'Hilary, I've got something to tell you.'

'Mr Spranger has made you pregnant. OK. It's nothing to do with me.'

'No, no. I did something awful and I feel I must tell you.'

'Does it really matter?'

'Yes. I've got to tell you. I wonder if you'll ever forgive me?'

'Time will show no doubt.'

'I wrote a letter about you to Gunnar Jopling.'

'You what?' I went on walking.

'I wrote him a letter about you, about you and Lady Kitty.'

I went steadily on, not looking at her. The snow flakes were more frequent. 'What did you write to him about me and Lady Kitty?'

'I told him you were in love with her.'

'What made you imagine that? Perhaps you invented it?'

'I saw you kissing her in Kensington Gardens, that day when I came to tell you about Kim.'

'How did you know it was her?'

'I'd seen her picture, and I saw her in your office. I recognized the coat.'

'It was clever of you to find us.'

'I came to the flat looking for you and you weren't there so I went out in the park. I knew that garden at the end of the lake was one of your special places.'

'How did you know that?'

'You took me there once. You told me you called it the Leningrad garden. You've probably forgotten.'

I had. 'What exactly did you say in the letter?'

'Just that you were in love with his wife. Nothing about her.'

'When did you post it?'

'Oh - after that - '

'Which day?'

'I wrote it and posted it on the next day - that would have been the Monday. I did it out of - sheer jealousy and spite - it was a wicked action - I thought, you see, that there was another woman and that it was because of her you wouldn't - I thought it was Laura Impiatt - then when I saw you with Lady Kitty I realized it was her and I couldn't bear it - she was so lucky and rich and now she had you as well - it was too awful, I felt I'd go mad - and I thought if only she'd leave you alone I'd have some chance - at least I don't know what I thought - because I'd sort of left you then, only of course I hadn't - I was sort of insane with misery - it was a dreadful thing to do - and then the next day the poor lady was dead - '

'So you needn't have sent the letter anyway.'

'So I needn't have sent the letter anyway. Well, that's a terrible way to talk - it was so awfully unkind to him, to Mr Jopling, and so unkind to you - but I expect he didn't believe it - I typed the letter, I didn't sign it - and I only said about you not about her - I expect lots of people think they're in love with his wife just because she was a famous beauty, they fall in love with her photo - perhaps he thought it was that, or else that it was a letter from a mad person - and then she was dead anyway. He never said anything to you?'

'No.'

'Then I expect he thought that it was a mad letter, people like him must get lots of them.'

'I expect so.'

'It's been so on my conscience, I simply had to tell you, it's been eating me up. Can you forgive me?'

So it was little innocent thoughtless Tommy who had brought it all about. Out of her childish resentment and woman's spite Tommy had shopped me to fate. She must never know. Another lifelong secret. Gunnar must have got her letter on the Tuesday morning. Then when Kitty made the excuse so as not to go to the party at Downing Street he decided to test his suspicions. He came back and - what? Shook Biscuit until she told him where we were? The details did not matter. Unknowing Tommy had brought about the encounter which killed Kitty and married Crystal and brought double-intensified eternal damnation into my life and Gunnar's. Not Clifford, not Biscuit, not, thank God, a dreadful plot of spouses to punish a detested criminal. I felt a kind of crazy relief combined with a renewed agony at the accidentalness of it all. If only I had had the sense to take Kitty somewhere else on that Sunday morning, almost any other place would have saved us.

'Can you forgive me?' Tommy repeated.

'I expect so. As I said, time will show.'

'You sound very cold about it. Perhaps you don't care much what I do.'

'Perhaps not. That's your way home, this is mine.'

'I'm coming with you.'

'I hope you'll invite me to your wedding with Mr Spranger. I'm getting used to weddings, I rather enjoy them.'

'I'm not going to marry him, I'm going to marry you.'

We were standing at the corner of Kensington Church Street. It was beginning to snow quite fast now. The bells of St Mary Abbots were ringing Christmas in with wild cascades of joy. Other churches nearby had taken up the chime. The Christ child, at any rate, had managed to get himself born.

'Happy Christmas, Tommy.'

'I'm going to marry you, Hilary.'

'Are you, Thomas?'

'Yes, I'm going to marry you.'

'Are you, Thomasina?'

A BIOGRAPHY OF IRIS MURDOCH.

Iris Murdoch (1919a1999) 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.

end.