Iris Murdoch - Bruno’s Dream

Must find things, rescue things, thought Adelaide. She stepped down into the water, forcing her legs against it, and went into Danby’s room. She flashed the torch at the window trying to see into the yard but could see nothing beyond the glass. She moved over and pushed up the sash of the window. The hissing and the roar filled the room with a chaotic hubbub. There was no light outside. Adelaide shone the torch, bringing it low down outside the window. There was a strange biting sensation in her hand. She realized she was touching water. The flood was mounting up in the yard and had reached a higher level than the water inside the house. The yard was like a lake. Adelaide began frenziedly to try to shut the window again but it seemed to have stuck and her hands were without power. Before long the water outside would have reached the level of the window sill. Crying, almost screaming, she pulled at the sash, then turned back to the room flash ing her torch. A large hairbrush of Danby’s was lying on the dressing table, looking curiously peaceful and ordinary and separated from the din of its surroundings. She picked it up and with the light of the torch flickering wildly from her left hand, began to bang the frame of the open window. There was a crash of glass and she could feel fragments falling all about her.

Adelaide staggered back from the window. She felt a sharp pain in one foot and sat down abruptly upon Danby’s bed. As she did so the wavering torch light showed her something which was floating upon the water quite near to one of the legs of the bed. It was the big black wooden box which contained the stamp collection.

”Adelaide! Adelaide!” Bruno’s voice had somehow pierced the uproar which seemed to possess the house.

Adelaide tried to pick up the box with one hand, then used two hands and put it onto Danby’s bed. She sat back and lifted her stocking foot. It felt as if a piece of glass was sticking into the sole. Holding the torch carefully she examined her foot, running her hand over it cautiously. A rapid stain of red was tinging the soaking stocking. Adelaide stared and moaned. Her questing hand was stiff with cold.

”Adelaide, get the stamps!” Bruno’s scream reached her again.

Adelaide turned the torch onto the wooden box. It was tilting over sideways and several of the drawers had fallen open. The familiar coloured faces of the stamps could be seen in side their cellophane wrappings. Something fell down over Adelaide’s eyes. It was the dripping scarf which she had not thought to remove from her head. She thrust it back. She could hear herself still moaning amid the roaring darkness of surging water and driving rain. Her body was shuddering with cold and her feet had contracted into balls of pain. She stared at the stamps. The thought occurred to her, sup pose I took some of these stamps to Will. Would he forgive me then? I could pretend they had been lost in the flood. They might have been. If I hadn’t been here they would all have been lost. It’s the deluge, it’s the end of the world anyway, so what does it matter what one does. She steadied the torch and reached out a wet hand clumsy with cold. Where were the Cape triangulars? If only she knew which ones were valuable. Get it up the stairs, she thought. Upstairs, dry clothes, get warm again, think what to do. She stood up and felt the sharp pain in her foot again. Crying, standing on one foot, she tried to lift the box, but it was too heavy.

” Adelaide, the stamps, the stamps !” The screaming voice seemed suddenly nearer.

Adelaide, with one knee on the bed, began trying to pull the drawers out of the box, but the drawers seemed to be attached at the back. They only came out so far and then stopped. With hands clumsy with cold, she pulled helplessly at the cellophane envelopes. They were attached too.

Suddenly there was a new echoing splashing spilling sound and something gripped Adelaide about the leg. She let go of the box and clasped the end of the bed. The piled-up water must be coming in through the open window. Adelaide cried out and plunged towards the door. It was now impossible to lift her feet out of the racing water. She pulled herself round the door and fell towards the stairs, grabbing at the banisters. She managed to get her foot onto the lowest stair. The lighted torch was clasped in the palm of her hand and she saw the illumined flesh like alabaster as her hand reached out before her.

”ADELAIDE, THE STAMPS, GET THE STAMPS!” Bruno’s terrible cry was just above her.

As she reached the next step she managed to shift the torch and cast its ray up ahead of her. She shrieked. Bruno was standing at the top of the kitchen stairs, leaning against the newell post. He was wearing only the jacket of his pajamas and his thin legs, like the legs of an insect, were bending at the knees. The great swollen head swayed above, checkered by the light into huge cubes, like a wooden head in a carnival. Bruno swayed, leaned forward, his thin twigs of hands grasping for the banister, his knees crumpling. The next moment he had fallen headlong, his head hurtling down into her shoulder. Adelaide dropped the torch and fell straight backwards, with Bruno on top of her, into the black surge of water below.

“You know,” said Miles, “one can actually hear the crack of the swallows’ beaks as they catch the flies. Listen.”

“They’re early this year,” said Diana. “I do wish they’d stay here with us and not go on somewhere else.”

”I don’t blame them. They’re making for some peaceful country farmhouse.”

It was a quiet sunny evening, one of those spring evenings which have the intensity of autumn, when growing things vibrate with colour and seem to breathe out silence. Miles and Diana were walking very slowly through Brompton Cemetery. They were near the centre now, where sounds from the Fulham Road and the Old Brompton Road had faded to a distant hum like the murmur of insects. Miles and Diana sat down on a seat. Miles put his arm round her shoulder.

”How quiet it is here, it’s like the country. I don’t see why the swallows shouldn’t stay.”

”Are you warm enough, dear?”

”Yes, Miles. The sun is warm, isn’t it? How green everything is, it’s like a great water meadow.”

”I think one forgets about green in the winter.”

”One forgets so many things. Every spring is a surprise.”

”Every spring is a surprise.”

”Just the grass growing again is so wonderful. Look at the light on it over there.”

”How was Bruno when you saw him today?”

”Much the same. He doesn’t know who I am. I think he doesn’t know who Danby is any more. He talks occasionally and it sounds like sense only it doesn’t connect with anything. He just seems to live in the present.”

”A good place to live, Diana. It’s a miracle he survived that fall.”

”The doctor says it won’t be long now. He’s awfully sort of cut off. Well, you saw.”

”He’s pathetic.”

”No, not pathetic. Just cut off.”

”He still hasn’t asked about the stamps?”

”No, thank heavens.”

”I’m rather glad they’ve gone.”

The stamp collection had perished in the flood. The box had evidently floated out of the window. When the water subsided it was found in the yard, tilted over with some of its drawers missing. The few stamps that remained in the box were completely ruined.

Miles gently squeezed his wife’s shoulder. Everything that had happened to him lately had been completely unexpected. What a terribly complex thing his life must be to be able so utterly to surprise its owner! Miles felt as if everything had been somehow turned inside out. The shape was much the same, but the colour was different, the feel was different. It was the old world made new or else perhaps really seen for the first time.