Authors: John Bayley
It had never for a moment occurred to either of us that the disease, or the gene that brought it about, could be hereditary. Indeed apart from the blanket term ‘senile dementia’ the
condition had then no specific name, nor did the specialists we consulted about her mother’s case prove in the least helpful, beyond suggesting various physiological explanations and
attempting to treat them. Mrs Murdoch’s own doctor, a hardbitten London GP, merely hinted at a fondness for the gin bottle, a suggestion that upset Iris very much, although it was obvious to
me that her mother had for some time been putting away a good deal. Why not? She was never lonely, because we had subsidised an old friend of hers, a sterling character, to live with and look after
her, but age and its problems are surely entitled to any aids they can find. Alcohol undoubtedly exacerbates the symptoms of Alzheimer’s in many of those who suffer from it, but where would
they have been without the stuff? Iris drinks wine nowadays as she has always done, but in diminished quantity, which for her seems natural. Other bottles of various kinds lie about the house, but
she ignores them.
As regards children, more than forty years ago, her attitude seemed equally natural. We hardly spoke of the question, because I suppose we knew we both understood it. Iris’s attitude to
procreation, as to sex, was not dismissive: it was detachedly and benevolently indifferent. She herself had other things to do. How many women feel the same, but feel also that it is unnatural to
do so, as if motherhood were an achievement they could not let themselves do without? Stevie Smith, the poet, whom Iris knew and liked, used to say in her rather deliberately elfin way, ‘My
poems are my kiddo.’ Iris would never have spoken of her novels as her children: she would never have said anything about the matter at all. Her reserve was deep, and as natural to her as it
was deep.
D.H. Lawrence worship was getting into its stride in the mid-fifties, reaching a sort of climax in 1963, the year in which the failure of an Old Bailey court case against Penguin Books licensed
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
for unlimited printing; the year in which, according to a sardonic poem of Philip Larkin, ‘sexual intercourse began’. There was a sense in which
this was true for England, where the matter had not previously been much discussed, or thought suitable for discussion. And so to the post-war generation Lawrence appealed less as a writer than as
a cult figure, like the newly famous Beatles, a symbol of enlightenment and modernity. For Iris it was only as a writer that he mattered. I remember hearing a philosophical colleague complaining to
her about Lawrence’s ‘half-baked religiosity’ in matters of sex. Iris mildly demurred, saying she thought he was such a marvellous writer it didn’t matter what he wrote
about, or how. But sex certainly did become one of the new religions of the sixties and seventies; and when disillusionment set in it was succeeded by a crudely Faustian view: sex as a performance
sport, for ever striving after new records, new achievements in the state of the art. All this passed by us, and our own cosy and quietistic approach to the matter.
There have been moments when I found myself wondering how Iris got on in bed with lovers whose approach was more ambitious or more demanding than my own; and on one occasion I accidentally
received an unexpected hint from an acquaintance who had, as I knew, been for a brief period a successful admirer. I did not greatly care for this character, a highly distinguished figure in his
own sphere, with a weakness for keeping his friends a trifle overinformed about a current love affair, and how painful or ecstatic or both it was turning out to be. On this occasion he made some
remark about how important it was to get the girl proficient at what you wanted to do yourself, indicating that if she was gone on you enough she would – whatever it was. ‘Nothing more
discouraging than a partner who won’t enter into the spirit of the thing,’ he observed sagely, and then gave me a sudden guilty look as if he might have given something away. It was
unlikely that he knew I was aware of his one time walk-out with Iris, but that brief hangdog look gave me a strong suggestion that he was thinking of her and her shortcomings in bed, thoughts which
he realised were now not best communicated to the husband.
Certainly our bedroom habits (the deep deep peace of the double bed after the hurly-burly on the chaise longue, as Mrs Pat Campbell noted) were always peaceful and unbothered by considerations
of better, or more. The lady in Iris’s novel
A Severed Head
who complained that her marriage ‘wasn’t getting anywhere’ would probably have made the same observation
about her sex life. We expected neither sex nor marriage to get anywhere: we were happy for them to jog on just as they were.
Although Iris remained quite untroubled by any wish to have a family life of her own she had a touching desire to join in any family activities that might be going on around her. As an only
child she greatly welcomed the prospect of having two brothers-in-law, although neither of them showed much interest in her. She bore this patiently, and was rewarded in the course of time by the
increasing regard, almost devotion, given her by my middle brother Michael, a bachelor and brigadier in the army, now retired. He had a distinguished military record, but his occupation since
retirement has been the repair of monuments in churches derelict and no longer in use: some of them magnificent buildings, mainly in East Anglia. Nothing seemed to give him more pleasure than to
take us on tour and to show Iris round any work he had been doing, commenting on the finer points of alabaster restoration – his speciality – and proudly showing off any neglected
statue or cherub’s head he had unearthed in the course of his work.
The now restored church of Lydiard Tregoze in Wiltshire was a special showpiece of his. A frugal person and careful with his pension – he made almost nothing out of restoration work
– he used to sleep in his campbed in the churches where he worked, however remote or desolate they might be. I once asked him if this wasn’t a shade spooky at times. He pooh-poohed the
idea; but added, after a pause for reflection, that he had once felt a little uneasy on waking up in the night in a private chapel on the Harewood estate in Yorkshire. We inquired whether any
explanation for this had manifested itself. Not exactly, he said, and yet he had been beset with the sense that something flat and dark, of considerable size, was in motion on the floor in the
half-light, slowly coming closer to his bed. Rather tactlessly I mentioned M.R. James’s ghost story, ‘The Treasure of Abbot Thomas’, in which a creature resembling a damp leather
bag has been set in mediaeval times by some satanic cleric to guard a treasure concealed under a church’s nave. He had not read it, he said shortly. In fact, as he occasionally remarked,
almost the only book he had read since his schooldays was
A Month in the Country
, not Turgenev’s play but a brief romance about a young man engaged like himself in the work of church
restoration. I cannot recall the name of the author, but about this book my brother was prepared to be enthusiastic.
I don’t think he ever read any of Iris’s novels, but in his own way he greatly respected her achievement. Perhaps because he saw her in a sense as a dedicated fellow-soldier: one who
had been prepared, as a good commander should be, to devote herself singlemindedly to the job of winning the battle. Certainly there was an unspoken accord between them, notwithstanding his extreme
reserve, which was perhaps in secret sympathy with her own. Undoubtedly they felt close to each other, although only meeting on rare occasions, family Christmases and the like. Since Iris developed
Alzheimer’s he has expressed, most uncharacteristically for him, a wish to come and see us at fairly frequent intervals, driving down from London on Sundays for lunch. Although she
doesn’t remember him beforehand, or grasp who it is that is coming, these visits always have a cheering effect on Iris.
My own feelings are more mixed as I have to produce something in the way of lunch instead of our vague little everyday picnic. When at home or on a job my brother lives on sardines and tomatoes,
a healthy diet although he’s not concerned with that. But he unconsciously expects his younger brother to take trouble for him. There is something I enjoy in this fraternal manifestation
– essentially one of kindness, unspoken protectiveness – even though it is a bit irksome, practically speaking, to go along with it. He is punctilious about not drinking when he drives,
bringing his own bottle of alcohol-free beer with some military name like ‘Caliber’.
I used sometimes to tease Iris by telling her that she possessed, in mild form, a ‘Lawrence of Arabia complex’. She smiled but did not deny it. I have always held the opinion that
T.E. Lawrence was a bogus figure.
The Seven Pillars of Wisdom
, once worshipped as a cult book among upper-class homosexuals and academics pining for action, seemed to me so turgidly written
as to be almost unreadable. I still think this is true, but Iris always remained quietly loyal to her affection for the book and its author. She had read it at school, ‘soon after my Rafael
Sabatini period’, as she once told me. (Sabatini, author of
Captain Blood
and
The Black Swan
, was a prolific swash and buckle performer of popular literature.) This willingness
to be unserious about
The Seven Pillars
went with its much deeper and more serious romantic influence, strongly discernible in many of her own novels. Transmuted as they are, and as is the
world she gives them to inhabit, her characters frequently have for the addicted reader the same sort of powerful fascination that the Lawrence legend and personality once exerted. My brother
himself has a shadowy presence in some of her novels, appearing in
An Unofficial Rose
as a character called Felix. I doubt if he would be recognised in the role, by himself or by anybody
else, and I never commented on the point to Iris. She always hated to think her characters were in any sense identifiable, least of all by her own family. She had made them up: they were completely
her own and belonged to her own world, which in its own way was certainly true.
At the time we got married she had written three successful novels and had begun on her fourth. An unforgettable scene in her third,
The Sandcastle
, has a green Riley car undergoing a
complex underwater adventure. I was proud of knowing where the original of the Riley, as a character in the book, had come from, because I had found the car for Iris after a diligent study of the
advertisements in the
Oxford Mail
. This had itself followed a mildly unfortunate incident involving a car – her car. It was a pale blue Hillman Minx, and it had been bought out of the
proceeds of the preceding novel,
The Flight from the Enchanter
. During the fine summer of 1955 I had acted as driving instructor. I had an old Morris car I had bought cheap from my parents
when they had acquired a more respectable vehicle, and Iris quickly learnt to drive, and to drive very well. It would be presumptuous to say I taught her, but I sat beside her and made suggestions.
My old car was known to us by its number EKL, which, as I pointed out, indicated the German word
ekelhaft
– disgusting – but we were fond of it none the less. Iris took her test
on it and passed first time. I was hovering in the background when she met the test official – in those days even driving tests were more informal than they are now – and I was relieved
to see her make a conspicuous point of adjusting the driving mirror before moving off, as I had advised her.
After this sage display of advice and instruction on my part it was I who managed to crash the poor Minx on an icy road in December. I had borrowed the car to go to a party outside Oxford. No
one has ever taken a piece of bad news better than Iris did when I broke it to her. She loved her Minx, and its life had been a sadly short one. But looking back I think that was the moment at
which our life together really began, even though there was still nothing said about marriage, and I had long since given up even hinting at it. But on its own minor scale this was the kind of
domestic disaster which tests a relationship, and shows whether or not it is going to work. Iris was so relieved I wasn’t hurt that she didn’t mind too much about the Minx. The accident
had shown my importance to her more effectively than any loving deeds on my part could have done. Moreover the insurance company paid up, and the green Riley, though impractical in many ways, was a
far more romantic and beautiful car. It was a 1947 model, nearly ten years old, and its dark green chassis, recently and rather amateurishly repainted, was set off by elegant black wings and the
graceful curl of the marque’s radiator, with the name enamelled in blue. No one could have been less fickle than Iris, but in her excitement over the Riley the Minx was soon out of mind, if
not forgotten.
Not forgotten until now, that is. That memory has passed beyond her mind, but when I mention the Riley, and describe it to her, there is still a very faint flicker of recognition. She even
smiles when I go on to remind her of its bad habits and its bad brakes. It would be a valuable car today if it still exists. We kept it in honoured retirement for more than twenty years, until we
could no longer afford garage space and so let it go for a few pounds.
Rivers, as I said, featured in our honeymoon, although not by intention. Our idea had been to take a cultural tour in a leisurely manner, down through France and over the Alps into north Italy,
keeping clear of famous places like Florence and Venice, which we would leave for another time, staying instead at Urbino, San Gimignano and Arezzo, places earnestly recommended to Iris by a couple
whom I thought of as her ‘art friends’ – Brigid Brophy and her husband Michael, who was later to become director of the National Gallery. Brigid had chided Iris for allowing
herself to do anything so banal as to get married, but her sarcasms were weakened by the fact that she had, however reluctantly, taken the same step herself. She wanted the experience of having a
child, and single mothers in those days had not yet acquired the glamour they would achieve later on.