by Iris Murdoch
“Was it your notion or your husband’s to blackmail him?”
“I have no idea, Mr Honeyman. I’m a woman. Look.”
Ducane was looking, but his head was perfectly clear now. He noticed that the huge brown circles in the centre of her breasts were reminding him of Fivey.
“Tell me about Radeechy,” said Ducane.
“I could love you, Mr Honeyman. You could love me.”
“I doubt that, Judy. Tell me about Radeechy.”
“You mean what we did in the vaults at night?”
“In the vaults—” said Ducane carefully.
“In the vaults of the office.”
“I see,” said Ducane slowly, thinking as fast as he could. “Of course. You used to go with Radeechy into the vaults, into the old air-raid shelters underneath the office—”
“That’s right, Mr Honeyman. I thought you knew. I thought you knew everything.”
“I know practically everything.” said Ducane. “I just want you to tell me the rest. Why did you go to the vaults?”
“It was getting to be a bit awkward at his house, you see, with Mrs around, and the neighbours. We used to make quite a lot of noise.”
“Hmmm,” said Ducane. “Did Mrs Radeechy know about all this?”
“Oh yes, it was all ever so honest.”
“Did she mind?”
“I don’t know,” said Judy. She had begun to oscillate her body in a circular movement, pivoted upon her rather large feet which were gripping the carpet with long claw-like toes. “She seemed not to. But I guess she did really.”
“Was Radeechy anxious because he was distressing his wife?”
“He was never anxious when he was with me, Mr Honeyman. No man is ever anxious when he is with me.”
“What did Radeechy want you to do for him,” asked Ducane. “I mean apart from the things that were obvious.”
“None of Mr Radeechy’s things were obvious things, Mr Honeyman.”
“Well, presumably he made love to you.”
“Oh no, nothing like that. It was all very spiritualistic, if you see what I mean. Besides, Mr McGrath was there half of the time.”
“Oh. You took part in rituals, magic?”
“I never understood it really, I just did what he told me, half of the time I couldn’t see what was happening. Some gentlemen have very strange ideas. He was not the first.”
“What do you mean by spiritualistic?”
“It was all ideas, all in his head like. There are some like that. He never touched me, not with his hands that is.”
The phrase “not with his hands” produced an effect on Ducane which he took a moment to recognize as extreme physical excitement. He pushed his chair back abruptly and stood up. Judy McGrath immediately, with an electrical jerk, altered her stance, stepping forward towards him and throwing her head back. At the same time she picked up something from the table. Ducane’s lowered gaze now sought out, what he had before avoided seeing, the place of the darkest shadow.
“Don’t go,” she said softly. “Or else take me with you. What are your things, Mr Honey? Whatever they are I could do them. And there are things I could teach you too.”
“Put your clothes on,” said Ducane.
Something moved in the sulphurous light between them and came to rest upon his wrist, brushing caressingly along the hairs of his arm. It was the pencil-thin tip of a riding whip, the other end of which rested in Judy’s hand.
Ducane jerked his arm away and moved quickly out of the room. He blundered through the hall and swung the front door wide open and blinked in the sudden brightness of the street. As he began to walk rapidly along the pavement he nearly collided with Biranne, who was carrying a bottle. They looked at each other appalled, and before Ducane pushed past and hurried on he saw Biranne’s face transfigured with fear.
Twenty-five
“WHY do animals not have to blow their noses?” asked Edward.
No one seemed to know the answer to this question or be prepared to enter into a discussion of it. Mary was cooking rhubarb, Paula was looking through a page of the Aeneid into some private worry of her own, and Ducane was engaged in composing and censoring some very private pictures of Judy McGrath.
“Uncle Theo wants Mingo please,” said Henrietta who had just come into the kitchen. “Here’s a postcard come for you, John.”
The twins shovelled the sleepy Mingo up from his comfortable place in Montrose’s basket and departed carrying him between them.
Ducane surveyed a picture of some veiled women. On the other side Kate had written, Darling, veiled women are so thrilling, though mean to be thrilled as would hate to be veiled self. This place is super. This morning saw some dogs doing something quite extraordinary. Can’t possibly tell you on postcard. Didn’t know dogs had vices. Much love.
Ducane turned the card again and looked gloomily at the veiled women. He too recalled being excited by veiled women in Tangier, and the memory mingled rather horribly with the strong aura of Judy which still hung about him. It was odd that his confrontation with the unveiled Judy should now seem to remind him of the hidden women of Africa. There was something mechanical in himself which responded to the two visions in much the same way. I am becoming cut off, he thought, I am becoming like Radeechy, it is all indirect, it is all in my mind. Then he wondered, what are my things anyway? The question was not without interest.
He turned the card over again and tried to concentrate his attention upon Kate: sweet Kate, with her halo of wiry golden hair and her affectionate and loving nature. But Kate seemed to elude his regard, and the place in the centre where she should have been seemed either empty or concealed. There was the same sense of the mechanical. I need her presence, he thought. I am not good at absence, at least I am not good at her absence.
Ducane had been disturbed not only by Judy but by what she had told him. At first sight the discovery that Radeechy’s ‘goings-on’ had taken place in the old air-raid shelters underneath the office strongly suggested that those who feared a ‘security risk’ were not being idly suspicious. The magic might be simply a front, a characteristically extravagant and far-fetched façade, to conceal quite other nocturnal activities. However, on second thoughts Ducane decided this was unlikely. If Radeechy wished to remain all night in the office there was really nothing to stop him, and the additional indulgence of fantasies involving girls seemed too wantonly risky if his purposes were quite other. No, Ducane concluded, once again the thing was what it seemed. But what did it seem? That dreary sense of the mechanical came to him again. Was there perhaps no centre to the mystery at all, nothing there but the melancholy sexual experiments of an unbalanced man?
Ducane had decided that his next move was to see McGrath again and to get McGrath to show him the place in the vaults where Radeechy did what he did. Ducane did not want any further view of Mrs McGrath, so he had written to McGrath summoning him to the office on Monday. After this, obeying an almost panic instinct of flight, Ducane had told Fivey to drive him to Dorset. He was upset by the whole business and wished heartily that Octavian and Kate were not away. A message had come from the Prime Minister’s office to confirm, what Octavian had earlier told him, that the Radeechy affair had ‘gone off the boil’, and to ask him for an early report, however inconclusive. When he received this message Ducane realised how very far, by now, his interest in the enquiry was from being a purely official one. He was deeply involved and for his own sake would have to try to understand. He felt too as if he were being drawn onward almost deliberately by a never entirely broken thread. Whenever the trail had seemed to end something had unexpectedly happened to show him the next piece of the way.
That Judy McGrath was ‘Helen of Troy’ and that McGrath had, not perhaps for the first time, used his wife as a decoy for a blackmail victim had occurred to Ducane a little earlier as possible. He had not expected the link between Judy and Biranne; but once the link had been so sensationally given it seemed something so suggestive as t
o be obvious. Ducane had been at first rather sorry that he had now given so definite a warning to Biranne and lost the possible effect of a surprise; though indeed Biranne had probably been kept informed of the direction of the enquiry by the kind offices of Judy and her husband. In all likelihood McGrath was also, in the friendliest possible way, blackmailing Biranne as well. In any case Biranne must know himself to be under suspicion and on further reflection Ducane decided that this was no bad thing. He had been greatly struck by the sudden expression of terror on Biranne’s face when he had encountered Ducane in Smith Street. Ducane thought, Biranne will come to me. It was not an unpleasant thought.
“Where’s Barbara?” Ducane asked Mary. “Is she out riding?”
“No, the pony’s strained a fetlock. I think she’s up in her room.”
“Is she still upset about Montrose?”
“Yes, dreadfully. She was crying again yesterday. I can’t imagine what’s happened to the wretched creature. Cats don’t just vanish or get killed.”
“I heard Pierce telling her Montrose was drowned,” said Ducane. “He shouldn’t say things like that to Barbara.”
“I know he shouldn’t,” said Mary shortly, stirring the rhubarb.
“Well, I think I’ll go up and see her. She shouldn’t be moping in her room on a day like this. We might go for a walk to Willy’s. Like to come, Paula?”
“No thanks.”
Paula gave him an anxious preoccupied stare. Her face seemed enclosed and grey, the face of a fencer looking through the thick mesh of a mask. Ducane thought, with a familiar pain of conscience, I ought to see Paula properly, make her talk to me and tell me what’s the matter. He thought quickly, shall I see Barbara now or Paula? But by now the pain of conscience had brought the accusing image of Jessica sliding before his mind. I ought to see Jessica soon, he thought, and the idea so depressed and confused him that the energy of his sympathy for Paula was at once decreased. Inclination triumphed. Barbara could console him. He would go to Barbara. He rose to his feet.
“Try to bring Willy down to tea, John,” said Mary.
“I’ll try, but I’ll not succeed.”
Ducane left the kitchen. The sun shone through the glass panels of the front door, revealing the polished slightly rosy depressions in the worn stones of the paved hall. Ducane picked up Edward’s copy of The Natural History of Selborne from the floor and replaced it on the table. On the lawn in front of the house he could see Casie and the twins sitting on a red tartan rug shelling peas. He felt, as his hand touched the table and he paused in the sunny familiar hallway, another and a different pang, touching, pleasant, painful, the apprehension of an innocent world, a world which he loved and needed, and surely could never altogether mislay? He thought: innocence matters. It is not a thing one just loses. It remains somehow magnetically in one’s life, remains as something quick and alive and utterly safe from the mechanical and the dreary. He thought poor Biranne. And he thought again the disturbing strange thought, Biranne will come to me. He began to mount the stairs.
As Ducane reached the landing he saw at the far end of it Pierce, who had just come up the back stairs from the scullery quarters. Pierce, who had not seen Ducane, was walking rather cautiously carrying a white dish in his hand. Balancing the dish, he opened the door of his bedroom and went in. Ducane half consciously took in what he had seen and half consciously reflected on it. Then, with a sudden flash which brought him back to the present moment, he understood its meaning. He paused, considered, and then walked quickly on past Barbara’s door. He gained the door of Pierce’s room and flung it open. Montrose was curled up on Pierce’s bed.
“Pierce, you rotten little bastard,” said Ducane.
Pierce, who had just put the saucer of milk down on the floor, slowly straightened up and took off his glasses. He thrust out his plump lower lip and drew his hand slowly down over his straight forehead and long nose as if to secure the expression of his face. He waited.
Ducane picked up Montrose and strode out. He knocked on the door of Barbara’s room and entered at once. The room was empty. Pierce, who had followed Ducane directly, came after him into the room. They faced each other.
“God, what a rotten thing to do!” said Ducane. He was suddenly trembling with anger. All the trouble, the anxiety, the guilt in him seemed focused into this simple anger.
“I didn’t hurt Montrose,” said Pierce slowly.
“No, but you hurt Barbara. How could you be so bloody?” Ducane set Montrose down on the table. As he did so he saw close to his hand Barbara’s small silver-handled riding whip. The image of the whip came to him incapsulated, separate, framed, and was blotted out.
“You see,” said Pierce in the same slow explanatory tone, “if she had only come to see me, come to my room like she used to do, if she hadn’t treated me like a leper, she would have found where Montrose was. It was a sort of test.” He put one hand on the table, leaning earnestly forward.
“You deliberately made her unhappy and wretched, and you kept it up too,” said Ducane. “I think—” His hand closed on the handle of the whip and with a quick yet very deliberate movement he raised the whip and brought it down sharply across the back of Pierce’s hand. The boy flinched but went on staring at Ducane and did not remove his hand.
“What on earth is going on here?” said Mary Clothier, who was standing in the doorway.
Pierce turned slowly and without looking at his mother walked past her out of the door, away down the corridor and into his own bedroom.
Mary hesitated. Then she moved into Barbara’s room. She found she was having to use a lot of strength to deal with the considerable shock of seeing Ducane strike her son. She did not know what she felt. A confusion of feelings silenced her.
“I’m sorry,” said Ducane, obviously confused too. “I’m sorry.”
“Why there’s Montrose—”
“Shut the door, Mary.”
“What happened?”
“You see—shut the door. You see, Pierce has been keeping Montrose prisoner all the time we all thought he was lost.”
“Oh—how very dreadful—I—”
“Yes. I’m afraid I lost my temper with him. I shouldn’t have done.”
“I don’t blame you. It was very wrong of him. I’ll go and look for Barbara.”
“Wait a minute, Mary. Just let Montrose out, will you. That’s right. Sit down. Sorry. Just wait a minute.”
Mary sat down on the bed and looked at Ducane who was standing by the window frowning and still holding the whip. He shrugged his shoulders suddenly and tossed it on to the table and then crossed his two hands over his forehead covering his eyes.
“You’re upset,” said Mary. “Oh don’t be! Do you imagine I’m going to be cross with you?”
“No, no. I’m upset about something, I’m not even sure what. I suppose Pierce will hate me for this.”
“He’s just as likely to love you for it. Young people have a strange psychology.”
“All people have a strange psychology,” said Ducane. He sat down at the table and regarded Mary. His rather round blue eyes, so markedly blue now in his bony sunburnt face, stared at Mary with a sort of puzzlement and he thrust back the limp locks of dark brown hair with a quick rhythmical movement. Mary studied him. What was the matter?
“I’m sorry,” said Ducane after a moment. “I’m just having a crisis of dissatisfaction with myself and I want sympathy. One always asks for sympathy when one least deserves it.”
He’s missing Kate, Mary thought. She said, “I’m sure you have little reason to be dissatisfied with yourself, John. But let me sympathise. Tell me what’s the matter.”
Ducane’s blue eyes became yet rounder with what looked like alarm. He started to speak, stopped, and then said, “How old is Pierce?”
“Fifteen.”
“I ought to have got to know him better.”
“I hope you will. But you can’t look after everyone, John.”
“You see me as al
ways looking after people?”
“Well, yes—”
“God!”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean—”
“It’s all right. He’s a very reserved child.”
“He’s been a long time without a father, too many years just with me.”
“How old was he when his father died?”
“Two.”
“So he scarcely remembers him.”
“Scarcely.”
“What was your husband’s name, Mary?”
Oh God, thought Mary, I can’t talk to him about Alistair. She recognized that particular coaxing intentness in Ducane’s manner, his way of questioning people with close attention so as to make them tell him everything about themselves, which they usually turned out to be all too ready to do. She had seen him doing this to other people, even at dinner parties. He had never done it to her. She thought, I won’t tell him anything, I’ve never talked to anyone about this, I won’t talk to him. She said, “Alistair”. The name came out into the room, an alien gobbet floating away into the air, drifting back again, hovering just above the level of her eyes.
“What did he do? I don’t think I ever knew his profession.”
“He was a chartered accountant.”
“Does Pierce resemble him?”
“To look at, yes, though Alistair was taller. Not in temper.”
“What sort of person was he?”
I can’t go on with this, thought Mary. How could she say, he was a funny man, always making puns. He was gay. He sang so beautifully. He was a universal artist. He was a failure. She said, “He wrote a novel.”
“Was it published?”
“No. It was no good.” Mary had spent part of yesterday reading Alistair’s novel. She had taken out the huge typescript with the intention of destroying it but had found herself unable to. It was so bad, so childish, so like Alistair.
“He died young,” said Ducane softly. “He might have done better, he might have done much better.”
Mary supposed this was true. It was not a thing that she felt. Perhaps it was unfair to dub him a failure. Yet somehow the judgment was absolute.