Iris Murdoch - The Sandcastle

Mor found that he was sitting on the floor, sitting somewhere in the sea of books, and leaning his back against more books. The body of Donald, breathing and unbroken, lay somewhere near him. He stretched out a hand and touched his son’s leg. People were leaning over them both. Someone was offering him brandy. Mor drank a little. His relief was so intense that he was stunned by it. He could see Donald being raised and propped up against the other wall. The boy’s eyes were open and he seemed to be taking in his surroundings. He turned his head and accepted some of the brandy. Bledyard was kneeling somewhere between them and trying to say something.

Donald was sitting more upright now. He drank some more and looked about him. He put his hand to his head. Then after a little while he tried to get up. People were saying soothing things to him. He pushed them aside, and began to stumble to his feet. He stood for a moment, staring about the room, his feet spread wide apart upon the sea of books. Then without warning he made a dive for the door. The boys scattered before him. His recent peril had made him numinous and alarming. He could be heard clattering away down the staircase.

Mor got up. He rubbed his hands over his face. He did not try to follow. Several boys were running down the stairs after Donald. A minute later Rigden, who had stayed beside Mor, and had now mounted one of the chairs by the window, said in an astonished tone, ‘There he goes!’

Mor mounted the other chair and looked out. He saw once again far below the lighted expanse of the playground, scattered with groups of people. Then he saw a running figure. Donald had issued at speed from the door of Main School and was streaking across the asphalt towards the darkness of the drive. The crowd of boys stood there and stared at him. It was a moment before they realized who it was. By then Donald had almost reached the drive. A cry arose from the School. Donald disappeared into the darkness, running fast. Like a pack of hounds, the other boys began to stream after him, shouting incoherently as they ran.

Mor got down from the window. He subsided again on to the floor. Two figures were leaning over him. They were Rigden and Bledyard, who were the only people left in the room. They were saying something. Mor did not know what they were saying. He leaned his head back wearily against the wall and lost his consciousness, half fainting and half falling into an exhausted sleep. In the far far distance now he began to hear the clanging bell of the fire-engine.

Chapter Seventeen

NAN thrust her arm through Mor’s as they began to walk slowly back up the hill, taking the little path that led from the Headmaster’s garden into the wood. It was the end of term. They had just been talking with Mr Everard. It was now four days since the climbing of the tower, and nothing had been seen or heard of Donald since the moment when he ran away across the playground and disappeared into the darkness. The boys who had pursued him as far as the main road had lost him there in the wilderness of fields and waste land on the other side. He had vanished, and there had been no news of him since. After two days of waiting, Mor had asked the help of the police, but without much hope of results. Nan and Felicity had of course returned home at once, and now one of them was always in the house in case the telephone rang. But it did not ring, and Donald’s absence and silence continued.

Jimmy Carde had had a miraculous escape from death. He was saved largely by Mr Everard’s pile of blankets; and was now in hospital with broken ribs, two broken legs, and a fractured skull. He was declared to be in no immediate danger, and likely to recover. Two of the boys who had tried to break his fall were also in hospital with concussion.

Against both Carde and Donald Mor Mr Everard had reluctantly invoked the law that decreed instant expulsion for climbers. He had been so apologetic to Mor about this that the latter had virtually had to make up his mind for him, pointing out that he had no choice but to expel them both. This was grave. What was in a way more grave was that it was now two days before Donald’s chemistry exam was due to start. Everard had told Mor that there would of course be no objection to Donald’s taking the exam at St Bride’s and using the laboratories as he would normally have done. But Mor knew that now his son would not take the examination, and was perhaps deliberately staying in hiding until the date was past. This was very grievous to him; but to think of it in this way a little relieved his more profound anxieties concerning Donald’s well-being.

On the night of the catastrophe Rain and Demoyte came to see Mor at a very late hour in Rain’s car, and wanted to take him back then and there to Brayling’s Close. Mor had refused, since he felt he must stay in his own home in case of telephone messages or in case Donald came back. Rain had cooked him a meal, which he was unable to eat, and had administered a sedative. She and Demoyte persuaded him to go to bed, and then they went away. Since then Mor had seen her frequently, now always at the Close. He had convinced her of what he himself hoped was the truth, that Donald was perfectly well but simply hiding so as to miss his exam. Mor had not yet spoken to Nan about what he and Rain intended to do. He knew that Rain was by now intensely anxious that he should speak; but she had not yet attempted to discuss the matter with him again. Mor found meanwhile that his resolution was unshaken, indeed the stronger for these new troubles. But he had not yet found the moment at which, in the midst of such distresses, he could decently tell his wife that he proposed to leave her.

Mor’s anxiety about Donald was intense. But his anxiety about Rain was equally intense; and he might, even then, have been able to speak decisively to Nan if the latter had given him the slightest chance. Mor knew that what he needed, in order to be able to speak with finality, was a moment of violence. If Nan, by provoking him, or by visiting almost any extreme of emotion, had given him the gift of anger or the sense of extremity, he would have spoken the words which would be fatal. But Nan, as if once more to cross him, had been since her return enormously calm, reasonable, and compliant, doing her best to generate once more that atmosphere of homely ennui which Mor could still remember that he had once found reassuring.

Nan was very worried too about Donald, but she had reasoned it out with Mor that the boy had almost certainly come to no harm, and would reappear after the opening date of the examination. As far as the exam was concerned, Nan was obviously more glad than otherwise that Don would miss it, but she refrained from irritating Mor by saying so. The person who was most genuinely afraid about what might have happened to Donald was Felicity, who busied herself with imagining the worst possible and was continually in tears. Nan vented some of her nervousness upon her daughter, but whether intentionally or not did nothing to upset her husband or to provide the great storm for which he was waiting and on which alone he would have felt himself able to ride.

‘Evvy has been awfully nice, hasn’t he?’ said Nan, still clinging on to Mor’s arm.

The wood was silent and empty. Many of the boys had already gone away on early buses and the rest were hanging about in the playground or the upper drive, waiting to be picked up. Some more charabancs were due at eleven o‘clock to take the West Country contingent to the station.

‘He’s very decent,’ said Mor. ‘Did he say anything special to you before I came?’

Last year’s leaves, and a few that had already floated down from the branches after the recent storm, drifted about under the trees or blew sharply to and fro across the path, striking their ankles. It was a dark windy morning.