Iris Murdoch - The Book And The Brotherhood

Tamar smoothed her face. She knew it was no use trying to rxplain to her mother the difference between a university education and being a mature student going to evening classes. It was now that the precious gift must be seized. She had already learnt so much, more than she had ever dreamt herself capable of, and that was just the beginning of the metamorphosis which was now to be so brutally cut off. She saw t hat the loss was terrible, no less than the loss of her whole life, file instant substitution of some sort of tenth-rate life for the one to which she had looked forward, to which she felt she had a right. Restraining her tears she tried to take in that there was no alternative to surrender. She knew how little money there was, and she believed what Violet said.

The telephone rang. Violet left the room. From where she %it Tamar began spiritlessly piling the dirty plates together on I lie stained cloth and assembling the jars and pots which never left the awful table into an orderly group. She entertained for a %econd only the traditional thought, which lived between I hem like a folk idea, that her mother had ruined her own life and was intent on ruining her daughter's. Tamar had early understood the huge dark mass of her mother's bitterness, she had seen how it was possible to expend all one's spirit, all one',, life-energy, in resentment, remorse, anger and hatred. She could picture (I'or she heard enough about it) her mother's relation with her mother, and felt even as a child, not only the automatic force of her mother's desire to 'get her own back', but also in her own heart a dark atom of that responding bitter anger. She had seen how a life can be ruined and had decided that she would not ruin her own in such a game of repetition. I t might be said that, recognising a choice between becoming a demon and becoming a saint she had chosen the latter. Slic saw that her safety lay, not in calculated hostility or intelligent self-regarding warfare, but in some genuine surrender of sell'. This was her 'angelic' gamble, which so irritated Violet who thought she 'saw through' it, and which led Gerard to regard Tamar as a virgin priestess. A habit of docility and never answering back had not been too hard to acquire. Only now did poor Tamar begin to see how agonisingly painful and (it must be seen) irreparably damaging surrender of self could be.

Violet returned to the kitchen. 'Uncle Matthew has passed away.'-

`Oh – I'm so sorry,' said Tamar, 'Oh dear – I wish I'd gone to see him – I wanted to – only you wouldn't let me -' She began to cry, not the storm of tears which must soon begin, but sad unhappy guilty special tears for Uncle Matthew who had so shyly and so kindly wanted to be her friend, and whom she had so rarely visited because her mother did not want her to be beholden to Ben's family.

`And if you're wondering,' said Violet, 'whether he's left us anything in his will, let me tell you he hasn't.'

Matthew Hernshaw had failed to carry out his intention to `do something' for Violet and Tamar because of an indecision which was characteristic of him. He could not make up his mind how much to leave them, knowing that if he did not leave them enough Gerard would disapprove and if he left them too much Patricia would be annoyed. What he did firmly intend to do was to leave a letter, addressed to both his children, asking them to look after Ben's granddaughter. He several times began to draft his letter but could not decide exactly t he wanted to say. This unformulated request was what attempted unsuccessfully to communicate to Patricia when its dying. Oh if only he had spoken sooner! That was Matthew’s last thought.

Tamar, who had not been wondering about Uncle Matthew’s will replied, 'He'll expect Gerard and Pat to help us.’

Pat will decide,' said Violet. 'She'll send us a cheque for lilt y pounds. We don't want their mean charity! What Gerard might be able to manage is to find you a job- that's it, he'll fix you up, that's the least he can do! So that's settled! It is – settled – isn't it?'

Violet was gazing at Tamar with a tense beseeching stare, ready to dissolve into joy or into anger. Tamar, looking at the inn jars and mustard pots, could picture tier mother's face.' She bowed her head and the storm of tears began. Violet, beginning to cry too, came round the table, moved a chair up beside her child, and hugged tier with gratitude and relief.

At about the time when Violet and Tamar were crying in each other's arms, and Gerard, who had stopped crying, was lying on his bed and thinking about his father and about Grey, and Duncan was lying on his bed and trying to cry and not succeeding, jean Kowitz, faint with an inextricable pain ofjoy and fear, had reached the house south of the river where Crimond lived. His address was in the telephone book.,Jean had not needed to consult this volume however. She had regularly checked his whereabouts, without any intention of going to see him, to know where he was as a place to avoid and perhaps simply to know where he was.

The address materialised as a shabby three-storey. semidetached house with a basement. It was faced with grimy crumbling stucco dotted with holes showing the bricks, also damaged, beneath. The window frames were cracking and almost bare of paint, and an upstairs window appeared to be broken. The house, though dirty and neglected, its scars searched out by the brilliant sunshine, was somehow solid and more imposing than the rat-hole in which Jean had imagined Crimond to be living. It and its neighbours were evidently divided into rooms and flats. Many of the houses had a row of names beside their doors. Crimond's house had only two, his own and above it some sort of Slavonic name.

The big squarish front door, scrawled over with fissures and reached by four steps up, was ajar. jean pushed it a little and peered into a dark hallway containing a bicycle. There was a bell beside the door, but by itself, not related to the names. jean pushed the bell but there was no sound. She stepped into the hall. It was hot and stuffy and the dusty air entered front outside with no hint of refreshment. The uncovered unpainted floorboards creaked and echoed. Some stairs led upward. The door of the front room was wide open and Jean looked in. The first thing she saw, spread out on a chair, was the kilt which Crimond had been wearing at the dance. The walls were entirely covered with bookshelves. There was a television set. She backed out and investigated the two rooms at the back, one book-filled, with a narrow divan bed and door to the garden, the other a kitchen. The garden was small, tended, Crimond liked plants. jean put both her hands onto the handlebar of the bicycle to stop them from trembling. The metal, greyishly shiny, was cold and sickeningly real. She removed her hands and warmed them against the hideous beating of her heart. She noticed on the floor near the bicycle her suitcase and her handbag which she must have put down when she came in. Suppose Crimond were not there. Suppose he simply told her to go away. Suppose she had entirely misinterpreted the wordless time they had spent dancing together.

She was incapable of calling out. A glass door, locked, closed off the stairs to the first floor. She was trembling and shuddering, her hands compulsively fluttering, her jaw jerking. She saw under the stairs an open door which must lead to Ow basement. She began slowly to descend, her feet cautiously testing the hollow treads. A closed door faced her at the bottom. She touched, but did not knock, then opened it.

The basement room was huge, occupying the whole floor Apace of the house. It was rather dark, with one window "liening onto the sunless area below the front of the house. The wooden floor was bare except where in a corner a rug lay beside a large square divan bed. The walls were bare except for a target which hung at the far end opposite the window. There was a large cupboard against one wall and beside it two long tables covered with books. Near to the target was a large desk with a lighted lamp upon it where Crimond, wearing his narrow rimless spectacles, was sitting and had been writing. He lifted his head, saw Jean, took off his spectacles and rubbed his eyes.