Mr Murray, I’ve come to apologize….’
Ned stepped forward, and Elizabeth’s ears burned. At the same time she felt that Ned’s thin white face was pitiful, and her heart nearly died away when he said: ‘So I’m not to be kicked in the gutter like a dog and left lying?’
‘You?’ said Elizabeth. ‘No, never.’
They stared at each other.
‘I saw you get the Dunlop Medal,’ said Elizabeth suddenly, in a breathless voice. ‘A lot of us went in to see the Math. show and I saw you get the Dunlop Medal.’
‘Of course, I remember you,’ said Ned. He waved an arm. ‘Please take a chair. What are you doing here?’ he went on. ‘Got a job?’
‘No, I’m not working.’
This answer seemed to please Ned.
‘So I’m not the only one,’ he said. ‘I’m staying here with my brother; he’s a minister, you know. I might have been a minister too, but they never let me take Hebrew…. There’s always something.’ He bent forward confidentially and tapped on the table. ‘The thing to do is to keep dodging. Keep dodging, for they’re cunning. They’ll get you if they can —’
The door opened, and Ned’s expression changed in a flash. His face, which, as Elizabeth noted with a sinking depression, was essentially handsomer than his brother’s, twisted until it became mean and ugly, he contracted his shoulders as if ready to spring and snarled rather than said: ‘Good God!’
William Murray came in quietly, as if nothing had happened. He greeted Elizabeth almost with coldness, and sat down. Ned was still glaring at his brother, and Elizabeth’s mouth dried up as she looked at him. She could think of nothing to say.
William’s voice said politely: ‘This has been a lovely day, hasn’t it?’
‘Glorious,’ she answered quickly. ‘I’ve been down to the sea. It was – it was glorious.’
Ned rose and stood at the window with his back to them, jerking his head round from time to time with an uneasy twist as if his collar irked him.
‘When the sun began to set,’ Elizabeth babbled on, ‘the foam caught all the colour, first rose and then lavender. And the lip of each wave spilled over the sand was opalescent. And just beneath the top that curls over, you know, the light shone pure green through the water.’
Ned turned swiftly.
‘Do you know what I saw in the paper this morning – this very morning?’
His voice was harsh. He came back and leaned over the table.
‘A butcher found a little stray kitten in his shop and chopped off his front paws and threw it out. A little stray kitten. Chopped its paws off.’
‘Oh no!’ cried Elizabeth.
‘I’ll let you see it in the paper.’
Ned began to shake out a newspaper with exaggerated gestures.
‘Mrs Shand doesn’t want to hear about it,’ said William.
Ned stiffened.
‘Mrs Shand?’ he said. ‘Mrs Shand? That’s not your name.’
‘I’ve married Hector Shand,’ said Elizabeth faintly, because even as she said it she felt that it should not be said.
Ned flung down the paper.
‘Trickery!’ he said. ‘I knew it. The same low cunning! But too obvious, madam, too ob-vi-ous.’
He thrust his face into Elizabeth’s with a sudden sneer, and then as suddenly marched out of the room with his head in the air, slamming the door.
The minister propped his elbows on the large table and covered his face with his hands.
Before Elizabeth could do anything Ned’s head popped in again.
‘The worst of the lot,’ he said, ‘is Hector Shand.’
He slammed the door, and reopened it immediately.
‘He’ll wait for you at a back door,’ he said, ‘and stick a knife into you!’
This time he could be heard tramping away from the door and up the stairs.
William Murray had not moved.
‘Mr Murray!’ said Elizabeth in a low voice sharpened a little with fear. ‘Mr Murray!’
The minister removed his hands.
‘You’re not afraid of him, are you?’
‘I shouldn’t be, I know. Oh, it’s not him I’m afraid of; its the state he gets into that frightens me. I mean, that a human being should be able to get into such a state. I thought at first it was pitiful, but it’s more than that.’
She was twisting her fingers together.
‘How can such a thing happen?’ she said. ‘What does it mean?’
‘I am beginning to think,’ said the minister with cold precision, looking at his hands, ‘that it means hell fire. Ned is in hell.’
‘You mustn’t say that.’ Elizabeth rose to her feet. ‘That’s what you mustn’t say.’
The minister shrank; he looked weary
‘What else?’ he muttered.
‘I don’t know what else…. But that makes it seem hopeless. There must be some way…. You can see that he was meant to be different.’
‘Did you know him at the University?’
It was Elizabeth’s turn to shrink.
‘Not exactly,’ she stammered. ‘I knew about him, of course. He was a nice boy.’
‘And now this.’ The minister looked up fiercely. ‘The love of God has been withdrawn from my brother.’
Elizabeth sat down again. She felt suddenly both assured and eager.
‘I’m not religious in the ordinary sense,’ she began. ‘I don’t think I’m a Christian. I don’t believe in your heaven and hell. I believe in something that flows through the universe. When I’m in touch with it I know at once; I feel happy; I feel I can do anything. You can call it God if you like. I have just found it again after losing it for months. It can be lost and found. It’s not a permanent state like heaven or hell. Your brother has lost it and why should he not find it again?’
The minister covered his face again, and muttered something undistinguishable.
‘It’s not outside, it’s inside oneself. And yet it comes suddenly, as if from outside. You must know what I mean, or you would not be a minister.’
William
