The Green Knight by Iris Murdoch
Perhaps it is better first to explain, or exhibit, since it is indeed difficult to explain, the relationship which existed between the brothers. Of course there was a built-in difficulty. Lucas, adopted, arrived first. Clement, the ‘real child’, arrived two years later. Lucas was acquired as a tiny baby. The parents, as is deemed wise, told him from earliest years that he was adopted. They did not tell him about his real parents and Lucas never asked. His strange eyes led some onlookers to think that he was a Down’s Syndrome child. His complexion was yellowish, sometimes seeming positively dark. He had strange mannerisms, drooping his hands and descending his head into his shoulders. He grew slowly, and looked for a time like a dwarf. He had also as an adult, small hands and feet. His younger brother, who resembled the handsome father, grew fast and was soon taller. Lucas was a podgy child. Clement was slim, willowy, graceful, a beautiful child, a good-looking youth. Of course it was soon evident that Lucas was very clever; but Clement was clever too in his way, endowed with so many talents and so much charm. How could the parents, blessed now by what they had really wanted, their very own child, conceal their preference? The special care, the deliberate cherishing, which they had lavished upon Lucas when he was the only child, when they wanted, as adoptive parents must, to make certain that he knew he was loved, seemed later on, when the real son arrived, artificial, condescending, treats hastily given to one who has failed. After the defection of the father the situation was still worse since it was to Clement that the abandoned mother turned for consolation. There were, moreover, occasions when it was necessary to chide Lucas for being ‘too rough’ with his younger brother. Only once did Clement run to his mother to tell her that Lucas had hit him; he learned soon afterwards how counter-productive such informing was. He was afraid of Lucas, who unobtrusively bullied him. Yet, persistently, he also admired Lucas, even loved him; and in spite of everything the general idea that the brothers were ‘close’ and ‘attached to each other’ was by no means false. Lucas enjoyed his absolute power over his brother: absolute because he had soon taught Clement to accept in silence any degree of despotism. Yet he was also, in some way, grateful to Clement for his submission, and, in his sense of ownership, set himself up as the protector of the younger child. At school, no one dared to bully Clement for fear of Lucas’s reprisals; and neither at school nor at home did anyone ever see Lucas bully his brother. The despotism remained a secret between the master and the slave. Something like this ‘love-hate’ relationship, so deeply established, continued in adult life. For instance, it was generally understood that no one was to criticise Clement in Lucas’s presence; and Clement was never heard to speak of his brother except with esteem and affection.
As they moved apart into quite different spheres, Lucas into the academic world, Clement into the world of theatre, the strange secret bond remained. In fact to call it a love-hate relationship was not quite just; Clement, who had so certainly won the ‘early childhood’ game, however often his brother had beaten him at ‘Dogs’, was not really capable of hatred. He loved and feared his brother who, never attacking Clement in public, did not, in private, conceal his contempt for Clement’s ‘mediocre fiddling’ in the world of entertainment. Clement was made to feel the inferiority of not being an intellectual. (Lucas had joined those who urged Clement not to quit Cambridge.) And behind the often spiteful continuation of the childhood warfare Clement could discern in his brother the old black bitterness and the terrible original never-healing wound. This dark thing Clement did not care to look upon. His natural cheerful and affectionate nature led him to believe, and there was some evidence of this too, that as the years went by the tension between them had become less of a damaging war and more like a strange ancestral game. The bond remained secret and mutually tacit; of course they would never have dreamt of discussing it. The ‘outside world’ continued to preserve the touching picture of brothers in amity.
Social relations between the two, which in other circumstances might have weakened, were sustained and stabilised by friends held in common, originally and especially Teddy Anderson and Bellamy, later Louise and Joan also, later still the four children. As already related, on Teddy’s death both Lucas and Clement, though not formally ‘guardians’, became responsible, indeed in part financially responsible, for the children. Clement and Bellamy were loved by these children; their feelings about Lucas, though more mixed, were never questioned. He was a part of their family, an uncle, a pillar, a remarkable person. At an earlier period, both before and after Teddy’s death, Lucas had been quite often on the scene. Later he withdrew and was said to be a recluse. He continued for a while to give Sefton history tutorials, but in time gave that up too.
On the summer evening in question Lucas had telephoned Clement about six o’clock and asked him, if he was free, to come over to supper. This had been, in the past, though lately rather discontinued, not unusual. Lucas, who disliked making arrangements beforehand, preferred, if any, ad hoc social encounters. On the telephone Lucas asked Clement not to mention this to anyone as he had refused two invitations and did not want to hurt feelings. He added that he would fetch Clement by car, soon, why not at once, since he had heard that Clement’s car was ‘laid up’. Clement, always pleased by any friendly signal from his brother, agreed. However, he said there was no need for Lucas to call for him, he would take a taxi. The afternoon had been hot and sunny, but as Clement prepared to set off a few drops of rain fell and he decided to bring his big umbrella – there might even be a thunderstorm. Supper with Lucas always consisted of pate, cold tongue and salad, cheese and apples. Clement had brought an inexpensive bottle of Beaujolais just in case, as had been known to happen, Lucas had forgotten to buy wine; however on this occasion he had produced a rather fine claret. During the meal both bottles were drunk, mainly by Clement, whose glass was never empty. Clement had not eaten much during that day, which he had spent at an incompetent little theatre helping to arrange the hire of some furniture. (I’m a stage-manager, it seems, he thought, not a director!) He ate most of the tongue and almost all the cheese. Lucas, who was ’never hungry’, behaved, as Clement recalled it later, in an unusually lively manner, smiling and looking about the sombre dining-room, his gaze lingering upon this picture and that vase, things which had been there unmoved since their mother died. It was as if he were listing those objects in his mind, since he was soon to go on a long journey and wished to fix them in his memory. Clement, when drunk in the presence of Lucas, usually felt anxiety, or in extreme cases shame. Now however, perhaps infected by his host’s liveliness, he experienced a calm exaltation, a marked sense of presence, as if for both of them time had slowed down. This staying of time he connected somehow with childhood. The exaltation, which involved a form of slow-seeing, or entranced-staring, presence, consisted for Clement of two layers, one of good joy, wherein he was gladdened that Lucas had survived, that Lucas was a great man, and that after all Lucas loved his brother. The other layer, primal and less clearly discernible, was some awful strange old feeling, left lurking in his deep mind from long ago, of having won, having triumphed over Lucas, of being himself the loved, the cherished, the real child; whereas Lucas was a dummy, a garish puppet, a robot. Even, as Clement later recalled it, that supper table, the familiar objects, the silver-plated knives and forks, the four-footed silver salt-cellar with its blue glass interior (the little feet were lions’ heads), the Wedgwood plates (as mother said, ‘not to be used’), the Irish Waterford glasses (‘for best’), enlarged and shining in Clement’s slowed vision, seemed to come alive while standing very still, as ‘witnesses’; the strange thought came to Clement as he reached out cautiously for his ever-full glass. He wondered, is time like this on another planet?
He had felt reluctant to go. When there was a silence in which he might courteously have expressed a wish to do so, Lucas always began speaking again. They had talked about childhood holidays, about schooldays, about Cambridge, about the dreadful state of education, about the girls (Aleph,
Hearing Lucas’s words about ‘show you something’, he got out of the car. It was dark. He thought, he has driven me home. Perhaps he’ll come in for a drink. I’ll tell him that beautiful strange dream – then he thought, no, perhaps I won’t. Then he realised that he was not at home. He held onto the car. Then felt Lucas taking hold of his arm and leading him under some trees into what seemed like a park or a garden, at one moment he saw a tall clipped yew, its blackness outlined against a slightly lighter sky, which was exhibiting a single bright star. He felt now, rather than saw, the presences of trees. Lucas was speaking to him now, ‘Would you like to see some glow-worms?’ Clement at once recalled what Lucas must be remembering, how on just such a summer evening, when they were children on holiday, Lucas had led him by the hand to show him a dell where a gathering of glow-worms made a positively brilliant light under some bushes. Clement even now fumbled for Lucas’s hand in the dark. But Lucas, who had released his arm, moved ahead of him. Where were they? He stumbled on, then saw, a pile of bricks. Perhaps it was a building site, a ‘development’, where some big house had been demolished, and they were now in the huge wild abandoned garden. He shook off a snake-like bramble which had seized his ankle. Lucas had paused. Among some tall trees there was an arch of bushy leaves making a little dark cave. Lucas was pointing. Beside him now Clement leaned forward peering in under the leaves. What was to change many lives happened, and happened very fast in the next moments.
Clement (and how clearly and constantly he recalled and established this in his mind) became suddenly aware that Lucas was about to hit him. It seemed later like an intuition, something apprehended without sight or sound, then caught in the slightest swiftest sidelong glance, before even he could move: the arm, holding some weapon, uplifted against the faintly lighter sky. Clement recalled, as in slow motion, his realisation, his reaction, as his whole body was suddenly focused in an act of evasion. He transferred his weight from one foot to another, moved his head aside, began to straighten his spine, spread out both arms to balance and protect, poised his feet to run: but these movements, vulnerably placed as he was, were too slow. The blow fell – but not on him. Clement saw, as he half fell, half sprang away, the figure beside Lucas of another man, upon whom the savage force of the weapon now descended. The man fell, without any cry, with a heavy hideous sound into the bushes. Something fell onto the grass near Clement’s feet. Lucas was kneeling down beside the fallen man. Clement, as he remembered, stood with his hands up to his face, holding his head as if it were likely to fall off, his mouth wide open, unable to utter any sound. Lucas rose and took hold of Clement’s arm, pulling it down, and thrust something into his hand. ‘Take this, put it under your coat, and go away, go home, walk home, go, remember, you were never here.’ Lucas knelt again beside the fallen man. Clement turned back among the trees, hastening at random, moaning as he ran, losing what had seemed to be a path, and emerged at last onto a lighted road, quiet, empty, there was no one there. He ran, then walked, looking about him to find out where in London he was. At last there were familiar streets, no longer empty, through which he hurried, holding something under his coat, passing the late night people, men in evening-dress, girls laughing together, solitary sinister men with terrible secrets – of whom Clement now and forever after must be one. It started to rain, but he had left his umbrella somewhere. He dared not take a taxi. He reached his flat at last, stumbling up the stairs. He turned all the lights on, laid down what he had carried under his coat, looked at it, then took it to the kitchen and washed it. He had felt, throughout the walk, dreadfully clear-headed, no longer drunk. He thought that now he must sit up all night, with huge wide eyes and round open mouth, staring at the event. But he did not. He tore off his clothes, turned off the lights, plunged into his bed and pulled the bedclothes over his head and fell into a black pit of slumber.
When he woke next morning he rose as usual and pulled back his curtains. The sun was shining. The trees in nearby gardens were radiantly green and shapely, displaying their motionless leaves. He opened the window to a warm smell of roses. He thought suddenly: I had such a terrible nightmare. Then he thought: but it’s true, it all happened. What am I to do now, what am I ever to do? He walked into the kitchen and looked at the thing which lay beside the sink. He thought, I must get rid of it somehow, I must take it somewhere. He wrapped it up in paper and put it away in a cupboard. He got dressed. He thought, Lucas will ring me. Then he thought, no he won’t. But what has happened, what happened to that man, what did Lucas do after I left, is the man still lying there in the bushes – ought I to go and look? No, and in any case he had no idea, where, in what derelict park or garden, the terrible thing had occurred. It had occurred, it had happened, and could never in his life be unhappened, never removed, a huge deadly black scar lasting forever. But what has happened next, what will happen, to him, and to Lucas? In some dim light, perhaps the light of the glow-worms, he thought he had seen the man’s face – but that was impossible – he had just gained an impression of him. What was he doing there so late at night in that dark place, by what accident was he, just then, just there? Who was he, had he been following Lucas, was he connected with Lucas? What did it all mean? Then Clement thought – of course – there were no glow-worms. And for a second he felt a strange terrible sharp pang, in thinking of the use to which that innocent memory had now been put. It was only in a secondary way, or at a deeper level, that Clement in his first state of shock, thought: Lucas intended to kill me. He made some tea. He sat beside the telephone. It was no use telephoning Lucas, who of course would not answer. In any case, Clement was afraid. Ought he to go over to Lucas’s house? He was afraid to go. He tried to write a letter to Lucas. It was impossible. He rang the theatre, he rang his agent, cancelling appointments. An actress, an old friend, rang up asking advice. He gave it. Time passed. Clement made some more tea. His hand was trembling. He could not eat, he could not sit still, he walked up and down. His life, his whole being, had been suddenly destroyed. He had another thought: Lucas had gone home and committed suicide. Lucas had often talked of suicide, but Clement had not taken this seriously. But if Lucas thought of suicide was it n