Iris Murdoch - The Book And The Brotherhood

Then suddenly, in November, Jean came back. It was a cold evening, a little snow was falling. Duncan was sitting as usual, with a whisky bottle and book, beside the gas fire in his little flat. The bell rang. It was late, he did not expect visitors. He went down some stairs, turned on a light, opened the front door. It was Jean. Duncan turned at once and began to go back up the stairs to the open door of his flat. He could still irmember, later, the feeling of the banisters as he hauled himself up. He had put on weight, he was tired, he was a little drunk. He heard the front door close and jean's steps behind him. She followed him into the flat and into the sitting room closing the doors. She was wearing a black raincoat and dark green mackintosh hat, both lightly spotted with snow. She took off the hat, looked at it, brushed off the snowflakes and dropped it. Then she let the coat slide off backwards onto the floor. She uttered a little whimpering sigh, looked quickly at Duncan, then turned her head sideways and plucked at the neck of her dress. Duncan, who had retreated to the fireside, stood with his hands in his pockets gazing at her with a calm faintly inquisitive look which did not at all express his feelings. He had felt of course, as soon as he saw her, certain that she was really and truly coming back to him. This was no conference once under a flag of truce, it was surrender. A golden light shone before his eyes and an explosive dilation of his hi.is stretched his breast to bursting. He was ready to cry wilt tenderness, to faint with joy; but what steadied him and dictated the charade, upon which he later looked back with satisfaction, was a sense of triumph. It was a delectable miil well-earned reward. He felt too a release of anger as if now lie could shake her, beat her. Just for these sustained seconds she was at his mercy. This was the unworthy thought which made him able to seem so calm and unmoved. Jean too, before his eyes, went through some steadying hardening transition. Perhaps she had hoped for an instant welcome and to allow her tears to flow. There had been some beseeching in her first glance. Now she frowned, smoothed down her hair, turned to him again and said, 'I expect you want me to make a statement.'

Duncan said nothing.

`Well, briefly, I've left Crimond, that's over, and I'd like to come back to you, if you'd like that. If not I'll go away, now, and we can arrange a divorce or anything that suits you.'

Jean's face was still red from the cold and the sudden warmth of the room, and her chin was wet where the snowflakes had got at it under her hat. She looked down at her raincoat on the floor, and evidently realising that it had been a mistake to take it off since she might be leaving directly, picked it up and began putting it on again.

Duncan had by now controlled himself for so long that he found it positively awkward to set about expressing his feelings, and felt silenced by realising that he had a choice of words. Then, watching her, he said spontaneously, 'What are you doing with that coat? Put it down.'

Jean dropped the coat and Duncan stepped forward and took her in his arms.

Thus ended the first episode of Jean and Crimond and thus began the renewed marital happiness of Jean and Duncan which lasted over many years until the occasion of the summer dance which has been described.

The problem about the book was really a quite separate matter which can be more briefly explained. It was separate, and yet it somehow increasingly wove itself into the fates of the friends, inand out as the years went by, and became, at least emotionally, connected with Crimond's behaviour to Jean and Duncan. It all started long ago, when Sinclair was alive, and it was, as they all later recognised, deepl yaffected by, as it:pr, Sinclair's hand protectively outstretched above the wriltious volume.

When they were all still young, in their twenties, when Gerard and Sinclair were living together and founding and 'thing their short-lived left-wing magazine, they saw a good deal of Crimond. Crimond, not at that time well known, was hushing about in politics and had just been expelled from the Coinmunist Party for left-wing deviation. He was living in Bermondsey in what he called 'a rooming house' and being twispicuously penniless and crammed with revolutionary in Wes. They were all to varying degrees left-wing. Robin was, though not for long, also in the Communist Party, Sinclair declared himself a Trotskyist, Duncan and Jenkin were radical Labour supporters, Gerard was what Sinclair described As a 'William Morris Merry England Socialist'. Rose (then a pacifist), and Jean, had just left the university. Long exciting itiometimes acrimonious political arguments went on at Crimond's place or at Gerard and Sinclair's flat, or at 'reading parties' at the Curtland parents' house in the country. Sinclair was very fond of Crimond, though not inany degree or way which could cause Gerard any jealousy. They were all free and generous and unjealous in their affections, in the style approved of by Levquist, and they noticed this too and felt pleased with themselves. They were all fond of Crimond, though he was even then the person least closely involved in the group. They also, and this was important, admired and respected him because he was more politically active, more dedicated, and more ascetic than they were. He was also more politically educated, and apt to assemble his ideas into theories. (He had been a very able philosophy student.) He began to write the pamphlets for which he was later renowned. He lived very frugally upon occasional journalism and savings made from his student grant at Oxford, he had not, and did not seek, a job. He travelled little except for regular visits to Dumfries to see his father. He was known to be good at 'living on nothing', he did not drink, and had worn the same clothes ever since his friends could remember. He liked living with very poor people.

About this time, during the exciting political arguments, Crimond spoke of a long quasi-philosophical book which he intended to write, and whose agenda he sometimes, at their insistence, enlarged upon to Gerard and the company. By now Crimond's savings were beginning to run out and (as he told Gerard when closely questioned) he was proposing to take a part-time job; any job, he said, so long as it was unskilled. Clearly it was no good trying to persuade Crimond to join the establishment' by becoming an academic or an administrator. Gerard had a poorly paid job with the Fabian Society, but Rose and Sinclair had 'money of their own', and jean, whose father was a banker, was rich. Crimond's situation was discussed, and it was deemed a pity that fie should have to spend time on other work when he ought to be thinking and writing. `He ought to write that book!' Sinclair said, and added only half in jest, 'I feel it is the book which the age requires!' It was also Sinclair who suggested that they should all join together and contribute on a regular basis to enable Crimond to devote himself to full-time intellectual work. 'After all,' said Sinclair, `writers have often been supported by their friends, what about Rilke living in those castles, and the Musilgeselischafl which supported Musil?' It seemed probable that some such project was then actually communicated to Crimond and contemptuously rejected, at any rate nothing happened. The idea persisted however of what Sinclair referred to as the Crimondgesellschaft, later known among them simply as the Gesellschaft.

Time passed. Sinclair was dead. Crimond had joined the Labour Party. He was becoming a popular figure on the far left, and was respectfully agreed to be an important intellectual. He became a parliamentary candidate. Duncan was in London (after Geneva and before Madrid) and Jean was wiorking (unpaid of course) as Crimond's research assistant. Gerard and Rose had not forgotten Sinclair's imagined Gesellshaft and, as it later appeared, Rose preserved the notion that his enabling of Crimond would constitute a sort of memorial to Sinclair who had so much admired him. The fact that Crimond had remained on the extreme left, while the others now held more moderate opinions, was not of course taken to matter. In a way, as Gerard and Jenkin agreed, they all felt a bit guilty before Crimond, that is before his ascetism and his absolute commitment. After the election (it was a hopeless seat, he did not expect to be elected) Gerard, prompted by Rose, questioned Crimond again about the book which he iwe said he would write. Jean and Duncan were by now in Madrid. Crimond, who had moved into larger no less shabby quarters in Camberwell, said he was about to start writing it. He also mentioned (in answer to questions) that he had taken a part-time job as an assistant in a left-wing bookshop. Gerard consulted the others, Rose, Jenkin, Duncan and Jean. He also consulted his father, and Jean consulted hers. A sort of informal document, not of course a legal instrument, was drawn up describing the proposed Gesellschaft as a group of supporters who would contribute appropriate sums of money annually in order to give Crimond enough free time to write his book. Matthew, Gerard's father, joined in because he had been an ardent socialist when young and felt ashamed of being hored by politics now. Jean's father, Joel Kowitz, who was to make the largest contribution, joined because he adored Jea and did everything that she asked. The next question was, Would Crimond accept the money; there was disagreement, rues bets, about the likelihood of' this. Gerard, in some anxiety, invited Crimond round, explained the plan and presented the document. Crimond immediately said no, then said that he would think about it. More time passed. Finally Crimond, pressed by Gerard and then by Jenkin, agreed.