Iris Murdoch - The Sandcastle

Suddenly she heard movements in the woodland not far in front of her, and then through the leaves she detected the flash of a white shirt. Felicity fell to the ground, and after lying still for a moment began to crawl forward. Liffey, who had appeared again, went before her, waving her black ears magically to silence any sounds which Felicity might make. This was just as well, as there was a good deal of bramble and crackly fern to be slithered through before Felicity could see what manner of creature she was stalking. At last a lucky vista gave her the view she wanted. Through a tunnel of green she could see, as in a crystal, a man sitting on the ground with his legs drawn up in front of him. He seemed to be alone. A book with wide white pages lay beside him. He had probably been sketching. He had laid the book aside now and was staring straight ahead of him, his arms clasped round his knees. She watched him for a long time, nearly five minutes, during which his attitude did not vary. He was a strange-looking man with big hypnotic eyes and rather long hair. She thought that she had seen him before. After a while she remembered that he was the art master. She would have taken him for sure as a manifestation of Angus, except that Angus never appeared in the guise of people that she knew.

His extreme stillness began at last to frighten her. She was reminded of stories of yogis and magicians. She began to wriggle backwards out of the tunnel of fern; and when she was able to stand upright she ran away with careful silent strides diagonally across the middle of the wood, regardless of peril. She had managed by now to frighten herself thoroughly, and wanted only to get to Donald’s room as quickly as possible. As she neared Prewett’s, Liffey made off among the trees. In a moment Felicity emerged at speed from some sheltering bushes and shot in through a small green back door into Prewett’s house. She paused a moment to listen. No pursuit and no sounds of imminent danger. She was in a disused cloakroom, which now served to store boys’ trunks and cricket gear. Distant sounds of laughter and banging echoed through the house. There was a stale smell of wood and damp concrete and old perspiration and sports equipment. Felicity moved forward into a dark space out of which some wooden stairs rose into an equally dark region above. She fled up these - hid while voices near by became suddenly loud and then died away - then shot like a hare down the adjoining corridor and straight in through the door of Donald’s room.

Donald was lying full length upon the table. The window was open, and one white clad foot was dangling somewhere outside. The other foot swung nonchalantly to and fro over the end of the table. His head was propped up on some books and a cricket pad. He was not alone. Underneath the table lay Jimmy Carde. Jimmy’s head was flat upon the floor and his feet were propped up on the arm of a chair. One hand was dug behind the back of his neck, while the other hand had hold of Donald’s ankle. At Felicity’s violent entrance they both jumped, saw who it was, and resumed their former postures.

Felicity was very disappointed at not finding Donald alone. She had never been able to make out Jimmy Carde; and since he had become her brother’s best friend a special hostility had existed between them.

‘Fella,’ said Donald, ‘I have told you six times, and must I tell you again, that you should not come in here to see me.’

‘No one spotted me,’ said Felicity. ‘I was very clever, the way I came through the wood. I spied on your art master. He was sitting there like fakir in a sort of trance.’

‘Bledyard will put the evil eye on you,’ said Jimmy Carde. ‘He stared at the school cat once all through chapel. It was sitting outside the window. And it died of convulsions three days later.’

Felicity shivered. ‘He didn’t look at me,’ she said, ‘though I looked at him.’

She began to wander round Donald’s study to see if anything had changed. The room was small and papered with a flowery wallpaper which had faded to a universal colour of weak tea. A small mantelshelf was painted chocolate brown, and a matching brown cupboard contained Donald’s bed, which was folded up during the day. A rickety bookcase with a chintz curtain contained Donald’s chemistry books, a number of thrillers, some books on climbing, and Three Men in a Boat. A table, a chair, and a carpet with a hole in it completed the room. Small pictures and photographs were dotted about at intervals on the walls, fixed by drawing-pins into the wallpaper. The position of these pictures was compulsory, since some previous inhabitant of the room had decorated it, shortly before he left, with a pungent and ingenious series of obscene drawings. In order to preserve these masterpieces for posterity it was the duty of each succeeding incumbent, enforced in case of need by the prefects of Prewett’s house, to pin up pictures in the appropriate spots and see that they stayed in place.

Felicity studied Donald’s pictures. She had not been told what lay behind them. She looked with interest, since she had not been in Donald’s room since some time in the previous term. A photograph of a lioness with her cubs. A coloured photograph of Tensing on top of Everest. A small framed reproduction of the Snake Charmer of Henri Rousseau, donated by the parents. A coloured advertisement from the New Yorker showing some very fantastic-looking cars. A photo of the St Bride’s second cricket eleven. That was new. Donald had only just made the second eleven. On the mantelpiece stood a photograph of the parents, with the glass cracked. Beside it was an enormous pocket-knife with several of its blades open, and a half-eaten doughnut.

‘Can I eat the rest of this?’ said Felicity Permission was given. After all, there didn’t seem to be much that was new.

‘Have you anything else to eat?’ said Felicity. ‘I’m starving after that trek.’

Donald removed himself lazily from the table and began to dig in a black tin box which stood in the corner. Jimmy Carde got up, stretched, jumped on the table and squatted there, bumping up and down on his heels and drumming on the table top, in the rhythm of a recent dance tune. Felicity wished that he would go away.

‘Here’s a cake,’ said Donald. ‘We’re not very flush at the moment.’

‘That’s an ancient British cake,’ said Carde. ‘It was part of Boadicea’s rations for her troops.’

Felicity tried it. It tasted rather like that. She ate it all the same.

‘How are the parents?’ asked Donald.

‘Mummy’s in a fuss about going away,’ said Felicity, her mouth full. ‘I haven’t seen much of Daddy.’ She began to poke around in a coagulated mass of things on top of the bookcase. ‘What’s that?’ She held up a long silver object.

‘That’s a supersonic whistle,’ said Donald.

‘Supersonic!’ said Felicity. ‘What’s it for, then?’

‘People use it for calling dogs,’ said Donald. ‘It makes such a high note that only dogs can hear it and humans can’t.’

‘That’s silly,’ said Felicity. ‘Why not call the dogs in the ordinary way? Of course, if it were a supersonic dog like -’ She stopped, since the existence of the infernal Liffey was a secret between herself and her brother, and putting the whistle her lips blew into it hard.

A thin piercing sound emerged. ‘Oh, it’s sonic!’ said Felicity disappointed.

‘You have to blow harder,’ said Jimmy Carde, ‘and then the sound disappears.’

Felicity blew harder, the note rose higher and was succeeded by silence. ‘How do I know it hasn’t gone wrong?’ she said suspiciously.

‘It makes people neurotic,’ said Carde. ‘They hear it without knowing and it makes them feel queer. Chaps used to do it at the Nuremburg rallies, to demoralize the other chaps.’