by Iris Murdoch
I waited for about ten minutes, trying to calm and clear my mind, and then went back to the bedroom door. I did not really expect that Priscilla would have got dressed and be ready to leave. I did not know what to do. I felt fear and disgust at the idea of ‘mental breakdown’, the semi-deliberate refusal to go on organizing one’s life which is regarded with such tolerance in these days. I peered into the room. Priscilla was lying in a sort of abandoned attitude on her side, having half kicked off the bedclothes. Her mouth was wet and wide open. A plump stockinged leg stuck rather awkwardly out of the bed, surmounted by yellowish suspenders and a piece of mottled thigh. The graceless awkwardness of the position suggested a dummy which had fallen over. She said in a heavy slightly whimpering voice, ‘I’ve just eaten all my sleeping pills.’
‘What! Priscilla! No!’
‘I’ve eaten them.’ She was holding an empty bottle in her hand.
‘You’re not serious! How many?’
‘I told you my life was ruined. You went away and shut the door. Go away now and shut the door. It isn’t your fault. Just leave me in peace. Go away and catch your train. Let me sleep at last. I’ve had misery enough in my life. You said there was nowhere to go to. There is death to go to. I’ve had misery enough in my life.’ The bottle fell to the floor.
I picked it up. The label meant nothing to me. I made a sort of dart at Priscilla, trying stupidly to pull the bedclothes up over her, but one of her legs was on top of them. I ran out of the room.
In the hall I ran to and fro, starting off back to the bedroom, then running towards the flat door, then back to the telephone. As I reached the telephone it began to ring, and I picked it up.
There were the rapid pips of the ‘pay tone’, and then a click – Arnold’s voice said, ‘Bradley, Rachel and I are just in town for lunch, we’re just round the corner, and we wondered if we could persuade you to join us. Darling, would you like to talk to Bradley ?’
Rachel’s voice said, ‘Bradley, my dear, we both felt – ’
I said, ‘Priscilla’s just eaten all her sleeping pills.’
‘What? Who?’
‘Priscilla. My sister, just taken bottle sleeping pills – I – get hospital – ’
‘What’s that, Bradley? I can’t hear. Bradley, don’t ring off, we – ’
‘Priscilla’s taken her sleeping – Sorry, I must ring – get doctor – sorry, sorry – ’
I jammed the phone down, then lifted it again and could still hear Rachel’s voice saying ‘anything we can do?’ I banged it back, ran to the bedroom door, ran back again, lifted the phone, put it down, began to pull the telephone books out of the shelves where they live inside a converted mahogany commode. The telephone books slewed all over the floor. The front door bell rang.
I ran to the door and opened it. It was Francis Marloe.
I said, ‘Thank God you’ve come, my sister has just eaten a bottle full of sleeping pills.’
‘Where’s the bottle?’ said Francis. ‘How many were in it?’
‘God, how do I know – The bottle – God, I had it in my hand a moment ago – Christ, where is it – ’
‘When did she take them?’
‘Just now.’
‘Have you telephoned a hospital?’
‘No, I – ’
‘Where is she – ’
‘In there.’
‘Find the bottle and telephone the Middlesex Hospital. Ask for Casualty.’
‘Oh Christ, where is the bloody bottle – I had it in my hand – ’ The door bell rang again. I opened it. Arnold, Rachel, and Julian were standing outside the door. They were neat and smartly dressed, Julian in a sort of flowered smock looking about twelve. They appeared like a family advertising corn flakes or insurance, except that Rachel had a bruise under one eye.
‘Bradley, can we – ’
‘Help me find the bottle, I had the bottle she took, I put it down somewhere – ’
A cry came out of the bedroom. Francis called, ‘Brad, could – ’
Rachel said, ‘Let me.’ She went into the bedroom.
‘What’s this about a bottle?’ said Arnold.
‘I can’t read the blasted telephone number. Can you read the number?’
‘I always said you needed glasses.’
Rachel ran out of the bedroom into the kitchen. I could hear Priscilla’s voice saying, ‘Leave me alone, leave me alone.’
‘Arnold, could you telephone the hospital and I’ll look for the – I must have taken it into the – ’
I ran into the sitting-room and was surprised to see a girl there. I got an impression of freshly laundered dress, freshly laundered girl, girl on a visit. She was examining the little bronzes in the lacquered display cabinet. She stopped doing this and watched me with polite curiosity while I started hurling cushions about. ‘What are you looking for, Bradley?’
‘Bottle. Sleeping pills. See what kind.’
Arnold was telephoning.
Francis called out. I ran to the bedroom. Rachel was mopping the floor. There was a vile smell. Priscilla was sitting on the side of the bed sobbing. Her petticoat with pink daisies on it was hitched up round her waist, rather tight silken knickers cut into her thigh, making the mottled flesh bulge.
Francis, talking quickly, excited, said, ‘She was sick – I didn’t really – it’ll help – but a stomach pump – ’
Julian said, ‘Is this it?’ Without entering she thrust a hand round the door.
Francis took the bottle. ‘Oh that stuff – That’s not – ’
‘Ambulance coming,’ called Arnold.
‘She can’t do herself much harm with that. Need to take an awful lot. It makes one sick actually, that was why – ’
‘Priscilla, do stop crying. You’ll be all right.’
‘Leave me alone ! ’
‘Keep her warm,’ said Francis.
‘Leave me alone, I hate you all.’
‘She isn’t herself,’ I said.
‘Get her into bed properly, snuggled down a bit,’ said Francis.
‘I’ll make some tea,’ said Rachel.
They retired and the door shut. I tried again to pull the bedclothes back, but Priscilla was sitting on them.
She jumped up, savagely pulled the blankets back, then crashed on to the bed. She pulled the clothes violently over her, hiding her head. I could hear her mumbling underneath, ‘Ashamed, oh ashamed – Showing me to all those people – I want to die, I want to die – ’ She began sobbing.
I sat down beside her and looked at my watch. It was after twelve. No one had thought to pull the curtains back and the room was still twilit. There was a horrible smell. I patted the heaving mass of blankets. Only a little of her hair was visible, with a dirty line of grey at the roots of the gold. Her hair was dry and brittle, more like some synthetic fibre than like human hair. I felt disgust and helpless pity and a prowling desire to vomit. I sat for a time patting her with the awkward ineffectual gesture of a small child trying to pat an animal. I could not make out what forms I was touching. I wondered if I should firmly pull off the covers and take her hand, but when I plucked at the blankets she burrowed deeper and even her hair disappeared.
Rachel called, ‘The ambulance has come.’
I said to Francis, ‘Could you deal with this?’ I went out into the hall, past where Francis was talking to the ambulance men, and went into the sitting-room.
Julian, looking like one of my pieces of china, was back in her place by the display cabinet. Rachel was lying sprawled in an armchair with a rather odd smile on her face. Rachel said, ‘She’ll be all right?’
‘Yes.’
Julian said, ‘Bradley, I wonder if I could buy this off you?’
‘What?’
‘This little thing. I wonder if I could buy it? Would you sell it to me?’
Rache I said, ‘Julian, don’t be so tiresome.’
Julian was holding in her hand one of the little Chinese bronzes, a piece which I had had for many years. A
water buffalo with lowered head and exquisitely wrinkled neck bears upon his back an aristocratic lady of delicate loveliness with a many-folded dress and high elaborate hair.
‘I wonder if – ?’
Rachel said, ‘Julian, you can’t ask people to sell you their belongings!’
‘Keep it, keep it,’ I said.
‘Bradley, you mustn’t let her – ’
‘No, I’ll buy it – ’
‘Of course you can’t buy it! Keep it!’ I sat down. ‘Where’s Arnold?’
‘Oh thank you! Why, here’s a letter addressed to Dad, and one for me. May I take them?’
‘Yes, yes. Where’s Arnold?’
‘He’s gone to the pub,’ said Rachel, smiling a little more broadly.
‘She felt it wasn’t quite the moment,’ said Julian.
‘Who felt?’
‘He’s gone to the pub with Christian.’
‘WITH CHRISTIAN?’
‘Your ex-wife arrived,’ said Rachel, smiling. ‘Arnold explained that your sister had just attempted suicide. Your ex-wife felt it was not the moment for a reunion. She retired from the scene and Arnold escorted her. I don’t know where to exactly. “To the pub” were his words.’
I ran out of the room. Men were coming in with a stretcher. I ran out of the house.
Perhaps at this point in my story, my dear friend, I may be allowed to pause and speak to you directly. Of course the whole of what I write here, and perhaps somehow unconsciously my whole œuvre, has been a communication addressed to you. But this direct speaking is a kind of relief, it eases some pressure upon the heart and upon the intelligence. There is an element of confession. It is a relief to be able to stand back, even to admit failure, and to admit it in a context where such an admission has no element of falsity. When the believer, fortunate man, asks God to forgive not only the sins he can remember, but also the sins he cannot remember, and, more touching still, the sins he cannot even recognize, so benighted is he, as sins at all, the sense of liberation and subsequent calm must be tremendous. So now in writing for you, and now in offering that writing to you, my penetrating critic, I feel a calmness, a sense of having done my best, and an acceptance of your perception of the frailty of my achievement. There are moments, I know, when I must seem to you like a sort of monomaniac, a man brimming over with delusions of grandeur. Perhaps any artist must be such a maniac, one who feels that he is God. Any artist must sometimes be filled with an intense pleasure in his work, a sense of its radiant merit, a vision of it as excelling. This is not a matter of comparisons in any ordinary sense. Most artists pay little attention to their contemporaries. Those who nourish them belong to the past. Only the vulgar are anxious when hearing others praised. One’s sense of one’s own excellence is uninvidious, imprecise, probably healthy, perhaps essential. Equally important is that humility, that sense of unavoidable limitation, which the artist must also feel when he sees, huge behind his own puny effort, the glimmering shade of perfection.
It is not my intention to accompany this book with a commentary upon it of equal length. The ‘story’ shall never be long kept in abeyance. The luxury of addressing you directly is the fulfilment of a desire which is itself one of the subjects of the book. In our long discussions of the form this work should take you confirmed the legitimacy of this ‘device’, though what comes so from the heart deserves perhaps a warmer name: this indulgence, let us say, of an irrepressible lyricism, an involuntary expression of love. My book is about art. It is also, in its humble way, a work of art: an ‘art object’, as the jargon has it; and may perhaps be permitted, now and then, to cast a look upon itself. Art (as I observed to young Julian) is the telling of truth, and is the only available method for the telling of certain truths. Yet how almost impossibly difficult it is not to let the marvels of the instrument itself interfere with the task to which it is dedicated. There are those who will only praise an absolute simplicity, and for whom the song-bird utterance of the so-called primitive is the measure of all, as if truth ceases to be when it is not stammered. And there are of course divinely cunning simplicities in the works of those whom I hardly dare to name, since they are so near to gods. (Gods one does not name.) But though it may always be well to attempt simplification, it is not always possible to avoid at least an elegant complexity. And then one asks, how can this also be ‘true’? Is the real like this, is it this? Of course, as you have so often pointed out, we may attempt to attain truth through irony. (An angel might make of this a concise definition of the limits of human understanding.) Almost any tale of our doings is comic. We are bottomlessly comic to each other. Even the most adored and beloved person is comic to his lover. The novel is a comic form. Language is a comic form, and makes jokes in its sleep. God, if He existed, would laugh at His creation. Yet it is also the case that life is horrible, without metaphysical sense, wrecked by chance, pain and the close prospect of death. Out of this is born irony, our dangerous and necessary tool.
Irony is a form of ‘tact’ (witty word). It is our tactful sense of proportion in the selection of forms for the embodying of beauty. Beauty is present when truth has found an apt form. It is impossible finally to separate these ideas. Yet there are points at which by a sort of momentary artificiality we can offer a diagnosis. This again is, that which amuses logicians, something which is a case of itself. How can one describe a human being ‘justly’? How can one describe oneself? With what an air of false coy humility, with what an assumed confiding simplicity one sets about it! ‘I am a puritan’ and so on. Faugh! How can these statements not be false? Even ‘I am tall’ has a context. How the angels must laugh and sigh. Yet what can one do but try to lodge one’s vision somehow inside this layered stuff of ironic sensibility, which, if I were a fictitious character, would be that much deeper and denser? How prejudiced is this image of Arnold, how superficial this picture of Priscilla! Emotions cloud the view, and so far from isolating the particular, draw generality and even theory in their train. When I write of Arnold my pen shakes with resentment, love, remorse, and fear. It is as if I were building a barrier against him composed of words, hiding myself behind a mound of words. We defend ourselves by descriptions and tame the world by generalizing. What does he fear? is usually the key to the artist’s mind. Art is so often a barrier. (Is this true even of the greatest art, I wonder?) So art becomes not communication but mystification. When I think of my sister I feel pity, annoyance, guilt. disgust and it is in the ‘light’ of these that I present her, crippled and diminished by my perception itself. How can I correct these faults, my dear friend and comrade? Priscilla was a brave woman. She endured unhappiness grimly, with dignity. She sat alone in the mornings manicuring her nails while tears came into her eyes for her wasted life.
My mother was very important to me. I loved her, but always with a kind of anguish. I feared loss and death to an extent I think unusual in a child. Later I sensed with profound distress the hopeless lack of understanding which existed between my parents. They could not ‘see’ each other at all. My father, with whom I increasingly identified myself, was nervous, timid, upright, conventional, and quite without the grosser forms of vanity. He avoided crossing my mother, but he patently disapproved of her ‘worldliness’ and detested the ‘social scene’ into which she and Priscilla were constantly attempting to penetrate. His dislike of this ‘scene’ was also compounded with a simple sense of inadequacy. He was afraid of making some undignified mistake, revelatory of lack of eduction, such as the mispronunciation of some well-known name. I shared, as I grew up, my father’s disapproval and his anxiety. One reason perhaps why I so passionately desired education for myself was that I saw how unhappy the lack of it had made him. I felt for my misguided mother pain and shame which did not diminish but qualified my love. I was mortally afraid of anyone seeing her as absurd or pathetic, a defeated snob. And later still, after her death, I transferred many of these feelings to Priscilla.
Of course I never loved Priscilla in the way that I love
d my mother. But I felt identified with her and vulnerable through her. I often felt ashamed of her. In fact Priscilla could have made a worse marriage. As I have said, I did not care for Roger. I could never, apart from anything else, forgive him for humiliating my father at the time of Priscilla’s ‘operation’. However, as the years went by, there was a kind of fairly solid ordinariness about that ‘maisonette’ in Bristol, with its expensive kitchen equipment and its horrible modern cutlery, and the imitation ‘bar’ in the corner of the drawing-room. Even the stupider vanities of the modern world can have a kind of innocence, a sort of anchoring steadying quality. They are poor substitutes for art, thought and holiness, but they are substitutes and perhaps some light may fall upon them. House-pride may have contributed, at times, towards the saving of my sister, towards the saving of many women.
However pride and ‘grim courage’ were not now the order of the day. Priscilla, with whom I was conversing, had by this time more or less convinced me that she really did mean to leave her husband and had in fact left him. Her distress at this catastrophe took a certain obsessive form. ‘Oh why was I such a fool as to leave my jewels behind!’ she repeated again and again and again.
It was the day after her exploit with the sleeping pills. The ambulance had taken her to the hospital from which she had been discharged on the same afternoon. She was brought back to my flat and went to bed. She was still in bed, in my bed, the time being about ten-thirty in the morning. The sun was shining. The Post Office Tower glittered with newly minted detail.
I had of course failed to find Arnold and Christian. Looking for someone is, as psychologists have observed, perceptually peculiar, in that the world is suddenly organized as a basis upon which the absence of what is sought is bodied forth in a ghostly manner. The familiar streets about my house, never fully to recover from this haunting, were filled with non-apparitions of the pair, fleeing, laughing, mocking, overwhelmingly real and yet invisible. Other pairs simulated them and made them vanish, the air was smoky with them. But it was too good a joke, too good a coup, for Arnold to risk my spoiling its perfection. By now they were somewhere else, not in the Fitzroy or the Marquis or the Wheatsheaf or the Black Horse, but somewhere else: and the white ghosts of them blew into my eyes, like white petals, like white flakes of paint, like the scraps of paper which the hieratic boy had cast out upon the river of the roadway, images of beauty and cruelty and fear.