The Black Prince

by Iris Murdoch

  I thought this afterwards, lying upon my bed, while Francis padded softly around the house inventing tasks for himself. I lay on my bed with the curtains half pulled and gazed at the chimney piece and at the buffalo lady and at A Friend’s Gift. I also felt a violent rage against Arnold, which was a kind of jealousy, a vile emotion. At least he was her father and had an indestructible connection with her. I had nothing. Did I really believe, I was asked later, that on that awful night Arnold had really come back and taken Julian away? I cannot answer this clearly. My state of mind, which I shall in a moment attempt to describe, is not easily conveyed. I felt that if I could not build a pattern of at least plausible beliefs to make some just bearable sense out of what had happened I should die. Though I suppose what I was conceiving was not true death, but a torture to which death would be preferable. How could I live with the idea that she had simply left me in the night without a word ? It could not be. I knew there was an explanation. Did I desire her during this time? The question is frivolous.

  I tried, out of a sort of last – resort self – preserving wisdom, to suffer purely. O you my fellow sufferers, you who mourn in waning hope and in ingenious fantastic yearning the loss of the beloved, let me give you at least this advice: suffer purely. Banish remorse, banish resentment and the screaming contortions of degrading jealousy. Give yourself over to immaculate pain. So, at best you will rejoin your joy with a far purer love. And at worst – you will know the secrets of the god. At best, you will be privileged to forget. At worst, you will be privileged to know. Hope is of course the prime tormentor, and I made a pact with hope. I did hope, but I hid my hope inside a black cloud. Some part of my being knew that Julian loved me, was part of me, and could not be taken from me. Another part of my being remembered and waited and moaned. I allowed no commerce between them, no speculation, no discussion, no reduction of one to the other. I passed my time, so far as I could, in a pure burning pain. Can one get beyond that image of pain ? Hell is depicted as fire. And men who ran the gauntlet in Imperial Russia could do no better when an inquisitive writer, their fellow prisoner, questioned them about their sufferings.

  In waiting time devours itself. Great hollows open up inside each minute, each second. Each moment is one at which the longed – for thing could happen. Yet at the same instant the terrified mind has flown ahead through centuries of unlightened despair. I tried to grasp and to arrest these giddy convulsions of the spirit, lying on my back on my bed and watching the window glow from dark to light and fade again from light to dark. Odd that a demonic suffering should lie supine, while a glorified suffering lies prone.

  I shall now advance the narrative by quoting several letters.

  I know that you will communicate with me as soon as you are able to. I will not leave the flat for a single moment. I am a corpse awaiting its Saviour. Accident and its own force induced the revelation of a passion which duty might have concealed. Once revealed, your miraculous self giving increased it a thousand fold. I am yours for ever. And I know that you love me and I absolutely trust your love. We cannot be defeated. You will come to me soon, my darling and my queen. Meanwhile, oh my dear, I am in so much pain.

  B.

  Dear Christian,

  Have you now any idea where Julian is? Has Arnold taken her away somewhere? He must be keeping her hidden by force. If you can discover anything at all, however vague, let me know for God’s sake.

  B.

  Please reply at once by telephone or letter. I do not want to see you.

  Dear Arnold,

  I am not surprised that you are afraid to face me again. I do not know how you persuaded or forced Julian to go away with you, but do not believe that any arguments of yours can keep us apart. Julian and I have talked with full knowledge and understand each other. After your first departure all was well between us. Your ‘revelations’ made and can make no difference. You are dealing with a kind of mutual attachment which, since you make no mention of it in your books, I assume that you know nothing of. Julian and I recognize the same god. We have found each other, we love each other, and there is no impediment to our marriage. Do not imagine that you can constitute one. You have seen that Julian was unwilling even to listen to you. Please now recognize that your daughter is grown up and has made her choice. Accept, as indeed you finally must, her free decision in my favour. Naturally she cares what you think. Naturally too she will not finally obey you. I expect her return hourly. By the time you get this she may even be with me.

  Your objection to me as a suitor has of course deep motives. The matter of my age, though important, is certainly not crucial. You have even admitted to me that as a writer you are a disappointed man. And some part of you has always envied me because I have kept my gift pure and you have not. Continual mediocre creation can sour a whole life. The compromise with the second best, which is the lot of almost every man, is by the bad artist externalized into a persisting testimony. How much better the silence and guarded speech of a more strict endeavour. That I should also have gained your daughter’s love must seem, I can well understand, like the last straw.

  I am sorry that our friendship, or whatever name one may give to the obsessive relationship which has bound us together for so many years, should end in this way. This is not the place to utter its elegy. If I feel vindictive towards you now, it is simply because you are an obstacle in the way of something infinitely more important than any ‘friendship’. Doubtless it is wise of you to keep out of my way. And if you visit me again, do not bring a blunt instrument with you. I do not care for threats and hints of violence. I have, I assure you, quite enough violence inside myself ready to be provoked.

  Julian and I will settle our future together privately and in our own way. We understand each other perfectly. Please accept this fact and cease your cruel and vain attempts to force your daughter to do what she does not want to do.

  B.P.

  Dearest Old Brad,

  Thank you for your letter. I don’t know where Julian is (honest!), I believe she is staying with friends. I saw Arnold and he was laughing about the whole matter! I’m afraid I can’t quite understand now why you got so excited. (I confess it rather amused me at first!) Of course she is an attractive girl, but doesn’t she regard you as some sort of uncle or sugar daddy? I can’t make head or tail of it all. Arnold says you took her on a seaside holiday and then when you got a bit too intense she legged it. Anyway, that’s his story. I think, all’s well that ends well, honi soit qui mal y pense, no smoke therefore no fire, and so on. I expect you will have calmed down somewhat by now. Do please see me. I know you were in last time I called, I could see you through the glass of the hall door. (You ought to be told how transparent that glass is, especially if the sitting – room door is open!) I assume you have still got Francis (I don’t want him of course) who is crazy about you. No wonder you imagine everyone is! See Below.

  Brad (this is the most important part of this letter) I want to say this to you. I wish in a way I hadn’t met Arnold so pat on coming back. I like him and I feel sort of curious about him and he amuses me. (And I like to be amused.) But he’s a red herring, I guess. I came back for you. (Did you know that?) And I’m still here for you. I go for you in a deep way, I never really gave you up, you know. And in a deep way you’re even far more amusing than Arnold. So why not let’s get together? If you need consoling, I’ll console you. As I told you before, I’m a damned attractive clever rich widow. A lot of people are after me. So what about it Brad? That little old till – death – do – us – part bit did mean something, you know. I’ll ring again tomorrow.

  Caring for you, Brad old thing, with much love

  Chris.

  The passage above about ‘waiting’ may have suggested that weeks had now passed. In fact four days, which seemed like four years, had passed.

  Men who live by words and writing can, as I have already observed, attach an almost magical efficacy to a communication in that medium. The letter to Julian I wrote out thre
e times, sending one copy to Ealing, one to her Training College, and one to her school. I could scarcely believe that any would reach her, but it was a relief to pain to write the letters and to drop them in the box.

  On the day after the funeral Hartbourne rang up to explain in detail why he had been unable to attend. I forgot to say that he had earlier dictated to Francis by telephone a carefully worded message of condolence about Priscilla’s death! My doctor also rang to say that my usual brand of sleeping pill was now on the forbidden list.

  On the third evening Rachel turned up. Of course whenever the door bell rang I rushed out sick with hope and terror. Twice it was Christian (whom I did not let in), once Rigby asking for Francis. (Francis went out and they talked for some time in the court.) The fourth time it was Rachel. I saw her through the glass and opened the door.

  Seeing Rachel there in the Hat was like a bad trip in a time machine. There was a memory – odour like a smell of decay. I felt distressed, physically repelled, frightened. Her wide round pale face was terribly familiar, but with the ambiguous veiled familiarity of a dream. It was as if my mother had visited me in her cerements.

  She came in tossing her head with a surge of excitement, a perhaps feigned air of confidence, almost of elation. She strode by me, not looking at me, her hands deep in the pockets of her tweed coat which had been cobwebbed – over by the light rain. She was purposeful and handsome and I flinched out of her way. She took off her woollen hat and her coat and shook them lightly and hung them up in the hall. We sat down in the sitting – room in the cold brown early evening light.

  ‘Where’s Julian?’

  Rachel smoothed her skirt down neatly about her knees. ‘Bradley, I wanted to tell you how sorry I was about Priscilla.’

  'Where’s Julian?’

  ‘Don’t you know?’

  ‘I know she’ll come back. I don’t know where she is.’

  ‘Poor old Bradley,’ said Rachel. She gave a nervous ejaculatory laugh like a cough.

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘She’s on holiday. I don’t know where she is just now, I really don’t. Here’s the letter you sent her. I haven’t read it.’

  I took the letter. The return of a passionate letter unread desolates far regions of the imagination. If somewhere she had read my words the world was changed. Now all blew back upon me like dead leaves.

  ‘Oh Rachel, where is she?’

  ‘Honestly I don’t know, I’m not in touch. Bradley, do stop it. Think of your dignity or something. You look terrible, you look a hundred. You might shave at least. This thing is all in your mind.’

  ‘You didn’t think so when Julian said she loved me.’

  ‘Julian is a child. This latest business had far more to do with me and Arnold than it had to do with you. You ought to know a bit about human nature, you’re supposed to be a writer. Of course it was “serious” in its way, but what people do doesn’t mean just one thing. Julian adores us, only she likes to stage little revolts from time to time. I daresay we are rather overwhelming as parents, and she is an only child. So she pushes us with one hand and pulls us with the other. She wants to assure herself that she’s free, at the same time she wants our attention, she wants the relationship of being scolded. This isn’t the first time she’s used somebody else to upset us with. A year ago she thought she was madly in love with one of her teachers, well he wasn’t as old as you, but he was married with four children, and she made it into a sort of little “demo” against us. We knew how to take it. It ended happily. You’re just the next victim.’

  ‘Rachel,’ I said, ‘you are talking about someone else. You are not talking about Julian, about my Julian.’

  ‘Your Julian is a fiction. This is what I’m telling you, dear Bradley. I’m not saying she didn’t care for you, but a young girl’s emotions are chaos.’

  ‘And you are talking to another person. You obviously have no conception of what you’re dealing with. I live in a different world, I am in love, and – ’

  ‘Do you think there is some magic in those words which you utter so solemnly?’

  ‘Yes, I do. All this is happening on a different plane – ’

  ‘This is a form of insanity, Bradley. Only the insane think that there are planes which are quite separate from other planes. It’s all a muddle, Bradley, it’s all a muddle. God knows, I’m saying this to you in kindness.’

  ‘Love is a sort of certainty, perhaps the only sort.’

  ‘It’s just a state of mind – ’

  ‘It’s a true state of mind.’

  ‘Oh Bradley, do stop. You’ve had a terrible time lately, no wonder your head’s in a whirl. I am so awfully sorry about Priscilla.’

  ‘Priscilla. Yes.’

  ‘You mustn’t blame yourself too much.’

  ‘No – ’

  ‘Where did Francis find her? Where was she lying when he found her?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You mean you didn’t ask?’

  ‘No. I suppose she was in bed.’

  ‘I would have wanted to know – all the details – I think – just to picture it – Did you see her dead?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Didn’t you have to identify her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Someone must have done.’

  ‘Roger did.’

  ‘Odd about identifying dead people, recognizing them. I hope I don’t ever have to – ’

  ‘He’s keeping her prisoner somewhere, I know he is.’

  ‘Really, Bradley, you seem to be living in some sort of literary dream. Everything is so much duller and more mixed – up than you imagine, even the awful things are.’

  ‘He locked her in her room before.’

  ‘Of course he didn’t. The girl was romancing.’

  ‘Do you really not know where she is?’

  ‘Really.’

  ‘Why hasn’t she written to me?’

  ‘She’s no good at writing letters, never has been. Anyway, give her time. She will write. Perhaps it’s just a rather difficult letter to compose!’

  ‘Rachel, you don’t know what’s inside me, you don’t know what it’s like to be me, to be where I am. You see it’s a matter of absolute certainty, of knowing your own mind and somebody else’s with absolute certainty. It’s something completely steady and old, as if it’s always been, ever since the world began. That’s why what you say is simply nonsense, it doesn’t make any sense to me, it’s a sort of gabbling. She understands, she spoke this language with me at once. We love each other.’

  ‘Bradley dear, do try to come back to reality – ’

  ‘This is reality. Oh God, supposing she were dead – ’

  ‘Oh don’t be silly. You make me sick.’

  ‘Rachel, she isn’t dead, is she?’

  ‘No, of course not! And do try to take a look at yourself. You’re simply absurd, you’re just talking melodrama, and you’re talking it to me, of all people! A couple of weeks ago you were kissing me passionately and lying beside me in bed. Now you expect me to believe that you’ve developed a life – long passion for my daughter in the space of four days. You expect me to believe that, and to sympathize with you, it seems! You are rather out of touch! One would think that some sort of dignity or tact or ordinary human gentleness would check this outpouring. Well, don’t look like that. You do remember being in bed with me, don’t you?’

  In a way, the truth was that I did not. I could attach no precise events to the idea of Rachel. Here memory was simply a cold cloud to be shuddered at. She was a familiar person and a familiar presence, but the notion that I had ever done anything in relation to her was utterly shadowy, so much had the advent of Julian drained the rest of my life of significant content, separating history from prehistory. I wanted to explain this.

  ‘Yes, I do – of course – remember – but it’s as if – since Julian – everything has been – sort of amputated and – the past has quite gone – it didn’t mean anything anyway –
it was just – I’m sorry this sounds rather unkind, but being in love one simply has to tell the truth all the time – I know you must feel that there was a sort of – betrayal – you must resent it – ’

  ‘Resent it? Good heavens no. I just feel sorry for you. And it’s all a pity and a sort of waste and rather pathetic really. Well, a sad thing, a disappointment perhaps, a disillusionment. It seems odd to me now that I ever felt that you were a sort of strong wise man or that you could help me. I was touched when you talked about eternal friendship. It seemed to mean something at the time. Do you remember talking about eternal friendship?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Can you really not remember? You are peculiar. I wonder if you’re having some sort of breakdown ? Can you really not recall our liaison at all?’

  ‘There was no liaison.’

  ‘Oh come come. I agree it was brief and stupid and I suppose rather improbable. No wonder Julian could hardly believe it.’

  ‘You told Julian?’

  ‘Yes. Hadn’t you thought that I might? Oh but of course you’d forgotten all about it!’