Nuns and Soldiers

by Iris Murdoch

  The Count had always known that he was not a gentleman volunteer in the army of the moral law. If ever a soul was conscripted he was. He intensely feared disgrace, loss of honour, loss of integrity. He stood, in his mind, as still and as expressionless as the soldiers at the Unknown Warrior’s grave in Warsaw. Indeed he could do nothing wrong, since the situation held him in a merciful steely grip. Sometimes he imagined how he might one day defend Gertrude from attack, rescue her from danger, sleep across her doorway like a dog. Die for her. Indeed Gertrude was somehow to be there ‘at the hour of his death’ as he departed from her in gentleness with his secret intact. He had, in these flashes which were too swift and physical to be pictures, occasionally imagined a touch, an embrace, a kiss. But these were the involuntary lapses of a man attentive to the beloved in the whole of his dedicated watchful body. He never permitted any extended fantasy. It would have been wrong, it would also have been torture. He knew which way madness lay. Reason and duty commanded him to desist. So he had lived, happily enough, in the cast-iron safety of her marriage. It was a house that would surely last forever.

  But now his life was about to change utterly. He felt grief, terror, and a more awful hope. He tried to banish hope, to banish the desire which breeds the illusion which breeds the hope; as the long long nourished desire to free Warsaw had fed the illusory hopes of those who fought and died in the ruined city. He must not think of ... anything which he might want to have ... as being in any sense ... a possibility. Rather he must think of it as remote, as receding, as lost. He thought, my happiness was an oversight, a mistake made by fate, and is now over. Behind almost every misfortune there is a moral fault. I am like Poland, my history is and ought to be a disaster. I am guilty because my father fled, because my brother died, because my mother pined away in a cell of solitude. I can expect nothing now but to be returned to the grey loneliness from which I came. Ah, how I have lived on illusions and fed myself with dreams! And I thought at least that my secret was harmless, to others of course, but also to me. Guy, it all depended on Guy, and soon Guy will be gone and my world will be a dead planet. Without Guy there was no way he could be near to Gertrude and safe, near to Gertrude and happy, near to her forever. No way ... except one way ... and of that ...

  He tried now to think of Guy, to grieve for Guy, Guy propped up in bed with his gaunt old face and his unimaginable thoughts, reading The Odyssey. Guy had spoken of himself as Odysseus. But it was a different story now. Odysseus was setting sail upon his last journey and he would not return again to his house and his home. And Penelope ... Suddenly the Count saw it: Penelope and the suitors! The siege of Penelope by the suitors; but no master ever to return now to claim her as his true wife. She was to be the prey of lesser men. And they were all there ... already ... round about her ... The Count turned off the radio and buried his face in his hands.

  While the Count was listening to the Renaissance music programme on the radio, Gertrude had already had her supper (soup and cheese) and had said good night to Guy. The Night Nurse was sitting reading in her bedroom which adjoined Guy’s room. Gertrude could not read. No book could serve her now. She walked to and fro. She thought about cigarettes, but there were none in the house. (Victor had persuaded most of them to give up smoking.) She readjusted the chrysanthemus in the green vase. She looked out of the window. It had stopped snowing. She was sorry about that. She wanted extreme weather. She desired tempests, mountains of snow. She desired screarning winds and floods, a hurricane which would destroy the house with her and Guy in it. She wished that his death could be her death. How can I endure so much misery, she thought, without dying of it. She looked at her watch. It was still too dangerously early to go to bed.

  The telephone rang.

  She had muted the telephone so that it produced a faint buzz. She had asked her friends not to ring up in the late evening. Who could this be telephoning at ten o’clock? She lifted the receiver and uttered the number in the business-like way upon which Guy insisted.

  ‘Hello. Gertrude?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘This is Anne.’

  ‘What?’ said Gertrude, not understanding.

  ‘This is Anne. You know, Anne Cavidge.’

  Gertrude tried to adjust her mind to this amazing information. She felt utterly confused, baffled. ‘Anne?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘But - but surely you aren’t allowed to use the telephone -’

  There was a laugh at the other end. ‘As a matter of fact I’m in a telephone box near Victoria Station.’

  ‘Anne - you can’t be - what’s happened - ?’

  ‘I’m out.’

  ‘You mean out - out for good - ?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Anne, a member of an enclosed religious order, had been inside a convent for fifteen years.

  ‘You mean you’ve left the Church, left the order, come back into the world?’

  ‘Roughly yes.’

  ‘What does roughly yes mean?’

  ‘Look, Gertrude, I’m very sorry to ring you -’

  ‘Anne, what am I saying, come round here at once. Have you money, can you get a taxi?’

  ‘Yes, yes, but I must explain, I booked in a hotel, but they say they’re full up, and I tried several others and -’

  ‘Just come round here -’

  ‘Yes. OK. Thanks. But I can’t remember your number in the street.’

  Gertrude gave the number and put the telephone down and held her head. She had not reckoned with a surprise of this sort and she was not sure if she was pleased or not. Clever Anne Cavidge, her best friend at Cambridge, had shocked them all by becoming a Roman Catholic, after a series of wild love affairs, converted at Newnham before Gertrude’s horrified eyes. And then, as if that was not enough, she had promptly become a nun. Gertrude fought her, mourned her. Anne was gone, her Anne existed no more. One cannot communicate with a nun. In the strange rare atmosphere which now divided them, friendship could not live. Anne had become Mother something or other, Gertrude wrote to her occasionally, increasingly rarely, firmly addressing her communications to Miss Anne Cavidge. She received in reply brief hygienic communications written in Anne’s familiar writing, but devoid of any sharpness of personality. Out of an awful curiosity she went to see her twice and talked to her through a wooden grille: beautiful clever Anne Cavidge dressed up as a nun. Anne was cheerful, talkative, glad to see her. Gertrude was touched, appalled. When she emerged she sat in a pub and shuddered and thought, thank God I’m not in that prison! She joked about it afterwards with Guy, who had never met Anne.

  Gertrude now thought, oh if only things were different, if only they were, how glad I should be to see Anne, to get Anne back, to introduce her to Guy, how happy I should be, it would be a sort of triumph, a sort of renewal, the return of Anne from the dead.

  She thought, I must open the downstairs door, she may not find the right bell and Guy mustn’t be disturbed. She left the flat and went down to open the front door of the house, usually locked at this hour. Ebury Street, quiet now, glittered in the lamplight. The recent snow had covered the foot-prints on the pavement. The cold air bit Gertrude’s face and hands and she gasped.

  The taxi drew up and a woman got out and paid the driver. Two suitcases were dumped on the pavement. Gertrude came down the steps, the snow engulfing her light slippers. ‘Here, let me take this case.’

  Anne followed her into the house. In the hall Gertrude said, ‘Don’t make any noise, Guy’s asleep.’ They went up the stairs and into the flat. Anne saw the Night Nurse who had emerged from her room and was watching curiously. Anne and the Night Nurse nodded. Anne followed Gertrude into the drawing-room. The door closed. The two women looked at each other.

  ‘Oh - Anne -’

  Anne slipped off her coat revealing a blue and white check woollen dress. She was thin, pale, taller than Gertrude. She now also looked older. Her hair, golden when she was a student, had faded, was still blonde rather than grey, and clung, closely clipped,
to her head. She held her coat a moment, then dropped it on the floor.

  ‘I always meant to ask,’ said Gertrude, ‘whether you shaved your head under that ghastly head gear.’

  ‘No, no, only cut the hair close. My dear, I’m awfully sorry to turn up like this, so late -’

  ‘Oh shut up,’ said Gertrude. She took Anne in her arms and they embraced silently, closing their eyes, and standing still, gripping each other in the middle of the room.

  ‘You see,’ said Anne, moving back, ‘I didn’t mean to -’

  ‘Your feet are wet.’

  ‘So are yours. I didn’t mean to bother you - and you carried the case with the books in -’

  ‘You mean you had escaped and you weren’t going to tell me?’

  ‘Well, “escaped” isn’t quite the word, and I was of course going to tell you, but I didn’t want to impose myself, you see I arrived by train and this hotel -’

  ‘Yes, yes, yes -’

  ‘I couldn’t find anywhere to go and as you were so close I just thought -’

  ‘Oh darling,’ said Gertrude, ‘darling, darling Anne, welcome back.’

  Anne laughed a little strangled laugh and touched Gertrude’s cheek. Then she sat down.

  ‘Anne, you must be tired. Have a drink? Do you drink now? What about eating something, have you eaten? Oh I’m so glad to see you!’

  ‘I won’t have a drink. You have one. I won’t eat I think, I can’t -’

  ‘But have you only just emerged, I mean sort of yesterday?’

  ‘No, I’m doing it gradually. I spent a couple of weeks in the convent guest house. Oh it was so odd. I walked about in the country. Then I spent some weeks in the village, I worked in the post office - and now I’ve just come to London -’

  ‘Oh, but do relieve my mind. You are really out of that awful labour camp, you aren’t going back? And you’re really through with it all, with the whole thing?’

  ‘I’ve left the order, yes.’

  ‘But God, do tell me you’ve finished with God?’

  ‘Well, it’s a long story -’

  ‘You must be so tired, I’ll fix your room -’

  ‘Who was that, the woman outside?’

  ‘Oh that - that’s the Night Nurse -’

  ‘Nurse?’

  ‘Guy’s ill - he’s very ill -’

  ‘I’m so sorry -’

  ‘Anne, he’s dying, he’s dying of cancer, he’ll be dead before Christmas -’

  Gertrude sat down and let the sudden violent tears spurt from her eyes and drench the front of her dress. Anne got up and sat on the floor beside her, seizing her hands and kissing them.

  It was the next morning. The Night Nurse had gone. The Day Nurse reigned in her stead. The Day Nurse was an elderly body, unmarried, wrinkled, wizened, but amiable, always with a little professional smile. She was a good nurse, one of the devoted people to whom it is hard to attribute a private life, personal aims, amazing dreams. She was quiet, untalkative, with a deft animal quickness in her movements. Guy had been got up, had breakfasted, was sitting in the chair beside his bed in his dressing gown. The Day Nurse shaved him. He kept saying that it really wasn’t worth being shaved any more at this stage, but he could not make the decision to stop it, and Gertrude could not make it for him. Gertrude had told him of Anne’s arrival, in which he had taken some interest. He even displayed an emotion which had apparently passed out of his life, surprise.

  Now Anne and Gertrude were sitting in the drawing-room. Outside the sun was shining on the melting snow, smoothing it over, yellowing it and making it glow and sparkle upon unmarked roofs and untrodden square gardens. A strange mystical light pervaded London.

  ‘What a nice flat.’

  ‘It’s odd you haven’t been here -’

  ‘What a lot of things you’ve got.’

  ‘Are you chiding me?’

  ‘Of course not! I’m just sort of not used to things, you know, ornaments and -’

  ‘Wasn’t your chapel full of beastly madonnas?’

  ‘That was not - Gertrude, I’m sorry to have turned up so suddenly -’

  ‘You’ve said that sixteen times. Where else should you come, but to this house? But why didn’t you write to me before and tell me you were coming out?’

  ‘I couldn’t have explained it, I couldn’t have written it down. It was all so strange and I was sort of frozen -’

  ‘Well, you’ll have to explain it now, won’t you? We hardly talked at all last night.’

  ‘I must go out soon and find a hotel -’

  ‘A what? You’re staying here!’

  ‘But Gertrude, I can’t, I mustn’t -’

  ‘Because of Guy? That’s just why you must stay. I mean, I’d want you to stay anyway - oh God - Anne, you’ve come, you can’t go, it’s important - you understand -’

  ‘OK. But - yes, I’ll stay - if I can be useful -’

  ‘Useful!’

  ‘I have plans - I’m going to America - but, oh, everything can wait.’

  ‘You are not going to America - but there’s so much for you to tell me - and just looking at you is - oh marvellous, a sort of miracle. ’

  ‘I know, I feel it too. I’m so glad I had the sense to ring you up.’

  ‘How lovely you look. But that dress isn’t right.’

  ‘I bought it in the village.’

  ‘It looks like it! I’ll help you dress, you’ve forgotten how, you never were much good at it.’

  ‘I’ve got money, you know.’

  ‘Oh never mind -’

  ‘But I do mind. The order is going to support me for two years while I find a job, get some training perhaps.’

  ‘What sort of job do you want?’

  ‘What can I get? I don’t know.’

  ‘What did you do in there, I mean in the way of intellectual pursuits, or was it all prayer and fasting?’

  ‘I taught some theology and Thomist philosophy, but it was so specialized and sort of simplified-I couldn’t sell it outside. It wasn’t a very intellectual order.’

  ‘So you said at the start, and amazed me! You sacrificed your intellect to those charlatans!’

  ‘I could teach Latin, French, Greek maybe -’

  ‘You wasted all those years - You must start thinking again.’

  Anne was silent.

  ‘Why not train to be a doctor? I’d help with money. Your father wanted you to be a doctor.’

  ‘It’s too late, and anyway I don’t want to.’

  ‘What were you intending to do in America before we decided you weren’t going there?’

  ‘Did we? There are courses run by Catholics for people like me, sort of retraining, for going into teaching or social work, and -’

  ‘Aren’t there courses like that in England? Or, is it that you want to run away? Some “fresh start” idea? I won’t let you - we’ll find you a job. I mean - I’ll - find you a job.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ said Anne. She looked at her friend with tired remote eyes and smoothed down her short fur of blonde hair.

  ‘Anyway why do you want to go to a Catholic place, haven’t you finished with them? You didn’t answer my question last night.’

  ‘I’ve left the order -’

  ‘You said that!’

  ‘Whether I’ve left Christianity, the Church, doesn’t matter, I mean I don’t know and it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘I should have thought it mattered. Your prying predatory clergy seem to think it matters!’

  ‘It doesn’t matter to me. Time will show - or it won’t.’

  ‘What’s that you’re wearing round your neck on a chain, I can see a chain.’

  Anne pulled it out. A little golden cross.

  ‘There you are! But, Anne, you must know, you must be clear -’

  ‘All right, I’ve left, if that will please you!’

  ‘You don’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘Not yet. Forgive me.’

  ‘Forgive me. You know, you’re tired, it has ti
red you, getting out of that cage. Do you still have those migraines?’