Iris Murdoch - The Sandcastle

She said, ‘Would you mind taking the ladder back to the studio? You could leave it just outside in the yard.’ She picked up the jacket of her dress, which had been lying on the grass, and drew it on.

Mor stood as she spoke, his hands hanging down, looking at her unsmiling as if his eyes would burn her. He had heard the beating of her heart.

She hesitated, looking down, her hand involuntarily held to her breast. Then she said, ‘I’m so sorry.’ Then she turned and ran away very quickly into the wood.

Mor did not attempt to follow her. He stood for a moment, leaning with one arm upon the step-ladder. Then, like one who is fainting, he sat upon the ground.

Chapter Ten

THE day of the House Match was, as everyone had predicted, a fine day. The heat wave had been lasting now for more than a month. The sun shone from a cloudless sky upon the cricket field, which was tanned to a pale brownish colour except where in the centre assiduous watering had kept the pitch a bright green. Mor was standing behind the double row of deck-chairs near the pavilion. He was in his shirt sleeves and suffering considerably from the heat. He would have liked to go away anywhere into the shade, preferably into the darkness. He would have liked to sleep. But he had to be there, to show himself, to walk and talk as if everything were perfectly ordinary.

Not that Mor was unmoved by the House Match. An irrational excitement always surrounded this ritual. Even the masters were touched by it; and this year Mor found himself almost excessively upset. He could hardly bear to watch the game. His own house were fielding. They had been batting in the morning and early afternoon and had put up a total of a hundred and sixty-eight. Prewett’s were now batting, and one of the two batsmen who had been in now for some time was Donald Mor, who had gone in first wicket down. Donald was playing extremely well, with style and with force, and two fours which he had recently hit had won prolonged applause. He had made twenty-three, and looked as if he was settling in. Prewett’s total stood at fifty-two for one.

Jimmy Carde had just come on to bowl. Carde was attached to Mor’s house by an arrangement whereby the scholars were, for certain purposes, distributed among the other houses. In effect, this merely meant that they played games for these houses and sometimes travelled with them on expeditions. Carde was a rather ostentatious fast bowler, with a long run and a good deal of flourishing and bounding. The ball came down the pitch like a thunderbolt when launched by Carde, but not always very straight. Mor watched him bowl once to Donald. Then he turned away his head. He was moved by the spectacle of his son, and his identification with him was at that moment considerable.

Mor began to mooch along slowly behind the deck-chairs. He was feeling extremely unhappy. He looked across the field to where the housing estate lay spread out along the far boundary, a sprawling conglomeration of bright red boxes. He looked back over his shoulder towards the wood. It looked cool and dark. Mor wondered if he could decently escape, and decided that he couldn’t. A burst of clapping arose, and he looked round to see that Donald had just driven the ball past cover point for another four. Donald s success was obviously pleasing to the school. He was standing now in the middle of the pitch, conferring with his fellow batsman. Carde came down and said something to them and they both laughed. Mor mooched onwards, watched as he passed by boys anxious to descry whether his loyalties at that moment were with his house or with his son.

The House Match, which was the final in a knock-out contest, normally lasted for two days, but it was the first day which was the great occasion; it ended with a dinner given by the Headmaster to the housemasters, a festival which under Evvy’s consulship had reached an unprecedented degree of dreariness. Mr Baseford, who was a man who liked his bottle, had tried to coach Evvy into making something of this dinner, so far with little success, and now Baseford was away Mor did not care enough to try to continue his work. In the morning and afternoon, parents and other visitors were not encouraged to appear, although a few did sometimes turn up. The match was kept as a domestic occasion, the two lines of deck-chairs being occupied mainly by masters and by their families if any, and a few local friends. The School lounged along the edge of the wood, half in and half out of the shade, wearing the floppy canvas sun hats which St Bride’s boys affected in the summer, or else crowded near the pavilion within talking distance of the batting side. Mor judged that almost every body must be present. The crowd by the wood was especially dense. Occasionally a soft murmur arose from it, or the voice of a boy was heard far back under the trees, but mostly there was complete silence except for the intermittent patter of applause.

Mr Everard was sitting in one of the deck-chairs in the front row talking to Hensman, who was always the hero of this particular day. Prewett was just emerging from the pavilion. Tim Burke, who was present as usual on Mor’s invitation, was also sitting in the front row. He seemed in good spirits, looking slightly bronzed and healthier than usual, and was talking over his shoulder to one of the Sixth Form boys. Tim always got on well with the boys. Mor decided that it was about time he went back to Tim or else sat down near the wood, but he did nothing about it. On this occasion no women were present. Nan, whom duty would have constrained to come, was away, and Mrs Prewett, who was an enthusiastic cricket fan, was at home suffering from a touch of sunstroke. Mor looked round the edge of the field and sighed. He wished the day was over.

It was now five days since Nan’s departure and since the extraordinary scene in the wood. Since that time, Mor had not met Rain, nor had he made any attempt to meet her. She on her part had equally avoided him. He had caught not even a glimpse of her in the intervening days. Mor had gone to bed that night in a state of dazed and blissful happiness such as he could not remember having ever experienced before. He woke on the following morning in despair. He was ready then to attribute his outburst to a sudden relaxing of tension connected with Nan’s disappearance, to a revengeful anger against Nan for her behaviour, to overworking, to the relentless continuance of the heat wave. Whatever the explanation, it was clear that nothing more must come of this. To have made the declaration at all was insane; he could not think how he could have been so foolish.

He was, in particular, astonished that he could have let himself be so moved and softened merely by putting to himself the idea that he was in love. It seemed almost as if this phrase in itself had done the damage. Yet he knew perfectly that the notion of being in love, which was all very well for boys in their twenties, could have no possible place in his life. Mor took seriously the obligations imposed by matrimony. At least he supposed he did. He had never really had occasion to reflect on the matter. He had always been scrupulously responsible and serious in everything that related to his wife and children. But it was not so much considerations such as these which made him feel that he had acted wrongly. It was simply the non-existence in his life, as it solidly and in reality was, of any place for an emotion or a drama of this kind. When he had imagined himself to be swayed by an overwhelming passion he had been a man in a dream. Now he had awakened from the dream.

It was not a happy awakening. Mor was tormented by the thought that he had startled Rain, perhaps shocked her, and might, for a while, be contributing to make her unhappy, or at least anxious. He had no idea what exactly her thoughts and feelings might be; but he was certain that her concern with him could not possibly extend farther than a mild and vaguely friendly interest. That being so, his outburst and subsequent withdrawal were not likely to cause her any serious suffering. At worst, there would be a certain amount of embarrassment at such few inevitable social encounters as might remain to be got through before she went away for good. All the same, it grieved Mor to think that he had subjected her to this unpleasant experience. Then he reflected also upon their previous tête-à-tête, and concluded that really Rain must have a very poor view of him indeed; and he was tempted to write her a note of apology. He resisted this temptation. The idea of writing to her was at once suspiciously attractive, and Mor had been made wary by his earlier experience of letter-writing. To write would merely be to add yet another act to a drama which had better simply terminate at once. He would just be silent and absent and hope that Rain would understand.