Iris Murdoch - The Book And The Brotherhood

‘Crimond, Crimond, he's a bore, why do we have to talk about him all the time?'

‘How was it you came to that dance with him?' Gull had wanting to ask this question for some time, but only now felt old enough.

‘Oh pure accident, some other girl dropped out at the last tent, that was nothing. I don't know him all that well realy but then who does.'

Lily was secretive about Crimond, not because anything had 'happened', there was nothing thrilling to hide, and though she did not mind if people suspected otherwise, it was true that she did not know him at all well. What was precious to her, and to be concealed, was simply the uneventful, but to her deeply significant, history of her thoughts and feelings about this man. Lily first heard of Crimond in the days when he was a famous extremist and idol of the young, an influential friend of well-known left-wing MP's, addressing crowd meetings and appearing on television. Then, at a time soon after Jean's return to Duncan and just before Lily's marriage she got to know Jean at the yoga class. Of course Jean never mentioned Crimond, but the Women's Lib group which Lily then frequented talked a lot about the affair, and though dip did not esteem the institution of marriage voted Crimond swine, a bully, a male chauvinist pig, and not at all politically, sound on the liberation of women. When Crimond was speaking at a meeting near where Lily then lived in Camden Town she went along to look at him. She was captivated. It was not exactly being in love, Lily did not presume thus to entitle her obsession with Crimond. It was more like being enslaved in situation where this was just something that happened to people and they took it for granted as a matter of fate and initsio the best of it. Some such picture, for Lily did not reflect upon the details, expressed the sort of hopeless unfrenzied fatality of her condition. She pondered for a while about what to do. She went to another meeting, and another, travelling once across London, once to Cambridge. She managed on the second occasion, pushing her way through a bevy of exicted students, his 'Red Guards' as someone called them, actually it, talk to him. She pretended to be a representative of the lot ail branch of the Socialist Women's Workshop, a body she lind heard of, and asked if she could come and see him. Looking al his watch he said she could write to him care of his publislivi, and vanished. Lily gave herself up to a long interval in whit It to gloat over the idea of writing to him. But as the interval lengthened she realised that she could not write, she could not compose a clever enough letter. He would not answer and she would be in hell. She found out where helived and went round one morning, faint with fear, found Crimond alone, and offered her services as his messenger, his secretary, his house-maid, anything in his life. He told her to go round to the local Labour Party where they would give her some work to do. Departing almost in tears Lily was suddenly inspired to lion (which was then not too untrue) that she was a friend Fitin Kowitz. She also had the wit to use Jean's maiden name. Crimond now really looked at her. Then he said, y ou go.' Lily was disappointed, yet she also knew that reliwth she existed for him.

Now she wrote a business-like letter saying (which was untrue) that she did a lot of typing for writers and scholars and would be glad to type anything for him. This received no answer. But when, after ajudicious interval, Lily arrived early and sat in the front row of one of Crimond's meetings, he recognised her and smiled. She then wrote again simply ring 'typing service' and sending good wishes. An impersonal communication from a secretarial agency asked her to Iii rush job for Mr Crimond. Lily, taking leave from her office worked demonically, then took the perfected typescript round in person. Someone took it from her and paid her, Crimond, glimpsed through a door, shouted thanks. Meanwhile, inreal life, Lily was submitting to the embraces of'sweet rime James Farling, whom, still Crimond's slave and valuing herself at nothing, so it didn't matter, she married. There followed the almost instant widowhood which left her with fame and fortune, at any rate with money (she could never get clear how much) and the tattered fame of some, not pys friendly, references in the press. Presuming upon the degree of real being conferred by these assets she began to send mond occasional postcards with little messages of good lies and references to her 'typing bureau'. Time passed during which she went on through euphoria into depression. She hegan to feel that everyone was 'after her money', declared she was 'through with men' and would become a ‘recluse’ .She renewed a friendship with a painter called Angela Parke whom she had known as a student, but quarelled with her because of some imagined 'slight'. She began to believe that 'people' now thought of her as a stupid, vulgar pushing woman who thought that money would 'get her in anywhere'. She did a lot of solitary drinking. She worried ineffectually about her money which seemed to be disappearing. She felt continually snubbed, she had no friends and no world.

Lily was however, during this period, perceptibly ported by her curious one-sided relationship with Crini. This was the one thing which remained intact and p,, Crimond played for her, during this time, the role of God. Here was one relation which required of her only the best which could not be degraded. It was also of course a source of fear, since the power of this remote being over her woo terrifying. Her postcards were of course never answered, hill some more typing turned up, and she managed actually to see, Crimond a few times and have brief conversations with him On one happy day he called her 'Lily'. She took in that At need fear no rebuff. Crimond, of whom so many robust peopif were afraid, could afford to be casually kind to the wrsskr Gradually she was able to frame more sensible plans for lief immediate existence. She made spasmodic attempts to ‘improve her mind', read a few high-brow novels and watched the `better' programmes on television. She even attended (though briefly) evening classes in French. She felt she was actuallv changing a little. Earlier she would not have been capable of conceiving and achieving the odd little friendship she now had with Gulliver Ashe. Meanwhile her relation with Jean's 'set', of which she had hoped much, remained disappointingly undeveloped. Jean had virtually dropped her, only Rose Curtland kept hold of her, inviting her to occasional gatherings of which nothing further came.

The gods, who in their bored way arrange such things in the destinies of mortal men, brought it about that as soon as Lily had, after prolonged and risky trying, established a very small real relationship with Crimond, her period of enslavement came to an end. Of course she still loved and valued Crimond more than anything in the world, but she was no longer the it he was not perfect, was able to criticise him to other people, even to enquire boldly about his sex life, of which ever little was known. A lot of fear disappeared from her tence and she felt generally better. In the innumerable hours of reflection which Lily had of course devoted to the itrr, she had turned over the idea that she 'meant something' to Crimond because of a presumed connection with it. She did not know what to make of this hypothesis, even ruler or not she liked it. She told herself sensibly that really she meant nothing to Crimond, who casually tolerated her as did innumerable other insignificant hangers-on. But still, half in secret from herself, she developed the idea that Crimond was somehow keeping her on, not for herself'ofcourse, as a tool, a possible line of communication. It began to Incase Lily to think of herself in this respect as a 'sleeper', somebody stored away for possible future use. It was again a paradox that when the moment came for Lily to play indeed a crucial part in Crimond's life she failed to recognise her role and very nearly did not play it. Lily had learnt from Rose, s luite a long time beforehand, about the dance in Oxford, and who was going, even about Tamar and the American boy. As it happened, very shortly beforehand, she had one of her brief infrequent meetings, now much less emotionally terrifying, with Crimond for whom she had done some emergency typing. The typing was always of hastily written political stuff, not of the book of whose existence of course she knew, but which she had never seen. Crimond was by now living a much more solitary life in Camberwell, no longer supported by secretaries, helpers, admirers, Red Guards. Lily, coming by ppointment, always found Crimond alone and was permitted short chat, for which she always attempted to prepare something interesting to say. She had never, since that moment at the very start, dared to utter ,Jean's name, but she occasionally mentioned having seen Rose or Gerard. She thought this might increase her standing in Crimond's eyes, although she knew that relations between him and 'the set' were now extremely cool. Crimond never picked up these references, but did not seem annoyed by them either. In her little babble about Rose, Lily came out with the news of the dance, which was now only a week away, saying 'they're all going' and listing Mr and Mrs Cambus among the others. Crimond immediately said (the speed of this response later amazed her), `I think I'll go too. Will you come with me?' Lily nearly fainted with surprise and joy.