by Iris Murdoch
Miles banished the vulgar idea of the stamps from his mind. He got up restlessly and began to walk about his room. Three paces took him across it and three paces took him back, past the lighted grainy polished table which he kept so neat with his Notebook of Particulars and his row of varicoloured biros and his fountain pen and his silver ink pot, which Diana had given him, and his neatly aligned sheets of blue blotting paper and the little Chinese vase of red and purple anemones. He paused to look at his face in the small square mirror. He used to think that he resembled the young Yeats. What he saw now in the gilded square, a little blurred as in a small painting by Cezanne, was a long thin crooked face with a lopsided tremulous mouth and a long pointed nose and frowning eyes and an anxious insecure expression, surrounded by jagged wavering stripes of limp dull dark hair well streaked with grey. He showed his wolf’s teeth unsmilingly. It did not matter any more what he looked like. He began pacing again. He thought about Lisa in the cemetery.
His reaction had indeed been, to use Lisa’s expression, rather Victorian! Of course Lisa could look after herself. She was a hundred times tougher than a drunken trifler like Danby. It was odd that although he had got so used to seeing Lisa through Diana’s eyes as a ‘bird with a broken wing’ he had also, and as it now seemed to him from the start, apprehended her as a person with strength. Lisa was somebody. It must be no joke being a teacher in that school. Miles had visited it once and been appalled by the atmosphere of dirt and poverty and muddle, the smell, the haggard mamas, the children brawling in the street. Lisa lived in a real world which seemed very unlike the reality which in his poetry he was attempting to join. That was her vocation and he respected and admired it.
Why then, since Lisa was so patently able to deal with Danby’s foolery, had he been so upset? And why had it seemed so clear that Diana must not be told? Lisa was a part of the household, a part of his life. He and Diana had long ago decided that Lisa would never marry, that she would be with them for ever. Diana had asked did he mind. No, he did not mind, he was glad that Lisa should be there, very glad. She had become a part of his contentment. She gave him a kind of companionship which Diana could not give, she could talk to him about things which Diana did not understand. Miles had come to think of her as a person secluded, segregated, enclosed. She did her work and she lived with Miles and Diana. She was not as other women, she was a kind of religious. After all, she had actually been a nun for several years and the experience had marked her with a coldness and a separateness. Was that why he had been shocked then, as if one had seen a gross man insulting a nun, dragging her by her habit?
‘Is it so very odd that a man should want to have lunch with me?’ No, it was not really odd. Lisa was not pretty as Diana was. Indeed one had to know her well before one could see her attractiveness at all. Miles could see it. He could even, he felt now, see her beauty, her secret beauty, that dark intensity of eyes and mouth. This must be invisible to an outsider. He could imagine how Lisa must look to the outsider, like a gaunt untidy middle-aged schoolmistress. Yet even such people occasionally got invitations to lunch he supposed. Only not Lisa. Danby’s gyrations were meaningless of course, probably the outcome of drink, but they had posed a question, and Miles had begun to be aware of the question like an infixed dart. How would he feel if Lisa had a suitor?
In a way he knew very little about Lisa. In a way the concept of the broken-winged bird had served to conceal her. He had never discussed her past with her. He had imagined, it did not now seem very clear why, that she preferred not to speak of it. He knew nothing about her sex life, if it had ever existed. Diana had mooted a theory that Lisa was not interested in men, and Miles had rather vaguely taken the theory over. When he asked his routine questions about Lisa’s ‘day’ it had never occurred to him to wonder if the day had included a man. In fact he did not imagine that Lisa had any secret life. But what he had now received from that glimpse of the by-play in Brompton Cemetery, and what he now knew that he could never rid himself of, was the idea that it was possible for Lisa to be courted. She was loseable. She was free.
As Miles continued to pace his room, brushing the mantelpiece at one end and the door-handle at the other, he began slowly to take in the significance of the prophetic terror which he had experienced beside the cemetery railings. He had discovered something new and dreadful and growing with which he would now have to live, a deep and unpredictable menace to his peace of mind. Something at the very heart of his world which had been sleeping was now terribly awake. Lisa belonged at Kempsford Gardens. He loved Lisa. Lisa was his.
18
‘DANBY!’
Danby, who had just completed a letter to Lisa and put it in an envelope, cursed and laid his electric razor down on top of the envelope. As there was no table in his room he had written the letter standing up beside the chest of drawers.
‘DANBY!’
‘Coming, Bruno, coming!’
Danby went up the stairs two at a time.
‘Don’t shout so, Bruno.’
‘Danby, one of the stamps has gone.’
‘I daresay it has the way you scatter them around.’
‘But it’s gone, it was there in its case, last time I looked and I’m certain I didn’t take it out.’
‘You probably did, you know. Don’t get out of bed, Bruno. I’ll look for the damn thing.’
‘It’s one of the Cape triangulars, it’s worth two hundred pounds.’
‘Don’t get out of bed! And don’t fuss so. I’ll search, Adelaide will search, it’s probably somewhere in this room on the floor.’
‘It can’t be–’
‘Adelaide! ADELAIDE!’
It was late evening, nearly Bruno’s bed time. Rain was beating against the windows. The lamp shone on the pale scrawled counterpane, Bruno’s supper tray with half-eaten beans on toast, the usual litter of stamps, The Spider Population of East Anglia, and the Evening Standard. Danby had spent the evening in a frenzy. Lisa had visited Bruno in the afternoon and he had missed her.
A champagne glass rolled off the bed on to the floor and broke. Adelaide came in looking tired and irritable and began to pick up the pieces of the glass.
‘Adelaide, Bruno has lost a stamp, a triangular stamp. It must be somewhere here on the floor. You do that side of the room and I’ll do this side.’
‘It can’t be in this room, I’m sure it was in its case–’
‘Oh shut up, Bruno. Lift the carpet up at the corners, Adelaide. I’ll help you shift the books. Mind you don’t put your knee on a bit of glass. Oh Nigel, hello, Bruno’s lost a stamp, a triangular one. Could you help us look? It must be on the floor.’
Danby and Adelaide crawled slowly along the floor towards each other while Nigel stood dreamily at the door and watched them.
‘I’ll do under the bed, Adelaide. There’s that hole in the carpet, it might have got underneath there.’
‘It’s no good your looking, Danby, I know it’s not in this room.’
‘Well, where is it if it’s not in this room?’
‘I don’t know, but I know–’
‘Oh stop blithering. You’re being jolly helpful aren’t you, Nigel. Bruno, get back into bed. Well, it looks as if it’s not on the floor, I’ll look in the drawers and on the shelves. You can knock off, Adelaide, just take that damn glass away, will you, don’t leave it in the waste paper basket. And the tray. And don’t bang the bloody door like that!’
Adelaide was heard noisily descending the stairs. Nigel continued to watch while Danby searched the chest of drawers, moved it away from the wall and looked behind it, looked behind the bookcase, looked behind the books in the bookcase.
‘It may have got inside a book. And if it has, God knows when it’ll turn up. It doesn’t matter anyway. Bruno, can’t you be philosophical about a bloody stamp!’
‘It’s the best one of the set. It’s worth two hundred pounds.’
‘Well, that doesn’t matter to you, does it? Oh Christ, Bruno, don’t take on
so, I’ve had a ghastly day. I can’t stand all this damn fuss about a stamp. Nigel, will you either help me or fuck off? Bruno, I’m sorry, don’t look so awful.’
‘I know you’re only waiting for me to be gone, you’re only waiting–’
‘BRUNO, stop it! Look, I’ll search the landing and the stairs, all the way down to my room. It may have got dropped somewhere on the way. Do try to compose yourself. You haven’t even opened your Evening Standard.’
‘I want that stamp–’
‘Don’t be so childish. I’ll go on looking. You just read the paper for Christ’s sake. Read about the Thames flood menace. That’ll take your mind off stamps.’
Danby came out, followed by Nigel, and shut the door. As he began examining the linoleum on the landing he felt a soft touch on his shoulder.
‘Oh clear off, Nigel. This is one of your dream days.’
‘Could I talk to you a moment?’
‘No.’
‘It’s about the stamp.’
Danby straightened up. Nigel had moved on into his own room and Danby followed him.
Nigel’s room presented a stripped and drear appearance. All the furniture had been pushed back against the walls and the dressing table had been banished on to the landing. The centre light showed a square of shabby brown carpet in the middle of the room, a surrounding section of unstained boards, and a further section of much worn cheaply stained wood floor. Some Indian painted wooden animals stood on the chest of drawers together with two jamjars containing anemones and narcissus. The narcissus had faded to the colour and texture of old thin paper. Nigel stood on one leg in the centre of the carpet stroking down his long lank sidelocks of dark hair so that they met under his chin. He motioned Danby to shut the door.
‘What do you do in here?’ said Danby. ‘Dance?’
‘I know where that stamp is.’
‘Oh. Where is it?’
‘What will you do for me if I tell you?’
‘Nothing.’
‘You’ll owe me something.’
‘Stop babbling, Nigel. Where’s the stamp?’
‘Adelaide took it.’
‘Adelaide?’
‘Yes.’
‘That can’t be true,’ said Danby. ‘You’re romancing, you’ve had too much of whatever bloody stuff it is you take.’
‘Truly. She didn’t take it for herself. She took it for Will Boase. It was his idea.’
‘For Will Boase? Why on earth –?’
‘He wanted a camera.’
‘Christ! But why should Adelaide do that for Will Boase?’
‘Better ask her.’
‘Nigel, is this true?’
‘Yes, yes, yes. Cross my heart.’
Danby left the room and bounded down the stairs. ‘Adelaide!’
Adelaide was in her room sitting on her bed staring in front of her. She looked as if she had been crying.
‘Adelaide, Nigel says you took that stamp, but this is ridiculous–’
‘It’s true.’
Danby sat down on the bed beside her. ‘He says you took it for Will Boase.’
‘Yes.’
‘But why?’
Adelaide shook her head slowly from side to side and tears began to course down her cheeks. She still stared, not looking at Danby. She said nothing.
‘Well,’ said Danby after a moment, ‘whatever the reason you can bloody well get it back again, and if your worthless thieving cousin has sold it he can bloody well give us the money or see the police. I’ll write him a letter and you can take it over straightaway. Bruno wants that stamp. I’ll tell him we found it somewhere. How could you be so unkind to the old man?’
Adelaide began to sob.
‘Oh stop it, Adelaide. I’ve had enough today. Sorry I was rough, but it’s all a bit much.’
Adelaide began to scream. Sitting stiffly and still staring at the door she uttered a series of low piercing bubbling screams which crowded in her throat as they fought for utterance. Saliva foamed down on to her chin.
Danby turned her round towards him and slapped her face.
The screams stopped, but the next moment Danby felt himself gripped by the shoulders and almost hurled off the bed. Punching, kicking, biting, Adelaide had attached herself to the whole length of his body. Caught off his balance he could not get his hands between them. He felt her teeth at his neck. The next moment they had both fallen heavily on to the floor.
Danby pulled himself up. Adelaide lay where she had fallen, leaning on one elbow, her hair rolling about her, looking up at him with a contorted face.
‘Adelaide–please–what is it–you’ve gone mad–’
‘You despise me,’ she said. ‘You regard me as a servant. You treat me as a slave. You wouldn’t dream of marrying me, oh no. I’m cheap trash. I’m just good to go to bed with for a while. I’m convenient, easy. You don’t really care about me at all. I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.’
Danby was trembling. ‘Adelaide, please don’t speak like that. Don’t worry about the stamp. We’ll deal with it tomorrow. Better get yourself to bed. Shall I bring you a hot drink, some aspirins or something?’
‘I hate you.’
He hesitated at the door. Then he went out closing it behind him. He went straight up into the hall and out of the house into a dark continuum of light driving rain.
Adelaide got up from her bed. She felt bruised and stiff and her face ached with crying. She thought, I’ll kill myself. She looked in the mirror and the sight of her terrible face brought on more tears. She leaned against the wall gasping with sobs.
It was nearly three o’clock in the morning and Danby had not come back. Or perhaps he had come back and gone out again. During the first two or three hours after his departure Adelaide had been crying too frenziedly into her pillow to be at all conscious of her surroundings. Later she thought that she heard Bruno calling. Now there was only the rain.
She could not yet understand what had happened or why it had happened. She had been mad to take the stamp. She had known that even before she gave it to Will. She had gone over to Camden Town with the stamp in her handbag, still undecided about whether to give it to him or to return it. After Auntie had gone to bed they had started quarrelling as usual. Adelaide had made some sarcastic remarks about Will’s flirtation with Mrs. Greensleave. The memory of this scene had begun to torment Adelaide. She particularly resented the ease with which Mrs. Greensleave had got into conversation with Will. For Adelaide to converse with Will was difficult, even flirting with Will was awkward, inarticulate, perilous. Mrs. Greensleave had seemed to find it all very easy. Adelaide told Will he had behaved like a flattered servant and simpered like a petted boy. Will had been extremely angry. Adelaide declared that if Will telephoned Mrs. Greensleave she would not see him again. Will professed himself quite unmoved by this threat and announced his intention of telephoning Mrs. Greensleave forthwith. Reduced at last to tears of rage and helpless misery Adelaide had thrown the stamp on to the table. The scene had ended with Will delighted, attentive, loving, promising never to communicate with Mrs. Greensleave again.
It was all unworthy, horrible, muddled, nasty to look back upon. Oh she had cried so much in these last days. And it had ended in this insanity, which must have broken Danby’s love for her for ever. Even if he was kind to her now he must regard her as a mad person. He would always be nervous of her, watching for a recurrence of that awful fury. Indeed she had frightened herself. Yet Adelaide knew that she was not mad, she was just driven somehow beyond the bounds of her endurance.
She opened the door of her room. Danby’s door opposite was still open and the room was dark. She walked across and turned the light on. The bed was still made up, not slept in, the curtains were not drawn across the black shiny rainy window, the room was desolate. More tears came to Adelaide. She went across and pulled the curtains. Then she took the Welsh counterpane off the bed and turned back the blankets neatly, dropping her tears on to the sheets. She stood looking abou
t the room.
Then she saw that there was a letter lying on top of the chest of drawers. Her first thought was that Danby had come back while she was still weeping hysterically and had left a message for her. She moved over and pushed Danby’s electric razor aside. The envelope was addressed to Miss Lisa Watkin. It was unsealed.
Adelaide listened for a moment. Only rain. Then after another moment’s hesitation she pulled the letter out of the envelope.
My dear Lisa,
I am sorry to have behaved so badly in Brompton cemetery and perhaps startled you. I am not much good at writing letters but I must write this one. I want you to know it’s serious. Not that I have any hope anyway, why should I have? But it’s not a light thing. You may find this incomprehensible. I’ve only seen you a few times. But oh God Lisa, please believe it’s serious, it’s terrible. I do love you and I do want to see you and get to know you and I ask you please to consider this as a serious possibility. I will behave very well and do anything you want. Don’t just blankly say there’s no point. How do you know there’s no point until you try? I know I’m nothing compared with you, but I love you terribly and one is not mistaken about something like this. I have only loved like this once before. It is quite different from ordinary trifling affections and just wanting to get into bed with people. I feel a sense of destiny here. You must listen to me, Lisa. That you may think badly of me (for instance because of what you saw that first time) and think I am a frivolous person somehow doesn’t matter. I am a frivolous person, but not about you, and if you attended to me at all you might be able to forgive me and you have already changed me. Don’t regard all this as drunken babbling or something. It is the heart speaking and one knows when that is happening. Please recognise and I dare to say respect the fact that I love you, and see me again, Lisa. You have got to. There is no way round this. I will write again and suggest a meeting. Please think of me seriously. I love you, Lisa, and everything else is utterly blotted out.