Iris Murdoch - The Book And The Brotherhood

'Well – everyone experiences a different Oxford. Did you have any lovers?'

Tamar blushed scarlet and moved slightly away from Duncan, pulling down her skirt over her slender legs. She had been aware when she arrived of the smell of whisky on his breath, and she felt repelled by his bulk at close quarters. She was surprised by his question which she felt he would not, in any ordinary state of mind, have asked. She answered it readily enough however. 'Yes, I had two – well, rather brief – relationships. I liked both the boys, they were very nice, but I think we weren't in love-we were just anxious to have had the experience.’

`To get it over! What a way to see it! Then why do it more than once?'

`I don't know, it just happened – I wanted to see, to besure- and they were very kind, it was really good – but they didn’t stay around and I didn't really want them to.'

`It sounds rather a quiet scene! What was it you wanted be sure of?'

Tamar was suddenly uncertain, at least uncertain how to put it. She had known, and clearly known, that she did not want to remain a virgin, literal virginity would have been an irrelevant burden to her, an unnecessary source of anxiety and tension. Better, indeed, to get it over in circumstances where, as she rightly foresaw, no one would get hurt. The two, not thrilling but not unpleasurable, experiences with the nice boys had revealed to her, which was what she wanted to know, `what it was like', leaving her free, until something really serious turned up if it ever did, to forget about it! So far she had not found anything really serious, though she had got as far as imagining that Conrad Lomas might be. Condensing and editing these reflections she said to Duncan, 'I wanted to have the thing with someone I liked and respected without being committed. I didn't want intensity.'

`You're a cool one, little Tamar.'

It was the day after Tamar's visit to Jean. Of course Tamar, had no intention of talking to Duncan about Jean, that was out of the question, and he had not lingered over her photos in the albums. Gerard had said there was no need to say anything in particular but simply to be there. Tamar did not think that her being there had been any use to Jean, and did not expect it to do anything for Duncan either. She was merely concerned here to obey Gerard, and looked forward to making her meagre report to him, which she felt she could not do until she had seen both of them. Jean had told her to come again, but Tamar wondered if another visit would be either wise or welcome. There had been no doubt about Crimond's displeasure, even disgust. Tamar had cried in the train going back to Acton. She had felt too, like a scorching electrical ray passing through her body, the emotional tension between Jean and Crimond. She had cried in the train with shock and fear, but also with excitement. About that experience she would not tell Gerard.

‘I think I'd better go home,' said Tamar, 'my mother will be-‘

'Oh, don't go yet,' said Duncan, who, though usually alone it the evening, could not now bear the loss of a drinking companion, 'have another drink. Why, you haven't finished that one.'

'I feel quite tipsy already. Oh dear!'

Tamar had put her glass on the floor and now, reaching for it, had moved her foot and tilted it over. The sweet sherry which she had preferred, had extended a long tongue of dark liquid across the pale rug. 'Oh,' cried Tamar, 'look what I've done, how dreadful. I'm so sorry, I'll get a cloth from the kitchen-'

‘Oh, don't bother, for heaven's sake, I'll -' Duncan heaved himself up to follow her. He did not want her to see the kitchen.

Tamar got there first, and turned on the light. The sight was indeed horrendous. Unwashed dishes, mildewed saucepans were piled in crazy mounds not only in the sink but on the floor. Empty whisky bottles and wine bottles, some upright, some not, had been there long enough to collect layers of arty dust .The floor was slippery with egg shells, rotting vegetables, mouldy bread. The rubbish bin overflowed with empty tins and slimy packaging. Tamar thought at once, I'll clear all this up before I go! Something to do with her relationship with her mother made it impossible for Tamar to clean or tidy the flat at Acton. But here she felt an instant power to do magic, to make all beautiful, all in order, to do at least thing for Duncan for whom she was feeling such intense pity. But first she would deal with the awful sherry stain. The cupboard where she knew that cloths and mops were kept was beyond a shelf upon which a variety of odd-ments were huddled together. To reach the handle of the phoard door she quickly moved a dirty glass jug, then a packet of instant soup, then an old half empty tin of beans, then a tea-cosy… It was already too late, as she seized the tea-cosy, to do anything about the fact that there was a tealwl inside it. The teapot was already in the air. Tamar screamed and grasped at it. But it smashed at her feet, distributing fragments of coloured china and brown tea and spatterings of wet tea leaves about among the empty bottles. Tamar burst into wild tears.

Duncan heard the crash, he reached the door to find his mother's pretty teapot in smithereens and Tamar wailing. The teapot was an old friend.

The violence, the achievement of breaking the teapot, seemed for a moment like a blow aimed at himself. The shattered thing was terrible, like the murdered corpse of a loved animal. That the next instant, it became something horrible which he had done, his own disgusting black misery externalised as if his tortured body had sicked it up. He looked down at it and saw hell. He evert heard himself say 'Hell'. He experienced, as in a mystical vision, the infinite wretchedness of the whole of creation, its cruelty and its pain, the pointlessness of life, the pointlessness of his life, his shame, his defeat, his condemnation, his death by torture.

Tamar seeing his dismay and hearing the word which he had uttered redoubled her wails. She too felt a shock wave of desolation and terror, but this for her was tempered and redeemed by a clearer and more precise feeling of sorrow for the poor teapot, and pity and love for Duncan.

'Stop it, Tamar, it doesn't matter, come out of here.'

Shaking her head and weeping Tamar now managed to open the cupboard and got out a cloth which she soaked under the tap, and ran back to the drawing room where Duncan turned on another light. She knelt to mop up the spilt sherry, dropping her tears onto the rug, trying to blend the edges of the stain into the patterned rug, wringing out the cloth to soak the area in water. Then, passing Duncan at the door, she ran back into the kitchen and began hastily picking up the pieces of the broken teapot, scraping up the tea-leaves with her fingers, and mopping up the tea. After that she began, staring down through a haze of tears, running hot water into the sink and dabbing the dirty plates with a mop.

‘I said stop!' Duncan turned off the tap, took the mop away, took hold of Tamar's hand and led her back to the drawing room. They sat down again on the sofa. Duncan offered Tamar a large white handkerchief. Her tears abated. The hauled horrors faded. They looked at each other.

Tamar saw, as before, his stout bulk, his flushed plump wrikled face, but she saw in the same look his big animal head with its flowing mane, his huge nostrils like a horse, his sad melancholy of a beast who has been a prince, and now that he had taken off his heavy glasses the apologetic but intent and humorous gaze of his dark eyes.

She said, 'I do like your strange inky eye, it's beautiful, have in always had it?'

'Yes. The rug looks all right already. But your stockings are all stained with tea.'

Tamar laughed and adjusted her skirt. With the centre light on she could now see the desolation of the room. The pictures had been removed from the walls, the bookcase was empty, the mantelpiece was bare, the armchairs, pushed back against the wall, were covered with newspapers and random clothes. Everything was dusty. Tamar recognised the scenery of unhappiness as it existed too in her own house .