Iris Murdoch - Bruno’s Dream

Yet he knew really that she was not simply an apparition. She was not Gwen come back from the dead. She was very different from Gwen. And he was very different from Gwen’s husband. He was an older fatter more drunken man than the one whom Gwen had so unaccountably loved. But he was also perhaps, and this intimation somehow entered into the deepest part of Danby’s pain, a wiser man. The years had brought him something which, potentially at least, was good. That obscure small good seemed to suffer and ache inside him as he thought vaguely but intensely about all the might-have-beens of a quite other life with Lisa. It seemed to him that in spite of his casual mode of being and his bad behaviour to Adelaide and his general willingness to play the fool, he had found something in the world, some little grain of understanding which that glimpse of Lisa had made suddenly luminous and alive. He felt obscurely the dividedness of his being, the extent of what was gross, the littleness and value of what was not. But these thoughts, when they came, were never entirely clear to him, and he spent most of his days in a coma of misery, thinking about Lisa and the other man, inducing physical pains of yearning and jealousy which made him gasp, and putting off the attempt to pull himself together.

The prospect of the crazy “duel” had been, to his desperate mood, almost a relief. It had seemed the image of something destructive and mad, and also of something appropriate and necessary. The aching and deprived heart yearns for necessity. Danby would have been glad to be arrested, imprisoned, scourged, judged. Now in his dreams, in some huge echoing courtroom, a woman’s voice rehearsed misdoings which dated back to his earliest childhood. Anything which could show his present situation as inevitable would have been an alleviation of his pain. It was not enough that his rational mind could display to him the utter improbability of his success. It was its im possibility that he needed to have the proof of. As it was, the torment of accidents continued. If only he had met her earlier, if only there were not this other man, if only she had not seen him kissing Diana, if only he were the different and better per son which it seemed to him he might easily be. He had accepted and even welcomed the idea of the duel because it seemed somehow to belong to the other order of things, the legal, the necessary.

But now, shivering in the cold cramped little office underneath the electric light, with all the familiar things looking alienated and eerie, the craziness of the plan took on a different and more sinister air. From the moment of the tapping on the window and the receipt of Will’s pompous letter, Danby had thought of nothing but himself. He had thought of the encounter in relation to himself, as something that he was going to bring about or do. He had not thought of Will except as of a blind agency destined somehow to act upon him. Now, as he poured himself out another glass of whisky, he thought about Will more carefully. He really knew very little about him. The one thing which he certainly knew about Will was the degree of his hatred. But how exactly would that hatred make him behave? Will had loved Adelaide since they were children. He had thought of her as ever the pure sweet maid who was somehow reserved for him. This much Danby had gathered from Adelaide’s tearful outpourings after the delivery of the letter. How would Will feel towards a man who had casually, unseriously, seduced this dream woman, and what fate would he deem appropriate for such a man? That Will intended in some way to humiliate him became clearer to Danby now. Had he proposed the dawn hour, the deserted place, for some quite other purpose of his own? Perhaps he and Nigel would arrive with other men, tie Danby up, and thrash him? He had heard of such things.

He put the glass down and came out into the main work shop. The windows were paler. He switched off the lights and could now see the nearer shore and the surface of the water gleaming and shifting in flakes of very pale yellowish grey. The opposite shore was veiled by a mist which seemed to quiver and vibrate, casting out a diffused yellow radiance which revealed the debris-strewn river bank below the printing works in a faint but horribly clear morning light. Danby shuddered.

He heard a sound behind him and jerked round. He had left the outer door open, as they had agreed. There were two figures on the other side of the room, one tall and thin, the other shorter, stouter.

”Oh,” said Danby, “good morning.” He did not like to turn the electric light on again. There was just enough illumination to recognize his visitors. His heart beat violently.

Will, who was carrying a large case under his arm, stayed by the doorway. Nigel came forward, tiptoeing or gliding across the floor. When he came up to the window Danby could see his face quite clearly.

”You’ve no one with you?”

”No. I thought I’d dispense with a second!”

”That’s a bit irregular, you know,” said Nigel. He stood for a moment staring at Danby. His face seemed stretched, beaming with a blissful excitement, the purple bruise still visible along the cheek and under the eye.

”Isn’t this all rather absurd?” said Danby in a loud voice. “I think we should forget it and go home. I can’t think why I came at all.”

Will moved forward from the door. He stopped about five paces away, put the case down on the level tray of one of the colour-printing machines, and looked at Danby with a gaze of cool intense hatred.

”All right,” said Danby. “Do what you like. Play out your little game. But let’s do it quickly. I want to get home.” He thought, this man is in the theatre, and yet he’s horribly in earnest too. I can’t get away now. If I tried to go he’d spring on me. At any rate there seemed to be only the two of them.

”Let’s go down then,” said Nigel. “The tide’s out, isn’t it? It was a good idea of yours to have it here.”

Danby opened the door. The cold water-scented air filled the doorway. He could smell the sea. He took a deep breath and went a little unsteadily down the steps, trailing his hand on the wall. He crossed the wharf and began to climb slowly down the iron ladder to the river shore. As he stepped off onto the yielding gravelly mud, he could see the large rubber-soled boots of Will on the upper rungs of the ladder.

The expanse of shore, some twenty feet from the base of the wall to the water, was quite clearly lit now by a light still faint but rather lurid which seemed to emanate from the curtain of mist which hung now at the centre of the river and arched over the shore, enclosing it in a capsule of bright haze. A quietness, which seemed also to be coming out of the mist, held the scene poised, and Danby was startled by the sound of his own footsteps moving over the rather sticky gravel. He stood staring at the water’s edge. The tide had not yet turned and the river was still running steadily downstream. A sleek line of mud was reflecting the yellowish light. Above it, the surface was more irregular, lumpy, stony, strewn with plastic bags and old motor tyres and bottles of green and clear glass and very pale smooth clean pieces of driftwood which the Thames had long had for her own. The clear glowing light made the littered scene seem over-precise, purposive, as if one had wandered suddenly into the very middle of a work of art.

Will was still standing beside the ladder, leaning the edge of the case against one of the rungs and fumbling with the clasp. Nigel, with the same lilting gliding motion, came over to Danby. The light fell on his face, which was strained into a semblance of an archaic smile.

”How would you like to proceed? Have you any special wishes?”

”Anything you like,” said Danby.

”There are various possibilities-“