Iris Murdoch: Bruno’s Dream

It all went back to the beginning. That was something which he would like to try to explain. “Bruno” his father had named him, but his mother, who could not get on with the name, had called him “Bruin,”

”Little Bear.” How had he become corrupted and lost the innocence which belonged to his mother’s only child, and how could the child of such a mother ever have become bad? Yet had he become so bad, and how bad had he become? Most men deceive their wives all the time, statistics say. He had only had Maureen. And his later excesses amounted to little more than holding hands in Notting Hill. He had lived a chaste life really. It was his accusers and not his crimes which troubled him.

It all seemed so accidental now. Yet could anything have been different on that night, when he proposed to Janie in St. James’s Theatre in an atmosphere of sugar and Shakespeare and the sweet craziness of the London season? He wrote Marry me, Janie on a page from his programme, folded the page into a paper dart, and threw it from the stalls into her box. She caught it in the air and read it with a faint smile as the lights dimmed after the interval. The play was Twelfth Night. After wards he searched for her frenziedly in the crowded foyer. Turning away with her party she tapped his arm with her fan. “I quite like your suggestion, Bruno. Come and discuss it tomorrow.”

It had gone on, the froufrou and the wit and the bright artificial lights, right on it seemed to him until that moment in crowded sale-time Harrods when Maureen had been struggling with the dress. It was the early days of zip fasteners. Bruno, who often bought her clothes, was standing just outside the curtain of the trying-on room. Maureen had got the dress half over her head, but because the zip had stuck she could get it no further. She came out to Bruno, masked by the dress, her arms helplessly waving, a foot of frilly petticoat showing. “Quick, Bruno, get it off, I can’t breathe.” Bruno laughed, pulled. Then there was suddenly a moment of panic. “Maureen, keep still, you won’t suffocate, you fool. You’re tearing the dress.” The dress came away. Bruno looked over Maureen’s bare shoulder into the eyes of Janie. Janie turned at once and disappeared among the shoppers. Bruno, for whom Maureen no longer existed, darted after her. He sought for her desperately in the slow crowds as he had sought her long ago in the foyer of the theatre. He glimpsed her ahead, hurrying, and then she was gone. He came back to the department and paid the assistant for the torn dress. Maureen had vanished too. You taught me how to love you. Now teach me to forget.

As he waited at home for Janie to come back he felt that the quality of time had altered, perhaps forever. She did not come until the late evening. Janie made him take her to see Maureen. How had she made him? That terrible sense of being punished. Thrusting in front of him she went into Maureen’s flat first and locked the door. He could hear Janie’s voice speaking on the other side of the door and then the sound of Maureen crying. He knocked on the door, calling to be let in. The other lodgers in the house came out of their rooms to watch. They mocked him. “His wife’s telling off his mistress!”

”Been found out, have you?”

”Hard luck, old man.” They laughed. Bruno went home. More waiting. He never saw Maureen again. But Janie visited her over a period of several months. “I want her to understand what she’s done.”

”I want her to know that we were happy together before this happened.”

”I want to help her.” Strong avenging Janie, weak defenseless Maureen. Years later, after Janie was dead, he put an advertisement in The Times. Maureen. At the parting of the ways. Please contact BG. Just to talk of long ago. There was no answer. He had not really expected one. It was an attempt to propitiate her shade. Years later still he saw a terrible news item in the paper. A Mrs. Maureen Jenkins, a widow living by herself in Cricklewood, had been found by neighbours lying dead in her home, suffocated by a dress which she had been unable to pull over her head. There was a picture of a tired stout elderly-looking woman. He could not decide if it was her or not. Danby had come to sit on the end of the bed. He pushed the stamps into a pile. “I do wish you’d be more careful with those stamps, Bruno. I found a Post Office Mauritius on the floor the other day.”

”Nothing can happen to them.”

”They could fall through chinks in the floor boards.”

”There are no chinks. The room is too dusty to have chinks. The chinks are full of dust.”

”There’s no point in your seeing Miles, I shouldn’t think.”

”You don’t understand. There are things I can only talk to Miles about.”

”You want to make a life confession?” Bruno was silent. He looked down at the stamps, caressing their gay innocent faces.

He looked up at Danby’s big healthy handsome face. How odd human faces were. They differed so much in size , apart from anything else. Danby was no fool. “Maybe.”

”Well, make it to me. Or better still to Nigel. He’s in touch with the transcendent.”

”Why are you against it?” said Bruno. He could hear his voice quavering. He had a little touch of the fear which he sometimes had now when he realized his utter helplessness. He was a prisoner in this house forever. If they wanted to keep him from Miles they could do so. They could fail to give messages. They could fail to post letters. There was the telephone. But they could cut the wire. Of course these thoughts were insane.

”You haven’t really imagined it,” said Danby. “You’d just embarrass each other horribly. You know how you brood as it is. Something unfortunate would be said and you’d just be utterly miserable.”

”I’ve got to talk to him,” said Bruno. He looked at his poor blotched hands crawling over the stamps. They looked like huge spiders.

”Why this fuss all of a sudden when you’ve managed without him for years? You never even answer his letters.”

”There’s not much-time left.” Bruno looked involuntarily at his dressing gown. “Miles might refuse to come,” said Danby. “Then you’d be terribly distressed. Have you thought of that?” Bruno had not thought of it. “I’ve thought of that of course. But I think he’ll come. I must see him. Please, Danby.”

Danby looked upset. He stood up and went to the window, smoothing his thick white hair down onto his neck.

”Look, Bruno, of course you can do anything you like. You don’t have to say ‘please’ to me. And I hope you don’t think-Naturally I assume-It’s not-I really am just thinking about you. You could be inventing a torment for yourself.”

”I’m already in torment. I want to try-anything.”

”Well, I don’t understand,” said Danby, “but okay, go ahead, no one’s stopping you.”

”Don’t be cross with me, Danby, I can’t bear your being cross.”

”I’m not cross, for heaven’s sake!”

”Would you go and see him?”

”Ate? Why me?”

”I think it would be wise to spy out the land,” said Bruno. The new thought that Miles might simply refuse to come was frightening him terribly. It had not occurred to him for a moment. Perhaps Danby was right that the risk was not worth taking. He lived so much in his mind now. Suppose he wrote and got no answer? Suppose the telephone were just replaced when he rang up? There were worse torments, other vistas, further galleries. All the rest and that as well.

”You mean find out if he would come? Perhaps argue him into coming?”

”Yes.”

Danby smiled. “Am I the right ambassador, dear Bruno? Miles and I never exactly hit it off. And I haven’t seen him for years. He thought I was unworthy of his sister.” Danby paused. “I was unworthy of his sister.”