Iris Murdoch - The Sandcastle

The organ was playing a cheerful march and the boys were filing out of the chapel. Mor looked up, but he was too late to see Donald go. The truth, had he told Rain the truth? He had not spoken about the children. But what was there to say? Mor turned and began to shamble along towards the other door, close behind Prewett’s back. The music ended abruptly, and he heard his own footsteps shuffling unrhythmically in the direction of the exit. He got outside. He would give the others a little while to disperse and then he would make unobtrusively for the place of meeting. He wandered a short way down the hill and hung about on the edge of the wood.

He had deliberately given Rain the impression that his marriage was a complete failure, a wash-out, something that was already breaking up, quite independently of her arrival. He had, he knew, been anxious, very anxious, that she should think this, lest she should suddenly decide to go away. He wanted to ease her mind and to relieve her scruples. Had he in doing so exaggerated the situation? It was true that Nan had often said to him in the past - why do we go on? And he had always brushed this cry aside. But he had believed that Nan was not serious. Then it had suited him to believe that Nan was not serious. Now it suited him to believe that she was serious. Where was the truth?

Perhaps, indeed, Nan is not serious, Mor thought. But that isn’t the point. As far as Nan is concerned our marriage may be solid enough. But why shouldn’t it be, for her - since it’s always been an arrangement devised for her convenience? Possibly I too am one who is to decide whether our marriage is solid. And it will not be solid - if I decide to break it. He leaned against a tree, disturbing the ferns with his foot. For the hundredth time he conjured up memories from the past, memories of the long long quarrels with his wife, from which he would emerge feeling as if every bone in his body had been broken, and she would emerge fresh and smiling, with the familiar mockery upon her lips. But this time the memories would not perform their task. Mor no longer felt any anger. Instead he saw again, clear as in a photograph, the look which he had received from Donald in the chapel. He closed his eyes. Oh God, what a mess he had made of it all. Only one thing was dear. He would not surrender Rain. The prospect of doing this, when he came to contemplate it, as many times in every day as he forced himself to do so, was like the prospect of cutting off his own arm at the shoulder with a blunt knife.

A long time had passed. Mor looked at his watch. He was almost late. He turned and began to walk through the wood in the direction of the squash courts. Now that the heat wave had broken, the weather was pleasantly warm and cloudy. A scent of moist sand and moss was rising from the crisp path beneath his feet and small white clouds, seen for a moment between coniferous branches, were tumbling down in the direction of the valley. Mor began to wonder where he would go with Rain that afternoon. They could go away somewhere in the car, somewhere a long way off, London perhaps, or perhaps over the top of the downs to the coast, to the sea. So slowly and reassuringly the idea of her took possession of his mind. She drew him. He quickened his pace.

As he went, his path crossed another path which led down the hill from Prewett’s house. Here some of the younger boys were padding about, dressed in bathing wraps and rubber shoes, bound for the swimming pool. When they saw Mor they shouted ‘Good afternoon, sir!’ and stood aside to let him pass. With a hasty salute he hurried across and plunged into the deeper wood, leaving the path now, and ran down the hill through the dragging bracken and the brambles until he saw close to him through the trees the pale rough-cast walls of the squash courts. The building was plain and oblong with an entrance at each end and a pointed glass roof. Within, it consisted simply of the six adjacent courts with the corridor which joined them, and a narrow overhanging gallery for spectators. Mor came running across the open grass, swung in through the door, and straight into the first court.

A person was standing there; but it was not Rain. It was Bledyard. It took Mor a second to recognize him and another to conclude that he was not there by chance. They looked at each other in silence. Mor waited for Bledyard to speak. Bledyard was dressed in his Sunday clothes, a black suit and an unusually clean shirt. He looked at Mor from under his eyebrows. He seemed a little embarrassed. Mor was panting from his run and leaned back against the dirty green wall of the court. Once the first shock was over he felt strangely little surprise at seeing Bledyard there. It was all part of the madness of the present time.

Bledyard said at last, ‘I sent her away.’

‘You sent her away?’ said Mor. He almost laughed at the impudence of it. ‘How dare you do that? She’s not a child.’

‘Well, you know you know she is a child,’ said Bledyard.

‘Which way did she go?’ said Mor. ‘I regret that I can’t stay to tell you just what I think of this perfectly idiotic interference.’

‘I have things to say to you,’ said Bledyard.

‘I have no time to listen to you,’ said Mor. They stood for a moment, Mor glaring and Bledyard squinting at the floor. Mor made another impatient movement. He was extremely angry and upset and anxious to go to find Rain, wherever she might be, distressed no doubt by the unspeakable Bledyard. However, he was also rather curious about what Bledyard was up to. He still hesitated.

‘I want to talk to you about the things you are doing now,’ Bledyard, ‘to your wife and Miss Carter.’

‘Suppose you mind your own goddamn business!’ said Mor. He was trembling. Bledyard’s impertinence was almost beyond belief. Yet it was not as impertinence that Mor felt these words.

‘I think that you should reflect reflect carefully,’ said Bledyard, ‘before you proceed any further.’ He was looking directly at Mor now. He was no longer embarrassed.

‘I know it’s Sunday, Bledyard,’ said Mor, ‘but one sermon is enough. You speak of matters of which you know nothing whatever.’

Over their heads, upon the green glass roof of the court, birds were moving to and fro, their shadows flickering, scratching on the glass. A sudden din of shouts and splashes from near at hand announced that the juniors had hurled themselves into the swimming pool. The birds flew away.

‘I have to bear witness,’ said Bledyard, ‘and say that I think you are acting wrongly.’ He stood very straight, his hands hanging down, his eyes wide open and bulging, looking at Mor.

Mor knew now that he could not go away. He regretted it deeply. He knew too that he could not fend Bledyard off with anger and indignation. ‘I seem to remember your saying not so long ago,’ he said, ‘that human beings should not judge one another.’

‘Sometimes,’ said Bledyard, ‘it is unavoidably our duty to attempt to attempt some sort of judgement — and then the suspension of judgement is not charity but the fear of being judged in return.’

‘All right, all right,’ said Mor. ‘Your interference is absurdly impudent and self-righteous. But I’m insane enough at the moment to be willing to hear what you have to tell me.’ Something in the seriousness of Bledyard’s manner, combined with the extremity in which he now continuously felt himself to be, made him engage the discussion on Bledyard’s own terms. He added, ‘Let me say at once that I doubt if my conduct is defensible on any front.’

The latter showed no surprise. He replied, ‘That is a very strong position, Mr Mor! The point is not to lament or cry out mea maxima culpa , but rather to do the thing the thing that is right.’