The Bell - Iris Murdoch [144]
'I was pretty serious with him,' said James. He looked at Michael now with a level stare. A tiny flame of hostility flickered in the air between them and was gone. 'I thought he'd behaved foolishly, even in some ways badly, in relation to both you and Dora, and I told him so. After all, he'd felt badly enough about it himself to take this rather drastic step of making a confession - which I must say I thought a very sensible and admirable thing to do. And it had to be met with the seriousness which the case deserved. Anything else would have been too little.'
'Where's Toby now?' said Michael.
'I sent him home,' said James.
Michael jumped up from his chair. He wanted to shout and bang on the desk. He said quietly to James, 'You perfect imbecile.' He went and stood looking out of the window. 'When did he go?'
'He went this morning,' said James. 'I sent him off on the early train. The car taking Catherine picked him up at the Lodge. I'm sorry I wasn't able to raise all this with you yesterday, but there was so damn much happening. I had to make a decision. I decided it was better he shouldn't see you again. He obviously felt the thing was - you know, sort of messy and unclean. He'd tried to clean things up, for himself anyway, by telling about it. And I thought he should go while he felt, as it were, that he'd got back to some sort of innocence. If he'd stayed and had a talk with you he'd just have fallen back into the mess again, if you see what I mean.'
Michael drummed on the window. James was quite right in a way. But his heart ached terribly for Toby, sent away now with all his imperfections on his head, loaded with guilt, and involved by James's solemnity in a machinery of sin and repentance with which he probably had no capacity to deal. How typical of James to do the simple decent thing which was also so damned obtuse. By sending Toby away he had branded the thing into the boy's mind as something appalling; almost any other way of closing the incident would have been better than this one. Yet as Michael reflected how dearly he would have liked to be able to close this drama in his own way, he was not at all sure that his method would have been an improvement.
'Why am I an imbecile?' said James.
'There was no need to be so damn solemn,' said Michael. 'The real blame belongs to me. By sending Toby away you've made him feel like a criminal and made the whole business into a tremendous catastrophe.'
‘I don't see why he shouldn't take his full share of responsibility,' said James. 'He's quite old enough.'
Michael looked away across the lake and down the great avenue of trees toward the Lodge. He said, 'I wonder why he suddenly took it into his head to confess to you?'
'Why shouldn't he?' said James. 'He was worried enough. I think what immediately made up his mind were some things Nick Fawley said. Apparently Nick knew all about it and reproached him and told him he ought to own up. First sensible thing Nick's done since he arrived, in my view.'
Michael continued to drum on the window. The slight dazzle from the lake hurt his eyes. He moved his head to and fro, as if to help his mind to take in what he had just heard. He was too appalled to speak. So Nick 'knew all about it'. His revenge could not have been more perfect. To have seduced Toby would have been crude. Instead, Nick had forced Toby to play exactly the part which Nick himself had played thirteen years earlier. Toby had been his understudy indeed. Michael had hoped to save Nick. But Nick had merely ruined him a second time and in precisely the same way.
Michael turned back to the desk and looked down at James, who had gone back to ruffling his hair. 'Well, that appears to be that,' he said to James. 'I'm sorry if I've seemed cross. I assure you I regard myself as very much to blame. There's no point in going into it now. Of course I shall resign or whatever one does and go away from Imber.'
James began to say something in protest.
There was a loud knock on the door and Mark Strafford came in. He looked pale, upset, and frightened