Iris Murdoch: Bruno’s Dream

”There’s no one else,” said Bruno. His voice was becoming hoarse. He cleared his throat. “You’re part of the family.”

”All right. When do you want me to go? Tomorrow?”

”Not tomorrow.” His heart was suddenly beating violently. What would it be like? Danby was looking at him closely. “The doctor won’t approve of this.”

”It doesn’t matter what the doctor thinks now. Perhaps you would write a letter.”

”To Miles? Saying what? Asking to come and see him?”

”Yes. Do everything very slowly. I mean, give Miles time to think. He might be hasty. If he has time to think he’ll come.

”Well, all right. Will you compose the letter? You know I’m hopeless at letters.”

”No, you compose it. But not today.” Adelaide came in and threw the Evening Standard onto the bed. A river of stamps cascaded to the floor. “I’ll bring your tea in ten minutes. Would you like muffins or anchovy toast?”

”Muffins, please, Adelaide.” The door closed. Danby was picking up the stamps and put ting them into the black wooden box. Bruno’s father had disapproved of stamp hinges, which he held were injurious to stamps, and had indeed spent a lifetime vainly trying to invent an alternative device. So although he believed strongly in the aesthetic aspect of his hobby, and had often preached to Bruno that a man who did not love looking at his stamps was a trades man and no true philatelist, he had never kept the stamps in books. He had constructed the large wooden box with a great many narrow drawers within which the stamps were supposed to lie between fitted cellophane covers, which could be fanned out when the drawers were opened. Bruno, however, whose attachment to the stamps was even more purely aesthetic than that of his father, had long ago started to jumble the carefully docketed system by which they were arranged. Of late he had started selecting out his special favourites, regardless of origin, and these were now kept heaped together in a spare drawer at the top. “Okay, Bruno,” said Danby. “I’ll do that small thing. Don’t worry. We’ll see. Can I help you to the lav?”

”No, thanks. I can manage.”

”Well, I’ll be off. I’ve got an appointment at the Balloon. Cheerio.”

He thinks I won’t do it, thought Bruno, gradually moving his legs towards the side of the bed, but I will. It was frightening though, the prospect of a change, something utterly new, the danger of being hurt in a new way. He got his legs over the side of the bed and rested. Suppose Miles wouldn’t come, suppose he sent back a hostile reply? Suppose he came and were unkind to Bruno? Suppose Bruno felt an irresistible impulse to tell about Janie’s death and Miles cursed him? Miles could curse him. He was a violent intense boy. He could hurt him now, terribly. Perhaps Danby was right. It was better to die in peace.

Bruno edged over and got his stockinged feet onto the ground. In between each trip his feet seemed to forget about walking altogether. They curled up into balls under the bedclothes and were reluctant to flatten out again into surfaces that could be stood upon. The process of their reeducation was painful. Bruno stood, stooping a little, supporting himself with one hand on the bed. Still holding onto the bed he began to shuffle towards the door. Once he got as far as the bed post he could reach out and get his dressing gown from the door without having to stand unsupported.

Of course it wasn’t absolutely necessary to put on the dressing gown now that it wasn’t winter any more, but it represented a challenge. It was quite easy, really. The left hand held the bed post while the right lifted down the dressing gown and with the same movement slid itself a little into the right sleeve. The right hand lifted on high, the sleeve runs down the arm. Then the right hand rests flat against the door a little above shoulder height, while the left leaves the bed post and darts into the left arm hole. If the left is not quick enough the dressing gown falls away towards the floor, hang ing from the right shoulder. It then has to be slowly relinquished and left lying. There was no getting anything up off the floor.

Bruno manages it, twitching the gown forward over his shoulders and drawing it together in front with the left hand. He is breathing deeply with the effort. He slides his right hand down slowly as far as the puckered brass door handle and begins to open the door, sidling slowly round it as he does so. His movement brings him round to face the room and he contemplates it for a moment, seeing his little prison box as an outsider might see it. The yellowish-white counterpane of threadbare Indian cotton is patterned with faded black scrolls which look like copperplate writing on a very old letter. The bed, between its four light-brown flat-headed wooden posts, looks coiled up and dirty, a disorderly lair. The sheets all seem to be knotted. It has the desolate incomplete look of an invalid’s bed, momentarily untenanted. The cold sunless evening light from the window shows the small square of thin brown carpet, with the ragged bit tucked under the bed, surrounded by dusty varnished boarding. The wallpaper, covered with a dim design of ivy leaves, is pallid and bleached and spotted with tea-coloured stains. The little bedroom was “the small spare room” for years. Bruno occupies it now because of its proximity to the lavatory. On Bruno’s right is a book case topped with cracked marble on top of which two detachments of empty champagne bottles frame Janie’s picture. The upper shelves contain paperback books of great antiquity. The lower shelves house Bruno’s microscope and four wooden frames containing test tubes of spiders in alcohol. On Bruno’s left, behind the door as it opens, is a rickety gate-leg table upon which the great wooden stamp box now rests. At night Danby usually takes it away to his own room, hoping perhaps that Bruno will forget to ask for it again, so that it can then be conveyed to the bank. The full bottles of champagne are under the table. On doctor’s orders Bruno does not drink his champagne chilled. Spider books, which are too big to go into the bookcase, fill much of the rest of the room, piled on the chest of drawers, on the two upright chairs, and on the little bedside table round about the lamp. The sash window shows a segment of wet slate roof, a coffee-coloured sky in slow unseizable tumultuous motion, and one of the trinity of towers of Lots Road power station looking black and two-dimensional in the sullen light.

Bruno levers himself round and begins the journey to the lavatory, his right hand moving along the wall. A dark continuous blur upon the wallpaper, the record of many such journeys, guides his moving hand. The lavatory door is open, thank heavens. The doorhandle is stiff. It was Nigel’s bright idea that it should always be left open when untenanted. Nigel is full of little ideas for Bruno’s comfort. Bruno’s hand moves on the wall. It was surely not Parvati who had made all that anger. It was Miles. Parvati must have under stood. Her own parents, who were Brahmins, had opposed the match too. They never consented to see Miles. If only he had met Parvati everything would have been all right, a real girl, not just an idea of an Indian girl. He hadn’t meant it anyway, it was just something he’d said once about not wanting a coloured daughter-in-law. He could not remember any feeling about it all now, any feeling that he had had. Miles said he had “bitterly opposed” the marriage. It was not true. All he could remember was the muddle, denying he’d said things, and Miles’s cold high-minded anger. It was so unfair.

Bruno was inside the lavatory leaning against the closed door. As he began to fiddle with his pajamas something dropped to the floor at his feet. He saw at once that it was a Pholcus phalangioides which he had dislodged from its place on the door, or perhaps in the corner of the wall, where it had woven its irregular almost invisible scaffolding, unmolested by Adelaide. The spider did not move. He wondered if he had damaged it with his sleeve. He touched it gently with his stockinged feet. The creature lay still, its long legs curled to its body. It might be shamming dead. Slowly stepping across it Bruno lowered the lavatory seat and sat down on it. He took a piece of lavatory paper and leaning forward introduced it carefully underneath the little curled-up thing. The spider slid onto the paper together with a good deal of dust and fluff. It stirred slightly. He must have damaged it somehow, but without the microscope, or at any rate a magnifying glass, he could not see how. He tried to look into the spider’s face but without his spectacles all was blurred. He had not kept captive spiders for a long time now. A year ago he had had a sudden yearning to see again a beautiful Micromatta vivescens and he had sent Nigel, armed with a photograph, to hunt in Battersea Park. Nigel came back without a Micromatta but with a jam jar full of assorted spiders, two of them already dead, a poor Ciniflo ferox and an Oonops pulcher , probably killed by the fierce Drassodes lapidosus with which they had been sharing their captivity. Bruno put his magnifying glass away and told Nigel to release them all in the yard straight away. He had never really been a scholar anyway.