Iris Murdoch - The Book And The Brotherhood

Gerard's imagination engaged with the fact that Patricia had seen him die. Gerard had seen people dead but he had never seen anyone die. He thought, when it comes it is, isn't it, so fast. Well, that must be true by definition, 'fast' doesn't really apply. There just has to be a last moment. What we call a slow death is a slow dying. We may still picture the end as if it were a leap over a stream, but there is no stream and no one to leap. ,Just a last moment. Could one know, think 'it will come in this minute'? A condemned criminal could know. At that stage many of us are condemned criminals. It was such a very little time since yesterday when his father had wished him a happy goodbye as he left for the dance. 'Tell me all about it tomorrow.' Gerard had not slept since he had seen his father living. That seemed important too. For Patricia, the sudden going must have been perceptible, one moment the struggle to communicate, to help, the talking, the soothing, the saying, ,rest, you'll feel better soon', then at some next moment the utter solitude, the job over, nothing to do, alone. Oh God. How is it done, thought Gerard. It can't be difficult, anyone can do it. It could be more like a little movement, a sort of quick turning away. I shall make that movement one day. How shall I know how? When the time comes I shall know, my body will tell me, will teach me, urge me, push me at last over the edge. It is an achievement, or is it like falling asleep which happens but you don't know when? Perhaps at the very last moment it is easy, the point where all deaths are alike. But that must be true by definition too. Here, with a habitual movement ,Gerard forbade his thoughts to wonder how long before it happened Sinclair knew that he was to die. That had been too much worked on, once. Thoughts must not go there. He shuddered now looking at the dead flesh, so recently alive, so frightful, so abhorrent to the living. He covered the face and rose and stepped back, trying to see the long still form on which the white sheet made sculptured folds as something general, a sort of monument.

He went to the window and looked at the pale oblong leaves of the walnut tree, tugged at by the breeze, transparent in the sun, looking like messages, a tree of messages, like paper prayers that had been tied to the branches. He felt such a painful aching pity for his father. It seemed absurd to pity someone for being dead, yet so natural too. The helplessness of the dead can seem, at that first realisation, so agonisingly touching, pathetic rather than tragic, the powerlessness, the defencelessness, of those `strengthless heads'. Poor poor dead thing, oh poor thing, oh my poor dear dear dead father. Now love released runs wild when it is too late. I should have seen him more, he thought, oh if only I could see him now, even for a minute and hug him and kiss him and tell him how much I love him. How much I loved him. He pictured his father's face, his loving eyes, as he had seen them yesterday, that sleepless yesterday which had become today. There was so much to say, so much he ought to have said. He ought to have spoken to him about the parrot, only the moment had never seemed to come, so he had put it off, and then towards the end it had seemed too dangerous a matter, too difficult and painful to inflict upon a dying man – yet also perhaps that reference, that speech, was just what the dying man was longing for, was waiting for, but could make no sign. Sometimes when Gerard had felt it 'coming over him' that he should say some good thing about it, he had told himself that it no longer mattered, it had long ago been forgotten. Why drag it up now – better leave it alone, the years had mended it. But more often lie felt sure that the years had not mended it and it was not forgotten. He had not forgotten, how could his father have? The parrot had come into the family when Gerard was eleven and Patricia was thirteen. It had arrived when its owners, clients of Gerard's father, had left England ina hurry, leaving behind a confusion in their affairs which Gerard's father was to sort out, and the bird, who was to be found a home or handed over to a pet shop. Gerard loved the bird instantly, passionately. Its sudden presence in the house, its exalted winged bird presence, was a miracle to which he awakened with daily joy. Gerard's passion triumphed, not without some opposition, the bird stayed. It, or rather he, was a male, who had been given by its previous owner a whimsical condescending name which Gerard consigned to oblivion. The bird was a grey parrot and Gerard, divining his true name, called him 'Grey', a gentle simple name, a calm quiet colour, an open lucid sound which its owner was soon able to reproduce. Gerard's mother and his sister usually called the parrot 'Polly', but Grey scorned this and it never became a proper name. Gerard, helped by his father, looked after Grey, who was said to be a young bird. Grey glowed with health and beauty and grace. His clever eyes, surrounded by an ellipse of delicate white skin, were pale yellow, his immaculate feathers of the palest purest grey, and in his tail and wing-tips, the softest most radiant scarlet. About his neck and shoulders he wore, as Gerard saw it like a mobile coat of chain mail, a collar of small closely packed `fishscale' feathers which slithered about upon his athletic frame most expressively according to his moods. The furry leggings above his claws were of almost white down, and under his wings was an intimate softness as of fluffy wool. He could whistle more purely than any flute and dance as he whistled. His musical repertoire when he first arrived included 'Pop Goes the Weasel' and part of the 'Londonderry Air' and jesu joy of Man's Desiring'. Gerard soon taught him ,Three Blind Mice' and 'Greensleeves'. He could imitate a blackbird and an owl. His human vocabulary had progressed more slowly. He could say 'Hello' and (impatiently) 'Yes, yes', and (excitedly) 'Yippee!' He could also say, often with amusing appropriateness, 'Shut up!' What most touched, and also disturbed Gerard among those utterances from Grey's past was the way he would sometimes say in a tender slightly drawling woman's voice, 'Oh – pretty – one.' Perhaps there had been a woman who loved Grey and missed him; but diat was the past, and Gerard did not often think of it, Grey was his parrot now. Under Gerard's regime, Grey was a wayward learner however. He quickly picked up the sound of Gerard’s mother voice saying in quiet exasperation, ‘Oh dear, oh dear!', but he resisted Gerard's 'pieces of eight', turning his intelligent attentive head firmly away, blinking his eyes as if bored, refusing the nebulously sibilant sounds. He was soon able however not only to say his own name, but to utter something recognisably like the interesting sentence, `Grey is grey.'

Grey was for a time a novelty which sufficiently amused all the family, but later, since Gerard and his father cleaned the cage, fed the bird, examined him for ticks and mites, treated his little ailments, took him to be checked up by the vet, he became more 'their' parrot and of less interest to Patricia and Gerard's mother who soon stopped talking to him and often ignored him. His cage was moved from the drawing room to Gerard's father's study. The intelligence and presence of Grey was for Gerard a continual source of tremblingjoy, a feeling he described to himself as'touchment'. The parrot was a world in which the child was graciously allowed to live, he was a vehicle which connected Gerard with the whole sentient creation, he was an avatar, an incarnation of love. Gerard knew, he could not doubt, that Grey understood how much Gerard loved him, and returned his love. The clever inquisitive white-rimmed yellow eyes expressed, so soon, fearless faith and love. The gentle firm clasp of the small dry claws, the lightness of the entrusted body, the sudden scarlet of the spread tail, expressed love, even the hard dense stuff of the curving black beak seemed mysteriously endowed with tenderness. Of course Grey was soon out of his cage, flying about the room or perched on Gerard's hand or on his shoulder, leaning his soft feathered head caressingly against his cheek, clambering round the back of his neck and peering to look into his face. Eye to eye they often were as Grey, back in the cage to which he returned willingly, swung or jolted and danced to and fro upon his perch, or climbed around the bars, sometimes upside down, pausing to gaze or to listen or to demand attention. The sense of an attentive responding intelligence was indubitable. Grey parrots are not in general very big. Gerard would often take the bird, gently gathering the folded wings, to nestle the small head and light fragile body against his chest, or hold him inside his shirt against his beating heart. He stroked the soft feathers, cradling the frail hollow bones, while the delicate claws grasped his fingers with perfect trust.