Nuns and Soldiers by Iris Murdoch

Author:Iris Murdoch
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Group (USA), Inc.
Published: 2010-10-19T16:00:00+00:00

‘You didn’t want him to stay to lunch?’ said Anne. ‘I was trying to intuit what you wanted.’

Tim had gone. They had chatted for twenty minutes.

‘No, no, just a drink. He’s nice, isn’t he? Have we any lunch, by the way?’

‘Yes, there’s some of yesterday’s stuff left.’

‘Your masterpiece! It should be delicious cold. Or shall we heat it up?’

‘You stay and finish your drink. I’ll do everything.’

‘You’re an angel.’

Anne had already decided not to say anything to Gertrude about the anonymous letter. She was even angry with the Count for showing it to her. Such filth should not circulate. Surely the Count could have said simply that he had ‘heard a rumour’? But that reflective evasion, that discreet lie, was not in the Count’s character. Anne’s head buzzed with angry crazy unhappy thoughts, and she found herself banging the plates about in miserable exasperation. Meanwhile the Count was sitting in his office, in torment, waiting for her telephone call. Well, perhaps her intuition had been wrong. She could only hope that now Gertrude would tell her of her own accord. But if she did not?

‘What’s the matter, Anne, you seem bothered?’ said Gertrude, holding her glass, standing in the doorway.

There was something the slightest bit cold and detached about Gertrude’s tone and the way she stood. We are being separated, thought Anne. She is beginning to treat me like a servant, she thought. Then this seemed mad. Then am I not a servant? Whatever else should I be between now and the end of the world?

‘I think I’ll have a drink after all,’ said Anne. ‘Lunch can wait a bit. There’s nothing to do anyway.’

They both went back to the drawing-room and Anne poured herself a glass of sherry. Gertrude took another one.

They stood there, at opposite ends of the mantelpiece, drinking; each of them, out of a deep old knowledge and with a sensitive probing intelligence, was trying to read the mind of the other. Anne was looking at the monkey orchestra, Gertrude at Anne’s arrangement of blue and white irises with sprays of dark green box.

Gertrude said, in a conciliatory tone, for she had understood Anne’s reaction to her last remark, ‘I hope you really liked the necklaces and things. It would give me such joy to see you wearing them.’

‘Oh yes - yes-I do like them - thank you -’

‘I mean keep them, they’re yours now.’

‘Oh not all those -’

‘I like that dress too,’ said Gertrude, ‘though you ought to iron it, it’s getting creased. I’ll iron it for you. But you need some proper summer dresses. I suppose we will have some summer, after all it’s May, we might go shopping tomorrow, would you like?’

Gertrude’s manner was conversational, chatty, though with a little edge of deliberate gentleness. Anne thought, she just wanted Tim to show his face here. Now she wants to blur the effect, to change the subject.

Anne said, ‘I must work, I must find regular work, I am becoming demoralized. Perhaps your social worker friends would help me.

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