by Iris Murdoch
Tears surged over the bulges of Bruno’s cheek and soaked into the huge spade-shaped expanse of grey hair which was just beginning to look less like prickles and more like fur. The growth of hair was painful as it forced its way out through the fleshy folds and crevices of the tumbled face. But Bruno had not even tried to make Nigel change his mind about shaving him. It had soon begun not to matter.
‘I must go now, Bruno.’
‘You’ll miss Danby. He’ll be home in half an hour.’
‘Never mind. You didn’t mind my coming unannounced?’
‘No, it was a lovely surprise. A sort of–apparition.’
‘Yes, a ghost.’
‘A heavenly ghost.’
After the girl had gone Bruno lay back on his pillows and stroked his bearded face. He had had a moustache very long ago when he had been courting Janie. He had never worn a beard. How it pricked and tickled. Yet perhaps it was a good idea after all. It concealed the bulbous fleshy contours into which his face had collapsed. It might make him look more human. Of course the girl didn’t mean it, but how wonderful of her to say it. It had been a happy surprise, her visit, and now there were suddenly a lot of quite new and agreeable things to think about. It was good to find that there could still be pleasant surprises and absolutely new thoughts. Bruno said to himself, perhaps the doctor was serious, perhaps I might last out those years after all. He reached out his hand for Soviet Spiders.
‘I’ll kill Nigel.’
‘Well, he’s not here.’
‘And you can tell that swine Danby what he can do with himself. I’ll get even with that swine after I’ve fixed Nigel.’
‘Don’t shout so, Will.’
‘Writing me a damned condescending letter saying would I be so kind as to return the stamp and if a trifling loan would assist he’d be very glad to oblige!’
‘You still haven’t given me the stamp.’
‘Here’s the bloody stamp. I wish you’d never snitched the damn thing.’
‘Well, it was your idea!’
‘Don’t keep saying that!’
‘Mind the camera, you’re banging it against the kitchen table.’
‘Fuck the camera. It’s all the blasted camera’s fault.’
‘Never your fault, I suppose.’
‘Shut up, Ad, unless you want your head punched.’
‘Will, stop shouting, and go away for heaven’s sake. You know I don’t like having you in the house.’
‘The way you’re going on you soon won’t have me in any house.’
‘Well, that would suit me down to the ground!’
‘Oh, it would, would it–well, goodbye.’
Will pulled the strap of the camera case over his head and hurled the camera down violently on to the stone floor of the kitchen. He bounded out of the door and up the stairs and slammed the front door after him. Adelaide dissolved into tears.
After a while she dried a glass which had been standing on the draining board and went to the kitchen cupboard. She had been down to the Balloon Tavern that morning and bought herself a half bottle of gin. It helped a little bit.
She had not seen Danby. She had kept her bedroom door and the kitchen door resolutely shut and locked. She had heard him coming and going. Twice he had tapped on the door and called her name and she had not replied. She was beginning to need desperately to talk to him, but she could not bear to see that frightened pitying look upon his face again. She felt that before she saw him she should have something to confront him with, she should have made a plan and developed an attitude, but she had no plan and no attitude, only tears and total misery. She had been glad to see Will, but then of course they had quarrelled.
After sipping a mixture of gin and tears for a while she leaned forward and picked the camera up from the kitchen floor. Her body felt heavy and stiff and old. She wondered if the camera was broken. It must be. Yet when she shook it it didn’t seem to rattle so perhaps it was all right. She hung it round her neck and shed a few more tears.
A little later she heard someone coming down the stairs. She had heard someone mount the stairs earlier in the afternoon and enter Bruno’s room, and she had assumed that it was Nigel, though she had prudently told Will that Nigel was not there. She moved out to the foot of the stairs. Ought she to warn Nigel about Will?
Lisa Watkin passed through the hall and out of the front door. Without a moment’s hesitation Adelaide dashed up after her.
She caught up with Lisa just as she was turning into Ashburnham Road.
‘Miss Watkin–’
‘Oh, hello.’
‘Could I have a word with you?’
‘Yes, surely. I do hope you don’t mind my going straight up to Bruno? I didn’t like to ring the bell in case he was asleep.’
‘That’s all right. Look, there’s something I want to tell you.’
‘Oh yes. About Bruno?’
‘No. About Danby.’
‘About–Danby?’
‘Yes. You see I know all about you and Danby.’
Lisa slightly quickened her pace and her face put on a cold stiff slightly amused expression which enraged Adelaide. ‘I am unaware that there is anything to know about me and Danby.’
‘Don’t give me that. You know he’s been making advances. He wrote you a letter.’
‘Really.’
‘Or are you denying it?’
‘I object to your rude and aggressive tone of voice.’
‘Well, you’ll just have to put up with it, won’t you.’
‘I have no intention of putting up with it. You seem to be under some sort of misapprehension. But I am certainly not going to discuss it with you.’
‘You can put on airs, but I bet you’re dying to know what I’ve got to tell you.’
‘If you have something to say, say it.’
‘There you are you see! Well, before you get going with Danby there’s something about him you ought to know.’
‘There is no question of my, as you put it, getting going with Danby. I scarcely know Danby.’
‘I bet that’s a bloody lie. Anyway, you keep away from Danby. Danby is my lover. We live together. We’ve been lovers for years.’
‘I cannot think why you trouble to press this information on me. It’s of no conceivable interest to me and it doesn’t concern me. I can see you’re upset and I’m sorry if I was rude to you just now. Now will you please go back. Bruno may be needing you.’
‘I’m not your servant, madam. Do you believe me? If you don’t believe me ask Danby, just ask him.’
‘I have no plans for seeing Danby. You are upsetting yourself about nothing. I haven’t the slightest intention of interfering with your arrangements. Now be kind enough not to trouble me any more with this nonsense. Good afternoon.’
They had reached the King’s Road. Lisa darted quickly into the traffic and crossed the road leaving Adelaide standing on the kerb. Adelaide stood for a moment, then slowly turned back. Then she paused and pulled off the camera, which had been bobbing round her neck, and hurled it down violently on to the pavement. This time all its inward parts came out and scattered themselves in the gutter. She left them lying there.
21
IT WAS SUNDAY. Miles was walking along the crowded pavement of the Fulham Road in the rain. With vague unfocused eyes he sidestepped his way through the oncoming crowds. His hair was plastered darkly to his uncovered head and the raindrops moved down his face like tears. He came to the discreet doorway of the Servite church and went mechanically through it. He needed somewhere to sit and think.
Miles had been to see Bruno. It had been all right. He had said that he was sorry and almost felt it. Bruno had told some rambling story about a stamp being lost and Danby finding it stuck underneath the stair carpet. None of the women had been mentioned. They had talked at random, darting from subject to subject in a way which Bruno seemed to find quite natural. They had talked about the house where they used to live in Fawcett Street and Miles had said it was a
ll let out in flats now. They had talked about the printing works and about Miles’s job and about the state of the economy. They had recalled a dog called Sambo who had been part of the family when Miles was a child. Miles had discussed whether Bruno would like to have a cat since he knew someone whose tabby had just had most attractive kittens, and Bruno had said no, he would get too damned attached to the cat and then it would be certain to run away or get run over. They had discussed the difference between cats and dogs. They had talked about spiders. It had all been quite easy. Bruno was quite rational and much more relaxed, and looked a good deal less appalling. No terrible memories had been stirred, only innocent and sad ones. Miles had not thought about Sambo in years. He came away, moved by the old man, and with a fresh and strangely pathetic sense of himself.
Now however he had already ceased to think about Bruno. He went through the corridor into the cold inward light of the church. There was a plaintive urgent melancholy sound of chanting, but after he had stood for a moment just inside the door he made out that there was no service in progress. The singers must be the choir who were practising invisible to him in a side chapel at the far end. The body of the church was almost empty, though here and there between bunchy brown granite pillars he could see one or two people kneeling before the shrines which arched along the side walls in a series of rich shadowy caverns. The plain-song chant ceased, leaving an intense quietness behind it. Miles knew the place. He had come here in the past to meditate. He took off his dripping mackintosh and hung it over the back of the pew in front. He sat down and began to dry his face and hair with his handkerchief.
What on earth was he going to do about Lisa? She had avoided him on Saturday, leaving for work early and coming back late. He had managed to see her for a moment early this morning in the garden, when all she had said to him was, ‘I’ve got to go away. Don’t let it start, don’t let it start.’ But this was impossible, it had already started. On Saturday evening, after Lisa had resolutely planted herself in the drawing room with Diana, he had withdrawn to his study. What had the women said to each other after his departure? Perhaps nothing. Before going to bed he had tried Lisa’s door. It was locked.
He had not spoken of the matter to Diana either, after a very brief exchange which they had had after Miles came to bed in the early hours of Saturday morning. Diana had of course seen what had happened between him and Lisa. It must have been fairly obvious: those looks, those sighs, those shudderings, those significant almost-touches. She said, ‘I knew it would happen one day.’ Miles did not believe her. He did not believe the possibility had occurred to Diana for a single second. She said, ‘She’s much better for you than I am. You ought to go away together.’ Miles said, ‘Nonsense, Diana. I’m married to you. Now shut up.’ They had lain rigid and sleepless side by side until the daylight came.
Miles had thought at first in these terms: as it is utterly impossible and inconceivable that I should part from either of them there is really no problem. The only question is how exactly to manage it, how to juggle it. There is no question about whether it should or can be managed. And fortunately the question of concealment does not even arise. This extremely simple and as it seemed to him radical way of seeing the problem persisted with him, together with sensations of mad joy, throughout most of Saturday. It had been almost a relief to be at the office, to perform neutral compulsory activities, and to think about Lisa dreamily and abstractly without considering any plan of action whatsoever. Saturday evening had been rather a trial, particularly the experience of leaving the two women behind together in the drawing room, reading their books. No eyes had been raised to meet his as he lingered at the door. The light head and the dark head both remained resolutely bowed. After he had walked for about half a mile up and down the three pace extent of his study he had considered the possibility of creeping downstairs to see if they were talking about him, but the idea seemed too sickeningly nightmarish.
The nightmarish aspect of the whole situation had then begun to be a little more obvious. He had, he realised, thought about the problem so far simply in relation to himself, as if it were all somehow neatly enclosed within him. He had to decide how to deal with the two women and manage them both somehow: this part remained vague, but as there was evidently no alternative some arrangement would doubtless prove to be possible. He would hold the situation: this form of words which he had used to Lisa recurred to him together with an atmosphere of comfort; he would hold the situation together and not let it fall to pieces, and this holding would be an embrace which strongly enfolded both Lisa and Diana. Love would triumph.
But now he had just begun to see, and the glimpse of it made him grit his teeth together with pain and terror, the absolute awfulness of the situation for the other two. Diana loved him, deeply, completely, she was his wife, she had shared his bed for years. He had had so many conversations with her about Lisa, as if they had been Lisa’s parents. They had talked with benevolent superior connivance about the failed nun, the broken-winged bird. They had worried about her together and speculated about her sex life and wondered if she were a Lesbian and made all sorts of plans to protect and cherish her. How could Diana tolerate this sudden monstrous change in her sister’s status? The sisters loved each other. What would happen now? And how could Lisa, with her rigid views of duty and her uncompromising life bear to become the instrument which should destroy her sister’s marriage? Miles’s vague vision of holding the situation had simply ignored both Diana’s claims and Lisa’s conscience. Oh how happy he had been before, he suddenly thought, living simply in the house with the two of them in a state of unconsciousness. Yet all that time Lisa must have been suffering.
There were certain impossibilities. He could not abandon Diana. Nor had he the faintest grain of inclination to abandon Diana. He loved and needed Diana, she had rescued him from desolation, she had been faithful to him and served him, he was bound to her by every tie of duty and indeed of deep marital love. The women were so different. He loved them both, but in different ways. Why was there not some dispensation for a situation which must be as common as this? However he had meant, and he still meant, what he had expressed to Lisa by saying, ‘You are the one.’ This was no blasphemy against Parvati. Parvati was twenty three years old. Miles was fifty five. Parvati would understand. It was simply true that Lisa fitted him, fitted into his soul, in a way that Diana did not. It was true, he realised with a terrible new pain, that if he had met Lisa first he would have married her.
Suppose he were to take lodgings for Lisa in another part of London? He could divide his week between them. It would seem odd at first, but they would all soon settle down to it and it would begin to seem natural. But as Miles started to imagine the details he saw that it was a perfectly abominable idea. He could not ask Diana, whose entire life consisted of caring for him, of waiting for him, to endure days of absence about which she would want to know nothing. And, even more strongly, he felt that it would be monstrous, if he were going to offer Lisa anything, to offer her less then everything. But this was exactly what he had decided at the start that he could not do. Terrible and unendurable possibilities began to structure themselves in the background of his mind. Unable to envisage them, Miles said frantically to himself, Suppose I just run off with Lisa after all?
Kyrie eleison, Kyrie eleison, Kyrie eleison. The choir were singing again. It was like a bird’s cry, piercing, repetitive, insistent, wearying God with petition. Or perhaps more like a kind of work, a close attentive intricate laborious toiling. How happy are those who believe that they can pray and be helped, or even, without being helped, be listened to. If there really existed an all-wise intelligence before which he could lay the present tangle, even if that intelligence held its peace, the knowledge that the right solution somewhere existed would soothe the nerves. As it was, it was indeed the opposite conjecture, that in fact there was no solution, that it did not matter very much what one did, which produced the impulse to struggle and plunge about like a t
errified horse whose cart has been overturned. A vision of chaos came suddenly to Miles: the blotting out of the ordinary world of ordinary obligations. Perhaps all ordinary obligations were fakes, and all meticulous lives based upon illusion?
Miles leaned forward, crossing his hands across his eyes. There came back to him not exactly as a memory but as a hallucination, the moment when he had received the news of Parvati’s death. An acquaintance who had seen the newspaper account, with the names of the dead, had come round to his house. Miles had made the man go away at once. He had stood there alone in the hall holding the newspaper. He had believed it instantly. Hope would have been too great an agony. And as it seemed to Miles now, he had begun, even in those first seconds, to plot how to cheat himself of any full recognition of what had occurred. His excuse was indeed a convincing one: a full recognition might have destroyed his reason. He acted as other human beings act, only with a different and in some ways more refined apparatus. He began to write the poem within three days. He continued it for over a year. His pain went into it almost raw.
It certainly seemed strange, when Miles reflected about it, that throughout his life, so much of which now seemed to have slipped dully away, he had retained his deep conviction that he was a poet. He had published a volume of young man’s poems just before Parvati died. He had continued to publish occasional poems in periodicals. There had been another small collected volume. His work was to be found in one or two anthologies. But he had always felt these to be weak preliminaries. His Duino visitation, his great angels were still to come. He had never lost this faith. Yet on the evidence it seemed so unlikely. He had become duller with the years, more pleasure-loving, less conscious. All those years with Diana, coming home on the tube to sherry and dinner and Diana’s latest flower-arrangements. Even Lisa’s coming had left him still blind. It was only lately, when he had started the Notebook of Particulars, that his vague faith had turned into a sharper hope, and had he perhaps even here misinterpreted what had happened? Was that sharper sense of life, that thrilled apprehension of being, not perhaps due rather to Lisa’s presence in the house and his still sleeping awareness of being in love with her? Perhaps it was Lisa, not poetry, which would complete his destiny.