The Nice and the Good (3 page)

CATHERINE BATES 2000

1
Iris Murdoch, ‘
Crest of a Wave
’,
Daily Mail
, 23 November 1978.

2
Tractatus Logico-Philisophicus
(1921), trans. D. F. Pears and B. F. McGuinness (1961), 6.421.

3
Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle: conversations recorded by Friedrich Waismann
, ed. Brian McGuinness (1979), pp.68–69.

4
Paul Englemann, ed.,
Letters from Ludwig Wittgenstein with a Memoir
(1967), p. 143.

A
HEAD
of department, working quietly in his room in Whitehall on a summer afternoon, is not accustomed to being disturbed by the nearby and indubitable sound of a revolver shot.

At one moment a lazy fat man, a perfect sphere his loving wife called him, his name Octavian Gray, was slowly writing a witty sentence in a neat tiny hand upon creamy official paper while he inhaled from his breath the pleasant sleepy smell of an excellent lunch-time burgundy. Then came the shot.

Octavian sat up, stood up. The shot had been somewhere not far away from him in the building. There was no mistaking that sound. Octavian knew the sound well though it was many years since, as a soldier, he had last heard it. His body knew it as he stood there rigid with memory and with the sense, now so unfamiliar to him, of confronting the demands of the awful, of the utterly new.

Octavian went to the door. The hot stuffy corridor, amid the rushing murmur of London, was quite still. He wished to call out “What is it? What has happened?” but found he could not. He turned back into the room with an instinctive movement in the direction of his telephone, his natural lifeline and connection with the world. Just then he heard running steps.

“Sir, Sir, something terrible has occurred!”

The office messenger, McGrath, a pale-blue-eyed ginger-haired man with a white face and a pink mouth, stood shuddering in the doorway.

“Get out.” Richard Biranne, one of Octavian’s Under Secretaries, pushed past McGrath, propelled McGrath out of the door, closed the door.

“What on earth is it?” said Octavian.

Biranne leaned back against the door. He breathed deeply for a moment and then said in his usual high-pitched and rather precise voice, “Look, Octavian, I know this is
scarcely
credible, but Radeechy has just shot himself.”

“Radeechy? Good God. Is he dead?”

“Yes.”

Octavian sat down, He straightened out the piece of cream-coloured paper on the red blotter. He read the unfinished sentence. Then he got up again. “I’d better come and—see.” He moved to the door which Biranne held open for him. “I suppose we’d better call Scotland Yard.”

“I’ve already taken the liberty of doing so,” said Biranne.

Radeechy’s room was on the floor below. A little crowd of people stood at its closed door, arms pendant, mouths open. They were being addressed by McGrath.

“Go away,” said Octavian. They stared at him. “Go to your rooms,” he said. They moved slowly off. “You too,” he said to McGrath. Biranne was unlocking the door.

Through the opening door Octavian saw Radeechy lying with his head turned sideways upon the desk. The two men went in and Biranne locked the door on the inside and after a moment’s thought unlocked it again.

The reddish brown flesh of Radeechy’s neck was bulging out over his stiff white collar. Octavian wondered at once if his eyes were open, but the shadowed face could only have been seen by peering. Radeechy’s left arm hung down toward the floor. His right arm was upon the desk with the gun, an old service revolver, near to the hand. Octavian was finding it necessary to take a deliberate grip on himself, to respire slowly and assemble his senses and tell himself who he was. He had seen many dead men. But he had never seen a dead man suddenly on a summer afternoon in Whitehall with his flesh bulging out above a stiff collar.

Octavian quickly informed himself that he was the head of the department and must behave calmly and take charge.

He said to Biranne, “Who found him?”

“I did. I was nearly outside his door when I heard the shot.”

“I suppose there’s no doubt he’s dead?” The question sounded weird, almost embarrassed.

Biranne said, “He’s dead all right. Look at the wound.” He pointed.

Octavian moved nearer. He moved round the desk on the side away from Radeechy’s face and leaning over the chair saw a round hole in the back of the head, a little to the right
of the slight depression at the base of the skull. The hole was quite large, a dark orifice with blackened edges. A little blood, not much, had run down inside the collar.

“He must have pointed the gun into his mouth,” said Biranne. “The bullet went right through.”

Octavian noticed the neatness of the recently clipped grey hair upon the warm vulnerable neck. He had an impulse to touch it, to touch the material of Radeechy’s jacket, to pulp it timidly, curiously. Here were the assembled parts of a human being, its clothes and carnal paraphernalia. The mystery appalled him of the withdrawal of life, the sudden disintegration of the living man into parts, pieces, stuff. Radeechy, who muffed most things, had not muffed this.

Octavian had never particularly liked Radeechy. He had never particularly known him. Radeechy was one of those eccentrics, found in every Government department, who though highly intelligent, even brilliant, lack some essential quality of judgment and never rise above the rank of Principal. Radeechy was considered to have, in a mild way, “a screw loose”. He had seemed content, however. He had interests elsewhere. He was always asking for special leave. On the last occasion, Octavian recalled, it was to investigate a poltergeist.

“Has he left a note?”

“Not that I can see,” said Biranne.

“That’s not like him!” said Octavian. Radeechy was an indefatigable writer of circumstantial minutes. “I suppose now we shall have the police here for the rest of the day, and just when I wanted to get away for the weekend.” He knew from the deepening of his voice that the dreadful moment had passed. Now he could be cool, business-like, soberly jocular.

“I’ll deal with them if you like,” said Biranne. “I suppose they’ll want to take photographs and all that.” He added, “I must remember to tell them that I touched the gun. I moved it just a little to see his face. They might find my finger-prints on it!”

“Thanks, but I’d better stay myself. Poor devil, I wonder why he did it.”

“I don’t know.”

“He was a pretty odd man. All that conjuring with spirits.”

“I don’t know,” said Biranne.

“Or perhaps—Of course, there was that awful business with his wife. Someone told me he hadn’t been the same since she died. I thought myself he was getting very depressed. You remember, that terrible accident last year—”

“Yes,” said Biranne. He laughed his high-pitched little laugh, like an animal’s yelp. “Isn’t it just like Radeechy’s damn bad taste to go and shoot himself in the office!”

“Kate, darling.” Octavian was on the telephone to his wife in Dorset.

“Darling, hello. Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” said Octavian, “but something’s happened in the office and I won’t be able to get down till tomorrow morning.”

“Oh dear! Then you won’t be here for Barbie’s first evening home!” Barbara was their daughter and only child, aged fourteen.

“I know, it’s maddening and I’m very sorry, but I’ve just got to stay. We’ve got the police here and there’s a terrible to-do.”

“The police? What’s happened? Nothing awful?”

“Well, yes and no,” said Octavian. “Someone’s committed suicide.”

“God! Anyone we know?”

“No, no, it’s all right. No one we know.”

“Well, thank heavens for that. I’m so sorry, you poor dear. I do wish you could be here for Barbie, she’ll be so disappointed.”

“I know. But I’ll be along tomorrow. Is everything OK at your end? How is my harem?”

“Your harem is dying to see you!”

“That’s good! Bless you, sweetheart, and I’ll ring again tonight.”

“Octavian, you are bringing Ducane with you, aren’t you?”

“Yes. He couldn’t come till tomorrow anyway, so now I can drive him down.”

“Splendid. Willy was wanting him.”

Octavian smiled. “I think
you
were wanting him, weren’t you, my sweetheart?”

“Well, of course I was wanting him! He’s a very necessary man.”

“You shall have him, my dear, you shall have him. You shall have whatever you want.”

“Good—ee!”

“Y
OU
must put all those stones out in the garden,” said Mary Clothier.

“Why?” said Edward.

“Because they’re garden stones.”

“Why?” said Henrietta.

The twins, Edward and Henrietta Biranne, were nine years old. They were lanky blonde children with identical mops of fine wiry hair and formidably similar faces.

“They aren’t fossils. There’s nothing special about them.”

“There’s something special about
every
stone,” said Edward.

“That is perfectly true in a metaphysical sense,” said Theodore Gray, who had just entered the kitchen in his old red and brown check dressing gown.

“I am not keeping the house tidy in a metaphysical sense,” said Mary.

“Where’s Pierce?” said Theodore to the twins. Pierce was Mary Clothier’s son who was fifteen.

“He’s up in Barbie’s room. He’s decorating it with shells. He must have brought in a ton.”

“Oh God!” said Mary. The sea shore invaded the house. The children’s rooms were gritty with sand and stones and crushed sea shells and dried up marine entities of animal and vegetable origin.

“If Pierce can bring in shells we can bring in stones,” reasoned Henrietta.

“No one said Pierce could bring in shells,” said Mary.

“But you aren’t going to stop him, are you?” said Edward.

“If I’d answered back like that at your age I’d have been well slapped,” said Casie the housekeeper. She was Mary Casie, but since she had the same first name as Mary Clothier she was called “Casie”, a dark pregnant title like the name of an animal.

“True, but irrelevant, Edward might reply,” said Theodore. “If it’s not too much to ask, may I have my tea? I’m not feeling at all well.”

“Poor old Casie, that was hard luck!” said Edward.

“I’m not going to stop him,” said Mary, “firstly because it’s too late, and secondly because it’s a special occasion with Barbara coming home.” It paid to argue rationally with the twins.

Barbara Gray had been away since Christmas at a finishing school in Switzerland. She had spent the Easter holidays skiing with her parents who were enthusiastic travellers.

“It’s well for some people,” said Casie, a social comment of vague but weighty import which she often uttered.

“Casie, may we have these chicken’s legs?” said Henrietta.

“How I’m to keep the kitchen clean with those children messing in the rubbish bins like starving cats—”

“Don’t pull it
all
out, Henrietta, please,” said Mary. A mess of screwed up paper, coffee beans, old lettuce leaves and human hair emerged with the chicken’s legs.

“Nobody minds me,” said Casie. “I’m wasting my life here.”

“Every life is wasted,” said Theodore.

“You people don’t regard me as your equal—”

“You aren’t our equal,” said Theodore. “May I have my tea please?”

“Oh do shut up, Theo,” said Mary. “Don’t set Casie off. Your tea’s there on the tray.”

“Lemon sponge. Mmm. Good.”

“I thought you weren’t feeling well,” said Casie.

“A mere bilious craving. Where’s Mingo?”

Mingo, a large grey unclipped somewhat poodle-like dog, was always in attendance upon Theodore’s breakfast and tea, which were taken in bed. Kate and Octavian were ribald in speculation concerning the relations between Theodore and Mingo.

“We’ll bring him, Uncle Theo!” cried Edward.

A brief scuffle produced Mingo from behind the florid cast-iron stove which, although it was expensive to run and useless for cooking, still filled the huge recess of the kitchen fireplace. Theodore had begun to mount the stairs bearing his tray, followed by the twins who, according to one of their many self-imposed rituals, carried the animal between them, his foolish smiling face emerging from under Edward’s arm, his woolly legs trailing, and his sausage of a wagging tail
rhythmically lifting the hem of Henrietta’s gingham dress.

Theodore, Octavian’s valetudinarian elder brother, formerly an engineer in Delhi and now long unemployed, was well known to have left India under a cloud, although no one had ever been able to discover what sort of cloud it was that Theodore had left India under. Nor was it known whether Theodore in reality liked or disliked his brother, his contemptuous references to whom were ignored by common consent. He was a tall thin grey-haired partly bald man with a bulging brow finely engraved with hieroglyphic lines, and screwed-up clever thoughtful eyes.

“Paula,
must
you read at the table?” said Mary.

Paula Biranne, the twins’ mother, was still absorbed in her book. She left the disciplining of her children, with whom she seemed at such moments to be coeval, entirely to Mary. Paula had been divorced from Richard Biranne for over two years. Mary herself was a widow of many years’ standing.

“Sorry,” said Paula. She closed her copy of Lucretius. Paula taught Greek and Latin at a local school.

Meal times were important to Mary. They were times of communication, ritualistic forgatherings almost spiritual in their significance. Human speech and casual co-presence then knit up wounds and fissures which were perhaps plain only to Mary’s own irritated and restless sensibility, constantly recreating an approximation to harmony of which perhaps again only she was fully aware. At these points of contact Mary held an authority which nobody challenged. If the household possessed a communal unconscious mind, Mary constituted its communal consciousness. The regularity of breakfast lunch tea and dinner was moreover one of the few elements of formal pattern in a situation which, as Mary felt it, hovered always upon the brink of a not unpleasant but quite irrevocable anarchy.