Iris Murdoch - The Book And The Brotherhood

Rose turned back from the window and the dazed slow falling of the snow to her pretty bedroom, so coolly and clearly revealed in the snow-light, whichhad scarcely changed since her parents had slept in it, and Rose had slept in the upper turret room. Rose came less often now to Boyars; the house was slipping from her. Annushka felt it, the cat felt it. She had begun recently, for the first time, to feel afraid at night, frightened not by the silence of the countryside, but by the silence of the house itself. She had begun to think about later on. If only she had someone really of her own to leave Boyars to. If she left it to Gerard he would leave it, or give it, back to her family, if she left it to Jenkin – well, what would Jenkin do, sell itto help the po orprobably .It was no use leaving it to poor Duncan, or to Jean who was as rich as Croesus and had no children – or to Tamar who would certainly make a disastrous marriage. Well, why not to Tamar? How cross Neville and Gillian would be! Tamar would have guilt feelings and hand it over, it would burden her, she would have no luck. How dreadfully childless they all were. Now supposing Tamar were to have a son… What foolish, even pathetic thoughts, caged thoughts, mean thoughts, so remote from those happy, free, an it seemed virtuous days, when Sinclair was at Oxford and Gerard and Jenkin and Duncan and Robin and Marcum, whom she now so dimly remembered, had come to this hotisf, and really worked and argued. That was before Jean's marriage, and Rose had been the only girl. It had all depended on Sinclair, if he had only lived… But these were bad dreams, a constant rat-run of her mind, where she always pictured Sinclair as so happy, so lucky. He too could have made a disastrous marriage, given up his studies, squandered what was left of the family fortune and taken to drink. He might have caused her endless grief instead of endless joy; but what could that matter, so long as he was there? Strange, she thought, they all died in accidents, my Irish grandfather wan killed out hunting, my Yorkshire grandfather fell from it mountain, my father died in a car crash soon after Sinclair’s death, if I had married Gerard and had a son he would probably have scarred my heart with fear and anguish before he too got burnt or drowned.

`When are you going to see Crimond?' asked Jenkin.

`Next Thursday.'

`Oh. So you've actually fixed it, you rang him up?'

`Yes.'

`Have you told the others?'

`No.'

`Where?'

`My place.'

`Play on home ground?'

`I can't invite myself to his place!'

`A pity. I'd like to know what it's like.'

`So you haven't been there?'

`No. Look, Gerard, I'm not in Crimond's pocket! We just run into each other at meetings!'

`All right,' said Gerard irritably, 'you don't have to tell me!'

`I do have to tell you, evidently!'

It was a little later in the morning and the snow had abated. They were in Jenkin's room, preparing to go for a walk. Gerard was ready. Jenkin was putting on his boots. Gerard was anxious to get out quickly so as to avoid being seen by Gull, who might want to come too. He intended to slink out by a side door through the 'offices', but feared that Jenkin might oppose this as being 'underhand'. Though Gulliver's bedroom was on that side, Gulliver had recently been seen curled up beside the drawing room fire. These were base calculations but Gerard wanted very much to talk to Jenkin alone.

`What time of day,' said Jenkin,

'I'd like to imagine it.'

`Morning, ten o'clock. Do hurry up. We'll go out by the side toward the woods.'

`I thought we were going to the village, I want a drink at the Pike.'

`Oh do you! I can't understand your passion for pubs.'

`They are universal places, like churches, hallowed meeting places of all mankind, and each one is different. Besides, they'll have the Christmas decorations up. Where's my cap? All right, I'm ready now.'

Jenkin followed Gerard down the stairs and out of the hall toward, but not into, the kitchen, past the gun room (no guns) and the brushing room (ancient boots) and the washing room (modern technology) and out onto the untrodden snow of a little courtyard. Gerard closed the door quietly and strode on, Jenkin hurrying after him. The very cold clean air made them gasp. They passed low derelict outbuildings, like a deserted village, hung with icicles silently pointed out by Jenkin, and began to walk along the outside of the tall brown-leaved beech hedge which skirted the back lawn. To the left, upon an eminence a mile away, were the woods, ahead of them a view, beyond the garden trees, of open empty snow-covered hillsides. There was no wind. Everything was very silent. Silence possessed them and they did not speak.

The sky, uniformly clouded, and lying closely over the land, was yellowish, shedding a sombre yellow light. The snow close by, upon the leaves of the hedge and upon the conifers and red-berried holly bushes, showed sparkling white in contrast to the dark greens and browns, but farther away upon the curves of the hills it looked sleek and tawny. The cold air unstirring, the garden immobile except for the crunch of their boots breaking the crisp frozen surface of the new-fallen Snow, which was already patterned here and there by the straight of curving tracks of foxes and by the wandering hieroglyphs of various birds. They passed on, veering now behind the house, along the line of the herbaceous border where plants which were not snugly underground appeared as snowy mounds, and into the shrubbery. Here the thick ilexes and conifers made a roof of snow and the earth was suddenly brown, covered in pine needles, soft and seemingly warm underfoot, and the silence even more intense. Beyond this was a path leading toward the stable block, through the orchard and thus over a stile to a footpath which meandered between fields in the general direction of the village.

Meanwhile Rose had left her bedroom. She had 'pulled herself together', reminded Annushka to make her special fudge which Jenkin liked, put on her boots and her coat and her fur hat, and made her way to the stables carrying a basket containing the captive ladybird in its glass. As she walked she murmured 'Ranter and Ringwood, Bellman and 'Frue,'an old charm of Sinclair's guaranteed to calm the nerves and alleviate the 'blues'. She climbed the worm-eaten wooden stairs to the big loft, released the ladybird who crawled sagaciously into a cranny, and unlatched the square loft door which opened onto countryside in the direction of the Roman Road.

She knelt in the opening, surveying the yellow air and the motionless white scene which contained no sign of human habitation, nothing, beyond the orchard trees, except fields and hills, and more distant hills. In the early spring Rose would leave the door open for the swallows whose shadowy dartings would continue throughout the summer. She had come for apples. Upon the floor of the loft, avoiding here and iliere the holes between rotting boards, lay a sea of Cox's Orange Pippins. The reddish greenish apples, recently harvested by Sheppey the plumber and his sturdy son, placed carefully so that no one touched another one, gave out a faint crisp fragrance. These English apples, much cherished by,Rose's forebears, had always seemed to Rose to be good Apples, innocent apples, mythological apples, apples of'virtue, full of the sweet nourishment of goodness. They would keep till April, even till May, turning gradually to a faintly wrinkled gold, and becoming smaller and sweeter. Rose liked their later iiicarnation best, but her father had preferred to eat them straightaway.

At the far end of the loft was a store of a different kind, a large pile of stones: smooth sea pebbles of different sizes and colours covered with lines and scrawls of natural abstract art, twirls, crosses, lattices, blotches, stains, white upon black, Flue upon brown, red upon purple, pure white, pure black, mostly ovoid but some almost spherical, all collected by Sinclair, who had known each individual stone personally and given some of them names. When he was no longer there the stones had been placed, carefully but without intelligible Border, in the little bedroom next to Rose's room; and from there removed to the stables by Neville and Gillian, then aged fifteen and sixteen, in order to clear the room for a school friend, when their parents had borrowed Boyars for a 'house party' in Rose's absence. Rose never again lent Boyars to the Yorkshire Curtlands, or indeed invited them to the house except in terms of an 'open invitation' of which they rarely availed themselves. She contained her rage; but she never brought the stones back to the house. She visited them occasionally, and, more rarely, selected one to take back to London. Sometimes she gave one to Gerard. Once she had given one to Jenkin.