Iris Murdoch - The Book And The Brotherhood

Jean seemed to reflect on these words but replied only. I’m sorry to disappoint you all, I'm not bored and I'm not unhappy. I have never been more completely happy in my life. If you want a message to carry back, there it is.'

`You left Crimond last time, there must have been reason. ‘

`I have a kind of happiness which I think you've never known or dreamt of.’

`Have you forgotten your love for Duncan? You did love him, surely you do love him?'

`Last time was different. I wasn't then able to conceive of a complete removal of my being, a complete change. I've groom into that ability in the time between. It's a meeting with an absolute. When you can see what is perfect, what is imperfect falls away, it withers. Now, it's face to face, not in a glass darkly. One cannot dispute, one cannot resist.'

`And apparently one cannot explain.'

`One cannot explain.'

`Forgive me,' said Rose, 'I wanted so much to talk to you, and there's so little time, I'm saying a lot of things very badly. I must go before Crimond comes back. Gerard said he'd give him an hour -'

, Give him an hour!'

`I don't know how long it will take him to get back, if he comes back at once – you see I'm trying to say what matters, what matters to me, God knows when I'll see you again. You know that I love you, we've been friends forever, I must say things. I think you're living inside an illusion. It's all so one-sided, so unfair. You don't know where he goes and what he does, you've given him over your whole life, you've given up your friends and your world, and you don't meet his friends or inhabit his world. He has not shared his things with you. You don't even share in the book. As far as I can see, you have no relationship now except with him, a sexual relation which is part of his life and all of yours! I'm sorry – if I'm saying crude emotional things it's because I'm angry on your behalf-'

'Oh don't be, don't be,' said Jean, who had listened to this wade with a weary air of absent indifference. She sighed and got up again and went behind her chair and tilted it a little towards her. 'Would you like some coffee? I'm afraid there's no alcohol in the house.'

, Of course I wouldn't like some coffee!' said Rose, exasperated. 'Oh Jean -'

'I don't deny our love,' said Jean, 'our love, I mean, between you and me, I have no doubt that it will survive forever, even if we were never to see each other again, which of course we will, it is something unique and uniquely durable. But you must take it that we inhabit two absolutely different worlds. You rely on continuity, you live by a certain quiet seamless order in your life, it suits you, you've lived and thrived on it, whereas it has gradually suffocated me.' She let the chair fall back with a jolt.

‘Oh well, if it's just desire for change – If you've chosen discontinuity that implies that you don't entirely believe in Crimond's love, you can't see your future together, you are insecure.'

' I am the only woman he has ever loved or could love. I believe in his love and our future is together whatever happens. But of course, unlike you, we can't foresee what will happen. There is insecurity, not in our love, but in the world. Crimond is brave and he has made me brave. You live in the old dreamy continuum where everyone is nice and dependable and good and every year has the same pattern. I have left that place, with him I am outside, in the dangerous contingent real world, love is dangerous, absolute and dangerous, one lives with death – and to live so is really to live. You don't understand what being deeply in love and being deeply loved is like, how it brims over one's whole existence and sanctifies and glorifies everything one does or thinks or touches, how it makes the world immense, as huge as the universe and full of light – you don't really know anything about sex and the way one can live and breathe it, when it's a total occupation something which is everywhere, in everything, and makes you into a god! When that happens one doesn't worry about right or shares or the little mean petty calculations which belong in the old small anxious selfish life. Self is obliterated. You’ve never had that experience, you've never been deified by love, you're a quiet girl, you're a puritan really, in the depths of your heart you feel that sex is wrong. Why didn't you get married? Why did you attach yourself to a hopeless proposition like Gerard? Why didn't you marry one of the others? Marcus Field, for instance, he was madly in love with you-‘

`Was he? He never said so.'

`He thought Gerard owned you, he thought Gerard would marry you. You could have had children-‘

`Oh stop it!' said Rose. 'You're just – just hopelessly romantic! Did you ever seriously think of marrying Sinclair?’

`Yes. But – I don't know that I would have done – even if he'd wanted it -'

`If you'd married him he'd be still alive.'

`Because I'd have stopped him gliding?'

`Because the causal chains would have been different.’

`Anything could have made the causal chains different.’

`I know.'

Rose, realising that she would soon be in tears, looked away down the room toward the far end where the target inthe dim light looked like a mandala. She felt very cold and pulled her coat on. Leaning back a little she felt the rough prickly material of the old quilt under her hands. She thought, after I go Jean will smooth out the quilt. I wonder if she will tell Crimond that I was here? I must go, I must go now before he comes back. I've lost Jean, we've lost each other, I've said all the wrong things. I'll regret it all so much, so much.

'I must go, darling.'

'Yes. I'll see you out. Wouldn't you like to see the book? Come.’

Rose fumbled with her scarf and gloves and followed Jean, her booted feet striking an echo on the bare floor, Jean's slippered feet soundless.

The book lay open underneath the lamp, the right-hand page written in Crimond's small neat scarcely legible writing, the left-hand page blank except for a sentence or two and a question mark. Jean turned the leaves back, showing other pages, the text varied here and the re by capital letters and things written in red, then set the book back as it had been, when Crimond had finished writing that morning. It was like being shown a holy manuscript or rare work of art, something to be marvelled at, not, by the uninitiated, actually studied. Jean then indicated piles of similar notebooks beside the desk containing the massive completed parts of the work so far. Rose, who had not wanted to see the thing, did not feel any instant hostility to it, as if she might wish to tear it up. What struck her, with a kind of surprise, was its inert separateness, its authoritative thereness, its magnitude. Feeling she ought to say something, she said, 'What a long task.'

‘Yes.’

‘When will it end?'

‘I don't know.'

They went upstairs to the hall, and stood and looked at each other by the unopened door. Rose's tears spilled over and they embraced, closing their eyes.

‘Why didn't you tell me you were going to see Gerard" said Jean.

‘They were sitting on the divan in the Playroom. Jean had smoothed it out where Rose had been sitting. Crimond still wearing his overcoat.

`I would have told you if you had asked me where I was going. I would have told you now anyway. That's not important. I was irritated about it beforehand, I didn't want to talk about it.'

`Was it all right?'

`Not very.'

`If he was rude I hope you told him to go to hell.'

`Oh he wasn't rude. I was foolish. I haven't talked to anyone about all that for a long time. I said too much and I was incoherent.'

`Rose said he'd decided to give you an hour!'