Iris Murdoch - The Book And The Brotherhood

Patricia thought, Gideon's worked really hard to get hold of those two, I hope he won't regret it! He's too kind-hearted and of course he's a power maniac with delusions of grandeur. He's quite unscrupulous when he gets going like this. How on earth will we ever get Violet out? She's sitting there like a toad and playing the interesting neurotic, it could go on forever, I suppose we shall have to buy her out! My God though, she may be a mental case, but she's kept her good looks and her figure, it isn't fair! Patricia was well aware of Gideon's funny kinky affection for Violet, and it did not trouble her. She was in any case too happy at present, what with Leonard's return and the house to play with, to bear any ill-will to her unhappy cousin. As for Tamar, it looked as if they were adopting her after all. Perhaps that was what Gideon had always wanted. Surveying the scene Patricia had already noticed something else which gave her pleasure. Leonard seemed to be getting on very well with Gillian Curtland. Hmm, thought Pat, a nice clever pretty girl, and she'll inherit a packet When they come to live in Hampstead we'll invite them tit dinner.

Violet's capitulation, which had occurred when Gideon arrived on the day after the abduction, was brought about by two kinds of consideration, one financial, the other emotional (Father McAlister would have used the word `spiritual'). The latter was a special kind of despair which took the form tit missing Tamar. Violet had been intensely and deeply shocked by the ruthlessness of Tamar's rejection of her. She realised that the docile spiritless girl she had known all her life watt gone forever, and that she would never meet that girl again, With Tamar so utterly gone from it the flat was desolate, n cage without its little captive. Keeping Tamar prisoner had been far more important to Violet than she had ever realised, Whether this importance had anything to do with love was a question which did not now concern her; she needed help, she was ready to run, Gideon appeared. The financial consideration could be more clearly stated. Gideon announced, which Violet had anticipated, that Tamar had already given up her ob. She wanted time to catch up with her studies. There were debts and bills and very little money. Gideon composed a rational argument. Violet had to face the facts and put her lifiin order. It made sense to sell the flat, which was a genuine asset, pay what was owed, and come and rest at Notting Hill, then get some sort of job (all right, not in his office) where she could use her wits, or anyway make a plan for a happier and more sensible life. She didn't have to stay on with him and Pat if she didn't want to, it could be an interim. Violet, who felt just then that the alternative was suicide, said yes with an alacrity which surprised Gideon, who had looked forward to a struggle, even a row, ending of'course in victory. Gideon had given her money to buy clothes. She had accepted the money and bought the clothes. (Gideon, discussing it all with Pat, attached great symbolic significance to this surrender.) Now at the party she felt like some sort of wicked Cinderella. Albert Labowsky was talking to her as if she were an ordinary person. She could see Gideon looking encouragingly in her direction. She had fallen into the hands of the enemy, the other race, who Would now expect her to be grateful, even to become happy! fcourse they had not expected her to share the flat with her ughter, the new Tamar. Gideon had bought a flat for amar before Violet moved in! What shall I do up there alone, thought Violet. Shall I quickly become ill, bed-ridden, have illy meals brought up by kind people who will sit by my bed and chat? Perhaps even Tamar might come and sit, and look of her watch. Violet was experiencing a sudden total loss of rnergy, what a car must feel when there is no more petrol. She had not really lived, before, on pure unmixed resentment and remorse and hate, she had lived on Tamar, as a presence, as a vehicle, as something always expected and looked forward to. Through Tamar she had touched the world. Could she now live on a hatred for Pat and Gideon, which she did not yet feel, but might have to develop as a source of'power? How she would detest their charity as the days went by, how she would loathe their kindness, their tactful sympathy, their gifts of flowers! But how now could she escape? Any relationship with the child who had rejected her seemed now impossible forever, one could only cast, in that direction, one's curse. Don't they know, thought Violet, that I'm not an ordinary person, that I'm dangerous, that I'll end by burning the house down? Now I'm a novelty. Soon they'll get nervous. I shall start to scream. They'll have foreseen this too. I shall go to a luxurious mental home and have electric shocks at Gideon's expense. If I leave now and go upstairs someone will be sent after me to see I'm all right. Soon they'll begin to be afraid of me. That at least will be something.

Father McAlister was looking forward to Easter. He had given up alcohol for Lent and the smell of the tangerine cocktail was inflaming his senses. Also of course he dreaded Easter. I do not know, I cannot tell, what pains He had to bear, I only know it was for me He hung and suffered there. The terrible particularity, the empirical detail, of his religion bore down upon him then as at no other time. He would endure it, he would purvey that story all over again, what else was he for? Without the endlessly rehearsed drama of Christ, His birth, His ministry, His death, His resurrection, there was nothing at all, he, Angus McAlister, was a vanishing shadow, and so were the planets and the most distant stars and the ring of the cosmos. Others live without Christ, so why not I? must be it senseless question. Nothing can separate me from the love of Christ. How did Saint Paul know? Is it not upon his knowledge that the whole thing rests? Without Paul to carry that strange virus from land to land the gospels would have been lost forever, or rediscovered centuries later as local curiosities. So it was all an accident? That was impossible, for it was something absolute, and what is absolute cannot be an accident. Suppose there was nothing of Christ left to us but his moral sayings, uttered by some unknown man with not a fragment of history to clothe him? Could one love such a being, could one be saved by him? Could he come closer to one than oneself? Christianity spoils its believers as spoilt children are spoilt. The radiant master, the martyred man, the beautiful hero, the incarnate god, the best known individual in history, the best loved and most powerful: this is the figure Christianity has lived upon and may die of. That was not Father McAlister's business. He had his own certainties and his own paradoxes; he did not dare, as Easter approached, to call these his lies. It must surely be possible for him – in Christ – not to lie. Such a truth as ends all strife, such a life as killeth death. Christ on the cross made sense of all the rest, but only if he really died. Christ lives, Christ saves, because he died as we die. The ultimate reality hovered there, not as a phantom man, but as a terrible truth. Father McAlister could not dignify his beliefs by the name of heresy. He prayed, he worshipped, he prostrated himself, he felt himself to be a vehicle of a power and a grace which was given, not his own. But his terrible truth was never quite clarified, and that lack of final clarification troubled him on Good Friday as at no other time. This mysterious Absolute was what, during those awful three hours as he enacted the death of his Lord, he had somehow to convey to the kneeling men and women who would see – not what he saw, but something else – which was their business and God's business – only there was no God. That the priest performed this task in agony, with tears, did him no credit. Rather the contrary.