by Iris Murdoch
“Shut the door. What time is it?”
“About ten.”
“Sit down, please.”
Muriel sat down uneasily, facing him across the desk.
“Have you found employment yet, Muriel?”
“Not yet.”
“I trust you will.”
“I will.”
“How is Elizabeth this morning? I heard her bell ringing.”
“She seems much as usual.”
“I want to talk to you about Elizabeth.”
Muriel stared across at her father’s handsome curiously stiff face. One side of it was revealed by the lamp, one blue eye illumined, the other side was dark. It was a face too much in repose, a face such as one might find in a remote mountain cave, belonging to some inaccessible indifferent hermit of an unknown faith, of a faith beyond faiths. Muriel shivered. A familiar feeling of depression, fear and thrill came to her from her father like an odour.
Muriel had awakened that morning in distress. She recalled with misgivings her interview with Leo and the curious bargain she had apparently made with him. The idea of introducing that irresponsible animal into the orderly and enclosed world of Elizabeth now seemed to her not ill-considered so much as senseless. She saw now more clearly that what had appealed to her in Leo and made her see him as perhaps “good for” Elizabeth, as even some “good for” herself, was precisely that moral, or rather immoral, friskiness, that cheerful willingness to behave badly which had had such an ugly issue in the unspeakable theft and in the scene with Eugene which she had overheard. She had thought of Leo as potent, as a sort of pure elemental force. It had been indeed some sense of the “purity” of that force which had led her so readily to conceive of him as an instrument. A creature so simple-heartedly egoistic could not be a menace. This was not the kind of thing which Muriel feared. It was the kind of thing which she flattered herself she could control. Yet now she felt both shocked and muddled, disgusted by Leo’s behaviour and yet unable resolutely to judge him, as if she herself had already become in some way his accomplice.
She found relief in an intense pity for Eugene, a pity potentiated by her failure to condemn his son. She left the house in extreme agitation to do her shopping, and was arrested and excited when, passing down Ludgate Hill, she had seen the Russian box for sale. She had never really noticed this sort of object before, and the way this one had so vividly attracted her attention could not but seem significant. She ran all the way back to the Rectory. She had expected Eugene to be pleased with the box and her thought of him, but she had not expected him to be overcome. His tears of gratitude startled Muriel and made her momentarily very happy. She had been right, and he had been glad that she cared. Later she regretted that she had allowed herself to become embarrassed and had left him too quickly. She ought to have stayed, she ought to have put her arms around him, she could almost at that moment have kissed him. Tossing on her bed that night she imagined kissing him and groaned into her pillow.
Now Muriel felt guilty in front of her father in the half-dark room. She had always felt guilt before him. She felt it now because of Leo but especially because of Eugene. She was beginning to love Eugene. Muriel held on to the edge of the dark.
“What is it, Muriel?”
“Nothing. What did you want to tell me?”
“It’s about Elizabeth. I am rather seriously worried about her.”
Muriel concentrated her attention. The lamp cast a circle of light in a wide arc over the desk. The other side of the circle fell somehow to the floor and was scattered. If only there was light outside the room, light which could be let in. Muriel felt her father’s eyes upon her like a steady pressure upon her face. She stared at the clear-cut arc of light. “She seems all right to me. She hasn’t been complaining of any new pains.”
“I am not referring to her physical condition.”
Muriel felt a point of sleepiness in her mind like a little cloud. It buzzed. More like a swarm of bees perhaps coming nearer, nearer. She rocked herself a little in her chair, scraping one ankle against the other.
“Elizabeth’s all right. I can’t think what’s worrying you.”
“Have you not observed a degree of apathy?”
Muriel had observed this. But it had no significance. She said hastily, “No. Yes. The move tired her, that’s all. And this beastly weather.”
“I think that is not all. You should be more observant of your cousin. She has become incapable of reading.”
“Well, she’s read a little—” It was true that Elizabeth had read practically nothing since their arrival in London. She had spent most of her time either fiddling with the jigsaw puzzle or sitting looking into the fire. But Elizabeth had had such moods before. It was inevitable in a girl so cloistered. It was surely nothing of importance.
“She has come to live much more in her mind. Everyday reality means less to her. Do you not see this?”
“No,” said Muriel with an effort. She lifted her eyes to meet her father’s gaze. His eyes though steady seemed to shift a little with some sort of regular motion. Muriel felt as if her own eyeball had become an enormous area over which Carel’s gaze was systematically ranging. I must deny everything, Muriel said to herself, scarcely knowing what she meant. I must deny everything.
“She is trying to leave us,” said Carel softly. He laid his hands flat upon the desk in front of him, the fingers neatly together.
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Muriel. “If you’re suggesting that Elizabeth is becoming a bit unbalanced or something then I just don’t agree. She’s perfectly well.” Her voice sounded harsh and raucous in the room, breaking through some tissue of murmurous noise which she became aware of as the Pathetic Symphony still whispering on.
“She is trying to leave us,” said Carel. “A difficult time lies ahead for you and for me. If it is impossible to keep her here we must as far as it is possible go with her.” He spoke yet more softly and with deliberation, pressing down his hands on the desk and leaning slightly forward.
“I really don’t understand you,” said Muriel. She felt drowsy, stifled, frightened. She formed vaguely the idea of something which she needed. Perhaps it was air, perhaps it was light, perhaps it was courage. She formed in her mind the word “courage". She must deny everything.
“You understand very well, very well Muriel,” said Carel. “You have always understood about Elizabeth.”
“You know I’m very fond of Elizabeth—” said Muriel.
“We are both very fond of Elizabeth. We have always taken great care of Elizabeth. She is our treasured possession. Our joint possession.”
Muriel felt, I must resist this. She was being taken into some kind of plot, enlisted in some unspeakable alliance. She was being told that she had always been in some kind of plot, some kind of alliance. It was not true. Or was it true? “No, no,” she said, “no.”
“Come, come, Muriel, what are you denying? We have always looked after Elizabeth together. We shall go on doing so. It is very simple.”
“I think she’s perfectly all right,” said Muriel. She found that her hands were still gripping the desk, her fingers pointed toward Carel’s fingers. She removed her hands and clasped them tensely together.
“Of course she’s all right, Muriel, and she’s going to go on being all right. Only we must take more care of her, extra-special care of her. We must protect her from shocks. She must be allowed her thoughts, her dreams. There must be no shocks and no intrusions. These could have the gravest consequences.”
The Pathetic Symphony came to its murmurous climax and the gramophone switched itself off. In the alarming silence Muriel said loudly, “I don’t agree. I think she needs to see more people. She’s just a bit bored. It would do her good to see some new people. All this loneliness makes her sleepy.”
“Sleepy,” said Carel. “Precisely.”
There was a pause. Muriel seemed to hear some sort of murmuring beginning again in the silence. Perhaps it was her thou
ghts, her thoughts which Carel had so uncannily been able to read.
Carel went on. “It is dangerous to awaken a sleep-walker.”
“Elizabeth isn’t a sleep-walker,” said Muriel. “She’s just a girl with a bad back who gets a bit lonely and depressed.” Yet the image of the sleep-walker was terribly apt. “Courage,” Muriel said to herself again, and then wondered if she had said the word aloud.
“The gravest consequences,” said Carel. “Elizabeth is a dreamer who weaves a web. That web is her life and her happiness. It is our duty, yours and mine, to assist and protect her, to weave ourselves into the web, to be with her and to bear her company as far as we can. This is a difficult task and one which can only be achieved in an atmosphere of complete quietness and peace.” His voice sank to a whisper.
“Naturally I shall try—” said Muriel.
“There must be nothing to startle her, no sudden movements, no upsetting of the familiar routine which you have set up and maintained so admirably round about her. She could not have wished, I could not have wished, for a more zealous nurse. You have done very well. But increased care and increased vigilance is necessary now. We must be more gentle with her than ever. I want your assurance, Muriel, that you will observe this vigil with me.”
“I still think—” said Muriel.
“Elizabeth is increasingly unable to sustain shocks of any kind. I want your assurance, I want your promise, that you will protect her as faithfully as you have always protected her.”
“Of course—” said Muriel.
“You will see to it that she is not intruded upon or troubled? Do you promise that?”
“Well, yes—”
“That is good. I shall rely upon you. We have a precious possession which we must guard together.”
Muriel was silent. She felt she ought to protest, to deny, to cry out, to call out Elizabeth’s name, to summon some distant boisterous gods into this too deadly quiet place. But she could not speak.
“We understand each other,” said Carel. There was a tone of dismissal.
Muriel stood up. She tried to say something, but now Carel had stood up too. A desire to get quickly out of the room took her as far as the door. She looked back into the darkness. How tall he was. She got herself out through the door and half closed it.
Frère Jacques, Frère Jacques, dormez-vous? The Pathetic Symphony began again from the beginning.
Muriel stood at the bottom of the stairs. The house had huddled itself again about the scarcely audible music. She wanted air and motion, running, flight, anything rather than this stillness. She could not think about Carel or about the strange bond which he had seemed to make between them. The existence of her father weighed on her bodily, oppressing her like matter not like thought. She felt loaded and brought to her knees by Carel. If this burden could only slip off her, if some merciful gravity could only release her from it. But the dark image descending had already brought into view its illumined counterpart. Eugene. Of course all the time she had been with her father she had been thinking about Eugene. Only that had preserved her from the pressure of that gaze. She had uttered Eugene’s name to herself, perhaps she had uttered it aloud. I will go to him now, she thought, and I will tell him everything. I will lay my head against him. All will be well.
She was light now. The weight had gone. Her limbs trembled with lightness like a leaf touched by the breeze. She moved through the kitchen and on towards his door. Her body leaned towards him, she was falling, falling. She reached his door and stopped dead. There was a voice within. Pattie’s voice.
Muriel stood there, half stooping with the force of her going. Her face began to wrinkle up and she covered it with her hand.
“You again,” said Leo behind her. “Come inside.”
Muriel turned slowly. She got herself through the door of Leo’s room. Then she began to cry.
“Deary deary deary me,” said Leo. “Sit down. Here on the bed. Have my hank, it’s quite clean.”
Muriel took the handkerchief and mopped her eyes. She gave a very long exhausted sigh, staring with unfocused gaze at Leo’s feet. The source of tears, touched for an instant, had dried again. Muriel had few tears.
Leo knelt beside her and put an arm round her shoulder. Then he squeezed her rather clumsily with both arms and drew away, squatting before her on the floor. “What is it? Tell Uncle Leo.”
“It’s nothing,” said Muriel in a cold tired voice. “I just got into a—terrible irrational state. I’m all right now.”
“No you’re not. I can see. Do tell.”
“It’s too complicated. You wouldn’t understand.”
“Well, stay and talk to me anyway. Talk about anything. I’m good for you, you know.”
Perhaps he was right. She stared at the touchable fur-like hair and the pale grey eyes, luminous with solicitude and laughter. He was a being who did not tolerate nightmare. “All right. You tell me some things. Have you got that icon back?”
Leo stood up. “No I haven’t, but I will, I certainly will. Look, let’s really talk to each other, shall we? I’m tired of all this fighting and joking. You must make me be serious. You can if you try. Will you try?”
She looked up at him. “I can’t do anything with you.”
“Because you think so badly of me? You do think badly of me, don’t you?”
“I don’t know,” said Muriel. “It doesn’t matter. I think so badly of myself.”
“It’s not play.”
“I know it’s not play.”
“About the icon. I will get it back. And if you don’t mind I won’t tell you how. But I’m not proud of myself. I’ve just done something which even I—”
“You haven’t been stealing again?”
“No. Worse. But I won’t tell you that. There’s something else I want to tell you, though it’s less important. Symbolic really. Why should you care?”
“What are you talking about?”
“When I told you why I sold the icon I wasn’t telling you the truth. In fact I told one lie to you, another one to my father and another to—well, a third party who’s got involved.”
“I gathered you wanted money for an operation for a girl.”
“Well, it wasn’t quite that. What I mean by ‘quite’ was that— Well, you see there was this operation, only that was some time ago, months ago, and the girl really has gone off with someone else. It’s not her. You see, the point is I borrowed money at the time for the operation. I borrowed it, well, from an older woman who was, well, sympathetic.”
“I see. So now—”
“This had consequences,” said Leo. “I don’t mean anything sensational, I mean I didn’t have to go to bed with her to get the money. It’s not like that at all. She’s awfully correct. But she’s so—we’ve had to become intimate friends, if you see what I mean. She’s so friendly and sympathetic and wants to know about me and help me. I feel like a wasp stuck in the jam. And while I owed her the money—”
“You couldn’t very well ditch her.”
“Yes. Though I wouldn’t put it quite like that. After all she isn’t my girl friend. I just wanted to get away and I couldn’t.”
“You were prepared to use her but not to face what you call the consequences?”
“I suppose it comes to that. Not very nice is it? Though I was pretty desperate at the time. The fact is I can’t stand her. And I feel all the time I’m half lying to her, well more than half. And while the bloody money’s still at stake—”
“I suppose she doesn’t want the money?”
“No. She keeps telling me I can have it as a present. But I can’t. That’s not morals, it’s psychology.”
“Often the same thing. I see the difficulty.”
“You do believe all this, don’t you?” said Leo. “I’ve told you a lot of things which aren’t true. This is true.”
“I believe this,” said Muriel. She did. “Have you paid her the money now?”
“Well, no,” said Leo. “That’s
the point. At least this is what, in a way, you are doing for me, or I am doing for you. I didn’t expect this.”
“I don’t understand you.”
“I’d made a plan for keeping the money to pay the debt and getting this third party to buy back the icon for me, but I can’t do it.”
“What’s stopping you. Surely not the demon of morality this time?”
“Yes, I suppose so. I’ve always imagined that I could just give up morals, but it’s not so easy. I’m not as free as I think.”
“It was true that you got seventy-five pounds for the icon?”