The Bell - Iris Murdoch [76]
Michael obediently turned the headlights full up, while Toby jumped out of the Land-Rover. He saw the boy running away down the road until he was nearly beyond the range of the beam. Then he turned and began to walk slowly back, keeping his eyes steadily fixed on where Michael was behind the blaze of the lights. His brightly illuminated figure approached at an even pace. His dark eyes, wide open and strangely like those of a sleepwalker, were unblinking and clearly visible.
They did not gleam or glow: he walked with a graceful slow stride, very slim, the white sleeves of his shirt uncurling on his arms. He was a long time coming.
When he reached the van he leaned his head in through the window towards Michael. Michael put one arm across his shoulder and kissed him.
It happened so quickly that the moment after Michael was not at all sure whether it had really happened or whether it was just another thing that he had imagined. But Toby remained there rigid, where he had stepped back, pulling himself away from Michael's grasp, and a look of utter amazement was to be seen on his face.
Michael said, and found his voice suddenly thick and stumbling, 'I'm sorry. That was an oversight.' The remark was idiotic, not what he had meant to say at all, that was not the word he wanted. There was a moment's silence. Then Michael said, 'I'm sorry, Toby. Just come round the other side and get in and I'll run you to the Lodge. We're still a little way away.'
Toby came round the front of the car, averting his face. As he had his hand on the door on the other side, someone came into view on the road, another figure vividly revealed and walking slowly up into the beam of the lights. It was Nick. As soon as Michael saw him, following an instinctive desire for concealment, he switched the lights off again. Nick's form loomed up near the car. Toby was still standing in the road.
'Hello you two,' said Nick. 'I thought you were never coming. What's the game, stopping such a long way from the gates?'
'I made a mistake,' said Michael. 'Perhaps you'd see Toby in. I'll be off now. Cheerio, Toby.' He put the lights up, started the car with a jolt, and moved off down the road and in through the Lodge gates which fortunately were open. He and Toby had been behind the headlights; but Nick might have seen something all the same. As he drove up to the house, which was by now entirely in darkness, it was this thought which tormented him most.
CHAPTER 12
It was lunch-time on the following day. As was customary, the meal was taken in silence, while a reading was made by some member of the company. Lunch usually took about twenty minutes, during which the reader sat at a side table, while the others sat at the long narrow refectory table with Michael at one end and Mrs Mark at the other. Today the reader was Catherine and the book from which she read was the Revelations of Julian of Norwich. Catherine read well, in a slightly trembling voice, with deep feeling and patently moved by the matter of her reading.
'This is that Great Deed ordained by our Lord God from without beginning, treasured and hid in His blessed breast, only known to Himself: by which He shall make all things well. For like as the blissful Trinity made all things of nought, right so the same blessed Trinity shall make well all that is not well.
'And in this sight I marvelled greatly and beheld our Faith, marvelling thus: Our Faith is grounded in God's word, and it belongeth to our Faith that we believe that God's word shall be saved in all things; and one point of our Faith is that many creatures shall be condemned: as angels that fell out of Heaven for pride, which be now fiends; and man in earth that dieth out of Faith of Holy Church: that is to say, they that be heathen men; and also man that hath received Christendom and liveth unchristian life, and so dieth out of charity: all these shall be condemned to hell without end, as Holy Church