Nuns and Soldiers

by Iris Murdoch

  ‘OK, OK, now I have an idea.’

  ‘I’ve got an idea, I had it yesterday but I forgot. Why don’t you copy the animals in the National Gallery, just by themselves, and put them into glossy frames like the mogs? You’re so good at copying. They could look awfully charming those animals.’

  ‘You mean like the little dog in the Van Eyck and the big soppy dog in the Death of Procris and -’

  ‘Yes, the place is stiff with beasties.’

  ‘I’ll try it -. Has your landlord been after you again about the rent?’

  ‘Yes, but let’s not think of that. Oh God, I feel so stir-crazy in April. I wish we could get out of London to anywhere, Market Harborough, Sutton Coldfield, Stoke-on-Trent, anywhere.’

  ‘Yeah. Me too. Christ, we’re nearly out of golden syrup.’

  ‘Don’t give it all to me, Blue Eyes, old Blue Eyes, you’re almost as nice as Barkiss.’

  ‘I’ll go to the National Gallery tomorrow and look at those animals. ’

  ‘No, for God’s sake stay here and paint cats, that’s our only hope for my rent and more golden syrup. Jesus bloody Christ, can’t you go back to that gift shop in Notting Hill? They’d take them. I know you say it’s a mingy profit but beggars can’t be choosers.’

  ‘OK, OK.’

  ‘And if you go to the Nat Gall you’ll just moon around and waste time. I wish I hadn’t suggested it.’

  ‘I get inspiration there.’

  ‘It’s a total fallacy that painters inspire other painters. Either you paint or you don’t, either you’re good or you’re not - It’s like being able to wiggle your ears, or like moving your scalp, which I can do and no one else can that I’ve ever met. Painting is just factual. It’s nothing to do with charming emotions. I know what you’re like in the National Gallery, you wander round in a fantasy world where everything’s easy and pretty.’

  ‘Beautiful, not pretty. And not easy.’

  ‘Easy and pretty. Prettification, that’s what your friends Titian and Veronese and Botticelli and Piero and Perugino and Uccello and all that famous old gang are on about. They take what’s awful, dreadful, mean, grim, disgusting, vile, evil, nasty, horrid, creepy-crawly in the world and they turn it into something sweet and pretty and pseudo-noble. It’s such a lie. Painting is a lie, or most of it is. No wonder Shakespeare never mentions a single painter.’

  ‘Yes he does. Giulio Romano. Guy told me.’

  ‘Guy would admire Giulio Romano!’

  ‘He doesn’t admire him, he just said -’

  ‘You can tell some truths in a book. But nearly all painting is for sweetness, it’s nice, it’s like cake, look at Matisse, look at -’

  ‘You don’t like any painter unless he’s sadistic like Goya.’

  This was an old argument. Almost anything could start it up. Once it started they could not stop it from blundering on over the same ground to the same explosive conclusion.

  ‘Sadistic! You mean truthful. Your Christian friends are the real sadists, with their crucifixions and flagellations and beheadings and frying chaps on gridirons. And Saint Sebastian showing off his figure and smirking at the audience. Well, we know what that’s about. Never a sign of real pain in the whole galère.’

  ‘If there’s no pain then it’s not sadistic.’

  ‘It’s never-never-land art. At least Goya cares. God, have we eaten everything already? Give me some more wine for Christ’s sake. Your painting was always prettykins, or rather you chose such a weak soppy lot to copy, you never had any ideas of your own, at least you never thought it meant anything, you were right to give it up.’

  ‘I haven’t given it up!’

  ‘I used to imagine you could draw, and to think I wanted you to do me as the madonna once for a lark!’

  ‘You’ve really given it up. You might at least try, even just to earn us some cash.’

  ‘Fuck painting. I’m a writer. You can say something that matters in a book.’

  ‘Well, maybe you were right to give it up. There never have been any good women painters, and there never will be. No sex drive, no imagination. No women mathematicians, no women composers, no -’

  ‘Oh stop rubbishing, you know you’re only doing it to hurt me. Ever since the bloody world bloody started bloody men have been sitting down and being waited on by women, and even when women get some education they can’t concentrate because they have to jump up whenever little mannie arrives -’

  ‘Yah!’

  ‘And who the hell are you, Tim Reede, you put on airs and a fancy smock and who do you think you’re impressing? You can’t do anything, you’re less use to the world than the bloody man who picks up the bloody glasses in the bloody pub, you’re a parasite, a scrounger, living out of other people’s fridges, a toadie, a mean cadger, you’ve got the soul of a servant and a bloody useless dishonest one at that -’

  ‘Daisy - darling -’

  ‘Oh shit! Don’t darling me, and don’t start reminding me that you pay my rent.’

  ‘I wasn’t going to -’

  ‘All right, go away, fuck off, if you’re fed up, I’m not asking you to stay, go and find yourself a nice little typist, at least she could earn some money for you to live on. No more beans on toast. You could have a little house in Ealing and a dear little mortgage and a couple of bloody kids, just like everybody else, except that you’d be living on your wife. Oh you make me so mad, you’re so bloody pleased with yourself -’

  ‘I’m not -’

  ‘You think you’re not but you are. I’ve seen you when you thought no one was looking, with your perky little face so jaunty like a little bantam cock, and peeking at yourself in the mirror and prinking and smirking. You think you’re a wonderful little man, awfully sweet and rather clever and thoroughly harmless and lovable and nice. Oh Jesus bloody Christ! Let’s face it, we’d be better apart, we just torment each other, we drag each other down, with our pretences and with our lies, it’s all lies, Tim, let’s chuck it ... We’re bad for each other, we meet just where we’re most unreal. You want to go, why don’t you say so, why do you mask it in these spiteful attacks? Leave me alone. You think I couldn’t manage without you? I could manage bloody better. I’d pull myself together and do something if I hadn’t got you fussing around and pretending to look after me.’

  ‘Oh Daisy, stow it. We say these things, it means nothing. We’re us, we’re together, there isn’t anything else. Let’s love each other, what else can we do? Have some more wine.’

  ‘Have some more wine seems to be the final solution every time. OK, you pay my rent, do you think I enjoy it?’

  ‘I’ve got that job for September.’

  ‘September!’

  ‘We can manage if we drink less and don’t buy clothes.’

  ‘You mean if I drink less and don’t buy clothes. Yet, this dress is new, at least it’s new to me. I got it in a second-hand shop. It cost -’

  ‘Oh never mind! I say we’ll manage.’

  ‘I suppose we won’t die. Sometimes I wish I could. Life with you is beastly. Another life might be better. I just can’t arrange it. As you say we’re poor old us and we’d better love each other. My novel will make some money. I know you don’t think so! Only I can’t write at present, I try every day but I’m blocked. We’re a priceless pair. We’re landed with each other all right. Oh fuck, the wine’s finished. What are we going to do with ourselves?’

  ‘You could move in here I suppose.’

  ‘In this space we’d kill each other.’

  ‘Daisy, we may have to try it.’

  ‘The flat’s cheap, OK nothing’s cheap if you’re penniless, but it’s rent-controlled and I’d never get another one at that price.’

  ‘You can let it, you did before.’

  ‘The lodger’s only got to say “it’s mine” and it is.’

  ‘Well, you could find a -’

  ‘Oh yes, a rich American spending three weeks in London who wants to live in a stinking little room in Shepherd’s Bush
and share a bathroom with a lot of smelly bastards!’

  ‘You managed it before.’

  ‘That was a bit of luck and it was the tourist season. Besides, you don’t want me here, I don’t want myself here, you couldn’t work, I couldn’t work.’

  ‘You could sit in the public library.’

  ‘Fuck the public library. You know it isn’t on.’

  ‘Well, what shall we do?’

  ‘You could try Ebury Street.’

  ‘I’ve told you, there isn’t any Ebury Street any more. They’ve dropped me. Guy was the only one who bothered about me. Now I’ve vanished, they’ve forgotten me, they wouldn’t remember my name!’

  ‘Well, remind them. Ask the Count for a loan. It’s not all that long till September.’

  ‘Daisy, I can’t -’

  ‘Oh you’re so spineless. Can’t you do something for us? They’re all rolling in money -’

  ‘They aren’t -’

  ‘And we haven’t any. It stands to reason. It’s natural justice. God, if I had a gun I’d bloody go and take it off them!’

  ‘I can’t see it is justice,’ said Tim, ‘I mean expecting them to help us.’

  ‘Well try, try to see it as justice!’

  Tim tried. He almost could. After all, he had always been somehow like a child among them.

  ‘I’m sure they swindled you out of that money, that trust fund money.’

  ‘They didn’t.’

  ‘Oh, I’m so tired of these arguments. Can’t you do something? Go and see Gertrude.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Why not? You’re frightened of her.’

  ‘All right, I’m frightened of her.’

  ‘I bet she was head girl of her school.’

  ‘Anyway, she’s a liberated woman, you ought to approve.’

  ‘Gertrude, liberated! Laissez-moi rire! She’s just a new style of slave. Is she still away?’

  ‘She should be back by now. But I’ve never had any dealings with Gertrude. Guy was the one who cared for me. But he’s dead and I can’t go and bother Gertrude now, it’s out of the question. I’m finished there, I’m past history, there’s no connection any more.’

  ‘You mean she’d show you the door?’

  ‘No, but I just mustn’t go there any more, not unless I’m invited, and I won’t be.’

  ‘So, for a social nicety, we starve!’

  ‘Darling, don’t exaggerate our sorrows, we shall survive!’

  ‘I think you don’t understand. I am asking you to do, for you and me, something which is dead easy. What have you got to lose? OK, she may just stare at you with her glassy eyes and change the subject, but what have you got to lose?’

  ‘I don’t want to be glassily stared at - and - oh I can’t explain - it’s to do with Guy.’

  ‘With Guy? But he’s dead!’

  ‘Oh - Daisy -’ Tim could indeed not explain, and scarcely to himself. It was something to do with his special relation with Guy, his respect and affection for Guy, his private farewell to Guy. These things concerned nobody but Guy and Tim. He could spoil all that now by going cap in hand to beg from the widow.

  ‘You’re afraid of that fat female.’

  ‘She isn’t fat.’

  ‘She’s podgy and stodgy.’

  ‘In any case -’

  ‘So you admit you’re afraid?’

  ‘No - Oh Daisy, do stop. Let’s go to bed. There’s always that.’

  ‘There’s always that! Oh Jesus!’

  ‘You mean you’re short of money?’ said Gertrude.

  ‘Well, yes -’ said Tim. That did about sum it up.

  Daisy had at last persuaded him. He hated it. He had put on a tie, and one of his suits from better days, the one he used to wear to those Ebury Street ‘evenings’ which now belonged to an ancient and vanished past. It was six in the evening and they were standing beside the fireplace in the drawing-room holding sherry glasses. Tim put down his glass and toyed with a china monkey flautist. He had hoped that cold Anne Cavidge would not be present. She had given him a very chilly look when she had found him, before Christmas, rifling Gertrude’s fridge and stuffing things into his plastic bag. There was no sign of her at the moment, thank God.

  Gertrude was silent, seeming embarrassed. Tim’s heart was in his boots. It was going to be the glassy stare and the door after all. Of course Gertrude would be kind about it -

  Gertrude could certainly not now be called ‘fat’. She was thinner and looked older. In some ways this suited her. She was wearing a dark coat and skirt with a high-collared white blouse and a yellow and brown silk scarf tied in a bow. She wore brown patterned stockings, and a smart brown leather shoe tapped on the fender. She had small feet. Her copious slightly-curling hair had been cut and swept in closer to her head. Her browncomplexioned fine-nostrilled face had, with the faint anxiety, its fastidious look. The brown eyes frowned at the blue eyes, the blue eyes flinched and turned elsewhere.

  I’ve spoilt it, thought Tim, I’ve spoilt the past, I’ve sinned against Guy, against what just for a moment seemed to be my family ; and, in that belief, somehow they were my family. Why didn’t I wait? Gertrude might have written to me, asked me to come. Now I’ve upset and annoyed her and ruined it all and she’ll despise me. Even if she gives me a hundred pounds, it won’t be worth it. I don’t even want it. Why ever did I let Daisy persuade me? I’m a creep, and Gertrude must be seeing me as one.

  Tim had laboured over a letter to Gertrude. Was it better to pretend he was proposing a social call, or should he at once strike the note of business? He tore up the letter, he could not write things. In the end he just rang up and said he would be near Victoria that evening and could he call in? Once there, and seeing Gertrude’s smiles, he could not bear to pretend. He at once, awkwardly, bluntly, rudely, made clear that it was money he was after. Oh God!

  ‘I see,’ said Gertrude. She began to finger a china monkey violinist. ‘But - well - if you don’t mind - I’d like to understand-I thought-I imagined - you had a teaching job - and you sell your pictures-I suppose -’

  ‘I should have explained,’ said Tim, ‘it’s just a matter of getting through the summer. I shall have employment in the autumn. I haven’t got a job at the moment -’

  ‘Have you tried? I suppose you could get some sort of job?’ said Gertrude.

  Tim felt cold. Well, maybe he could. But what a world of experience separated him from Gertrude! Maybe Daisy was right about her after all! ‘I might be able to,’ said Tim, ‘but I want to go on painting.’ He realized at once that this was, in this room surrounded by the faces of hard-working Judeo-Christian puritans, the very worst thing to say. Was he then asking Gertrude to support him in a life of unpractical self-indulgence? It certainly sounded like it.

  ‘Then you can sell what you paint? Or can you?’

  ‘No, not much,’ said Tim. ‘I mean, there’s a time-lag you see -’

  ‘But you have paintings stored up-I mean ones you could sell? I believe painters sometimes don’t want to sell their work, they don’t want to part with it, I can understand that.’

  ‘I have some things,’ said Tim, ‘but I don’t think they’d fetch much. I’m not a very fashionable painter.’ That was one way of putting it.

  Gertrude latched onto this. ‘I’m glad you say that. Of course you mustn’t try to be fashionable just to make money. What are you painting now?’

  Tim wondered if he could explain to Gertrude about the cats. He decided he could not. He said, trying to be at least partially truthful, ‘I’m drawing at present - drawing people, people I see in - in parks and places - and animals and - and things -’

  ‘Drawing is like practising scales for a musician?’

  ‘Oh yes, very like, just like that -’

  ‘I expect you do it all the time while you’re waiting for the next big thing that you do?’

  ‘Oh - yes -’

  ‘And what will that be?’

  ‘I’m - not sure -’
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  ‘But you don’t want to leave off and do art teaching? You were doing some teaching, weren’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Tim patiently, ‘I was, but that job has folded up. All the art schools are short of money and the part-time staff are the first to go. I can’t get another teaching job at present, I’ve tried and tried, everyone is after these jobs. I’m unemployed until September unless I want to - er -’

  ‘Take something very uncongenial?’

  ‘Yes. And even that’s hard to get now. It’s just hard to get work. It’s a bad scene.’

  ‘I realize of course -’ said Gertrude.

  Tim thought, now I’m exposing my sores and accusing her of being a sort of Marie Antoinette! No wonder she looks annoyed. I’ve got everything wrong! He began to say, ‘I’m sorry I -’

  Gertrude said, ‘I suppose you can apply for unemployment benefit?’

  ‘I have, I do,’ said Tim desperately. ‘It’s not much of course - but as you say - I’ll go again and get some more - of course I can manage perfectly well - it’s not as if I wanted to live in luxury - I’m sorry I bothered you, it’s not important really.’

  ‘Have you only yourself to support?’ asked Gertrude.

  Tim had no difficulty with that one. ‘Oh yes - only me - no dependants.’

  ‘Forgive me for asking. I really know so little about you.’

  ‘Not at all -’

  ‘And this job in September, it’s part-time teaching? Is it certain or only possible?’

  Tim hesitated. He was really not sure. He had told Daisy that it was certain, to cheer them both up. But with things as they were, nothing was certain. ‘Nothing is certain,’ he said, ‘but I hope-I mean I think -’

  ‘Have you any money saved?’ said Gertrude.

  ‘No - well, scarcely-I mean - No.’

  ‘It sounds a bad situation.’

  ‘Oh, it’s not so bad really,’ said Tim, ‘I rub along perfectly well, in fact I can’t think what I’m complaining about -’

  ‘Where do you live?’

  ‘I have a little sort of studio flat, in Chiswick, it’s cheap.’

  ‘Forgive me for asking all these questions,’ said Gertrude, ‘It’s just that if I’m going to help you, I’ve got to understand the situation, I’ve got to see it all.’