The Book and the Brotherhood by Iris Murdoch

important.’
    ‘Was he in pain?’
    ‘I don’t think so. I’d given him the usual stuff. But he had such a – a terrible
urgent
look in his eyes, and he couldn’t keep still, as if all his body were wrong and intolerable.’
    ‘An urgent look. Did he say anything clear?’
    ‘He said several times, “Help me.”’
    ‘Oh – dear – Did he ask for me?’
    ‘No. He talked about Uncle Ben.’ Benjamin Hernshaw had been Matthew Hernshaw’s ‘disreputable’ younger brother, Violet’s father, Tamar’s grandfather.
    ‘He always loved Ben. Have you telephoned Violet?’
    ‘No, of course not.’
    ‘Why of course?’
    ‘I wasn’t going to ring her in the middle of the night, was I? She never liked Dad, she isn’t interested, she knows there’s nothing for her in the will.’
    ‘How does she know?’
    ‘I told her.’
    ‘Was that necessary?’
    ‘She asked me.’
    ‘We must give her something.’
    ‘Oh for God’s sake don’t start on that, we’ve got enough to worry about.’
    ‘Dad didn’t mention her because he assumed we’d look after her.’
    ‘Just you try, she’d bite your hand off, she hates everybody!’
    ‘She did accept money from Dad, I know – we must tell her he talked about Ben. What did he say about him?’
    ‘I don’t know, he was mumbling – remember Ben, or remember Ben’s something or other –’
    ‘Well, there you are –’
    ‘Look, Gerry, we must decide –’
    ‘Pat,
wait
– Did you know he was going to – to die?’
    ‘Only just before the end – then suddenly it was – so clear – as if he’d explained it –’
    ‘Ah – and you saw him go?’
    ‘Yes. He was lying there and twisting and turning and talking about Ben. Then suddenly he sat up straight and looked at me – with that awful puzzled frightened look – and he looked all about the room – and he said – he said –’
    ‘What?’
    ‘He said slowly, and quite clearly, “I’m – so – sorry.” Then he leaned back onto the pillow, not falling, but slowly, as if he were going to sleep again – he made a little tiny odd sound, like – like a –
mew
– and I saw it was over.’
    Gerard wanted to ask, what did you see, how did you know, he felt, later on I won’t be able to, everything must be said now, but he did not ask. He would have time later to think about that dreadful pitiful ‘I’m sorry’. He thought, he was looking for me at that moment.
    Patricia was dry-eyed and controlled, her emotion evident in her hesitations and in the hard clipped exasperated tone in which she answered Gerard’s questions. She now made coffee. She opened a drawer, chose a clean red and green check table cloth and spread it on the table, then set out plate, cup, saucer, knife, spoons, butter, marmalade, sugar, milk in a blue jug, sliced bread aligned in a bowl. She set the coffee pot on a tile.
    ‘Do you want hot milk?’
    ‘No, thanks. Aren’t you having coffee?’
    ‘No.’
    She gave him a paper napkin. The paper napkins represented her regime, used in preference to Gerard’s linen ones. She sat down opposite to him and closed her eyes.
    The house felt terrible, disjointed, gutted. Sitting quietly in it at last, Gerard felt his body aching with grief and fear, with grief which was fear, an exhausted denatured sensation, a loss of being. He concentrated on Patricia. It was possible, he knew, to esteem and admire people and enjoy their company and dislike them heartily. It was also possible to be irritated, maddened and bored by people whom one loves. He had thusloved his mother and Pat. Through time and custom, simply by enduring, this love had grown stronger. This was no doubt a proof that ‘family’ meant something to him, or perhaps that he had got used to putting up with them for his father’s sake; though for his father’s sake too he had resented their separatism, their little league against ‘the men’, critical, mocking, secretive. He had never liked their laughter, had been