Iris Murdoch - The Sandcastle

‘I’ve just arrived, said Felicity. ’I haven’t got any plans.‘

She began to mount the stairs. Her parents watched her in silence. A moment later they heard her bedroom door shut with a bang.

Chapter Two

IT was a fine dear evening. Mor closed the door of the Sixth Form room and escaped down the corridor with long strides. A subdued din arose behind him. He had just been giving a lesson to the history specialists of the Classical Sixth. Donald, who was in the Science Sixth, had of course not been present. It was now two years since, to Mor’s relief, his son‘ had ceased to be his pupil. Mor taught history, and occasionally Latin, at St Bride’s. He enjoyed teaching, and knew that he did it well. His authority and prestige in the school stood high; higher, since Demoyte’s departure, than that of any other master. Mor was well aware of this too, and it consoled him more than a little for failures in other departments of his life.

Now, as he emerged through the glass doors of Main School into the warm sunshine, a sense of satisfaction filled him, which was partly a feeling of work well done and partly the anticipation of a pleasant evening. On an ordinary day there would be the long interval till supper-time to be lived through, passed in reading, or correcting, or in desultory conversation with Nan. This was normally the most threadbare part of the day. But this evening there would be the strong spicy talk of Demoyte and the colour and beauty of his house. If he hurried, Mor thought, he would be able to have one or two glasses of sherry with Demoyte before Nan arrived. She made a point of arriving late, to the perpetual irritation of Handy. Then there would be wine with the meal. Nan never drank alcohol, and Mor did not usually drink it, partly as a lingering result of his teetotaller’s upbringing and partly for reasons of economy, but he enjoyed drinking occasionally with Demoyte or Tim Burke, though he always had an irrational sense of guilt when he did so.

Demoyte lived at a distance of three miles from the school in a fine Georgian house called Brayling’s Close, which he had acquired during his period of office as Headmaster, and which he had left to the school in his will. He had crammed it with treasures, especially Oriental rugs and carpets on the subject of which he was an expert and the author of a small but definitive treatise. Demoyte was a scholar. For his scholarship Mor, whose talents were speculative rather than scholarly, admired him without envy; and for his tough honest obstinate personality and his savage tongue Mor rather loved him: and also because Demoyte was very partial to Mor. The latter often reflected that if one were to have him for an enemy Demoyte would present a very unpleasant aspect indeed. His long period as Headmaster of St Bride’s had been punctuated by violent quarrels with members of the staff, and was still referred to as ‘the reign of terror’. A feeling of security in their job was a luxury which Demoyte had not had the delicacy to allow to the masters of St Bride’s. If the quality of an individual’s teaching declined, that individual would shortly find that Demoyte was anxious for his departure; and when Demoyte wanted something to occur it was usually not long before that thing occurred.

Demoyte had not been easy to live with and he had not been easy to get rid of. He had persuaded the Governors to extend his tenure of power for five years beyond the statutory retiring age - and when that time was up he had only been in duced to retire after a storm during which the school Visitor had had to be called in to arbitrate. Ever since Mor had come to the school, some ten years ago, he had been Demoyte’s lieutenant and right-hand man, the intermediary between the Head and the staff, first unofficially, and later more officially, in the capacity of Second Master. In this particular role, Mor was sincere enough to realize, he had been able to experience the pleasures of absolute power without remorse of conscience. He had mitigated the tyranny; but he had also been to a large extent its instrument and had not infrequently enjoyed its fruits.

Demoyte would have liked Mor to succeed him as Head; but St Bride’s was a Church of England foundation, and at least a nominal faith of an Anglican variety was required by the Governors in any candidate for the Headship. This item Mor could not supply; and a storm raised by Demoyte with the purpose of changing the school statutes on this point, so as to allow Mor to stand, failed of its object. Demoyte himself, Mor supposed, must originally have conformed to the requirement; but by the time Mor first met him his orthodoxy had long ago been worn down into a sort of obstinate gentlemanly conservatism. Under the Demoyte régime not much was heard at St Bride’s about Christianity, beyond such rather stereotyped information as was conveyed by the Ancient and Modem Hymnal; and the boys had to learn about religion, much as they learnt about sex, by piecing together such references to these blush-provoking topics as they could discover for themselves in books. What Demoyte cared about was proficiency in work. This his masters were engaged to produce and sacked for failing to produce; and during his period of office the yearly bag of College scholarships by St Bride’s rose steadily and surely. As for morality, and such things, Demoyte took the view that if a boy could look after his Latin prose his character would look after itself.

Very different was the view taken by Demoyte’s successor, the Reverend Giles Everard, whom Demoyte regarded with unconcealed contempt and always referred to as ‘poor Evvy’. The training of character was what was nearest to Evvy’s heart - and performance in Latin prose he regarded as a secondary matter. His first innovation had been to alter the school prospectus, which had formerly reflected Demoyte’s predilection for star pupils, in such a way as to suggest that now St Bride’s was concerned, not with selecting and cherishing the brilliant boy, but with welcoming and bringing to his humbler maturity, such as it was, the mediocre and even the dim-witted. Demoyte watched these changes with fury and with scorn.

Nan had never taken to Demoyte. This was partly because Demoyte had never taken to her, but she would have disliked him, Mor thought, in any case. Nan hated eccentricity, which she invariably regarded as affectation. She did not, it seemed to Mor, care to conceive that other people might be profoundly different from herself. Nan had, moreover, a tendency to be hostile towards unmarried people of either sex, regarding them as in some way abnormal and menacing; and in Demoyte the sort of bachelor behaviour which made Nan particularly uneasy had developed, through age and through the long exercise of tyrannical power, to the point of outrage. Demoyte was overbearing in conversation and rarely sacrificed wit to tract. Although he was a Tory by habit and conviction, there were few institutions which he took for granted. Marriage was certainly not one of these. In the sacred intimacy of the home Nan was often pleased to refer to ‘our marriage’; but she did not think that this was a subject which, either in particular or in general, could be discussed or even mentioned in the company of strangers - and everyone beyond the family hearth was to her a stranger. Demoyte felt no such delicacy, and would often embarrass Nan by outbursts on the subject of the married state. ‘A married couple is a dangerous machine!’ he would say, wagging a finger and watching to see how Nan was taking it. ‘Marriage is organized selfishness with the blessing of society. How hardly shall a married person enter the Kingdom of Heaven!’ And once, after an occasion when Mor had sharply defended Nan from one of Demoyte’s sarcasms, he had almost turned the pair of them out of the house, shouting, ‘You two may have to put up with each other, but I’m not bound to put up with either of you!’