Authors: John Bayley
I can’t recall myself saying that I would be the cook. To me it just happened, and in any case it was not really cooking. The point was that Iris was working – properly working
– and I was determined she should not be distracted from this. Getting something to eat was easy, and we often used to go to a pub on the main road where a good plain dinner could be had
cheap. That was long before the present situation in England, when cooking has at last become an art to be treated seriously – overseriously. There was no fiddly
nouvelle cuisine
forty
years ago.
Yet there had been one occasion when Iris took as many pains as any acolyte in the media-haunted kitchens of today. Well before we were married, and when I really thought she never would marry
me, she decided to entertain to supper the same pair – the academic lawyer and his wife – at whose table we had eaten our first meal together. She had another guest too, and made no
apology for not including me in the party. She was living in her Beaumont Street flat at the time, on the top floor. There was no dining-room and her attic kitchen was barely a room at all. I had
been a little hurt, none the less, and had suggested that if she must entertain the Johnsons, couldn’t she take them to a restaurant? She’d said pacifically she didn’t want to do
that: they’d asked her to supper so many times, and she felt the least she could do was to make a special effort of her own. Iris, as I saw then a little gloomily, could be very conscientious
about such things.
She took immense trouble. First of all she bought herself at great expense a red enamel casserole, a boat-shaped one with a close-fitting lid. It weighed about a ton. I think it was the first
time either of us had seen such a thing. I gazed at it in awe: Iris with all the pride of new possession. A culinary-minded friend of hers who was partly Greek had told her this was what she needed
to prepare the very special Attic dish called
stephados
. He had told her that if properly done, which only very rarely happened, it was the most delicious dish in the world. He was a
philosopher, a follower of Plato, but his real interest was in cooking and telephones. Since he was the inspiration of the dish Iris proposed to prepare it was natural that he should be one of the
three guests invited.
Iris took two days to prepare that dish. I cannot recall exactly what was in it, as neither she nor I ever attempted to prepare it again, but there was a lot of high-quality beef from the
market, and olive oil and aubergines and spices and herbs and tomato puree. It was, of course, a colossal success. She allowed me to finish it with her, cold, the following day, and I honestly
don’t think I have ever eaten anything more delicious in my life.
So Iris could cook, and to perfection, just as she might have done all sorts of other things superlatively well. But as I sat eating it with her the following day – and to my great
satisfaction she admitted it was even better cold than hot – I had not been able to avoid a feeling of disappointment. Somehow it was not like Iris to have done such a thing, to have pulled
off a culinary coup that must have staggered the Johnsons, accustomed as they were to thinking Iris an odd but lovable lovable and unworldly person, a philosopher, a hopeful writer of novels, whom
they had got the measure of, whom they could patronise in their own fashion. Was that why she had done it? If so, I could not escape a fellow-feeling with the Johnsons. Friends, who fill their own
allotted place in your life, should not behave wholly uncharacteristically. Still less so if you are in love with such a friend, as I was.
Perhaps Iris knew this too: perhaps that is why it was such a one-off occasion? It surprised me none the less, and continues to do so, trivial as the occasion might now seem. My memory of it
could be the difficulty I now feel in writing about Iris as she was. Is it that I can only think of her as she now is, which is for me the same as she has always been? In any case no description of
anybody, however loving, can seem to do anything but veer away from the person concerned, not because it distorts their ‘reality’, whatever that may be, but because the describer
himself begins to lose all confidence in the picture of the person he is creating. The Iris of my words cannot, I know, be any Iris who existed. In writing about the
stephados
(or should it
be
stefados
?) episode I can no longer believe in my own account of the Iris who willed it, who so uncharacteristically made it happen.
The words in which to talk about it are in any case becoming muddled in my mind, because Iris is stirring out of her doze beside me, making me attentive to her, and not to what I am trying to
write. And this is the Iris I now know, the unique one as it seems: the one who has been here always: thus the only one I have ever known.
As for the expensive red casserole boat, it was never used again. Or hardly ever. Maybe it was cooked in by me once or twice, without conviction and without much success. I may have made a few
stews eaten without comment by our guests, or perhaps with some kindly routine commendation by one of the women present. Like so many other things in the house it is lost now, undiscoverable,
although I remember that the last time I saw it, covered with cobwebs at the bottom of a cupboard, it looked as if worn out, terribly old and tired, with rust patches coming through the red enamel
from the iron underneath. But when new it once housed the most perfect dish in the world, made by the person who then seemed, and in a sense was, the least likely person to make it.
I could record one other cooking experience in Iris’s life, and one I still find quite upsetting to remember. It must have taken place about the time I first met her, or perhaps before I
met her. Two friends of hers, the strong-minded female philosopher who practised ‘telegamy’, and a mathematical logician of international standing who was a bachelor, had asked to
borrow her room for a day while she was absent. The room she then lived in had a gas-ring and wash-basin but not much else, and they required it not for secret sexual congress but because the
mathematician wanted to indulge himself in a culinary experiment. Why they should have required Iris’s room for this purpose I still cannot fathom, except that the room was handy and they
knew they could presume on her discretion and her unbounded good nature. (They were right of course, but I still grind my teeth when I think of it, even though they are not my own teeth any more
but false ones, a denture.) The experiment was in the manufacture of herring soup, which the mathematician, Viennese but possibly with Baltic origins, swore he was on the verge of perfecting. The
philosopher affected not to believe him, and swore in her turn – she was a lady with a strong streak of puckish humour – that she could never be induced under any circumstances to
partake of such a dish, however exquisitely prepared. The very idea of it was repellent to her. So they made what amounted to a bet.
The mathematician won the bet. The soup was a triumph: the philosopher capitulated and said that it was so. Indeed she consumed it with relish. When Iris returned a few days later it was to find
her room in the most gruesome possible disorder, smelling strongly of fish, and her landlady furious. Other tenants had complained of the noise and the smell. Miss Murdoch’s reputation, once
immaculate, was now in ruins. In the eyes of the landlady she was, and remained, a fallen woman: one who allowed the most unspeakable orgies to take place in her room, and no doubt participated in
them herself. Iris left the house not long after, although its position and amenities had suited her very well. But that was not what upset me when Iris told me the tale, which she did in a
tolerant amused way, without a trace of resentment.
Indeed she remained, and still does, on the best possible terms with both parties, even though neither attempted an apology for what had taken place, or even seemed to think one might be
appropriate. It annoys me intensely that she should still revere them, none the less. But what upset me even more, and for some reason can still go through me like a spear, was that Iris found one
of her most treasured possessions lying on the floor of the room, hideously violated. It was a blue silk chiffon scarf which her mother had given her as a special birthday present. Its state when
discovered was so repulsive that Iris had no choice but to take it straight out to the dustbin, holding her nose while she did so. The logician had required the finest possible sieve to strain the
end product of his masterpiece, and the philosopher, casually opening a drawer, had handed him the scarf.
I can still see and imagine the pair, wringing out the last drop. I have only met either of them a few times, but when I do I find it difficult to be more than barely civil.
It is too late to remind Iris of the story now, but if I were able to do so I am sure that she would reveal the same Christ-like qualities of tolerance, amusement and good nature –
forgiveness would not even be in question – which she must have felt as she gazed on that fearful scene. Or perhaps it only became fearful in the telling? – more specifically, in the
way she told it to me? All my instincts, or so I still feel, would have led me into some wild counter-excess. I should have gone after the pair, murdered one or both of them, or at the very least
cut as many of their possessions as I could find into ribbons, with a sharp knife. And yet here I was, when Iris told me the story, longing to share my life with a woman who could behave as
angelically as she seemed to have done.
I think that was what really upset me most of all. It seemed so unnatural. As it still does. I can upset myself still more if I am not careful by wondering whether Iris really behaved so
angelically after all? Did something in her secretly long to be violated in this way by the pair? Did she in some sense invite this wanton exercise of power over her? Was she submitting to these
gods of logic and philosophy as she submitted to the godmonster of Hampstead? Was she, almost as if in one of her own novels, the absent victim of a sacrifice in which she would have participated
as a willing victim, had she been present?
The idea still makes me shiver a bit. Have I really been sharing my life with someone like that? But if I have it has never seemed to matter much, even though the idea of having behaved in a way
so unlike myself can give me the occasional shock of incredulity. One thing remains certain: Iris has always disliked fish, and particularly abominated the whole herring tribe. That may well have
been true before the episode: it has certainly been the case ever since.
Why should someone who loves water so much have so little desire for the creatures that live in it? Or is it that she feels in unconscious fellowship, and so would not dream of eating them? As a
strict matter of fact, however, she
will
eat my sardine paté, heavily flavoured with curry powder. Perhaps she doesn’t recognise it as fish at all? But there must have been no
doubt about what caused the appalling smell that came from her scarf, when she picked up the poor bedraggled thing. My instinct, none the less, would have been to try to wash it out, to rescue and
cherish it. But Iris was not like that. She sacrificed the scarf cheerfully; and seemingly at least on the wholesome altar of friendship.
‘The house and premises known as Cedar Lodge’, as the old deeds described them, were neither warm nor dry. There were the remains of a huge cedar near the front
gate, just a vast plate of rotten wood nearly flush with the earth. Perhaps they had chopped this great tree down and burnt it indoors in a vain attempt to keep warm? We ourselves tried various
ways of doing the same thing. An old Rayburn stove my mother gave us, night storage heaters, electric fires, an expensive affair in the front hall, with a beautifully fluted stainless steel front,
which burned anthracite nuggets as expensive as itself. Nothing seemed to do any good. When we at last installed some partial central heating, after one of Iris’s novels had been turned into
a film, that failed to work properly too. Something about gravity, the position of the oil tank, the installation of pipes ... Our dear Mr Palmer was dead by then, and his son put it in.
But we never minded the cold and the damp; indeed I think we rather enjoyed them. We were always warm in bed, and in retrospect I seem to spend most of my time in bed: I very soon developed the
habit of working there. I remember coming home on a snowy evening, and uttering wild cries as we rushed about the garden together hand in hand, watching our feet make holes in the printless snow.
It often snowed at Steeple Aston, which is several hundred feet higher than Oxford, where it seldom or never does. Our bed, too, was the one place from which to me the house felt safe and natural.
The bed was home, even if unknown creatures might be living at the other end of the long house, perhaps unaware of our existence?
It was when Iris was away for a day or two that I realised that the existence of such beings was not just fantasy. We had never heard anything, but as I came from the garden and went up the dark
rather narrow staircase I saw something going up ahead of me. It was a large rat. It reached the top, looked around unhurriedly, and dived with a plop into a wide crack between the oak boards. It
had come home.
Those rats were gentlemen. Until that moment we had no idea of their existence. Nor did their presence, once defined, cause us at first any bother. They led their lives and we led ours. But
since we knew they were there, and they knew we knew they were there, our relations could never feel quite the same. For one thing their behaviour ceased to be so considerate. Now we often heard
them moving about in their own solid subterranean world beneath the floorboards. Although the house was in bad condition it had been built in the solid style of its period, and there must have been
plenty of room in that other world, and plenty of massive woodwork to gnaw upon. Those rats took to gnawing it as a night-time occupation, and sometimes, as it seemed out of sheer
joie de
vivre
, they charged up and down those long invisible corridors at one or two in the morning. They must have been in residence for many generations, and the arrangements they had made must by
now have suited them perfectly.