The Book and the Brotherhood

PENGUIN BOOKS

THE BOOK AND THE BROTHERHOOD

Iris Murdoch was born in Dublin in 1919 of Anglo-Irish parents. She went to Badminton School, Bristol, and read classics at Somerville College, Oxford. During the war she was an Assistant Principal at the Treasury, and then worked with UNRRA in London, Belgium and Austria. She held a studentship in philosophy at Newnham College, Cambridge, and then in 1948 became a Fellow of St Anne’s College, Oxford, where she lived with her husband, the teacher and critic John Bayley. Awarded the CBE in 1976, Iris Murdoch was made a DBE in the 1987 New Year’s Honours List. In the 1997 PEN Awards she received the Gold Pen for Distinguished Service to Literature.

Iris Murdoch wrote twenty-six novels, including
Under the Net
, her writing début of 1954, the Booker Prize-winning
The Sea, the Sea
(1978) and, more recently,
The Green Knight
(1993) and
Jackson’s Dilemma
(1995). She received a number of other literary awards, among them the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for
The Black Prince
(1973) and the Whitbread Prize for
The Sacred and Profane Love Machine
(1974). Her works of philosophy include
Sartre: Romantic Rationalist, Metaphysics As a Guide to Morals
(1992) and
Existentialists and Mystics
(1997). She also wrote several plays, including
The Italian Girl
(with James Saunders) and
The Black Prince
, an adaptation of her novel. Her volume of poetry,
A Year of Birds
, which appeared in 1978, was set to music by Malcolm Williamson.

Iris Murdoch died in February 1999. Among the many who paid tribute to her as a philosopher, novelist and private individual was Peter Conradi, who in his obituary in the
Guardian
wrote ‘Iris Murdoch was one of the best and most influential writers of the twentieth century. Above all, she kept the traditional novel alive, and in so doing changed what it is capable of… She connected goodness, against the temper of the times, not with the quest for an authentic identity so much as with the happiness that can come about when that quest is relaxed. We are fortunate to have shared our appalling century with her.’

IRIS MURDOCH IN PENGUIN

Fiction

Under the Net

The Flight from the Enchanter

The Sandcastle

The Bell

A Severed Head

An Unofficial Rose

The Unicorn

The Italian Girl

The Red and the Green

The Time of the Angels

The Nice and the Good

Bruno’s Dream

A Fairly Honourable Defeat

An Accidental Man

The Black Prince

The Sacred and Profane Love Machine

A Word Child

Henry and Cato

The Sea, the Sea

Nuns and Soldiers

The Philosopher’s Pupil

The Good Apprentice

The Book and the Brotherhood

The Message to the Planet

The Green Knight

Jackson’s Dilemma

Non-Fiction

Acastos: Two Platonic Dialogues

Metaphysics As a Guide to Morals

THE BOOK AND
THE BROTHERHOOD

Iris Murdoch

PENGUIN BOOKS

PART ONE
Midsummer

PART TWO
Midwinter

PART THREE
Spring

TO
DIANA AVEBURY

‘David Crimond is here in a
kilt
!’

‘Good God, is Crimond here? Where is he?’

‘Over in that tent or marquee or whatever you call it. He’s with Lily Boyne.’

The first speaker was Gulliver Ashe, the second was Conrad Lomas. Gulliver was a versatile, currently unemployed, young Englishman in his early thirties, pointedly vague about his age. Conrad was a more gorgeously young young American student. He was taller than Gulliver who was rated as tall. Gulliver had never hitherto met Conrad, but he had heard of him and had addressed the remark which caused such excitement to, jointly, Conrad and his partner Tamar Hernshaw. The scene was the so-much-looked-forward-to Commem Ball at Oxford, and the time about eleven p.m. It was midsummer and the night was not yet, and was indeed never entirely to be, dark. Above the various lighted marquees, from which various musics streamed, hung a sky of dusky blue already exhibiting a few splintery yellow stars. The moon, huge, crumbly like a cheese, was still low down among trees beyond the local streamlets of the river Cherwell which bounded the more immediate territory of the college. Tamar and Conrad had just arrived, had not yet danced. Gulliver had confidently addressed them since he knew, though not well, Tamar, and had heard who her escort was to be. The sight of Tamar filled Gulliver, in fact, with irritation, since
his
partner for the momentous night was to have been (only she had cried off at the last moment) Tamar’s mother Violet. Gulliver did not particularly like Violet, but had agreed to be paired with her to oblige Gerard Hernshaw, whom he usually obliged, even obeyed. Gerard was Tamar’s uncle, or ‘uncle’, since he
was not Violet’s brother but her cousin. Gerard was considerably older than Gulliver. Gerard’s sister Patricia, who was to have had Jenkin Riderhood as her partner, had also not turned up, but had (unlike Violet, who seemed to have no reason) a good reason, since Gerard’s father, long ill, had suddenly become iller. Gulliver, though of course thrilled to be asked, was irritated by being paired by Gerard with Violet, which seemed to relegate Gulliver to the older generation. Gulliver would not have minded partnering Tamar, though he was not especially ‘keen’ on her. He found her too shy and stiff, she was pale and thin and rather schoolgirlish, she was wispy and waifish and lacked style, she did her short straight hair in a little-girl way with a side parting. He did not like her virginal white dress. Gull, who was not always sure that he liked girls at all, preferred ones who were bolder and able to take charge of him. In any case there was never any question of Tamar, since she was known to be going to the dance with her new acquaintance, this clever young American, whom she had met through her cousin Leonard Fairfax. Gerard, apologetic about Violet’s defection, had said vaguely to Gulliver that he could no doubt ‘pick up a girl somehow’, but so far this did not seem likely to be possible, all the girls being firmly held onto by their chaps. Later on of course as the chaps got drunk the situation might change. He had wandered about in the warm blue twilight for some time hoping to meet someone he knew, but Tamar’s had been the first familiar face, and he felt on seeing her annoyance rather than pleasure. He was also annoyed because he had not, after much consideration, put on his frilly lacy blue evening shirt, such as most of the younger generation were now seen to be dressed in, and was wearing the conventional black and white uniform which he knew that Gerard, Jenkin, and Duncan would have on. Gulliver, who thought himself good-looking, was tall and dark and slim, with straight oily dark hair, and a thin slightly hooked nose which he had come to terms with when someone called it aquiline. His eyes, which he had been told were beautiful, were of a very pure unflecked liquid golden brown. He very much wanted to dance and would have felt
thoroughly cross with Gerard for messing things up if it had not been that Gerard had paid for Gulliver’s (very expensive) ticket without which he would not be there at all. While these thoughts were mingling and colliding in Gulliver’s mind, Conrad Lomas, with a murmured apology to Tamar, had shot off like an arrow in the direction of the marquee where David Crimond was said to be. He
ran
upon his unusually long legs across the grass and disappeared, leaving Gulliver and Tamar together. Tamar, surprised by the amazing speed of his departure, had not immediately followed her swain. This should have been Gulliver’s opportunity, and he did indeed wonder for a moment whether he should quickly ask Tamar to dance. He hesitated however, knowing that if Tamar refused he would be upset. Nor did he want to find himself, perhaps, later on, ‘landed’ with her for some long time. He had really, in spite of his cherished grievances, quite enjoyed wandering around by himself and being a
voyeur
. Moreover, the idea had just occurred to him of returning to the room where Gerard and the oldies were still drinking champagne, and asking Rose Curtland to dance. Of course Rose ‘belonged’ to Gerard, but Gerard wouldn’t mind, and the notion of putting his arm, where it had never dreamt of being, round Rose Curtland’s waist, was certainly an appealing one. His moment for Tamar passed and she began to move away.

Gull said, ‘That was Conrad Lomas, wasn’t it? Whatever got into him?’

Tamar said, ‘He’s doing a thesis about something about Marxism in Britain.’

‘So he’ll have read all Crimond’s stuff.’

‘He
idolises
Crimond,’ said Tamar, ‘he’s read everything he’s written, but never met him. He wanted me to get someone to introduce him but I felt I couldn’t. I didn’t know he’d be here tonight.’

‘Neither did I,’ said Gulliver, and added, ‘neither do
they
.’

Tamar, with a vague wave, set off in the direction of the tent into which Conrad had disappeared. Gulliver decided not to go back to the others yet after all. He wanted to wander about a little longer. This was not his college or his university. He
had done his degree in London, and although he regarded Oxford and Oxford ways with sardonic detachment he was ready, on this unique evening, to give himself up to the charm of his surroundings, the ancient buildings floodlit, the pale exquisite tower, the intense green of illumined trees, the striped tents as of an exotic army, and the peregrinating crowd of colourful young people of whom, now that he had had a few drinks, he did not after all feel too uncomfortably envious. Perhaps the immediate thing to do was to have some more drink. He made his way toward the cloisters where he could get some whisky. He was tired of Gerard’s champagne.