Iris Murdoch - The Book And The Brotherhood

‘I was just talking,' said Jenkin. I don't know whether Duncan wants a child. He said once that he did -'

Anyway he wouldn't have wanted this one. But I wanted it. ‘The tears began to flow again. She said, 'Oh, I'm so tired – I want to sleep.'

‘You must live with this as people do live with terrible losses. It is possible, you will discover how.' He thought, there's so much here that can't be mended, or only miraculously. I wish I could share this burden with someone else, but I don't see how I can. 'Is there anyone else you'd like to talk to? What about that parson, Father McAlister? You told him -'

‘He forced me to tell him. He talked about Jesus and how pure love made you penitent and your guilt was washed away and so on. But he didn't know what it was all about, I can't go back to him.'

'Look, who knows you're here, beside Gerard? Does Lily?'

'No, I ran out while she was shopping, then I walked above in the rain.'

‘Then I must ring Lily, and your mother must be told too-‘

‘No!'

'People must simply know where you are. I won't tell them anything else. I think I'll ring Gerard, and he'll tell them Tamar, won't you please eat something? No? Then you must go to bed when I've fixed the room. We can talk again tomorrow.'

Jenkin had made up the bed in the spare room and put in a hot water bottle and laid out a pair of his pyjamas. She crawled into bed in a state of complete exhaustion. Jenkin was about to take her hand and kiss her, but she had already fallen asleep. He watched her for a while, and then made a signal over her, a private signal of his own, for her protection.

As he went to the telephone to ring Gerard he suddenly recalled, which he had quite forgotten, the odd little scene with his friend which Tamar had interrupted. He paused with his hand upon the telephone. He could not remember exactly what he had said, he had the impression that he had been rather rude to Gerard in the earlier part of the conversation, and then he had laughed at what Gerard had said later. Well, there was nothing there that would need a miracle to mend.All the same he would have to think – He lifted the 'phone quickly and dialled Gerard's number.

'Hello.'

'Gerard.'

'I was hoping you'd ring. What's the matter with Tamar?`

'She's all right. She's asleep, I mustn't wake her. I just thought, would you mind ringing Lily to say she's here? And if Lily's alarmed Violet -'

'Yes, yes, I'll sort all that out.'

There was a moment’ silence.

‘Gerard-‘

‘Don’t worry.’

‘I won’t.’

Jenkin sat down by the fireplace and poured himself out some more whisky. He felt upset, racked with pity, frightened, also excited. Inside a mix of disturbing sensations there was a cherishing gladness that there was in his house, safe and resting, a wounded creature who had run to him for protection. It was odd to feel he was not alone in the house.

He tried to be calm and quiet. His laughter had been partly shock-laughter, a protection from any more immediate response. Yet it had been funny too, absurdly funny. Come home. Was he tempted? Yes, he was. Throughout the years Jenkin had been conscious, more conscious than Gerard, of, with their closeness, the distance between them. He had reflected, this distance, this steady secure space, as if it were pet haps asking for a hand to be stretched across it. His hand? As he thought this, sitting by the fire and remembering he made an embryonic gesture. He had inhibited the possible gesture out of a kind of timidity or chaste shame, a sense, life-long it seemed now, of Gerard's superiority. Had he feared the, kindest possible of course, barely perceptible perhaps, rebuff? Nor had he ventured to imagine what that step closer would be like, what it would entail, what his life would be like w ithout that clear void (he pictured it as a kind of trough of sky, pale blue and full of light) across which he looked at Gerard. Sometimes it seemed ridiculous, something too solemn, a conceptualising of the unconceptualisable, to think about his relation with Gerard in this way. If they were destined to come closer, to be more intimate, to meet oftener, or however one described it, would not this happen spontaneously, and if it did not happen was that not because there were good reasons, invisible perhaps but good, why it should not happen? Why all the fuss? Well, there was no fuss, only this awareness, sometimes manifested as jealousy, of which Jenkin, who concealed this carefully from Gerard, was certainly capable. And now, and unexpectedly, that so important structural space had suddenly been annihilated. The king had come to him, cap in hand – and Jenkin had laughed at him. Come home? I don't think I can come home, thought Jenkin, it's not in my nature to come home or have that sort of home. Even this home, this house, is a shell that must be broken. All right, so this is romanticism, it is sentimentality. But I must go away soon, sooner than I had planned, if I am not to run to Gerard.

There was another piece of the puzzle, old and faded but still there, which had been jolted by Gerard's surprising declaration. That was the question of Rose. Jenkin was so used to being just the tiniest bit in love with Rose that it was scarcely to be called that any more, nor did he use such terminology to himself. Jenkin had loved women and had had, though not at all lately, more adventures than his friends imagined, or others who thought of him as hopelessly sexless. But Rose was a special case. He had never spoken of his odd not too uncomfortable feeling to anyone except once to a close Oxford friend, Marcus Field, who also loved Rose. Jenkin, sage even then, had kept his feelings on a lead. Rose's love for Gerard went far back into the shades of history, almost as I'm back as Gerard's love for Sinclair. Gerard had let her love him, what else could he do? Yet (Jenkin very occasionally allowed himself to think) was he not a trifle complacent about it, ought he not perhaps to have told her to go away and find someone else? However that might be, an element, not exactly a motive, in Jenkin's decision to escape was his desire to get away, not only from Gerard, but from Rose.

Yet – how much of that delicately balanced picture of motive and decision, which he had been so long constructing and had now been completed, had been shifted, even seriously damaged, by Gerard's extraordinary move?Jenkin had never had a homosexual relation or dreamt of considering his close friendship with Gerard inthat light – nor did he now allow himself to wonder what exactly it was which now existed and previously had not. What he felt was a sudden increase of being. Gerard had called to him, and the echoing call stirred things in deep places. Come live with me and be my love. Perhaps, after all, this changed everything?

Gerard had telephoned Lily, and Rose, whom Lily had alarmed, and driven round to Violet's to tell her Tamar was with Jenkin. He stayed a while with Violet. She told him, and seemed glad to be able to do so, about Tamar's weeping and screaming fits which had preceded her flight. Violet did not know why Tamar was in such a state. Violet was certainly unnerved, upset, frightened, perhaps even shocked into genuine loving concern for her daughter. Gerard took the opportunity of saying to Violet with an air of authority that really she must allow Tamar to continue her education. Probably Tamar's grief on this subject lay behind her breakdown. Some young people passionately wanted to go on learning and pludying, and the really difficult things, which would be possessions forever, had to be learnt when still young. If Tamar were frustrated now (so Gerard painted the picture) she might fall into depression and lose her job, whereas if she could return to Oxford she would get a much better-paid job later on. Gerard would be very glad meanwhile to help financially, and so on and so on. Violet, quickly recovering from her softened mood, soon put on an expression, familiar to Gerard, of quiet amused cynicism. He left hoping that he might nevertheless have made an impression.