Read Online An Accidental Man by Iris Murdoch - Free Book Online Page B

a comfort. Please wait until my sister and brother-in-law come. My brother-in-law wants to ask you something.’ Charlotte invented that. Men attended to what other men wanted.
    â€˜All right. I’ll wait.’
    â€˜Can I give you tea, a drink?’
    â€˜Some tea perhaps.’
    â€˜Nurse, would you make some tea for the doctor? I’ll sit with her a while.’
    Charlotte had opened the door again. Nurse Mahoney got up from the bedside. She said, ‘Could I make a telephone call, please, Miss Ledgard?’
    â€˜Yes, certainly.’
    The nurse went out. She was red-haired and Irish, broad-faced with golden eyes, very young, utterly untouched by the drama in which she was taking part. Next week it would be another one. She was kind and efficient, but her thoughts never engaged with these people, they were all, except the doctor, unreal to her.
    Charlotte took the nurse’s chair and stared at Alison. Alison’s face was villainously contracted with what seemed already a pain of the spirit rather than of the body. Spirit too travailed. Perhaps it finally travailed most of all. Or did it mercifully perish first? One eye was tightly closed, the other hugely wide, moist as with unshed tears and full of consciousness, Charlotte thought. Yesterday there had been tears, and they had been terrible. Today none. Had Alison overheard that conversation? Even with the door shut Charlotte could hear Nurse Mahoney talking on the telephone to her boyfriend. She was telling him that she would be free tomorrow. And I too, thought Charlotte, I too shall be free tomorrow.
    Today had been so busy, so awful. This is the first moment I’ve had to sit down, thought Charlotte. Now everything is fixed, everything is arranged for. Alison must do the rest. There had been turmoil. Now at last there was silence. Alison was looking at her. The single eye stared, not with love or hate or even fear — there had been such dreadful fear — but just with a sort of pure consciousness. As with a small child now perhaps consciousness had become an end in itself. She sees me, thought Charlotte, purely at last, and then knew that this was nonsense. Alison saw nothing, knew nothing, in all probability. ‘How is it with you, mother?’ said Charlotte. Even language had become strange, estranged.
    Alison stared, then murmured something, a word. She had murmured the same word once before. It sounded like ‘trees’.
    Charlotte looked at the window. The window was full of light blue evening sky. The two lime trees in the front garden had been cut down. Alison had wished it, Charlotte had arranged it. Later on Alison had regretted it and spoken of ‘My dear trees. My poor trees. I killed them.’ Charlotte had been harsh with such sentimentality. There were so many other real things to regret.
    â€˜It’s better without the trees,’ said Charlotte. ‘More light.’
    Her mother murmured the word again.
    â€˜More light, mother. Better.’
    Oh let me not pity her now, thought Charlotte, later, not now. Go, go in peace, she prayed. Poor poor mother. She’s had a good life, she thought. But what did that matter now, and was it even true?
    â€˜Are you comfy?’ said Charlotte. She touched the pillows, touched her mother’s dull dry grey hair, always now undone and straying, which sometimes in a dim light made her look like a girl. There was nothing more to be done. She did not try to adjust the pillows. Though it was evening time there was no point in feeding Alison again. That was a strange thought. Alison would need no more food. That life-long rhythm had ended though consciousness itself was not yet at an end. There was nothing more to be done, in the many years’ long task. It was strange, like after an examination when suddenly books that have been a part of daily life are set aside for ever. Oh let me not pity her, not yet.
    â€˜Would you like some tea, Miss