Iris Murdoch - The Book And The Brotherhood

The parrot, accepted for a while as Gerard's pet, began later to divide the family. Gerard's mother (her name was Annette) was mildly and reasonably annoyed by bird droppings on the carpet. She and Patricia came to resent the proprietary attitude of Gerard and to a lesser extent his father (whose name wits Matthew) about the bird, and were irritated by Gerard's continual chatter about Grey's exploits. Possibly, he thought later, they were both jealous. They had in any case never spent the time and care necessary to become really friendly with-Grey. In approaching a wild thing it is necessary to move quietly and predictably, to speak gently and softly, adopt regular routines, behave respectfully, be patient, reliable and truthful. All this Gerard knew by instinct. Patricia, perhaps out of jealousy and envy, took to teasing the bird, poking at him jerkily, offering food then whisking it away. Gerard of course was angry. Patricia said she was just playing with Polly, who after all belonged to her too. Gerard explained to his sister, frequently and at length, how to treat the bird with whom they were privileged to live. (He never used the word `pet'.) Patricia continued the persecution in his absence until one day Grey seized hold of an intrusive finger and bit it. There were screams and tears. After that Patricia kept well away from the parrot and the furore died down. The time came for Gerard to go to boarding school. Gerard told Grey not to worry, he would be back before long, he took an emotional farewell pressing his face against the bars as his father was calling him to the car. All his letters babbled of Grey, sending his love. At the longed-for half-term, ferried home in a friend's parent's car, he rushed joyfully into the house and into the study. Grey was not there. He ran to the drawing room, to the kitchen. He screamed.

The explanations followed. No, Polly was not dead, it had not escaped, it had just gone away, it belonged to someone else now. It had gone to the very best pet shop in the city centre, and had been bought by some people, some very nice people the shop man said when he telephoned, no, he didn't know who they were, they were passing through, they had taken Polly away in their car. 'You'll never see it again!' Patricia cried. Gerard's father, averting his face, said nothing. The explanations gabbled on. It was just too difficult to look after it with Gerard away, they could not take the responsibility, it had become wild and vicious, it had tried to bite Annette, they had read in a book, it was kinder to the bird, and so on and so on.

Gerard was hysterical for ten minutes. Then he fell silent. He did not speak to any member of his family for two days. Annette wanted to take him to a psychiatrist. After that, quite suddenly, he resumed polite ordinary apparently cheerful relations with them all. Nothing more was said about the parrot. 'Thank God that's over!' said Annette. Gerard's father knew better. He knew how terribly, how unforgivably, he had failed his son. He had given in, he had allowed the women to bully him, to outwit him, he had, for a quiet life, surrendered to their noisy arguments, to their jealousy and their malice. He had believed their (Gerard had no doubt) lies. He knew it as the years went by, reading that lack of forgiveness sometimes in his son's thoughtful looks, in the very faintly cool quality of' some acts of politeness and consideration. Even undoubted kindness, even love, retained that indelible icy line. They never spoke of the matter again.

Could it be true, thought Gerard, could it actually have any meaning, to say that he had 'never forgiven' his father? About `the women' he minded less. He expected less of them. His love for them, for he did love them, was something less formal, less a question of absolutes, of honour, of responsibility, of truth. He even came later on to see their attitude as not totally unreasonable. His father's failure, his weakness, his duplicity (for it seemed that the infamous crime had been committed soon after Gerard's departure) wounded Gerard deeply. Some perfect thing, some absolute safety, some ground of' being, was, with his belief in his father's perfect goodness, gone out of the world forever. Equally deep, equally enduring was Gerard's mourning for his irreplaceable bird-friend. Through all his childhood, indeed through all his life, he continued to miss Grey. Ideas of searching fbr him, going to the pet shop, asking for clues and so on, had been instantly dismissed as useless, productive only of worse pain. Later when Gerard was an adult he sometimes thought, and it was such a very sad and moving thought, how Grey was probably still alive somewhere. If he passed a pet shop he would occasionally stop and look to see if there were a grey parrot, and if it were Grey. He felt sure that he would recognise Grey, and Grey would recognise him. But he felt frightened too, a reunion might somehow, for some reason, be too awfully distressing. In fact lie was certain that Grey was alive. He never spoke again about the parrot to his parents or his sister, and never mentioned his existence to his later friends; never to Sinclair or to Duncan, to whom he had been so close after Sinclair died, never to Robin or Marcus, or Jenkin or Rose, or to any of'his friends did he breathe a word about him. Only once, in St Mark's Square in Venice, with Duncan long ago, when a pigeon alighted on his hand and he exclaimed with grief, did he come near to telling, and confessed to 'a most unhappy memory'. Oh – pretty – one. In conversation, if parrots were mentioned, he changed the subject; and he never again had any relation with any beast, no cat, no dog, no bird, entered his life. A re-enactment was impossible, and it would have been too painful a reminder. How frail these gentle creatures are who deign to share our lives, how dependent on us, how vulnerable to our ignorance, our neglect, our mistakes, and to the wordless mystery of their own mortal being.

He thought, I ought to have said something-about Grey to my father, brought the subject up somehow. Yet what could I have said, in what form of words and to what good effect? I couldn't just say, 'I forgive you', or `I have long ago forgiven you'. Would that be true anyway, and if a lie would it not be instantly seen as such? In any case this terminology would be too solemn, like an imputation of'guilt. It was not a burden to put upon a dying man, a prolonged discussion would have been unthinkable. Yet, when there was so little time left, was not that exactly the moment to say those things? Or were such ventures only tolerable in a formal context, best left to priests? Perhaps his father had ceased to feel guilty, had long ago dismissed the whole matter. That was unlikely. Gerard had, he thought, or imagined, at many moments through his life, understood the particular look of those gentle penitent eyes. On the other hand, it was also possible that, as he nursed the wound, to himself, to his son, over the years, his father might have felt resentment against Gerard, not only for his withdrawal, but for having somehow occasioned the whole business in the first place by his fanatical attachment to that wretched bird. As for the withdrawal, that must surely have become imperceptible by the time Gerard was at Oxford, the 'iciness' had been internalised. The 'forgiveness' was, had to be, something enacted over a long period, and perhaps had effectively been so enacted, since Gerard's affection for his father had been, and must have been seen to be, so wholehearted, in spite of the secret pain which no longer prompted any accusation. Was the fact that they had never spoken about it, that Gerard had never spoken, since it was for him to make the first move, really so important, so awful? Yes. Yet as the years went by it became harder to raise the subject without some sort of unpredictable shock, without the danger of making matters worse. It could not be casually touched upon or easily woven into ordinary reminiscence. At the end it was too late to make any gesture, as much too late yesterday, he thought, as it is today. And he thought, I'm sure Grey has outlived my father, parrots live longer than we do, he could outlive me too, I hope he will, I hope he is happy. How odd it still is, not knowing where he is, and how odd that when I have forgotten so much I have not forgotten this and can call up the same emotions? And that I feel just this now when my father has died. He stared out of the window at the tree of prayers, frail ephemeral supplications to remote and cruel gods. Turning back towards the long still figure on the bed, he felt tears come to his eyes at last.