Iris Murdoch - Bruno’s Dream

All three of them needed a lot of persuading that it was a good idea but were at last entirely persuaded and soon it all began to seem quite natural. Perhaps Lisa seemed to fill the gap left by the absent child in the life of the married pair. The sisters were deeply attached to each other and Miles came to be fond of his sister-in-law and to rely upon her presence. He enjoyed the sisterness of the two women, the fugitive resemblances. He liked it in the evenings when he found them sit ting together sewing. Lisa, not by nature orderly, had surrendered, even sooner than Miles had, to Diana’s domestic tyranny. It was good, after all these years � eux , to have an extra person in the house, to have in the house two women both devoted to his comfort. Perhaps he had been alone with Diana for a little too long. The extension of their society was refreshing and enabled him to see his wife in a new light.

Also in some vague yet evident way Lisa did need looking after. Diana used to generalize about her sister. “She has somehow missed the bus of life.”

”She is like someone who breaks his bones if he falls over.”

”She has lost the instinct for happiness.”

”She is a bird with a broken wing.” Lisa was graver, gaunter, darker than Diana and was usually taken to be the elder sister. She was nervy and reticent and silent and solitary though she sometimes talked philosophy with Miles and was more ardent than he to complete the argument. Sometimes they got quite cross with each other and Diana had to part them. Lisa appeared to be contented in her school work and in the holidays did voluntary work for the local probation officer. Miles enjoyed her company. She puzzled him and he pitied her. She seemed a cold dewy yet wilting flower. Sometimes indeed she seemed to him simply an apparition, a shadow beside the solid reality of her sister. He and Diana shared an anxiety about her which occupied them not unpleasantly.

The sky was almost dark now, hung with a blazing evening star with tiny pinpoints of other stars round about it. The traffic was humming evenly in the Old Brompton Road. A blackbird, who always sang at the last light, was unwinding in a nearby tree the piercing and insistent pattern of his Kyrie. The damp air was turning chill in the darkness. Down below something pale was moving. A woman in a pale dress was walking slowly across the paving stones and along the path of clipped grass towards the archway. Which of them was it? The obscurity defeated his eyes as he watched the moving figure in silence.

Suddenly the light in the room was switched on.

Miles turned round abruptly and then with the same movement closed the window and pulled the curtain.

”Diana, I wish you wouldn’t do that!”

”I’m so sorry.” Diana was dressed in an old-fashioned blue embroidered kimono. Her straight hair, not yet grey, had paled without losing its lustre, to a sort of pearly sandy yellow. Her ivory face was unlined, like a face in a miniature.

”I’m sorry, I wasn’t sure if you were here.”

”Where else would I be at this time for heaven’s sake? I wish you wouldn’t come porlocking. I’m trying to work. What’s that you’ve got there?”

”A letter someone delivered by hand. It said ‘urgent’ so I thought I’d bring it up at once.”

”Don’t go, sweet. Forgive me. Who the hell’s it from, I don’t know the writing.” Miles tore the letter open.

Dear Miles,

I expect you will be surprised hearing from me like this out of the blue. The thing is this, your father is ill, as you know, and although there is no immediate cause for concern he is naturally thinking in terms of arrangements and all that. He would like to see you. He wants me to emphasize that he has nothing special in view here but just feels that he wants to see his son. I very much hope that you will feel ready to see him, as he is anxious to see you. As you haven’t met for such a long time I thought it might be a good idea if you and I had a preliminary talk about it first, so that I can sort of put you in the picture. I very much hope that you will agree to this. I will, if I may, telephone you at the office tomorrow morning and find out what time would be convenient for me to visit you. I very much hope that all this can be arranged amicably. Your father is an old man and very far from well.

Yours sincerely,

Danby Odell

”Oh God,” said Miles.

”What is it?”

”A letter from Danby.”

”Danby? Oh, Danby Odell. What does he want?”

”He wants me to go and see my father.”

”Isn’t it odd,” said Diana, pushing her hair back behind her ears, “that in all these years I’ve never met either your father or Danby Odell. Is it urgent, I mean is the old man on the point of death?”

”Apparently not.”

”You’ll go of course? I’ve been feeling for some time that you ought to do something about it.”

Miles threw the letter down on the table. He felt exasperation and an uneasy feeling rather like fear. “Well, hell, I’ve been writing polite letters to the old bastard all these years and he’s never replied. And now that fool Danby writes as if it was somehow all my fault.”

Diana had picked up the letter. “I think it’s quite a nice let ter. He doesn’t imply it’s your fault.”

”Yes he does. Oh Christ.” Miles did not want this now. He did not want emotions and memories and scenes and unmanageable unforeseeable situations. He did not want to go through the rigmarole of forgiving and being forgiven. It would all be play-acting. It would be something hopelessly impure. And it might delay, it might offend, it might preclude forever the precious imminent visitation of the god.

Danby straightened his tie and rang the bell.

Miles opened the door.

”I hope I’m not too early?”

”Come in.”

Miles turned round and walked upstairs leaving Danby to shut the door. After a moment’s uncertainty Danby shut the door and followed his host up the stairs. Miles had already disappeared into one of the rooms. Danby approached an open door and saw Miles standing over by the window with his back half turned. Danby entered the room and closed the door.

Danby had chosen the time of six-thirty in the evening for their interview on the assumption that Miles would be certain to offer him a drink, which would help him through the interview. He had not however omitted to drink two large gins at the Lord Clarence before turning into Kempsford Gardens. The room was dark. The sky outside was a glittering grey.

Viewed at close quarters, the idea of actually confronting Miles had alarmed Danby considerably. It was not that he was worrying about the stamps. Bruno’s seeing or not seeing Miles would probably make no difference to their destination. He had not really believed that Bruno was serious about seeing his son. Bruno had speculated about this before and nothing had come of it; he had speculated about it at earlier times when he was very much more enterprising and resolute than he was now. Danby had come to feel that Bruno had settled down peacefully into the last phase of his life, wanting simply to be left alone with his routine of stamps and telephone and evening papers, with his eyes fixed, if not upon eternity and the day of judgement, at least upon some great calm and imminent negation which would preclude surprises, demarches, and the unpredictable. He had underestimated Bruno, and when he suddenly perceived the strength of will that still remained inside that big head and shriveled body he had experienced a shock and had had rapidly to re-examine his own conception of Miles.

Miles had been filed away for years. Without reflection, Danby had assumed that he would not see Miles again. There could be no occasion except possibly Bruno’s funeral. Danby occasionally imagined Bruno’s funeral, how it would be. He imagined his own feelings of tenderness and regret and relief, the solemnity of the scene, the silent bow to Miles. Now suddenly there was this curiously naked and unnerving and quite unscripted encounter with a man who was a stranger and who yet was, as Danby had realized in the short while that had intervened since Bruno’s decision, somehow rather deeply involved in Danby’s life. He could only be indifferent to Miles at a distance. Close to, Miles was an interesting, disturbing, even menacing object.