The Red and the Green (Vintage Classics)

by Iris Murdoch

  Aunt Millicent’s town house was what Hilda called ‘one of the better class houses’ of Dublin. It was a ‘double-fronted’ house in Upper Mount Street, several times wider than the house in Blessington Street, but otherwise not unlike it in structure. In the watery sunlight the brick façades of Upper Mount Street glowed a rusty pink and yellow, only Millie’s house, together with one or two others, had been washed over with a powdery red preparation, currently fashionable, and the interstices between the bricks outlined in black. The sagging steps up to the door were immaculately reddened to match. Beneath its magisterial fanlight the door was a radiant newly painted rose pink, its brass knocker, shaped like a fish, polished as softly bright and smooth as Saint Peter’s toe; while at each gleaming window a heavy froth of lace curtain was symmetrically looped back. Just beyond, at the end of the street, the elegant green dome of Saint Stephen’s, Church of Ireland, rose into the lucid blue sky. Long green coppery streaks trailed down the light grey stone of the tower and fingered the clock which was just now striking four. Its particular high cracked tone struck with a melancholy authority upon the heart of Andrew, recalling to him the church’s rational empty interior where he had sometimes worshipped as a child, if participation in those calm, prosaic rites could be called worship.

  A maid with long white streamers depending from her cap informed them that her ladyship was out in the garden. As they passed through the dark belly of the house Andrew tried to revive his memories of it. But it was many years since he had been there, and the rooms seemed unfamiliar. He glimpsed great mahogany surfaces gleaming like black mirrors in twilit interiors. There was a vernal smell of furniture polish.

  The garden was more fresh in memory. He recognized, though he could not have pictured it beforehand, the wide terrace of slightly reddish paving stones, with its intermittent clumps of iris and rosemary and rue, and its square fish-pool, the brown beech hedge beyond, still clothed in its crisp twirled winter leafage, and the little lawn with the propped-up mulberry tree. The scene was wet and glistening, the paving stones reflecting hints of light and form, the mulberry tree dripping. Then suddenly the sun became brighter and a light seemed switched on in the garden. The great hump of the mulberry tree glowed into a golden green. Aunt Millicent came through the gap in the hedge.

  Andrew felt a perceptible pleasurable very rapid shock as if a needle had passed right through his body without hurting him. It was many years since he had seen his aunt, and although he retained intact, like old snapshots, some attractive memories of her, these had been gradually overlaid by his mother’s continual though vague remarks about Millie being so ‘tiresome’, or being about to ‘go to pieces’, a fate which was for some reason persistently foreseen by her sister-in-law. These prognostications, together with the reports of hunting, cigar-smoking, pistol shots and trousers, had made him, without reflection, expect something slightly, by this time, gaunt and sourly tweedy, something a little weatherbeaten, smelling of tobacco and even of whiskey, although drink had not in fact figured so far in his mother’s denunciations. What confronted him now was a plump youngish woman with a radiantly smiling face, elegantly dressed in a tight-skirted slightly old-fashioned mode, and positively, oh very positively, pretty.

  ‘Oh, hello my dears’, shouted Millie across the terrace, You’ve come! Oh, goody!’ She swept up to Hilda and began kissing her. ‘Hello Christopher. Glad to see you, you old stranger. I absolutely adore your hat. And this is the golden-haired soldier boy! My, doesn’t he look fine! I can remember him when he wasn’t interested in anything but farthing lucky-bags. Can you remember those farthing lucky-bags, Andrew? Many a penny you begged off me for them, to get them at Nolan’s shop. But I mustn’t remind you of that now, must I? Why, I think he’s blushing, the pet!’

  Andrew, smiling rather stiffly, felt he had gained a little insight after all into what his mother meant by ‘tiresomeness’.

  ‘It’s very nice to see you, Millie,’ said Hilda. ‘You seem to be keeping well. We had such a pleasant walk here. Merrion Square is looking lovely, with the lilac and the laburnum all ready to flower. And I’m glad to say the rain seems to have given up at last.’

  ‘Oh yes, and I thought we’d have tea in the garden,’ said Millie. ‘Wouldn’t that be fun? I haven’t done it yet this year.’

  ‘Won’t it be a bit wet and cold for tea in the garden?’ said Hilda, not concealing her displeasure.

  ‘I’ll lend you all woolly shawls from Connemara. I’ve just got some new ones and they’re such pretty colours. And as for a little wet, sure I don’t mind it, and you won’t either when you’ve been over here a bit longer. One’s getting oneself wet all the time in Ireland, isn’t that so, Christopher? Sure I don’t mind it at all.’

  This appeared to be true, as Andrew observed that his aunt’s high-necked dress of dove-grey silk, which with the enthusiastic gesturing that accompanied her words constantly swirled against the low bushes, was darkened with water and even muddied all round the lower hem. He also noticed as she swayed the rather old-fashioned flounced bustle effect at the back, unless it was indeed perhaps Aunt Millicent’s shape. He looked elsewhere.

  ‘Well, I think we shall be cold,’ said Hilda firmly. She seemed to have decided it was a matter of principle to show the flag to her sister-in-law straight away.

  ‘The sun’s shining and it’ll be dry directly,’ Millie went on inconsequently, ‘Wouldn’t you like to walk down the garden? The little brick path is a dry way.’

  ‘How’s the camellia?’ said Christopher.

  ‘Oh, but it’s in flower, it’s a sight. You take Hilda down to the greenhouse to see the camellia and young Andrew shall stay here and help me with the tea things.’

  Christopher led Hilda away. The murmur of her protests could be heard receding beyond the hedge.

  ‘Aren’t they a well-matched couple?’ said Millie, looking after them. Then she laughed. ‘Well now, young Andrew, come and sit down and let me look at you.’

  She drew him to a wooden seat and they sat down. The long twisting branches of rosemary swept the pavement at their feet. The seat was extremely wet, as Andrew instantly realized. The dove-grey silk took the matter in its stride.

  Millie sat for a moment staring at him, and he, half annoyed, half amused, returned her stare. She was not perhaps as handsome as she had seemed at first sight. Her complexion was rather coarse and her mouth too large. She had big dark brown eyes which she continually narrowed, perhaps because she was short-sighted. Her reddish brown hair, to which a fine and scarcely perceptible scattering of grey gave a metallic patina, was much plaited and entwined. Two small ears held their own against it, adorned with bright blue lapis lazuli earrings. After having been a very laughing face, it was now a very serious face. It compelled Andrew, and only after he had been looking into her eyes in silence for half a minute did he realize how unusual this proceeding was.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You are like him. I could never really see it before.’

  ‘Like—?’

  ‘Like your father. You are really very like him now.’

  ‘I’m glad—,’ said Andrew lamely. The scrutiny now embarrassed him, and he averted his eyes.

  ‘I wonder if you remember a picnic at Howth—well, why should you, you were very young. Tell me about yourself. So you were in France, but not for long, you got pneumonia, and you’re still on sick leave?’

  Andrew was a bit surprised and flattered at this knowledge of his lot. ‘Yes. I’m afraid I haven’t seen much action yet.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Millie. ‘This old war is going to last quite a while. You’ll have plenty of time to behave with reckless courage on some battlefield.’

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘Well, you’re a fool to hope so. I really think one should be a pacifist. I’m sure they could all make peace now if they tried. But what with the wicked old men and the silly young ones— it’s about time women had the vote. Are you political?’

  Andrew
was not sure how serious she was. He answered lightly. ‘I don’t understand much about politics. I’m leaving that for later.’

  ‘I think we should all be political nowadays. I say, my bottom says it’s wet, what does yours say? Let’s walk about a bit, take a turn, as your mother would say.’

  She jumped up, and as she did so swept her hand along one of the rosemary branches collecting the small narrow leaves in her palm. A delicious musty fragrance arose which almost made Andrew sneeze.

  ‘I love things with grey leaves, don’t you? Well, rosemary hasn’t actually got grey leaves, or rather they’re only grey underneath, but that was the idea of this garden, and the rue has, and that stuff called trimalchio or whatever it is. There—’ As she took his arm she strewed the leaves of the rosemary over his khaki sleeve.

  ‘That’s for remembrance. And rue—what is rue for, I forget?’

  ‘For sorrow, I suppose,’ said Andrew.

  ‘Such a pretty plant. Well, sorrow we shall all have, especially you as you are so young. I keep thinking I have grown out of sorrow, but it keeps coming back. Don’t worry about the tea, Maudie will lay it inside whatever I say, and I declare I think it’s going to rain again after all. Come and see my fish.’

  She released him, and moved to the other side of the little fish-pool, regarding him across it. The brown surface of the pool quivered a little at their feet, perhaps with some preliminary drops of rain. The sky behind Millie was now a bright hazy yellow.

  Andrew stared at his aunt across the pool. The blue earrings glowed in the dark convoluted hair.

  She murmured, ‘Yes, you are confoundedly like your da. What are you thinking at this moment?’

  Andrew framed in his mind the sentence, How beautiful your earrings are, Aunt Millicent. He said, ‘How beautiful you are, Aunt Millicent.’

  There was a second’s silence before Millie’s loud laugh. ‘Why, you naughty boy, are you flirting? And you engaged to the dearest girl in the world! Well, you must bring her to see me. You must come to tea next Thursday at Rathblane, the pair of you. And next Thursday, but not before, you shall call me Millie.’

  She knelt down on the pavement beside the pool. Andrew knelt too, embarrassed at what he had so unaccountably said, but also, unaccountably, feeling rather pleased with himself. He pretended to be investigating the fish.

  As he looked down into the dense brown vegetable depths of the pool something suddenly flashed past him. There was a glint of blue and a splash and a receding sinking glimmer. ‘Dear me,’ said Millie. ‘One of my earrings has gone west.’

  With an exclamation of distress Andrew peered down into the pool where the earring had completely disappeared from view, and his first instinctive idea was that it was lost forever. He looked up at Millie and found her regarding him coolly, her eyebrows slightly raised. She seemed unmoved by the incident and only interested in what he would do.

  ‘Of course,’ said Andrew, as if laboriously working it out, ‘the pool’s not very deep, is it? I’ll get it for you’. His hand broke the surface of the warm water. He hesitated. Rather awkwardly he removed his watch and put it in his pocket and then began to take off his jacket. Millie stared at him. He folded the jacket and then could not think what to do with it, being unwilling to lay it on the wet pavement, until Millie reached out and took it from him in silence. He rolled up one sleeve of his shirt to the shoulder and loosened his tie and undid the shirt at the neck where it was a little tight. These preparations seemed to take a ludicrously long time. He plunged his arm into the pool up to the elbow, deeper, without touching bottom. A pale oval, the reflection of Millie’s face, danced disjointedly on the disturbed surface. Andrew lay down full length upon the pavement. As the water lapped at his shoulder his hand explored the soft sludgy bottom. He touched something hard, and the next moment had fished up the earring. He handed it quickly to his aunt and they both rose.

  Andrew felt distressed and discomfited by the incident, chiefly, as he now confusedly felt, because he had paused to take his jacket off; and yet it would have been idiotic to plunge his arm in without doing so. He quickly resumed his jacket. He coughed and began to brush down his breeches to which a greenish slime from the pavement adhered in streaks. He was beginning to feel annoyed and put in the wrong.

  ‘Andrew,’ said Aunt Millicent.

  He straightened up to look at her. At once with a quick gesture she dropped the earring down inside the front of his shirt. A second later Hilda and Christopher appeared through the gap in the hedge. The terrace rang with Millie’s unexplained laughter. It began to pour with rain.

  Chapter Five

  ‘I THOUGHT they’d never go,’ said Christopher.

  ‘How did you give them the slip?’

  ‘I said I was going into town.’

  ‘You don’t think Aunt Hilda suspects?’

  ‘Darling, Hilda knows nothing.’

  ‘Did she say anything special?’

  ‘Only that it was just like you to want to have tea in the garden. I must say I agree!’

  ‘But that was on purpose,’ said Millie. ‘I thought if we were all shivering out on the terrace they’d go all the sooner!’

  ‘So you’re not as feckless as I thought. A shrewd calculating person lives inside you.’

  ‘Well, not really. I only invented the reason afterwards.’

  ‘Whatever did you do to young Andrew, by the way? You must have bewitched him. He said practically nothing all through tea and just fumbled with the neck of his shirt.’

  Millie laughed. ‘Oh, I did something to embarrass him. Never mind what. He is so touchingly like his father, one can’t help teasing him. Do you fancy him as a son-in-law?’

  ‘He’s all right. He’s not as intelligent as Frances, but he’s got sense and a very sweet nature. And they know each other very well and love each other.’

  ‘Love—ah well—’

  ‘Ah well, indeed.’

  This conversation was taking place in a long upper room, originally a billiard room, which Millie used as a combination of personal boudoir and shooting gallery. The combination of these two atmospheres unnerved, and doubtless was intended to unnerve, Millie’s friends. The room was thickly carpeted and at the near end, by the door, looking obscurely ecclesiastical, stood a low white dressing-table with a tall mirror surmounted by a large lace canopy not unlike those which are held above the Host in religious processions. A plump pink stool, gathered in to a waist-line of silken roses, was placed before the mirror which was flanked by a pair of gilded candlesticks containing candles, unlit at the moment. All round about was a cluster of extremely comfortable satin-covered armchairs, all facing the mirror, placed as if for some ceremony at which Millie would adorn herself or possibly undress before an admiring audience. This ceremony, as far as Christopher knew, never took place, nor did he suppose, though he had never investigated, that the jars of Waterford glass on the dressing-table actually contained cosmetics. They were more likely to contain liqueurs. As far as he knew: for sometimes for a fleeting moment he had the suspicion that Millie led some secret life where, with other recondite suitors, she proceeded to lengths of which he never dreamed. But in fact that was impossible; he knew all about Millie: and even if he lacked, certainly no one else enjoyed, the ultimate privileges.

  The wall at the far end of the room, faced with wood and pitted with revolver fire, was bare except for the row of targets at which, standing among the satiny chairs, Millie took aim with her small nickel-plated revolver. The side walls, lined with a furry green vegetational wallpaper, were thickly covered with tolerably good oil paintings of members of the Kinnard family. At these, with suitably pugnacious exclamations, Millie often pointed her weapon, but had only once loosed off a bullet in their direction, which happily lodged in a frame. Christopher disliked these sports. He hated the noise and the horrible sensation of the impact. Millie, armed, cut a pretty figure. But he took the menace of it painfully to himself.

  Although it was stil
l light outside, Millie had pulled the curtains and lit the gas, and the fierce bright mantles purred along the room under their red tasselled shades. During the time in which Christopher had been engaged in ‘giving the slip’ to Andrew and Hilda, she had changed out of the tight grey dress into a looser shorter dress of purple crepe-de-chine, rather oriental in appearance. She kept nudging the skirt of it against her leg as she stood, as if unused to the length, while she played absently with the revolver, spinning the barrel fast and then stopping it abruptly with her finger. Christopher, outstretched in one of the armchairs, watched her with exasperation, fascination, adoration and fear.

  ‘You know, Christopher, when you play Russian roulette it isn’t really dangerous because the weight of the bullet always pulls the loaded chamber down to the bottom.’

  ‘I have no intention of playing Russian roulette. You are quite breath-taking enough as a pastime. Don’t change the subject, my darling.’

  The process of falling in love with Millie had, for Christopher, taken place over quite a long period. Yet there had never been any moment when he had both understood clearly what he was doing and been still able to control it. At moments of control he had not understood, and at moments of understanding he had been helpless. He sometimes told himself that if he could have prevented this thing from happening he would have done so. He knew, now, what Millie did, but he did not know what Millie thought, and he feared, coming upon them suddenly, certain blank moments of ruthlessness in her. Yet even the process of coveting Millie, at first as it had seemed so vainly, had renewed the world for him, and in her light he had seen every flower, every leaf, every bird designed with a wiry clarity and plumped out with a celestial untainted colour.