head down gently, and kissed him on the cheek. He looked surprised. Then he kissed her forehead in return. The train began to move, and in a moment he had disappeared, still waving to her, into the fog.
Dora drew out her handkerchief and walked slowly back to the taxi. She shed some tears and a sweet sadness pierced her heart. Anyway, the kiss had gone off all right. She got into the taxi and told the taxi-man to drop her at the entrance gates.
As she walked down the avenue of trees the fog was clearing, and the Court became visible opposite to her, its pillars and copper dome clear-cut and majestic in the sunshine, a light radiant grey against a sky of darker moving clouds, rising above the still misty levels of the lake. Only the windows seemed to Dora a little dark and blank, like the eyes of one who will soon be dead.
When she got to the ferry, the boat was still on the other side and invisible in the fog. She drew upon the line and felt it coming heavily and sluggishly towards her. It emerged into view and came bumping up against the landing-stage. Dora got in and was about to propel herself across. Michael had taught her how to use the single oar. Then a new idea occurred to her. A second oar was always kept for emergencies, upon the landing-stage. Dora picked it up. She fitted the two oars into the rowlocks, and then undid the painter that joined the boat to the two sides of the ferry. No one would be coming across that way now.
She got in and sat down, trying the oars gingerly. She used to know how to row. After a certain amount of splashing she found that she still knew. The oars dipped and the boat moved away slowly over the surface of the water. Delighted, Dora released her breath and sat enjoying the gliding motion and the silence of the misty lake, broken only by the dripping of water from the blades. The mist was becoming golden. Now it began to clear away, and she saw the Court and the high walls of the Abbey toward which she was drifting. Behind the Court the clouds were in perpetual motion, but the sky was clear at the zenith and the sunshine began to warm her. She kicked off her sandals and trailed one foot in the water over the edge of the boat. The depths below affrighted her no longer.
She looked at the Court. She could not help being glad that Michael and Catherine would not live there, and their children and their children’s children. Soon all this would be inside the enclosure and no one would see it any more. These green reeds, this glassy water, these quiet reflections of pillar and dome would be gone forever. It was indeed as if, and there was comfort in the thought, when she herself left it Imber would cease to be. But in this moment, and it was its last moment, it belonged to her. She had survived.
She drew in her foot and began to row slowly along the lake. From the tower above her the bell began to ring for Nones. She scarcely heard it. Already for her it rang from another world. Tonight she would be telling the whole story to Sally.
Iris Murdoch
