A Word Child by Iris Murdoch Page B

imagined when no such thing was in prospect. I had intended to transform her life, I had intended to transform her mind, but I had failed, and this was the fundamental and awful failure for which I should be damned. I had, I suppose, pulled her up a little way out of the Aunt Bill caravan world, but only a little way. I had never, as I once meant to, educated her. Crystal knew her Bible, but she did not know who Tolstoy was or whether Cromwell lived before or after Queen Elizabeth. In this respect Arthur was not exactly a foothold. Arthur’s rag-tag of junkies and criminals whom he ‘helped’ (or was victimized by) led straight back into the world I myself was about to enter when I was rescued by Mr Osmand. I felt a horror of that world and I did not want the smell of it to come near Crystal ever again. What was Arthur himself anyway? A poor clerk with no talents and no prospects. Would Arthur be strong enough to protect Crystal? Arthur was a muddler. He might even become some sort of drop-out. Would not a marriage with him mean some ultimate subsidence into confusion and poverty and thereby misery? Married life if not organized is hell. Neither of these two could organize themselves out of a wet paper bag. Although it might not be so thrilling, there was a kind of purity and cleanness about Crystal’s present position which I knew was a support to her; and protected by me she felt perfectly secure. Would she be strong enough to exist as Arthur’s wife, to become the (oh God) quite different person Arthur’s wife would be? On the other (to all this) hand, Arthur was thoroughly decent and he loved her and it had begun to look as if perhaps she could love him; only of course everything ultimately depended on me.
    My relations with Tommy had begun before Arthur became important on Crystal’s scene, and it was a cause of bitter pain to me to think that that entanglement had possibly in some way encouraged the other. Unfortunately these dramas had proceeded at a different pace. I never deliberately isolated my sister, I introduced her to some few of my few friends, but it had never hitherto happened that any friend of mine had really become a friend of hers. Arthur, however, with some diffidence and caution I must admit (for he feared me) did begin to move in, and this was made easier by the fact that I was then so involved with Tommy and was seeing less of Crystal. Something which I could never measure was the fright which I had then perhaps given to Crystal by some seeming desertion of her. Had this fright created a space, a need? This question, from which my mind recoiled in horror, was by now perhaps of historical interest only. What was more crucial was this. I had been watching Crystal anxiously to see if she ever showed signs of getting married, and of course (though naturally she never breathed a word about it) Crystal was watching me anxiously to see if I ever showed signs of getting married. I had earlier on told Crystal in the most forthright terms that I would never marry. (I did not notice then, but did later, that she did not offer me a similar resolution.) And for a long time it seemed to me as if I was perfectly right about myself, and my bachelor existence had become a steady and established fact. Then I fell in love with Tommy. I was not of course ‘really’ (totally) in love, but I was physically in love in a way which I had not imagined ever again to be possible. And although this love had ceased its consequences remained. Crystal knew that I could love, and so could conceivably want to marry. She even now perhaps thought that I wanted to marry Tommy. She knew that Tommy and I had our difficulties and she had seen them on display before tonight. But I had never told her that I did not want to marry Tommy, and I had refrained from telling her for a good reason. Crystal was quite capable of sacrificing Arthur, even if she wanted desperately to become his wife, if she felt that I