Iris Murdoch - An Unofficial rose

I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.

FANNY PERONETT was dead. That much her husband Hugh Peronett was certain of as he stood in the rain beside the grave which was shortly to receive his wife's mortal remains. Further than that, Hugh's certainty did not reach. The promise meant little to him that the priest had uttered. He did not even know what Fanny had believed, let alone anything concerning the possible consequences of her beliefs. After more than forty years of marriage, and although his wife had not been a mysterious woman, he had not really known what was in her heart. He looked across the open grave. The tiny coffin opposite to him, under its pile of sodden roses, was like that of a child. She had shrunk so much in her last illness.

Fanny had had few friends. Yet the gathering at the graveside, under its receding rows of black umbrellas, was a large one, and the family itself accounted for little of the throng. In the chapel, during the dreary singing of Abide with me, Hugh had been too dazed to note who was present and who was not. Now he began a little to look cautiously about him. Fanny's peevish architect brother was there, of course, the one who had inherited the pictures. He looked so transparent now with thinness and age that it was hard to remember that he was her younger brother; Fanny herself had been so plump and busy, such a bouncy little person, till the cancer came. Then there were the others, his own people, Fanny's and his people. His son Randall and Randall's wife Ann stood nearest to him; and half opposite, little figures in navy blue raincoats, were two of his grandchildren, Randalls daughter Miranda, and young Penn Graham, Sarah's eldest son and now Hugh's eldest grandchild. Dear Sarah was in Australia with her husband and Penn was there, as Sarah had put it in her long emotional cable, to represent the love of all the Grahams. What a rotten time the boy had had, Hugh reflected. It was almost indeed as if he had come for Fanny's death-bed. They had even forgotten his fifteenth birthday. Poor Fanny had been looking forward so much to seeing him on this long-promised visit; but by the time he arrived she had become too deeply concerned with her own last things.

With so much rain it was hard to tell who was weeping. For those who, like himself, felt it indelicate to raise an umbrella in the presence of death, external nature provided a semblance of that tribute which, from a?winter? spring, the heart could not or would not offer. Hugh had no tears. But Penn was certainly weeping. Hugh looked at the boy. He seemed slight and childish in his school mackintosh, his little thin face all red with grief, as he stared down at the raindrops fretting the pool of water in the pit below him, and thrust his knuckles regularly into his eyes. He had scarcely known his grandmother, but because she was his grandmother he had loved her, and he sorrowed now with a complete sorrow as at an utter loss. Hugh envied the completeness. All the same there was something frail, almost sentimental about the boy. He was quite unlike the tough Australian grandson of Hugh's imaginings. Given what the boy's father was like, they had all been prepared for something roughish, but not for this rather pathetic elf.

Hugh looked at Miranda. She too appeared younger than her age.

She must surely, he reminded himself, be fourteen now. Or was she? It was shocking not to know. Her very pale freckled face, so like her mother's, wore a paralysed self-conscious expression. She was not crying. She looked steadily upward above the heads of the mourners, determined not to catch the eye of her parents, and as if absorbed in some long calculation of her own. Now and then with a nervous hand she patted the unaccustomed little black hat which covered her red-golden hair, her bright hair which fell usually in big separate locks like a cap of autumn leaves, hidden now except where a few rain darkened ends clung to her neck. She was to Hugh a totally mysterious little girl.

The other person who was really crying was Ann. As she was on Hugh's deaf side he could not hear her sobs, but he could feel against the sleeve of his overcoat the convulsive movements of her shoulder. He gave her a quick sideways look. Her eyes and nose were red, but the rest of her face absurdly retained its usual waxen paleness so that she looked like a rather damp clown. A wet scarf covered her hair, which had been, when Randall married her, so flaming, but which had faded to a pale ginger now on its way to becoming a sandy grey. She had loved Fanny; and Fanny had loved her too, in her way. 'Such a serious girl', Fanny had said of her at first, a little timidly, a little suspiciously; and timidity and suspicion had always remained to temper their good relations, for Fanny was never very far from thinking that Ann thought her a fool. But Fanny had believed in Randall's marriage, had believed in it right up to the end, seeing no danger signs and noticing no deterioration; and perhaps that very belief had helped to keep Ann and Randall together.

We brought nothing into this world and it is certain we can carry nothing out.

It was true that Fanny had brought nothing into this world. On the other hand she had had plenty of things waiting for her when she arrived. It was many years now since Hugh had stopped wondering to what extent he had married for money. Plump rose-red Fanny had somehow so much made one with her rich art-dealer father and the great family collection that it made no sense even to ask whether he had married her for the pictures: and by the time the pictures went away to the boorish brother and the collection was dispersed Hugh hardly wanted them any more. Except the Tintoretto. That he had always wanted, and his wish had been rewarded, since Fanny got the gem, the Tintoretto. Perhaps indeed he had married her for the Tintoretto, as in a curious muddled way it had sometimes seemed to him in his dreams when his poor wife and the picture became strangely identified with each other.

For man walketh in a vain shadow, and disquieteth himself in vain: he heapeth up riches and cannot tell who shall gather them.

Hugh hoped that the children were not too disappointed about Fanny's will. She had left everything to him and nothing to them, which was characteristic of her and perfectly right. Yet Randall had shown resentment enough when Hugh, paid Penn Graham's fare to England, as if it were already Randall's own money that was being wasted. Hugh hoped there would be no unpleasant discussion. It was true that Sarah and Randall both needed money: Sarah to feed her increasing brood, and Randall Randall for his freedom. The rose nursery, Randall's creation, still brought in an income. But Randall's heart was no longer in it: heaven knew indeed where it had fled to by now, that most volatile organ. Hugh reflected that perhaps it was better after all that his son should not be wealthy, should not, anyway, be wealthy yet. They could wait, both of them, they could wait for what was left of Fanny' s cash.

It would not be very long. Old age, which when he had been younger had seemed a coloured prospect of broken wisdom, a condition like that of a late Titian, full of great melancholy shattered forms, now presented itself, when he was on the brink of it as a state, at best, of distraction, irritation and diminished dignity: his rheumatism, his indigestion, his weak legs, his deafness, the perpetual buzzing in his head. On the brink of it was indeed how he now from day to day imagined himself. To picture himself, passing that limit would be to admit into his imagination the reality of death; and this even now he could not do. Fanny had not done it, up to the end; and as Hugh well knew, her spiritual adviser, the rector Douglas Swann, had not been able, in the course of many visits, to bring himself to steer the conversation round to the state of her soul. Fanny had not been equipped for the seriousness of mortality, and one had felt, in the midst of grief, almost embarrassed for her in this respect.