Nuns and Soldiers

by Iris Murdoch

  Gertrude thought, I won’t say more for the moment. I think she will stay, she must stay.

  ‘I want you to help me spend my money,’ said Gertrude.

  ‘Jet travel and champagne?’

  ‘Well, that too, why not! I was thinking of good causes.’

  ‘You know more about that than I do. What about all the work you’ve been doing with the Asian women?’

  ‘I’m such a beginner at that. They’re so beautiful and spiritual, they ought to be teaching me! Maybe I’ll go back to school-teaching, I don’t know. But whatever I do I want you to do it with me. You’re our nun now, the Count was saying that about you. You’re our holy woman and we need you. A widow is a kind of nun, we’ll be nuns together and do virtuous things! I don’t see why Stanley’s children should have all Guy’s money. Let you and me spend it together.’

  Guy had put nothing on paper, but it had been almost tacitly agreed between him and Gertrude that she should make at least an interim will in favour of William, Ned and Rosalind Openshaw. Gertrude, who had no close family, had always accepted Guy’s family as her own. Now however she felt detached from them, almost resentful. Guy, the flower of them all, was gone, while they lived on.

  ‘You may marry again,’ said Anne.

  ‘Never! And thank you, dear heart, for keeping them at bay. Without you they’d have eaten me alive.’ By them Gertrude meant les cousins et les tantes. Anne had taken charge. They had not all been pleased.

  ‘They love you.’

  ‘Yes, yes -’

  ‘Anyway, I’m glad you’re learning Urdu.’

  The two women had established in their time at the cottage a routine of work. In the mornings they sat apart, studying, Gertrude in the little sitting-room and Anne in her bedroom. Gertrude worked on Urdu. Anne was polishing up her classical Greek. More even than her convent training, her own temperament forbade her to be idle. At least she could be attempting to learn a trade. Gertrude too was unwilling to be idle, though she was more restless than Anne and laid aside her books sooner. Anne now saw in her friend the restless lost middle-aged widow. She had lived through her husband. Now she had no children and no work and had lost her way. Well, had not Anne too lost her way? There was one once who had said to her, ‘I am the Way.’

  Before lunch they went down to the sea, then drank a glass of sherry, sitting outside on a bench beside the hawthorn trees, if there was even a gleam of sun. Anne had never learnt to cook, and made it clear that she would not start now, so Gertrude cooked lunch. (Gertrude was a modest cook, she had never learnt Jewish cookery as the other Gentile women had done. Janet Openshaw’s gefilte fisch was famous.) After lunch they performed household tasks, then usually set off walking, along the coast or inland, following little winding lanes between stone walls where purple and white violets grew, and seeing further off the curving hills of gauzy green, spotted with white sheep, where the cloud shadows constantly passed. There was a small farm near the cottage, but the nearest village was a pleasant two miles walk away. The village shop closed and the village pub opened at the same evening hour, so when Anne and Gertrude came to the shop they could imbibe the local cider before walking home to dinner and to lamplit reading. Anne was reading The Heart of Midlothian. She read very slowly, thoughtfully. Gertrude was reading Sense and Sensibility. Gertrude read with a sad quiet feeling of revisiting another period of her life and its forgotten pleasures. She had somehow, until Anne arrived, given up reading novels. (Guy only liked philosophy and history. Popular biography was his ‘lightest’ reading.) Anne read with continued amazement. What an extraordinary art form it was, it told you about everything! How informative, how exciting, how funny, how terribly sentimental, how full of moral judgements! Sometimes they argued about the novels. (They disagreed about Jeanie Deans.) They went to bed early.

  ‘Hey hey the white swan.’

  ‘Still can’t do it,’ said Anne. Gertrude had asked her about this white swan of Guy’s. What did it mean? Anne did not know.

  ‘I’ll never find out now, or about that cube,’ said Gertrude. Her eyes filled with tears.

  Anne had been surprised by the fierceness of Gertrude’s grief and its duration. But with a kind of professional detachment she knew that the violence of it would not last, even though the pain would never go.

  ‘It will never go, the pain,’ said Gertrude. Sometimes, it seemed to Anne, they picked the very words out of each other’s heads, so close were they. ‘I remember now he used to say it earlier sometimes when we saw the pub called the Swan. But I never asked him, I feel now I let him down. I ought to have asked. And then I somehow couldn’t - perhaps it was something religious.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Anne added, ‘You are without guilt here, don’t invent it. That pain at least is spared you.’

  ‘I’ll sell the flat,’ said Gertrude. ‘We’ll give up the world together. I can’t do it on my own.’

  Anne thought, I left the convent so as to be homeless. Foxes have holes, but the Son of Man hath not where to lay his head. I must go onward with my Christ, if I still have a Christ. If I stay with Gertrude I shall have a home forever. (She tried not to think: oh what happiness!) Gertrude’s idea of giving up the world would be a little house in Chelsea.

  Anne suddenly laughed, and Gertrude very nearly laughed too. It was an old laugh, that special mad complicit laugh which they had used to laugh together when they were at college; and this laugh Anne was teaching again to Gertrude, who had as yet no other.

  ‘What are you laughing at, darling?’

  ‘The idea of you giving up the world!’

  ‘I wonder if you ever really gave it up?’ asked Gertrude.

  ‘It’s a good question.’ How pride supports me, thought Anne, how unbroken it is. Have I really changed at all, can people change? That death in life which she had attempted: to refuse false gods, to undo the self, a little every day, like picking off leaves or scales ... Was it not imaginary? Gertrude thought of Anne’s religion as a prison from which she had emerged, an obsessive delusion of which she had been cured. How unlike this it really was. And yet how was it? Her prayer continued, not a ‘let me out’, but a deep insistent ‘let me in’. Where would she and her Christ wander to now and what would become of them? She had left the convent in order to be truthful and lonely and harmless. If she were to find a cell where she could live as an anchoress in the world and retain her innocence, would that too be ‘imaginary’? Or would she, like Kim’s lama, settle down with Gertrude? How much could love and duty show her here? I could easily do it, thought Anne. That ‘forever’ was at times very very close to her heart.

  ‘You tried to destroy yourself,’ said Gertrude, ‘but you failed.’

  There was a sharp vehemence sometimes in what Gertrude said to her, almost an incoherent resentment, a desire to probe and needle.

  Anne sat quiet in the mornings and the evenings. Sometimes, without thought, she knelt. Was this superstition? Did it matter so much, what was and was not superstition? Would she ever be able to talk to anyone about this? The early birds reminded her of the nuns singing.

  ‘It’s Sunday.’ The distant sound of church bells, now renewed, had already brought this news to them over the gauzy sheepy hills. The church was in the village, beside the pub, a little grey sturdy building with thick Norman pillars and a narrow dog-toothed doorway. Anne had entered it, with Gertrude and alone. It had seemed to her a beautiful empty place. Whoever lived there had gone away long ago.

  ‘Yes. The pub won’t open till seven. We forgot last week.’

  ‘I’ve thought of another reason why you must stay with me forever,’ said Gertrude.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I need someone in my life who can drive a car.’

  ‘I’ve forgotten,’ said Anne.

  ‘You were a demon driver once.’

  Anne had indeed been a dedicated driver in those days. Now she really felt she had forgotten. Manfred had wanted her to drive his big car on a lonely s
tretch of road coming north, but Anne had refused.

  ‘You wouldn’t drive Manfred’s car,’ said Gertrude. ‘You funked it.’

  ‘I funked it. Manfred drives too fast.’

  ‘You are censorious, I’ve been noticing it. Maybe it’s the one thing you really took away from that gloomy convent. You will judge people. You told me last night I was drinking too much.’

  ‘You were.’

  ‘Yes, a judge, I see you as a judge, a holy judge in our lives. I’m not teasing, darling, I like it, we like it, we need it. You shall dispense justice.’

  Am I censorious, Anne wondered. She certainly found it harder than she had expected to accept the tempo of worldly lives now she was among them. People irritated her, even Gertrude did. She disliked being marked off as ‘holy’ or ‘a nun’. Yet did she not feel different, superior? Yes. A terrible admission.

  ‘Who’s “we”?’ she said to Gertrude.

  ‘Oh-I don’t know - Sweetheart, stay with me. I love you, why can’t I have you? Damn giving up the world. Guy wanted me to be happy.’

  ‘He was right, it is for you.’ But not for me, thought Anne. Happiness has no part in what drove me out and must drive me on.

  ‘Of course we’ll both work. You can teach. Or why not write a book about losing your faith? That could help a lot of people.’

  ‘Oh Lord!’ My Lord and my God, when will the real suffering start? Consoling Gertrude was a safe interim. Yet her love for Gertrude was the first reality she had encountered outside those gates.

  If she had been a priest would she, inspired by some idea of obedience, have stayed inside? Would the priesthood have lifted her above some level where she felt at times that it did not matter what she thought or did, because she was a woman? She carried no precious cup from which the many fed. Anne was confused by speculation which often seemed to her positively diabolical. Better not to think. Yes, with Gertrude she was in safety. Yet it was exactly here that she must wait for the night to begin. It would begin.

  Anne and Gertrude had, for their morning walk, gone to the end of the beach, near to where the hard many-surfaced cliff rose out of the breaking waves. The waves rose, leaping rampant up the cliff side, and the keen wind carried the spray. A strong sea was running. The two women turned back, walking on the grey stones near to the foam which was racing in bubbles to their feet. The wet stones were almost black. The dry stones were an absolute grey in which even the brightest sunshine could kindle no hint of any other colour. Anne picked up a stone. They were so similar, yet so dissimilar, like counters in a game played by some god. The shapes, very like, were never exactly the same. Each one, if carefully examined, revealed some tiny significant individuating mark, a shallow depression or chipped end, a short almost invisible line. Anne said to herself, what do my thoughts matter, what do their details matter, what does it matter whether Jesus Christ redeemed the world or not, it doesn’t matter, our minds can’t grasp such things, it’s all too obscure, too vague, the whole matrix shifts and we shift with it. What does anything matter except helping one or two people who are nearby, doing what’s obvious? We can see so little of the great game. Look at these stones. My Lord and my God. She said aloud, ‘My God.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Just look at these stones,’ said Anne. She dropped the one she had been holding, then with a sort of animistic possessiveness turned to pick it up again, but she could not now discern which one it had been.

  ‘Yes,’ said Gertrude. ‘There they are. What about them?’

  ‘There they are.’

  ‘It’s hot,’ said Gertrude. ‘If the wind drops for even a moment it’s positively hot now that the sun is shining. Hold these while I take my coat off.’

  Anne took from her the little bunch of primroses and short-stemmed violets which she had picked here and there on the green turf edge and under the hawthorns as they descended to the beach.

  Gertrude pulled off her coat. They were both dressed for cool weather, but the April sun was now suddenly warm, even hot. Tall Anne was wearing now, for out of doors, the blue and white check woollen dress which she had bought at the village shop in what seemed a remote previous existence. (She wore the dark blue tweed dress for evenings.) Round her neck she wore a long mauve Indian scarf which Gertrude had given her. She had refused to let Gertrude ‘dress her’. She wore black knee-length woollen stockings with the stout convent walking shoes. Her hair had been growing, but she had decided to keep it cut fairly short. Gertrude liked it like that too. She recalled the big golden mane of Anne’s student days, but this silver-blonde fur was now more precious. Walking, a little sun had browned Anne’s thin face, but only lightly, pallidly. Her rather narrow blue-green eyes were, as Gertrude put it, shaded or hazed over, still puzzled by the world. Gertrude was wearing, under her coat, a brown almost summery light jersey dress, sprigged with yellow-brown flowers. Her face had changed a little, become perhaps permanently strained and older. So very much crying had worn it a little, as if it had been touched like the stones, by a lightly pressing finger. Her bright clear brown eyes stared more from deeper sockets, her fine mouth drooped more, lengthened by two faint descending lines. Her hair, which she had only lately started to wash regularly again, was its old self however, knowing not of grief, profoundly and variously brown, longish, now wind-tangled upon the collar of her brown-sprigged dress. She had become slimmer, she was shorter than Anne but she walked as fast.

  Sun had now taken charge of the whole landscape. Over the emerald turf of the headland an invisible lark was crazily singing.

  ‘Oh - the sun - it’s the first time -’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh Anne, look at the sea, it’s all blue now, and flashing, like signals -’

  ‘Yes. Almost ready for swimming.’

  ‘You were a demon driver. You were a demon swimmer too.’

  ‘I thought I’d never swim again.’

  ‘What about a swim now, would you?’

  ‘Are you daring me! Or do you think I’d funk it, like driving Manfred’s car?’

  ‘It’s much too cold, of course, I was joking.’

  ‘It’s not all that cold. I think now you mention it I’ll go in.’

  ‘You mean now? Anne, don’t be silly - it’s icy cold! You aren’t serious -’

  ‘I am,’ said Anne. ‘It’s a wonderful idea. If you want to see me swim, I’ll swim!’

  ‘I don’t! Oh please, please.’

  Anne had already kicked off her shoes and was pulling off her socks. The flat grey stones were smooth and chill under her bare feet. She undid the Indian scarf and the belt of her dress.

  ‘Anne, don’t be crazy, look at those waves-I wasn’t daring you, we aren’t nineteen!’

  Anne was now in a sudden wild frenzy to get into the sea. A strange piercing sensation like sexual desire had sent a spear through her entrails. She dragged her half-unbuttoned dress violently over her head. A moment later, dressed only in the little golden cross upon its chain which hung close about her neck, she advanced into the running creamy foam. She went on quickly, stumbling a little upon the shifting stones, until the white water was above her knees.

  ‘Anne - Anne - stop -’

  The sea was intensely and beyond expectation cold. Wild mad exhilaration licked her naked body. The beach descended steeply, a wave met her breast-high and broke over her head. Gasping then yelping with the cold she lost her footing, then leapt into the following wave and was swimming, kicking, lifted up by the strong incoming rollers, her eyes blinking away the spray, seeing the blue-green white-flecked crests of the advancing waves and the brilliant light of the blue sky beyond. She cried out now in wild joy, feeling her limbs becoming warm in the fierce water as she swam out strongly from the shore and gave herself confidently to the huge movement of the sea.

  Anne had been an athletic girl, a golfer, a swimmer, a tennis player. Physical strength and physical prowess had been taken for granted in her life, part of a calm sense of superiority which
had never faltered until it had run to its destined fulfilment in an ecstatic submission to God. She was strong, Anne Cavidge. She felt this now as she turned on her back and kicked the rhythm of the waves into a matted foam round about her. Enough now. She dolphin-leapt into the fast elegant crawl which she had not forgotten, any more than she had forgotten walking, and headed towards the land. The sea was indeed very cold.

  As she now swam back she felt, like an unexpected blow, a sudden lassitude. What had happened to the strength in which a moment ago she had been exulting? Her arms no longer moved effortlessly, they were puny and aching, and her naked body was coated with a profound cold. The nuns had prided themselves on keeping fit. Garden walks were not enough. Anne had followed a regime of exercises. Perhaps it had become less strict as the years went by. The vigour of youth was gone. What’s the matter with me, she thought. I’m weak, of course I haven’t forgotten how to swim, but I’m weak, my limbs are strengthless. Anne gasped, swallowed salt water. She continued to swim towards the land, but now with a terrible exhausted slowness. Over the flecked jumping wave-crests she could see the figure of Gertrude upon the shore very far away, and beyond her the grey cube of the cottage. Perhaps there was a current taking her out to sea! It could not be just her own weakness which made the land seem to recede? She tried harder, spurred now by fear. Was she going to drown now, stupidly, wickedly, before Gertrude’s eyes? Yesterday she had climbed the cliff to impress Gertrude. It had really been quite difficult.

  Gertrude could see Anne swimming hard to get back against some force which seemed to be preventing her. Gertrude could see too the malignant violence of the breaking waves as they smashed down on to the stones. It was easier to leap out against those waves than to swim in with them. The sea seemed to have become greater and fiercer in the short interval since Anne had rushed into it. I dared her, thought Gertrude, it is my fault. Now, just when I have found her, she is going to die in front of me, to drown helplessly and disappear. Gertrude could scarcely swim. She had always feared the sea. She called ‘Anne! Anne!’ wringing her hands.