The Bell - Iris Murdoch [32]
'Hello, Catherine!' said Mrs Mark loudly. 'I've brought Dora to see you.'
Catherine jumped and turned about, looking startled. What a jittery creature she is, Dora thought. She smiled and Catherine smiled back at her through the net.
'You must get terribly hot doing that,' said Dora. Catherine wore an open-necked summer frock with pale washed-out flowers upon it. Her throat was burnt to a dark brown by the sun, but a sallowness in her face had seemed to resist the sunlight and gave her the pale look which Dora had remarked the night before. She pushed the hat back off her head as she spoke to Dora until it rested, held by its strings, upon the great bunch of hair on her shoulders, and she swept the ragged dark fringe back from her brow. She wiped a brown hand wet with perspiration upon her dress, while they exchanged a remark or two about the weather. Dora and Mrs Mark passed on.
'Catherine's so excited about going in, bless her heart,' said Mrs Mark. 'This is such a thrilling time for her.' 'Going in?' said Dora.
'Oh, you didn't know,' said Mrs Mark, as she led Dora back towards the gate. 'Catherine is going to be a nun. She is going to enter the Abbey in October.'
They went out of the gate. Dora turned to take one last look at the figure under the net. At the news which she had just heard she felt a horrified surprise, a curious sort of relief, and a more obscure pain, compounded perhaps of pity and of some terror, as if something within herself were menaced with destruction.
* * *
'It's time now please,' said the man behind the counter.
Dora jumped guiltily to her feet and returned her glass. She was the only remaining inhabitant of the darkly varnished bar parlour of the White Lion. She went out into the sunshine and heard the sad sound of the inn door being closed and bolted behind her. It was half past two.
After taking leave of Mrs Mark in the morning Dora had rested for about twenty minutes, and then had walked to the village by a footpath which Mrs Mark had indicated to her, to inquire at the station about the suitcase. The walk took longer than she expected, but when she arrived, sweating and exhausted, she was told that the case was due to be returned by a train which came through in about half an hour. Wandering out again into the village Dora was transported with delight to discover that the pubs were open. She patronized in turn the White Lion and the Volunteer, and sat dreaming in the dim light of the bars, enjoying that atmosphere of a quiet pub which was connected with her pleasanter memories of being in church. She went back to the station and found the train was late. Eventually it appeared and the suitcase was unloaded and given to Dora. Her first action was to retire with it to the Ladies' Cloakroom and change into a summer dress and sandals. Feeling much better, she emerged and was about to start out, laden with the suitcase, on the walk back which it had not occurred to Paul, or indeed to herself, to think of as likely to be peculiarly wearisome, when she happened to look at the time. It was a quarter past one. Dora then remembered that lunch at Imber was at twelve-thirty. It was then that she entered for the second time into the White Lion.
Ejected, she trailed off through the village and found the stile and the little footpath which led through two wheatfields and a wood to the main road. The wheat, tawny with ripeness, had been cut and stood in tented stooks about the fields, while a few ghostly poppies lingered at the edge of the path. Dora reached the