Iris Murdoch - The Bell

Dora knew that voice of Paul’s, stiff, trembling with nervous anger. She hardly dared to breath in case it should be audible. It seemed that Paul must know that she was there at the other end of the line. She couldn’t bring herself to put the phone down. If she kept quiet perhaps Paul would think the number was unobtainable.

Then Paul said “Dora.”

As Dora heard her name her eyes closed, and her face wrinkled up in pain. But she kept icily still, scarcely breathing.

“Dora,” said Paul again, “Dora, is that you?”

Suddenly in the silence that followed another sound could be heard along the wire. For a moment Dora could not think what it was. Then she recognized it as a blackbird singing. The bird uttered a few notes and then was quiet. The telephone box at Imber was downstairs in the hallway by the refectory. The blackbird must be just outside on the terrace. It sang again, its song sounding clear and intolerably remote and strange in the silence after Paul’s voice. Dora put the phone down noisily on the table. She went into the kitchen. She looked with a sort of amazement at the collection of food, at the half-open door of the fridge, at her own half-finished drink. She went back and replaced the receiver.

She returned to the kitchen. The piece of steak, uncurling from its frozen state, lay raw and oozing, its wrapping paper, stained red, adhering to it. The garlic, the olives, the oil, suddenly looked to Dora like part of some dreary apparatus of seduction. Here too, she felt, she was being organized. The sense of unreality returned; after all, there were no meetings and no actions. She stood for a while miserable and irresolute. She no longer wanted to stay and have lunch with Noel. She wanted to get away from the telephone. She picked up her coat and her bag, scribbled a note to Noel, and began to trail down the stairs. She knew Noel wouldn’t mind. That was a wonderful thing about Noel, and made him so unlike Paul; he never bothered about little things such as one’s coming to lunch with him and then suddenly deciding to go away.

Dora reached the corner of the road and hailed a taxi. As the taxi was turning round to join her at the kerb she saw Noel running towards her with the bottle in his hand. He reached her just as the taxi drew up.

“What’s got you now?” said Noel.

“Paul rang up,” said Dora.

“My God!” said Noel. “What did you say to him?”

“I said nothing,” said Dora. “I put down the receiver.”

“Is he on his way here?”

“No, he rang from the country. I heard a bird singing. And I didn’t reply so he can’t know.”

“Well, what about our lunch?” said Noel.

“I don’t feel like it any more,” said Dora. “Please forgive me.”

“I thought you were a fighter,” said Noel.

“I can’t fight,” said Dora. “I never could tell the difference between right and wrong anyway. But it doesn’t matter. Sorry to rush away. I enjoyed our dance.”

“Me too,” said Noel. “All right, off you go. But don’t forget, what these people believe isn’t true.”

“O.K.,” said Dora. She turned to the taximan and said the first thing that came into her head, “National Gallery.”

Noel called after the taxi, “Don’t forget! No God!”

Dora hadn’t especially intended to visit the National Gallery, but once she was there she went in. It was as good a place as any other to decide what to do. She no longer wanted any lunch. She wondered if she should try telephoning Sally again; but she no longer wanted to see Sally. She climbed the stairs and wandered away into the eternal spring-time of the air-conditioned rooms.

Dora had been in the National Gallery a thousand times and the pictures were almost as familiar to her as her own face. Passing between them now, as through a well-loved grove, she felt a calm descending on her. She wandered a little, watching with compassion the poor visitors armed with guide books who were peering anxiously at the masterpieces. Dora did not need to peer. She could look, as one can at last when one knows a great thing very well, confronting it with a dignity which it has itself conferred. She felt that the pictures belonged to her, and reflected ruefully that they were about the only thing that did. Vaguely, consoled by the presence of something welcoming and responding in the place, her footsteps took her to various shrines at which she had worshipped so often before: the great light spaces of Italian pictures, more vast and southern than any real South, the angels of Botticelli, radiant as birds, delighted as gods, and curling like the tendrils of a vine, the glorious carnal presence of Susanna Fourment, the tragic presence of Margarethe Trip, the solemn world of Piero della Francesca with its early-morning colours, the enclosed and gilded world of Crivelli. Dora stopped at last in front of Gainsborough’s picture of his two daughters. These children step through a wood hand in hand, their garments shimmering, their eyes serious and dark, their two pale heads, round full buds, like yet unlike.

Dora was always moved by the pictures. Today she was moved, but in a new way. She marvelled, with a kind of gratitude, that they were all still here, and her heart was filled with love for the pictures, their authority, their marvellous generosity, their splendour. It occurred to her that here at last was something real and something perfect. Who had said that, about perfection and reality being in the same place? Here was something which her consciousness could not wretchedly devour, and by making it part of her fantasy make it worthless. Even Paul, she thought, only existed now as someone she dreamt about; or else as a vague external menace never really encountered and understood. But the pictures were something real outside herself, which spoke to her kindly and yet in sovereign tones, something superior and good whose presence destroyed the dreary trance-like solipsism of her earlier mood. When the world had seemed to be jubjective it had seemed to be without interest or value. But now there was something else in it after all.

These thoughts, not clearly articulated, flitted through Dora’s mind. She had never thought about the pictures in this way before; nor did she draw now any very explicit moral. Yet she felt that she had had a revelation. She looked at the radiant, sombre, tender, powerful canvas of Gainsborough and felt a sudden desire to go down on her knees before it, embracing it, shedding tears.

Dora looked anxiously about her, wondering if anyone had noticed her transports. Although she had not actually prostrated herself, her face must have looked unusually ecstatic, and the tears were in fact starting into her eyes. She found that she was alone in the room, and smiled, restored to” a more calm enjoyment of her wisdom. She gave a last look at the painting, still smiling, as one might smile in a temple, favoured, encouraged, and loved. Then she turned and began to leave the building.

Dora was hurrying now and wanting her lunch. She looked at her watch and found it was tea-time. She remembered that she had been wondering what to do; but now, without her thinking about it, it had become obvious. She must go back to Imber at once. Her real life, her real problems, were at Imber; and since, somewhere, something good existed, it might be that her problems would be solved after all. There was a connexion; obscurely she felt, without yet understanding it, she must hang onto that idea: there was a connexion. She bought a sandwich and took a taxi back to Paddington.

BY the time Dora arrived back at Imber she felt considerably more subdued. She had caught a train at once, but it was a slow one. She was vastly hungry again. She was afraid of Paul’s anger. She tried to keep on believing that something good had happened to her; but now it seemed that this good thing had after all nothing whatever to do with her present troubles. It had been a treat and now it was over. At any rate, Dora was tired and couldn’t think any more and felt discouraged, frightened, and resentful. The village taxi took her most of the way down the drive; she would not let it come right up to the house as she wanted the fact of her return to dawn quietly on the brotherhood. She was also afraid that, unless she could first see him alone, Paul would make a public scene. She saw from a distance the lights of the Court and they looked to her hostile and censorious.