Iris Murdoch - Bruno’s Dream

Adelaide carried the two bags down the narrow stairs, past the dusty potted plants in the brass bowls, and left the larger bag with the porter. She got into the taxi. She thought, Oh God now I shall really start to cry again. And she did. Curiously watched by people in neighbouring cars, she abandoned herself to sobbing as the taxi crawled slowly through the North London traffic. At last they had arrived. Adelaide dabbed her face with a soaking wet handkerchief and tried to powder it again, only now the powder puff seemed to have got wet too. She paid the taxi driver out of her new black patent-leather handbag. She crossed the busy pavement between a newspaper stand and a stack of crates of fruit which were just being delivered to the greengrocer. A tomato rolled across the pavement and broke, revealing its damp blushing interior at her feet. Adelaide skirted it and went into the little dark doorway and up the stairs to the office on the first floor. She knocked and went in.

Auntie and the twins were already there. Auntie was wearing a very long black coat with a fur-trimmed collar and a hat which appeared to be made entirely of peacock’s feathers. She was also wearing a big red and green brooch and a number of flashy rings. The twins were in dark suits, Will sporting a red rose and Nigel a white rose. The registrar came forward to welcome Adelaide.

”Hello,” said Adelaide, looking past him at the twins.

Nigel advanced and kissed her a little awkwardly on the cheek. He was smiling. Will’s face was thunderous. He had trimmed his moustache into a Hitlerian toothbrush. He came and kissed Adelaide, also on the cheek. He said, “Christ, your face is hot.” Auntie said, “ Moya meelaya devooshka .” Will said, “Shut up, Auntie.” Adelaide felt that she was going to faint and had to sit down.

”Now then,” said the registrar a little coyly, “must remember why we’re here, mustn’t we. Now let me see, which of you gentlemen is going to be married? Mustn’t marry the lady to the wrong one, must I?”

”I’m the groom,” said Will. “Oh Ad, do stop crying, turn off the waterworks, will you? Have you got no dignity? Anyone’d think you were going to be executed.”

”I think we all feel like that on our wedding day, ha ha ,” said the registrar.

Nigel smiled.

Auntie said, “ Svadba, soodba, slooshba .”

Will said, “Ba ba black sheep to you, Auntie. Now Ad, do pull yourself together. You don’t want to call the whole thing off, do you?”

”Nooo,” Adelaide wailed.

Auntie said, “ Ya tosha ,” and began to sniff.

”Tosh off, Auntie, Ad, try to behave like a rational being or I shall really get angry with you. Come and sit here beside me, come on. Now stop it, or I’ll give you something to cry for!”

Adelaide came forward. She had knocked her hat sideways by her exertions with her handkerchief and she had smeared her lipstick again. Her breath hissed through shuddering lips. Tears had begun to course down Auntie’s face. Nigel was smiling.

”Now I think you both know the procedure,” said the registrar. “This is a very simple little ceremony, but it has the force and solemnity of law and society behind it, and is just as binding as if you were being married in a cathedral.”

Adelaide moaned and put her damp handkerchief to her mouth. Nigel, still smiling, wiped away a tear from his eye.

”First I must check your names please, your full names, and also your fathers’ names. You, Adelaide Anne de Crecy…”

Nigel’s face was streaming with tears. He was still smiling.

”And you, Wilfred Reginald Boase�”

”Oh Christ!” said Will. His face became red, and his eyes filled and over-brimmed with tears. “Christ! Sorry, Ad.”

”And your father’s name-Oh dear-Oh dear me-“ The registrar’s pen faltered and he began to reach for his handkerchief.

Adelaide had anticipated pains and difficulties in her married life, and her anticipations were fulfilled. Will’s temper did not improve as the years went by, and a chronic dyspepsia, caused by the irregular life of the theatre, did nothing to soothe his frequent tantrums. Adelaide submitted meekly at first. Later she learnt how to shout back. But she always felt ashamed and tired after their rows. Will never seemed even to remember that there had been a quarrel. Yet if Adelaide had certainly foreseen the bad things it was also true that she had not managed to foresee the good ones. She had married Will in a mood of cornered desperation because she felt that Will was her fate. She had not even framed the idea of happiness in connection with her marriage. Yet there was happiness too. Adelaide had not realized beforehand how very much she would enjoy being in bed with Will and how greatly this enjoyment would lighten the way for both of them. Nor did she, as she wept and signed her new name, Adelaide Boase, for the first time, dream of much later and sunnier days, in spite of Will’s cantankerous temper, when her tall twins would be up at Oxford (nonidentical, Benedick and Mercutio), when Will would be one of the most famous and popular ac tors in England, and a greatly transformed Adelaide would be Lady Boase.

Nearer in time, and a financial godsend to the young house hold, was the surprise they got when Auntie died and her jewels turned out to be worth ten thousand pounds. Auntie’s memoirs too, when translated into English, proved a best seller, as well as being a mine of information for historians about the last days of the Czarist regime. Adelaide and Will kept saying that they would learn Russian one day so as to read Auntie’s memoirs in the original, but they never did. However, Benedick became a Russian expert. Mercutio was a mathematician.

Danby was sitting on the edge of his bed. It was ten o’clock in the evening. The walls of the room were still a bit damp, but he had managed to dry the bed out with hot-water bottles. On warm days he put the mattress in the sun. The electricity had been off for weeks, as the whole house had had to be rewired. Fortunately the government were going, if he filled in enough forms, to pay for that. Fortunately too the weather had been exceptionally warm for the time of year.

The room had not suffered too much. Getting the mud off the floor had been the difficult thing. It was fantastic how much mud that water had brought in with it. The carpet had been mud-coloured anyway, but the walls were darkly stained up to about four feet from the ground. It was no good having the place redecorated until the walls had dried. With luck, the government would pay for that as well. Danby had been sleeping upstairs, but he was wondering if tonight he wouldn’t move back into his own room. He didn’t like it up stairs, though of course it was nearer if Bruno called in the night. But Bruno very rarely called in the night now. He seemed to be sleeping better, and indeed spent quite a lot of his time asleep.

Danby had stopped going to the printing works and spent his days at home now. Someone had to stay with Bruno. Nigel had simply vanished from the scene, leaving most of his be longings behind, and Danby felt there was no point in engaging another nurse at this stage. The doctor was surprised that Bruno had lasted so long. Diana came nearly every day in the late afternoon and Danby went out for a breather and a visit to the pub while she sat with Bruno. He could hear her talking to Bruno sometimes, as he went out of the hall door, but he never asked her what they talked about. He talked a little with Bruno himself, usually about immediate things, food, the weather, Bruno’s room. Bruno could talk quite sensibly about these things, but the background of his mind seemed to have come adrift, and Danby often caught Bruno looking at him with a puzzled expression, as if he did not know who Danby was and did not quite like to ask. Diana too was a source of puzzlement, though Danby lost no opportunity of repeating, “Diana, you know, Miles’s wife.” But Danby did not explain his own identity. He did not want to remind Bruno about Gwen.