An Accidental Man

by Iris Murdoch

  ‘Gracie —’

  ‘That’s just the point. Firstly, I doubt very much if Char would accept money from Gracie, and secondly —’

  ‘Gracie hasn’t offered any?’

  ‘Precisely. Our daughter is a mystery, and with Char as she is we just can’t wait on mysteries. So we thought we’d start a Charlotte Fund, you know, a sort of Charlottegesellschaft.’

  ‘Excellent idea.’

  ‘And we’d get a lot of people to contribute. There’d be us of course, and Gracie if she wanted to join in, and then we thought of asking you and Mavis and the Odmores and the Arbuthnots —’

  ‘Old Char will be a millionaire at this rate —’

  ‘Be quiet, George. And Penny Sayce and Oliver and —’

  ‘I think we should jolly well start a fund for ourselves while we’re about it!’

  ‘But would Charlotte accept it?’ said Matthew.

  ‘This is where you come in,’ said Clara. ‘Of course George and I have thought of helping her, but she’s so difficult and stiff and proud. You know, well I’m not giving away any secrets, that she’s in love with George, always has been, be quiet, George, and this makes her awfully touchy, in a way it’s the tragedy of her life, and she’s always seen us being so happy together and so on. If we ask her she may go off in a huff and then it’ll be that much harder to do anything for her. But if you ask her and if you tell her it’s entirely your idea, and that you’re running it — you needn’t really be, George will run it — you see, she respects you so much, it will make it all much more impersonal and business-like sort of, you do understand, and please forgive us for hoping, well for assuming, that you’d like to help. Even very small sums, guaranteed every year, from all those people —’

  ‘Of course I’ll help,’ said Matthew, ‘and do whatever you want.’

  ‘Oh good! We’ll go on now and ask the others. And then you’ll explain it to Char when it’s all complete?’

  ‘Yes —’

  ‘Thank you so much!’

  ‘It’s a very kind idea,’ said Matthew. ‘By the way, I’ve been telephoning Charlotte and got no answer.’

  ‘Really? Well, she’s — oh she’s on holiday I think —’

  ‘Now if you’ll forgive me, I must make those ‘phone calls.’

  ‘I hope we haven’t been a nuisance.’

  ‘No, indeed —’

  Matthew saw George and Clara to the door. He waved them well away down the street and then turned back into the house.

  Garth and Dorina came out of the dining-room like a pair of animals, as shadowy as rats in the darkening hall and went into the drawing-room where Dorina sat down and began to cry silently into her hands.

  ‘Please stop it,’ said Matthew quietly. ‘You said you wouldn’t. Compose yourself. I’m going to ring for the taxi.’ He dialled again. ‘The taxi’s coming at once. Now, please, Dorina —’

  ‘I’m afraid I upset her,’ said Garth.

  ‘Shall I get you a handkerchief?’

  ‘I told her that her having come here will absolutely kill my father, it’ll kill him.’

  ‘Your father will never know,’ said Matthew. He felt an omen of despair settling on his heart like a big black bird. He wanted to take Dorina in his arms.

  ‘He’ll know,’ said Garth. ‘He’ll find out somehow. He’s the sort of man who finds out that sort of thing. Some demon in his destiny will let him know of it. Of course I won’t tell him, but he’ll find out all the same. Dorina will probably tell him herself, she’ll have to.’

  ‘I didn’t intend to come to Matthew,’ said Dorina, wiping her eyes with her knuckles. ‘It was an accident.’

  ‘That’s perfectly true,’ said Matthew. ‘Dorina understands. Leave her to her understanding of the situation. Since it is unthinkable that Austin should know this he simply must not be told it. And the four people who know it will not tell him. That’s all. I am very sorry that you arrived at just this moment and I am very sorry that you have upset her.’

  ‘So am I, I should have held my tongue.’

  ‘Yes. How did you know she was here anyway?’

  ‘Mavis told me. I called about something else. But really, you two must have been living here in some sort of dream world for three days. Three days! My father will run mad. And how can you so coolly put this burden on to Dorina? You put on to her the burden of this silence. It’s all very well for you and me and Mavis, we’ll be getting on with our own lives elsewhere, but Dorina will be with Austin every day with this dreadful thing kept secret. She’s certain to tell him eventually out of sheer anxiety.’

  ‘Enough, Garth,’ said Matthew, ‘enough. I didn’t invite this situation. Dorina came here looking for Charlotte. I talked to her because she was here, I had to.’

  ‘You didn’t have to keep her for three days — and nights,’ said Garth.

  ‘You are not suggesting —’

  ‘No, of course not, that’s not your style —’

  Dorina got up and still concealing her face with crossed hands ran out of the room. The dining-room door closed behind her. The front door bell rang.

  Matthew went out to the door. It was the taxi, the same one. ‘Sorry, I don’t want you just now.’

  ‘Make up your mind,’ said the taximan, as Matthew paid him again.

  In the drawing-room Garth was standing rigid in the same position. ‘As I was saying, that’s not your style. You do it by talking. You want to inspire devotion. You want to have people forever. Christ, you might have had me. You’ve got Ludwig. And now you’ve got Dorina.’

  ‘Garth, please, this is profitless anger.’

  ‘Thank God I’m not in your cage —’

  ‘You’ve upset Dorina terribly.’

  ‘And what do you think he’ll do to her when he finds out?’

  ‘He won’t find out.’

  ‘If I hadn’t warned you you’d have met the Tisbournes on the doorstep.’

  ‘Garth. Stop being angry. Stop.’

  ‘All right. Now I suppose I say, “Sorry, sir”, and you say, “Not at all, my dear fellow.”’

  ‘Garth, please.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m so bloody frightened for Dorina. And you see — I thought of trying to help her too — in my little way — if I’d had less scruple and more nerve I might have done. Maybe you were right to attempt it. People often perish because other people are too meticulous or dignified or something to rush in. One should rush in. But here. It’s so dangerous, for both of us, I mean you and me, and the penalty falls on her. Sorry, I’m incoherent —’

  ‘No, you’re perfectly clear.’

  ‘I’m sorry for what I said about you. I wasn’t implying it was all sex.’

  ‘Perhaps it is all sex,’ said Matthew. ‘But anyway what’s done is done.’

  ‘If Dorina holds her tongue it’ll be for love of you. You realize that? But she’ll tell him sooner or later out of sheer death wish.’

  ‘No,’ said Matthew, ‘I don’t think she will now — because she is — better —’

  ‘Better! Is that what “better” is like? God!’

  ‘I didn’t invite or want this situation. Now, Garth, please go away. This can’t be argued about, certainly not in these terms. I must talk to Dorina again and make her calm. I’ll get her out of here in the next half-hour.’

  ‘If you like I’ll wait and take her back.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re going to escort her, are you?’

  ‘No. She’s going alone in a taxi. She’s prepared for that.’ He added, ‘I shall not see her again.’

  Garth lifted his hands and dropped them heavily to his sides. He gave a kind of laugh. ‘Ah well —’

  They had been standing opposite to each other in stiff awkward attitudes. With Garth’s gesture they both moved, staring at each other’s faces. There was dread and shuddering in the room.

  ‘I’m very sorry,’ said Garth.

  ‘That’s all right. You — I understand.’<
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  There was a moment’s silence.

  ‘Well, goodbye then,’ said Garth. ‘And good luck to all concerned!’

  He went out abruptly and had closed the front door behind him before Matthew could reach it. Matthew went into the dining-room.

  The dining-room was empty. He began slowly to climb the stairs. He called, ‘Dorina!’ He went into the bedroom which she had occupied. His pyjamas, which Dorina had insisted on wearing although Mavis had sent her nightdress, were lying on the unmade bed. Dorina was not there. ‘Dorina, where are you?’ Matthew searched the other rooms upstairs and downstairs, calling out to her. He even went down into the cellar. He noticed that her suitcase and handbag had gone from the dining-room. There was no sign of Dorina in the house at all.

  In fruitless panic he ran out and looked for her in the street. Then he came back and telephoned Mavis. He and Mavis telephoned each other at intervals throughout the day and throughout the night that followed, but there was no news. Dorina had vanished.

  Dear Mitzi,

  I am leaving the house early and when you find this I shall be gone for good. Sorry. You were kind to me and I appreciate it but we are not exactly made for each other and I can’t forgive you what happened the other night though I know in a sense it wasn’t your fault. Some people are sort of automatically the instruments of other people’s woe, and you have never brought me luck. (Who has? now I come to think of it.) So let’s say goodbye quietly and make a clean break, as they say, with thanks on my part and best wishes to you. Seeing Dorina here was a salutary shock actually and I am glad it happened, it was for the best. It made me feel how absolutely above everything else in my life she is. People like you just pull me down. (Sorry.) She is the only person who has ever pulled me up. We needs must love the highest when we see it and all that. It has taken me two or three days to put my mind in order but now it is in order and I know what I must do. I must seek my own good in the honest place and trust myself utterly to that good to overcome all my difficulties: which difficulties lie mainly in my own rottenness. You are better without a chap like me, incidentally. Dorina loves me with a pure love and because she is some sort of angel in my life she can perhaps change me, anyway it is worth trying. And I propose to start as from now and cut out all the shilly-shallying diplomacy. I am going to Valmorana to claim my wife. As you will see, I have packed up all my stuff and I shall take (shall have taken) it away by taxi. Sorry, but I think a quick end is better than messing around. Please have the decency and kindness not to try to communicate with me. I shall be trying to live now wholly with and for Dorina and if I am ever to save myself from corruption and chaos I must put my all into that effort now. Please understand and forgive, Mitzi. I couldn’t do you much good but I also honestly believe I haven’t done you much harm. You’ll soon get over yours truly. And all the best, old girl. Goodbye, and I mean it. Please don’t reply to this or pursue me ever. You know how bloody I can be. It’s no good. This is a moment of vision and I know.

  Yours

  Austin

  PS. Thanks for everything. Goodbye.

  Mitzi, standing in her kitchen in her dressing-gown, crumpled up the letter which she had found propped up in the hall when she went down to fetch the milk. She turned on the gas stove and lit the gas and filled the kettle and put the kettle on the gas. She walked back into the sitting-room and sat down.

  She so little doubted the absolute finality of Austin’s letter that some immense time-shift had already occurred between his sojourn with her and the present moment. This was another era. That he should have sat in his room and penned the letter yesterday, even today, was inconceivable. Austin had been lost in some ancient cataclysm. He was utterly gone. A few shattered unconnected things remained. A hurricane had passed removing purpose and future and significant emotion. She sat until the kettle boiled and then made the tea. The house was very silent. She drank a little tea. Then she went up to Austin’s room, looked upon its emptiness, and came down again. She wondered whether to get dressed or to go back to bed. She went back into her bedroom and lay down. Ever since Austin’s arrival she had lived in a state of vague, often acute, sexual excitement. This too was gone. Her body, which had been large and vague and flabby, like a jelly fish afloat in warm water, was now shrivelled and hard and small. It was like lying alive in one’s coffin, inhabiting a rigid dried contorted frame and looking about with one’s eyes.

  Despair had shot her down so quickly there had not even been a struggle. She would not try to pursue Austin ever. He had returned to his wife and must be allowed to follow his own good without any hindrance from what was now the far past. He had got cleanly away and now existed elsewhere in the closed circle of his own life, secret and forever gone. Her love for him had grown so fast, love can grow fast. There had been a thousand ties of tenderness, a thousand dreams, from which he had so deftly escaped and fled.

  She had a sick old black feeling like the feeling when her parents died. They had both died when Mitzi was in her early twenties. Since than no one had been really kind to her, except Austin. He had been thoughtlessly carelessly kind, he had brought honey-sweetness into her life, but he had never loved her with that special love which makes a person to be, makes them more of a person. Her parents had done that. The weird loved atmosphere of her childhood came back to her now, the shy awkwardness of her proud father, the little drab cosy private formalities of her shabby home. She had shaken it off, cleaned it off like an old smell, though she loved her parents always. In the days of her fame, when she had been a feather-weight bird-swift six-foot-one Etruscan goddess she had imagined that she had become a different person. But she had never really succeeded. She was her daddy’s girl, his Mitzi, the child of that vanished home still. Instead of opening out into wealth and freedom and renown her life had become ever narrower until now it had dwindled to a point.

  In the golden days wherever she had travelled in the world she had sent picture postcards back to her parents nearly every day. The postcards were a proud record of achievement, a sort of perpetual fanfare. To search out the gaudiest ones, to stamp them with exotic stamps, had been such a positive pleasure and a cumulative satisfaction. Even now whenever she saw picture postcards for sale in London she felt, in a stale sad way, the old impulse which was a kind of act of love. When her mother died and she sorted out the little house in Poplar, she found all the postcards, hundreds of them, in a big cardboard box. The box was with her now, in fact it was under her bed. Mitzi pulled herself up slowly and edged the box out with her foot. Hanging her head dully down she pulled the lid off and began to turn over the pile of stiff bright cards. The Alps. The Mediterranean. Sydney. San Francisco. Had she really been to all those places? Castles in lands she had forgotten. How little that brightly coloured world had ever entered into her being. She looked at it all now with incredulity. And on the backs, always the same flat message. Great fun here. Hope you are well. Awfully sunny here. Really hot, lots of wine. Sun shining and swimming marvellous. Much enjoying sea and sun. Much love. Had the wide world been nothing but sea shores and drink and sun? Those suns were shrunken now in memory and gave little warmth. Had they ever really warmed her at all? What had her life been? She had marvelled when she first saw great mountain peaks with snow. Someone had marvelled. But all was dead now. Even for her dear father she had had no voice really and his love had given her no lasting formation.

  I have not achieved myself, thought Mitzi, and I cannot now. I have no money and no job and no Austin. No one is kind to me any more or knows or cares whether I live or die. I could sit in this house forever and nobody would come to me. She continued dully to turn over the cards. One was blank and she picked it up. It was of the glacier at Chamonix and it brought with it a sudden physical sensation of sun and snow and racing on skis. She turned it over and reached for a pencil and addressed the card to Austin. She wrote on it It’s sunny here. Wish you were with me. Good luck. She propped the card up beside the bed. She thought about her dear fat
her and how his loved being seemed now to be drawing her towards itself. She had seen his coffin lowered into the grave and her life had seemed to end then. Perhaps indeed it had ended. She destroyed her ankle soon after and in doing so destroyed herself. It only remained to complete the process. Mitzi shuffled to the cupboard and found the big bottle of sleeping tablets which the doctor had given her. She had only taken one or two. Now she would take the rest. They would be sorry, Austin would be sorry, this would be the last thing he would expect. At least she could surprise him. He would be sorry. Tears had come and she whimpered quietly. She went and fetched some water and the whisky bottle. She began swallowing the tablets and drinking the whisky, choking every now and then with sobs.

  Meanwhile Austin had arrived with his suitcase on the doorstep at Valmorana.

  He was in a state of elated self-satisfaction. A great anxiety had been taken from him and he had been led through shame to revelation and certainty. The anxiety concerned Norman. Austin had spent some time at the hospital where with a nervous morbid urge to know the worst he had persistently questioned Norman to find out how much he could remember. Mrs Monkley could not thank Austin enough for his concern and kindness. Austin peered into Norman’s now curiously guileless brown eyes to see if he could discern lurking in those speckled depths any dawning memory of what had actually happened. There seemed to be none. Norman was in many ways much better. He knew his wife and could cope with the present and even talk about the future. He could remember his days in hospital and he could recall his childhood. He had not lost his skills. He could vaguely recall his marriage. Nearer times seemed to have been blotted out. Austin’s probing elicited nothing. ‘Don’t you remember giving me your novel to read?’

  ‘Novel? No.’ Norman seemed to think that Austin was a doctor and thanked him warmly for his visits. Austin brought Norman fruit and flowers. The hospital staff now thought that Norman would never fully recover. So that was all very satisfactory.

  The shock of having been found by Dorina in Mitzi’s arms first prostrated him with such a sense of uncleanness and shame that he could not face his wife. He wrote her two very crawling letters, and then later felt that he ought to have been more manly. Was it really such a terrible crime to hug another girl when one’s wife had left one? What struck him now was rather the disparity between the two women. Why was he, the husband of Dorina, stooping to cuddle a fat illiterate landlady? He had been sorry for Mitzi, that was the trouble, and that had led him, as so often, to be far too kind. What a mess it all was. He had endured it, he now saw, only because Dorina had been safely immured and sequestered. She had been, while he developed his thoughts and followed through his phase, in captivity. She could have, in this interval, no thought or motion. She was on ice. But now providence had led her, by her sudden brief appearance in his world, to break the spell. This visitation had done all, it had returned him to reality. Whatever demons he and Dorina had engendered between them must be faced together. They had had their holiday from each other and it had produced nothing but misery and muddle. It had also produced the certainty that they belonged together and that, for better or worse, they were chained to each other forever, their minds mutually interdependent to the last trembling atom of consciousness. People so tied have to live together even if life together is torment since life apart is yet greater torment. So Austin saw. And as he came nearer to Valmorana his determination became more and more radiant with hope. What he felt Dorina must feel too. In the fullness of time they had found each other again, just as they knew they would.