The Italian Girl

by Iris Murdoch

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Do you mind if I kiss you? I’m sorry about the shock tactics last time. I was just a bit mad then because of David. I don’t know if you understand.’

  I didn’t quite. ‘I understand.’ I took small, plump, tear-stained Isabel in my arms and kissed her hot eyes and her brow. Her arms clutched my neck violently for a moment and I let her find my lips. It seemed like a desperate farewell. As I held her then I felt sad and deprived in all my being and felt from top to toe the same sadness in her.

  13. Edmund runs to Mother

  ‘Maggie.’

  It was very quiet in the kitchen, with a kind of distilled quietness, after the recent hubbub of Isabel. It seemed a place of sanity and recollection.

  Now Maggie had been washing Otto’s underwear. There was an intimate smell of warm wet wool. Steaming piles of vests and long pants lay in a big blue plastic basket. One by one she took the garments and stretched them into shape and laid them over the slats of a wooden drying-rail which had been lowered from the ceiling by a pulley. I recalled this ritual very well from childhood, the strong neat movement of the hands as they pulled the garments straight, the hands of Giulia and Carlotta and Vittoria. I sat down to watch, feeling with a mixture of shyness and familiarity included in the scene, comfortably included in her consciousness although she had not replied to my exclamation, had scarcely looked in my direction. My half-eaten orange and the pile of boxwood blocks lay still at one end of the table, and at the other were Maggie’s sewing, her work-box and scissors. I watched her quick rhythmical movements. The line of Otto’s things lengthened.

  I looked up at her face and found her looking at me. Her eyes, with that damp strange animal look, seemed forbidding and suspicious. I felt troubled by a sharp need to talk to her, together with a paralysing absence of wit. I felt extremely upset, ill-used, lacerated, I wanted comfort: yet how could I ask for it here? I looked quickly down.

  It was a dark rainy evening and the light in the kitchen was uncertain, as if things were constantly moving and shifting just at the corner of one’s vision. The twilight began to trouble me. I felt distressed in all my body and almost frightened. I knew I ought to go upstairs and sit alone and think about what Isabel had said to me, but I could not go away. I moved abruptly and switched the light on. There was a miserable glow, more like fog than like light, scarcely brighter than the damp sulphurous illumination outside. Maggie, who had jumped slightly at my movement, stared at me and then returned to her task.

  I ranged about the kitchen in the dirty muted haze, touching things here and there. I ached with discomfort and distress. ‘God, what a rotten light. You couldn’t possibly sew by this light, I hope you don’t try. Lydia was so mean. Are there any stronger bulbs in the cupboard? Ah yes, a hundred watts, that’s better. Could you turn the light out again? All right, I’ll take my shoes off.’

  I mounted on the table to fix the new bulb. My hair brushed the ceiling. Maggie was looking up at me in the shifting twilight, her face a blur, her eyes big and black. She stretched out a hand to help me descend. I felt the small hand warm and damp from the washing. It seemed a long way down. Then she moved to the door and a very bright light dazzled us. I covered my eyes. Yes, Lydia was dead.

  The garden outside was suddenly a dark blue square, misty and insubstantial, withdrawn. I went to pull the gay red and blue William Morris curtains. The kitchen was enclosed and bright now like a compact little ship, everything in it brimfull of radiant colour. I felt a little better. Maggie spread out Otto’s pants upon the rail, a wide outrageous forked pennant. I sat on the table and began to destroy the remainder of the orange.

  ‘It’s funny, isn’t it?’ I said to her.’ You must have been taller than me when we first met.’

  ‘No. You were already taller, much taller. You are thinking of Vittoria.’

  ‘Where do you come from in Italy, Maggie? I’ve stupidly forgotten. Verona?’

  ‘No, that was Giulia. I come from Rome.’

  ‘Rome, of course. I remember your showing us pictures.’

  ‘Have you been to Rome?’

  It seemed odd she should not know. And yet why should she? ‘No. Florence, Venice. Not Rome. You remember you said you’d take us there, kidnap us? We had quite a fantasy about it. Or was that Carlotta?’

  ‘No, that was me. Carlotta came from Milan.’

  Her voice was that of a cultivated English person with only a very light accent, She had been an educated intelligent girl. What had condemned her to a wasted life in this sombre household?

  ‘I’m afraid you’re all mixed up in my mind,’ I said. ‘I wonder where they are now –’

  ‘Married.’ She spoke it as if it were the name of a distant country.

  In a sudden flurry of distress I went on hastily, ‘People in the north dream of the south. I wonder do people in the south dream of the north. Did you?’

  ‘I had a dream of the north once, a dream of strength.’

  This distressed me too, though I could not say why. I watched her briskly haul the drying-rail up to the roof. Otto’s enormous underwear swayed in the warm air from the range, blatantly unmentionable.

  Something in the sight of my brother’s things displayed in a row like a fatuous grinning army produced a rush of irritation and some more painful emotion. I wanted to sweep Otto right out of the way. Then I knew that I was going to leap the divide and appeal to Maggie for help. I said, ‘I’ve been a failure since I arrived here.’

  Maggie slowly dried her hands on the towel. She looked at me with an expression of faint interest. She seemed aware of the extent of my appeal. But she just said, ‘And now you are going away?’

  Her cool acceptance of my remark hurt me unexpectedly much. It was not that I wanted to be told I was doing well, or that no one could have managed better: but I found I cared what Maggie thought about me.

  ‘Can I help anyone by staying?’

  ‘Possibly not anyone else. Yourself perhaps.’

  She said it in such a dry way, almost a metaphysical way, I could hardly bear it. I was shamefully in need of sympathy, or warmth. I did not want to be dissected and despoiled.

  ‘I don’t think the question of me arises,’ I said rather irritably. ‘There is nothing for me here.’

  She looked at me with those eyes which always seemed near tears and yet at the same time so cold. ‘The question of oneself always arises, doesn’t it?’

  This was painfully true. And of course if I stayed, I confessed it now, I would stay because of some need of my own. I felt that I was fencing with Maggie and getting the worst of it. There was a tension in the air, an obscure sense of direction. I said to her, ‘I suppose you know more or less what’s going on in this house?’

  ‘I think I know altogether what’s going on in this house.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘People have loud voices. Everyone shouts a great deal here. Perhaps the pipes conduct the sound. I seem to hear everything in the kitchen.’ She spoke with an extreme cat-like softness; it was the voice of the unseen observer, of the eternally silent superior servant.

  I imagined Maggie working there alone in the kitchen, peeling the mushrooms and pouring the red wine into the pollo, washing Otto’s unspeakably filthy pants, and listening to the secret life of the house. It was a weird thought. Then at the next moment it was a disagreeable one. Maggie must have overheard my exchanges with Levkin. We were not exactly whispering. I looked at her uneasily, at her sallow secretive southern face. She had returned to her sewing.

  I got up restlessly and began to pace about. My body still felt disturbed and unhappy. The leg of one of Otto’s undergarments slapped me damply in the eye and I irritably thrust it off. What was an intelligent girl like Maggie doing wasting her time washing Otto’s things for him? The mad idea flashed across my mind that I might ask Maggie to come and be my housekeeper. But that was idiotic. There was no place for a housekeeper in my three miserable rooms. I said suddenly, ‘I don’t want to lea
ve here.’

  ‘Don’t then.’

  She looked up at me, but I avoided her glance, I resented her display of indifference. I could not endure being treated so coldly. I felt I was being deprived of some natural right. I knew I ought now to keep silence, to retrieve dignity, to leave her. But the warm words came tumbling out of my mouth, the old impulse to confession, the final weak appeal for comfort. ‘I’ll have to go, I’ve made such a mess of things. Particularly with Flora, I’ve been such a clumsy idiot with Flora. Isabel asked me to look after her, to take her away home with me, but I can’t. I don’t know how it happened but just now, upstairs, I sort of took hold of her, I frightened her. And after all she’s been through, poor wretched child. Of course I meant no harm, but now she won’t trust me an inch. Only someone’s got to help her and I do think she should go away. Oh God, Maggie, I am a fool!’

  ‘Che peccato. Do you often jump on young girls?’

  ‘I haven’t touched a woman in years!’ The words fell out between us, and then I blushed scarlet with rage at her asking and at my answering. Nor did it ease me to recall that she had also witnessed and doubtless misunderstood the scene with Isabel. The notion that Maggie might think me a philanderer provoked an incoherent apoplexy of indignation. Yet at the same time I violently regretted having made the admission. Such things were nobody’s business but my own.

  She seemed to be accepting what I said with cool credulous interest. ‘No girls at all? And no boys either?’

  ‘No!’ I added more quietly,’ Certainly not!’ and glared into those rather moist dark eyes.

  She gave a secretive little smile and returned to her sewing. I found myself hot with emotion. There are things which may be thought but should not be said. I felt a strong resentment against Maggie for her directness, for having so unfairly startled me out of my reticence. I felt too perhaps some primeval male fear of a woman’s contempt. Yet I had started this rather confused and unmanageable conversation.

  I looked at her now, remote and self-contained as a cat: the cunning little smile, the thin fine line of the mouth and the downy hairs above it, the dark-golden yet transparent skin, the sober downcast eyes. She seemed a chaste figure, now more like a priestess than a nun, a keen severe little priestess. She reminded me vaguely of something in a painting. Yet I had seen that face before I had seen any painting, perhaps before I had seer any face.

  ‘I think,’ said Maggie, still attending to her sewing, ‘that you ought to apologize to Flora. You might be able to win her confidence again. She certainly needs somebody she can trust.’

  ‘There aren’t any words for that apology. Can’t you help Flora?’

  ‘I too have lost my power to help. Acts have their consequences. Your mother set us all at odds. As you can imagine.’

  I could imagine. ‘But surely no one could hold anything against you. Surely you are perfectly innocuous.’

  ‘Because I am so little, almost invisible, like a mouse –’

  ‘No, no, no, I mean you are good.’

  ‘Like you, yes!’

  ‘Oh, stop it, Maggie,’ I said. I clashed the boxwood blocks sharply together like castanets.

  ‘Stop what?’

  What indeed. I looked down with distressed, exasperated puzzlement at the small familiar large-eyed face.

  ‘Oh, excuse me,’ said Flora from the doorway.

  14. Otto Selects a Victim

  Flora banged the door behind her with her foot. She looked flushed and untidy. Her hair was a shaggy mass almost toppling forward over her brow, and a bronzy glow surrounded her head where curly tendrils had escaped from the arrangement. Her short upper lip thrust suspiciously forward and her upturned nose wrinkled and quivered. She drew her tartan dress closer to her legs in an unconscious gesture of self-defence, perhaps disgust. But she ignored me and addressed herself to Maggie.

  ‘I’ve brought the change.’ She spoke in a deliberately harsh and rasping voice. She advanced to the table and with a theatrical gesture threw on to it a heap of five-pound notes. Then she could not stop herself from glancing at me.

  Maggie, who had risen, quietly gathered the notes together and began to count them. As the meaning of the scene dawned on me I felt an immediate shocked repulsion at the sight of the two women with the pile of money between them. It was like a scene in a brothel.

  ‘Yes,’ said Flora. ‘I got it cheap because the doctor was such a dear old man and I was such a dear little girl! And Maggie lent me the money because she’s a woman, or used to be. But I don’t exactly love her for it. You’re all a lot of monkeys as far as I’m concerned. I–’

  ‘Flora, please,’ I said, ‘just listen to me for a minute. This is important. You must try to forgive me for what happened upstairs. I didn’t mean to frighten you like that, and I’m very sorry. I don’t quite know how it happened. Anyway I apologize and I hope I haven’t entirely lost your affection and your confidence. I shall certainly try to deserve them if you’ll give me another chance. I think it would be a good thing if you came and stayed at my house for a little while. You need a bit of rest and peace and I should be very happy if you’d come. Or if I can help you in any other way I should be only too glad. Whether or not you come and stay with me I do think you would be better away from this house for a while. Don’t you think so too?’

  Flora stared at me, her flushed face pulled into a self-conscious sneer. ‘Uncle Edmund, you’re pathetic. Did Maggie put you up to it?’

  ‘No, well – but won’t you try to forgive me?’

  ‘Don’t be silly. I can’t arrange what I feel. I just hate the sight of you, that’s all. As for your not knowing what came over you, I think you’d better wake up to yourself. I’d see a good psychoanalyst if I were you!’

  ‘I’m sorry you feel like that, Flora. As I say, I do humbly apologize. But, seriously, don’t you think you ought to go away from here?’

  ‘So that Mummy can have a clear run with darling David? I suppose she put you up to it!’

  ‘No, no. Use your common sense, child. Everything here is in an awful tangle and you’re better out of it. Anything could happen.’

  ‘You mean when Daddy finds out. Yes, that’s what I’m dying to see, what happens when Daddy finds out. You want me to miss all the fun!’

  ‘Don’t be a perfect idiot. You’ve done quite enough harm already. You must realize that. The least you can do is to try to minimize the consequences.’

  ‘“Minimize the consequences”!’ She mimicked me. ‘So you’re judging me, are you, the two of you, like a couple of pious parents with their erring little girl! Count it carefully Maggie, and see I haven’t cheated you. As if I would have taken your bloody money if I could have got it anywhere else! I regret nothing I’ve done and I’m certainly not accountable to you. And I’m not little Alice in Wonderland any more, Uncle Edmund, thanks to people like you, except that you wouldn’t have had the guts for it. This is my home and I’m staying in it. Why don’t you go away? You’ve only made yourself ridiculous here and no one likes you!’

  I was hurt by her words and even more by the new aggressive ugliness of her face as she spoke them. It was a terrible growing up. I groaned for my hopeless lack of the right kind of authority.

  ‘Flora, I’m not judging you. I’m in no position to judge anyone. I know I’m ridiculous. But you are my niece and I want to help –’

  ‘You’re just an old goat, Uncle Edmund, why not admit it? Your goody-goody act doesn’t take anyone in any more. I expect you’re impotent into the bargain. Why don’t you go home and look at your obscene photos?’

  ‘Flora,’ said Maggie quietly, ‘stop shouting and talk to us sensibly. You know perfectly well you can’t stay on here. Your mother will never come to her senses while you are in the house.’

  Flora advanced on Maggie, and her voice rose to an incoherent whine of fury. ‘You! You can stop telling me what to do. Just because you lent me that money you think you own me, don’t you! But I know all about you, Maggie M
agistretti. And if this house is crazy you’ve certainly done your bit in making it so!’

  I could see the child was becoming hysterical and ought to be slapped or bundled straight out of the door. But I also knew that I could not possibly touch her. I banged on the table. ‘Flora, go back to your room – ’

  She turned on me. Her lips were wet and trembling and tears were spilling from her eyes. ‘Oh, you don’t know about Maggie! Well. I’ll tell you. She had a horrible, horrible thing with Lydia. It was beastly and it made the whole house horrible – And just because she doesn’t attract men – ’

  I felt pain, shock, anger, and a horrified impulse to close her mouth. But as she moved, in fact I recoiled. Flora struck the table violently, sweeping the pile of money up into a flurry of notes which flew to every part of the kitchen. Maggie was saying something in Italian and reaching out her hands in a deprecating gesture. I saw Flora’s face flushed and distorted and the reddish-golden hair beginning to fall forward over her brow as if her head were coming in two. She seized Maggie by the wrist and jerked her forward and in a moment the two women merged into a swaying stumbling intaglio. I backed away from them as if they had been scuffling animals. Then I saw that Flora had got hold of Maggie’s scissors and was flourishing them like a knife. For a moment I almost expected blood to flow – and then as the two came apart I saw that Flora had sheared through Maggie’s hair at the nape of the neck. With an exclamation of horror and disgust Flora dropped the oblong knob of hair on to the table where it unravelled into a black snake. There was silence.

  I sat down on the window-seat. I had never seen two women fighting, and the sight of it was utterly nauseating. Flora, her mouth wide open and dribbling, was staring at the limp dead length of hair. She still held the scissors high up like a weapon. Maggie drew her hands slowly about her shorn neck and then covered her face and her breast with the gesture of one suddenly made naked. At that moment Otto came in.

  The appearance of Otto filled me with terror even before I knew what was going to happen, and I felt too, for the women, for myself, an immediate crippling sense of guilt. It must have seemed a strange scene: Flora now lifting the severed hair with an almost ritual gesture, Maggie metamorphosed into some quite other being, hiding her face as if from the gaze of Medusa, and the table and floor strewn with five-pound notes.