingers unlatched the wooden gate and she flew up the path to the door, knocking loudly and impetuously upon it with the speed of her flight.
Footsteps. The hall light. The door opened.
‘Colette!’
John Forbes, an early bedder and an early riser, had had a busy day and was about to retire. He had driven to London to see Patricia Raven. Patricia was an old friend, originally a girlfriend of Ruth’s, then a friend of both of them. Patricia was an archaeologist, now the head of a woman’s college in London. She had never married. John had sometimes wondered whether she was really interested in men. He had only managed to interest her, in that sense, in himself by representing his need as purely mechanical. Now he saw her regularly at her flat. They had lunch, talked politics, then made love. At least John made love and Patricia, always disconcertingly humorous about it, let herself be made love to. It could only be possible with such an old friend. John felt a wry surprise, but of course no shame, at the relentless pestering continuance of his sexual urges. He kept this part of his life strictly secret from his children though they occasionally still saw ‘Aunt Pat’. He never never stopped missing Ruth.
Today he had got back home for a late tea and to watch the replay of a football match on colour television with George Bellamy. Of course George had his own television, but he liked to come over to Pennwood to escape from his wife and daughter and get a free drink and a bit of masculine company. Sometimes he met Giles Gosling, the borough architect, in the Horse and Groom. Long ago, Gerda had tried to make a match between Bellamy and Rhoda. Bellamy was interested. Rhoda looked odd, but one could find that attractive, there was much to be said for a wife who couldn’t talk, and Mrs Marshalson would give them a cottage as a wedding present. Rhoda made it clear that she scorned Bellamy. Bellamy, only then aware what a concession he would have made in marrying her, chose a Laxlinden girl whom he bullied, and to whom he felt that he had stooped. He lived in a Marshalson cottage in Dimmerstone.
This evening he had come round as usual bringing news of the Hall, in which John took a malign interest. ‘Seen the squire?’ ‘Young Henry? Yes. He was in Dimmerstone looking at the cottages.’ ‘I hope you told him about those roofs.’ ‘He doesn’t care about roofs. He’s like an American, he just gawps, and he talks all Yankee.’ ‘I suppose he thought it was rather picturesque and tumbled-down.’ ‘Tumbled-down, you can say that again! He didn’t want to know. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was a pansy, he looks like one.’
John Forbes opened the door for his daughter and Colette went on into the kitchen and sat down at the table where the remains of John’s bacon and egg supper were still set out.
‘You said you’d let me know when you were coming.’
‘Sorry.’
‘I suppose you haven’t eaten anything?’
‘No, but don’t worry. I’ll just have some bread and cheese. Don’t worry. I’ll have this.’
‘All right, all right. You look a wreck.’
‘Is there any wine?’
‘Won’t beer do?’
‘No.’
‘That’s one thing you seem to have learnt at college. I’ll open a bottle. How did you get here?’
‘I thumbed a lift. Then I walked.’
‘I’ve told you a hundred times not to hitch-hike.’
‘Is there any jam?’
‘Bread and jam and vintage claret.’
‘It isn’t vintage.’
‘What a wonderful thing education is. I rang up your tutor.’
‘I know.’
‘Do you know what he said?’
‘No.’
‘He said you were unteachable.’
‘He told me he thought I was wise to quit.’
‘I bet he did!’
‘I hope you’re not cross.’
‘Of course I’m cross! Why are you unteachable? You’ve got perfectly good wits. You just won’t try. You young people just don’t know what trying’s like. It hurts.’
‘I don’t want to be hurt. Is there anything on television?’
‘You arrive back without a word and march in and want to look at television! Don’t you want to talk to your father?’
‘Yes. I just wondered.’
‘Why didn’t you let me know you were coming?’
‘I was in a muddle.’
‘Your bed’s not made.’
‘I’ll make it. How’s Cato?’
‘How should I know?’
‘Daddy, I’m so sorry—I know how you feel about Cato—and now me—’
‘You’re a priceless pair. I can’t understand you not wanting to be educated. You always were a complainer and a fretter—’
‘You talk as if education were a kind of special stuff and nothing else would do, but there are hundreds of ways of discovering the world.’
‘It is a kind of special stuff and nothing else will do. It’s precious. You’re damn lucky to be capable of receiving it.’
‘You won’t accept the fact that I’m not like you.’
‘You needn’t be like me. You could be like your mother.’
‘You won’t accept the fact that I’m not an intellectual, that I’m not clever. You think it’s a sort of sacrilege—’
‘Of course you’re clever! To hear a child of mine sitting there and saying it’s not clever—’
‘Everyone says how wonderful it is to be young. I’ve never seen it. I want to enjoy being young. I don’t want to spend my youth pretending to be somebody else.’
‘And how do you propose to enjoy being young? Stay here and arrange
the flowers?’
‘You always put me in a false position—’
‘Do you really want to be an empty-headed kitten, a little fluffy sex object?’
‘No! I hated the way people talked about sex at the college—’
‘I never thought you were a timid girl—’
‘I’m not! I’m—’
‘You’ll have to get a job, you know. And what can you do? You can’t even type. All right, you’re free, you’re perfectly free, it’s your life, I’m not going to advise you. But I’m damned if I’ll support you here to be a grand country lady like Mrs Marshalson.’
Colette began to saw some cheese off a large chunk of bright yellow cheddar. The kitchen table smelt of cheese and wine. She said, ‘Has Henry Marshalson come back?’
‘That drip. Yes. He’s been swanning around pretending he owns the place.’
‘Well, I suppose he does own the place.’
‘He’s not worthy to own it. He’ll slink off back to America with his tail between his legs. “Trundletail” Sandy used to call him.’
‘I’m going to bed,’ said Colette.
‘The sheets are in the airing cupboard. Sorry I’ve been sounding off like that. I just feel so disappointed that you’ve left the college.’
‘You forced me into it.’
‘I didn’t force you—’
‘Yes, you did. And you forced Cato into the Church.’
‘I—what?’
‘Well, you made him run away, he had to escape to somewhere, he was frightened of you. I’m frightened of you. You always ridiculed us when we were young. And you raise your voice so. You mustn’t talk to people like that, even if they are your children. You don’t know how strong you are, how you can hurt. Ever since I got back you’ve been lecturing me, and I’ve had such an awful day and I’m so tired—’
‘Look, I’m sorry, but don’t—’
‘And another thing, in case it interests you. I’m still a virgin and I’m going to stay a virgin until I meet the right man, and then I’m going to marry him and have six children!’ Colette went out slamming the door.
John Forbes sat motionless feeling subdued and guilty. Did he really frighten his children? He could not believe it. It was a terrible thought. Oh if only Ruth were here … All the same, Cato wanting God and Colette wanting kids! What a defeat. He opened a can of beer.
‘That rich chap—’ ‘Henry Marshalson.’
‘I liked the look of him, he’s a gentleman. Some gentlemen dig us villains. We give them kicks. Was he really interested in me?’
‘No.’
‘But you said—’
‘I thought I might ask him for money to help your education, but as you don’t want any—’
‘Well, I might do, who knows. You see, nobody cares about me except you. You don’t know what that’s like. You’ve always had people who cared. You’ve always had people. I’ve never had anybody. No wonder I feel frustrated. Now if that rich chap—’
‘Forget it.’
‘You’re the only real person I know. Do you think that rich chap would set me up—?’
‘No.’
Cato, coming from the church back to the Mission, had seen a sign in a clothes shop window which said, in neon lights, TROUSERAMA. He felt a piercing desire to laugh and cry. There was no God and the world was damned and everyone had quietly gone mad only they were carrying on as usual. The universe was funny brittle awful momentary. Human life was the pointless wandering of insects. TROUSERAMA. That’s what it was. Life was simply a trouserama.
That morning, though at first intending to do so, he had not celebrated mass. He had suddenly felt the need for the mass as a nervous compulsive superstition. It was not that today especially or at last he clearly ‘disbelieved’, but he felt that the mass was now somehow preventing him from thinking and moving. It had become a dead idol, something which he must, for the present at any rate, let go of. And he said to Christ, stretching out his hands, I am sorry, forgive me, I cannot.
Instead he sat, resisting the compulsion to kneel, in the early morning in the dark church where only a cluster of distant candles gave a little light. He sat motionless and open-eyed for more than an hour as gate after gate in his mind seemed quietly to open, until there was no person there any more. He did not seek, he did not speak, he just waited. There was stillness and emptiness. Superficial thoughts moved, passing him by like quiet birds. He thought of Beautiful Joe and let the image of the boy stay there in the stillness as if exposing it to blessing. He thought about his father and his sister. He wondered if he had now celebrated his last mass and whether the deep love of God which is joy had departed forever from his life. In the stillness there was no quickening, no joy. He had tasted a rapture which it would be hard to live without. Was he now indeed called upon to surrender the precious privilege of the priesthood, the dedicated role which had seemed so essentially, so naturally, his? He was a priest, he felt, with all the atoms of his being. Unpriest him, and there would be nothing left. He was so much a priest that surely he must be able to make God to be in order to sanction his calling. But this was exactly what he must not think.
When Cato left the church he found that, although he had not been reflecting about his more mundane decisions, certain immediate matters appeared in a clearer light. Brendan had written again, asking him to come and stay at his flat. Cato decided that he would probably go to Brendan, not at once, but in a few days. Not that he expected any fresh illumination, but he wanted, before seeing his friend, to have put some more form into his existence, in particular to have taken some rational step about Beautiful Joe. He feared seeing Brendan, not of course fearing reproaches, but dreading his own deep desperate desire to be persuaded to stay in the order, in his home, with his love.
As far as the immediate future was concerned, what had become plain as he sat in the church was that he must stop hiding. For the days which remained before he went to Brendan or back to Laxlinden or wherever he did finally go he must live openly at the Mission, see and be seen, and also, and at last, talk more openly with Beautiful Joe. He felt now how unwise it was for him to have allowed this sort of negative teasing relationship to arise between himself and the boy. The relation itself was a dangerous kind of barrier. No wonder Joe made extravagant fanciful remarks with the hope of establishing a more direct bond simply by making Cato angry. He must take the risk of speaking more simply and frankly. He really had no evidence, except Joe’s own wild pronouncements, that the boy was involved in anything illegal or even in danger of being so. Well, there was the revolver. Joe had said it was an imitation. For the first time it occurred to Cato, perhaps it was an imitation. It had weighed enough. But perhaps—It was then that he had seen the sign TROUSERAMA. His resolutions remained however and he felt grimly grateful to the brittle funny awful universe for having prevented him from saying mass.
As he was walking along the sun came out, and when he got back to the Mission Cato left the back door ajar and propped open one of the windows in front, to air the house and as a sign that he was in residence. The house could do with some airing. He could do with some airing himself. His clothes were filthy, his underwear unchanged, his cassock stinking. The suddenly warm spring day made him feel noisome and shaggy. As he had told Henry, his persistent wearing of the cassock was eccentric. Most of his colleagues had by now abandoned even the dog collar. Cato could not approve of this, nor of the young nuns who now ran around London dressed in short skirts and high-heeled shoes.
Noon had brought Beautiful Joe, light footed and fresh, wearing a crisp flowery shirt, a broad velvet tie, and a tight-waisted suit of mauve linen. He danced in. ‘I saw the front window open—’ Cato invited him to stay for a bread and cheese lunch, and sent him out to buy cigarettes and beer.
Lunch was now over. The sunlight revealed the grey newspaper stuck to the kitchen table by layers of grease, two burnt saucepans and a boiled-over mess upon the stove, a wide scattering of crumbs and cigarette ends upon the
floor, a group of milk bottles containing various levels of coagulated sour milk, and a mass meeting of the pink transparent beetles in a far corner. Through the open door came, somehow, from distant gardens, smells of earth and green leaves. Cato stared at Beautiful Joe. He had not yet managed to break through to the new frankness which had this morning seemed so necessary and so simple. He could not find the opening, the tone. The boy’s expectant quizzical eyes, half-hidden by glinting reflections, disturbed and confused him. Joe had removed his tie and opened his shirt. Now, with a clean steel comb, he was meticulously combing his hair into a near square head-piece of blond silk and staring back at Cato with an intentness which controlled the possibility of wild laughter. Cato felt stirrings of desire, the need for contact.
‘You know I’m not a villain, Father. Not yet.’
‘I hope that’s true.’
‘You think too badly of me.’
‘I don’t know what to think of you.’
‘Don’t think of me. Just love me.’
Cato looked into the glinting golden eyes which now seemed to him to burn with sincerity. ‘Joe, I must try and speak more openly to you.’
‘I hoped you would. You’ve treated me like a child, you know.’
‘Have I? I’m sorry. Joe, listen. I’ve got to leave here and go away God knows where. I may even have to leave the priesthood, leave the Church, and—’
‘Why, what have you done?’
‘I haven’t done anything, I’ve just decided, that is, I may decide—’
‘Oh no, no, you can’t, you can’t not be a priest any more, it’s impossible, don’t you see it’s impossible, you are a priest, you can’t mean it, you can’t mean what’s impossible, you can’t stop being a priest ever, ever—’ The boy spoke quietly, but with vehement will, stretching out one hand palm downwards on the table.
With a thrilled emotion not unlike relief, Cato said, ‘Well, impossible, yes, perhaps you’re right—’
‘What’s impossible can’t happen, can it—’
‘No, well, I expect I’ll stay, yes, of course I will—’
‘You had me worried, Father, for a moment I really thought you were serious! Why if you went whatever would happen to us? There must be something holy somewhere, it’s got to be there, somewhere.’