However, lest I should now seem to be spiteful, let me say that Gabriel is very kind and tirelessly attentive to Alex, and seems to be in general more reconciled to being a wife and mother. Perhaps, after witnessing the troubles of others, she feels how lucky she is to have a loyal decent husband, even if he is bad-tempered, and a fine tall growing-up son. She may at times be heard to murmur, ‘Of course, George would have been perfectly ordinary if only Rufus had lived.’ I doubt if she is right.
I find it difficult myself to leave the subject of George, whom I confess I enjoy discussing regularly with Stella. Stella says she thinks George has started to write poetry, though he always hides it when she comes in, and she takes this as a hopeful sign. She believes that although George had been daydreaming for some time about murdering his old teacher, he really decided to kill him after he received the philosopher’s final savage letter, only at first he concealed this decision from himself by imagining a final liberation from the relationship. ‘I felt I had really finished with him,’ George told Stella, ‘only he … provoked me so …’ This accords with what Tom has since told me of the extraordinary ‘radiance’ (he used this word), a sort of unnatural visionary calm which surrounded George when they met at Diane’s flat just after, it appears, George had received the letter. George’s reflections on his mental state, which he imparted to Stella during the period of his blindness, reveal indeed a considerable capacity for self-knowledge. He even tried to explain to her what it was like to feel that a murder is a duty. What it was that ‘moved’ George from liberated euphoria to effective murderous hate must however remain a missing link. To say that the radiant euphoria ‘was really’ the scarcely conscious foreknowledge of the final determination to act is merely a way of stating the problem. The motivation of terrible deeds tends to be extremely complex, full of apparent contradictions, and often in fact bottomlessly mysterious, although for legal, scientific and moral reasons we ‘have to’ theorize about it. I have never ventured to suggest to Stella that the peculiar shock of her return, with its reminder of an old jealousy, might have had some decisive effect upon her husband. I do not know whether she ever reflects upon this distressing idea. It would be a sad irony if her inopportune mention of the philosopher’s name should have prompted the violence which ended this tale as well as that which began it. Was the final ‘provocation’ hers after all, and not John Robert’s? Such are the chance ‘triggers’ which may determine our most fateful actions and yet remain opaque particulars with which science can do little.
Since his early outpourings George has not talked much about the past. It is hard to say how far his present mien is instinctive and how far it is a deliberate façade (the distinction can often be unclear). He seems like a much older man, his hair is turning grey and he treats people with a slow kindly dignified condescension. As I said earlier, and I based it on something Stella told me, George was fascinated by Nazi war criminals and identified himself in fantasy with these condemned and defeated monsters. Perhaps now he is enacting the part of one who after many years in prison emerges not exactly repentant but full of stoical wisdom, facing the truth, quiet and proud, acknowledging his acts as his own. George seems to have perceived his own ‘double-think’ about his false ‘liberation’ from John Robert. I wonder if he has also understood the part played in his mental stratagems by his old fantasy, derived so he thought from John Robert himself, of being ‘beyond good and evil’? More often than the ‘experts’ imagine, purely intellectual ideas and images can play ‘deep’ parts in human psychology. I do not despair of discussing these questions one day with George, indeed with Stella’s help this may now come about in the not too distant future. Some of the dedicated George-watchers in the town are of the opinion that George has ‘found Jesus’. Of course this is a nonsense, most vociferously denied by Stella. However, she reported something rather touching which George said lately. ‘Well, he said that Caliban must be saved too.’ About him Stella and I often talk. Steve Glatz has been questioning Stella about John Robert, and Stella tells me how prudently she has replied. Steve is writing a memoir about Rozanov, to be expanded later into a definitive ‘life’. He showed me a little of this piece, in which the philosopher has been metamorphosed into some kind of saint! He is also busy reconstituting the drowned notebook of the ‘great work’ from his own lecture notes. Meanwhile between ourselves Stella and I have been agreeing that perhaps John Robert was not really quite such a great man as we all imagined.
Steve Glatz is very much upon the Ennistone scene at present. Anthea Eastcote has broken off her engagement with Joey Tanner, thus satisfying those who held that ‘he was only after her money’. Anthea is now said to be ‘involved’ with Steve, and Tom and Hattie have lent them the little house at Malibu. Mr and Mrs Tom McCaffrey still live at the Slipper House, where Pearl and Emma often come to stay, putting up with Tom’s heavy humour at their expense. Tom and Emma maintain a steady amitié amoureuse, although neither of them would dream of using that expression, or indeed alluding to the matter in any way. Hattie and Pearl love each other with the deep love of childhood friends, tempered by the love of those who have been shipwrecked together. They often talk of John Robert, but not of the shipwreck. With an instinctive delicacy which is natural to both, Pearl never speaks of her secret love for the philosopher, nor has Hattie discussed with her those last terrible days at Hare Lane. I wonder (for of course I would never ask her this) whether she ever meditates upon the strange fact that it was John Robert and not Tom who first awakened her sexually. It is certainly fascinating to consider how successfully (and indeed how literally), in the end, the philosopher carried out his plan of thrusting her into Tom McCaffrey’s arms.
I share the general view that the marriage will be a happy one. I see Hattie as the leader. Tom and Hattie still sometimes discuss whether they would have come to love each other without being urged to do so by John Robert’s tremendous willpower. They agree that, even though he brought them together, this merely counts as one of those pieces of pure luck that bring about happy marriages. Hattie is determined not to let her university studies prevent her from starting a family. She feels sure that the first child will be a girl. Perhaps John Robert ought to have waited after all? Tom and Hattie intend to have a lot of children, so there will be plenty more McCaffreys available in the future for the inhabitants of Ennistone to gossip about.
The end of any tale is arbitrarily determined. As I now end this one, somebody may say: but how on earth do you know all these things about all these people? Well, where does one person end and another person begin? It is my role in life to listen to stories. I also had the assistance of a certain lady.
A Biography of Iris Murdoch
Iris Murdoch (1919–1999) was one of the most influential British writers of the twentieth century. She wrote twenty-six novels over forty years, as well as plays, poetry, and works of philosophy. Heavily influenced by existentialist and moral philosophy, Murdoch’s novels were also notable for their rich characters, intellectual depth, and handling of controversial topics such as adultery and incest.
Born in Dublin, Ireland, Murdoch moved to London with her parents as a child. She attended Somerville College in Oxford where she studied classics, ancient history, and philosophy. While at Oxford, she was a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain (which she later left, disillusioned) and, in the 1940s, worked in Austrian and Belgian relief camps for the United Nations. After completing her postgraduate degree at Newnham College in Cambridge, she became a Fellow of St. Anne’s College, Oxford, where she lectured in philosophy for fifteen years.