Iris Murdoch - The Book And The Brotherhood

with me and do as I want – but if she doesn't she can go and I'll never see her again! I mean it! I hope you are pleased with your meddling now! Well, Tamar, what is it to be?'

`Of course I've got to go,' said Tamar in a matter-of-fact tone, 'but what you say doesn't follow.'

`Oh yes it does. Go then, go – and pack your things!'

`They are already packed,' said Tamar. 'You will change your mind.'

`I see, it's a conspiracy. It was all arranged beforehand. Wanting to help me was just a pretence!'

'No.'

`I am left to burn, I am left to die -you know that. For God's sake, Tamar, don't leave me, stay with me, tell those wicked wicked people to go away! What have they to do with us? You're all I have- I've given you my life!' The hysterical voice hit a ringing quivering piercing note which made everything in the room shudder. Patricia turned away from the door and hid her face.

Tamar did not flinch. She gave her mother a sad gentle look, almost of curiosity, and said ina low resigned tone, 'Oh don't take on so – I'm going to Pat and Gideon – you'll come later – I'm sorry about this. I'm afraid it's the only way to do it.'

The original author of' this scene, which as Gideon felt afterwards had a curiously brittle theatrical quality, was Father McAlister. Reflecting upon Tamar's situation and her future he had had the excellent idea of appealing not to Gerard but to Gideon. The priest saw, rightly, in Gideon, the mixture of self-confidence, ruthlessness, stage-sense and shameless money required to carry off what might almost, in the end, amount to an abduction. He had however envisaged the plan as unfolding more slowly and under his own guidance. He had persuaded Tamar, more easil ythan he had expected, to play her part, emphasising that the great change would actually, also, constitute the rescue, perhaps even the salvation of her mother. Father McAlister's very brief' meetings with Violet had led him to a prognosis which was if anything grimmer than Tamar's own.

Gideon expected Violet to scream, and for a moment she seemed likely to as she drew her breath in a savage gasp like a fierce dog. She clenched her fists and actually bared her teeth. She said in a low voice, 'So you won't do anything for me, any more?'

`I am doing something for you,' said Tamar, 'as you will see later. But if you mean will I do whatever you want, no. I can't do that – and at the moment probably I can't do anything at all for you – I can do- nothing for you.' Tamar then turned her head away, looking at the window where net curtains, grey with dirt, hung in tatters. Then she. looked back, looking at Gideon with an alert prompting expression as if to say, can't we end this scene now?

Tamar had spoken so coldly, and now looked, as she ignored her mother and turned to Gideon, so ruthless, that a strange idea came into Father McAlister's head. Supposing it were all somehow false, the emotional drama, the passion play of salvation in which he and Tamar had been taking part? It was not that he thought that Tamar had been lying or play-acting. Her misery had been genuine, her obsession terrible. But in her desperation had she not used him as he came to hand, carrying out his instruction, as a savage might those of a medicine man, or as a sick patient obeys a doctor? Or why not simply say it was like an analysis, neurosis, transference, liberation into ordinary life, an ordinary life in which the liberated patient could snap his fingers at the therapist, and go his way realising that what he took for moral values or categorical imperatives on even the devil and the eternal fire were simply quirkish mental ailments such as we all suffer from, a result of a messy childhood, from which one can now turn cheerfully and ruthlessly away. Tamar had faced the devil and the eternal fire, he had seen her face twist with terror, and later, when he had exorcised the spirit of the malignant child, seen it divinely calm and bathed with penitential tears. Now Tamar seemed endowed with an extraordinary authority. Even Gideon, he could see, was startled by it. She was authoritative and detached and able, in this crisis with her mother, to freeze her feelings. It was her freedom she had wanted, perhaps all along, and now she could smell its proximity she was ready to trample on anyone. In this ritual of dismissal and liberation which he had been there to sanction, it was as if she had cursed her mother. The priest's `bright idea' had envisaged a row, certainly, but with it an emergence of Tamar's genuine love for her mother, which he imagine he had discerned deep within her. He had not wanted to release his penitent from one demon to see her seized by another. Tamar's former obedience, the predominant importance she had given to her mother's states and her will, had had something bad about it. He kept telling Tamar about a true and free love of her, a love in Christ, which could heal Violet as she, Tamar, had been healed. The priest had, in his Drier meetings with Violet, made her out as a monster. He could see, he thought, her terrible unhappiness, an unhappiness which made his sympathetic sentimental (she had used that word) soul wince and cringe, a black unhappiness, deeper and darker and harder than her daughter's, and he had seen too how her suffering had made her monstrous. He was not going to let his Tamar be any more this monster's victim. But must not, and by both of them, the poor monster be helped too? Now, as he looked at Tamar, who was brushing crumbs off her skirt and making the restless unmistakable shrugging movements of someone who is about to rise and depart, he wondered: is this new energy, this detachment, this authority, old perhaps simply a metamorphosis of an old deep hatred, whit It has been for so many years obediently kept in check? Have I liberated her not into Christ, but into selfish uncaring powri Have I perhaps simply created another monster? (In the very process however of unrolling these awful thoughts Fathri McAlister, by a gesture familiar to him, handed the whole matter over to his Master, knowing that it would be hands it back to him later in a more intelligible state.)

Violet, who had been glaring at Tamar open-mouthed, het eyes suddenly seeming like blazing rectangular holes, rear suddenly to her feet, rocking the table and making Gideon hastily shift his chair. She fumbled for her glasses in the pocket of her skirt. Taken by surprise by the intrusion, she was Gideon could see now, pathetically untidy, her blouse crumpled, her cardigan spotted with holes through which the colours of her blouse and skirt showed accusingly. She was raring down-at-heel slippers one of which had come off. She looked down, stabbing at it angrily with her foot. Gideon Moved the table. Violet went forward to the door. As she did so ohir composed her face. Patricia, who was standing in the hall, good hastily aside. Violet entered her bedroom, banged the door, and audibly locked it.

As soon as Violet's departing back was turned to her, Tamar too rose, and saying, 'Let's go,' darted to a cupboard td began pulling out her suitcases.

Gideon said, 'Oh dear!' and rose to his feet. Father McAlister automatically picked up one of the sugary cakes, a pink one and stuffed it whole into his mouth. They moved into the hall.

'Well,' said Patricia, 'you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs. Come on, let's get out, get Tamar away before she changes her mind.'

'She won't change her mind,' said Gideon.

'If only I'd got that sack out into the hall,' said Patricia, 'we could have taken it with us. I found such indescribable filth and mess in Violet's room, awful hairy decaying things under the bed, I couldn't even make out what they were.’

Patricia was putting her coat on. The priest picked up his. Tamar carried out three large suitcases and dumped them by the door. As she did so she looked at Father McAlister and an extraordinary glance passed between them. The priest thought, she has seen through me. Then: who has betrayed whom?