Nuns and Soldiers

by Iris Murdoch

  Tim felt his full dismay at the prospect of this relentless just scrutiny. Would Gertrude demand to see his studio, look at his pictures? Would it be a proper means test? Oh why why why had he come!

  ‘These are the questions,’ said Gertrude, ‘which Guy would have asked you.’

  The truth of this touched Tim. He put down the china monkey flautist. He had been looking at Gertrude’s elegant brown foot. He raised his eyes now and met her intent worried gaze. He said, ‘Guy was very good to me. I miss him very much. I’m sorry -’ He wondered if he should now mention the fact that Guy had lent him money, but decided not to.

  ‘I was going to write later to ask how you were,’ said Gertrude. She put down the violinist with something of a clack. It sounded like a reproach. During the questioning she had been purposeful, business-like. Now she was embarrassed again, possibly annoyed.

  ‘I’m sorry I didn’t wait for your letter,’ said Tim. This now sounded rude.

  ‘I can’t think why Guy didn’t buy any of your pictures.’

  Of course Guy had bought one, but he had evidently never shown it to Gertrude.

  ‘Oh - they’re not much good -’

  ‘Have you had shows, exhibitions?’

  ‘Good heavens no.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Gertrude, ‘it sounds as if I’m saying it would be an act of charity to buy your work and I don’t mean that of course.’

  This conversation is becoming terrible, thought Tim, and that ghastly Anne Cavidge will probably turn up in a minute and find me scrounging again. I’d better get out. He said, ‘I’m sorry to have troubled you. It’s done me good just to air my worries. Just talking about them has helped. In fact I now see that I can manage perfectly well. It’s only till September. I just wanted to see you, really, say hello. I thought it would be nice to - to see you - to be in this room again. I’ve thought so much about Guy - and how awful it - you know-I simply wanted to drop in. Forgive me for chatting about my little bothers. They’ve all blown away now anyhow. Thanks for the drink - and now - dear me it’s late-I must be off -’

  ‘Tim, please, just stop fussing me,’ said Gertrude. ‘Look come and sit down here and let me get you another drink.’

  Tim obediently moved to an upholstered upright chair just beyond the edge of the Spanish rug.

  Gertrude said, ‘I just want to think.’

  Tim said to himself, she is trying to imagine what Guy would do now. He was right.

  Gertrude gave him another dose of sherry in one of the cut-glass glasses which had so much excited Daisy’s scorn. He accepted it gratefully. The first dose had been insufficient. Gertrude pulled another chair up opposite to him. It was like a small business meeting. It was not exactly a social scene.

  ‘I could lend you some money,’ said Gertrude.

  ‘Oh no, no!’ said Tim, confused (he had already gulped the sherry). Daisy had impressed on him, ‘If possible don’t let her call it a loan - we probably won’t repay it, we can’t, but if it’s called a loan you’ll fret, you won’t raise a finger to pay it back but you’ll fret.’ Tim recognized the justice of this prognosis of his character. Then he thought, well, let it be called a loan, so long as it’s money. But he had already cried ‘No!’

  Gertrude went on, ‘But it would be much better if I could find some way for you to earn money. One must earn one’s living. You want to-I must help you -’

  I don’t want to, thought Tim, I just want the money! But he said, vaguely wildly, ‘Oh - yes - yes - !’

  ‘If you were out of London, could you let your flat?’

  ‘My - oh - yes - yes, I could.’ I couldn’t, thought Tim, but what does it matter. Gertrude is losing her grip, I’m not going to get any money out of her, I must just get out of the house politely. And I mustn’t accept another drink or I’ll just sit here waiting for more alcohol.

  ‘Would you mind being somewhere else? I mean, you could work anywhere, couldn’t you?’

  ‘Oh, yes - anywhere -’

  ‘Supposing you went to live in our house in France?’ said Gertrude.

  ‘In - where?’

  ‘In my house in France,’ said Gertrude, correcting herself.

  They were upright, facing each other, holding up their sherry glasses, as in some kind of contest.

  ‘But -’ said Tim, ‘I - what?’

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ said Gertrude, ‘of something which you could do for us - for me - something like a job - where you could paint too - and if you could let your flat as well -’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t understand,’ said Tim.

  ‘You see, there’s this house in France, it’s a cottage really, in some little hills, not quite in Provence, Guy and I bought it ages ago and did it up, and we used to go there, almost every year, and we let it sometimes -’

  Tim had vaguely heard of ‘the French house.’ ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘Well, I won’t be going there again I think. I’ll probably sell it. By the way, can you speak French?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Tim. He could scarcely speak French but his mind was racing.

  ‘We - Now the tourist season’s starting it’s better to have someone there, like a caretaker sort of. And if I’m going to sell it, it would be just as well to see that everything’s in working order, like the electricity and the water, and there’s something with the roof I remember or a window. If you could just activate the builder and - Could you bear it? You’d be all alone though, perhaps you’d hate it?’

  ‘I’d love it,’ said Tim. Exerting all his will-power he stared into Gertrude’s eyes.

  ‘You could stay for a while, as long as you like. Just live in the house and find out what’s working and what isn’t. There’s water and electric light, no telephone I’m afraid, it’s all very primitive. I’ll tell you how to get in touch with the people in the village. It’s a bit isolated but there’s a bike. And there’s food there, tins and stuff, you may as well eat up. But the village shop has most things. You wouldn’t be lonely? I’d pay you of course for caretaking, and you could paint too, couldn’t you?’

  ‘Yes - yes - yes -’

  ‘Do you paint landscapes?’

  ‘Oh yes-I paint everything.’

  ‘Well, Tim - you could do something which Guy always wanted, and we somehow never managed it - he wanted an artist to paint a picture of the house and of, you’ll see, the hills, the view. It seems sad now, but I would so much like you to do it. I’d buy anything you managed to do of the place.’

  ‘Gertrude, wait a minute,’ said Tim. He got a grip of himself and leaned forward. He was about to tap her brown-stockinged knee, but refrained. ‘Listen. I am not a very good painter. So if that’s the point -’

  ‘It isn’t-I mean I’m sure you are, the scenery will inspire you - but I want you to be there -’

  Tim swayed back again, ‘Well, I’ll do the best I can. And it’ll be just me, no one else there? I’d love that.’

  ‘Yes, just you. It’s right out in the countryside, you understand, but you can meet the village people if you want to. Everybody loves a painter. You can stay for ages if you like, until September. It gets terribly hot of course. If I decide to sell the place it would be very useful to have someone speaking French and English on the spot to show it. In fact, now I come to think of it, it’s a brilliant idea.’

  ‘Gertrude, you’re a genius!’ said Tim. He thought, what a fantastic break for Daisy and me! She can let her flat, she says she can’t but she can. And we can spend the whole summer in France! She speaks the lingo. Gertrude will pay me. Daisy and I will live on bread and wine and olives like blooming lotus-eaters! ‘Oh thank you, Gertrude!’ Tim cried. ‘Thank you, thank you!’

  The bell rang. Anne Cavidge pressed the button that released the street door, then opened the door of the flat. Manfred and the Count were coming up the stairs.

  ‘We met at the door,’ said Manfred, smiling. The Count’s pale eyes glared unseeingly at Anne.

  ‘Gertrude is talking to
Tim Reede,’ said Anne as they came in.

  Gertrude opened the drawing-room door. ‘Tim is just leaving,’ she said.

  Tim slithered out. He said, ‘Thanks, Gertrude. Oh, hello, cheerio.’ He went out, stumbled over the step, and fell down the stairs. He picked himself up, reiterated ‘Cheerio’ and ran off.

  Anne Cavidge thought to herself, there’s something about that young man that I don’t trust. Her dislike of him was of course, as she knew, partly based upon a sense that he disliked her.

  Manfred and the Count had entered the drawing-room. Anne went into her own room. She combed her hair and looked at her thin colourless head in the mirror. Had those years ‘inside’ really made her invisible? Was invisibility the gift she had been given by a discerning and just God, in lieu of the great gift which she had sought, the pearl of great price? Innocence, the lack of any power to hurt, even to touch, the innocence of an invisible strengthless spectator! Was what she now felt herself to be a permanent condition, or was it the anaesthetic numbness which preceded the ghastly suffering attendant upon a change of being? The soft creature which has lived and walked secretly upon soft feet curls up and sleeps, lying half-buried in the damp earth, then wakes in an agony of pain and strife to find that it is becoming something quite else, a winged beast, entirely different, even living in a different element. In Anne’s case the change was the other way round; she was destined to become wingless and weak and small. Only for now she was dead, pale, unseen and without significant images of her life.

  What had so far helped her most perhaps was the way in which Gertrude, dear Gertrude, had taken her arrival, her service, so absolutely for granted. Gertrude’s questions about the convent had been uninstructed and perfunctory. Obviously Anne would come out (why had she delayed so long?) and obviously Anne would now, somehow, be with Gertrude always. And yes, thought Anne, somehow I suppose I will be, with her, or near her. If ever one was sent to another I was sent to her. But life changes, and how will I be, and how will this be a part of my mission, for it must be only a part? And indeed haveI a mission, why do I think I have been sent back into the world! Is this idea not a blind consolation? Why do I retain the notion of obedience after I have rejected all authority? Had all that gilded panoply really departed, the cherubim and the seraphim and the Most High seated in the midst, a focus of unimaginable light? Anne looked into the mirror, looked into her narrow blue-green eyes and prayed: oh let it be well, let me see, let me see. How odd to pray looking into a mirror.

  She turned away and patted her dress. She had several dresses now. Gertrude called this her Quaker dress since it was dove-grey with a white collar. She opened the door of her room and listened for a moment to the murmur of conversation in the drawing-room. She had noticed again, and been irritated by it, the Count’s agitation, his annoyance at arriving with Manfred. So would her task be simply to escort Gertrude into the arms of her second husband? Well, why not. Anne trotted across the hall and joined the company.

  ‘Hello, Anne, have a drink, you drink wine now, don’t you?’

  ‘Give her a little white wine mixed with soda water, she likes that.’

  Manfred had risen politely, smiling. He was always solicitously courteous to Anne.

  The Count, who had been sitting on a stool beside Gertrude’s armchair, failed to rise, then staggered to his feet and sat down again.

  ‘I hear you’ve passed your driving test, Anne,’ said Manfred.

  ‘Yes, I thought I should have a licence.’

  ‘Well done.’ Manfred attended to Anne’s drink. He said to Gertrude, ‘What did Tim Reede want?’

  ‘He wanted money!’ said Gertrude. They laughed.

  ‘A preoccupation, I imagine, with that young man,’ said Manfred.

  ‘I am afraid I never imagined it,’ said Gertrude.

  ‘Did Guy support him?’

  ‘Not that I know.’

  Gertrude was thinking: how clumsy and stupid I was with Tim. Of course I had to try to understand the situation. That’s what Guy would have done. But I did it so tactlessly, like a sort of inquisitive official. And he really was fond of Guy, that was so touching. And Guy was fond of him, he regarded him as a son. I must have hurt his feelings. He wanted kindness and really I gave him none. It was right to find a way of letting him earn the money. And it is a good idea he should stay at Les Grands Saules. But I was too successful in making it look like something just devised for my benefit! Maybe I should have said at once: Tim, don’t worry, you are a member of the family, I will help you, of course.

  The Count was thinking: I must control my feelings. I must stop being sick with love. Yet how can I, I don’t want to stop. I cannot endure to be in company with Gertrude, and yet if I am alone with her I risk horrifying her by some outrageous breakdown, I might seize hold of her, I am dangerous, I am mad. She is a woman afflicted, in deep mourning. She must not know that I am boiling with emotion. She smiles at Manfred, their fingers touch as he hands her a glass. I ought to go away but I can’t, I won’t. She must not know.

  Anne was thinking: I must go into retreat soon. Not in a religious house of course. This has nothing to do with Easter. Perhaps I should ignore Easter, give it up as an irrelevant pleasure. I must be alone, I can’t stand company, even Gertrude’s. I haven’t been properly alone since those long walks just after I came out of the convent. I must learn to pray in my new way, I must learn what it means. If there is anything to be found I can only find it alone. Gertrude is all right for now, she is surrounded by family, by friends, by suitors, I shall not be missed. I shall come back to her of course. But I must be away for a while and converse with my other self. Maybe I could go to the cottage in Cumbria or to Gertrude’s house in France.

  Gertrude was thinking: dear, dear Count, how he stares and trembles. Manfred has noticed it and is amused. I wonder if I should give Guy’s philosophy books to the Count? I am glad that he loves me. I cannot help being glad. And yet I feel so far away from him, so far away from everybody. I pretend, I pretend. They watch me for signs and they think I am better but I am not. Grief returns like the rain, like the night. I am all wound, all loss, though I smile. I am utterly maimed. Oh dearest husband, why have you left me? Oh Guy, Guy. I must not weep now.

  What Manfred was thinking will be revealed later.

  CHAPTER THREE

  TIM REEDE WAS ALONE in France. He was monarch of all he surveyed. He was mad with joy.

  He was standing on the terrace of Les Grands Saules and looking down into the little valley below him. Rough grass near the house, scythed no doubt the previous year (one could hardly call it a lawn), was covered with little blue flowers rather like grape hyacinths only smaller. Above these, like perpetual live confetti, flickered a mass of very small blue butterflies, even smaller brown moths, and innumerable bees. The sun shone, not yet hot, the heat of the day and the crackle of the cicadas still to come. Beyond the level of the cut grass the ground descended through an overgrown olive grove where the trees, set in trios, fell about in grotesque attitudes, splitting into huge semi-recumbent forms possessed of elongated faces and writhing bodies. Grass grew randomly upon the earth, which had at some time been ploughed, and crowded in clumps about the bases of the trees. Below the olives an invisible streamlet in the valley bottom nourished the big silver-grey willows which gave the house its name. They were not native to the area and had been planted there by Guy’s predecessor. A winding line of green canes, already grown tall, marked the further course of the stream. At night the music of frogs arose from this dell. On the other side of the stream there was a grove of poplars set in rows with clean light paper-brown trunks and a high twinkle of leaves. Then there was a small steep vineyard, and then the brilliant rocks which could look white or blue or pink or grey, and which rose, interspersed with bushes and grassy ledges and rare umbrella pines, to a fairly low and not distant skyline.

  The house of grey stone, once a small farm house, was handsome but not large. At one end its solid cubical for
m rose into a sort of tower. It was roofed with faded tubular red tiles and set upon a terrace of cracked paving stones which was partially shaded by a fig tree. Just below the terrace, and before the rough grass began, Gertrude had once made some confused efforts at a garden. Here rosemary and lavender and ramping geraniums survived, and a clump of radiant lyrical light-giving pink-white oleanders which made Tim positively shudder with colour-experience. The upper storey of the house had elegant square windows which retained their original stone lintels. The lower part, once a barn and byre, had been altered by Guy. An archway, closed by a folding door, gave onto a domed summer-dining-room, and a big French window opened to the sitting-room. From the kitchen at the back another original square window looked out over a wilderness of brambles towards a garage made of pierced bricks with rambler roses planted beside it and (Guy’s contribution) a eucalyptus tree. From here a short drive led to the little gravelly road. A bookish room beside the kitchen had clearly been Guy’s study. Above there were three bedrooms and two bathrooms and the tower room, reached by a ladder, which contained nothing but a lot of shrivelled onions. Tim thought of hauling a mattress up there, but the novelty of not sleeping on the floor was too attractive and he chose the small corner bedroom whence he could see both the willow valley and, through a cleft in the rocks, a triangle of far-distant green hillside. No human habitation was in sight, and in spite of all the cultivation it was an entirely empty landscape.

  Taking possession of the house had been an adventurous experience which appealed to Tim’s sense of ‘loot’, a mixture of fear and weird burglarious triumph. He enjoyed the space, the quiet attentive pleasantly furnished rooms, all his now. He felt profoundly safe in the house, as he had felt in childhood when his father was staying with his mother. He slept, relaxed, lying on his back, always a good sign. It had been a bit eerie at the start, inserting the key which Gertrude had given him in far-off London, opening the door, and coming in to that significant silent interior. He could understand why Gertrude did not want to come there, to see the books lying on the table, a Times of last year, papers and a pen upon Guy’s desk. There was also, for the benefit no doubt of tenants, a set of instructions in Guy’s fine pedantic hand. The heating for the bathrooms turned on in the airing cupboard. Rubbish should be taken to the village tip, never burnt. In case of mistral put garden chairs away promptly. You are advised to read the note in the First Aid Box about what to do if someone is bitten by a viper. Crockery broken should be (reasonably) replaced. Please do not remove books or maps. Mindful of his charge, Tim had at once checked as far as he could the condition of the house. He was relieved to find that the water and electricity were in working order. The roof appeared to be sound, but had yet to be tested by rain. A pane of glass in the study room was cracked. A little vine-covered loggia upon the terrace just outside the archway room had partially collapsed, but Tim had managed to mend that already with some stout poles which he had found in the garage.