Iris Murdoch - The Sandcastle

Nan refused to leave her point. ‘You’re so simple-minded, Bill. You think that reactionaries consider all women to be stupid, and so progressives must consider all women to be clever! I’ve got no time for that sort of sentimental feminism. Your dear Mr Everard has got it too. Did I tell you that he wants me to make an after-dinner speech at that idiotic dinner?’ There was to be a ceremonial dinner, at a date not yet arranged, to honour the presentation to the school of the portrait of Mr Demoyte.

‘Yes, he told me,’ said Mor. ‘I hope you will. You’d make a good speech.’

No, I wouldn’t,‘ said Nan. ’I’d just make myself and you look ridiculous. I told Evvy so. He really is an ass. Men of his generation have such romantic ideas about female emancipation. But if his idea of the free society is women making after-dinner speeches, he’d better find someone else to cooperate with. He told me to “think it over”. I just laughed at him. He’s pathetic.‘

‘You ought to try,’ said Mor. ‘You complain about the narrowness of your life, and yet you never take the chance to do anything new or different.’

‘If you think my life would be made any less, as you charmingly put it, “narrow” by my making a fool of myself at that stupid dinner,’ said Nan, ‘I really cannot imagine what conception you have of me at all.’ The two-fifteen bell for the first afternoon lesson could be heard ringing beyond the trees.

‘I wish you hadn’t stopped your German,’ said Mor. ‘You haven’t done any for months, have you?’

Mor had hoped to be able to educate his wife. He had always known that she was intelligent. He had imagined that she would turn out to be talented. The house was littered with the discarded paraphernalia of subjects in which he had hoped to interest her: French grammars, German grammars, books of history and biography, paints, even a guitar on which she had strummed a while but never learnt to play. It irritated Mor that his wife should combine a grievance about her frustrated gifts with a lack of any attempt to concentrate. She deliberately related herself to the world through him only and then disliked him for it. She had few friends, and no occupations other than housework.

‘Don’t go out of your way to annoy me,’ said Nan. ‘Haven’t you got a lesson at two-fifteen?’

‘It’s a free period,’ said Mor, ‘but I ought to go and do some correcting. Is that Felicity?’

‘No, it’s the milkman,’ said Nan. ‘I suppose you’d like some coffee?’

‘Well, maybe,’ said Mor.

‘Don’t have it if you’re indifferent,’ said Nan; ‘it’s expensive enough. In fact, you weren’t really thinking about my German. You’re still stuffed up with those dreams that Tim Burke put into you. You imagine that it’s only my narrowmindedness that stops you from being Prime Minister!’

Tim Burke was a goldsmith, and an old friend of the Mor family. He was also the chairman of the Labour Party in a neighbouring borough, where he had been trying to persuade Mor to become the local candidate. It was a safe Labour seat. Mor was deeply interested in the idea.

‘I wasn’t thinking about that,’ said Mor, ‘but you are timid there too.’ He was shaken more deeply than he yet liked to admit by his wife’s opposition to this plan. He had not yet decided how to deal with it.

‘Timid!’ said Nan. ‘What funny words you use! I’m just realistic. I don’t want us both to be exposed to ridicule. My dear, I know, it’s attractive, London and so on, but in real life terms it means a small salary and colossal expenses and absolutely no security. You don’t realize that one still needs a private income to be an M.P. You can’t have everything, you know. It was your idea to send Felicity to that expensive school. It was your idea to push Don into going to Cambridge.’

‘He’ll get a county grant,’ Mor mumbled. He did not want this argument now. He would reserve his fire.

‘You know as well as I do,’ said Nan, ‘that a county grant is a drop in the ocean. He might have worked with Tim. He might have knocked around the world a bit. And if he learns anything at Cambridge except how to imitate his expensive friends — ’

‘He’ll do his military service,’ said Mor. In persuading Donald to work for the University Mor had won one of his rare victories. He had been paying for it ever since.

‘The trouble with you, Bill,’ said Nan, ‘is that for all your noisy Labour Party views you’re a snob at heart. You want your children to be ladies and gents. But anyhow, quite apart from the money, you haven’t the personality to be a public man. You’d much better get on with writing that school textbook.’

‘I’ve told you already,’ said Mor, ‘it’s not a textbook.’ Mor was writing a book on the nature of political concepts. He was not making very rapid progress with this work, which had been in existence now for some years. But then he had so little spare time.

‘Well, don’t get so upset,’ said Nan. ‘There’s nothing to get upset about. If it’s not a textbook, that’s a pity. School textbooks make money. And if we don’t get some extra money from somewhere we shall have to draw our horns in pretty sharply. No more Continental holidays, you know. Even our little trip to Dorset this year will be practically ruinous, especially if Felicity and I go down before term ends.’

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, Nan,’ said Mor, ‘do shut up! Do stop talking about money!’ He got up. He ought to have gone into school long ago.

‘When you speak to me like that, Bill,’ said Nan, ‘I really wonder why we go on. I really think it might be better to stop.’ Nan said this from time to time, always in the cool, un-excited voice in which she conducted her arguments with her husband. It was all part of the pattern. So was Mor’s reply.

‘Don’t talk that nonsense, Nan. I’m sorry I spoke in that way.’ It all passed in a second.

Nan rose, and they began together to clear the table.

There was a sound in the hall. ‘Here’s Felicity!’ said Mor, and pushed quickly past his wife.

Felicity shut the front door behind her and put her suitcase down at her feet. Her parents stood looking at her from the door of the dining-room. ‘Welcome home, dear,’ said Nan.

‘Hello,’ said Felicity. She was fourteen, very thin and straight, and tall for her age. The skin of her face, which was very white but covered over in summer with a thick scattering of golden freckles, was drawn tightly over the bridge of her nose and away from her prominent eyes, giving her a perpetual look of inquiry and astonishment. She had her mother’s eyes, a gleaming blue, but filled with a hazier and more dreamy light. Nan’s hair was a dark blond, undulating naturally about her head, the ends of it tucked away into a subdued halo. Felicity’s was fairer and straighter, drawn now into a straggling tail which emerged from under her school hat. In looks, the girl had none of her father. It was Donald who had inherited Mor’s dark and jaggedly curly hair and his bony face, irregular to ugliness.

Felicity took off her hat and threw it in the direction of the hall table. It fell on the floor. Nan came forward, picked up her hat, and kissed her on the brow. ‘Had a good term, dear?’

‘Oh, it was all right,’ said Felicity.

‘Hello, old thing, said Mor. He shook her by the shoulder.

‘Hello, Daddy,’ said Felicity. ‘Is Don here?

‘He isn’t, dear, but he’ll come in tomorrow,’ said Nan. ‘Would you like me to make you lunch, or have you had some?’

‘I don’t want anything to eat,’ said Felicity. She picked up her suitcases. ‘Don’t bother, Daddy. I’ll carry it up.

‘What are your plans for this evening?’ said Nan.