Nuns and Soldiers

by Iris Murdoch

  ‘Yes-I suppose so -’

  ‘Go then.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Go.’

  Tim got up and made for the door. He remembered that he had put his shaving things in a plastic bag beside his chair, and he returned and picked it up, not looking at Daisy. Tears had now come into his eyes. He returned to the door, went out, crossed the hall, let himself out of the flat door, closed it quietly and began to descend the stairs. He thought, it’s not real, so I don’t have to have this terrible suffering. I can always go back, I can always go back. She can’t vanish like she said.

  He came out into the street and began to walk slowly towards Finchley Road Station. He felt estranged from his body, giddy, awkward as if he were learning to walk. How odd a procedure, to put one foot down, then lift the other and swing it forward, then put it down and change balance and lift the other . . . He felt he might fall down at any moment. When someone came towards him on the pavement it seemed like a dark blur and he had to stop moving to let it pass. He walked along slowly with his mouth open. The hot tears in his eyes burnt him but refused to fall. He felt sick with a vast black iron sickness.

  He could not determine the exact moment when he had decided to leave Daisy. It had been ‘coming on’ for some time. It had been like a huge mass of material bearing down on him and which he had seen out of the corner of his eye as he waited paralysed with fear. He had at last, gasping with emotion, acknowledged the reality of his intention. He had during the last few days scarcely seen Daisy at all. She stayed in bed in the mornings, often till midday, and he left the house without seeing her. He returned late at night, and drank a glass of whisky with her if she was visible, then retired quickly to bed. Daisy was, during this time, drunker than usual.

  During the day he walked London. He did not go to the galleries any more for fear of what he would see there. He sat in pubs. When they closed he sat on park benches. The weather was golden, London was dazzlingly beautiful. The huge long-armed plane trees were dreaming of autumn, already dropping big green and brown leaves here and there. Leaves sailed slowly down and laid themselves quietly at Tim’s feet. He felt as if he were being transmitted into some other spiritual state. Sometimes he doubted whether he was still visible. He found that he was able to sit entirely immobile for an hour on end. He sat, and did not exactly think, but let things happen in his mind. The external world disappeared and he existed in the midst of some pale whitish void. Sometimes the void gleamed like the sea, turning silver. It hummed or throbbed quietly. Tim breathed.

  He wondered if he were really changing, going mad perhaps. Was the onset of madness like this? He felt extremely quiet, but absolutely stretched as if space were bending and he were bending with it. Everything seemed to vanish including his own personality. He was a tiny scrap of being, a particle, and yet also he was the surrounding area which seemed infinite. He was an atom, an electron, a proton, a point in empty space. He was transparent. It was this transparency which made him feel invisible. He was empty, he was clean, he was nothing. Yet at the same time he was refined energy, pure activity, pure being. The experience was not in itself painful, though frightful pain somehow existed too, nearby, half hidden, sometimes like a black hole, sometimes like a dense mass of indestructible matter. The sense of emptiness was occasionally almost pleasurable. It was always awful. It’s a condition of pure freedom, it’s like being an angel, he thought once. In the later stages he did not even go to pubs any more. He ate very little. He sat quietly on benches in Regent’s Park, in Hyde Park, in Kensington Gardens, and existed. If someone came and sat near him he quietly rose and moved slowly to another bench and his feet did not touch the ground.

  The ‘form’ of his experience was, he supposed, his resolution to leave Daisy. And he said to himself, it’s like The Magic Flute after all, except that something has gone wrong and the music is being played differently and Papagena and Papageno are not to be saved after all, they have lost each other in the darkness of their ordeal and are never to be reunited ever in any paradise by any god. Yet he knew too that his experience was more than this ‘form’, that it was absolute, some kind of ultimate phenomenon, some kind of truth, not as it were God, but the cosmos itself, gentle, terrible, final. It was also a vision of death. He breathed, amazed at breathing, as if he had just realized that all his life he had been counting his breaths. He was appalled by what was happening, terrified of himself as he had now become, yet he wanted too to prolong the experience. He could not see how to return to ordinary life, and he knew the return would be agony. He gradually formed his terrible resolution, or rather it was formed for him, but he was not then living in the ordinary world of time and space where resolutions are carried out and situations change irrevocably and forever; and only in this way could he have decided.

  One morning at about noon he went into a telephone box at Baker Street Station and called the flat. There was no answer. He stood with the telephone in his hand and his heart beating so painfully it was like having a ferret in his breast. He left the box and stopped a taxi. He kept the taxi at the flat while he collected his belongings. He went on in the taxi to the studio and carried the stuff up the steps. He looked with amazement at the studio, immobile in its own quietness in spite of the surrounding sound, oblivious of history. Its peaceful chaos was just as it had been when he had stood there talking to the Count. No one had been in, nothing had happened. He returned that night to the flat at Finchley Road, and during the next day he went out as usual and walked and sat and walked and sat. But he knew that he had set off a terrible avalanche of events. The white separated time was coming to an end.

  On the following day he did not go out early. He shaved and put all his remaining things into a plastic bag. He sat on his bed waiting for Daisy to wake and stir, and now he felt the pain, the black rending pain which had travelled with him and found its moment. He sat with closed eyes and doubled himself up over the pain, until at last he heard Daisy coughing, padding to the bathroom, at last fiddling in the kitchen; and he picked up the plastic bag and came out.

  It was true that it had nothing to do with Gertrude. It could not have. In the white cold fire where he had been living there was no such thing as Gertrude. It was as if thoughts and feelings and judgements stretching away into the remote past had been collected and perfected in that blankness. The fabric of the resolution was made of old old things, ancient things that knew not of Gertrude. His whole life was collected, recollected, in what with dreadful inevitability was happening now. And the strange thing was that Daisy knew at once, knew as soon as she saw his face. It was like taking partners for a dance. She understood everything. She was perfect.

  Yet was not that perfection his final ordeal? How could he leave such a woman? Was not this, which had happened, some sort of purification or consummation or redemption of their love, like, at last, a marriage? How could he leave and forever the person with whom he had shared, after so long a pilgrimage, that final experience of absolute truth? He loved Daisy more than he had ever loved her before. In the darkness of that final unimagined pain his perfection and her perfection met to negotiate the severance.

  He felt that he needed to be in an open space, and he took a taxi to Marble Arch. The taxi dropped him off at Speakers’ Corner and he walked away under the trees; and something which had been going very fast, perhaps his heart, began gradually to slow down. The white light seemed to be with him again but it was different now. It had become pearly, dove-grey, attentive, still. He found that he could see through it. He could see the trees, the huge quiet planes, with their immense friendly peeling trunks and the vast dangling swing of their downward reaching branches covered with feathery leaves. He walked on over the grass which was dry and warm and bleached to a faded gold, and it made a soft springy sound under his feet. He could see in the distance the line of the lake and the Serpentine bridge. Then suddenly his knees gave way, he knelt down and lay prone upon the grass. Like an orgasm, like a birth, something wr
enched his body and then left it, leaving him utterly limp. A warm wave had broken over him and now flowed on and on. A wave of pure thoughtless happiness which made him, with his face in the dry grass, moan and moan with joy.

  On the fifth morning the mistral began to blow. They had nevertheless not abandoned their plan of going into the village. Gertrude and the Count sat in the café while Anne shopped. Anne was also to discover someone to mend the cracked pane in the study. After that they intended to drive some way to leave a message with the electrician who usually at this time of year serviced the electric pump which brought the water up from the well. Then the idea was to have lunch somewhere on the way home.

  The terrasse of the café was deserted and the doors were closed. Gertrude and the Count sat inside and drank cognac. The patron, usually their friend, was ill-tempered. The place was cold. Whenever anyone came in the door had to be gripped hard to prevent its crashing back against the wall outside. It was impossible not to bang the door when closing it. The patron shouted angrily. Pieces of newspaper and leaves swept in onto the floor. Gertrude and the Count sat hunched up over their cognac wishing they had brought their coats. Anne arrived. She had been unable to find a glazier. She remembered that she had forgotten to buy butter. Gertrude said it didn’t matter, the Count said he would get it on the way to the car. They agreed not to go to the electrician or out to lunch but go straight home. When they were getting into the Rover one of the car doors doubled itself back with such violence that the hinges were damaged and it was extremely difficult to shut. Once shut, they decided it had better stay shut. However the Count, forgetting this, opened it again when they got back to the house and it took even longer to get it shut again. They had also forgotten the butter. Gertrude said the wind would probably blow for three days and then stop.

  They went round the house securing the shutters, which they had failed to do before they left. Then they sat for a while in the sitting-room drinking more cognac and saying how exciting it all was. Eventually they had a lunch of fruit and cheese. Anne had also forgotten to buy bread, but yesterday’s stale bread was not too bad. Anne ate practically nothing and eventually admitted she was feeling sick. It felt like a migraine coming on. She retired upstairs. Gertrude began a long querulous search for a book to read. Colloquial Urdu, at which she had thought she might have another go, was unopened. Guy had stocked the house with ‘classics’ and Anne and Gertrude had been able, jesting about this, to continue with the novels they had left unfinished in Cumbria, The Heart of Midlothian and Sense and Sensibility. But in the wind-racked house Gertrude felt unable to read Jane Austen. She found a detective story by Freeman Wills Crofts, which had been left behind by Stanley, and also retired upstairs. The Count had brought Proust with him, unnecessarily as the whole work, in French and English, was already in Guy’s study. But the Count felt alienated from Swann. He did not want to read about the pains of jealousy. He went through Guy’s books to find something about Poland and failed. Guy’s books here (and indeed in London too) knew not of Poland. The Count felt a little chagrin. He did not quite feel, as his compatriots were sometimes said to feel, that really ‘everyone is more or less of Polish origin.’ But he did feel that every intelligent person must be interested in Poland. He thought he might go for a walk, and stood outside for a while in the wind, then came in again feeling as if he had been scalped. He sat on his bed worrying about Gertrude. Anne had been quite right in her conjecture that the Count had resolved to wait until after Christmas to propose to Gertrude. But now this resolution was weakening. Yesterday Gertrude had received a letter from Manfred. (The post was left in a box in the garage by an invisible postman.) The Count recognized Manfred’s affected Italianate script upon the envelope as Gertrude carried it away upstairs. He felt that he could not wait much longer to know his fate.

  The mistral had begun to blow suddenly at about ten o’clock out of a blue sky. Now the sky had become grey, but not in the usual manner by the arrival of perceptible clouds. It was rather as if each grain of blue had quietly, and without changing its position, faded into a grain of grey. It would indeed have been hard to be sure that the sky was clouded at all were it not that the sun was invisible. Yet perhaps it had already sunk behind the rocks? The Count, whose watch had stopped, could not now make out what time it was. He had lain down on his bed for a moment. Had he fallen asleep? He went out into the sitting-room. There was no one about. The wind blew, not as other winds blew in waves or moody gusts, but steadily, as if the air, set into some regular swift motion, were simply flowing past like a river. The wind-river, flowing parallel to the ground, carried with it, as the Count watched it from the sitting-room window, willow leaves, vine leaves, olive leaves, twigs and other items of debris kept aloft by the steady lines of force, as if the earth itself were being quietly disintegrated into a stream of particles. There was a monotonous machine-like roar, not very loud or piercing, but pitched so as to set every nerve jangling.

  Gertrude came down complaining that she had been unable to rest. She made some tea which neither of them wanted. The house had become very cold. After some searching Gertrude found a small electric fire in a cupboard and plugged it in in the sitting-room and they sat beside it trying to be amused by the wind. Gertrude recited some of the usual folklore about it. A steady draught, a mini-mistral, was coursing through the room and up the chimney. The Count suggested that, if there was any fuel, they might light a fire that evening (well it was evening by now, wasn’t it?) in the big stone fireplace. Gertrude applauded this. She was unwilling to go out as her coat was so thin, but she told the Count where the wood store was, in a wooden lean-to shed beside the garage. He went out and came back saying he had been unable to find it. Gertrude went out irritably hugging her flimsy coat. The shed was empty, the wood had been stolen. They came back and Gertrude began a fruitless search for hot water bottles which she said they would certainly need that night. When the mistral blew, the beds in some mysterious way immediately became damp.

  Anne Cavidge lay in bed, propped up with pillows. She had covered herself over with all available blankets, with her coat, even with a mat off the floor, but she still felt cold. She had felt sick that morning in the village and had forgotten the bread and butter, which she much regretted. She had a terrible migraine, which was taking an unusual though not altogether unfamiliar form. She had entirely lost the centre of her field of vision. The centre was occupied by a large greyish round hole into which she seemed to stare, round the edge of which was a fringe of boiling particles not unlike porridge. Outside this the edges of the field of vision, what is seen ‘out of the corner of the eye’, appeared as usual. She had no ordinary headache, but a much worse sensation of extreme giddiness and sea-sickness, a spinning head and a dull heavy iron-grey desire to vomit. She had put some newspaper and a chamber pot on the floor beside her. She could not stand, sit, or lie flat. The propped-up position was the most endurable. She could not keep her body still but had to keep moving it about for relief, writhing her legs and shifting her shoulders and rolling her head. She lay listening to the monotonous roaring of the wind and the rattling of the captive shutters. That morning in the village she had posted her letter to Chicago.

  Gertrude knocked, then came in.

  When Anne heard her coming up the stairs she quickly leaned over and pushed the newspaper and the chamber pot under the bed.

  ‘How are you, my dear? Do you mind if I look in your cupboard? There are some hot water bottles somewhere.’

  ‘Yes, do.’

  Gertrude rootled in the cupboard. ‘There’s one, but it looks pretty ancient. How dark it is. Do you mind if I put the light on?’

  Gertrude turned on the light. Anne covered her eyes.

  ‘Here’s another, that’s something. Sorry, I’m dazzling you.’ She turned the light off again. ‘How are you, Anne, dear heart?’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Have you been reading Scott?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I couldn’t
read either. I’m sorry about the hellish wind. It will stop. Are you warm enough?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Let me feel your feet.’ Gertrude thrust her hand under the blankets and felt Anne’s restless feet. ‘You’re frozen. And your feet are bare, you silly dolt. Haven’t you any socks or anything with you?’

  ‘Well - oh, yes - in that suitcase - it doesn’t matter -’

  Gertrude found a pair of socks, pulled back the bed clothes and pulled the socks on. Anne lay rigid for a moment, feeling Gertrude’s warm hand, then as Gertrude restored the blankets, resumed her writhing.

  ‘I’ll give you a bottle,’ said Gertrude, ‘if either of these holds water. How do you feel, really?’

  ‘It’ll pass.’

  ‘Your dress is all crumpled. Wouldn’t it be a good thing to undress ?’

  ‘Will later.’

  ‘You must see Victor when you get back.’

  ‘Better other doctor, stranger.’

  ‘You saw Orpen.’

  ‘Dentist different.’

  ‘Have you taken aspirins?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Couldn’t they do anything about this vile migraine at your stupid convent?’

  ‘It’s psychological.’

  ‘You’re a masochist.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Would you like a little consommé?’

  ‘No thanks.’

  ‘You can’t keep still. Would a sleeping pill help?’

  ‘Later, thanks.’

  ‘I don’t know what to do with you. Brandy?’

  ‘No thanks.’

  ‘Oh dear, and the Count’s like a cat on hot bricks. We’re all unhinged today.’