Iris Murdoch - The Book And The Brotherhood

‘You think Tamar's so perfect,' said Violet, 'everybody does. Wh yare you fussing about her now?'

'She’s too perfect. I can't help feeling she's in danger. Someone at her publisher's told someone who told me that she looked really ill. You yourself said that she was dying.'

‘She's been impossible lately. She won't eat and she looks a little misery and says nothing, she won't speak to me, it's like having a ghost in the house.'

'Does she have any social life, any sign of boy friends?'

‘No. She wouldn't say anyway. She goes out in the evening. I think she just walks round and round the roads. Anything to get away from me and the television"

'Seriously, Violet, won't you let me help? You accepted Matthew's money.'

‘How did you know that? That was something else, it was money he owed to his brother, it wasn't much in any case.'

'All right, and you won't deal with Rose and Gerard, but I’different, they're muffs, I'm a doer. I can give effective help, I can take charge. Besides – I'm different because I'm me.'

‘I’ve forgotten who you are.’

'Don't you remember "Hello, swinger"?'

'No.'

'We've known each other a long time.'

Probably Violet's most terrible secret was that she had known Gideon when they were young, barely twenty, before he met Patricia, in fact Violet introduced them. Gideon, then it shy thin Jewish boy studying history at a London college, had made little impression. Gideon's father (a refugee who had adopted the name of Fairfax out of a Gilbert and Sullivan opera) had a junk shop in the New King's Road. Violet had been in love with a music student who was starting a pop group. By the time she was prepared to take an interest in Gideon Patricia had already appropriated him. The notion that Gideon had been a bit 'keen' on her, and proving unwelcome had transferred his attentions to her cousin, travelled with Violet, a dark cancerous nugget, which, as she grew older, became blacker and larger. For years she wondered if Gideon had ever said anything to Pat about that shadowy non-event, later she assumed he had not. She and Gideon never spoke of it, but, as Gideon progressed from pow student to tycoon, their mutual consciousness of this 'sonic thing' seemed to become, without ever really amounting it, 'anything', more substantial.

'You don't want to help us,' said Violet, 'it's just an exercise of your perpetual euphoria, you are in every way successful, your success shines brighter here by contrast. It’s a way of triumphing over us. We're to join the line behind your chariot. You want to make us look up at the sky and sing, but we can't, Some people have streams of' happiness laid on, others have the black river. We belong to another race.'

'The world of the happy is not the world of the unhappy, as Gerard often says, quoting some philosopher. But what that philosopher did not realise was that the happy can sometimes kidnap the unhappy and carry them kicking and screaming, into the world of happiness. That is what money can do, Violet, that is what money is for.'

'You love money, you love power, that's all. You are an utterly selfish person.'

‘Yes, all right, but can't you attribute any benevolent motive to me? You know how fond I am of Tamar.'

'Oh Tamar, Tamar. I expect you're in love with her, you find her physically attractive, you want to be her favourite uncle, and God knows what else -'

‘Oh shut up. Come on, Violet, just lift your head up, yes, look at the sky and the sunshine for a change. I hate that picture of you trudging behind the chariot. I want you and Tamar in the chariot. Where will you be at Christmas?'

' Here, as usual, of course.'

‘I won't try to imagine how ghastly that must be. Look – we don't have to spend Christmas at Bristol any more, now that poor old Matthew's gone, we can be anywhere. Why don't you and Tamar come with us? We could rent a house in Italy. star's never been to Italy. We'd have some fun. Why not, please?

'That's your idea, not Pat's, and it's a silly impertinent idea. We don't want to be patronised by you and Pat, we don't want to in play the humble grateful poor relations! Tamar wouldn't want to come anyway, she never wants to go anywhere now.'

It's Pat's idea too, as it happens, I wouldn't float it on my own!'

You want to share your happiness with the poor. Well, the poor don't want it. Pat's kindness humiliates me. Like last time, I was treated like a servant. It upsets Tamar very much. Pat just wants me there as a visible proof of how happy and lucky she is! When one is really afflicted sympathy is the last thing one wants. I can live with my miseries if only people would leave me alone!'

'Your miseries are self-inflicted,' said Gideon, 'and you are very unjust. You were not treated like a servant. You make y sort of generosity or kindness impossible, and you do this it behalf of Tamar, as if she were as mean and suspicious and full of spiteful hatred as you are.'

'You despise me,' said Violet, 'you treat me like dust, and you seem to think you have a right to, you wouldn't speak in this outrageous way to anyone else.'

'No, I wouldn't, and maybe I have a right to.'

`You come here as a tourist to see how hideous this place is and how hideous I am so that you can go back and tell Pat!'

At that moment Tamar appeared at the kitchen door. Tamar did indeed look like a ghost, not a transparent wraith, but rather the substantial stick-like kind, which might be a broom handle or a signpost but clearly and terrifyingly is not. She was wearing a long brown overcoat, and a large brown beret which was pulled down over her ears and made her look like a weird pale-faced animal, faintl ypathetic, faintly un pleasant. Only her large animal-like eyes, staring with hostility into the kitchen, conveyed, as animal eyes can do, a kind of spirit. Gideon, who had not seen her for some time, was instantly shocked, as by the sight of some unnatural mental-physical degeneration, even metamorphosis .

He immediately said, 'Oh Tamar, what a bit of luck, here you are! I was just saying to your mother how nice it would be if you were to spend Christmas with us in Italy, we're renting a house -'

Violet said, 'What are you doing here at this time, have you got the sack?'

`I've taken the afternoon off,' said Tamar.

`Tamar, what about Christmas, Italy?' cried Gideon, jumping up, as Tamar seemed to be turning to go.

, No thanks.' Tamar disappeared, banging the kitchen door behind her.

`You see?' said Violet.

As he walked away through the cold dark foggy London morning toward his car Gideon pondered upon the mystery of Violet and Tamar. How could people not want to be happy? It was utterly contrary to nature. In Gideon's view, human beings do, and certainly ought to, reach out instinctively and ingeniously toward the fruit of happiness, seeking through all the branches and shaking the tree if necessary. He pondererd, but did not want to ponder too deeply. He would try again of course. He had exaggerated slightly in saying that the Italian idea had been Pat's too. He had (as Violet had later assumed) never talked to Pat, or to anyone, about the moment (but had there ever really been such a moment?) when he had found twenty-year-old Violet attractive. He did not want to add anything to that little oddity, but neither did he dismiss it. It did not trouble him, it sometimes amused him. He loved his wife, and had found with her the happy life whose possibility he had intuited when he first met her; those two were closer than many outsiders liked to think. Pat certainly also wanted to help that miserable pair, though her motives were perhaps slightly different from his. About this too he did not ponder for long. Gideon could see Tamar's image as a perfect angel, certainly as a 'strong good girl', and he instinctively understood how this appearance, partly a reality, arose from her determination not to be ruined by her mother. Violet had called her a survivor, a tough little atom. Only as Tamar's impulse so patently lacked joy Gideon could not really believe in it, he saw her, as Gerard did not, as but too likely to 'break down'. Perhaps the process was now visibly beginning. He did in fact find her physically attractive, and wanted, but in no sinister or improper manner, to kidnap her and transform her, clothe her, take her to Paris, Rome, Athens, buy her a car and a rich successful handsome virtuous young husband. He also wanted to kidnap Violet and shake her into life, but that was a more complex wish, and probably a fruitless, even imprudent or senseless one. He recalled the days when she was 'swinger' and he was (a silly nickname which he refused to remember) without any deep emotion but with a kind of loyalty, he was touched by the memory and by her as a continuing element in his life; and he pitied her, though this was a feeling he did not care for, and continually altered into something else, perhaps into the euphoria and the selfishness and the power of which she accused him. As he walked along he banished the problem, he would have another idea about it later. He thought instead about his father whom he loved but with whom, in some profound way, he had never really got on (as he, for instance, got on with Pat). Of course his father was glad that his son was rich, and glad (must be glad) to be now surrounded with what money would buy. But he had wanted his son and only child to be a doctor and still spoke nostalgically of the old hard days in the New King's Road. Mutual love (for it was mutual) does not ensure mutual understanding. Thank heavens Leonard got on so well with his grandfather, as he had, as a child, with his grandmother, now long dead. She had been a contrary person too. Of course both of them had had terrible childhoods. Easily releasing his ancestors and their childhoods Gideon began to think about some Beckmann drawings which he thought he could obtain for a reasonable price. Then, as he approached his beautiful car, he thotighil far more deeply and vaguely, about himself, and began smile.