Iris Murdoch - The Bell

Like all inexperienced people, Toby tended to make all-or-nothing judgements. Whereas previously he had regarded Michael as a paragon of virtue and had not dreamt of speculating about whether his life could contain blemishes or failures, he now attributed to him homosexuality tout court with all that it involved of the unnatural and the nameless. At least this was his first reaction. He found that his thoughts moved fast and in the direction of greater complexity. His immediate emotion had been surprise. It was soon succeeded by disgust and an alarming sort of fear. He felt a definite physical repugnance at having been touched in that way. He felt himself menaced. Perhaps he ought to tell someone. Did the others know about it? Obviously not. Oughtn’t they to be told? Yet it was certainly not for him to speak. Besides, it was a matter also of protecting himself. He was thoroughly alarmed to find that he was the sort of person who attracted attention of that sort. He wondered if that showed that there was something wrong with him, an unconscious tendency that way which another person so afflicted would divine?

It was at this point that he began to accuse himself of exaggeration. Surely the thing wasn’t as important as all that; and was he not, by becoming so idiotically upset, just displaying his nai”vety and lack of sophistication? Toby had a horror of being thought naïve. He began to undress and resolved to think no more about it till the next morning. He turned the light out. But sleep did not come. And as he lay there in the darkness Toby found that after all what had happened had its interesting side. It certainly constituted an adventure, though a somewhat rébarbative one. And what he then experienced, though he did not at the time recognize it as such, was a feeling of pleasure at being suddenly in a position of power vis-à-vis someone whom he had so unques-tioningly accepted as his spiritual superior.

This thought led him back toward considerations which were more humane: and it was here that the complexities began in earnest. He began really to envisage Michael. What was it like to be Michael? What was Michael thinking now? Was he lying awake, miserable, wishing that that hadn’t happened? What would he do tomorrow? Would he speak to Toby about it? Or would he ignore it completely and behave as if it hadn’t been? Toby felt he couldn’t bear that. The sense of something needing to be completed began already to be strong in him. He was feeling, for the first time, intensely interested in Michael. He felt too, as he conjured up the image of that obviously rather complicated person, a new emotion about him. He found himself feeling, towards Michael, curiously protective. And with this thought at last he fell asleep.

The next morning he just felt wretched. His disgust had returned, but now it was directed for some obscure reason against himself. He felt as if he had taken part, on the previous night, in some exhausting orgy. Yet although he recalled with undiminished repugnance the incident in question, it seemed that what had constituted the orgy was chiefly his own thoughts. Yet he was far from wanting to turn his mind to other things. Whereas before he had wholeheartedly enjoyed his work in the garden, it seemed today burdensome and time-wasting in that it distracted him from thinking about Michael. He would have liked to spend the morning walking in the woods. Instead he had to sustain a conversation with James, and then with Patchway, and then with Mrs Mark, with whom he was detailed to spend the last part of the morning packing vegetables into nets and boxes. Michael avoided him.

It seemed possible that Michael might take an opportunity at lunch-time to call him aside. But the meal passed off without their having even looked at each other. Toby was anxious not to appear to invite a tête-à-tête , and he vanished during the short interval after lunch to a remote corner of the fruit garden where there was a job of attaching wires to the wall which he had been asked to do when a spare moment came. But when he got there he could not bring himself to do the job. He sat on the path, turning the little stones over with his fingers, until it was time to start work officially again.

In the afternoon he was employed, once more on the perennial hoeing. At least here he was alone. The weather had continued very hot and his vigorous efforts soon made him perspire freely. He worked on doggedly with his head down. From farther away he could hear the purr of the mechanical cultivator, which had gone into action immediately under the control of Patchway, who had experienced in its respect a lightning conversion. As the afternoon wore on Toby began to feel totally miserable, and the confusion of his thoughts was resolved into one intense need: to talk to Michael.

He went through high tea in a daze, and after sitting about for some time conspicuously in the common-room, forced himself to return to the fruit garden to do the wiring. It was here that Mrs Mark found him round about eight o’clock with the message that Michael would like to see him at once.

When Michael reached his bedroom he immediately lay down on the floor, and for a while it was as if, in a sheer desire to be hidden, all sense of his own personality left him. The shock of what had occurred and the intensity of his regret for it left him quite stunned. To have thought it, to have dreamed it, yes -but to have done it! And as Michael contemplated that tiny distance between the thought and the act it was like a most narrow crack which even as he watched it was opening into an abyss. Covering his face he tried to pray: but he soon realized that he was still thoroughly drunk. His present prostration was fruitless and ignoble. He was not even in a condition properly to recognize his own wretchedness. He uttered some words all the same, conventional and familiar words, put together for such purposes by other men. He could not find any words or thoughts of his own. He got up from the floor.

He went to the washstand and sponged his face over with a wet flannel. His skin was burning. He must pull himself together and do some decent thinking: but as he stood there with the dripping flannel in his hand what came back to him with a pain more searching still was the desire that Nick might not have seen, and the fear that he might. When he wondered why this seemed now to matter so desperately the answer was a strange one. He did not want Nick to feel himself betrayed or abandoned by Michael’s preference for a younger man. But this was, he knew, a perfectly crazy emotion, since it assumed that time had stood still. That he should not want Nick to think him corrupt or wicked was proper enough, and that for Nick’s sake as well as his own. But what seemed to distress him so profoundly was the notion that Nick might think him unfaithful.

Michael found this thought so surprising that he did not know what to do with it. He threw down the flannel. The cold water was trickling across his neck and down his back. He was conscious again of his headache and unpleasant sensations in the stomach. He sat on the bed making a violent effort to be calm. When he had to some extent succeeded he recognized it as appalling that his first concern had not been for Toby. His prior instinct had been that of a sort of self-preservation: a fear for himself, which he had not yet dared fully to examine, together with this insane reaction about Nick. Whereas what he ought to be considering was the damage done to the boy.

Thinking about Toby was at first less painful, since it was possible here to see the thing as a problem and to attempt at least to circumscribe it. Michael began soberly to estimate Toby’s state of mind. He was certain from what he knew of the boy and his background that Toby would have no experience and very little knowledge of homosexuality and probably regarded “queers” as contemptible, mysterious, and disgusting. The effect of Michael’s embrace would probably be considerable; and even if Michael himself were to decide it wisest to pass the incident off as something best not discussed, Toby would hardly be able to cooperate. He would want an explanation. He would require a sequel. To say no more about it would be to leave the boy in a state of unrelieved anxiety and tension. Something would have to be done.