The Red And The Green (34 page)

‘No, I was married. I was over here. You existed. It was a terrible business. Your father says the Irish have managed to hush it up completely, and in a way that's true. It was too painful to think about.'

‘Well, no one will be able to hush up the Spanish civil war. We're not going to forget
that.
What about Cathal's brother, what's his name, Pat Dumay?'

‘Oh, he was one of the nineteen-sixteen rebels, he was with Pearse and Connolly in the Post Office. He was killed in the fighting, on the Thursday of Easter week, the day before they surrendered. He was killed by a shell.'

‘And then there was that other fellow, the English chap—'

‘You mean Andrew Chase-White? He wasn't English, he was Irish.'

‘I always think of him as English. What happened to him?'

‘He was killed at Passchendaele in nineteen seventeen. He got an M.C.'

‘I remember now. And his mother died of grief.'

‘I don't know whether Aunt Hilda died of grief. She developed cancer very soon after the news of Andrew's death.'

‘Heroic lot, weren't they?'

‘They were inconceivably brave men,' said Frances, suddenly gripping the table.

‘And all those leaders, Patrick Pearse and company?'

‘They shot most of them. Pearse, Connolly, MacDonagh, MacDermott, MacBride, Joseph Plunkett—And they hanged Roger Casement.'

‘It's rather a miracle de Valera survived. Up Dev! You remember how you used to say that to us when we were children?'

Frances smiled, relaxing her hold. ‘Up Dev!'

She did not really think all that much about the old days; and yet now for a moment it seemed to her that these thoughts were always with her, and that she had lived out, in those months, in those weeks, the true and entire history of her heart, and that the rest was a survival. Of course, this was unfair to her children and to the man with whom she had journeyed so far into this workaday middle of her life. They, those others, had a beauty which could not be eclipsed or rivalled. They had been made young and perfect forever, safe from the corruption of time and from those ambiguous second thoughts which dim the brightest face of youth. In the undivided strength of their first loves they had died, and their mothers had wept for them, and had it been for nothing? Because of their perfection she could not bring herself to say so. They had died for glorious things, for justice, for freedom, for Ireland.

‘Yes, I do muddle them up though,' said Frances' tall son. ‘I remember you said you were in love with one of them. Which one was that?'

‘Me?' said Frances. ‘Oh, I was in love with Pat Dumay.'

She got up and went to the window to hide some sudden tears. She looked out at the neat garden and at the houses opposite. Tears flowed more freely now; and she heard drumming in her ears, heard, as she had heard it all through that dreadful week in nineteen sixteen, battering and breaking her heart, the thunder of the English guns.

THE END

A Biography of Iris Murdoch

Iris Murdoch (1919–1999) was one of the most influential British writers of the twentieth century. She wrote twenty-six novels over forty years, as well as plays, poetry, and works of philosophy. Heavily influenced by existentialist and moral philosophy, Murdoch’s novels were also notable for their rich characters, intellectual depth, and handling of controversial topics such as adultery and incest.

Born in Dublin, Ireland, Murdoch moved to London with her parents as a child. She attended Somerville College in Oxford where she studied classics, ancient history, and philosophy. While at Oxford, she was a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain (which she later left, disillusioned) and, in the 1940s, worked in Austrian and Belgian relief camps for the United Nations. After completing her postgraduate degree at Newnham College in Cambridge, she became a Fellow of St. Anne’s College, Oxford, where she lectured in philosophy for fifteen years.

In 1954, she published her first novel,
Under the Net
, about a struggling young writer in London, which the American Modern Library would later select as one of the one hundred best English-language novels of the twentieth century and
Time
magazine would list as among the twenty-five best novels since 1923. Two years after completing
Under the Net
, Murdoch married John Bayley, an English scholar at the University of Oxford and an author. In a 1994 interview, Murdoch described her relationship with Bayley as “the most important thing in my life.” Bayley’s memoir about their relationship,
Elegy for Iris
, was made into the major motion picture
Iris
, starring Judi Dench and Kate Winslet, in 2001.

For three decades, Murdoch published a new book almost every year, including historical fiction such as
The Red and the Green
, about the Easter Rebellion in 1916, and the philosophical play
Acastos: Two Platonic Dialogues
. She was awarded the 1978 Booker Prize for
The Sea, The Sea
, won the Royal Society Literary Award in 1987, and was made a Dame of the British Empire in 1987 by Queen Elizabeth.

Her final years were clouded by a long struggle with Alzheimer’s before her passing in 1999.

Murdoch as an infant with her mother, Irene, in 1919. Irene was a trained opera singer, though she gave it up after Iris was born. Murdoch’s father, John, worked as a civil servant once the family moved to London.

Murdoch in 1923, at age three or four. She was an only child and remembered her childhood as “a perfect trinity of love.” Her father encouraged her to read at a young age and her favorite authors included Lewis Carroll and Robert Louis Stevenson.

The London house in which Murdoch grew up, seen here in 1926.

Murdoch in 1935. She was studying philosophy, classics, and ancient history at Oxford at the time of this photo.

Murdoch with an unidentified friend in 1946. At this time Murdoch was studying philosophy at Cambridge, where she enrolled after working for the United Nations to help Europeans displaced by the Second World War.

John Bayley, Murdoch’s husband, in the 1960s. The two were married in 1956 after meeting at Oxford.

Murdoch and Bayley at an unknown date. One of the couple’s shared passions was swimming, which they did together whenever the opportunity presented itself.

Bayley and Murdoch on vacation in Orvieto, Italy, in September 1988, with family friend Audi Villers, whom Bayley married after Murdoch’s death.

Bayley and Murdoch in Delft, Holland, in 1996. Murdoch was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in the mid-1990s.

Bayley’s writing desk, which originally belonged to J.R.R. Tolkien. Murdoch’s scrapbook can be seen atop the desk.