Iris Murdoch - The Sandcastle

He went straight into the drawing-room, where he found Rain sitting with Demoyte. They were a great deal together in these days. When Mor came in, Rain jumped up and ran to seize the sleeve of his coat, while Demoyte looked on with a sombre expression.

‘This place is turning into a madhouse,’ said Demoyte. He began to gather up his books preparatory to leaving the room.

Don’t go, sir,‘ said Mor.

‘Don’t give me that stuff,’ said Demoyte. ‘I’ll be in the library, if either of you wants to see me, which is unlikely.’

As soon as the door closed, Mor picked Rain up violently in his arms and held her as if to crush their two bodies into one. It seemed as if such an embrace must surely mend all. He set her down at last, protesting and laughing a little.

She led him to a chair, in a way that was now familiar to him, and sat on the ground before him to interrogate him. He had little to tell her.

‘How was it this morning?’ asked Rain.

How could he tell her how it was? This morning he had suffered to extremity. This morning he had been a liar and a traitor. But now he could scarcely remember these things - as perhaps the blessed spirits when they enter paradise very soon forget the horrors of purgatory which seem to have been a dream until they vanished altogether from the memory.

‘This morning was all right, said Mor. He had already told her that there was no news of Donald.

‘Mor,’ said Rain, tugging at his knees, ‘you haven’t - said anything to Nan yet?’

This was the question which Mor had been dreading. ‘No,’ he said.

‘Will you - soon?’ she asked. Her look of tender anxiety made Mor cover his face.

‘Rain,’ he said, ‘I can’t give this blow to Nan just now, just when we’re so worried about Donald. We must wait a little longer.’

‘Mor,’ said Rain, ‘I cannot wait. I know this impatience may be very tiresome or wicked. If it’s wicked, it hardly adds much to the sum of what we’ve already done wrong. But I think we should tell Nan the truth now, even if it is a bad moment.’

‘Why now?’ said Mor. ‘Or are you afraid I’ll change my mind?’ He held her by the chin, and looked into her eyes. He had never known before what it was to converse with someone, reading their eyes the whole time. Angels must know each other in this way, without a barrier.

‘Not that!’ said Rain. ‘Yet I am afraid of something, I don’t know what. I want to bind you to me.’ Her small hands gripped his wrists and tried to shake him.

When Mor saw her intensity and her determination, he felt deep gratitude. He drew her towards him. ‘So you shall, my dearest,’ he said. ‘But you must leave this other matter to me. Now tell me about something else. Have you worked on the picture again?’

‘No,’ said Rain, ‘I haven’t touched it. I feel far too rotten to paint. It’s no good, but it’ll have to stay like that’

The picture had been taken from the easel and was leaning against the wall in the far comer of the room. They both looked at it. It seemed now to Mor a little less good. He even thought he saw dimly what Bledyard had meant. The colossal strength of Demoyte’s over-sized tyrannical head was not really present in the picture - though many of his traits were present, especially a musing thoughtfulness which Mor had not often seen in him, but which he was ready now to believe to be one of his most fundamental moods. It was a gentler and more pensive Demoyte that the picture showed - but also one that was less strong. However, there was no doubt that it was a good portrait.

I’m sorry,‘ said Mor. ’I hate having stopped you from painting.‘

‘Nothing could stop me,’ said Rain, ‘except for a moment!’

‘You know this awful dinner is on Tuesday?’ said Mor.

Rain shuddered. ‘Your wife won’t be there, will she?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ said Mor, ‘but that won’t matter.’

Rain jumped to her feet. ‘I can’t come to the dinner if your wife is there,’ she said, ‘I can’t.’ She was almost crying.

‘Darling,’ said Mor, ‘don’t be foolish. It’ll be awful, but it’s just something we must get through. It’s no madder than everything else is at the moment.’

‘You must tell her at once!’ she said.

‘Rain,’ said Mor, ‘leave it to me, will you?’

Rain was suddenly in tears. He embraced her. ‘I can’t,’ she kept saying, ‘I can’t go to that dinner, I can’t‘

Stop this nonsense,‘ said Mor, ’you must come to the dinner, of course.‘ He added, ’Anything may have happened by then. I may have told Nan everything. As for the dinner, if she doesn’t know the worst she won’t attack you, and if she does she won’t come. So stop crying.‘ But somehow Mor did not believe that he would have told Nan by next Tuesday. There was some date by which he would have told her. But it was not next Tuesday.

Rain sat down on the floor again and went on crying. Mor stroked her hair. He felt a strange diminution of sympathy. He loved her. Now he made her grief. But soon he would make her happiness. Meanwhile, it was he who was to be pitied, he who had to act the murderer and the traitor. Her grief was that of a temporary deprivation. His was a grief for things which would never mend again once they were broken. There would be a new life and a new world. But that which he was about to break would never mend, and he now knew he would never cease to feel the pain of it. Inside all his happiness this pain would remain always intact until his life’s end. He continued to caress her hair.

Chapter Eighteen

IT was Tuesday. The opening date of the chemistry exam had come and gone, but Donald Mor had not come home, nor had any news been received which might provide the slightest clue to his whereabouts. Mor had not told Nan that he intended to leave her. It was the day of the presentation dinner. Rain was to be present, of course; and Nan had not changed her mind either about coming or about replying to the toast.

The dinner was to take place in the masters’ dining-room at St Bride’s, and its organization had for some time now been producing alarm and confusion among the school staff who were rarely called upon to stage manage anything more magnificent than a stand-up tea for Speech Day. The masters’ dining-room, like so many things at St Bride’s, was misnamed. No one at that institution ever dined in that room or elsewhere, since the relevant meal was known, not at all inappropriately, as supper - and in fact the room in question was not normally used for eating in at all, but had become the meeting place of the Board of Governors, the Sixth Form Essay Society, and the Games Committee. To transform this grim chamber into the setting for a festive scene was not likely to be easy. Great efforts had however been made, inspired largely by the ubiquitous Hensman, whose enthusiasm was the more touching as he was not to be present at the dinner, since after much discussion it had been decided that only senior masters were to be invited in addition to the Governors.

Mor was in evening-dress. This was, for him, an extremely rare experience, and he felt very odd. He had bought himself, especially for the occasion, a soft white evening-shirt to replace the errant carapace by which he had been tortured in the past; but he still felt at wearing these unusual clothes an intense discomfort which was caused partly by general embarrassment and partly by the discovery that he must have grown stouter since the last occasion. The trousers met, but only just. Fortunately the old-fashioned jacket could be left unbuttoned. For all that, he thought that he looked well, and he reflected sadly that it would, if things had been different, have been a pleasant jest to show himself to Rain in this disguise. This thought shocked him by its lightness, and he turned quickly back to his griefs. He was in a state of increasing disquiet about the fate of his son. His imagination had begun at last to be busy with visions of Donald bitterly resolving never to return, Donald suffering from loss of memory, Donald suffering from hunger and despair, Donald derelict, Donald dead. These fears, by a strange chemistry of the afflicted spirit, slightly eased his other tensions by making it the more obvious that nothing could be told to Nan until after the reappearance of the boy.