An Accidental Man

by Iris Murdoch

  ‘It matters whether I act rightly or not,’ said Ludwig doggedly.

  ‘Not really, and not in the way you mean. You and I are conditioned anyway to do what’s normally thought of as right. Any of the acts you are capable of contemplating will be “right”. So why worry about that?’

  ‘What should I worry about then, according to you? Politics?’

  ‘Good Lord no. Or yes, maybe, if it’s one’s job. It isn’t yours or mine. Strictly politics ought to be done at the ground level where your whole being is testimony and there isn’t anything abstract any more and nothing in it for you, especially anything interesting or personal. And at that level distinctions break down and it isn’t really politics. One should do simple separated things. Don’t imagine you are that big complicated psychological buzz that travels around with you. Step outside it. Above all don’t feel guilt or worry about doing right. That’s all flummery. Guilt is the invention of a personal God, now happily defunct. There is no Alpha and no Omega, and nothing could be more important than that. Remember I once quoted to you that thing of Kierkegaard’s about metaphysics, that in order to sew you must knot the thread? Well, that’s wrong. You don’t have to knot the thread, you can’t knot it, you mustn’t knot it. You just keep pulling it through.’

  ‘I’m not with you,’ said Ludwig. ‘What are you going to do with yourself? What does all this amount to in practice?’

  ‘I’m not sure yet. I used to think I had a special destiny. But I’ve made a discovery. Everybody has one. So I don’t feel so bloody anxious now about mine. Thank God I lost the novel. It could have been a temptation.’

  ‘I thought on your curious view there wouldn’t be temptations any more,’ said Ludwig.

  ‘Oh there are temptations, there are trials, there are even goals.’

  ‘Mention one.’

  ‘To give up the world. To have nothing, not even hopes. To make life holy. You remember in the Iliad when Achilles’ immortal horses weep over the death of Patroclus, and Zeus deplores the sight of deathless beings involved in the pointless horrors of morality?’

  ‘Is that “holy”?’

  ‘Yes. Gods can’t really grieve. Men can’t understand. But animals which are godlike can shed pure tears. I would like to shed pure tears. Zeus sheds none.’

  ‘Are you on drugs?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Ludwig.’

  ‘This stuff is beyond me. Have some more whisky?’

  ‘No, thanks. And another thing —’

  ‘I’m not sure I can stand any more.’

  ‘I went to see Charlotte today.’

  ‘Aunt Charlotte? Yes.’

  ‘I annoyed her, hurt her. Never mind. One can’t get everything right. Could you tell Gracie something?’

  ‘Gracie? Yes.’

  ‘From me. Tell her she must at once and very humbly beg Charlotte to stay on in that house. I mean obviously Gracie isn’t going to turn her out. But Charlotte’s so bloody miserable, if everyone isn’t careful she’ll just take off, and then she’ll be very much harder to help. Gracie must beg her to stay, and say she’ll make a flat specially for her or something. It’s not easy, I mean to get the right tone and all that. But it’s urgent, it’s a matter of days and hours. Tell Gracie that if she’s got any love for Charlotte, Charlotte needs that love in action and in evidence right now. OK?’

  ‘OK,’ said Ludwig, rather expressionlessly.

  ‘You think I’m an interfering bastard?’

  ‘No. I think what you say is, to use one of my old-fashioned words, right. Say, how did you know Gracie had inherited the house?’

  ‘I read it in your letter, the one to your father that’s lying on the desk. I read it when I came in, just before I heard you and what’s-her-name talking in the kitchen.’

  ‘So reading other people’s correspondence is not incompatible with holiness?’ said Ludwig.

  ‘No, I don’t think so. I must be off. I say, could you give me a pound to help me through tomorrow. Give, if you don’t mind, I never take loans. Thanks a lot. Goodnight. And don’t forget. No Alpha, no Omega. So it doesn’t matter.’

  What a load of balls, thought Ludwig after his friend had departed, is he nuts or what. All the same, he’s a remarkable chap. He’s got thinner and crazier since Harvard.

  Ludwig looked at his letter to his father which was still lying on the desk.

  My dear father,

  I write to tell you first of all that my fiancée Grace has inherited a great deal of money, since she is the sole heir of her lately deceased grandmother . . .

  Had he thought that the news would console his parents? Yes. And why not. All the same.

  He tore up the letter.

  ‘One should do simple separated things. Don’t imagine you are that big complicated psychological buzz that travels around with you. Step outside it. Above all don’t feel guilt or worry about doing right. That’s all flummery. Guilt is the invention of a personal God, now happily defunct.’

  Austin Gibson Grey, standing outside the door, heard his son’s precise slightly staccato voice holding forth and ground his teeth with rage. Should he, he wondered, bound suddenly into the room, hissing and grimacing like a Japanese warrior? No. He went slowly back up the stairs. He was hurt that Garth, whom he had hardly seen, should come to visit Ludwig and so evidently avoid him. And he was ready to scream with incoherent irritation at Garth’s moralistic eloquence. Whatever it was all about, it certainly wasn’t about that. And it wasn’t like that either. Life was misery and muddle, it was misery and muddle.

  He stopped outside Mitzi’s door. He could hear her crying quietly inside, grieving for her lost health and strength, grieving for her youth, grieving about heaven knew what, him perhaps. The weeping was sing-song, a soft long wail in a descending octave, a few sniffing breaths, a whimper, then the wail again, very soft, mechanical. Should he go in and comfort her? She was drunk and would be wet and sentimental. He said sharply outside the door ‘Stop that!’ There was silence. He went on into his own room.

  He took off his jacket and shirt and trousers and put on his pyjamas over his vest and pants. He removed his glasses and lay down on the bed. At once the demon asthma was present. A stifling pad was pressed over his face, a steel cord tightened about his chest. He sat up again, leaning forward and breathing regularly. It was all so familiar and it would never leave him as long as he lived. He stared at his right hand and tried to flex it. With his left he reached for his tablets. They gave him nightmares, but they drove away the demon for a time. He shook up his pillow. Dust came out of it. He coughed and fumbled for a cigarette.

  His room had got into an extraordinary mess. Every room he lived in did. Unwashed clothes were everywhere, smelling. Old cigarette packets and coins and string and squeezed out tubes and razor blades and yellowing sheets of evening papers lay about. Why did his life somehow generate this excrement? He had applied for jobs. He had written cunning letters offering himself as one whose dedicated wish was to be an assistant librarian, a clerical officer, a part-time teacher, a secretary in a publishing house (they said one must type, but did not specify how fast) a personnel manager, a club organizer. What he thought of as rubble jobs. But no one wanted him. The Labour Exchange said they could get him a job as a nurse.

  Meanwhile he had not managed to let the flat. Perhaps Garth put off prospective tenants. It suited the holy boy to live rent free. Two possibles failed to get in at all, since Garth was away. Another man only wanted it for the week of the Motor Show. There were debts and very little in the bank. He had borrowed a few pounds from Mitzi. Garth was shamelessly penniless. While Gracie Tisbourne had, they said, inherited hundreds of thousands. Why were things thus? Would it be possible for him to grit his teeth and become a nurse? No. Names were important. If he took a rubble job he could always laughingly call himself an executive. But a nurse was a nurse.

  He cared what Dorina thought, he cared what Matthew thought, he cared what Garth thought, he even cared what
the bloody Tisbournes thought. Why should he be always the slave of his audience? Well, he was. What was so relaxing about Mitzi was that he did not care a fuck what Mitzi thought. Or Ludwig. There was peace there. But the others were his torment. How the Tisbournes would dance and sing if he became a nurse. ‘Darling, Austin’s got a job, guess what!’ And Dorina. How could he bear to be such a failure in her eyes? He had felt so proud on his wedding day. How had his marriage then become so vulnerable and exposed? He must be able once again to mystify and impress Dorina. She would lend herself to the mystification as she had always done.

  He must get a job. He must get the flat back. He hadn’t even let it yet. He must make Dorina stop being whatever she was being. Afraid of him? How he feared that fear, how he feared her horrible ghost-haunted thoughts, she was for him a fatal and destructive girl. Yet how precious she was and how much he loved her. He would kill anyone who came near her. How much longer could he keep her immobilized and spellbound at Valmorana? Of course she understood, she knew his jealousy, perhaps she feared it. She would keep still, as still as a frightened mouse, as still as prey. But supposing somebody were to kidnap her? The vile Tisbournes had asked her to stay with them. Supposing Mavis were to interfere or Garth or —

  He could hear Mitzi stirring, hear the sound of her door opening. He switched off the light. There was a soft knock and Mitzi said, ‘Austin, are you awake?’ He lay back silently. The door opened an inch or two. ‘Austin.’ He closed his eyes. He had read in a book that the eyeball reflects light. She must not see his terrible open eyes. The door creaked as it opened wider. He lay tense and stiff, feeling that he would scream if he were touched. The door closed again quietly and the feet shuffled away. He was on Calypso’s isle. But was Ithaca still real? He turned sideways pulling a blanket up. Suppose Ludwig were to write him a testimonial? What happened if the money simply ran out? Was it conceivable that he could ask Matthew to lend him money? No. Would Ludwig lend him some of Gracie’s hundreds of thousands?

  He was beginning to see those clear coloured images, the gentle precursors of sleep. Now he saw again the blue lake in the quarry to which he had climbed down on that hot summer’s day. Matthew would not come. Matthew was a timid boy. Scrambling down was easy, but to climb up was impossible, the loose stones came away, running past him in long rattling sluices. Matthew was laughing. Weakness, impotence, rage made him limp, the sun blazed in starry tears in his dazzled eyes, he could not get up. Now Matthew was throwing stones down at him and laughing. Weeping with rage he climbed and climbed. Something struck him and he fell and an avalanche of rattling stones cascaded him down to the very edge of the blue water. He had hurt his hand.

  Sleep took him and he began to dream a dream which he had had many times before. Betty was not dead after all. She had been kidnapped and taken away and kept in a big house by somebody who gave her drugs. She was alive still but drugged. He saw with horror her dazed vacant face. Yet he did not want her to awaken. That must never be.

  ‘Honey bun,’ said Ludwig to Gracie, ‘Austin has asked me to lend him money.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Gracie, ‘Did you?’

  ‘I lent him five pounds.’

  ‘That was quite enough,’ said Gracie. ‘I hope you won’t lend him any more. After all, you aren’t going to be paid until September.’

  Ludwig pondered on this. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘But I just mentioned it in case you might feel like lending him some.’

  ‘I don’t,’ said Gracie.

  That was that.

  The fact that he was quite accidentally going to marry a rich girl had made more difference to Ludwig’s consciousness than he would have believed possible beforehand. The prospect gave deep and warm satisfaction. He had become more extravagant. A life-long habit of anxiety about money was distinctly weakened. And when Austin had asked him for a loan he had felt pity for Austin and also a kind of contempt, which was new. He noticed the contempt with dismay. Had he then so quickly deserted to the side of the rich? With even more dismay, after parting with the five pounds, he reckoned out that before September he would have to ask Gracie for money. So far she had been delicate enough not to offer him any.

  Being paraded around as a fiancé was something he had not yet got used to. He had not got a fiancé’s temperament. ‘Have you met my fiancé, Ludwig Leferrier?’ Ridiculous word. And what about ‘husband’? ‘Have you met my husband?’ ‘May I present my wife, Grace?’ ‘Did you know, Leferrier’s got a rich wife?’ What would Andrew Hilton think? Gracie’s husband. Husband. The word became senseless to him. One day he looked up its derivation and was appalled. Gracie and Clara were busy planning the wedding. They asked if Ludwig’s parents would be coming. He did not know. He decided that if his parents seemed to want to come he would ask Gracie to pay their fare. It was all rather awkward and curious. And meanwhile he and Gracie were still careering around London like tourists. And they had still not been to bed.

  Ludwig thought a lot about Garth and tried to see him again, but Garth had once more disappeared. Of course Ludwig had been a dull companion because he had wanted only one thing from Garth on that evening, the ratification of his own decision. When one has momentously decided one does not want to be told that ‘it doesn’t matter’. Of course Ludwig had acted rightly. But he should have argued more intelligently with Garth. Garth’s theories had seemed mad, but now they recalled to him things which he had thought for himself in the quiet room at school. Of course he did not agree with Garth. But he did need what only arguing with Garth could give him, a clearer theoretical grasp of his own action. It was all hazy in crucial places. And he did need, just for once, to be praised by someone he respected. If only his parents’ attitude did not force him to think about other people’s opinions so much. Those awful touching letters stirred his imagination and robbed his decision of its cool certainty. When he slept he doubted himself in dreams. One terrible night a huge half naked woman in a helmet and starred and striped panties, looking rather like Mitzi Ricardo, brandished a spear at him and shouted, ‘Defend me!’ The dream Ludwig fled crazed with terror.

  ‘There’s a fly in the milk,’ said Gracie, ‘could you rescue him?’

  Ludwig removed the struggling fly on a teaspoon.

  ‘All right, Ludwig, leave him now, he’ll dry his wings. God helps flies who help themselves.’

  They had been at a sculpture exhibition in Holland Park and were now in a Kensington High Street tea shop. Gracie had eaten two chocolate éclairs and was now eating a meringue.

  ‘Do you mind if I smoke now, moppet?’

  ‘All right, barbarian. Why is the smoke at one end of a cigarette grey and at the other end blue?’

  ‘I think it’s a matter of —’

  ‘You know, you really must meet Matthew.’

  ‘I’ve just been thinking that,’ said Ludwig.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know —’ I’d care what he said, thought Ludwig. He had heard Matthew much talked about. Opinions about him seemed to differ.

  ‘You’ll probably meet him at my parents’ awful cocktail party.’

  ‘Must we go?’

  ‘It’s for us! Yes, I have plans for Matthew. Matthew is our fate.’

  ‘How do you mean, sweetie? I’m your fate!’

  ‘Yes, darling, I just mean we’ll take him up. He’s awfully amusing.’

  ‘OK, poppet.’ Ludwig was aware that married people usually used pet names. His father called his mother ‘Mudge’, his mother called his father ‘Topper’, he had never discovered why. He had not yet determined Gracie’s secret pet name.

  ‘He’s much cleverer than Austin, or Garth.’

  ‘By the way, angel, I’ve a message for you from Garth.’

  ‘From Garth?’

  ‘Yes. He says he thinks you should tell Aunt Charlotte very soon how much you want her to stay on at the Villa. You see, he called on Aunt Charlotte and he formed the view —’

  ‘Really, Ludwig,’ said Gracie. She
put down her fork. ‘Really! Do we have to be told what to do by Garth Gibson Grey?’

  ‘No. I agreed with him too, of course. And I’m sure you don’t need to be told anything. It’s just that he thinks Aunt Char might take off soon if — You see, he formed the view —’

  ‘I’m not interested in what view he formed. He’s conceited and interfering, he’s as bad as my parents. I don’t want to know his beastly thoughts. There’s something cold and dead about him, there’s a dead mark on him — Ugh!’

  ‘Well, Gracie, sorry dear, I —’

  ‘And as for begging Aunt Char to stay on at the Villa, I shall do no such thing. I shan’t ask her to go, but I shall leave it to her to move out without being asked.’

  ‘Gracie!’

  ‘Really, Ludwig, you must learn to think about these things. Honestly. If I ask Aunt Char to stay now it would be very unkind to ask her to go later. And how do I know what I want to do with the Villa? I may want to sell it.’

  ‘Yes, I see —’

  ‘Or we may want to live there ourselves. We shall need a town house. And there’s all our children.’

  ‘All our — yes —’

  ‘It would be terribly short sighted and silly to make Aunt Charlotte feel it belonged to her, as she must feel if she were to stay on now. Of course I’m not a monster, I’ll do something for Aunt Char later on. But I want to understand my own situation first of all. There’s nothing one regrets so much as one’s thoughtless acts of generosity. They’re usually just conceit anyway, one wants to see oneself acting nobly. Garth would have an idea like that, he’d so much enjoy begging Aunt Char to regard the house as hers.’

  ‘He’s rather sure of himself, I know —’

  ‘He’s not, he’s afraid of life, he’s a timid man like his father, only vainer. That sort of priggish vanity makes nothing but trouble. You do see what I mean?’

  ‘Yes, sure —’

  ‘And I think it’s extremely impertinent of him to offer us advice.’

  ‘Yes, I guess so.’ Ludwig was stunned by her grasp of the matter. And after a moment’s reflection he saw that she might very well be right. Would he and Gracie ever live in the Villa? And their — Oh God.