Iris Murdoch - The Sandcastle

‘You’re telling me you’re in a fix!’ said Tim. He took Mor’s arm in a wrestling grip and began to urge him back along the road. ‘I had to wait there, I wasn’t sure which way you’d come. I don’t want Nan to see me.’ They turned down another road.

‘What is it, Tim?’ said Mor, freeing his arm. They stopped under a tree.

‘Nan rang me up,’ said Tim.

Mor thought, of course, it hadn’t occurred to him, but naturally Nan would have rung up Tim to ask why he was so late. ‘What did she say,’ said Mor, ‘when you said I hadn’t been with you?’

‘I didn’t say that,’ said Tim.

‘What?’ said Mor.

‘I didn’t say it,’ said Tim. ‘I said you’d been with me most of the afternoon and that just then you’d gone over to the committee rooms and that you’d been delayed and you’d probably be back a bit later.

Mor put his hand to his head. ‘Tim,’ he said, ‘for heaven’s sake, what put it into your mind to invent all that?’

Tim took hold of the hem of Mor’s jacket. ‘I saw you down at the traffic lights at Marsington,’ he said, ‘in a car with a girl.’

Mor leaned against the tree. It was a plane tree with a flaky piebald bark. He pulled a piece of the bark off it. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid your Irish imagination has carrried you away a bit, Tim. That was just Miss Carter, who’s painting Demoyte’s portrait. And in fact I would have been with you this afternoon if it hadn’t been that the car broke down.’

Tim was silent. All this isn’t quite true, thought Mor. Oh God!

‘Tim,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry. You’ve acted very kindly. There’s been a horrible muddle today, all my fault.

‘You’re not angry with me, Mor?’ said Tim. ‘You see, I couldn’t just say you hadn’t been there. I had to do my best. I had to try to think what to do.’ He was still holding on to Mor’s coat.

‘That’s all right, Tim,’ said Mor. ‘You acted very well, in fact. It’s been all my fault. But there won’t be anything like this again. We’d better just bury it quietly and not refer to it any more. I’m deeply sorry to have involved you in this. And thank you for what you did.’ He touched Tim’s shoulder lightly. Tim let go of his coat.

They looked at each other. Tim’s look expressed curiosity, diffidence, and affection. Mor’s look expressed affention, exasperation, and remorse. They began to walk back along the road.

When they got to the corner, Tim said, ‘Have you talked to herself yet about that thing?’

‘No,’ said Mor, ‘I will soon though.’

They stood for a moment.

‘You’re not angry?’ said Tim. ‘I tried to do the best for you.

‘How could I be angry?’ said Mor. ‘It is you who should pardon me. You did very well. And now we’ll not speak of it again. Good night, Tim.’

Mor turned and began to walk slowly along the road that led to his own house.

Chapter Seven

ALREADY the light was leaving the earth and taking refuge in the sky. The big windows of Demoyte’s drawing-room stood open upon the garden. A recurring pattern of bird-song filled the room, not overlaid now by any human voices. In the last light of the evening Rain Carter was painting.

It was the day following the disaster with the Riley. The breakdown men had in fact managed to right the car fairly quickly, and towed it to the garage. The engine was badly jolted and drenched with water, but there was no serious damage to the car except for a certain buckling of the roof. The garage had promised to restore it, almost as good as new, in a short while.

Rain, however, was not thinking now about the Riley. Nor was she thinking about William Mor, although that was a subject which had preoccupied her for a while before she retired to bed the previous evening. She was completely absorbed in what she was doing. Early that morning Rain had found herself able to make a number of important decisions about the picture, and once her plan had become clear she started at once to put it into execution. A white sheet was laid down in the drawing-room on which the easel was placed, together with a kitchen table and a chair. Paints and brushes stood upon the table, and the large canvas had been screwed on the easel. Enthroned opposite, beside one of the windows, sat Demoyte, his shoulder touching one of the rugs which hung behind him upon the wall. Through the window was visible a small piece of the garden, some trees, and above the trees in the far distance the tower of the school. In front of Demoyte stood a table spread with books and papers. Demoyte had been sitting there at Rain’s request for a large part of the afternoon and was by this time rather irritable. During much of this period Rain had not been painting but simply walking up and down and looking at him, asking him to alter his position slightly, and bringing various objects and laying them upon the table.

Demoyte was dressed in a rather frayed corduroy coat and was wearing a bow tie. This particular capitulation had taken place the previous morning after breakfast when Rain had said sharply, Don’t think me eccentric, Mr Demoyte, but these are the clothes I want to paint you in‘ - and had laid the very garments on the chair beside him. Demoyte had made no comment, but had gone at once in quest of Miss Handforth to tell her exactly what he thought of this betrayal. Handy had informed him that needless to say she knew nothing about it and surely he knew her better than to imagine she would give information to that imp or make free with her employer’s clothing. Demoyte had pondered the outrage for a short while, made a mental note to give Mor a rocket when he next saw him, changed into the clothes in question, and felt immensely better and more comfortable.

Rain, surveying now at leisure the object placed before her, could hear her father’s voice saying, ‘Don’t forget that a portrait must have depth, mass, and decorative qualities. Don’t be so fascinated by the head, or by the space, that you forget that a canvas is also a flat surface with edges which touch the frame. Part of your task is to cover that surface with a pattern.’ What Rain had lacked was the motif of the pattern. But this had lately occurred to her, and with it came the definitive vision, which she had been seeking, of Demoyte’s face. The old man’s face, it now seemed to her, was of a withered golden colour, like an old apple, and marked with the repetition of a certain curve. Supremely this curve occurred in his lips, which Rain proposed to paint curling in a slightly sarcastic and amused manner which was highly characteristic of him. It appeared again, more subdued, in his eyebrows, which met bushily above his nose, and in the line made by his eyes and the deep wrinkles which led upwards from their corners. The multitudinous furrows of the forehead presented the same motif, tiny now and endlessly repeated, where the amusement was merged into tolerance and the sarcasm into sadness.

Rain had chosen as part of the background one of the rugs which, as it seemed to her, spoke the theme again. In some obscure way this patterned surface continued too to be expressive of the character of the sitter, with his passionate interest in all-over decoration. Rain selected a noble Shíráz, of a more intense golden shade, not unlike the colour in which she proposed to paint the old man’s face, and wherein the curve occurred again, formalized into a recurrent flower. This rug, which was the same one which Rain had been studying when William Mor first beheld her, she had persuaded Demoyte to move, exchanging its position with another one so as to have it in the picture. He had done this with many complaints.

Rain was aware of the dangers of her plan. She was not especially worried at the possibility of depth and space being sacrificed to decoration. That was a risk which had to be run in any case - and she found in practice that if she thought about decoration first, and then forgot it and thought about depth, the thing would usually work out. It was rather that this particular motif, combined with the colour scheme which seemed to be imposing itself, was a somewhat sweet one and might soften the picture too much. To counteract it she would rely upon the sheer mass and strength of the head - that would be her most difficult task - and upon the powerful thickness of the neck. The hands and the objects upon the table would have to play their part too, especially the hands. Rain did not yet see this very clearly. The treatment of the window was also to some extent problematic. She was tempted to paint the trees in a stylized and curly manner, but suspected that this was a false instinct. Something different must be done with the trees, something rather austere. What she could not bring herself to sacrifice was the idea of putting in the neo-Gothic tower of the school in the top left-hand corner, rising into the sky with a fantastic flourish. The sky itself would be pallid, cooling down the rest of the picture, so far as was consistent with a strong light in the room. Demoyte himself would be looking back, away from the window, his glance not quite meeting that of the spectator.