Iris Murdoch - The Bell

The next day everything seemed different. As soon as Michael awoke he knew with absolute certainty that he could not go to Catherine and tell her that he would not receive her brother. Supposing in a month or a year Nick were to do something really outrageous, suppose he got himself into serious trouble (no unlikely result, according to the details which Michael confidently filled in to Catherine’s picture), suppose he killed himself – how would Michael feel then? He could not deny this suppliant, and most especially because of the past. He prayed long and passionately about the matter. He became the more convinced: and with the dawning of a strange joy he apprehended in the way things had gone a certain pattern of good. Nick had been brought back to him, surely by no accident. He did not dare to imagine that he was himself to be the instrument of the boy’s salvation; but he thought it possible that he might be destined, in some humble way, to stand by, as one who has a small part in some great ceremony, while this was indeed achieved. He was after all, where Nick was concerned, to have a second chance. He could not be meant to reject it. The thing chimed in so exactly with Catherine’s departure from the world. A being of such purity, as he now in exalted mood saw her, might indeed effect the salvation of her brother, and in some way his own as well, and miraculously the redemption of the past.

This highly coloured frame of mind did not last long; yet the essence of the hope and vision which it had brought him remained with Michael and he was now as firmly determined to have Nick as before he had been not to have him. Rather disingenuously pleading the authority of the Abbess he soon brought the others round, although James remained sceptical. Catherine was asked to write to her brother. Michael could not bring himself to do so. She immediately received a reply to say that he would come.

It was a morning early in August that trembling at the knees Michael had gone down to the station to meet Nick Fawley. He had parted from a boy; he was to meet a man. Yet, as happens at such times, the interval was in imagination annihilated, and what chiefly worked in Michael’s mind as he drove to the station was his last glimpse of Nick, it seemed yesterday, white as a sheet at school prayers, avoid- “ ing his eye. Catherine, who had visited London the previous weekend to see her brother, had tactfully indicated that she was, that morning, unavoidably busy. No one else was much interested in Nidk at the moment; the market garden, producing its first summer crop, was far too absorbing. So Michael, amazed that his agitation had apparently escaped notice, slipped away and stood, far too early, nervously smoothing down his collar, upon the station platform. He had by an effort prevented himself from looking in the mirror in the waiting-room. He reflected with surprise that it was many years since he had had so sharp a consciousness of his external appearance.

By the time the train arrived Michael could hardly stand up. He saw several ladies get off, and then saw a man at the far end of the platform carrying a rifle and a shot-gun and accompanied by a dog. It was Nick all right. He seemed far away yet very clear, like a figure in a dream. Michael set his feet in motion to walk towards him. He had temporarily forgotten about the dog, though Catherine had warned him, and he felt an immediate irritation as at the presence of a third. Nick, not sustaining his glance as he approached, was leaning down to fuss with the animal. He straightened up as, Michael came close to him, a nervous smile breaking involuntarily upon both their faces. Michael had wondered if he would be able not to embrace him. But it was quite easy. They shook hands, babbling trivial remarks, although they could not conceal their emotion. The dog provided a useful diversion. Michael took Nick’s large suitcase from him, which Nick in a dazed way surrendered, keeping the firearms slung over his shoulder. They walked out to the car. Michael drove back to Imber in a state resembling drunkenness. He was unable later to recall the journey with any clarity. The conversation was not so much difficult as mad. They talked constantly but completely at random, sometimes both starting up a sentence at the same time. Michael made imbecile remarks about dogs. Nick asked banal questions about the countryside. On two occasions he asked the same question twice. The car swept onto the gravel in front of the house.

Catherine was waiting. The brother and sister greeted each other in a muted and deliberately casual way. Margaret Strafford bustled up. Nick was taken inside. Michael went back to his office. Once alone he put his head down upon the desk and found himself shuddering: he did not know whether he was glad or sorry. Nick had seemed at first dreadfully changed. His face, once so pale, was now reddish and fatter; his hair was receding over the tall brow and grew untidily down his neck, curling vigorously, but looking greasy rather than glossy. The heavy eyelids had thickened in layers, the eyes were vaguer, less full of power. He was a handsome man, but heavy, florid, almost coarse.

Michael quickly pulled himself together and turned back to his work. The encounter had been, on the whole, less upsetting than he had expected; and he was rather relieved than otherwise to find Nick now so devoid of the taut pallid charm which he had possessed as a boy and which dreamily survived in his sister. Michael had already resolved to see as little as possible of Nick during his sojourn at Imber; he did not feel, now that the first shock was over, that this would be difficult. Nick was, at his own urgent request, given a room outside the main house. Michael did not like leaving him there alone, but it was not immediately easy to find him a companion. Catherine had not proposed herself, Patchway had refused, the Straffords were impossible as there was only a small room available, an egotistical delicacy prevented Michael from asking Peter (who knew nothing of the story), and James had taken an instant dislike to the newcomer. So it was that until the arrival of Toby Gashe three weeks later Nick was by himself in the Lodge.

In so far as Michael had had serious hopes that any individual other than Catherine might be of any genuine help to Nick at Imber he had thought that James Tayper Pace was the man. He was disappointed in James’s reaction. James showed himself, where Nick was concerned, stiffly conventional. “He looks to me like a pansy,” he said to Michael, soon after Nick’s arrival. “I didn’t like to say so before, but I had heard it about him in London. They’re always troublemakers, believe me. I’ve seen plenty of that type. There’s something destructive in them, a sort of grudge against society. Give a dog a bad name, and all that, but we may as well be prepared! Who’d believe that thing was twin to dear Catherine?”

Michael demurring a little, wondered what James would think if he knew a bit more about his interlocutor, and marvelled once again at this curious naivety in one who had, after all, seen plenty of the world. James was certainly no connoisseur in evil; a result perhaps of a considerable pureness of heart. Could one recognize refinements of good if one did not recognize refinements of evil, Michael asked himself. He concluded provisionally that what was required of one was to be good, a task which usually presented a singularly simple though steep face, and not to recognize its refinements. There he left the matter, having no time for philosophical speculation.

As the days went by Nick’s presence, somehow, began to seem to Michael less remarkable. Nick was given the nominal post of engineer, and did in fact occasionally attend to the cars and cast an eye over the electricity plant and the water pump. He seemed to know a lot about engines of all kinds. But most of the time he just mooched about, accompanied by Murphy, and until asked to stop, shot down with remarkable accuracy crows, pigeons, and squirrels, whose corpses he left lying where they fell. Michael watched him from afar, but felt no urge to see more of him. Half guiltily he began to see Nick a little through the eyes of James and Mark Strafford; and once in conversation he found himself calling him a “poor fish”. Nick on his side seemed passive, almost comatose at times. Once or twice, when opportunity offered, he seemed to want to talk to Michael, but Michael did not encourage him and nothing came of these half explicit gestures. Michael felt curious about Nick’s relations with his sister, but this curiosity remained unsatisfied. They seemed to meet infrequently, and Catherine continued with her work, seemingly unobsessed by the proximity of her eccentric brother. As for the lines of force from the power house across the water, in which Catherine had had so much faith, they were apparently impinging without effect upon the thicker hide of her twin.