An Unofficial rose

by Iris Murdoch

  He stood for a while looking down the hill. He could hardly believe that this was the end and that he had struggled for so many years to arrive simply at this moment of annihilation. He felt like a sorcerer who has created a vast palace and adorned it with gold and peopled it with negroes and dwarfs and dancing girls and peacocks and marrmosets, and then with a snap of his fingers makes it all vanish into nothing. Now when he turned his back upon it the Peronett Rose Nurseries would cease to be as completely as if they had been sunk in the Marsh. Here was the slope where he had first planted his roses, against much wise advice, in the face of the sea winds from Dungeeness. Here he had created Randall Peronett and Ann Peronett, names to keep company with Ena Harkness and Sam McGredy, and also his darling the white rose Miranda. They would live on, these purer distillations of his being, when their namesakes were only so much manure. He wondered, will I ever do all this, somewhere else, again, making roses with different names? Will I live through this whole cycle of creation again? And as some ambiguous voice in his heart answered no, and that he would now never breed a blue rose, or win the Gold Medal at the Paris Concours, or send Lindsay's name round the world in a catalogue, he told himself that he was tired of it all anyway: tired of the endless feverish race to market new floribundas and new hybrid teas, the endless tormenting of nature to produce new forms and colours far inferior to the old and having to recommend them only the brief charm of novelty. What was it all for, the expulsion of the red, the expulsion of the blue, the pursuit of the lurid, the metallic, the startling and the new? It was after all a vulgar pursuit. The true rose, the miracle of nature, owed nothing to the hand of man.

  There was still no one to be seen. He walked a little way down the hill, drawn by his favourite corner where gallica and bourbon, moss and damask, made with their more luscious and ferny foliage a welcome haze of green beyond the gawky sterus of younger breeds. He passed a tool shed and impulsively entered and picked up a pair of secateurs. All was in order in the shed. He noticed, half with disappointment, that the place did not seem to be deteriorating.

  The old roses were at the height of their season, and Randall stood still among them, completely absorbed into a heaven of vision. There were moments when he knew that he loved nothing in the world so much as he loved these roses; and that he loved them with a love of such transcendent purity that they made him, for the moment, like to themselves. He could have knelt before these flowers, wept before them, knowing them to be not only the most beautiful things in existence but the most beautiful things conceivable. God in his dreams did not see anything lovelier. Indeed the roses were God, and Randall worshipped.

  Moving slightly in the breeze the intense little heads surrounded him and drowned him in their odour. Lifting a few towards him he looked with his ever new amazement at the close packed patterns of petals, those formulae that Nature never forgot, those forms that were the most desirable of all things and so exquisite that it was impossible to carry them in belief and memory through the winter; so that every year one saw them as if for the first time, and as they must have looked in the Garden of Eden when in a felicitous moment God said: let there be roses. So Randall moved on, deeper into the rose forest, between the tall thickets with their crossing and interlacing boughs, and as he went he picked them, snipping off here a faintly blushing alba and here a golden-stamened wine-dark rose of Provence.

  A woman started up suddenly, appearing on the grass path between the bushes with the sudden illuminated presence of a Pre-Raphaelite angel. He turned with a gasp of fear. But it was Nancy Bowshott; She came up to him breathless, her dress billowing, her eyes wide, her chestnut hair wild and bushy after running fast down the hill. 'Are you going away, Mr Peronett? I had to see you.

  He contemplated her: pretty buxom Nancy, a rose of a different sort. No one could have been farther from his thoughts. She had indeed never really occupied his thoughts at all, and he resented her intrusion now upon the rite of farewell.

  'Yes, Nancy, going away.

  «For good, is that, Mr Peronett?

  'For good, Nancy.

  'Ah —’ she said, and turned from him, her eyes filling with tears.

  Randall was shocked. The roses had put him into a trance-like state, and Nancy's red face, her heaving bosom, her moist and spilling eyes were suddenly too real, too close. He said, 'Come, come, Nancy. You mustn't be upset. It had to be, you know.

  'I can't stay here without yon. she said. 'The place will be horrible without you.

  The thought that he would leave at least this aching heart behind him at Grayhallock did not altogether displease Randall. He said, 'Now don't be tiresome, Nancy. Don't be so emotional. You'll get on perfectly well without me.

  'No, I won't, she said. 'I shall die here without you. Please let me come too. You'll want a servant or something. Let me come with you, Mr Peronett. I'd work for you, I'd be no trouble, I promise I'd be no trouble »

  'What nonsense! said Randall. But he was touched. 'Your place is here, Nancy. You must help Mrs. Peronett. You know how much she relies on you. And after all, there's Bowshott. You can't leave him, can you?

  'If you can leave her I can leave him. She looked at him fiercely, her tears mastered, suddenly his equal.

  'What you ask is impossible, said Randall. 'I'm sorry. You'll soon settle down again. Now stop being so foolish. They stared at each other. He saw her, but only for a second, as a separate being with troubles and desires of her own. Then the silence between them took on a new quality. She seemed to him with her flushed face and her fierce brow and her disordered hair suddenly beautiful. The wind from Dungeness drew her dress tight about her.

  They stood for another moment, close together, perfectly still.

  Then Randall took her in his arms and as her body yielded to him, faint and sighing, he began to kiss her savagely. The roses fell to the ground.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  THE news that Randall Peronett was off, that he had left his wife and gone away, positively and definitively gone away with Lindsay Rimmer, was greeted with almost universal satisfaction. There are few persons, even among those most apparently straitlaced, who are not pleased by the flouting of a convention, and glad 'deep inside themselves to think that their society contains deplorable elements. Randall indeed, when it came to it, did his job properly. He did practically everything except announce it to the press. His timing was careful. Nothing was said to anyone until the day when the plane was due to leave for Rome. Then Randall fired off a number of decisive letters. He had even with demonic efficiency arranged that Ann should receive the letter from his solicitor about the divorce arrangements by the same post as his own letter announcing his final and irrevocable departure from her life. His thoroughness amazed and impressed his father; and Hugh felt, at the spectacle of his son's ability so ruthlessly to kick things to pieces, admiration, revulsion, distress, disapproval, and envy.

  The whole world now converged upon Ann. She had never been, to persons who had throughout years neglected her, almost forgotten her, a more interesting object. She was besieged by inquisitive and sympathetic visitors and received by every post letters of condolence in which scandalized exclamations and offers of help mingled with the triumphant satisfaction of the virtuous in what had occurred. She was simultaneously invited to ten different houses: she should come and rest, be looked after, stay as long as she liked. Randall and Ann were become, overnight, universal favourites.

  Hugh learnt the news from Ann, who rang him up half an hour after the receipt of Randall's letter. Ann asked him to come to Grayhallock at once. Hugh answered vaguely. He would come. But he had, for the moment, urgent business in town. She was to ring him up whenever she liked, and of course if there was anything he could do for her without actually coming to Kent. He would ring her up in any case at least once a day. She was to look after herself and keep cheerful. Why not have Mildred or Clare Swann to stay with her in the house? What a blessing Miranda was at home. He thought about her constantly
and would come down at the earliest possible.

  Since the sale of the picture Hugh had been in a curious frame of mind. He felt like someone who had lit a long fuse to a barrel of gunpowder. He had done his task and now had only to wait for the explosion. But how odd the waiting was; and when it occurred to him sometimes that perhaps nothing would happen at all he did not know whether he was glad or sorry. Since the moment when Hugh had indicated to Randall that he would get the money, communication between father and son had ceased by tacit mutual consent.

  It was still not very clear to him what he had done, what sort of crime he had committed and whether he had committed a crime at all. His curious son had, he realized, a certain power to confuse him morally. He had been, however, much set on his way by Mildred who showed, suddenly, a remarkable firmness about his doing the bold thing, the brave thing, the beautiful thing, without regard for a structure of convention which, as she now pictured the matter to him was too gross to have any relevance to an action so unusual and somehow great. She did not altogether convince him, but he let her words comfort him all the same.

  His conscience continued to be busy with the matter. Was he depraving Randall? Was he depriving Ann? But Randall was depraved and Ann deprived already. The new situation would have at least a clarity and an honesty. Nothing, he felt, could be worse for all concerned than Grayhallock with Randall there. He shuddered whenever he recalled the last days, with Randall sequestered in his room brooding and drinking. So bad for Miranda. And at the end of this frequently repeated argument he could sometimes achieve a moment when he felt himself to be a fairy godfather. But then he would start off again with picturing the loneliness of Ann, the despair perhaps of Ann. Yet Ann had had, for long already, her solitude and her despair. Ann was tough, Ann would manage, Ann would survive. And then with a strange vicarious thrill which silenced his officious conscience for the time he envisaged the lovers in flight. And with that his thought returned to his own affairs and to Emma.

  Hugh had felt, during the interim between his action and its results, unable to see Emma. Too much depended upon the issue and he did not want, as it were, to spoil the effect of his reappearance in a new situation of which he would be the acknowledged author. Also, he did not want to be chaperoned by Lindsay and that this would be, if he went sooner, with impish cruelty insisted on by Emma he was fairly sure. He had, about his ultimate reception by the abandoned Emma, oddly few fears or misgivings. He knew her well enough to think that she would greet his coup with admiration rather than resentment. He had not been to see her; but he had sent, every day, and with a luxurious pleasure, letters, chocolates, and flowers. She had not replied. And now, an hour and a half after Ann's telephone call, he stood upon Emma's doorstep. He had rung up to ask if he could come and she had briefly said yes.

  'I miss my pretty one, said Emma. 'You'll find me dull.

  She had not responded to the gentle drama of Hugh's arrival. He had imagined the scene far otherwise. She made no secret of her bereft state. But her remarks about it had a peevish and casual air, and she had spent the first ten minutes of their encounter complaining about her charwoman. There was a depressing lack of intensity. Hugh was at a loss.

  The flat looked odd too. It had a sort of stripped appearance, like Aladdin's palace in a state of partial demolition. When Hugh commented on this, Emma replied. 'She took her things and a lot of mine as well. You just wouldn't recognize the bedroom.

  'Why didn't you stop her?

  'Ah well, said Emma vaguely, 'I wanted her to have them really. I told her she could take a few mementoes.

  ‘You parted — in anger?

  Emma laughed. 'Lord, no! How could you think it? Surely you know what an old matchmaker I am.

  'You mean you-

  'I invented it, after all, Randall and Lindsay.

  Now when she said it it seemed true. Yet Hugh did not know whether to believe her. His imagination drew a blank. He had never been able to, would never be able to, picture that friendship. He was disconcerted too to find Emma claiming to have done what he thought he had done. He said, 'I wonder what Randall will make of it.

  Emma was grave for a moment. 'Randall may be saved in the end because at least he loves something. Though I'm afraid» Lindsay may be only the symbol of it. Now you can give me some whisky. Did I tell you? I've decided to take to drink.

  He poured out two glasses and then stood before her frowning and biting his nails. He pawed absently at his ear where a large ball of steel wool seemed to be grinding to and fro. He said, 'You're not angry with me, are you?

  'You keep attributing anger to me. I can certainly be ill-humoured.

  But neither lust nor rage dance attendance upon my old age. There is no citadel any more upon which the flags can wave defiantly. Why ought I to be angry, though?

  'I didn't say you ought to, said Hugh. 'I meant —’ He hesitated. He did not want to lay claim to an act which had harmed her, if there was any way of getting out of it, and she had already shown him a way. Yet he did want the credit of an act performed for her sake. Yet again, he did not want, in disputing her own picture of the matter, to seem even for a second to pity her. And yet he had indubitably done something and he wanted at least to be noticed for it. A subdued noise like a distant pistol shot went off in his head and the grinding stopped.

  Emma watched him with some amusement. 'If you want me to chastise you because you gave Randall a dowry, you'll be disappointed. It was a beautiful idea. I wish I had thought of it myself. Have you any spare cigarettes, by the way? I seem to be running out. Oh, those horrid healthy ones. Well, I'll have one all the same.

  'I didn't exactly do it for Randall, said Hugh. He kept his eyes upon her pointed face which was veiled with fugitive lights of frivolity and humour.

  'Ah, but you loved it, said Emma. 'Confess you loved it. What a wild reckless streak you have in your nature after all! And a light please, if you don't mind.

  'You know I did it for you.

  'Sweet of you to say so. I'm flattered of course. So bad for my character. But all our characters seem to have taken quite a beating lately, don't they? I think I'll have a little more whisky. This malt stuff is rather good. I much prefer an unblended whisky, don't you?

  'Listen,’ said Hugh, sitting down beside her. He did not want his passionate intention, his entreaty, to be lost in her badinage. He did not want to be cheated of his scene. 'I am a selfish man and when I say I did it for you I mean I did it for myself. Be sincere with me, Emma, and don't mock me. Is it not a miracle that we are together again, and if it is a miracle is it not a destiny? Do not make my words seem foolish. You know they are truthful. I love you and I need you and you belong to me in the end.

  'Good heavens, are you proposing to me? said Emma with a little shriek. 'I haven't had a proposal in twenty years!

  'Stop it! He seized one of her hands.

  'But wait — are you proposing? said Emma, her eyes humorous and intent.

  He let go of her. 'I hadn't got as far as that.

  They were silent for a moment and then both burst out laughing. I must say, I do rather love you, Hugh: There is something sublime about you. But I don't know if anything follows. Perhaps there is nothing but this.

  'But — what?

  'Well, just this; this understanding, this talk, this laughter, perhaps just this moment.

  'If there is this much there must be more, said Hugh. 'When I said I hadn't got as far as proposing I didn't mean the proposal came later in the speech, but just that we couldn't yet know what we wanted exactly.

  'Well, what do you want, roughly?

  'Roughly, everything.

  She laughed again. 'That is a lot, Hugh. Or is it? Aren't we perhaps dried up now, all hollow inside like shrivelled gourds, dry and rattling? Belonging to each other «in the end» is a rather metaphorical sort of belonging. The trouble is: it is the end already.

  'No, no, no! He could not help being elated by the directness of their exchanges and by his sen
se of the continuity of the old love with the new. It was the same love, the same girl.

  'Ah, you're pleased with yourself, really!

  'Emma, he said, 'just don't say no to this in your heart. And let our good fates do the rest.

  'My dear, I don't say anything in my heart. I'm a perfect phenomenalist. Or if anything is said it is something like «whisky» or «teatime». Can I have another of those horrible cigarettes?

  'You know perfectly well we aren't old. People don't grow old.

  Old age in that sense is an illusion of the young.

  'I am old, said Emma. 'Or rather I lack an attribute of youth which you have got: a sense of the future, a sense of time. I am just a bundle of perceptions, most of them unpleasant. As for other people, either they're with me or they don't exist.

  'Well, let me be with you!

  'Oh, you're so tiring, Hugh', she said, looking at her watch. 'You must go out and get me some Gauloises before the shops shut.

  'Don't be so complicated about it: he said. He was holding his breath, fearing now to press her too much in case she should say some words of rejection. 'You are lonely with Lindsay gone. Let me look after you a little. I'm sorry if I went too far today. Let us be simple and slow.

  'Simple and slow', she murmured. 'How adorable you are. I'm really quite fond of you.

  'You said a little while ago you loved me. Fondness is less.

  'I have told you I am not a continuous being. My words cannot be used as evidence against me.

  'But you'll let me come again?

  'Perhaps.

  'We'll see what happens, shall we?

  She gave a deep sigh and turned upon him her dark luminous eyes of a nocturnal animal. 'We'll see that in any case.

  Chapter Twenty-four