Iris Murdoch - The Book And The Brotherhood

It was nine o'clock. The promised rain had come. Gerard, Itaken unawares, had got his hair wet, which annoyed him. He had arrived punctually j enki n had put the gas fire on earlier and closed the window inthe sitting room and pulled the curtains and turned on the lamp and remembered to turn off the centre light. He had brought in from the kitchen window sill a brown mug with a single twig of viburnum fragrans which Mrs Marchment had given him out of her front garden when he had been to see Marchment about a letter to the Guar dian and to gossip about Crimond. He had put a plate of arrowroot biscuits upon the small table on which Gerard had now set down his glass. Jenkin was drinking tea. He was, he told Gerard (which much disturbed the latter) 'cutting down on drink'. Gerard was drinking the wine which he had brought along himself as usual. They had been talking above Crimond's book.

`It's being typed now, Marcliment says. He's still on speaking terms with Crimond. Hardly anyone else is.'

`You haven't seen Crimond?'

'No. Do sit down, Gerard.'

'I wonder who will publish it.'

'I don't know. We might get hold of a proof copy. I'm dying with curiosity.'

'What's that plant? It smells so.'

'Viburnum something.'

'It's got no business being in flower at this time of year.'

'It always is, I'm told. Shall I take it away?'

'No. Where did you get this stone?'

'I told you, Rose gave it to me.'

'I remember.' Gerard replaced the stone, which he had been holding in his hand, upon the mantelpiece. The stone was curiously cold. He sat down. He said to Jenkin, 'I've been thinking about you.'

'Oh – jolly good -'

'Are you going away?'

'Yes, I'm going to Spain for Christmas, on a package tour, I told you at Boyars.'

'I thought you'd be with us. Now it's possible for the first time, with my father gone.'

'I'm sorry -'

'But I mean – are you really going away, far away, for a long time? You've seemed so restless, not yourself.' Gerard thought, what am I saying, it's I who am restless and not myself. He added, 'Not that I've any reason to think – after all why should you -'

'Oh, I'm thinking of it,' said Jenkin, as if this was obvious.

'Where to?'

'I don't know, really – Africa, South America – I sort of think – after all – I want to get out of England and do something else, something different.'

'What you sort of think sounds to me like running away, ‘ said Gerard. 'It's sentimental, it's romantic. You're just feelling a bit fed up with schoolmastering. It's too late for you to take on the African mess or the South American mess, it's a lifetime job. You can't be serious!'

'I'm not thinking of being an expert or a leader or anything-‘

'Of course not, you see yourself as a servant, the lowest of the low! But an untrained servant not in his first youth is not likely to be much use. You just enjoy picturing yourself in some scene of awful suffering! Aren't I right?'

'Why are you being so nasty?' said Jenkin amiably. 'I can dream, can't I? But I am serious about it – somehow – not because I think I'd be terribly good at it -'

''Then why?'

'Just because I want to. Of course there's something in your idea of the "picture", but that's peripheral, I can't be bothered with motives.'

‘I know, you want to be out on the edge of things, you want to live outside Europe in some sort of hell.'

'Yes.'

'And you think that isn't romantic nonsense?'

'Precisely. I mean, I think it isn't romantic nonsense!'

'I ask you not to go.'

‘Why? I just said I was thinking about it!'

‘We need you. I need you.'

‘0h, well-you can all rub along without me, I should think -anyway it's an idea I've got – it's time for a change – I can always come back I suppose. I think I'll have a drink after all.' Jenkin disappeared to the kitchen, humming nervously to himself.

Gerard, seeing his back, the set of his shoulders, the particular way that the tail of his jacket was always so hopelessly crumpled, felt a wave of emotion which almost made him exclaim. He thought, this is no good, I'm not getting anywhere. I've bothered him already, and I hate that. He'll refuse to be serious now about anything I suggest, he'll just shuffle it off.

Jenkin returned with a glass and a can of beer. Gerard said, `Let's go on holiday together, just you and me, it's ages since we did that.' And why is it ages, he wondered, I could have asked him anytime, I could have insisted.

, You mean a walking tour in the Lake District, sharing a tent in the rain?'

`No. I was rather thinking of a good hotel in Florence.' But the tent idea was not unattractive.

`OK, if I'm still around in the spring. But I somehow think I won't be. I've got that now-or-never feeling.'

`We could travel together. Go to Australia. Go to Africa it you like, or Brazil. I noticed that Portuguese grammar at Boyars. If you're determined to go I might come too.'

`Very kind of you, but you'd hate it, you know! I mean if we went where I want. Anyway, I have to go alone, that's part of the deal.'

‘What deal, who with?'

‘Oh, not with anyone-with myself- with fate if you like-or God, only he doesn't exist.'

`So it's a pilgrimage. That's pure sentimentality, it's play-acting.'

`You're making me say silly things. I just don't want to be too blunt!'

`Oh, be as blunt as you like!'

What is happening, thought Gerard, are we going to quarrel, or have I been imagining how fond he was of me, have I been quite mistaken? I can't say the things I meant to say now, they've been spoiled, ruined. He'll think ill of me now, and I can't bear that, in a moment I shall be pathetic! Or in order not to be pathetic, I shall seem resentful. Which is worse?

'I don't think you lot need me all that much,' said Jenkin in a tentative tone. 'I've always felt like the odd man out.' He had never said anything like that before.

`What perfect nonsense!' said Gerard, regaining a little confidence. 'You're central, you're essential, even Crimond saw this. He said you were the best!'

`Oh – Crimond -' They both laughed, though a little nervously. -

`It's not true that I'm essential,' said Jenkin, 'Duncan has never altogether liked me, Robin was always impatient with me, so is Gull, Rose laughs at me, Crimond thinks I'm a fool. Don't interrupt me, Gerard. Of course this is a stupid way to talk, but you're forcing me into it. This stuff about being heeded is part of an illusion we've kept up all these years. I know I'm talking nonsense and making you angry, because of course there is something close, something unique, and perhaps such things are always partly illusion, partly real. It's just that I've felt the illusion a bit more lately, that's part of wanting to go away. I haven't been alone enough, and that's because I've had to play – that game- which of course wasn't a game, but – You see, I must be alone in the way one can be in what you called hell.'

'You're wrong about the others, they treasure you.'

'Like a mascot.'

'Rose adores you – but let's not argue about that – I don't even care about it – and maybe you're right that such things are hopelessly mixed up between illusion and reality, perhaps all things are-'

'What don't you care about?'

'Them, the others – well, I do care, yes, I do – and I deny what you said about being odd man out – but I could do without them.

'You know, Gerard,' said Jenkin, staring at him at last, 'I don't think you could! You've been supported by them all your life. You've liked being chief among us, why not, the cleverest, the handsomest, the most successful, the most loved-and it's true you have been these things, you still are – but you do depend on it or something like it, and I don't. Please don't misunderstand me, I'm not thinking of going away because I've discovered that nobody loves me! I'm just chucking out your argument about I mustn't go because I'm needed. I'm not needed. It's you they all look to, it's you they all depend on, and so -'