Iris Murdoch - The Sandcastle

Mor threw away his cigarette. It was nearly time for the train to arrive. He went to the end of the platform to wait. His longing to see her drove away all other thoughts. He stood staring down the line. A few minutes passed. Surely the train was late. Mor began to walk up and down, biting his nails. Perhaps something terrible had happened, perhaps there had been an accident. He had a momentary but very detailed vision of Rain lying bleeding in the midst of some piled and twisted wreck. He looked at his watch again. Oh, let the train come! Now at last the train was appearing, there it was after all. It slid smoothly round the curving platform, stopped quickly, and immediately disgorged hundreds of people. They surged towards the barrier. There was no sign of Rain. Perhaps she had been taken ill. Perhaps she had decided not to come. Perhaps she had been offended at something he had said yesterday. Perhaps she had decided to go away altogether. No, there she was, thank God, so small he hadn’t seen her behind that porter. She had seen him and was waving. She was almost at the barrier now. She was here.

‘Oh, Rain — ’ said Mor. He enveloped her in a great embrace. He no longer cared if anyone saw him, he no longer cared about concealment and gossip.

Rain struggled out of his clutches, laughing. She drew him across towards the exit, looking up at him. ‘You’ve been crying, Mor,’ she said. ‘You have a way of crying inside your eyes which is terrible. I would rather you shed tears.’

Mor realized that he had, after his fashion, been crying. ‘Well, you see how feeble I am!’ he said. ‘But it’s all right now.’ They came out of the station and began to walk towards the river.

‘Where shall we go?’ said Mor. He had discovered that Rain knew London far better than he did.

‘First we cross the bridge,’ said Rain, ‘and then I take you and show you something.’ She was pulling him along, as a child pulls an adult. They came on to Waterloo Bridge.

The enormous curving expanse of the Thames opened about them girdled with its pale domes and towers. Above it was a great sky of white bundled clouds. The day was chill, and there was a promise of rain. The river glittered, thrown up into small foam-flecked waves that set the anchored barges rocking. Yet above the tossing water the air was light, and the familiar skyline receded into a luminous haze. They both paused to look, and Mor felt within him the quick stir of excitement which came with the first sight of London, always for him, as in his country childhood, the beautiful and slightly sinister city of possibilities and promises. The wind blew upon them coldly. They looked eastward in silence.

Rain shivered. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘in this place it’s autumn already. I thought the leaves fell in September. But here they begin to fall in July. I don’t think I could live in England all the year.’

Mor shivered too, but not at the wind. He was reminded yet again that Rain was free. Also, he had not been able to keep it out of his consciousness, she was wealthy. She could wonder to herself whether she would spend the winter in England, or go back to the Mediterranean, to Majorca perhaps, or Marrakcsh. At this thought Mor felt a mixture of attraction and revulsion.

Rain read his thoughts. She did not want him to know that she had read them. She wanted somehow to make it clear that she did not envisage any going away that did not include him. She said, ‘I wonder if we shall work together one day, I at my painting and you at your books -’

Mor had told Rain about the half-finished work in political concepts. He had still not said anything to her about the possible candidature. This was all the less necessary since he had almost finally decided now that he would not stand. Whatever happened, probably, he would not stand. He could not bring himself even to think about the Labour Party at the moment. Compared with his present preoccupations, everything to do with the Labour Party paled into triviality. He was surprised to find how little he cared. He must settle the more pressing problem first — and other problems could just look after themselves.

‘You would always be working hard,’ said Mor, ‘but I don’t know how I would make out in a state of’ — he searched for the word - ‘freedom.’ He pictured himself for a moment living in a hotel in Majorca on Rain’s money. He did not find the picture nauseating, merely ludicrous. Of course, there would be nothing like that. When the scandal was over, he would start a school of his own. They had envisaged this and even discussed it. Mor tried to fasten his thoughts upon a possible future. It was not easy. Instead, he kept seeing in his mind’s eye the face of his son. He remembered with a jolt that it was less than ten days to Donald’s chemistry exam.

They reached the other side of the bridge. It was beginning to rain.

‘We go the rest of the way by taxi,’ Rain announced. She seemed unusually cheerful today. The storms of doubt and guilt seemed to have passed over for the moment. Mor thought, if only she were, even for a short while, absolutely certain, I could make my decision; and this thought seemed to bring it nearer. He hailed a taxi, and once inside he held the girl violently in his arms and forgot everything else.

The taxi stopped, at Rain’s request, just off Bond Street, and they got out. Mor looked round vaguely. Rain’s presence made him live so completely from moment to moment that he had not even wondered where they were going. Then he saw a poster beside a door near by. It read: FATHER AND DAUGHTER. An Exhibition of Works by SIDNEY and RAIN CARTER.

Rain watched him, delighted at his surprise, and began to lead him in. Mor felt considerable emotion. Except for the portrait of Demoyte, he had seen no paintings by Rain, or her father, in original or reproduction. He felt both excited and nervous. He began to think at once that he might hate the exhibition. They climbed the stairs.

Rain’s appearance created a mild sensation in the room above. She was known to the girl who sold the catalogues and to two art dealers and the owner of the gallery, who were chatting in the middle of the room. One or two other people, who were looking at the pictures, turned to watch. Mor felt himself for the first time in Rain’s world. He felt intimidated. She introduced him without embarrassment as a friend of Demoyte’s. The art dealers knew about the Demoyte portrait, inquired after it, and said that they would make a point of going down to St Bride’s in the autumn to see it. The notion that connoisseurs would now be making pilgrimages to St Bride’s was strange to Mor. In any ordinary state of mind it would have pleased him. But now to speak of the autumn was like speaking of some time after he would be dead. He listened as a condemned man might listen to his warders chatting.

Rain seemed in no hurry. She exchanged news and gossip with the three experts. They spoke a little of her father’s work, mentioned the recent sale of one of his pictures, and the price. The price astonished Mor. He stood aside in silence, looking at Rain. She seemed now so utterly at her ease, quite unlike the weeping ragamuffin he had seen two nights ago when they had talked for hours about their situation. She could step out of that into this. He marvelled again that she had not gone away altogether. She was dressed today in a dress which he had not seen before, a clinging dress of light grey wool, which made her look taller. As she talked, he watched her bright thrown-back boy’s face, and the extreme roundness of her breasts, displayed now by the close-fitting wool. He noticed that she was wearing high-heeled shoes, instead of the canvas slippers which she usually wore down at St Bride’s. He noticed he handbag and a long black-polished heel tapping rhythmically. He coveted her, and his need for her was suddenly so extreme that he had to turn away.