The Unicorn

by Iris Murdoch

  The black wall of the cliff rose sheer beside her, glistening a little and seeming to overhang. The sun beat directly upon it but its darkness hung like a shadow overhead. The beach too was black, with gritty sand at the base of the cliff, and black pebbles at the water’s edge. Marian had never been afraid of the sea. She did not know what was the matter with her now. The thought of entering the water gave her a frisson which was like a kind of sexual thrill, both unpleasant and distressingly agreeable. She found it suddenly hard to breathe, and had to stop and take deep regular breaths. She threw her bag down on the sand and advanced to the edge of the sea.

  From up above it had seemed serene and calm and indeed it still looked fairly calm a little way from the shore. But some twenty yards out the smooth surge gathered into enormous waves which with sudden violent acceleration came tearing in to destroy themselves upon the shingle, which they then sucked sharply downwards and backwards with a grinding roar. Beyond the wild snowy curl and retreat of the foam the sea now looked, in the bright sunlight, inky black. Marian studied the pebbly verge. It looked as if the beach shelved very steeply, creating an undertow, each retreating wave being sucked with positive vicious violence back beneath the tall uncurling crest of its closely following successor. Marian began to wonder what to do. Then she lifted her head and saw a face.

  The face was floating in the sea directly opposite to her, just beyond where the waves began to rush in. As soon as she had seen it it disappeared. Marian gave a little startled cry into the roaring of the sea. She realized the next moment that of course it was only a seal. She had never seen one so close. The seal rose again, lifting its sleek dripping antique dog-like head and regarded her with big prominent eyes. She could see its whiskers and its dark mouth opening a little. It floated lazily, keeping just out of the surge, and keeping its old indifferent gaze fixed upon her. Marian found the animal both touching and frightening. It seemed, with its head of a primitive sea-god, like a portent. But whether it was warning her out of the sea or inviting her into it she could not decide. After a minute it swam away, leaving her trembling.

  Marian was by now thoroughly frightened of swimming but determined to swim. She would just have to throw herself boldly out through the breaking wave, avoiding the undertow. She could return upon a breaker, let it cast her on the shingle and scramble up quickly. It was a matter of pride; and she felt obscurely that if she started now to be afraid of the sea she would make some crack or fissure in her being through which other and worse fears might come. Still trembling, she began awkwardly to undress.

  In her bathing-costume she approached the steep verge. The pebbles hurt her feet and it was hard to stand upright on the wet shifting slope. She was wetted by now by the cold spray, and the pounding foam touched her feet before it hurled violently back, ripping the black grinding pebbles into a great dark mass beneath the white breakneck foam of the next wave. Marian stumbled, and scrambled gasping back, already wet through. The touch of the water was icy. She tried to stand again, precariously keeping her balance on the descending avalanche of stones.

  ‘Hey, you !’

  She started back and sat down, already exhausted. A man was approaching.

  She sat upon the beach until the man was near to her, and then got up and threw a towel round her shoulders. The voice from the sea and the stones was so loud that it was difficult to hear what he said. He seemed to be a local man.

  ‘You mustn’t go swimming in that sea.’

  Almost in tears now, Marian said, exasperated and determined to misunderstand him, ‘Why not? Is this a private beach? I come from Gaze Castle.’

  ‘You mustn’t go swimming here,’ said the man as if he had not heard her. Perhaps he had not. ‘You’ll be drowned directly.’

  I’ won’t be!’ said Marian. ‘I can swim very well.’ But she knew with a premonition of deeper fear that she was defeated.

  ‘Two Germans were drowned last week,’ said the man. ‘Swimming near Blackport they were. We’re watching for their bodies yet.’ He spoke with the lilting accent of the region, solemn, incantatory, dignified. He looked at Marian out of ancient alien eyes. He resembled the seal.

  ‘All right,’ said Marian shortly. She turned her shoulder to send him away.

  ‘And don’t be hanging about too long either. The tide comes in fast. You don’t want to have to climb the cliff, do you.’ He moved off.

  Marian began to fumble with her clothes. Hot tears blinded her eyes. The sun had gone in and a chill wind was blowing.

  ‘Hello.’

  Marion pressed the towel quickly to her face, pulled up the strap of her bathing-costume and turned again. Another figure had come close to her, this time a woman.

  ‘Hello,’ said Marian.

  The woman was dressed in honey-coloured local tweeds and had a sort of tall staff in her hand. It was evident, even before she spoke again, that she belonged to the ‘gentry’.

  ‘Are you Miss Taylor?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m Alice Lejour.’ She held out her hand.

  Marian shook it, recalling almost at once that Lejour was the name of the family at Riders. Scottow had said that the old man had his son and daughter with him. ‘I’m so glad to meet you.’ She wished all the same that she had some clothes on and could look a little more dignified. The scanty towel about her shoulders flopped in the wind.

  Alice Lejour seemed to be in her thirties, a big handsome blue-eyed woman with short golden hair and a good straight nose and a wide rather lined brow. She seemed stout and solid and aggressively real, planted there with her tweed skirt strained against her legs and her wet brogues deep in the shingle. Marian felt flimsy before her as she danced from one bare foot to the other and tried to prevent her teeth from chattering.

  ‘I hear you’ve just come, yes,’ said Alice Lejour.

  ‘Yes, I don’t know the region. I like it very much.’ ‘Bit lonely for you, isn’t it?’

  ‘Well, yes, there’s not much company,’ said Marian, and then added defensively, ‘I like everyone at Gaze very much though.’ It looked awkward.

  ‘Hum. Never mind, yes. Will you come and see us?’

  ‘I’d love to,’ said Marian, realizing as she found herself liking the brusqueness of the woman how much, in the last few days, she had missed the presence of ordinary simple human reactions. Reactions at Gaze were slow and clouded.

  ‘We’ll have to work out a time,’ said Alice Lejour. ‘Don’t want to offend anyone. I don’t suppose they’re working you very hard, are they? Bit of luck meeting you down here, really. Some time next week perhaps when Effingham’s here. My friend Effingham Cooper, that is. Effingham and I do a little entertaining when he’s here and when there’s anyone to entertain. You know, people will drive fifty miles for a drink in this country.’

  Marian, who had just realized that the curious staff was a fishing-rod, said, ‘But we’re such close neighbours. I hope we may often meet, with you or at Gaze.’

  ‘Not at Gaze, I shouldn’t think. Never mind, yes. Effingham and I will be splicing the old mainbrace next week. We feel it our duty to cheer my Pop up a little. He gets a bit odd over the winter-time, you know.’

  ‘He must be lonely. I believe you - and your brother - come just for part of the summer?’

  ‘Who told you that? Well, anyone might have, yes. He’s not a lonely man. God keeps him company through the winter. You and I must have a talk. When Effingham comes. We’ll send you a note, Effingham and I. I suppose that’s all right, sending you a note. Don’t want to offend anyone. I won’t keep you now, you’re shivering like a leaf. Enjoy your swim?’

  ‘I didn’t go in,’ said Marian, with a sudden sense of bitter shame. She was beginning to feel slightly bullied by this plump well-clad person. ‘I was afraid to,’ she added.

  ‘Wise of you, I dare say. I used to swim a lot around here before I got so fat. It’s getting in and out that’s tricky. Well, I’ll leave you to dress. Better not dally because of the tide
. We’ll send you that note then. When Effingham comes. Cheerio.’

  Marian saw her recede, squelching through the stones with firm strides. She was so cold now that she could scarcely get her clothes on, and was still chilled and shivering as she began to stumble back along the beach. A cold rainy wind was blowing, and she wished heartily that she had brought a sweater. She felt completely worn out. She looked at her watch and saw with horror that it was nearly a quarter to six. She began to run.

  She passed the weedy pools, where she fell twice and cut her knee. She started to pant up the steep stony track towards the house.

  ‘There now, there now, no such hurry, no such hurry!’

  She had almost run blindly into Gerald Scottow.

  ‘I’m terribly sorry,’ said Marian, gasping for breath. ‘I’m late for tea.’

  ‘We were a little worried about you. Good heavens, you haven’t been in the sea, have you?’

  ‘No, I funked it,’ said Marian, and she sat down on a rock and burst into tears.

  Scottow stood tall beside her. Then he pulled her gently to her feet. His manner was both solicitous and authoritative.

  ‘There now, don’t cry. But I thought I told you not to swim?’

  ‘You did, you did,’ wailed Marian.

  As they started up the hill he released her arm, ‘Well, do what you’re told next time, Maid Marian, and we’ll have fewer tears. Eh?’

  Chapter Four

  Tell him if he puts one there again I’ll put it down the lavatory.’

  Violet Evercreech was speaking to one of the maids on the landing. Marian, who had for some time been watching the gold-fish swimming round and round the wash-basin, became rigid and breathless, hoping that Miss Evercreech would-not come into the bathroom again and accuse her of some sort of complicity with Nolan’s misdeed. Idiotically, she turned down the oil-lamp.

  ‘Well, well, and what are we doing in here in the dark?’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ said Marian. She always behaved guiltily with Violet Evercreech.

  ‘Nothing to be sorry about that I can see,’ said Miss Evercreech. She turned the lamp up again. ‘Disgusting!’ She indicated the fish. ‘Come along now.’

  People were always vaguely ushering her about at Gaze. It was the nearest they came to treating her as a servant.

  Marian issued awkwardly from the bathroom. They faced each other in the half-light by the open door. Two black-clad maids faded along the landing. Miss Evercreech always seemed to have one or two in attendance. The black and white figures seemed her shadows.

  ‘Come to my room, Marian,’ said Miss Evercreech.

  Put like that, the invitation sounded menacing, as if chastisement rather than entertainment were in prospect. It had not been issued before, though Marian had felt in the unnerving quality of the older woman’s attention to her some hint of a significant encounter to come.

  ‘I can’t, I’m afraid,’ said Marian. ‘I’m just on my way to Mrs Crean-Smith. We’re going to read some poetry together.’ It sounded like a lie although it was the truth.

  ‘A bit late for that sort of thing, isn’t it?’

  It was indeed rather late by Gaze standards, being nearly ten o’clock in the evening. Marian had been delighted by the suggestion, made by her employer earlier that day, that they should meet after dinner and read the Cimetiere marin together. Marian was beginning to find the late evenings at Gaze rather hard to live through. She had so often yearned, cried out, simply for time, time to read, time to write, time to think, time quietly with a cigarette to be, to commune with objects, to expand into being herself. But now that there was time it was time with a difference, as if it had been spoilt or crossed out or used by somebody else before it reached her. She could do nothing with those late evenings. She had tried occupying herself in one of the little downstairs sitting-rooms, hoping that someone would come and talk to her. But no one came, and the oil-lamps, which she could not relight, went out. So now she usually retired to her own room and tried to stop herself from listening to the quiet house and tried to stop herself from thinking about Gerald Scottow and tried to fall asleep early. Sometimes she stood for long in the darkened room looking out at the constellation of the lights of Riders and trying to read in them some hopeful message. But they remained enigmatic. The promised summons from Alice Lejour had not come. Marian could not read or work in these hours, and while not sleepy felt exhausted, as if her energy were sapped simply by resisting some influence upon her of her too silent surroundings. So she was glad now of a chance to shorten the night. She was glad too, in quite a simple way, of the prospect of once again instructing somebody. There was no doubt that she was a little pedagogue.

  ‘I don’t know, Miss Evercreech. Anyway, we’re going to read tonight and if you’ll excuse me I must be getting along.’ She wondered guiltily if Violet Evercreech had noticed that she had taken all the pictures down from the walls of her room. Possibly one of the maids would have told her.

  Miss Evercreech drew her hand along Marian’s forearm as far as the elbow, which she held in a gentle hold as if cradling an egg. ‘It’s nearly time for you to call me Violet. After we’ve had our little talk perhaps.’

  ‘You’re so kind.’

  The fingers pressed and released her elbow. ‘Not kind, must fond of you. We have so little here to be fond of. Good night’

  Something touching in the words though not in their manner of utterance made Marian for a moment attend more closely to the long pale half-illuminated face; some shudder from childhood went through her, and she reflected that if she strangely lacked curiosity about Violet Evercreech it was simply because she was afraid of her. She watched the tall figure recede into darkness through a curtained archway. A light passed in the distance as a maid emerged and followed carrying a lamp.

  Marian could now find her way about all the parts of the house that concerned her in the pitch dark. Sometimes lamps were lighted when darkness fell and sometimes not, and sometimes the ones that had been lighted went out and one found one’s way about through blackness to intermittent glows and distant pinpoints of light. She sped now along the murky corridor toward Mrs Crean-Smith’s room. A faint last evening twilight showed through tall windows the intermittent hangings.

  ‘Come in. Ah, hello, Marian, it’s you. I thought it might be Gerald.’

  ‘Shall I fetch him?’

  ‘No, don’t bother. Come near the fire. The wind is high tonight. Come and see what we have here.’

  As Marian advanced she saw a movement and noticed someone else in the room. It was Denis Nolan, who had been standing in the shadow just beyond the mantelpiece. He shifted into the lamplight and darted her a cold ray from his very blue eyes.

  Hannah Crean-Smith, who was wearing a dress tonight instead of her usual dressing-gown, was kneeling on the hearth rug scrutinizing something which lay before her on the floor.

  ‘What is it?’ said Marian.

  She joined them and looked at the thing on the floor. It was a little brown thing, and it took her a moment to make out, with a slight shudder, that it was a bat.

  ‘Isn’t it a dear?’ said Hannah Crean-Smith. ‘Denis brought it. He always brings me things. Hedgehogs, snakes, toads, nice beasts.’