The Book and the Brotherhood by Iris Murdoch Page A

enraged as a child by his mother’s jesting at his father’s expense, had resented his father’s humble surrender of his authority and his dignity. Yet they had had a harmonious time on the whole and, apart from that one terrible episode and its reverberations, he could not claim an unhappy childhood. His father had been too old for the second war, Gerard too young. He had continued to love them all, and much later to see, with sympathy, his mother and sister as strong frustrated women. Patricia had wilfully thrown away her education and was now irked with excesses of energy for which she could find no use. She was a loving and business-like mother and wife but yearned for some indefinable larger scene, more status, more power. He looked at her now, her face relaxed in tiredness, perhaps in sleep, her lips parted, her mouth, as in a tragic mask, drooping heavily into long harsh lines. She was a striking woman, inheriting her mother’s long smooth face, her stern and noble look and perpetual frown, a brave powerful face whose owner would no doubt be a valuable companion on a desert island. The idea of ‘putting a brave face on it’ suited Patricia, she had ‘nerve’, and had been a tomboyish child. Her shortish fair hair, a little streaked with grey, well cut at intervals, usually tousled, often patted into shape by its owner, looked youthful, was still shaggy and boyish. In recent years she had put on weight. Even now in repose her shoulders were back, her prominent chin well tucked in, her bust set forward under a flowery apron which Gerard was noticing for the first time. It was only lately that Gerard had realised that his sister had begun to envy her younger cousin’s trim figure and enduring good looks. Patricia, once handsome, could never have been called beautiful; but Violet Hernshaw’s face had that enduring structure which can command esteem at anyage. Of course Pat was established as ‘successful’, her husband wealthy, her son ‘brilliant’, whereas Violet, as Pat now often sympathetically observed, had made a complete mess of her life, and her charms had brought her only bad luck. Ben had abandoned his mistress and his little daughter, he had been a crazy fellow who took to drugs and died young. Matthew, had tried to ‘save’ him, had been deeply grieved by his failure; perhaps he felt guilty as well. Matthew had been sober, conscientious, gentle. Now he was gone too. Gerard was aware of laying his head down on the table. He recalled, then saw with the eyes of dream, how his staid father, who rarely touched alcohol, used sometimes to startle them all by singing slightly
risqué
music-hall songs, his grave face transformed by a lunatic jollity. They found his occasional crazy merriment childish, touching, and embarrassing.
    ‘You’d better go to bed,’ said Pat’s voice.
    Gerard lifted his head. He had been dreaming about Sinclair and Rose. He had been young in the dream. It took him a second or two to remember that he was no longer young and Sinclair was dead. ‘How long have I been asleep?’
    ‘Some time.’
    ‘You go to bed. I’ll fix things. We must ring up the undertaker –’
    ‘I’ve done that,’ said Patricia, ‘and I’ve rung the doctor about the death certificate.’
    ‘I’ll ring Violet.’
    ‘I’ve done that too. Look, Gerard, we were talking the other day about the house in Bristol, why don’t you go and live there? You said you loved that house. You don’t have to live in London now.
    Gerard became wide awake. Typical Pat. ‘Don’t be silly, why should I live in Bristol, I live here!’
    ‘This house is far too big for you, it doesn’t suit you, you’re only here by accident. I’ve just been talking to Gideon on the telephone. We’ll buy it off you. You’ll like Bristol, you need a change.’
    ‘Oh shut up, Pat,’ said Gerard, ‘you’re crazy. I’m going to bed.’
    ‘And another thing, now Dad’s gone I want to be on that committee.’
    ‘What