Iris Murdoch - The Book And The Brotherhood

'So you want to be Doctor Hernshaw, that's it, is it?'

'I won't cost you anything -'

'You're costing me something all the time by not earning! That money Uncle Matthew gave us has all gone -'

'I thought it was invested.'

'Invested! We can't afford investments! I've had to spend it – to buy your expensive books and that ball dress – and now You've lost your coat and that grand shawl someone gav, you -'

`Gerard gave it to me -'

`And you lost your partner, can't you get anything right? At least now you can sell all those books – Don't look like that, and don't say I'm trying to ruin your life because I ruined my own, I know you're thinking that. I know they've said it to you -'

`No

`Well, they will now.'

`It's only a year to wait, can't we wait? I must do my exams -'

`You can pick it up later, you could go on studying at evening classes, lots ofpeople do that. They say it's better to be a mature student anyway.'

`Oxford doesn't work like that, you can't just drop in and out, you have to keep straight on, it's very difficult to be there at all and the exams are very difficult, you have to keep on studying ever so hard, I can't leave now, it would spoil everything, I'm ready now, I've been working very hard, I'vegot it all in me – my tutor told me -'

`You mean you'll forget all those facts? You can mug them up again. You'll do better after you've been out in the real world, you'll probably see it's a waste of time anyway. You're just infatuated with Oxford, you think it's all so impressive and grand – but what has university education done for that lot, Gerard and his precious friends, except make them into prigs and snobs and cut them off from ordinary life and real people? Don't you realise thatyou are becoming a snob?'

`If I go on and get that degree I'll be able to get a better paid job and earn more money -'

`Tamar, you haven't understood, you haven't been listening. I can't afford to keep you any more. I can't afford to keep anything any more. I owe money, if I don't pay it I'll be in a law court. I can't earn it. You must. It's as simple as that.'

They sat silently looking at each other across the table. Tamar had hastily taken off her ball dress and was now barefoot in a shirt and jeans. The two women, for Tamar though she seemed so childish was indeed a woman, presented it marked contrast. They were so unlike that it might have been imagined that Tamar sprang, like Athena, out of her Imlier's head without female assistance: her vanished unknown father who did not know that she existed, and about whom, especially when she lay awake at night, she so often mid so ardently thought. She was exceedingly thin and had Ptullcred from anorexia nervosa when she was sixteen. The i1iinness of her face enhanced her eyes which were large and mournful and wild like those of a savage child, both fierce and Irightened, and were of the greenish-brownish colour known its hazel. Her thin silky hair which was straight and cut to the earlobe and parted at the side was ofa matching brown colour, not exactly mousy, a sort of dulled yet lively woody brown with intimations of green, the colour of trunks of trees, of ash trees or cherry trees or old birch trees. Her legs were long and diin and being shapely could be called slender. Her neck was thin, her nose was short, her hands and feet were small. Of her youthful breasts, small and exceedingly round, she thought little, though a few discerning persons had thought much. Her complexion was pale and clear, her cheeks flushing faintly, her rye lids delicate as if transparent, as was her neck.

Violet was in more obvious ways handsome and was, as Rose Curtland had remarked, still an attractive woman, which was not very surprising as she was not much over forty. She was taller than her daughter with a fuller finer figure, she wore her chestnut hair (now discreetly tinted) in a fringe, her ryes were markedly blue. She was short-sighted, and when she put on (as rarely as possible) her big round spectacles she could look clever and slightly stern, like a shrewd bossy office woman. Her beautifully shaped mouth, which could also look stern, a stern rose-bud, had lately begun to droop a little. The expression which in Tamar's face was sad, was in her mother's more positively resentful, even bellicose. As they now tensely stared at each other the similarity between them was, in their fierce concentrated expressions which mingled guilt and fear and old familiar misery, at its most evident. Violet had plenty to be bellicose about. She had been dealt a rotten hand by fate, or, to use an even more painful image, had stupidly thrown away such good cards as she had. As an illegitimate child with a feckless drug-addicted rarely visible father, she certainly had a bad start. Her mother had resented her existence. Violet, well aware of the baleful repetition, resented Tamar's existence. An important difference was that whereas Violet and her mother had quarrelled endlessly and bitterly, Tamar and Violet did not quarrel much. This was, Violet knew, no credit to her but was largely because Tamar was, to her mother, it 'bit of an angel'. This angelicness was at times a consolation, but more often a source of guilt which increased Violet's sense of being ill done by.

She had left school at sixteen to get away from her mother. She lost touch with her mother and was pleased to learn later that she was dead. After her father's death his family made serious attempts to help her, but she kept aloof from them. She worked as a maid in a hotel, saved up and did a typing course, worked as a typist. When she was twenty she was beautiful and had various unsatisfactory lovers. At this stage she made some serious mistakes. She rejected someone whom she should have seen as a promising suitor. Perhaps, she thought later, she was simply not in love, and was still too young to realise that a solitary penniless girl cannot afford the luxury of marriage for love. Her most lasting mistake was of course Tamar and the wandering Scand. As Violet had frequently explained to Tamar, she would have been promptly 'got rid of if her mother had had, at the crucial time, enough money to arrange it. This was in the old days when such abortions were illegal, secret and expensive, and there was no respected 'right to choose'. Violet was not able to choose and Tamar was unchosen and often made to feel so. The story ran that Violet, not even willing to think of a name for the unwelcome brat, let her be christened at the registry office by the registrar, a lay preacher who suggested 'Tamar' and his secretary, who offered her own name, 'Marjorie'. Tamar received a decent school education at the expense of the state and proved to be clever and very industrious. Violet was pleased when she went. to Oxford, but was envious, and jealous too when Tamar lirgan to know some men and could be presumed to have lovers. Violet was also able to value her daughter's docility, her desire to please, her quiet acceptance of a very limited way.4 life. Several sums of money had been, secretly, accepted from Uncle Matthew, but money offered by Gerard and Patricia was rejected with scorn. Tamar was allowed to accept Christmas presents however, and the cashmere shawl, from Gerard, was one of these.

'I could get a job in the long vacation,' said Tamar. 'Sorting letters in a post office? No! You must work properly, you must get us out of debt, you must keep us out of debt, you must settle down to being the breadwinner from now on!' 'Can't we just wait -'

'No, we can't! I've done enoughforyou!' said Violet, voicing the thought at which Tamar was arriving. They looked at each,other for a second with faces made similar by misery and anger.