Iris Murdoch - The Sandcastle

‘I will paint one for you, dearest,’ said Rain. ‘I will paint many, many. I will paint pictures of you. I will paint you over and over again.’

Mor saw the years ahead. The room was full of pictures of himself and Rain. Himself reading upon the terrace at evening, working in the drawing-room in the noon light, walking in the wilderness between the dusty leaves of the bushes where there was no path. Rain, slowly losing her boyish looks, the tense and precious simplicity of her childhood changing into the serenity of middle age, and so picture behind picture away into the farthest future. Rain with her brush in her hand, looking through a thousand canvases towards the end of life.

He said nothing. Rain was looking up at him. He met her eyes without smiling, yearning for her to decide his fate.

‘Is there no picture here of your mother?’ Mor said at last.

‘No,’ said Rain. ‘My father hardly ever painted her.’

They moved a pace or two and Mor wondered to himself how much that missing face would have told him. He wanted to ask a question, but Rain interrupted.

‘This is rather a curiosity,’ she said, pointing to a large canvas which hung at the end of the room. Here both the faces appeared. Rain’s father sat behind a table which was strewn with books and papers, facing the spectator. Upon the left side of the table, propped up upon it, was a large gilt mirror, in which could be seen the reflection of Rain and of the canvas which she was painting, whereon the same picture appeared again, severely foreshortened. Rain’s father was wearing an open-necked shirt. His close-cropped dark hair fell in a silky fringe along his brow, his narrow brooding face looked intently upward towards his daughter, and one hand rested upon the frame of the mirror wherein was seen the reflection of her face, equally intently looking down on him. The heads were close together and the resemblance between them was marked and touching.

‘That’s extraordinary!’ said Mor.

‘Not very successful, I’m afraid,’ said Rain. ‘I must try again sometime with you.’ She spoke in the most ordinary tone, her attention still upon the picture.

Mor thought: she has decided. She has decided. He began to want to get away from the pictures. Without words they turned and went slowly down the stairs. As his heels bit into the thick carpet Mor felt the pain of the transition, back to the cold rainy autumnal afternoon and the roaring traffic outside the door. Here all was the same as before, chilly, noisy, ugly, without space, without leisure, without peace. He looked sideways at Rain as they came out of the door. No, she was not quite the same; a new light fell upon her from the pictures, she was strengthened and made radiant by her past. All the different faces that he had seen, from the young girl with the plaits to the posed beauty in the flowering dress dwelt in her face now, giving it suddenly a new authority and a new age. He thought too how much at this moment she resembled her father, except that what in him appeared as a sort of self-contained moroseness appeared in her as a pedantic and dignified serenity, which combined with her rounded head and fresh face of a child was absurd and affecting. Mor was overcome with emotion.

It was raining steadily. Mor had no overcoat. Rain had a small umbrella swinging over her arm. She handed it to him in silence and he opened it above them both. Arm in arm they made their way back to Bond Street.

‘Tea at Fortnum and Mason,’ Rain decreed.

Tea at Fortnum and Mason! Mor was suddenly filled with a deep and driving joy which furrowed through his body with such force that he did not at first know that it was indeed joy that shook him so. She had decided. He had decided too. He could do no other. ‘Rain — ’ he said.

She looked up, squeezing his arm, bright-eyed and confident. ‘I know, she said.

The rain began to fall faster. ‘I’ll tell you something,’ said Mor. ‘I’m not sure that I could really live outside England, not all the time, not even most of the time.’

‘Dear Mor, then we’ll live in England!’ said Rain.

She clutched his arm more tightly. The rain began to pelt down with spitting violence. They started to run as quickly as they could in the direction of Fortnum’s.

Chapter Sixteen

IT was the following day. That evening Bledyard was to give his famous art lecture, and Rain had been persuaded by Mr Everard that she really must be present — especially as the lecture, on this occasion, was to be on the topical subject of portrait painting. Mor usually cut Bledyard’s lecture, but this time, as Rain was coming, of course he would come too. Since he had finally and definitely made up his mind, the world had been completely altered. A tremendous energy, which had previously consumed itself in perpetuating his indecision and conjuring up all kinds of catastrophic fantasy, was transformed into the purest joy. Mor now felt an intense benevolence towards his colleagues, including Bledyard, and he found himself positively looking forward to the lecture as if it were to be the most enormous treat. He would be sitting in the same room as Rain, and as Bledyard talked he could think about her, and see again the extraordinary and moving images of the previous day which still hovered for him about her head, like a cloud of angels surrounding the madonna.

Mor had had a bad hour during the afternoon when he had drafted a very frank letter to Nan. Even this task had been lightened, however, by the extreme relief which he felt at finally knowing what the truth was and being able to tell it. When he had completed the draft he roughly sketched a letter to Tim Burke explaining briefly that after all he would not be able to stand as a Labour candidate. Concerning this, Mor felt another quite separate and deep regret. But he gave himself the same answer. He had won a great prize. He was willing to pay for it. When he had done, there was no time left to copy the drafts, so he put them away in a drawer. They would go on the morrow.

The one matter to which he had not yet let his thoughts fully turn was the matter of the children. When he felt him self inclined to think about them he told himself: whichever way I move, something must be destroyed - and the destruction may well be less than I fear. After all, the children are nearly grown-up now. We cannot lose each other altogether. But so far as he could he prevented himself from considering the children. He had made up his mind, and there was no point in indulging in painful self-laceration which had no longer any relevance to the making of a decision. He had suggested in the draft letter to Nan that nothing be said to Donald or Felicity until after Donald’s exam. He had considered the possibility of delaying his letter to Nan until after this date - but his anxiety to tell her what he had decided was too intense. He felt, still, that his achievement was precarious and must be fixed and established at once. Towards Nan he felt no more of his former anger, only a dull feeling of hostility, mixed with pity and regret. He knew that she would be very surprised. She would hardly be able to imagine that he would turn against her decisively at last. At the thought of her surprise he felt a very slight satisfaction which faded into a sense of shame. Then pity began to take possession of his mind — and as soon as he was able to he brought the full focus of his attention back towards Rain.

Bledyard’s lecture took place after supper and was to be given, as usual, in the Gymnasium, which was easier to black out than the hall. In fact, it would be dark soon after the lecture started, but it was worth blocking out the twilight for the sake of the first few slides. It was to be hoped that the epidiascope would not go wrong again, and that the number of slides inserted upside down would be kept to a minimum. Somehow these things always seemed to happen at Bledyard’s lecture, when their tendency to bring about total chaos was especially strong. The most trivial incident, which on any other occasion would pass unnoticed by the School, on this one was a cue for hysterics. The School came to Bledyard’s lecture as to a festival or orgy, in the highest of spirits and ready to be set off by anything. The atmosphere was infectious. Mor found himself caught by it and looking forward in a crazy way to the enlivening of proceedings by all kinds of absurdities.