Nuns and Soldiers

by Iris Murdoch

  After a while she was even able to talk about some of this to Tim, and about how her mourning had to go on inside her marriage. She was not worried any more about the ‘time scheme’, or about what in this connection ‘the others’ would think. Guy had died in December, Gertrude was to wed in July, with mirth in funeral and dirge in marriage. Well, so be it. Guy had often said to her that time was unreal. The question of time-lapse now seemed to her superficial and mechanical, something subject to her own judgement upon her own history, her own sense of what was proper and what was real. She no longer anxiously reckoned the weeks and the months of her widowhood. She would decide what to do about Tim in the light of her relation with Guy, and about Guy in the light of her relation with Tim. Love itself would here be her light. These calm thoughts helped Gertrude not to worry too obsessively (though she did worry) about what Guy’s family thought of her or about how madly their tongues were wagging. They were of course, to her, infinitely polite, considerate, intelligent, amiable. She knew that among themselves they would be talking of nothing else, and she imagined vaguely, not in detail, the degrees of shock, amazement, malice and moral disapproval which would spice these conversations which they would all enjoy so much. Positive encouragement had come to her from Gerald (who seemed genuinely fond of Tim), Moses Greenberg (who adopted a fatherly role) and rather surprisingly from Mrs Mount who went out of her way to be pleasant. Manfred of course behaved perfectly, but Gertrude had, as usual, little idea of what he was thinking. (It appeared that his absence on the wedding day was unavoidable. There had been rather short notice of the event.) Gertrude was not, at present at any rate, too worried about them. Perhaps she had been a cause of scandal. But, in this quarter, her sense of duty did not torment and puzzle her.

  Anne and the Count, those two ‘noble souls’ as Gertrude thought of them, were another matter. Tim and Gertrude had ‘lain low’ during the fairly brief interval between their reunion and the amazing announcement. They lived at Ebury Street, but without their previous obsession with secrecy. They said nothing, but anyone might have seen them together. Gertrude once more feigned to be ‘probably’ away, at least she said this to the Count and Anne (the others did not matter) without knowing whether they believed her, and a little hoping that they might not. It would perhaps be better, now, if they were to work it out for themselves. Just before she told ‘the family’ Gertrude wrote brief affectionate letters to them both telling them of her intention to marry. Of course they congratulated her, and the Count wrote a warm letter to Tim. Gertrude invited them to drinks with Moses, Manfred, Gerald, Victor and Mrs Mount, and they both came and the little party even achieved a plausible appearance of merriment. Tim seemed happy after the party, he said ‘they’ve accepted us.’ Gertrude was not so sure. She talked a little to Tim about the Count. Tim had been vaguely aware that the Count cared for Gertrude, but he had never known how much, and Gertrude did not now inform him. Anne’s behaviour was impressive. As soon as Gertrude told Anne that she was definitely going to marry Tim, Anne expressed no more opposition and whole-heartedly set about being pleased with the situation. The Count could not be pleased, doubtless could not even try to be. He behaved well, but was, though in general very cordial (it was now a point of honour to accept her invitations), a little remote and aloof. Gertrude measured in detail these movements of detachment and retreat. Now that she was determined to marry Tim she did not feel quite the same anguish about losing the Count’s good opinion which she had felt earlier when her liaison had seemed, even to her, like a messy doomed ‘affair’. But she guessed how much he was suffering. There were rare moments when his eyes could not resist the quick flicker of pain. And she thought to herself, very sadly, well, I have lost the Count, I suppose. He will slowly recede and go away. He cannot do otherwise. I can’t expect to have everything, can I.

  During this period Tim gave himself over to a sort of orgy of pleasure. He entered a time of festival from which anxiety was to be banished. He did this the more conscientiously as he felt that his enthusiasm must carry Gertrude who had her own burdens of sadness. Not that he doubted, this time round, her whole-hearted assent to their love. But he knew, because she told him, of her thoughts about Guy, and, because he guessed, of her worries about Anne and the Count. As a part of the festivities, Tim attempted during this time to change his persona, to make himself look different, younger, more picturesque. He trimmed his hair carefully and washed it more often. He shaved his barley-field beard down to invisible pin-points, but developed curly side whiskers. He still had his ‘caretaker’s salary’ to spend (he and Gertrude laughed about that) and dressed himself up like an artist in an opera with floppy coloured shirts and subtly contrasting cravats. He did his best at least to amuse Gertrude’s friends. He played the painter heartily for their benefit, and hoped that, after the first shock, they found the act intelligible and reassuring.

  Of course Tim could not really banish care. He thought about Daisy, though not obsessively. He thought about her at intervals for certain periods of time and then stopped thinking. He worked out certain things which would have to be done and which would be done, and then, for the moment, ceased to fret. He felt a deep sad tenderness about Daisy but no desire to see her. He felt that she was receding from him. In a certain positive way he was glad to have got away from her, it was something which, in a way, he had long wanted to do, but which without Gertrude’s help he could not have done. He welcomed and cherished this thought. He made certain good resolutions, one of which was that he would tell Gertrude all about Daisy, but not yet. He wondered whether he ought not to tell her at once, but decided on reflection not to. The revelation would hurt her, and she was suffering at present enough pain on his behalf. Moreover to explain Daisy would not be easy, Gertrude might very well misunderstand. Supposing, through some silly impulse of frankness, he were now to lose Gertrude after having so miraculously found her again? To risk this would be a gross ingratitude to the gods. Tim did not exactly put it so to himself, but he really needed time to rethink his relation with Daisy and remove it to a position of comparative unimportance in his autobiography. If only he had not run back to Daisy after Gertrude’s ‘rejection’, if only he had then had more faith in their love, this rewriting of his history would now be considerably easier, he would be much nearer to being ‘in the clear’! He must wait. Later, in the midst of a fortified and perfected married love, he could tell this tale less painfully and more safely. And by then it really would be something that belonged to the far past.

  With this settled in his mind, Tim planned the sad necessary steps of the severance. He had of course ceased to appear at the Prince of Denmark. He sent Daisy a short letter saying that he was again with Gertrude and would marry her. He had composed a longer letter with penitential paragraphs, but he tore this up. Daisy’s apt gibes occurred to him as his own thoughts. There was no point in ‘saying sorry’. The facts spoke clearly enough. It would be an insult to Daisy to surround them with the vaguely self-justifying emotional rubble of his mind. His mind was indeed full of rubble. He had a very long habit of loving Daisy, and among the shifting mental debris there was an odd idea; suppose he were to tell Gertrude about Daisy and say that he could not altogether give Daisy up but needed to continue to see her as a dear friend? Suppose he were to assume confidently that Gertrude would understand? He entertained this idea as a soothing compromise but of course recognized it as nonsense. It would shock Gertrude, and Daisy would spit upon it. He was, in the midst of his happiness, so complex and versatile is the human mind, thoroughly unhappy at times about Daisy. He did not expect her to reply to his letter, and she did not. Was she waiting for Gertrude to be finished and for Tim to return? Or had she finally consigned Tim to the devil? Should he write again, explain more fully? Every letter was a new bond. Yet he must, he felt, have some sign of dismissal from Daisy, some indication that she knew, that she had taken it all in. He could not bear her not to know. Suppose the first letter had gone astray? There were
mad lodgers in Daisy’s house who might steal letters. He really did need, for his peace of mind, her forgiveness, but for this he could not formally ask. Daisy’s forgiveness in any case would have its characteristic expression. At last, and after he was married Tim sent a letter containing a stamped envelope addressed to the studio, with a blank card inside it. His letter said, My dear, I am married, Pardon me and say good-bye. The envelope came back. Daisy had written Fuck off on the card. This was his pardon and he was deeply grateful for it. He recalled Daisy’s saying that without him she would pull herself together and do something. He hoped and half believed that this was true, and gradually he began to worry less about her.

  ‘When you leave the studio where will you store your pictures? We could have them here -’

  ‘No need, I can leave them at Jimmy Roland’s place.’

  ‘Isn’t he the chap you share the studio with?’

  ‘Yes, but he’s got another place.’

  Tim was painting at Ebury Street now. The studio was still ‘dangerous’, a moody Daisy might come there one day, though this was unlikely. He imagined Daisy breaking in and slashing his canvases. It was an exciting scene, but out of character. He did not actually want to part with the studio just yet. Moving the stuff would be a lot of trouble, and the reference to Jimmy Roland was an instinctive fiction. He decided to let the matter drift for a while.

  Tim and Gertrude were sitting over a long lunch in the dining-room at Ebury Street. Guy had been a fast eater. Tim was a slow eater. Although they were both working, the festival atmosphere still prevailed. On some mornings Gertrude taught English to her Asian women. She had only just started to teach these women when Guy fell ill, and she felt she was still a beginner. Her pupils, often patently intelligent, come of a resourceful and clever race, were diffident and timid. They would not come (with or without their husbands) to the flat and had not yet invited Gertrude to their homes. Lessons took place in a school-room atmosphere at the community centre. The language barrier was paralysing. A little Urdu or Hindi would have helped, but Gertrude was no linguist. She took her pupils singly, and confronting those dark handsome thoughtful anxious women, dressed in the most beautiful clothes in the world, she sometimes felt that she herself was being transported far away. Sometimes, speechless, she reached across the table for a frail brown hand, and pupil and teacher communicated, almost with strange pleasant tears or else with helpless laughter. She tried to describe all this to Tim, but without meeting the women he could not understand.

  Meanwhile in the mornings Tim worked at painting. He liked to be alone then, with the safety of Gertrude in his mind, but alone. That was necessary. He had taken over Anne’s room as a studio, the light was good, and had transported there by taxi the larger and more picturesque elements of his craft together with some of his more presentable pictures. He had also brought a supply of his rubbish-tip wood for painting on, though he scarcely needed this since Gertrude had bought him a number of fine new expensive canvases: or he had bought them with Gertrude’s money, or with his own money since their worldly goods were now mutually endowed. This would take a bit of getting used to, and he maintained his thrifty habits. He had not yet touched any of these beautiful white rectangles even with his thought. He had fiddled with some of the sketches made in France (not the drawings of the Great Face, those he left alone). He did two unsuccessful water colours of flowers at Gertrude’s request; and on some days when she went out teaching, he went to the park and drew trees. They travelled a little way together on the Underground, they liked that. Tim had to admit that he could not yet really settle down to his work.

  The afternoons were various. Sometimes Gertrude went back to her community centre to make arrangements or to attend meetings, and Tim returned to his new studio. He also liked cleaning and tidying and mending things. The excellent char, Mrs Parfitt, still came twice a week but Tim discovered plenty of tasks himself. Sometimes after lunch he and Gertrude would go shopping together for food and household goods. Like a young ménage, they enjoyed buying mops and brushes and cake tins and tea towels and other items which were usually unnecessary as the flat was well equipped. They encouraged each other to buy clothes, but their expenditure was tacitly modest. Occasionally they invited people for evening drinks. More often they went out for London walks ending in pubs. They frequented the Ebury Arms. They had not yet invited anyone to dinner, their evenings together were too precious.

  Gertrude and Tim constantly commented to each other on how amazingly well they got along. Both of them had, though without imagining in detail, expected disagreements, blockages, periods of non-communication. But these painful episodes did not occur. There were all sorts of little unforeseen concessions which they had to make to each other, but love and good sense enabled them to make them promptly. A vast scheme of small quick adjustments was no doubt taking effect the whole time. They looked at each other with a kind of wide-eyed benevolent generosity which took in each other’s deepest failings with a quick ‘Oh!’ followed by the ingenious accommodations of married love. Gertrude came to realize how far her life had depended upon Guy’s absolute efficiency, his reliability, his meticulous omniscience, his rational grasp upon the world, his effortless power over builders, plumbers, waiters, taxmen, motor cars, people on telephones, people in offices, people in shops. When she mentioned her income tax problems to Tim he said smilingly that he knew nothing about tax, he had never paid any. Tim was meticulously tidy and could clean and cook and wash clothes, but he lacked the concept of paying bills, or even keeping them. He could not write a business letter or conduct an impersonal telephone conversation. She was also shocked at the way he seemed to be able to live without reading.

  Tim on the other hand was amazed at how little Gertrude knew about painting and how little visual sense she possessed. She did not seem to know much about any art except literature. She professed to enjoy music but (rather to Tim’s relief) did not suggest concert-going. Thus each of them felt, in a new way, a little superior to the other, while quickly transforming the superiority into a kind of protective tenderness. Gertrude saw that Tim was inefficient, inaccurate, even lazy. Tim realized that Gertrude was (unlike Guy) not a polymath, and, in spite of her swim in the crystal pool, not a goddess. But each continued to find the other utterly charming and quite sufficiently clever. Tim found in his wife the absolute security for which he had always craved. He perceived her virtue and rested upon it. She had rescued him from his demons and renewed his innocence.

  Gertrude did gasp to herself sometimes to think that she had perfectly loved Guy, and now perfectly loved Tim, although the two men were so totally different. Sometimes she thought how can I be happy with someone so unlike Guy? She underwent in holy secrecy the pains and shocks of her mourning which continued their due ritual unaware of Tim. She had altered the flat as much as she could, but could not avoid seeing Tim’s shaving tackle in the bathroom where Guy’s had been; and there were many many ‘frames’ of her life where she still instinctively expected Guy and found Tim. She shed strange secret tears. She was even able in her inmost heart to grasp the idea that Tim was morally inferior to Guy. But her lively versatile love managed its new economy with self-regarding wisdom, and she found Tim not only adorable but very amusing. She often gazed at him, when he was intent on doing something (drawing, shaving, looking out of the window) and thought to herself: this absurd funny strange enchanting animal is my animal! She was aware of him as younger and of herself as travelling to join him in the land of his youth. She knew that she knew of death and he did not.

  ‘When we get a new flat you’ll have a better studio.’ They talked of finding a new place, but although both of them wanted to neither felt it was urgent. It was as if they did not yet want any new project, even this one, to disturb the magical continuity of their days. Life was still a honeymoon. They had not gone away after the wedding. Simply being together was their holiday. ‘You say the light’s good in Anne’s room. But it isn’t big enough.’ />
  Tim wished Gertrude would stop calling it ‘Anne’s room’. It was his studio now. Sometimes he still wondered how much, in the amalgam, he was marrying for security, for his art, so as to be able to spoil expensive canvases with experiments. Was there a grain of that in it all? He trusted his love enough to know that it didn’t matter.

  ‘The room is fine,’ said Tim.

  ‘Anne wants us to go for a drink at her new flat.’

  ‘Oh of course she’s in. Where is it, I forget?’

  ‘Camden. She says it’s cheap.’

  ‘When does she want us to go?’

  ‘Six o’clock tomorrow.’

  ‘We were going to do the Battersea walk to the Old Swan.’

  ‘We can do that next day, there are lots of days.’

  ‘May it be so! I keep thinking you’ll die or I’ll die.’

  ‘We’ll try not to. You know, I meant to tell you something-I feel I must tell you everything like in transference.’

  ‘What? Not anything awful?’

  ‘No, no, just odd. You know when - when we were just back from France and we got into that funny state -’

  ‘You did!’

  ‘Well, someone sent an anonymous letter to the Count saying we were having an affair.’

  ‘Oh God,’ said Tim. He flushed scarlet. ‘Who?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘What did the Count say, what did he think -?’

  ‘I haven’t discussed it with the Count,’ said Gertrude. She was blushing too.