by Iris Murdoch
They had decided not to run away together. But supposing Diana were to run away, and leave them to each other? Was there somehow somewhere here an issue from the circle of her pain? Almost blindly she considered it. She might go abroad somewhere leaving no address. But they would scarcely believe that she had gone for good. They would search for her lovingly together. In any case Diana had no money and no skill to earn it with. With a conscious sense of madness she even considered going to Danby. If she went to Danby would Miles and Lisa then feel convinced, released? Diana had kept, during all her awful preoccupations, the idea of Danby in reserve. She had retained a feeling for him, gratitude, affection, a sense of him as a holiday from Miles. Here at least there was a new place of love. It had struck her as odd that Miles had said nothing to her about Danby’s drunken visit. Doubtless his own agony had rendered Danby’s activities invisible. Yet did it really make any sense to run to Danby? He might simply not know what to do with her. It would end in a muddle which would merely reveal her as, after all, irrevocably and slavishly attached to Miles. Was there no other way?
Diana looked at the bottle of sleeping tablets and then looked back at Bruno. He was a little propped up, as he had been when he was talking to her, the head fallen sideways. It was not easy to tell, even when regarding him full face, when his eyes were open and when they were not. Perhaps he was quietly watching her now? Diana turned back to him and moved to the side of the bed. Holding her breath she leaned over him. His eyes, amid the pudgy folds of flesh, were tightly closed, the little sighing breath issued from the mouth, the moist red lower lip extended and retracted rhythmically with the breath.
Diana stood in the middle of the room half way to the door and looked out of the window at the plump grey folds of cloud which were passing in a rapid seething surge behind the chimney of the power station. A sick fear rose up in her throat. She had the power to blot out all the suffering years. She had loved Miles, she still utterly and agonisingly loved him. But was not the future now simply the long grey time of the extinction of love? He would never forgive her because of that sacrifice. And she would never forgive him. They would watch each other grow cold. But if she quitted the scene, if she went, utterly went, she would be the preserver of love: his love, hers, Lisa’s. Was not this, so plainly and for all of them, the answer and the only answer?
Diana caught her breath and almost staggered. She moved to the door and picked up the bottle of sleeping tablets. She opened the door.
A lanky dark haired man was standing on the landing just outside the door.
‘Oh!’ said Diana. The immobility and sudden closeness of the figure seemed menacing and uncanny.
‘I beg your pardon,’ he said softly. ‘I didn’t mean to startle you. I was listening to see if anyone was with Bruno.’
Diana closed the door and slipped the bottle of tablets into her handbag. ‘I was talking to him but he fell asleep.’
‘My name is Nigel. I’m the nurse. Nigel the Nurse. I suppose I should say the male nurse, the way people say women writers, though I don’t see why they should, do you, as more women are writers than men are nurses. Wouldn’t you agree?’
‘I’m afraid I must be going,’ said Diana. She began to go down the stairs.
However before she could reach the front door Nigel had darted past her into the hall. He now stood with his back to the door. ‘Don’t go just yet.’
‘I’m in a hurry,’ said Diana.
‘Not just yet.’
She stood uncertainly, facing him. His face was very bland, almost sleepy, as he leaned floppily against the door with arms outspread against it. She felt confused and alarmed. ‘Get out of the way, please.’
‘No, Mrs. Greensleave.’
‘You know who I am–’
‘I know you well. Come in here a minute, I want to speak to you. Please.’
He took hold of the strap of her handbag and tugged her gently in the direction of the front room. The room smelt of dust and damp and disuse and the curtains were half drawn. ‘This is the drawing room. But no one ever comes in here, as you can see. Please sit down.’ He gave Diana a little push and she fell over on to the brown plush sofa, raising a puff of dust which made her sneeze. Nigel pulled the curtains back and let in the cold cloudy afternoon light.
‘What do you want?’
‘There’s something you ought to know.’
‘What?’
‘Danby loves your sister.’
Diana stared at him as he swayed to and fro against the window. ‘I think you are confused,’ she said. ‘Danby scarcely knows my sister.’
‘He knows her enough to be madly in love with her.’
‘I think you must be mixing my sister up with me. Not that Danby–Anyway it’s nothing to do with you.’
‘I’m not mixing you up. He liked you. Then he met Lisa and fell in love.’
‘You are mistaken,’ said Diana. She began to rise.
‘Well, look at this.’ Nigel thrust into her hand a much torn piece of paper which had been reconstituted with the help of adhesive tape. It was a first draft of Danby’s second letter to Lisa.
Diana read it through. Then it fell from her fingers on to the floor. She leaned back into the sofa and stared ahead of her. This was surely a sign. She knew now, and knew it quite clearly, that Danby’s love would have kept her from suicide. But now–Lisa had taken Danby too. Diana clutched her handbag, feeling the bottle of tablets inside it. She thought I will go home, no I will go to a hotel, and do it at once. This is the end. Danby too. Lisa had annexed the world. A tear rolled down her cheek. She had forgotten Nigel’s presence.
He had sat down beside her. ‘I thought you ought to know in case it made any difference.’
‘It makes no difference,’ she said, wiping away the tear. She began to get up.
‘Wait. I’ve got something else to say.’
‘What about?’
‘About Miles and Lisa. You mustn’t be desperate.’
‘How do you know all these things?’
‘Because I am God. Maybe this is how God appears now in the world, a little unregarded crazy person whom everyone pushes aside and knocks down and steps upon. Or it can be that I am the false god, or one of the million million false gods there are. It matters very little. The false god is the true God. Up any religion a man may climb.’
‘Let me go,’ said Diana. Nigel had taken her by the shoulders.
‘You must not be resentful. You must not be angry with them. There must be not a speck of resentment, not a speck of anger. That is a task, that is the task. To make a new heaven and a new earth. Only you can do it. And it is possible, it is possible.’
‘Let me go. It’s no business of yours.’
‘It is my business. I love you.’
‘Don’t be silly, we’ve never met before.’
‘We have met. I was painting the railings. I had paint in my hair.’
‘But surely that was–someone else–’ Diana put her hand to her face. She felt she must be going slightly mad.
‘Besides I love everybody.’
‘Then it can’t be love. Take your hands away, please.’
‘Why not? Didn’t I tell you I was God?’
‘I think you must be mad–or drugged.’
‘Maybe. May I call you Diana, Diana? Do you know that you’re rather beautiful?’ Nigel began to slide his arms round the back of her shoulders. Diana struggled, but he was amazingly strong.
‘Do you want me to start screaming?’
‘You won’t scream. Besides, who would rescue you? Bruno? I just want to hold you ever so lovingly while I talk to you.’
Diana, her arms pinioned, tried to get some purchase with her knee. More clouds of dust arose out of the old sofa. Diana began to sneeze again and Nigel’s grip tightened. Tears of helplessness and misery coursed down her face. She stopped struggling.
‘There, there, don’t fight poor Nigel, he loves you. You must forgive Miles and Lisa.’
&n
bsp; Diana let the tears flow for a while. She was unable to wipe them away because of the closeness of Nigel’s embrace.
She said at last, ‘How?’
‘Let them trample over you in their own way. Perhaps they have done the right thing, though they have done it proudly, riding on horses. Their pride has its little necessities. See and pardon.’
‘There is also my pride,’ said Diana.
‘Abandon it. Let it fall away like a heavy stone.’
‘It hardly concerns me,’ she said, ‘that they have done the right thing. They have made a great sacrifice. I’ve got to be grateful. But I can’t be. They love each other terribly.’
‘Each loves himself more. Their love for themselves and for their own lives left them no other way. They have sacrificed nothing. They have just decided to do what will make them flourish.’
‘I can’t discuss this with you,’ said Diana. But she did not now try to draw herself away.
‘You are discussing it with me, my dear. The terrible thing is that nobody will die of this! Miles will flourish, and you will watch him kindly, as if you were watching a child.’
‘They should have gone away together. He’ll resent it for ever. He’ll despise me. There can be no love between us any more. I cannot bear his thoughts, his thoughts about her, his thoughts about me.’
‘A human being hardly ever thinks about other people. He contemplates fantasms which resemble them and which he has decked out for his own purposes. Miles’s thoughts cannot touch you. His thoughts are about Miles. This too you must see and forgive. He will be pleased with himself and you will see him smiling.’
‘But what about me?’
‘That is what they all cry. Relax. Let them walk on you. Send anger and hate away. Love them and let them walk on you. Love Miles, love Danby, love Lisa, love Bruno, love Nigel.’
Diana had laid her head against Nigel’s shoulder. Her tears were drying upon her cheek and upon his coat. ‘I don’t think I know how to do it.’
‘You know how to try to do it. Everybody knows that.’
‘It’s all been so mad. Danby and Lisa too. It all seems like a dream now, a nightmare, with nothing clear.’
‘It is mostly a dream, Diana. Only little pieces are clear and they don’t necessarily fit together. When we suffer we think everything is a big machine. But the machine is just a fantasm of our pain.’
‘It did seem like a machine,’ she said. She began to sit up and push back her hair. Nigel had relaxed his hold.
‘You see, it is already passing.’
She sat back and looked at him. A bluish purple bruise covered one side of his face, darkly ringing the half-closed eye. ‘Whatever have you done to yourself?’
‘I ran into a piece of the real world. It can hurt.’
‘Poor Nigel–’
‘And let me take these away. You won’t be needing them.’ Nigel’s hand, burrowing in her handbag, had got hold of the bottle of sleeping tablets. He lifted them out and transferred them to his pocket.
Diana rubbed her face, smoothing the dried tears into the skin. ‘No, I suppose I won’t. But I don’t know why. You’ve just talked nonsense to me.’
‘Of course, of course. I am the nonsense priest of the nonsense god! A false doctor is not a kind of doctor, but a false god is a kind of god, Diana. Let me see you home.’
27
DANBY SWITCHED ON the light. The big lower room of the printing works, musty with mingled smells of ink and paper and years-old papery debris, looked desolate, untidy, cluttered, cold, caught off its guard, and yet peculiarly immobile and suddenly attentive against the line of black uncurtained windows. It always looked very odd without the bustle of people and the clattering noise. It was nearly five o’clock in the morning.
Danby began to cross the room. On the way he paused beside the old Albion press which had arrived the day before from the art school. The cast iron was dulled and a little rusty. It needed paint, oil, love. Even in its humbled disused condition it was a thing of strength and beauty. Cope, London. 1827. He caressed the big iron flower which served as a counter-weight, and when he swung the bar the press moved easily, silently, with quiet power. He left it and went on across the room.
At the far side a door led out on to a flight of stone steps. The steps led down on to a diminutive wharf, now disused, from which an iron ladder led on down into the river, or at low tide to the muddy banks of the Thames. Danby unlocked the door and opened it and looked out. He could now see a very faint suggestion of light in the sky, a grey dimness contrasting with the thicker black below. He tried to make out the outline of the power station chimneys opposite but could not find them. Two or three lighted windows on the other side of the water distracted his eye, and he thought for a moment about Bruno, although he knew that Stadium Street could not be seen from the printing works. The surface of the river seemed now to be becoming visible. Or perhaps it was an illusion. Perhaps too there was a faint rivery sound, or perhaps just a steady murmuring in his ears. There was a smooth cool smell of mud and water. It was still a little time to low tide.
Danby stepped back inside and looked at his watch. He took off his mackintosh, shivered, and put it back on again. The cold air was making his bruised shoulder ache. He went over to the little rickety wooden office which jutted out like a hut into the main room, and switched on the light inside it. The office, which was used by Danby and Gaskin, was untidy, the desk piled with letters, some still unopened. Danby had been unable to work himself and unable to delegate his duties. The walls were papered with old handbills, announcing sales and theatrical performances of sixty years ago. Danby opened the cupboard and poured himself out a glass of neat whiskey. He was feeling ridiculously nervous.
He had accepted Will Boase’s absurd challenge to a duel for reasons which had seemed compelling at the time, but which were now by no means quite so clear. Of course he knew that the ‘duel’ would be a farce, something staged by the twins with theatre pistols loaded with blanks, and designed to confuse and humiliate him. Nevertheless it now seemed like a frightening trial, something unforeseeable and violent, a happening in which he would have to play a rapid and impromptu role, and in which he might find it difficult to act resolutely and impossible to act with dignity. He felt that he had delivered himself entirely into the hands of hostile men.
Yet such a handing of himself over had been what at first he had thought that he wanted. He had wanted to become the victim of a violent event. He had been arrested by the word ‘punish’ which Will had used in his letter, and it had seemed to Danby that the twins, whom he now connected together into one agency, were the instruments of a fate, directed against him, and yet indubitably his. The idea of the duel was the idea of an ending, a fake ending of course, as Danby vaguely knew, but at any rate such a sort of forced small catastrophe as might symbolise the closing of an era.
He knew that Lisa had gone away. He had gone round to Kempsford Gardens and Diana had showed him the empty room. Diana said that she had gone abroad, for good. Danby did not ask for details. He did not suppose that she had gone abroad alone. He had stood silently with Diana in the empty room. Only after he had departed did he realise that Diana now seemed to know about him and Lisa. Miles must have told her. He went to the office the next day and the next day. He tended Bruno as usual, coming back to feed him at lunch time. Nigel, after an absence of three days, returned and resumed his ministry. Only now Nigel was a hostile presence, a thin sardonic judging angel. Danby spoke to him awkwardly, apologetically, and shrank away from his smile. Adelaide had packed her belongings in several suitcases, which she had to unpack every day to find things she needed. She had announced her intention of going but had not yet gone. She spent most of every day away from the house. The kitchen was filled with dirty crockery and decaying food. Danby held a used plate under the hot tap every time he had to feed Bruno. He took his own meals in pubs.
Danby felt very sorry about Adelaide. What had seemed so natural and simp
le and pleasant while it was going on nicely now seemed much more like a crime. He could not work out quite why it was a crime. It was not what Adelaide said, about his not wanting to marry her because he thought her inferior. He did not, he believed, think her inferior. He simply would not have married anybody whom he loved in that rather simple mediocre sort of way. He would not have married Linda either. Perhaps the crime was that of letting himself be loved so much more than he loved. Perhaps it was that of allowing someone to be committed, to be utterly bound, for the sake of a second rate kind of loving. It was not that it was a casual loving exactly. It had its own kind of reality, it was domestic, it belonged, like some humble house spirit, to the house at Stadium Street, to the kitchen and bedrooms there. Yet it was after all a poor weak thing, instantly broken at the touch of what now seemed to Danby to be the re-entry into his life of a reality which he had shamefully forgotten.
Yet which was the reality? He told himself sometimes that Lisa was, must be, a dream figure, an apparition, and that as time went on he would more and more realise this, until it would seem to him in the end that he had never really met her and that she had never really existed at all. He had become momentarily insane because of a girl who resembled Gwen, a serious intense girl with a dark wig of hair and a thinking mouth whom he had seen about half a dozen times in his life. He had become insane because she had suddenly reminded him of what it had been like, of what he had been like, of how he had been made to be, so long ago during his marriage. Lisa was just an angel of memory, a reminder of loss.
Yet he knew really that she was not simply an apparition. She was not Gwen come back from the dead. She was very different from Gwen. And he was very different from Gwen’s husband. He was an older fatter more drunken man than the one whom Gwen had so unaccountably loved. But he was also perhaps, and this intimation somehow entered into the deepest part of Danby’s pain, a wiser man. The years had brought him something which, potentially at least, was good. That obscure small good seemed to suffer and ache inside him as he thought vaguely but intensely about all the might-have-beens of a quite other life with Lisa. It seemed to him that in spite of his casual mode of being and his bad behaviour to Adelaide and his general willingness to play the fool, he had found something in the world, some little grain of understanding which that glimpse of Lisa had made suddenly luminous and alive. He felt obscurely the dividedness of his being, the extent of what was gross, the littleness and value of what was not. But these thoughts, when they came, were never entirely clear to him, and he spent most of his days in a coma of misery, thinking about Lisa and the other man, inducing physical pains of yearning and jealousy which made him gasp, and putting off the attempt to pull himself together.