Iris Murdoch - The Book And The Brotherhood

After a while, moving away from her, he said, 'So the Rover is a write-off?'

'Yes.'

'What happened?'

'I was running away, too fast.'

'Will you run back equally fast?'

'No. That's smashed – too.'

'Aren't you still in love?'

Jean said, gazing out of the window, 'It's over.'

'I shall take some convincing.'

'I will convince you.'

'It'll take a long time, you know, to put us together again many tears. We must show all our wounds, tell each other the, truth, abstain and fast. Time must pass. We do not know what we shall be or what we shall want.'

'But we'll be together.'

'I hope so.'

'You pity me.'

‘ I pity you very much, that is something you will have to put up with.'

'I am afraid of you.'

'Oh good – but, oh my darling, let us be happy at last.'

'Just when everything's going well, you spoil it all!' cried Lily.

,Sex is going well,' said Gulliver. 'Nothing else is. And don't say "what else is there". I'm tired of your smartness.'

'I'm not smart. I just try to be. You're hurting me deliberately. You've become mean and cruel. What's the matter with you?’

' I've told you what's the matter, I'm worthless.'

‘That's what I say! So we're both worthless! So let's stick together!'

'No, you're real, you're something. I'm nothing. You've got money, that's something.'

'Then let's celebrate, let's go to Paris.'

'No. And you've got some inside, you've got courage, you're We, that's something too, you've got being, you are unticated and stupid, but you actually want to do things, u've got joie de vivre.'

'I wish you had. You've been a perfect misery for days. All you need is a job.'

'All I need is a job! How dare you taunt me! You despise

'I don't. You're tall and dark and good-looking.'

'I shall never be employed again, never. Do you realise what it’s like to face that? You don't care, you actually like doing ling. I don't.'

'You can write can't you? You started writing another play.'

`It's no good. I can't write.'

`Couldn't we do something together, set up a small business, money could do that.'

`What sort of small business? Manufacturing ball-bearings or face cream? We haven't any skills. We'd just lose your money. Anyway, I'm through with your money.'

'Oh stop it, you bloody man! Can't Gerard get you a job? He tried before, didn't he?'

'Yes, and he's just tried again, he oh so kindly sent me a man who ran a literary agency who told me to get lost! Gulliver doesn't care. He only does fake good works to make admire him.'

'That's not true. You said he led you on and dropped you! That's why you're against him!'

'He didn't even lead me on!'

'Gull, don't be so awful when things are getting better. We’re better, Tamar's gone home, thank God, and she's back at work, Jean's come back to Duncan, it'll soon be Christmas -'

'Tamar's another damned soul who'll kill herself with drugs or cancer. And Duncan will kill Jean, he can't forgive her twice, he's just pretending, I bet she's scared stiff. One night when they're in bed she'll find him staring at her like Othello and then he'll strangle her.'

'You'd better go to a doctor and get yourself seen to.'

'Why do you talk about them as if they cared about us ? You're a snob. You'd like to belong to that horrible set, but they'd never regard you, or me, as one of them, not in a hundred years, so you needn't try so hard!'

'Oh shut up! Go and join the Foreign Legion!'

'I'm going away, I'm serious. I'm giving up my flat, I sold the furniture to the next tenant, I've sold my books -'

'No!'

'Well, most of them, what do you think was in those boxes I asked you to store for me? I can't afford to live like that more, and I'm not going to sponge on you. I'm going to the north.'

'To the north?'

'I want to be where people are really suffering and not just pretending to. I want to join the dregs of humanity, the bottom people, I want to be really poor. I've got to stop thinking I'm a burgeois intellectual. If I can stop thinking that I can get a job. But not here, not with you lot, not with bossy Gerard and lot my Jenkin and aristocratic Rose -'

, I'll come with you -'

'Don't be silly. You're another thing I've got to get away from, you're a bad symbol, you're anidle woman.'

, I think you hate women, I thought that when I first met you. I wish you'd let me do your horoscope.'

‘And you're superstitious, and your grandmother was a witch, and -'

‘Gull, do stop terrifying me, you're not yourself.'

‘I have no self.'

‘Now you're being smart. You don't mean all those horrid things you said about -'

'About them, no, all right, I didn't. But can't you recognise a man in despair?'

‘Well, I'm in despair too, only I don't make such a fuss about it. All right, I've got some money, but I can't do anything with it or myself- then you turned up and I thought life made sense at last, and now you bother me with your bloody despair!'

‘There comes a time when a man has to be alone, really alone.’

‘Gull, please, won't you go and talk it over with someone, Jenkin, I'll ring him up -'

‘You won't. He's running away too, and I don't blame him, going to South America.'

'How did you know, did he tell you?'

‘Marchment told me, that schoolmaster, I even went crawling to him for a job. Jenkin's fine, only he'd tell Gerard, and I want to go to South America.'

‘I should hope not! You're ridiculous. Why not stay in and live here with me? If you want to work with people there are plenty in this city, I could work with you-‘

,Lily, I don't want to work with people, like a social worker, I want to be with people! It's no good, I'm through wide compromises.'

`Gulliver, don't leave me. You're the only person who has ever really made me exist. We love each other, we agreed that the night before last. Let's get married, please let's get married.'

‘No. I'm leaving.'

Where do you imagine you're going to?'

`Leeds, Sheffield, Newcastle, I haven't decided. Everyone unemployed up there.'

`You're mad – I'll tell Gerard to stop you -'

‘If you do I'll never forgive you.'

But you'll let me know where you are?'

`I'll write, probably, but not at once. Now please don't make a scene.'

Lily jumped up and began to cry. 'You'll never write, you'll disappear, you'll marry a girl in Leeds and get a job in a factory and I'll never never see you again!'

Jean and Duncan, now back in London, seemed to their anxious friends to be coming to terms with each other more easily than had been predicted. They were both very tired. They had been carrying heavy burdens and were glad now to lay them down, together, exhausted. There was a mutual agreement to tend themselves and each other. They were assisted here by a deep and determined hedonism, an early bond between them. With Duncan again, Jean soon rediscovered the pleasure principle. They made jokes about this. They fell over other trying to invent consolations, gratifications, treats. They felt that, after surmounting mountainous difficulties to be together again, they deserved to be rewarded. Once they were known to be back they were showered with invitations.

The goal of being happy united them. The healing of deep terrible wounds was another matter. The question 'Can I give her?' had made, for Duncan, the concept of' forgiveness so murky and complex that he ceased employing it. There were many other ways of handling the situation. They both referred to precedent; they had managed it last time, and hadn't they managed it fairly easily? It seemed so, but they did not remember too clearly. It had seemed, at the begining, that they must simply work at their reconciliation by long talks about the past, telling the truth, showing every scar, probing every misunderstanding. But this comprehensive gramme of mutual revelation proved difficult, and was felt hoth, privatel y, to be dangerous. They did talk a great deal however, and told each other how valuable this was. They talked, selectively, about what had happened in Ireland. That first drama seemed sometimes closer, more real, more full of hires, than what had happened more lately, over which so many clouds now hung. Duncan told Jean, for instance, what he had never recounted before, how, when hewas in Wicklow, he had sat in a public house among the damned. This evolution of Duncan's state of mind seemed to have significance for both of them. He had never told Jean, and certainly did not tell her now, of how he had found Crimond's hair on the flow of their bedroom. This detail, utterly revolting to Duncan, hail with the years gathered all kinds of filth in his mind, and hr had no intention of'giving it more power and form by putting it into Jean's mind. Neither of course did he tell her about Crimond's blow and its long frightful sequel, the damage to his eye, the damage to his soul; of these terrible things he was bitterly ashamed. In fact, although they talked and reminisced a lot, and carefully handled a good deal of interesting material, neither of them had much to say about Crimond. It was as if, in that important central spot, there was a curious lacuna. They constantly talked round him but not about him. Well, was it really so important to talk about him? Duncan had wanted to be convinced, and Jean had engaged to convince him, that her relation to Crimond was finally over. But it became evident that this could not be done in any direct of simple way. Of course time would show. But how much time would be needed, perhaps the rest of' their lives? Duncan watching her, thinking about her, could not but believe her still in love with Crimond. Such a passion could not suddenly vanish, it could only die of long starvation. Let it starve then. But he found it difficult to ask straight questions about this m ystery. 'Telling each other everything' was to have included a long and detailed reliving of her whole relationship with Crimond, including the details of exactly how they came to part, so as to determine to the satisfaction of both of them that it was now at an end. This did not come about. A look of such misery came over Jean's face when he put certain questionm that Duncan felt too sorry for her to proceed. He wanted to know what exactly they had said to each other which constituted 'an agreement'; but Jean was vague, made contradictory answers, changed the subject. Nor could he, talking to her, make any sense of the car crash, which on reflection seemed to have something odd about it. One subject after another war clumsily handled and postponed. Perhaps that was the only way to proceed and perhaps they were thereby making frog. ress. In fact they did make progress, but not by the clarification and truthfulness method. The 'fasting and abstaining' which Duncan had had in mind concerned or included sex. He id had, at Boyars, no idea of' how, when, or whether, they could establish anything like their former sexual relation. He sometimes wondered whether it was conceivable that she could move from Crimond's bed to his, or that he could accept her with the aura of Crimond upon her. But a greater and more impersonal power, to which they both silently and readily submitted, brought it about that after a due time they found themselves in bed together again. This significant reunion was blessed and hastened by a sort of'gentle tenderness with each other, an eagerness to please, which perhaps adequately took the place of showing wounds and telling the truth. They did not ask, 'Do you still love me?' But love was there, busily moving about inside what still seemed, at times, the awful mess of their damaged marriage.