Iris Murdoch - The Book And The Brotherhood

Gerard was irritably aware of Rose's sympathetic stare. He felt tired and older. He had looked that morning, when shaving, for his familiar handsome face, so humorous, so ironic, so finely carved and glowing with intelligence, and it was not there. What he saw was a heavy fleshy surly unhappy face, dark-ringed wrinkle-rounded eyes, dulled extinguished skin, limp greasy hair. Rose had asked, tiresomely, as usual, whether he was writing. He was not. He was not reading either, although he sometimes gazed at the pages of some of Jenkin's books. He thought obsessively about ,Jenkin, about Jenkin's death, about Crimond. He kept imagining scenes in which Crimond shot Jenkin through the forehead. Through the forehead was what Marchment had said. Gerard could have done without that picture. Crimond had lured Jenkin there and murdered him. Why? As a substitute for murdering Gerard, as a revenge on Gerard for some crime, some slight, some contemptuous remark which Gerard had made to him and instantly forgotten, thirty or more years ago? So I am to blame for Jenkin's death, thought Gerard. My fault, my sin, brought it about. I can't live with this, I'm being poisoned, I'm being destroyed, and Crimond intended that too. He thought daily of going to see Crimond, but daily decided that it was impossible. When he was at his most obsessed he sought for help by recalling Jenkin laughing at him, and this sometimes worked, though it made him so deadly sad, and more often returned him to his loss and to the hell which he was inhabiting with Crimond. They were in hell together, he and Crimond, and sooner or later must destroy each other.

Of course Gerard did not reveal these thoughts to anybody, certainly not to Rose who still sometimes tried to draw him into speculations. In conversation with her he now quickly dismissed as unthinkable any notion thatjenkin's death could have been other than a simple accident. Nor did he reveal to her another obsessive pain which left him no peace and made of his present life a fruitless interim. His acquaintance at the Oxford Press had said that he would soon, he hoped, be able to lay hands on a proof of Crimond's book, and would send it to Gerard at once by special messenger. Gerard dreaded the arrival of this thing. He did not want to read Crimond's hateful book, he would want rather to tear it up, but he was condemned to it, he would have to read it. If it was bad he would feel a sickening degrading satisfaction, if it was good lie would feel hatred.

Rose was looking older too, or perhaps it was just that, since he felt disturbed and irritated by her, he was at last looking at her, instead of regarding her as a nebulous extension of himself, a mist presence, a cloud companion. He was suddenly able to see the parts not the whole. She had had her hair cut too close and too short, revealing her cheeks, the tips of her ears, her face looked unprotected and strained, her lightless hair was not grey but deprived of hue, like a darkened plant. Her lips looked dry and parched and scored with little lines, and she had dabbed too much powder on her pretty nose. Only her dark blue eyes, so like her brother's, her courageous eyes as someone had called them, were undimmed, looking at him now with some silent appeal from which he turned away. She was wearing a green silkish dress, ver ysimple, very smart, with an amethyst necklace. It reminded him of the dress she had worn at the midsummer dance, when they had waltzed together, he even suddenly remembered the music and his arm round her waist and the stars over the deer park. Then he thought, she has dressed herself up for Reeve.

`Gerard, don't crush the crumbs into the rug.'

`Sorry.'

Rose straightened the rug. 'It's such a pretty rug.'

`I gave it to him.'

`I'll take these things away. Reeve will be here soon.'

So she's tidying the place up for Reeve. ‘I suppose he'll want a drink. I'll get the sherry.'

`Reeve likes gin and tonic.'

`I'll get the gin and tonic. Don't fuss with the tea things.'

`We can't have them here. It won't take a moment.' Rose found the tray propped against the wall and started loading it.

`I haven't finished!'

The door bell rang.

`I'll let him in,' said Rose. She went into the hall, leaving the tray on the table. Gerard stood in the doorway of the sitting room holding his tea cup. Reeve came in, was welcomed, took off his coat, said there was an east wind blowing, that it was starting to rain, and was it all right to leave his car just outside the house. Gerard retreated with his cup, picked up the tray, sidled past Reeve who was entering the room, and searching for the gin in the kitchen heard Rose asking her cousin for news of the children. Holding drinks, gin and tonic for Reeve and Gerard, sherry for Rose, they stood together awkwardly beside the fire like people at a party.

`Reeve says we mustn't stay long because of our table.'

Reeve, in an expensive dark suit, looked burly, broad-shouldered, his face weathered, ruddy, rosy-checked, his skin rough. The big broad nails upon his large practical uneasy hands were clean but jagged. He wore a wedding ring. His brown hair was carefully combed. He had probably combed it in the car, even standing at the door, before he came in. He peered up from under his softly lined brow and his projecting eyebrows at Gerard, expressing a sort of determined wariness. Of course the yhad often met over the years, they knew each other reasonably well, they liked each other reasonably well. Rose found herself for the first time anxious in case Gerard should seem to patronise Reeve, to condescend. So that was what he usually did, and she had never noticed it before?

Reeve was looking round at the little room, the faded torn wallpaper, the emergent patches of yellow wall. He could not conceal a little surprise.

`This is Riderhood's place?'

`Yes.'

`Rose says you live here now.'

‘Yes, I do.'

‘A sad business.'

`Yes. Sad.'

Reeve, leaning against the small mantelpiece, picked up the grey purple-striped stone which Rose had given to Jenkin years ago. 'I'm prepared to bet this stone came from Yorkshire.'

`Oh yes – yes!' said Rose. 'It came from that beach -'

`Yes, I know where.' They smiled at each other. Reeve continued to hold the stone.

`How's farming?' said Gerard.

`Awful.'

`I'm told farmers always say that.'

`Rose tells me the Cambuses are looking for a house in France. Everyone seems to be on the move.'

`Reeve is looking for a house in London,' said Rose.

`Really?' said Gerard, smiling pleasantly.

`Well, or a flat,' said Reeve apologetically. 'The children liave been wanting one for ages.' He exchanged a glance with Rose.

The door bell rang.

Gerard went to the door and opened it onto the east wind, the rain, the dark street with distant yellow lamps reflected in wet pavements, Reeve's Rolls-Royce glittering in the light from the doorway. A youth was standing outside holding a parcel.

`Mr Hernshaw? I've got this for you from Oxford.'

`Oh, thank you – won't you come in? Is that your motor bike? Have you come all the way -?'

`Oh, all right – thanks. I'd better lock up the bike, I suppose I can lean it against the wall here.'

Gerard took the parcel, it was bulky and heavy. He put it on the chair in the hall. The boy, inside, slid off his mackintosh. He took off his crash helmet revealing a mass of blond hair.

`Come in – would you like a drink? Let me introduce, Rose Curtland, Reeve Curtland. I'm afraid I don't know your name?'

`Derek Wallace. No, I won't have any sherry, thanks. I wouldn't mind a soft drink.'

`He's ridden from Oxford on his motorbike in the rain,' said Gerard.

`Well, no, it's only just started to rain.'

`You'll have had the wind in your face all the way,' said Reeve, who thought about winds.