by Iris Murdoch
‘I don’t believe you.’
I shrugged my shoulders and was about to get up only James held the sleeve of my shirt.
‘Charles. Tell me what you think you are going to do. I know you are planning to do something.’
What indeed was I planning to do? I was in a state which I well knew was close to a sort of madness, and yet I was not mad. Some kinds of obsession, of which being in love is one, paralyse the ordinary free-wheeling of the mind, its natural open interested curious mode of being, which is sometimes persuasively defined as rationality. I was sane enough to know that I was in a state of total obsession and that I could only think, over and over again, certain agonizing thoughts, could only run continually along the same rat-paths of fantasy and intent. But I was not sane enough to interrupt this mechanical movement or even to desire to do so. I wanted to kill Ben.
When I say that I wanted to kill him I do not mean that I had yet a definite plan or a definite programme with a date. That would come to me, and come soon, once I was alone. The necessary period of sheer miserable brooding was over, and I would soon be able to make decisions. Ben had attempted to kill me; and it now amazed me in retrospect that I had been able so far to overlook or ‘forgive’ this crime, this insult, as not to feel compelled to punish it as such. My late and now outdated plan to besiege Hartley by ‘tramping in and out’ had had as its end her rescue, not his chastisement. I had proposed to intimidate him simply in order to get her away; to destroy him had not been my prime object. But now the situation was entirely different. I could not ‘overlook’ the murder of Titus or let it go unavenged. Because I had failed to die, Ben had struck Titus on the head and drowned him. He had killed the boy out of pure hideous spite against me; and that he could be crazy enough to do so I could well believe as I considered how crazy I now was myself. In truth the basis of my madness was sheer grief, the loss of that precious precious child, the horror of his sudden death, together with a sense of having been the victim of a wanton wickedness. The only balm for Titus’s death was hatred and the immediate transformation of misery into revengeful purposeful rage. As in a civil war, further killing was the only consolation; and, as it seemed to me then, to survive the murder of Titus I had to become a terrorist.
During the last days, as I allowed myself to be quietly watched by James and Lizzie, and as I played my part of simple mourning, I had filled out in imagination how terribly Ben, with his mad beliefs, must have hated me, and because of me, Titus, throughout the miserable years of Titus’s childhood. The connection between me and Titus in his mind must have become a dynamic obsessional pattern. The boy, continually before him, was (as he thought) the visible symbol of his wife’s inconstancy and of the jaunty unpunished escape of the hated rival, whose jeering image he so regularly saw in the newspapers and on the television screen. Ben was a naturally violent man, a destroyer, a killer. How he must have loathed me and my changeling brat, and torn his own entrails with that loathing. Punishing the wife and the boy could never be enough while the prime culprit ran scot free and laughing. Sheer hatred can be a commanding form of madness. Many and many a time, in all those years, Ben must have killed me in his imagination.
When we at last met he was soon to see that his own violence and anger were matched by equally fierce emotions in me. He knew perfectly well of my impulse to push him in, on that occasion when we faced each other on the rocky bridge. He knew that I wanted him out of my way, and may have conjectured how very far I might, in the end, be prepared to go. He could even argue that he had tried to kill me in self-defence. Then when I had so disobligingly failed to die and was still there, taunting him with my free existence and brazenly protecting as my ‘son’ the hated bratling, what could be more natural than that Ben’s mad rage should turn against me through the boy, bringing about perhaps an even more satisfying act of vengeance? I recalled Ben’s last words to me, wherein a curse on the ‘vile brat’ was joined with ‘I’ll kill you’.
Could I now walk away into the world and ‘get over’ this act, this fact? It was unthinkable. Act must match act. But how? In all these thoughts I was just sane enough to try to steady myself by the image of Hartley. I tried to see her face looking at me, wistful and calm, beautiful as it had once been and perhaps would be again. Later, I would move to her and embrace her and we would console each other at last. What I could not really get myself to see or feel however was just how the path through the destruction of Ben led to Hartley or what exactly the destruction of Ben would be like. Now that I felt free to destroy him I sometimes felt that I hated him even more obsessively than I loved her; at least I knew, watching my obsession, that I was not now wanting to remove him simply because of her. The removal had become an end in itself.
Concerning what I was actually going to do I had evolved a number of quite different plans, which were still more or less at the stage of being fantasies. When I was alone I would have the concentration necessary to convert one of these into a practical proposition. I thought of going to the police. Someone had attempted to kill me and an explanation of all the circumstances would point an unambiguous finger at Ben; and it would, I guessed, be in Ben’s character to answer a formal, or even hinted, accusation with a defiant avowal of guilt. This indeed might be the simplest easiest way to catch him: to open a big net and let him run straight into it. I saw Ben as a simple aggressive man who would be made uneasy by the subtleties of the law and would then scorn the refinements of lying. I played with this fantasy so much that the whole thing began to seem as good as done. On the other hand, if Ben did consistently deny the charge, I was certainly short of proof.
I also, and equally, considered various mixtures of guile and violence. If I could lure him to the house and push him into Minn’s cauldron that would be the justest thing of all, but of course he would be too cautious to come. I considered other ways of drowning him. None was easy. I was more attracted by some straightforward sort of violence, which however could not be too straightforward since Ben was a strong dangerous man, and if he were to do me a serious damage while I was trying to damage him I really would go mad with chagrin. An accomplice would help, but I had vowed to act without one. I had not forgotten what Hartley said about Ben having kept his army revolver. I had no doubt that he kept it oiled and polished but he might have no ammunition. I possessed, but in London, a beautiful replica automatic, property of the theatre. Suppose I were to hold him up with that, make him turn round, then hit him with a hammer! And then? Tell the whole story to the police? Get Hartley to testify that I did it in self-defence? As it was at every moment possible that Ben might make another attempt to kill me, my fantasy actions did in fact begin to look to me more and more like self-defence.
Those who are caught in mental cages can often picture freedom, it just has no attractive power. I also knew, in the midst of it all, that some unexamined guilt of my own was driving me further into hatred; but this was no moment to be confused by guilt. As I moved like a ghost, performing in the house and its environs a sort of ritual dance under the eyes of James and Lizzie and Perry, I thought about Hartley and I pictured peace with her, in that little house where we would hide forever after. Yet if I did what I so intensely desired and consoled myself by desiring, if I destroyed Ben, if I killed him or crippled him or damaged his mind or got him sent to prison, could I then walk away with Hartley in peace? What would that peace be like? What would the idea of justice be able to do for me afterwards? Was it not, under all these disguises, my own death that I was planning?
I said to James, pulling away my sleeve which he was still holding, ‘I am not going to do anything. I just feel all smashed up by misery.’
‘Come to London with me.’
‘No.’
‘I can see you’re scheming. Your eyes are full of awful visions.’
‘Sea serpents.’
‘Charles, tell me.’
These particular words brought back to me how extremely difficult I had found it to mislead James when I
was a boy. He had a way of worming things out of one, as if the intended lie turned into truth on one’s very lips. I was not going to tell now however. How could I reveal to anyone the horrors that now crowded my mind? ‘James, go to London. I’ll come later, soon. I’ll come and sort out my flat. Don’t torment me now. I just want a day or two of peace here by myself, that’s all.’
‘You’ve got some awful idea.’
‘I have no idea, my mind is empty.’
‘You said something to me before about imagining that Ben pushed you into the cauldron.’
‘Yes.’
‘But of course you don’t really think that.’
‘I do, but it’s not important any more.’
James was looking at me in a calculating way. Lizzie called from the kitchen that breakfast was ready. The sun shone calm and bright on the grass, refreshed by the rain, on the border of pretty stones, on the sparkling yellow rocks. It was a caricature of a happy scene.
‘It is important,’ said James. ‘I don’t want to leave you behind here with that totally false notion in your head.’
‘Let’s have breakfast.’
‘It is false, Charles.’
‘You sound quite passionate! That’s your view, and I have mine. Come on.’
‘Wait, wait, it’s not just a view, I know. I know it wasn’t Ben.’
I stared at him. ‘James, you can’t know. Did you see it happen?’
‘No, I didn’t, but—’
‘Did someone else see it?’
‘No—’
‘Then how can you know?’
‘I just do. Charles, please, will you trust me? Surely you can trust me. Just don’t ask any questions. Accept my statement that Ben didn’t do it. Ben did not do it.’
We stared at each other. The intensity of James’s tone, his eyes, his fierce face, carried conviction into my resisting mind. But I could not believe him. How could he know this? Unless—unless—James himself had pushed me in? What after all lay behind that Red Indian mask? We had always been rivals for the world, I the more successful one. A childhood hatred, like a childhood love, can last a lifetime. James was an odd card, a funny man with a funny mind. He was in a ruthless profession. I recalled his respectful remarks about Ben. It might even be that he had tried to remove me simply because he knew I had guessed that he was a secret agent and was returning to Tibet. I put my hands to my head.
I said however, ‘Listen, James, and stop trying to impress me. Not only did Ben try to kill me. Ben killed Titus.’
‘Oh—Lord—’ said James. He turned away with an air of distracted hopelessness, then said, ‘What’s your evidence for his having killed Titus? Did you see him?’
‘No, but it’s obvious. No one examined that blow on the head. Titus was a strong swimmer. And when Ben had tried to murder me—’
‘Yes, that’s your “evidence”. But I know it isn’t so.’
‘James, you can’t know! I understand this man and how much he can hate. You were just gratified to see a fellow soldier. What I see is an able killer and a man absolutely consumed, mad, with jealous spite, with a whole history of it. And I know what jealous spite is like.’
‘That’s what I’m afraid of,’ said James, ‘your spite. What can I swear upon that will satisfy you? I swear by our childhood, by the memory of our parents, by our cousinhood, that Ben did not do this thing. Will you not please just accept this and ask no more? Oh let it all go now, let it go. Come to London, let’s get out of this place.’
‘How can I “accept” it? I notice you argue that it wasn’t Ben, but not that I imagined it all! Would you just “accept” the fact that some person unknown had tried to kill you? And you can’t be sure it wasn’t Ben. Unless by any chance it was you?’
‘It wasn’t me,’ said James frowning, ‘don’t be absurd.’
I felt a ridiculous degree of relief. Had I then for a moment seriously entertained the idea that my cousin was filled with murderous hate against me? Of course I believed him at once, and of course it was absurd. But if it was not James, or as he argued, Ben, who was it? I was impressed by his solemn oath, though I could not believe him. Gilbert, mad with secret jealousy because of Lizzie? Rosina mourning for her lost child? Perhaps there were quite a lot of people with motives to murder me. Freddie Arkwright? Why not? He hated me, he was now at Amorne Farm where Ben had been to get the dog. Suppose Ben had hired Freddie to kill or perhaps just maim me, and it had ended with that dreadful fall?
James could see me speculating and he made a hopeless gesture.
‘I’m no good at guessing games,’ I said. ‘I thought it was Ben and I still think so.’
‘Come inside then,’ said James, and he rose.
We came into the kitchen. Lizzie was standing at the stove. She had pinned her hair back and was wearing a very short check overall over a very short dress. She looked ridiculously young and had an anxious silly schoolgirl look which she sometimes wore. Perry was sitting at the table with his legs stretched beneath it and his elbows upon it. His big face was already greasy with sweat and his eyes were glazed. He might even have been drunk.
James just said, ‘Peregrine.’
Peregrine said, without moving, his glazed eyes still staring ahead, ‘If you’ve been discussing who killed Charles or failed to kill Charles, it was me.’
‘Perry—’
‘My name is Peregrine.’
‘But, Peregrine, why on earth—did you really—why?’
Lizzie moved, without surprise, sat down to watch. She evidently already knew.
‘You ask why?’ said Peregrine, without looking at me. ‘Just think why, just think.’
‘You mean—good heavens, you mean Rosina?’
‘Yes, oddly enough, I do. You deliberately smashed my marriage, you took away my wife whom I adored, you did it carefully, cold-bloodedly, you worked at it. Then when you had got her away from me you dropped her. You didn’t even want her for yourself, you just wanted to steal her from me to satisfy the beastly impulses of your possessiveness and your jealousy! Then when they were satisfied, when my marriage was broken forever, you went jaunting off somewhere else. And what is more you expected me to tolerate this and to go on liking you! Why? Because you thought everybody always went on liking you whatever rotten things you did because you were wonderful wonderful Charles Arrowby.’
‘But, Peregrine, you yourself said to me, more than once, that you were glad to be rid of the bitch—’
‘OK, but why did you believe me? And don’t use that foul language please. Of course everyone knows you regard women as trash. But what bugged me was that you wrecked my life and my happiness and you just didn’t seem to care at all, you were so bloody perky.’
‘I don’t believe you were happy—you just say so now—’
‘Oh for Christ’s sake! You took her out of sheer spiteful jealousy. OK, I can be jealous too.’
‘But you yourself encouraged me to feel it was all right! Why did you bother to pretend, and mislead me? You can’t blame me now—If you had looked more stricken I would have felt more guilty. But you were so nice to me, so friendly—you always seemed so pleased to see me—’
‘I am an actor. And perhaps I was pleased to see you. We sometimes like to see people whom we hate and despise so that we can stir them up to further demonstrations of how odious they are.’
‘So you’ve been waiting all these years for revenge!’
‘No, not like that. I enjoyed leading you on and just looking at you and gloating and thinking how surprised you’d be if you knew what I really felt. You’ve been a bad dream to me all these years, you’ve been with me like a demon, like a cancer.’
‘Oh my God. I’m sorry—’
‘If you imagine I want to hear you apologizing now—’
‘I may have behaved badly to you, but I didn’t deserve to die for it.’
‘No, all right, I admit it was an impulse and I was drunk. I just pushed you and walked on. I didn’t really see what h
appened and I didn’t care.’
‘But you said you were non-violent, you said you never—’
‘OK, you were a special case. The last straw was seeing bloody Rosina suddenly sitting on top of that rock like a black witch. I thought you must still be carrying on with her, well obviously you are—’
‘I’m not.’
‘I don’t care—’
‘I wondered why you stopped talking about her. You were planning to kill me.’
‘I don’t care, I don’t want to know, I don’t believe anything you say, I think you’re a worthless person. I just couldn’t stand seeing her there, and the windscreen getting broken, I couldn’t stand it, it was a shock, it made me feel mad, it made a sort of hole in me, and all the old stored-up hate came pouring out and all the green-eyed jealousy, as fresh as ever. I had to do something to you. I really just wanted to push you into the sea. I daresay I was pretty drunk. I didn’t choose that spot, I didn’t think it was that awful whirlpool or whatever you call it—’
‘Then you were lucky, weren’t you. I might be dead.’
‘Oh I don’t care,’ said Peregrine, ‘I wish you were dead. I thought of calling you out, only then I thought you might kill me instead, because you drink less than I do. I suppose honour is satisfied now anyway, and I won’t have to offer you any more drinks, thank God, and I won’t even want to tell you what a four-letter man you are. You’re an exploded myth. And you still think you’re Genghis Khan! Laissez-moi rire. I can’t think why I let you haunt me all these years, I suppose it was just your power and the endless spectacle of you doing well and flourishing like the green bay tree. Now you’re old and done for, you’ll wither away like Prospero did when he went back to Milan, you’ll get pathetic and senile, and kind girls like Lizzie will visit you to cheer you up. At least they will for a while. You never did anything for mankind, you never did a damn thing for anybody except yourself. If Clement hadn’t fancied you no one would ever have heard of you, your work wasn’t any bloody good, it was just a pack of pretentious tricks, as everyone can see now that they aren’t mesmerized any more, so the glitter’s fading fast and you’ll find yourself alone and you won’t even be a monster in anybody’s mind any more and they’ll all heave a sigh of relief and feel sorry for you and forget you.’