Iris Murdoch - The Sandcastle

‘Good night, sir,’ said Mor, ‘and thank you. Good night, Miss Carter.’

‘Good night,’ said Nan. ‘Thank you for the roses.’

‘Good night,’ said Miss Carter.

Nan and Mor were out on the gravel outside the front door. The house glowed at them for a moment from within, and they saw the figures of Demoyte and Miss Carter waving them off. Then the door shut and the light above it went out. Demoyte did not believe in seeing his guests off the premises. Nan waited while in darkness Mor found his bicycle. They started down the drive, Mor pushing the machine. Nan took hold of his arm.

‘Thank heavens that’s over!’ she said, ‘it was rather grizzly, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ said Mor.

‘What did you make of Miss Carter?’ said Nan.

‘Not much,’ said Mor. ‘I found her a bit intimidating. Rather solemn.’

‘She takes herself seriously,’ said Nan. ‘But she’s really a little clown. She obviously gets on swimmingly with Demoyte when no one else is there.’

‘Maybe,’ said Mor, who hadn’t thought of that.

‘You were ages in the garden,’ said Nan. ‘Whatever happened?’

‘Nothing,’ said Mor, ‘absolutely nothing.’

They walked on in silence and turned on to the main road. Mor was reviving in his mind the curious feeling of shock which he had experienced at the top of the stone steps. He found it hard to interpret.

Chapter Three

‘RIGDEN,’ said Mor.

A long silence followed. Mor was taking the Fifth Form Latin class, a chore which sometimes came his way during the absence on sick leave of Mr Baseford, the classics master. The day was the day after Mr Demoyte’s dinner party. It was a hot afternoon, the first period after lunch, a time which Mor hated. A fly buzzed on the window. Twenty boys sat with the Elegies of Propertius open before them. Rigden clearly could make nothing of the line in question.

‘Come on, Rigden,’ said Mor rather wearily, ‘have a bash. You can translate the first word anyway.’

‘ You ,’ said Rigden. He was a slight crazy-looking boy with a small head. He idolized Mor. His inability to please him was one of the tragedies of his school days. He leaned intently over his book.

‘That’s right,’ said Mor, ‘and the second word.’

A yell of uncontrolled laughter went up in the next room. That was Mr Prewett’s mathematics class. Prewett was unhappily quite unable to keep order. Mor knew that keeping order was a gift of nature, but he could not but despise Prewett a little all the same. Mor himself had but to look at the boys and they fell silent.

‘ Only ,’ said Rigden.

‘Yes,’ said Mor, ‘now go on.’

Rigden stared wretchedly at the page. ‘ While it is permitted ,’ he said.

‘ Lucet , you juggins,’ said Mor, ‘not licet . Carde?’

Jimmy Carde was one of Mor’s enemies. He was also the bosom friend of Mor’s son Donald. Mor never felt at ease with Carde.

‘ While there is light ,’ said Carde. He spoke in a casual and superior way, scarcely opening his mouth, as if it were a concession on his part to support these absurd proceedings at all.

‘That’s right,’ said Mor. ‘Now, Rigden, you go on.’

Rigden was beginning to look desperate. He gazed into the book, biting his lip.

‘Get a move on,’ said Mor, ‘we haven’t got all day.’ He sighed, hearing the traffic which murmured away sleepily in the distance. There came back into his consciousness the thought, which had not been far absent from it throughout the lesson, that at a quarter past three he was to meet the portrait painter, Miss Carter, and show her round the school. A note from Mr Everard, waiting in his pigeon-hole that morning, had conveyed the request; and since its arrival Mor had had little time for reflection. He had felt only, for some reason that was obscure to him, a slight feeling of disappointment and irritation that his next meeting with Miss Carter was not to be at Mr Everard’s lunch party, which he had fixed in his mind as the next occasion when he would see her.

‘Lives do not desert the fruit,’ said Rigden in desperation, throwing caution to the winds.

‘No,’ said Mor. ‘Did you prepare this, Rigden?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Rigden, not raising his eyes, and trying to invest his voice with a tone of injured innocence.

‘Well, you’d better stay behind afterwards and talk to me about it,’ said Mor. ‘Our time’s nearly up. Could somebody finish translating? Carde, what about you, could you do the last six lines for us?’

Carde sat quietly looking at the poem. He was a good performer, and he was in no hurry. Carde was efficient, and Mor respected efficiency. In the moment of renewed silence he looked again at the poem. He had chosen it for them that morning as a piece of prepared translation. Perhaps after all it was too hard. Perhaps also not quite suitable. His eye passed over the lines.

Tu modo, dum lucet, fructum ne desere vitae.

Omnia si dederis oscula, pauca dabis.

Ac veluti folia arentes liquere corollas,

Quae passim calathis strata natare vides,

Sic nobis, qui nunc magnum speramus amantes

Forsitan includet aastina fata dies.

Carde cleared his throat.

‘Yes?’ said Mor. He looked at his watch. He saw that the period was nearly ended, and a slight feeling of uneasiness came over him.

‘While the light remains,’ said Carde, speaking slowly in his high deliberate voice, ‘only do not forsake the joy of life. If you shall have given all your kisses, you will give too few. And as leaves fall from withered wreaths which you may see spread upon the cups and floating there, so for us, who now as lovers hope for so much, perhaps tomorrow’s day will close the doom.’

‘Yes,’ said Mor, ‘yes. Very nice, Carde. Thank you. Now you can all go. Rigden, wait a moment, would you?’

An immediate clatter broke out, and amid a banging of books and desk tops there was a rush for the door. Carde was first out. Mr Prewett’s class was evidently up at the same moment, and there was a confluence of din outside. The admonishing of Rigden took but little time, and Mor strode into the musty corridor to disperse the riot. A moment later he emerged from the centre door of what was gracelessly called Main School into the sunshine and looked about him.

The chief buildings of St Bride’s were grouped unevenly around a large square of asphalt which was called the playground, although the one thing that was strictly forbidden therein was playing. The buildings consisted of four tall red-brick blocks: Main School, which contained the hall, and most of the senior classrooms, and which was surmounted by the neo-Gothic tower; Library, which contained the library and more classrooms, and which was built close against Main School, jutting at right angles from it; School House, opposite to Library, where the scholars ate and slept; and ‘Phys and Gym’ opposite to Main School, which contained the gymnasium, some laboratories, the administrative offices, and two flats for resident masters. The St Bride’s estate was extensive, but lay along the slope of a hill, which created notorious problems upon the playing fields which lay behind Main School, stretching away towards the fringes of the housing estate and the maze of suburban roads in the midst of which Mor’s house lay. The playground was connected with the main road by a gravel drive which ran through a shrubbery, past the masters’ garden; but the largest section of the grounds lay farther down the hill, below the Library building. Here there was a thick wood of oak and birch, dense with fern and undergrowth, and cut by many winding paths, deep and soft with old leaves, the paradise of the younger boys. On the fringe of this wood, within sight of the Library, stood the Chapel, a stumpy oblong building of lighter brick and more recent date, looking not unlike a water works. Beyond this, hidden among the trees, were the three houses to which the boys other than the scholars belonged, where they lived and took their meals and, if they were senior boys, had their studies. These were Mor’s house, Prewett’s house, and the third was under the aegis of Mr Baseford, then on sick leave. The houses dully bore the names of their housemasters, and a keen rivalry between them was continually fostered by the teaching staff. Beyond the wood, alongside the arterial road, which skirted the school grounds on that side, lay the squash courts and the swimming pool - and upon the other side, upon the edge of the housing estate, were the music rooms and the studio. At the bottom of the hill was a ragged lawn, a half-hearted attempt at a flower garden, and beyond these a white stucco Victorian house inhabited de officio by Mr Everard. This ended the domain.