Iris Murdoch: A Life: The Authorized Biography. Peter Conradi J.
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Название: Iris Murdoch: A Life: The Authorized Biography
Автор: Peter Conradi J.
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Биографии и Мемуары
isbn: 9780007380008
isbn:
On Philippa’s first night Iris explained that she had insufficient blankets, and showed Philippa how to pull down the blackout material from the skylight to cover her bed. They were often cold. The ancient gas-cooker supplemented the single feeble gas-fire on bitter winter nights, when the girls went to bed fully dressed, even wearing their overcoats, taking hot-water bottles with them – by the end of the war, when rubber gave out, unyielding stone bottles. (Philippa, noting later how often hot-water bottles appeared in Iris’s fiction, was unsurprised.) The Lyons tea-shop across Victoria Street gave them breakfast warmth, tea or coffee and sticky buns. Sometimes, though not often, older, richer friends like Thomas Balogh or Nickie Kaldor – those ‘cloistered aliens, with un-British [i.e. left-wing] views’, as Churchill remarked in the House of Commons, originally Philippa’s friends, later very much Iris’s also – would take them out to l’Etoile in Charlotte Street or the Gay Hussar. The men paid for the meal, as was then customary. The five-shilling limit on restaurant meals did something for social justice during that time of strict rationing. While clothes rationing did not worry them over-much, the fact that they had only three pairs of shoes between the two of them was troublesome, given the amount of walking that had to be done. The extremely broken-down and frayed state of Iris’s shoes much impressed Philippa’s sister Marion when they first met in a Chinese restaurant (one favoured dish: a plate, only, of plain boiled rice), more even than Iris’s fairly elderly raincoat, which was to become a trademark, and her lack of make-up.
When Iris’s single pair had eventually to be mended, Philippa lent her a pair of hers, and complained bitterly that she got them back as ‘flat bottom boats’, which was how they were from then on referred to. Iris later recalled the good times at Seaforth, and how much we laughed together – ‘the scene changes to Illyria’ (as we leave the supper table uncleared): I had forgotten that. The cheese and cabbage. How? pulled down the blackout. The bomb that arrived just before the alarm clock went off (not quite so gay).? ironing my blouse with desperate slowness as I chafe to go out to a party … 8
They were still young and ‘ready for silliness’, laughing a good deal, and with a closeness based on shared jokes and gossip about boyfriends. Once they decided to tell each other of the men who had asked to marry them. Philippa’s ‘list’ was soon done. As Iris’s went on and on Philippa asked crossly whether it might not save time if Iris listed the men who had not
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