An Accidental Man

by Iris Murdoch

  ‘Yes, fascinating.’

  ‘Why did you decide not to stay in the east?’

  ‘Oh well, I didn’t really fit in there. I thought I’d better come home. Home is better, after all.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘One is more at home.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Perhaps it’s frivolous of me, thought Mavis, but I can’t bear his having got so fat, and he’s become pompous and sort of oriental and old. He could be my uncle.

  ‘I’m afraid I’ve put on some weight since we last met,’ said Matthew.

  ‘Oh no.’

  ‘You look just the same.’

  ‘I’ve faded.’

  ‘Fading suits you.’

  ‘Like a piece of old chintz.’

  ‘Yes, there’s no doubt that I’ve put on weight.’

  She is defeated, he thought, tired out by years of a rather dull life. We are both weary, we have not the energy for real communication, we are cautious and afraid of hurts and entanglements. We are saddening and disappointing each other.

  ‘Did you ever try dieting?’

  ‘No, I’ve rather taken to the fleshpots in my old age.’

  He has become so rotund, she thought, even his head has become fat. And his eyes are a sort of viscous fishy blue but so bloodshot that they look almost purple. He probably drinks too much.

  ‘So you’re thinking of selling Valmorana?’

  ‘Yes.’ She supposed she was. The nuns were bankrupt and moving house and the local authority wanted impossible things. And she had been putting everything off until she met Matthew. What a desolation she had now prepared for herself. Why had she been so sure that he would be a source of new life? Had he expected this of her? She read disillusion in his eyes.

  ‘It’s quite a good moment for selling house property.’

  ‘Is it? Good.’ They say he made a fortune in Hong Kong, I can believe it. ‘I’ll get a flat. Much more convenient.’

  ‘Much more convenient.’

  I’m boring her, he thought. They were having lunch at the Café Royal. Matthew had no servants at the Villa yet. He had thought that food and drink would help. Now they had both eaten and drunk too much in desperation.

  The texture of the face matters so, she thought. That flabby ageing surface invited no touch. She had imagined a great magnetic force drawing them together, she had imagined tears of joy. She had recalled him so clearly, smooth-cheeked, clear-eyed, plump and blond. But that image was already fading.

  ‘Will you have cheese or pudding?’

  ‘Cheese, please.’

  ‘I’ll have the chocolate mousse. Yes, and cream.’

  No wonder he is so fat, she thought. Why does he stare so as the waiter pours the cream? His eyes are suddenly glistening with interest.

  ‘And I think I’ll have some cheese too. Waiter, cheese. And I trust Dorina is well?’

  It was odd how tamely these names now came into their conversation. We should be faint with emotion, thought Mavis, but this is a kind of game. It is as if we are dealing with everything, making it safe and ordinary, and then setting it aside. Austin had already been perfunctorily dealt with. The whole past was being sadly folded up and put away. Was it for this that they had met? Perhaps it was. Suddenly it occurred to her, I am no longer attractive; and then that was what it all meant.

  ‘Dorina’s very well. When Austin gets a job I expect they’ll get together again.’

  ‘I expect so.’

  It was a mistake to meet like this, he thought. Eating and drinking are so gross. She has got fragments of biscuit all down the front of her dress. We ought to have met at nine o’clock in the morning on a bridge. After all, and though we hoped otherwise, something is utterly lost to us. How could it not be so? We surrendered each other bloodlessly without a fight. Our love was puny, not powerful enough to live on and be changed into anything which could nourish us now. We deserve this fiasco.

  ‘And Tokyo must be a very interesting city too.’

  ‘Yes, fascinating.’

  There is nothing either in the world or out of it which is good without qualification, except a good will.

  Bosh, thought Garth, eating baked beans on toast in a Lyons tea shop in the Tottenham Court Road.

  Nothing was good without qualification. Will was just ropes and pulleys. Moral conceit was an aspect of mental health. Usefulness mattered, but only in the obvious sense. And not mattering, that mattered too.

  He had kissed Dorina. That was important, but only in a momentary separated sort of way. It had no consequences nor even any implications. Had it been an innocent kiss? Yes. But was it her innocence or his which made it so?

  Should he go and see Uncle Matthew? If he did it would be artificial and dramatic, the sort of thing he had intended henceforth to eschew. It would also be something important but of a different kind. It would have consequences. Did he after all want somebody’s approval? Matthew’s? Or somebody’s love? Matthew’s?

  He had kissed Dorina. Did his father’s marriage still exist and could it be salvaged? Was it any business of his?

  In the restaurant in Soho where he washed up every night an out-of-work actor called Trevor was making advances to him. Everyone employed there talked about sex the whole time. Garth hated sex. In America he had made experiments and felt ashamed and disgusted. Better to live alone. Why had he never discussed these things with Ludwig?

  He was worried about his future and his state of mind. After the excitement of coming home he had felt a failure of energy. He had considered work which he might do and had discussed it with very busy people. The contingent details of choice disturbed him. Everything that was offered him was too particular, too hole and corner and accidental, not significant enough, though at the same time he realized with dazzling clarity that all decent things which human beings do are hole and corner. That was indeed, as he had told himself earlier, the point. But when it came to it he found he could not profit from his own wisdom and because his power had momentarily weakened he felt ordinary things like loneliness.

  Meanwhile life was inconvenient, impecunious and tiring. He dashed about most of the day doing voluntary work and discussing jobs. At night he washed up and listened to filth. He had desired the freedom of having nothing to lose, no possessions, no ambitions, no hopes, but this did not feel like it. Into his mind and even into his plans were crowding other matters with which he had not reckoned and which he had proposed to do without. Concern for his father for instance. He had envisaged a cool duty but not this muddying anxiety. People occupied his thoughts and made him feel interest, even curiosity, even the possibility of resentment.

  And there were odd compulsions such as this compulsive feeling he now had about going to see Uncle Matthew, as if this had to be done before anything else could happen. What did he want from Matthew? The idea of virtue is a fake-up, he thought, it’s like God. When one understands that one can begin to live. Did he imagine he could explain it all to Matthew? Nothing could be more dangerous.

  Matthew held in his hand something which was for him one of the most beautiful things in the world. It was a shallow Sung bowl with a design of peonies cut under the glaze. Its colour was a sort of milky ivory, what an angel might conceive of if asked to conceive of white. Its texture was something indescribable, a combination of softness, hardness, smoothness, depth and light.

  He placed the bowl on the table next to a Ting cup in the shape of a chrysanthemum. The cup was paler, another unearthly shade, the colour of water, not as we ever see it but as God sees it.

  His collection had arrived in several packing cases. He had unpacked some of the things. A history of his life, in a way. Old friends.

  He and Mavis had parted almost resentfully. So much for that. I am not what I seemed to her, he thought, and doubtless she is not what she seemed to me, but it is our lot to be irrevocably condemned to seemings and to deserve them too. We were both, when it came to it, determined to be disappointed. We were mean w
ith each other. What in a way saddened him most of all was the sense of having repelled her physically. This brought on a mood of regret for his youth which seemed, after many of his recent emotions, almost pure.

  Mavis had been an objective, and now that she had somehow swept fruitlessly past him he felt the problem of what he was to do with himself even more keenly. He had come home because there was nothing else to do, he had come home because of Austin. But Austin was proving another blank. Meanwhile Matthew frequented his club and chatted politics with Charles Odmore and Geoffrey Arbuthnot.

  He now felt his worldliness as a kind of galloping sickness. His unoccupied mind craved diversions, detective stories, television, gossip, drink. Once or twice he thought of telephoning Kaoru. But Kaoru hated the telephone and such a conversation would be merely upsetting, unkind, undignified, bad form. What could they say to each other by long distance telephone call? Matthew did not want to lose face with Kaoru by exhibiting bad form. Such miserable dignities were left to him. Perhaps he would end up writing his memoirs after all.

  Austin preoccupied him, with a hopeless brooding anxiety which now concerned the past more than the future. He dreamed about Austin almost every night. He re-enacted the scene in the quarry. He dreamed about Betty. He dreamed about Dorina. He did not dream about Mavis. He avoided the Tisbournes. They seemed to make him quite automatically play a part which he found distasteful, that of the successful public man. They gave him cues, they egged him on to ever more playacting, they applauded. He would have quite liked to see Charlotte, and even felt he ought to, but kept putting it off. He would have quite liked to meet Ludwig Leferrier, but was afraid that if he tried to he would end up having tea tête à tête with Gracie. He would have quite liked to see Garth, but that was out of the question. He needed occupation, but not of the kind Charles Odmore kept proposing. He tinkered with the house. Now there was his collection to arrange. He had acquired a charwoman and a motor-car and an Irishman to cut the grass. He feared for himself.

  Someone was ringing the front door bell. Matthew was in shirt sleeves. He could not find his jacket. After a moment or two he went to the door as he was. Austin was standing on the doorstep.

  Matthew’s immediate thought, in the midst of his emotion and his surprise, was how young and good-looking his brother still was, with the sun shining on his fair hair.

  ‘Come in, Austin,’ said Matthew, as coolly as he could.

  Behind Austin, also glowing in the morning sunshine, stood Matthew’s new motor-car.

  Austin followed him past the packing cases into the drawing-room where on the table and on the mantelpiece vases and bowls stood about still wispy with straw.

  ‘The famous collection,’ said Austin.

  Matthew thought, he is a bit drunk. Dutch courage. ‘Yes. I haven’t really got space for it here. I may lend some of it to a museum.’

  ‘You mean until you move into an even larger house?’

  ‘Well, I — I really need some show cases — but they never look quite right in a house — it’s a problem — I’ve never had it all together before —’

  ‘What did you do with it when you were out there?’

  ‘Oh it was stored in various places. I went on buying new stuff.’

  ‘A sort of compulsion I suppose, like drinking.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘I can’t see it. Not one of my vices. But it seems pretty stupid to own it if you put it in a museum, doesn’t it?’

  Austin reached out and seized a famille rose vase and held it up frowning in front of his face. Instinctively Matthew stepped forward and took it from him.

  They stared at each other. Then Austin laughed.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Matthew. ‘Have a drink.’

  ‘I could always use a drink. Whisky, thanks. Neat, thanks. You won’t? Yes, you even look like our father now that you’re old. I think if that gentleman hadn’t been so damned abstemious I might have been — well, what might I have been — Do you mind if I sit down?’

  ‘I’m no abstainer,’ said Matthew, ‘only it’s a little early. I’m glad to see you, Austin.’

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘Yes. You know I am.’

  ‘I can’t think why. Oh yes I can. So as you can thank God you aren’t me.’

  ‘No, not only for that reason.’

  Austin laughed again. ‘That’s nice. Not only for that reason. You’re a caution. Well, you wanted to see me and here I am.’ Austin had sunk into a chair, his legs cocked over the arm. Matthew prowled, touching the china.

  ‘So you decided to come and have a look at me after all.’

  ‘No. You’re no oil painting, as my friend Mitzi would say. Do you know about my friend Mitzi? Oh yes, you’ve met her, haven’t you. The twenty stone Minerva with the heart of gold. She’s not my mistress, by the way.’

  ‘I didn’t suppose she was.’

  ‘Hang what you supposed. I came because — let me see, why did I come — because you asked me to and now that our father is in Abraham’s bosom you are the head of the family, if there is a family.’

  Matthew felt cool now. He was glad that Austin had had a drink or two. A little craziness would help here. He was determined not to let this meeting fail in the way his meeting with Mavis had failed.

  ‘Then let me enact the head of the family,’ said Matthew, ‘by asking you whether you’ve got a job yet.’

  ‘No, I haven’t, and since we’re on the subject I’m broke. Could you lend me some money?’

  That’s what he came for, Matthew thought. Of course. He felt exasperated and disappointed but still determined to keep Austin with him until — until what? What did he want, what seriousness could they possibly achieve? How, he now realized, his whole scene had changed since he reached England. Something had dwindled, some pure fire. Give Austin the money and let him go. Human beings are better off without pure fires. But it’s what I need, thought Matthew, not what he needs, that makes this so important for me.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ said Matthew. ‘I’ll just find my cheque book.’ He began to ferret about in the desk.

  ‘You despise me, don’t you,’ said Austin behind him.

  ‘No,’ said Matthew, still searching. He found the cheque book. He could keep Austin now until he wrote the cheque. He turned round and sat down. ‘Austin, can’t we stop being enemies at last?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Can’t we forgive each other — or rather can’t you forgive me?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Please try,’ said Matthew. ‘As you said just now, I’m old —’

  ‘That hurt, did it?’

  ‘Please. I’m old and you’re not young. And we’re not just two acquaintances, we’re part of each other. While this bitterness exists there’s a part of each of us that is poisoned. Can’t you feel the poison in yourself?

  ‘Yes,’ said Austin. ‘But there’s only one way to cure that. And it isn’t by forgiving you, as you rather mawkishly put it. What does that church language mean anyway? There isn’t such a thing as forgiveness. It’s a theological myth. You should know that, since you’re such a religious expert.’

  Austin had abandoned his nonchalant posture, leaning forward now in the chair and staring at his brother. Matthew leaned forward too. It was as if they were playing chess. Outside, under the walnut tree, the Irishman was pushing the mower over the lawn.

  ‘Never mind the word,’ said Matthew, ‘there are movements of the spirit which break down resentment, which let love and pity in —’

  ‘I don’t want your pity.’

  ‘I was thinking of yours.’

  ‘My pity for you? Don’t make me laugh, Sir Matthew.’

  ‘I know you see me as a success,’ said Matthew, ‘but I’m not a success. Everyone has wounds which they hide and failures and humiliations which torment them. I want and I need to be at peace with you. How this thing grew up between us God knows — at any rate God if He existed would be the only one who could know, it’s so da
mn complicated and so deep and so beyond the conscious will of either of us. But never mind how it grew. We don’t need to know that in order to make it cease. To make it cease is perhaps something oddly simple. There’s that much good in the world, at any rate.’

  ‘I don’t know that there is that much good in the world,’ said Austin. ‘And why do you imagine that I want you to be at peace with me? Why should your peace be an aim of mine? If you were at peace that would be your final triumph. That at least you shan’t have while my will can prevent it.’

  ‘Your will can prevent it forever,’ said Matthew, ‘so you needn’t feel any anxiety on that score. But why choose strife and unhappiness? Because this does make you unhappy, doesn’t it?’

  Austin after a moment’s pause said softly, ‘Yes.’ Then he leaned back in his chair, still staring. He added, ‘But why should I want happiness more than anything else? You don’t.’

  ‘I’m not sure about that,’ said Matthew. He wondered about it for a moment. Ease of spirit, absence of anxiety, absence of fear. These were the ingredients of happiness.

  ‘Oh get on with it,’ said Austin. ‘Write the bloody cheque and let me go. I swallowed my pride and came here partly because I’m financially desperate and can’t live on air and my girl friends any longer, and partly because I’ve realized I don’t care a damn. I’m at the bottom, I don’t care, I’m free, it just doesn’t bloody matter any more. Can I have some more whisky?’

  ‘Yes. Austin, listen. I have never purposely or willingly hurt you in my life.’

  ‘That’s a lie. Please write the cheque before we start, ha ha, becoming emotional.’

  Matthew searched for his pen. He said, ‘Would a hundred pounds do you for the moment?’ He had intended to offer a larger sum but he thought, let him come again.

  ‘You’re cunning,’ said Austin. ‘Keep little brother on a lead. Interview him every month. That’s your idea, isn’t it? You want to make me into your remittance man. And then you say you have no ill-will towards me.’

  ‘I want to see you again.’