Iris Murdoch - The Book And The Brotherhood

Something else had happened to Tamar in the interim; she had received a large cheque from Joel Kowitz in New York, coming, he said, although he had signed it himself, from a Jewish Educational Foundation. Tamar knew that the cheque was prompted by Jean and did not believe in the Educational Foundation. She opened the envelope at breakfast watched, as was usual when she was opening her letters, by her mother. Violet snatched the cheque and would have torn it up, only Tamar snatched it back, promising that she would return it to Joel, which she would have done in any case. After she had posted it back to him with a suitably grateful letter she found herself wondering why she had not paid the cheque into her bank and sna pped her fin gers at her mother. But of course she could not do that. She reflected on the reasons, wondering if they were good ones. When Tamar had decided that she must give up Oxford she had set herself to it as to a dedicated task, a duty, something absolutely inevitable. To think it didn't have to be so would have been agonising. Violet had set out and Tamar had studied the details of the financial position. It was very serious. Violet could not get work, Uncle Matthew was dead, Tamar's job was urgently necessary to reassure the bank manager. Tamar understood why her mother would not accept help. Nor did she forget Violet's cry of 'I've done enough for you!' It was a matter of honour.

Duncan's flat, on this occasion, looked different. Three lamps were on in the drawing room and a fire was burning in the grate. The room, though still dusty, was tidy, and some of the stacked-up books had found their way back onto shelves. The kitchen, which Duncan had shown to Tamar as soon as she arrived, was a bit cleaner and more orderly, though Duncan had not been able to dominate a by now inherent chaos.

Tamar had handed back, washed and ironed, the big white handkerchief which she had carried away with her on the last occasion, and had resisted a temptation to keep. They were now sitting on the sofa which had been drawn up near to the fire, Tamar was sitting with her feet tucked under her, one thin ankle and a buckled shoe visible from under her dress, and Duncan had given her to read a letter from a solicitor, acting for Jean, who requested Duncan's cooperation in the arrangement of a divorce.

On the previous night Tamar had had a curiously vivid dream .She dreamt that she was lost in an enormous circular hotel, 'as tall as the Tower of Babel', and could not find her room or even remember which floor it was on. In a desperate, and distressed state of hurry, she kept rushing up and down staircases and round circular corridors, staring at numbers and trying locked doors. At last she found a door which seemed like the right one and opened it. It opened into a small bathroom. Lying in the bath, which was dry, was a woman in a long red dress with a black network mask over her face. Sitting beside the bath and staring at Tamar with intense silent hostility was a woman with brown hair and glasses, dressed as a nurse. Tamar understood at once that the woman in the bath, who was unconscious or possibly dead, was the victim of some terrible infectious plague, the existence of which was being hushed up by the hotel authorities. Starting back from the door in horror she became aware of a tall thin figure standing behind her, a man with blond almost white hair and very light blue eyes. Tamar thought, he's a doctor, then he's my father and he's an Icelander! The next moment the tall figure moved away and with a ritualistic deliberation laid the palm of his hand against the wall of the corridor. The wall slid aside, revealing what Tamar recognised as the interior of a very big steel safe. Her father walked into the safe, the wall slid back into place, and Tamar beat upon it with her hands in vain. Trying to interpret the dream, Tamar decided that the nurse was, of course, Violet, and the woman in the bath, dressed as she had been at the dance, in red and black, was Jean. These two were sinister, heavy with the horrid unreality and (as Tamar felt it) unclean ambiguity of dream images. Her father was different; he very rarely appeared in Tamar's dreams, and when he did his apparition carried with it a kind of clarity and certainty, a kind of innocence, as ifit were indeed no mere delusive ectoplasm from the unconscious, but a periodical visit from another plane. He was always tall (though never hitherto Icelandic), and always a benevolent though elusive figure. The memory of this dream suddenly, and with an extra vividness, recurred to Tamar as she sat on the sofa beside Duncan and read the momentous letter. She thought, perhaps he isan Icelander, an idea which had not occurred to her before. He had appeared as a doctor beside a dying, perhaps dead, patient. Tamar then thought, perhaps he is dead. In the dream he had entered into a steel box and the door had closed. She had entertained the possibility, but never before thought as a deep emotional thought, that he might be dead. She had so much needed and wanted to believe that he was still living and still somewhere. Perhaps he had come to her to say goodbye. That strange gesture of laying his palm upon the wall had some sort of mysterious finality. Now she thought, he is dead, and her hand holding the letter trembled, and with her other hand she touched Duncan's sleeve, and she turned her troubled face towards him.

Duncan took the letter from her and put it on the floor. He had received it that morning. He had of course known that among the variety of Jean's possible moves this was one, but he had not really expected it. He had found himself unable to face the office and had spent the day at home engaged in, as he put it to himself, remaking his mind. He kept repeating, as he had done earlier, I've got to survive, I won't let those two kill me. But now the image of Crimond, which had somehow protected him from the utterness of loss, giving him the occupation of anger, faded; and he saw only Jean, Jean gone, Jean, his dear Jean, coldly effecting the legal and absolute end of her connection with him. At the same time some little air of warmth which knew nothing of the death of love seemed wafted from her towards him, waking all sorts of little innocent expectations and memories, the way she ran to him when he returned in the evening and put her arms around his waist, how they told each other their day. They had been happy. He kept trying to 'face it', to 'realise it at last', to see it as 'true'. How was this to be done? He measured now how much, when he had thought all hope was gone, he had still hoped. He would have to answer the lawyer's letter, to make hideous assertions, to assent to hideous arrangements, in order to help Jean never to have to see him or think of him again. He thought, I'll do it for her and then I'll kill myself. About Crimond he ceased thinking. The fact of irretrievable loss, now before him like a black cliff; annihilated Crimond as it would soon annihilate Duncan.

Duncan had taken hold of Tamar's hand at the Guy Fawkes party out of a sense of gratitude and because he wanted to reassure her about the teapot. The feel of her warm hand in his cold hand (neither was wearing gloves, but Tamar's hand had been in her pocket) gave him an unexpected shock and reminded him of how they had sat together on the sofa and looked at each other after the teapot disaster. He had written to invite her again because he had now resolved to ask her if she had seen ' Jean. He also invited her because she was harmless and he could bear her sympathy and because her visit was an incentive to tidy the flat. After the arrival of the letter he forgot Tamar and only remembered her just before she came.

Tamar, still dazed by the sudden recall of her dream, tried to concentrate upon what she had read in the letter. 'Do you think she means it, do you think it will happen? Perhaps -'