The Black Prince

by Iris Murdoch

  I became aware that I had uttered a sort of moan, because the man on my other side, whom I noticed now for the first time, turned and stared at me. At the same moment my stomach seemed to come sliding down from somewhere else and then quickly arched itself up again and I felt a quick bitter taste in my mouth. I murmured ‘Sorry!’ quickly in Julian’s direction and got up. There was a soft awkward scraping at the end of the row as six people rose hastily to let me out. I blundered by, slipped on some steps, the terrible relentless sweet sound still gripping my shoulders with its talons. Then I was pushing my way underneath the illuminated sign marked Exit and out into the brightly lit and completely empty and suddenly silent foyer. I walked fast. I was definitely going to be sick.

  Selection of a place to be sick in is always a matter of personal importance and can add an extra tormenting dimension to the graceless horror of vomiting. Not on the carpet, not on the table, not over your hostess’s dress. I did not want to be sick within the precincts of the Royal Opera House, nor was I. I emerged into a deserted shabby street and a pungent spicy smell of early dusk. The pillars of the Opera House, blazing a pale gold behind me, seemed in that squalid place like the portico of a ruined or perhaps imagined or perhaps magically fabricated palace, the green and white arcades of the foreign fruit market, looking like something out of the Italian Renaissance, actually clinging to its side. I turned a corner and confronted an array of about a thousand peaches in tiers of boxes behind a lattice grille. I carefully took hold of the grille with one hand and leaned well forward and was sick.

  Vomiting is a curious experience, entirely sui generis. It is involuntary in a peculiarly shocking way, the body suddenly doing something very unusual with great promptness and decision. One cannot argue. One is seized. And the fact that one’s vomit moves with such a remarkable drive contrary to the force of gravity adds to the sense of being taken and shaken by some alien power. I am told that there are people who enjoy vomiting, and although I do not share their taste I can, I think, faintly imagine it. There is a certain sense of achievement. And if one does not fight against the stomach’s decree there is perhaps some satisfaction in being its helpless vehicle. The relief of having vomited is of course another thing.

  I leaned there for a moment, looking down at what I had done, and aware too of the tear – wetness of my face upon which a faint breeze was coolly blowing. I remembered that casket of agony, steel coated in sugar. The inevitable loss of the beloved. And I experienced Julian. I cannot explain this. I simply felt in a sort of exhausted defeated cornered utmost way that she was. There was no particular joy or relief in this, but a sort of absolute categorical quality of grasp of her being.

  I became aware that someone was standing beside me. Julian said, ‘How are you feeling now, Bradley?’

  I began to walk away from her, fumbling for my handkerchief. I wiped my mouth carefully, trying to cleanse it within with saliva.

  I was walking along a corridor composed entirely of cages. I was in a prison, I was in a concentration camp. There was a wall composed of transparent sacks full of fiery carrots. They looked at me like derisive faces, like monkeys’ bottoms. I breathed carefully and regularly and interrogated my stomach, stroking it gently with my hands. I turned into a lighted arcade and tested my stomach against a smell of decaying lettuce. I walked onward occupied in breathing. Only now I felt so empty and so faint. I felt that I had reached the end of the world, I felt like a stag when it can run no further and turns and bows its head to the hounds, I felt like Actaeon condemned and cornered and devoured.

  Julian was following me. I could hear the soft tap – tap of her shoes on the sticky pavement and my whole body apprehended her presence behind me.

  ‘Bradley, would you like some coffee? There’s a stall there.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Let’s sit down somewhere.’

  ‘Nowhere to sit.’

  We passed between two lorries loaded with milky white boxes of dark cherries and came out into the open. It was becoming dark, lights had come on revealing the sturdy elegant military outline of the vegetable market, resembling a magazine, a seedy eighteenth – century barracks, though quiet at this time and sombre as a cloister. Opposite to us the big derelict eastern portico of Inigo Jones’s church was now in view, cluttered up with barrows and housing at the far end the coffee stall referred to by Julian. Some mean and casual lamp – light, itself seeming dirty, revealed the thick pillars, a few lounging market men, a large pile of vegetable refuse and disintegrating cardboard boxes. It was like a scene in some small battered Italian city, rendered by Hogarth.

  Julian seated herself on the plinth of one of the pillars at the dark end of the portico, and I sat down next to her, or as near next to her as the bulge of the column would allow. I could feel the thick filth and muck of London under my feet, under my bottom, behind my back. I saw, in a diagonal of dim light, Julian’s silk dress hitched up, her tights, smoky blue, coloured by the flesh within, her shoes, also blue, against which I had so cautiously placed my own.

  ‘Poor Bradley,’ said Julian.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Was it the music?’

  ‘No, it was you. Sorry.’

  We were silent then for what seemed ages. I sighed and leaned back against the pillar and felt a few more tears, latecomers to the scene, quiet and gentle, come slowly brimming up and overflowing. I contemplated Julian’s blue shoes.

  Then Julian said, ‘How me?’

  ‘I’m terribly in love with you. But please don’t worry about it.’

  Julian whistled. No, this does not quite convey the sound she made. She let her breath out thoughtfully, judiciously.

  After a while she said, ‘I thought perhaps you were.’

  ‘How on earth did you know?’ I said, and I rubbed my face and dabbed my lips with my wet hand.

  ‘The way you kissed me last week.’

  ‘Oh really. Well, I’m sorry. Now I think I’d better go home. I’ll be leaving London tomorrow. I’m very sorry to have spoilt your evening. I hope you’ll excuse my animal behaviour. I hope you haven’t dirtied your pretty dress. Good night.’ I actually got up. I felt quite empty and light, able to walk. First the flesh, then the spirit. I started to walk away in the direction of Henrietta Street.

  Julian was in front of me. I saw her face, the bird – mask fox – mask very intense and clear. ‘Bradley, don’t go. Come and sit down again, just for a moment.’ She put her hand on my arm.

  I jerked myself away. ‘This is not something for little girls to play with,’ I said to her. We faced each other.

  ‘Come back. Please.’

  I came back. I sat down again and covered my face. Then I felt Julian’s hand trying to come through the crook of my arm. I shook her off again. I felt determined and violent, as if at that moment I hated her and could kill her.

  ‘Bradley, don’t – be like that – Please talk to me.’

  ‘Don’t try to touch me,’ I said.

  ‘All right, I won’t. But please talk.’

  ‘There’s nothing to talk about. I have done what I swore to myself I would never do, told you about my condition. I don’t have to emphasize, I think you must already have gathered, that this is all rather extreme. I shall tomorrow do what I should have done earlier, go away. What I do not propose to do is to gratify your girlish vanity by a display of my feelings.’

  ‘Bradley, listen, listen. I’m not good at explaining or arguing but – You see, you can’t just unload all this on to me and then run off. It isn’t fair. You must see that.’

  ‘I’m beyond fairness,’ I said. ‘I just want to survive. I’m sure you feel a curiosity which it is natural to try to gratify. Even perhaps politeness suggests that one should be a little less abrupt. But I honestly don’t care a hang about considering your feelings and all that. It’s possibly the worst thing I’ve ever done. But now it’s done there’s little point in lingering over a post – mortem, however much satisfaction you might de
rive from it.’

  ‘Don’t you want to talk to me about your love?’

  The question had a striking simplicity. I was clear about the answer. ‘No. It’s all spoilt. I endlessly imagined talking to you about it, but that just belonged to the fantasy world. I can’t talk love to you in the real world. The real world rejects it. It’s not that it would be a crime so much as – absurd. I feel quite cold and – dry. What do you want? To hear me praise your eyes?’

  ‘Has telling your love – made your love – end?’

  ‘No. But it’s – it’s not — it has no speech any more – it’s just something I’ve got to carry away and live with. When I hadn’t told you I could endlessly imagine myself telling you. Now – the tongue has been cut out.’

  ‘I — Bradley, don’t go – I must – oh help me – find the right words – This is important – And It concerns me – You talk as if there was nobody here but you.’

  ‘There is nobody here but me,’ I said. ‘You’re just something in my dream.’

  ‘That’s not true. I’m real. I hear your words. I can suffer.’

  ‘Suffer? You?’ I got up with a sort of laugh and set off again. This time before I could take more than a step or two Julian, still sitting down, had managed to capture one of my hands in two of hers. I looked down into her face. I willed to pull my hand from her, but somewhere between the brain and the hand the message got lost. I stood looking down into her urgent face which seemed to have hardened and aged. She gazed at me, not tenderly but frowning with intent, the eyes narrowed into thin questioning rectangles, the lips parted, the nose wrinkled with some sort of delicate fastidious doubt. She said, ‘Sit down, please.’ I sat down, and she released my hand.

  We looked at each other. ‘Bradley, you can’t go.’

  ‘It looks like it. Do you know, you are a very cruel young lady.’

  ‘This isn’t cruelty. There’s something I’ve got to understand. You say you’re just concerned with yourself. All right. I’m just concerned with myself. And you did start it. You can’t just stop it now when you decide to. I’m an equal partner in this game.’

  ‘I hope you are enjoying the game. It must be pleasant to feel blood on your claws. It’ll give you something nice to think about when you lie in bed tonight.’

  ‘Don’t be beastly to me, Bradley, it isn’t my fault. I didn’t invite you to fall in love with me. I never dreamt of it at all. When did it happen? When did you first begin to notice me in that way?’

  ‘Listen, Julian,’ I said, ‘reminiscences of this sort are very charming to indulge in when two people love each other. But when one person loves and the other doesn’t they lose their charm. The fact that I am unfortunately in love with you doesn’t mean that I can’t see you for what you are, a very young, very undereducated, very inexperienced, and in many ways very silly girl. And I do not propose to pander to your silliness by any coy account of the history of this business. I know it must be very amusing to you. I daresay it’ll make your day. But you’ll just have to try to be a bit grown – up and be cold and grim about this and just let it go. You can’t have it for a plaything. Your curiosity will be unsatisfied and your vanity ungratified. And you will, I trust, unlike me, keep your mouth shut. I can’t stop you from gossiping and giggling over this, but I ask you not to.’

  Julian after a moment said, ‘You don’t seem to know me at all. Are you sure it’s me you love?’

  ‘All right, I daresay I can trust your discretion. But I must now ask you to release me from this unkind and unseemly inquisition.’

  Julian said, after another short pause, ‘So you’re going away tomorrow? Where to?’

  ‘Abroad.’

  ‘And what am I supposed to do? Just lock this evening away and forget about it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You think that’s possible?’

  ‘You know perfectly well what I mean.’

  ‘I see. And how long will it take you to get over this, as you put it, unfortunate infatuation?’

  ‘I did not use the word “infatuation”.’

  ‘Suppose I say, you just want to go to bed with me?’

  ‘Suppose you say it.’

  ‘You mean you don’t care what I think?’

  ‘Not now.’

  ‘Because you’ve spoilt all the fantasy fun of your love by bringing it out into the real world?’

  I got up and got well away from her this time, walking quickly. I saw her as in a vision, her red and blue silk tulip dress spread by her legs, striding like a Spartan maid, her shining blue feet twinkling, her arms held out. And now again she had cut me off and we had stopped beside a lorry loaded with white boxes. A unique but unidentified smell, carrying awful associations, entered my mind like a swarm of bees. I leaned against the tail board of the lorry and groaned.

  ‘Bradley, may I touch you?’

  ‘No. Please go away. If you pity me at all, go away.’

  ‘Bradley, you’ve upset me and you must let me talk this out, I want to understand myself too, you don’t conceive – ’

  ‘I know this must nauseate you.’

  ‘You say you aren’t thinking about me. Indeed you aren’t!’

  ‘What’s that bloody smell? What’s in those boxes?’

  ‘Strawberries.’

  ‘Strawberries!’ The smell of youthful illusion and feverish transient joy.

  ‘You say you love me, but you aren’t interested in me in the least.’

  ‘Nope. Now good – bye. Please.’

  ‘You evidently don’t think at all that I might return your affection.’

  ‘Nope. What?’

  ‘That I might return your affection.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ I said. ‘You’re being childish.’ Pigeons, unsure whether it was day or night, were walking about near our feet. I looked at the pigeons.

  ‘Your love must be very – what’s the word – solipsistic if you don’t even imagine or speculate about what I might feel.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘it is solipsistic. It’s got to be. It’s a game I play by myself.’

  ‘Then you oughtn’t to have told me about it.’

  ‘We agree on that.’

  ‘But don’t you want to know what I feel?’

  ‘I’m not going to get excited about what you feel,’ I said. ‘You’re a very silly young girl. You’re flattered and thrilled because an older man is making a fool of himself about you. Possibly this is the first time this has happened to you, and doubtless it won’t be the last. Of course you want to explore the situation a bit, probe your feelings, fake up a few emotions. That’s no use to me. And of course I realize that you’d have to be a good deal older and tougher and cooler than you are to be able to drop this thing at once as you ought to do. So you can’t do what you ought to do any more than I can. What a pity. Now let’s get away from these blasted strawberries. I’m going home.’

  I began to walk away, but more slowly this time. Julian was walking by my side. We turned into Henrietta Street. I felt horribly excited but determined not to show it. I also felt that I had just taken, or allowed to be taken, some step that could prove fatal. In protesting that I would not talk love I had talked love and nothing but love. And this had given me an intense bitter – sweet pleasure. This discussion, this argument, this fight once started could continue and continue and could become for me an addiction. If she wanted to talk about it how could I ever be strong enough to refuse? If I could die of this talk I would be most happy. And I realized with shock how much, even in this last twenty minutes, this treatment had increased the sum and complexity of my love for her. Before, my love had been huge but lacked detail. Now already there were caverns, there were labyrinths. And soon ... Complexity would make it stronger, deeper, more hopelessly ineradicable. There was so much more now to ponder, so much more to feed upon. Oh God.

  ‘Bradley, how old are you?’

  The question took me horribly by surprise, but I replied instantly, ‘Forty – six.�
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  Why I told this lie is hard to explain. Partly it was just a bitter joke. I was so absorbed in prophetic calculation of this evening’s damage, of how much more awful the pains of loss and jealousy and despair would now be; to be asked my age was somehow the last straw, the last dash of salt upon the wound. One could only jest. Anyway, surely the girl knew my age. Also however in another part of my mind was the idea: I am not ‘really’ fifty – eight, how can I be. I feel young, I look young. There was an immediate instinct for concealment. I was in fact about to say forty – eight, and then hopped on to forty – six. That seemed a reasonable age, acceptable, right.

  Julian was silent for a moment. She seemed surprised. We turned into Bedford Street. Then she said, ‘Oh, then you are a little older than my father. I thought you were younger.’

  I began to laugh helplessly, wailing softly to myself, how funny it was, how exquisitely insane. Of course young people do not reckon ages, do not perceive temporal distance. Over thirty it all looks much the same to them. And I had this deceptively youthful mask. Oh funny funny funny.

  ‘Bradley, don’t laugh in that horrible way, what is it? Please let us stop and talk, I must talk to you properly tonight.’

  ‘All right, let us stop and talk.’

  ‘What’s this place?’

  ‘Inigo Jones giving us another chance.’

  A discreet gateway and two draped urns ushered us towards the west end of the church, accessible only from this side. I turned into the darkened courtyard and went on into the garden. At the end of the path the doorway of the lovely barn, last resting place of Lely, Wycherley, Grinling Gibbons, Arne, and Ellen Terry was dimly lit. Here was its brown and bricky, small and more domestic face of a pretty elegance, a more purely English beauty. I sat down upon one of the seats in the garden, where it was dark. A little way away a lamp shone dimly upon tangerine – coloured roses, making them look like wax. A cat went by, soundless and swift as a bird’s shadow. I moved away as Julian sat down beside me. I would not not not touch the girl. Of course it was insanity to continue the argument. But now I was weak with madness, with the insane awful funniness of it all. After the lie about my age all prudence, all efforts at self – preservation, seemed finally pointless.