Iris Murdoch - The Book And The Brotherhood

At other times he was amazed at his calmness, his gentleness, his efficiency, his cheerfulness even. He loved his wife and was happy in loving her. He felt tired, but with a relaxed not frenzied tiredness. He was pleased with the new house and able to concentrate on the location of the swimming pool, even to think about it when he awoke in the night. Still he was aware of ghosts and horrors, black figures which stood beside him and beside whom he felt tiny and puny. Perhaps they would simply thus stand with him for the rest of his life without doing him any other harm – or would their proximity drive him mad? Could he go on existing knowing that at any moment… What did the future hold of intelligible misery? Would Crimond recur in his life, coming back relentlessly, inevitably after a period of years?Jean had even said to him – but she had said it, as she also told him, because she felt she must be able to say anything: 'Supposing I were to go off with Crimond again, would you forgive me, would you take meback?" 'Yes,' said Duncan, 'I would forgive you, I would take you back.' 'Seven times?' 'Unto seventy times seven.' Jean said, 'I have to ask this question. But my love for Crimond is dead, it is finished.' Was it true, could she know, would Crimond whistle and she run, Duncan wondered, but with a sort of resignation. Seventy times seven was a lot of times. If they were left in peace would he before long grow tired of worrying about Jean and Crimond? He had his house to think about, where he would sit and write his memoirs and Jean would create a garden and write the, cookery book she used to talk about, and perhaps they would drive about the region and write a guide book, or travel and write travel books. He still thought but not obsessively, almost coldly, about what was known only to Crimond and himself',jenkin's death. He felt not the slightest wish or obligation to inform anybody about what really happened. If people cared to think that Crimond had murdered Jenkin it was their affair, and not very far from the truth either. He had only lately performed a curious little ritual. When he had left Crimond to deal with the bod yand the police, he had carried away inhis pocket the five dud leaded cartridges which he had removed from the gun with which hehad killed Jenkin. He could not decide what to do with them. If ever connected with him, those odd little things could prove awkward and suggestive evidence. He had to get rid of them, but in London it had proved absurdly hard to decide onany really safe method. He took them with him to France and eventually, stopping the car in a wild place far from their farm house, while Jean was unpacking a picnic lunch, he strayed away and dropped them into a deep river pool. The feel of the smooth weighty objects in his hand made him think of Jenkin's body. It was like a burial at sea.

Yes, he understood why Crimond had had to summon him, responding to a nervous urge, an irresistible craving, like the toreador's desire to touch the bull. The woman had gone, the drama remained between him and Duncan. Crimond had always hated the idea of being in debt, he was a meticulous payer, he was a gambler, he feared the gods. The gesture of' baring his breast was natural to him – it was a ritual of purification, an exorcism of something which, like a Grecian guilt, was formal and ineluctable, curable only by submission to a god. But why did Jenkin have to die? Crimond had offered himself as victim to Duncan, but Duncan had killed Jenkin. So Jenkin died as a substitute, as a surrogate, he had to die so that Crimond could live? Had some deep complicity with Crimond brought it about that Duncan could kill Crimond without killing Crimond? By not killing Crimond he had brought about Jenkin's death. Had he even in some sense brought it about deliberately? Duncan recalled daily the dark red hole in Jenkin's forehead and the sound of his body hitting the floor. He remembered the special warm feel of jenkin's ankles and his socks, as Duncan pulled the body along the room, and how, afterwards, he had stepped to and fro over it in his frenzied hurry to tidy up the scene. He remembered Crimond's tears. He also, in the presence of these images, asked himself, retrieving it now from the depths of memory, whether perhaps he had not always, in his play with firearms, had a fantasy of shooting someone like that through the middle of the forehead? Perhaps an old sadistic fantasy, tolerated over many years, had been there to prompt him; and had found him ready because of other ancient things, such as an old jealousy ofJenkin surviving from Oxford days. After Sinclair's death it was to Jenkin, not to Duncan, that Gerard turned for consolation. That microsecond before he pulled the trigger: could it actually have contained a decision? Duncan had wanted to kill Crimond – but had found himself unable to – because he was afraid to- because he did not really want to- yet lie had needed to take revenge on somebody, somebody had to die. It was as if, not strong enough to kill the man he hated, he had killed his dog.

`Your funny eye looks better,' said Jean, who had been staring at him. 'Well, I suppose it isn't actually different. Can you see better out of it?'

`I think so – or I imagine I can – the clever old brain has fudged things up, it often does.'

`It'll fudge things up for us,' said Jean.

They smiled at each other tired complicit smiles.

She went on, 'I can't remember when you first had that eye thing. You haven't always had it.'

`Oh years ago, I was developing it before we went to Ireland.' Something about this exchange made Duncan suddenly feel that it was a good time to tell Jean about the thing with Tamar. He would be relieved to get rid of it. 'I've got something to confess – it's about Tamar – I had a little momentary quasi-sex episode with her one evening when you were away and she came round to console me.'

`With Tamar!' said Jean. 'With that good sweet child! How could you!' She felt an unexpected relief at this sudden utterance by Duncan, as if even some partial shabbily doctored piece of truth-telling could somehow 'do them good'. 'I hope you didn't upset her?'

`Oh, not at all. Nothing happened really. She just threw her arms round me to cheer me up. I was feeling miserable and I hugged her. I was touched by her affection. No harm's done. There was nothing else.'

What a dear old liar he is, thought Jean. I certainly won't question him. 'I expect she was flattered.'

`Perhaps I was! She may not have thought it was anything at all. You're not cross with me?'

`No. Of course not. I'll never ever be cross with you. I love you.'

Jean thought to herself, if Tamar hadn't come round to tell me about Duncan and the child I would never have thought of searching Duncan's desk, and telephoned Jenkin and sent him to Crimond. If Duncan had not seduced Tamar Jenkin would be still alive. If I had not left Duncan he would not have seduced "Tamar. Is it all my fault or his fault or Tamar's fault, or is it fate, whatever that means? Oh how tired I feel sometimes. It's as if Crimond devoured part of me which will never grow again. Perhaps that's my punishment for having left Duncan. Would the results of all these things ever reach their ends? And poor Tamar, and that child. Sometimes at night.jean thought about the child, Duncan's child, whom they might have adopted. So if Duncan could have children after all, there might yet be another child, not hers, but his, for them to cherish… But that way thoughts must not go, it was too late, it was too complicated, the time for mysteries and new beginnings and unpredictable adventures was over, their task now was simpl yto make each other happy.

The breeze had moderated, the sea which had been mildly disturbed and covered with flickering points of white had become calmer. The masts of yachts in the harbour were quiet. A fishing boat was moving out, its engine uttering little rhythmic muted explosions. The diffident lazy hollow sound came pleasurably to Jean and Duncan, as if it somehow united and summarised the scene, the harbour and the sea, so beautiful, so full of secure promise. The silk ylight blue unscored undivided sea merged at the horizon into a pale sky which at the zenith, cloudless, was overflowing with the blue sunny air of the south.