The Bell by Iris Murdoch

you waiting,’ said Mrs Mark. ‘Ready for our little tour?’
    â€˜Oh yes, thank you!’ said Dora, seizing her jacket which she threw loosely round her shoulders.
    â€˜I hope you don’t mind my saying so,’ said Mrs Mark, ‘but we never have flowers in the house.’ She looked censoriously at Dora’s nosegay. ‘We keep everything here as plain as possible. It’s a little austerity we practise.’
    â€˜Oh dear!’ said Dora, blushing. ‘I’ll throw them out. I didn’t know.’
    â€˜Don’t do that,’ said Mrs Mark magnanimously. ‘Keep those ones. I thought I should tell you, though, for next time. I feel sure you’d rather be treated like one of us, wouldn’t you, and keep the rules of the house? It’s not like a hotel and we do expect our guests to fit in - and I think that’s what they like best too.’
    â€˜Of course,’ said Dora, still extremely confused, ‘I’m so sorry!’
    â€˜You see, we don’t normally allow any sort of personal decoration in the rooms,’ said Mrs Mark. ‘We try to imitate the monastic life in certain ways as closely as we can. We believe it’s a sound discipline to give up that particular sort of self-expression. It’s a small sacrifice, after all, isn’t it?’
    â€˜Yes, indeed!’ said Dora.
    â€˜You’ll soon get used to our little ways,’ said Mrs Mark. ‘I do hope you’ll enjoy it here. Paul has fitted in so well - we all quite love him. Shall we go along? I’m afraid I haven’t a great deal of time.’
    She led the way out of the door. ‘I expect you know the geography of the house roughly by now,’ said Mrs Mark. ‘The members of the community sleep right at the top of the house in this wing, in what used to be servants’ bedrooms. The main rooms on your floor are all kept as guest bedrooms. We act, you know, as a sort of unofficial guest house for the Abbey. We hope to develop that side of our activities very much in the future. At present there are still a lot of rooms which we haven’t even been able to furnish. The other wing is completely empty. Directly below us on the ground floor are the kitchen quarters at the back of the house, and the big ground-floor room on the corner in the front of the house is the general estate office. Then in the middle, as you know, there’s the refectory underneath the balcony, and two little rooms up above, set back behind the portico, which act as offices for James and Michael. And at the back there’s the historic Long Room, a great feature of the house, which is two stories high. We’ve made that into our chapel.’
    As she talked Mrs Mark led Dora along a corridor, past the dark well of a back stairway, into a larger corridor and threw open a large door. They entered the chapel, this time from the end opposite the altar. In the bright daylight the room looked, Dora thought, even more derelict, like an aftermath of amateur theatricals. Though scrupulously clean, it appeared dusty and as if the walls were dissolving into powder. The hessian cloth reminded Dora of school.
    â€˜It’s not a proper chapel, of course,’ said Mrs Mark, not lowering her voice. ‘That is, it’s not consecrated. But we have our own little regular services here. We go over to the Abbey chapel for Mass, and those who wish to can attend at certain other hours as well. And we have a special Sunday morning service here at which an address is given by a member of the community.’
    They went out by the other door and emerged a moment later into the stone-flagged entrance hall. Mrs Mark threw open the door of the common-room. Modern upholstered chairs with arms of light-varnished wood stood in a neat circle, incongruous against the dark panelling.
    â€˜This is the only room we’ve really furnished,’ said Mrs Mark. ‘We come here in our