The Black Prince (Penguin Classics)

by Murdoch, Iris

  The next morning I had a headache and that illusion of not having slept at all, which insomniacs know so well. I decided I must telephone my doctor for more pills. The awful anxiety about. Priscilla was combined with a frenetic desire to get away and write my book. I also felt, together with this, a tender gratitude in the direction of Rachel and a self – indulgent desire to write her an ambiguous letter. In this respect however it turned out that she had forestalled me. As I emerged again into my little hallway after finishing my breakfast, or rather after drinking my tea, since I never eat at breakfast time, I found on the mat a long letter from her which had evidently just been delivered by hand. This letter ran as follows.

  My dearest Bradley, please forgive my writing to you at once like this. (Arnold is asleep. I am alone in the lounge. It is one in the morning. An owl is hooting.) You ran away so quickly, I was not able to say properly half the things which I wanted to say. What a schoolboy you are. Do you know that you blushed so beautifully? It is years since I have seen a man blush like that. It is also years since I have kissed anybody properly. And it was a very important kiss, wasn’t it? (Two very important kisses!) My dear, I have wanted to kiss you like that for a long time. Bradley, I want and need your love. I don’t mean an affair. I mean your love. I said to you yesterday that I did not mean what I said about Arnold when you saw me on that awful day up in the bedroom. That was not entirely true. I half meant it. Of course I love Arnold, but I can hate him too, and it can go along with love that one never forgives certain things. I thought for a short while that I should never forgive you for having seen me in that unspeakable moment of defeat – a wife crying upstairs while her husband shrugs his shoulders and talks about ‘women’ to a man friend. (That’s what hell is about.) But it has worked otherwise. In fact, it made me kiss you. I have got to have you as an ally now. Not in any ‘battle’ against my husband. I cannot fight him. But just because I am a lonely ageing woman and you are an old friend and I want to put my arms round your neck. It is also important that you love and admire Arnold so much. Bradley, you asked me if I thought Arnold was in love with Christian and I gave you no answer. After seeing him tonight I begin to think that he is. He laughed and laughed, he seemed so happy. (I suspect he spent the day with her.) He kept talking about you. but he was thinking about her. I cannot express to you what pain this gives me. This is, my dear, another reason why I need you. Bradley, we must have an alliance which is forever. Nothing else will do, and only you will do. I must live with my husband as best I can, with his infidelities and his tempers, which no outsider, not even you, really knows of or will believe in, and also with my own indelible hate, which is part of my love. I cannot cannot forgive. When I lay that day with the sheet over my bruised face I made a pact with hell. Yet I love him. Isn’t that odd, and can one keep sane so? You must help me. You are the only person who does and can know the truth, some of it anyway, and I love you with a special love which you must reciprocate. There is a bond between us now which cannot be broken and also a vow of silence. I will never speak of our‘ alliance’ to Arnold, and I know that you will not. Bradley, I must see you soon now, and see you often. You must get Priscilla away from Christian and bring her here, and you can visit her here, and I will look after her. Will you please telephone me this morning? I will drop this in on you early and then go home again. If Arnold is in the house when you ring I’ll talk in a conventional way, you’ll understand at once, and then you can ring again later. Oh Bradley, I need your love so much, I’m relying on you now and forever. Much much love

  R.

  PS I’ve read the review and enclose it with this letter. I think you shouldn’t publish it. It would hurt Arnold so much. You and he must love each other. That is so important. Oh help me to remain sane.

  I was upset, touched, annoyed, pleased and thoroughly frightened by this emotional and jumbled missive. What large new thing was happening now and what consequences would it have? Why did women have to make things so definite? Why could she not have let our strange experience drift in a pleasant vagueness? I had dimly thought of her as an ‘ally’ against (against?) Arnold. She had made this horrible idea explicit. And if I was to be made mad by a relationship between Arnold and Christian would it help me at all that Rachel was made mad too? How I feared these ‘needs’. I now wanted very much to see Arnold and have a frank talk, even a shouting match. But a frank talk with Arnold was something which seemed to be becoming more and more impossible. In utter dismay I sat down where I was upon a chair in the hall to think it all over. Then the telephone rang.

  'Hello, Pearson? Hartbourne here. I’m thinking of giving a little office party.’

  ‘A little what?’

  ‘A little office party. I thought of inviting Bingley and Matheson and Hadley – Smith and Caldicott and Dyson, and the wives of course, and Miss Wellington and Miss Searle and Mrs Bradshaw – ’

  'How nice.’

  'But I want to be sure you can come. You’ll be by way of being the guest of honour, you know!’

  ‘How kind.’

  ‘Now you tell me a day that would suit you and I’ll issue the invitations. It’ll be quite like old times. People so often ask after you, I thought – ’

  ‘Any day suits me.’

  ‘Monday?’

  'Fine.’

  ‘Good. Then eight o’clock at my place. By the way, shall I invite Grey – Pelham? He won’t bring his wife, so it should be all right.’

  ‘Fine. Fine.’

  ‘And I’d like to make a lunch date with you.’

  'I’ ll ring you. I haven’t got my diary.’

  ‘Well, don’t forget about the party, will you?’

  'I’ m writing it down now. Thank you so much.’

  As I put the telephone down someone began ringing the door bell. I went and opened the door. It was Priscilla. She marched past me into the sitting – room and immediately began to cry.

  ‘Oh God, Priscilla, do stop.’

  'You only want me to stop crying.’

  'All right, I only want you to stop crying. Stop crying.’

  She lay back in the big 'Hartbourne’ armchair and in fact stopped. Her hair was in ugly disorder, the darkened parting zigzagging across her head. She lay back limply, gracelessly, with her legs spread and her mouth open. There was a hole in her stocking at the knee through which pink spotty flesh bulged in a little mound.

  ‘Oh Priscilla, I am so sorry.’

  ‘Yes. Be sorry. Bradley, I think you’re right. I’d better go back to Roger.’

  'Priscilla, you can’t – ’

  ‘Why not? Have you changed your mind? You were saying so much I should go back. You said he was so unhappy and the house was so awful. He needs me, I suppose. And it is my home. Nowhere else is. Perhaps he’ll be nicer to me now. Bradley, I think I’m going mad, I’m going out of my mind. What’s it like when people go mad, does one know one’s going mad?’

  ‘Of course you aren’t going mad.’

  ' I think I’ll go to bed if you don’t mind.’

  'I’m sorry, I still haven’t made up the spare bed.’

  'Bradley, your cabinet looks different, something’s gone. Where have you put the water buffalo lady?’

  ‘The water buffalo lady?’ I looked at the gaping empty space. ‘Oh yes. I gave her away. I gave her to Julian Baffin.’

  ‘Oh Bradley, how could you, she was mine, she was mine.’ Priscilla gave a little moan and the tears began to flow again. She started to fumble vainly in her bag looking for a handkerchief.

  I remembered that technically speaking she was quite right. I had given the water buffalo lady to Priscilla years and years ago for her birthday, but finding the pretty thing once put away in a drawer had reappropriated it. ‘Oh dear!’ I felt the blush upon which Rachel had remarked.

  ‘You couldn’t even keep that for me.’

  ‘I’ll get it back.’

  ‘I only let you take her because I knew I could visit her here. I liked visiting her
here. She had her place here.’

  ‘I’m terribly sorry – ’

  ‘I’ll never get my jewels and now even she’s gone, my last little thing gone.’

  ‘Please, Priscilla, I really will – ’

  ‘You gave her to that wretched girl.’

  ‘She asked for it. I will get it back, please don’t worry. Now please go to bed and rest.’

  ‘She was mine, you gave her to me.’

  ‘I know, I know, I’ll get it back, now come on, you can have my bed.’

  Priscilla trailed into the bedroom. She got straight into the bed.

  ‘Don’t you want to undress?’

  ‘What’s the point. What’s the point of anything. I’d be better dead.’

  ‘Oh buck up, Priscilla. I’m glad you’ve come back though. Why did you leave the other place?’

  ‘Arnold made a pass at me.’

  ‘Oh!’

  ‘I pushed him away and he turned nasty. He must have told Christian about it. They were downstairs laughing and laughing and laughing. They must have been laughing at me.’

  ‘I don’t suppose they were. They were just happy.’

  ‘Well, I hated it, I hated it.’

  ‘Was Arnold there in the afternoon?’

  ‘Oh yes, he came straight back after you’d left, he was there nearly all day, they made a huge lunch downstairs, I could smell it, I didn’t want any, and I heard them laughing all the time. They didn’t want me, they left me alone nearly all day.’

  ‘Poor Priscilla.’

  ‘I can’t stand that man. And I can’t stand her either. They didn’t really want me there at all, they didn’t care about me really to help me, it was just part of a game, it was like a joke.’

  ‘You’re right there.’

  ‘They were just playing with me and triumphing and showing off. I hate them. I feel half dead. I feel as if I’m sort of bleeding inwardly. Do you think I’m going mad?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘She said a doctor was coming but he didn’t come. I feel terrible, I think I’ve got cancer. Everyone despises me, everyone knows what’s happened to me. Bradley, could you ring up Roger?’

  ‘Oh no, please – ’

  ‘I’ll have to go back to Roger. I could see Dr Macey at home. Or else I’ll kill myself. I think I’ll kill myself. No one will care.’

  ‘Priscilla, do get properly undressed. Or else get up and comb your hair. I can’t bear to see you lying dressed in bed.’

  ‘Oh what does it matter, what does it matter.’

  The front door bell rang again. I ran to open it. Francis Marloe was outside, his little eyes screwed up with ingratiating humility. ’Oh Brad, you must forgive me for coming – ’

  ‘Come in,’ I said. ‘You offered to nurse my sister. Well, she’s here and you’re engaged.’

  ‘Really? Oh goodie, goodie!’

  ‘You can go in and nurse her now, she’s in there. Can you give her a sedative?’

  ‘I always carry – ’

  ‘All right, go on.’ I picked up the telephone and dialled Rachel’s number. ‘Hello, Rachel.’

  ‘Oh – Bradley – ’

  I knew at once from her voice that she was alone. A woman can put so much into the way she says your name.

  ‘Rachel. Thanks for your sweet letter.’

  ‘Bradley – can I see you – soon – at once – ?’

  ‘Rachel, listen. Priscilla’s come back and Francis Marloe is here. Listen. I gave Julian a water buffalo with a lady on it.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A little bronze thing.’

  ‘Oh. Did you?’

  ‘Yes. She asked for it, here, you remember.’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘Well, it’s really Priscilla’s only I forgot and she wants it back. Could you get it off Julian, and bring it round, or send her? Tell her I’m very sorry – ’

  ‘She’s out, but I’ll find it. I’ll bring it at once.’

  ‘The place is full of people. We won’t be – ’

  ‘Yes, yes. I’ll come.’

  ‘He cut down my magnolia tree,’ Priscilla was saying. ‘He said it shaded the flower bed. The garden was always his garden. The house was his house. Even the kitchen was his kitchen. I’ve given my whole life to that man. I haven’t got anything else.’

  ‘The human lot is sad and awful,’ murmured Francis. ‘We are demons to each other. Yes, demons.’ He was looking pleased, pursing up his red lips and casting delighted coy glances at me with his little eyes.

  ‘Priscilla, let me comb your hair.’

  ‘No, I can’t bear to be touched, I feel as if I were a leper, I feel my flesh is rotting, I’m sure I smell – ’

  ‘Priscilla, do take your skirt off, it must be getting so crumpled.’

  ‘What does it matter, what does anything matter, oh I am so unhappy.’

  ‘At least take your shoes off.’

  ‘Sad and awful, sad and awful. Demons. Demons. Yes.’

  ‘Priscilla, do try to relax, you’re as rigid as a corpse.’

  ‘I wish I was a corpse.’

  ‘Do at least make an effort to be comfortable!’

  ‘I gave him my life. I haven’t got another one. A woman has nothing else.’

  ‘Fruitless and bootless. Fruitless and bootless.’

  ‘Oh I’m so frightened – ’

  ‘Priscilla, there’s nothing to be frightened of. Oh God, you are getting me down!’

  ‘Frightened.’

  ‘Do please take your shoes off.’

  The front door bell rang. I opened the door to Rachel and was making her a rueful face when I saw that Julian was standing just behind her.

  Rachel was wearing a light green rather military-looking macintosh. She had her hands in her pockets and her face, directed at me, communicating privately, blazed with a sort of euphoric purpose. The immediate eye to eye communication showed me how far we had moved even since our last meeting. One does not usually look deep into people’s eyes. There was a pleasant shock. Julian was wearing a tawny corduroy jacket and trousers and a brown and gold Indian scarf. She looked raffish, but had put on a self-consciously humble young person’s expression, the kind of expression which says: I know I’m the youngest person and very inexperienced and unimportant but I shall do my best to be helpful and it is very kind of you to pay any attention to me at all. This attitude is of course a special kind of vanity. The young are self – satisfied really and utterly ruthless. I saw that she was carrying the water buffalo and a large bouquet of irises.

  Rachel said meaningfully, ‘Julian arrived back and insisted on bringing the thing along herself.’

  Julian said, ‘Of course I’m very glad to bring it back to Priscilla, of course it’s hers and she must have it. I do so hope it will make her feel happier and better.’

  I let them in and ushered them into the bedroom where Priscilla was still talking to Francis. ‘He had no idea of equality between us, I suppose no man has, they all despise women – ’

  ‘Men are terrible, terrible – ’

  ‘Visitors, Priscilla!’

  Priscilla, her shoes humping the edge of the quilt, was propped up on several pillows. Her eyes were red and swollen with crying, and her mouth was rectangular with complaint, like the mouth of a letter box.

  Julian went directly and sat on the bed. She laid the irises down reverently beside Priscilla and then pushed the water buffalo lady along the coverlet, as if she was amusing a child, and thrust it up against Priscilla’s blouse, in the hollow between her breasts. Priscilla, now knowing what the thing was, and looking terrified, gave a little cry of aversion. Julian then took it into her head to kiss her and made a dive at her cheek. Their two chins collided with a click.

  I said soothingly, ‘There you are, Priscilla. There’s your water buffalo lady. She came back home to you after all.’

  Julian had retreated to the bottom of the bed. She stared at Priscilla with a look of agonized and still rather self �
�� conscious pity. She opened her lips and put her hands together as if praying. It looked as if she were begging Priscilla’s pardon for being young and good – looking and innocent and unspoilt and having a future, while Priscilla was old and ugly and sinful and wrecked and had none. The contrast between them went through the room like a spasm of pain.

  I felt the pain, I felt my sister’s anguish, I said, ‘And lovely flowers for you, Priscilla. Aren’t you a lucky girl.’

  Priscilla murmured, ’I’m not a child. You needn’t all be so – sorry for me. You needn’t all stare at me – and treat me as if I were a – ’

  She fumbled for the water buffalo and for a moment it looked as if she were going to fondle it. Then she threw it from her across the room where it crashed against the wainscot. Her tears began again and she buried her face in the pillow. The irises fell to the floor. Francis, who had picked up the bronze, hid it within his hands and smiled. I motioned Rachel and Julian out of the room.

  In the sitting – room Julian said, ‘I’m terribly sorry.’

  ‘It wasn’t your fault,’ I told her.

  ‘It must be so awful to be like that.’

  ‘You can’t imagine,’ I said, ’what it is to be like that. So don’t bother to try.’