An Unofficial rose

Iris Murdoch

An Unofficial Rose

Chapter One

I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.

FANNY PERONETT was dead. That much her husband Hugh Peronett was certain of as he stood in the rain beside the grave which was shortly to receive his wife's mortal remains. Further than that, Hugh's certainty did not reach. The promise meant little to him that the priest had uttered. He did not even know what Fa

Fa

With so much rain it was hard to tell who was weeping. For those who, like himself, felt it indelicate to raise an umbrella in the presence of death, external nature provided a semblance of that tribute which, from a?winter? spring, the heart could not or would not offer. Hugh had no tears. But Pe

Hugh looked at Miranda. She too appeared younger than her age.

She must surely, he reminded himself, be fourteen now. Or was she? It was shocking not to know. Her very pale freckled face, so like her mother's, wore a paralysed self-conscious expression. She was not crying. She looked steadily upward above the heads of the mourners, determined not to catch the eye of her parents, and as if absorbed in some long calculation of her own. Now and then with a nervous hand she patted the unaccustomed little black hat which covered her red-golden hair, her bright hair which fell usually in big separate locks like a cap of autumn leaves, hidden now except where a few rain darkened ends clung to her neck. She was to Hugh a totally mysterious little girl.

The other person who was really crying was A

We brought nothing into this world and it is certain we can carry nothing out.

It was true that Fa

For man walketh in a vain shadow, and disquieteth himself in vain: he heapeth up riches and ca

Hugh hoped that the children were not too disappointed about Fa

It would not be very long. Old age, which when he had been younger had seemed a coloured prospect of broken wisdom, a condition like that of a late Titian, full of great melancholy shattered forms, now presented itself, when he was on the brink of it as a state, at best, of distraction, irritation and diminished dignity: his rheumatism, his indigestion, his weak legs, his deafness, the perpetual buzzing in his head. On the brink of it was indeed how he now from day to day imagined himself. To picture himself, passing that limit would be to admit into his imagination the reality of death; and this even now he could not do. Fa