by Iris Murdoch
It really was rather a peculiar situation. She went to examine the pile of lacerated clothing in the hall. Julius had cut everything into hopelessly small pieces. She hurled herself against the bedroom door. It resisted stoutly. There were no tools with which she could try to force the lock. She began to search again. No chair with a loose cover. No cushion larger than one foot square. No spare table linen. The central heating appeared not to be turned on and by now she was beginning to feel very distinctly cold. Though the sun was still shining, the air seemed to be darkening outside. What shall I do, thought Morgan. I suppose Julius will come back. And yet will he? He had taken his suitcase away. He was perfectly capable of not coming back. He would be interested to see what she would do.
Of course she could shout for help from the window. Or she could issue from the flat clad in the washing up cloth and knock on the neighbouring doors hoping to find a sympathetic woman. But what explanation could she offer of her extraordinary predicament? There must be some idea I haven’t had, she told herself, some possibility that I haven’t thought of. She sat down on the sofa and tried to pile the petit-point cushions on top of herself. They were small and fat and they kept falling off. She tried to reflect. After a while she began to cry.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
SIMON WAS FEELING VERY DISTURBED. He could not quite make out what was the matter with him. Perhaps it was the heat. Like most Englishmen, Simon pretended to like hot weather but really didn’t. London in July with the sun for once continually shining had become a mad place, stifling, enclosed, dry, whose rows of unreal and shimmering houses seemed to conceal something quite else, some more than Saharan desolation. Ought to get out of town, he muttered to himself. But it was not so easy. He might have got leave, but Axel, who was working very hard, probably too hard, at one of those things that Simon could not understand, would certainly not agree to taking a holiday at the moment. And to get away for a weekend demanded a degree of will and organization which the very inertness from which he wanted to flee made Simon quite incapable of. Anyway Axel now worked all Saturday.
Axel was in a bad mood too. It was not that he was out of temper with Simon. That would in some ways have been easier to bear. He was thoroughly out of temper with himself. He was going through one of those periods of black self-depreciation and gloom which had been so frequent when Simon first knew him. Axel was very upset that he had lost his temper with Peter. He explained to Simon that when one feels shame at having offended someone it is the damage to one’s own pride that really hurts and not the distress of the other person. This philosophical observation seemed to be of no assistance however. He brooded upon his pride. He wrote a long letter to Rupert. He wrote, Simon knew from finding the fragments in the wastepaper basket, several letters to Peter. Simon did not think that one was posted. Axel also went off into long speeches about the unfairness of an older person imposing love upon a younger person. He speculated about whether he had not blighted Simon’s life. He wondered whether Simon might not really be heterosexual after all. He pictured Simon happily married to some charming long-legged twenty-two-year-old girl. He provided Simon with several splendid children. He gave a favourable estimate of Simon’s possibilities as a father. Almost in tears, Simon threw his arms round his friend’s neck. Axel gloomily conjectured that the whole thing was, in the crudest possible sense, nothing but sex after all.
Axel was also tormented by what Peter had said about concealment and hypocrisy. This torment was not new. Simon had often heard Axel say, with various accents of bitterness, how much he detested the necessity for discretion. Sometimes in such moods he blamed the rottenness of a society which still looked askance at such a harmless and natural phenomenon. Sometimes he blamed himself for lacking the courage to be frank about his preferences. Someone has to make a start, said Axel. This was not a matter which had ever worried Simon. In his wilder pre-Axel days the secrecy had seemed something rather amusing, connected with his sense of it all as a sort of vast romp. Even when his great love for Axel had made Simon so much more serious and so much happier, he still could not quite share Axel’s scruples. The instinctive prevarications, the euphemisms, ‘My friend Nilsson, with whom I share a house’ and so on, seemed to him more like a protective fence, a useful barrier behind which he and Axel hid the marvellous secret of their love. It made everything somehow cosier and more enclosed. He could not see it, as Axel undoubtedly did, as something potentially corrupting. ‘Oh well, why don’t you write to The Times about it!’ said Simon flippantly at last. ‘Maybe I ought to,’ replied Axel morosely, and then relapsed into frowning preoccupied silence, consuming without comment an excellent cheese soufflé which Simon had just concocted.
Another source of unease, of course, was Julius. Simon was not at all sure what he thought about Julius. Julius aroused, in relation to Axel, a very deep jealousy fear in Simon. Simon knew these fears. He had often talked about them to Axel and Axel had helped him to fight them. He had attempted, with Axel’s help, to see how base and how fruitless and how damaging these black instincts really were. However they were instincts and not at all easy to suppress. Simon had not in fact talked to Axel, since Julius’s visit, about this particular manifestation of the demon. This was partly because Axel had of late been struggling with demons of his own. Partly it was for another reason which Simon shifted about uneasily in his mind. Julius disturbed him. Simon had been upset too, in a confused way, by Peter’s attack. He had been hurt by that tone of contempt, though he felt no impulse to blame Peter who was clearly in some sort of bad way himself. What puzzled Simon was that the distress occasioned by Peter seemed now somehow to be attaching itself to Julius, as if Julius were its real source. Was it that Simon sensed that Julius despised him? Did Julius see him as a flimsy effeminate poseur? Yet Julius had been perfectly friendly and had not said anything which could suggest this belittling vision.
Everything is getting on my nerves, thought Simon, as he walked along Bond Street in the hot bright evening. The shops were shut and the street was full of well-dressed strollers, some of them in evening clothes. London felt idle and languid and wicked. I feel as if something were going to happen, he thought, and something not at all nice. His heart winced and his thoughts flew protectively to Axel. Suppose something happened to Axel, suppose Axel were run over or developed cancer or—Stop it, he told himself. He paused deliberately and gazed into the window of a very select man’s outfitters. He concentrated his attention on a royal blue cravat with emerald green acanthus leaves upon it. Would it suit him? Would it not! He craned his neck to see the price ticket, digested the shock, pictured himself looking stunning in royal blue with emerald green and decided to return the next day to buy it. He began to walk slowly on. He turned into Brook Street.
Axel was at Fidelio. Simon had not told Axel of Julius’s extraordinary invitation. ‘Come on Friday. Don’t tell Axel.’ He was about to share a secret with Julius. What sort of secret would it turn out to be? Simon felt guilt, alarm, excitement. It occurred to him for the first time that he found Julius physically attractive. At any rate, the idea of now confronting him was producing certain sorts of familiar tremors and symptoms. But then, thought Simon, I have never really been able to distinguish between fear and sexual desire. His nervousness increased. He stopped at a shop window and adjusted his tie and inspected his appearance. He had dressed with care. He was wearing a plain purple shirt and a plain pink tie, with the light black terylene summer suit which he had bought in Milan. He pushed back his slightly curly dark locks and gave them a careful pat. He gave a keen-eyed glance at his thin face. A trifle foxy? His nose was undoubtedly too long. A narrow clever face? Do I look clever? he wondered. Am I clever? he wondered. He walked on trying to look keen-eyed. When he reached Julius’s number his heart was beating rather hard.
It will be about Axel’s birthday, Simon said to himself, for sure. After all it was only this belief which made it right not to tell Axel. Indeed, what else could it be about? Julius wanted to
plan some jolly surprise for Axel, and he wanted Simon’s assistance. Very nice of him too, thought Simon, very nice indeed. Nothing to get excited about. He began to mount the stairs. When he got to the door of the flat he took a deep breath and rang the bell.
There was silence within. Then there was a faint cautious flurrying sound. Simon thrust his head nearer to the door and listened. A voice from very close to him said through the door, ‘Who is that, please?’
The voice sounded familiar. It was a woman’s voice. Startled, Simon said, ‘It’s Mr Foster, Simon Foster, I wanted to see—’
‘Simon!’
‘Morgan!’
‘Wait a minute, Simon.’
Simon felt confusion, shock. Whatever was Morgan doing there? Distress.
The door opened and Simon went in from the sunny landing to the dimmer light of the little hall. He blinked. He blinked again. The door closed.
‘Morgan—whatever—?’
Morgan was dressed in nothing but a small piece of coloured cloth which she had wound about her waist.
‘Simon, how marvellous! The gods must have sent you! You’re an answer to prayer.’
‘But, Morgan, what on earth—?’
‘Come in, come in. Oh God, but this is funny!’ Morgan was laughing wildly. She turned, revealing the limitations of the small loin cloth. ‘Come on in, Simon, welcome, welcome!’
He followed her into the sitting room which glowed shadowily with reflected light from the declining sun. The room looked as if it had been hit by a bomb. Cushions were scattered over the floor together with the fragments of some sort of Chinese ornament. Over one window there were jagged holes where a great deal of plaster seemed to have come out of the wall. A long brass curtain rod and a chaotic pile of velvet curtain lay on the floor below. Another curtain rod hung down diagonally across the window supporting a swirl of white nylon material from its lower end.
‘Darling Simon,’ cried Morgan, ‘thank God you’ve arrived! I was just beginning to get desperate! I suppose I ought to drape myself in the curtains only what the hell. You’ve seen me naked before.’
‘I haven’t actually,’ said Simon. ‘If you remember we never turned the light on.’
Morgan stopped laughing. She looked at him for a long moment, and then said, ‘Dear Simon, dear dear Simon—’ She twined her arms round his neck.
‘Where’s Julius?’ said Simon, drawing himself nervously back.
‘Gone away for the weekend!’ said Morgan. She began to laugh again. ‘Oh God! I pulled the curtains down because I felt I had to do something. And then they fell on this blasted Chinese thing. Could you look at the bits? Is it genuine?’
Simon picked up a fragment or two. ‘Yes, I’m afraid so. T’ang.’
‘Oh Lord. Would it be expensive?’
‘Yes. But look here, Morgan, have I gone mad or have you? What on earth is all this? Why did you pull the curtains down? Why have you got no clothes on? Why—’
‘You see, Julius cut up my clothes.’
‘Cut up your clothes?’
‘Yes, darling. You see, I leapt into his bed.’
‘Oh.’
‘Nothing happened, nothing happened at all, except that he cut up my clothes that is, so you see I had none, look—’ She darted into the hall and came back with a pile of silky ribbony stuff smelling faintly of face powder which she threw into Simon’s arms and which he promptly dropped onto the floor. He felt extremely upset and alarmed.
‘But why ever did he do that? What was—’
‘He was a bit cross with me. I don’t know why he did it. It must have amused him. Why does Julius do things? Don’t you think it’s rather marvellous though? Whoever else would slash one’s clothes to pieces?’
‘Morgan, I simply don’t understand—’
‘Do I trouble you like this? Would you like me to get underneath the curtains?’
‘No, no. But aren’t you cold?’
‘No. I was getting cold and I thought I might have to spend the night here so I hauled the curtains down for bed clothes. But now you’ve come I am simply glowing with relief!’
‘Why don’t you put on some of Julius’s clothes?’
‘That’s just the joke! He locked the bedroom door. And there isn’t a cloth or a clothe in the whole of the rest of the flat, except this dish clout which I’ve twined about me, quite unnecessarily really as you’re such an old friend.’ Morgan twitched the cloth off her and cast it away. She began to laugh again. She began to prance friskily about the room.
‘Well, well, well,’ said Simon. He sat down on the sofa and watched her. It occurred to him that apart from one rather upsetting guilty evening at a strip joint in Paris he had never seen a woman entirely undressed. He had certainly never seen a woman whom he knew dancing naked in a flat in central London, her breasts quivering with laughter and velocity. He did not find it enjoyable.
‘Morgan, please. We must do something. Suppose Julius comes back.’
‘He won’t,’ said Morgan, stopping her dance. ‘He’s gone to Market Harborough.’
‘Market Harborough?’
‘Well, he’s gone somewhere. Yes, we must certainly do something. But just at present I am feeling that this is one of the great moments of life.’
‘I’m not!’ said Simon.
‘Simon, you’re frightened of me!’ said Morgan. ‘That’s rather beautiful.’ She came and knelt in front of him, gravely placing her elbows upon his knees. Then she very gently took one of his hands and laid it on one of her breasts. She closed her eyes.
‘Oh dear,’ said Simon. He left his hand where it was, holding the moist soft warm heavy thing.
Morgan without her clothes was a completely different being, scarcely recognizable to him. Her bronzed sharp-featured face looked bird-like and ambiguous and old. The human traits of humour and sweetness seemed to have withdrawn from it. Without the glasses her eyes looked blind and insentient. The long neck descended to hard bony shoulders and prominent collar bones. White flesh still faintly outlined upon her body the pattern of a bathing costume. The rounded breasts were slightly pendent and the dark damp channel between them smelt of sweat. The flesh was layered a little, coiled below the waist, the hips curved, recessed and curved again, the tensed knees shiny. Simon, looking yet not looking, felt alarm and pity and disgust. He also felt physically agitated and upset. ‘Please, Morgan, please—’
‘All right. Do something. Yes.’ She sprang up.
Simon got up too. ‘Look, I’ll go and get you some clothes. I can get to Rupert’s in a taxi in fifteen minutes, well, twenty. Hilda will show me where to find your things.’
‘No,’ said Morgan. ‘I’ve got a better idea.’
‘What?’
‘I’ll take your clothes.’
‘What?’
‘Only for a little while, silly. Just to fetch my own. I’ll come back again at once.’
‘But Morgan—’
‘Don’t be an ass, Simon, nobody’s going to see you. You can wrap yourself in the curtains if you like. I’ll only be half an hour away. I’d buy something in Bond Street, only all the shops are shut.’
‘Morgan, isn’t it much more sensible if I go? After all—’
‘You know quite well it doesn’t matter what women wear nowadays. No one will even look at me. It isn’t as if I were going into the bar at Claridges.’
‘But what about me? I mean, I shall be—Really, Morgan, I’d much rather not. It wouldn’t take a minute to—’
‘Simon, I don’t want Hilda to know about this little drama. And if you went and asked for my clothes you’d have to tell her something. Do understand and be a sport. And whatever would Rupert think? He’d be shocked.’
‘I could tell them that you’d—I don’t know—fallen in the river.’
‘Now Simon, don’t be silly. Off with them, dear. I’m tired of having nothing on, and honestly I’m beginning to get claustrophobia in this flat.’
‘So am I!’
&n
bsp; ‘You’ll have to lend me some money, though. My handbag is in the bedroom. Damn, my glasses are in there too. Come on, let me undo your tie.’
Simon stood helplessly as Morgan undid his tie and began to unbutton his shirt. Then he groaned and began to take off his jacket.
‘That’s right. Dear Simon, you really must forgive me. I’m just suddenly cram full of purpose. I told you it was one of my great moments. You see, the test was to get out of here somehow. And your coming was such luck, and now I just can’t wait to be out. I couldn’t bear it if Julius came back and found me, even if help was on the way.’
‘Came back! But you said he’d gone away for the weekend. Is he likely to come back?’
‘Well, he might. And I wouldn’t want him to find me here all naked and shivering.’
‘I wouldn’t want him to find me here all naked and shivering!’
‘You needn’t shiver. I pulled the curtains down just to spite him actually, but you’ll find them handy if you’re cold. I’m sorry about that T’ang thing. I won’t be long away. What a lovely colour your shirt is. Does it suit me?’