The Black Prince (Penguin Classics)

by Murdoch, Iris

‘I’m so awfully sorry for her.’

  Rachel said, ‘You run along now.’

  Julian said, ‘Oh I do wish – Ah well – ’ She went to the door. Then she said to me, ‘Bradley, could I have just a word with you? Could you just walk with me to the corner. I won’t keep you more than a moment.’

  I gave a complicit wave to Rachel and followed the child out of the house. She walked confidently down the court and into Charlotte Street without looking round. The cold sun was shining brightly and I felt a great sense of relief at being suddenly out in the open among busy indifferent anonymous people under a blue clean sky.

  We walked a few steps along the street and stopped beside a red telephone box. Julian now wore a rather jaunty boyish air. She was clearly feeling relieved too. Above her, behind her, I saw the Post Office Tower, and it was as if I myself were as high as the tower, so closely and so clearly could I see all its glittering silver details. I was tall and erect: so good was it for that moment to be outside the house, away from Priscilla’s red eyes and duller hair, to be for a moment with someone who was young and good – looking and innocent and unspoilt and who had a future.

  Julian said with a responsible air, ‘Bradley, I’m very sorry I got that all wrong.’

  ‘Nobody could have got it right. Real misery cuts off all paths to itself.’

  ‘How well you put it! But a saintly person could have comforted her.’

  ‘There aren’t any, Julian. Anyway, you’re too young to be a saint.’

  ‘I know I’m stupidly young. Oh dear, old age is so awful, poor Priscilla. Look, Bradley, what I wanted to say was just thank you so much for that letter. I think it’s the most wonderful letter that anybody ever wrote to me.’

  ‘What letter?’

  ‘That letter about art, about art and truth.’

  ‘Oh that. Yes.’

  ‘I regard you as my teacher.’

  ‘Kind of you, but – ’

  ‘I want you to give me a reading list, a larger one.’

  ‘Thank you for bringing the water buffalo back. I’ll give you something else instead.’

  ‘Oh will you, please? Anything will do, any little thing. I’d so like to have something from you, I think it would inspire me, something that’s been with you a long time, something that you’ve handled a lot.’

  I was rather touched by this. ‘I’ll look out something. And now I’d better – ’

  ‘Bradley, don’t go. We hardly ever talk. Well, I know we can’t now, but do let’s meet again soon, I want to talk to you about Hamlet.’

  ‘Hamlet! Oh all right, but – ’

  ‘I have to do it in my exam. And Bradley, I say, I did agree with that review you wrote about my father’s work.’

  ‘How did you see that review?’

  ‘I saw my mother putting it away, and she looked so secretive – ’

  ‘That was very sly of you.’

  ‘I know. I’ll never become a saint, not even if I live to be as old as your sister. I do think my father should be told the truth for once, everyone has got into a sort of mindless habit of flattering him, he’s an accepted writer and a literary figure and all that, and no one really looks at the stuff critically as they would if he were unknown, it’s like a conspiracy – ’

  ‘I know. All the same I’m not going to publish it.’

  ‘Why not? He ought to know the truth about himself. Everyone should.’

  ‘So young people think.’

  ‘And another thing, about Christian, my father says he’s working Christian on your behalf – ’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t know what he thinks he’s at, but I’m sure you should go and see him and ask him. And if I were you I’d get away like you told them you were going to. Perhaps I could come and see you in Italy, I’d love that. Francis Marloe can look after Priscilla, I rather like him. I say, do you think Priscilla will go back to her husband? I’d rather die than do that if I was her.’

  So much hard clarity all at once was a bit hard to react to. The young are so direct. I said, ‘To answer your last question, I don’t know. Thank you for the observations which preceded it.’

  ‘I do love the way you talk, you’re so precise, not like my father. He lives in a sort of rosy haze with Jesus and Mary and Buddha and Shiva and the Fisher King all chasing round and round dressed up as people in Chelsea.’

  This was such a good description of Arnold’s work that I laughed. ‘I’m grateful for your advice, Julian.’

  ‘I regard you as my philosopher.’

  ‘Thank you for treating me as an equal.’

  She looked up at me, not sure if this was a joke. ‘Bradley, we will be friends, won’t we, real friends?’

  ‘What was the meaning of the air balloon?’ I said.

  ‘Oh, that was just a bit of exhibitionism.’

  ‘I pursued it.’

  ‘How lovely!’

  ‘It escaped me.’

  ‘I’m glad it got lost. I was very attached to it.’

  ‘It was a sacrifice to the gods?’

  ‘Yes. How did you know?’

  ‘Mr Belling gave it to you.’

  ‘Yes, how did – ’

  ‘I’m your philosopher.’

  ‘I really loved that balloon. I did sometimes think of letting it go, it was a sort of nervous urge. But I didn’t know I’d cut the string – ’

  ‘Until you saw your mother in the garden.’

  ‘Until I saw you in the garden.’

  ‘Well, Julian, now I must let you go, cut the string, your mother is waiting – ’

  ‘When can we talk about Hamlet?’

  ‘I’ll ring up – ’

  ‘Don’t forget you’re my guru.’

  I turned back into the court. When I got to the sitting – room Rachel moved towards me and enveloped me with a spontaneous yet planned movement. We swayed together, nearly falling over her piled macintosh upon the floor, and then slumped down on to Hartbourne’s armchair. She tried to nudge me back into the depths of the chair, her knee climbing over mine, but I kept her upright, holding her as if she were a large doll. ‘Oh Rachel, let us not get into a muddle.’

  ‘You cheated me out of those minutes. Whatever it is, we’re in it. Christian just rang up.’

  ‘About Priscilla?’

  ‘Yes. I said Priscilla was staying here. She said – ’

  ‘I don’t want to know.’

  ‘Bradley, I want to tell you something and I want you to think about it. It’s something I’ve discovered since I wrote you that letter. I don’t really mind all that much about Christian and Arnold. I suddenly feel that it’s sort of set me free. Do you understand, Bradley? Do you know what that means?’

  ‘Rachel, I don’t want a muddle. I’ve got to work and I’ve got to be alone, I’m just going to write a book I’ve been waiting all my life to write – ’

  ‘You look so Bradleian at this moment I could cry over you. We’re not young and we’re not fools. There’ll be no muddle except for the one that Arnold makes. But a new world has come into being which is yours and mine. There will always be a place where we can be together. I need love, I need more people to love, I need you to love. Of course I want you to love me back, but even that’s less important, and what we do isn’t important at all. Just holding your hand is marvellous and makes my blood move again. Things are happening at last, I’m developing, I’m changing, think of all that’s happened since yesterday. I’ve been dead for years and unhappy and terribly secretive. I thought I’d be loyal to him till the end of time, and of course I will be and of course I love him, that’s not in question. But loving him seemed like being in a box, and now I’m out of the box. Do you know, I think quite accidentally we may have happened upon the key to perfect happiness. I suspect one can’t be happy anyway until one’s over forty. You’ll see how little drama there’ll be. Nothing will change except the deep things. I’m Arnold’s wife forever. And you can go and write your book and be alone and what
ever you want. But we’ll each have a resource, we’ll have each other, it will be an eternal bond, like a religious vow, it will save us, if only you will let me love you.’

  ‘But Rachel – this will be a secret – ?’

  ‘No. Oh, everything’s changed so since even a little while ago. We can live in the open, there’s nothing to be secretive about. I feel free, I’ve been set free, like Julian’s balloon, I’m sailing up above the world and looking down at it at last, it’s like a mystical experience. We don’t have to keep secrets. Arnold has somehow forged a new situation. I shall have friends at last, real friends, I shall go about the world, I shall have you. And Arnold will accept it, he’ll have to, he might even learn humility, Bradley, he’s our slave. I’ve got my will back at last. We’ve become gods. Don’t you see?’

  ‘Not quite,’ I said.

  ‘You do love me a bit, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course I do, I always have, but I can’t exactly define – ’

  ‘Don’t define! That’s the point!’

  ‘Rachel, I don’t want to feel guilty. It would interfere with my work.’

  ‘Oh Bradley, Bradley – ’ She began to laugh helplessly. Then she drew her knees up again and threw the weight of her torso forward against me. We toppled over backwards into the chair with her mainly on top. I felt her weight and saw her face close to mine, leering and anarchic with emotion, unfamiliar and undefended and touching, and I relaxed and felt her body relax too, falling like heavy liquid into the interstices of my own, falling like honey. Her wet mouth travelled across my cheek and settled upon my mouth, like the celestial snail closing the great gate. As blackness fell for a moment I saw the Post Office Tower, haloed with blue sky, aslant and looking in at the window. (This was impossible, actually, since the next house blocks any possible view of the tower.)

  Francis Marloe came into the room, said ‘Oh, sorry’, and went out again. I slowly unwound from Rachel, not because of Francis (I minded him no more than if he had been a dog) but because I was feeling sexually excited and correspondingly alarmed. Guilt and fear, endemic in my blood, prickled, indistinguishable at that moment from desire, but prophetically announcing themselves. At the same time, I was deeply moved by Rachel’s confidence in me. Perhaps the new world of which she had spoken really existed. Could I enter it without disloyalty? And at that moment it was not disloyalty to Arnold which concerned me most. I would have to think. I said, ‘I shall have to think.’

  ‘Of course you will. You are a chap who thinks.’

  ‘Rachel – ’

  ‘I know. You’re going to tell me to go.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m going. See how docile I am. Don’t be frightened by anything I said. You haven’t got to do anything at all.’

  ‘The unmoved mover.’

  ‘I’ll run. Can I see you tomorrow?’

  ‘Rachel, I’m so terrified of being tied by anything just now. You’ll think me so mean and spiritless – I do care and I’m very grateful – but I’ve got to write this book, I’ve got to, and I’ve got to be worthy to – ’

  ‘I do respect and admire you, Bradley. That’s part of it. You’re so much more serious about writing than Arnold is. Don’t worry about tomorrow or about anything. I’ll ring you. Don’t get up. I want to leave you sitting there looking so thin and tall and solemn. Like a – like a – Inspector of Taxes. Just remember, freedom, a new world. Perhaps that’s just what your book needs, what it’s been waiting for. Oh you’re such a schoolboy, such a puritan. It’s time for you to grow up and be free. Good – bye, Bradley. May your own god bless you.’

  She ran out. I stayed where I was, as she had told me to. I was greatly struck by what she had just said. I reflected upon it. Perhaps after all Rachel was the destined angel. How very peculiar it all was, and how brimful I was of sexual desire and how unusual this was.

  I found that I was staring at the face of Francis Marloe. He had, I realized, been in the room for some time. He was making curious grimaces, closing up his eyes in a way that involved wrinkling his nose and dilating his nostrils. He looked, while doing this, as unselfconscious as an animal in the zoo. Perhaps he was shortsighted and was trying to focus on my face.

  ‘Are you all right, Brad?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘You’ve got a funny look.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Do you mind if I go out and have some lunch?’

  ‘Lunch? I thought it was the evening.’

  ‘It’s after twelve. There’s only baked beans in the kitchen. Do you mind – ’

  ‘Yes, yes, go.’

  ‘I’ll bring some light stuff in for Priscilla.’

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘She’s asleep. Brad – ’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Could you give me a pound?’

  ‘Here.’

  ‘Thanks. And, Brad – ’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m afraid that bronze thing got broken. It won’t stand up properly.’

  He thrust the warm bronze into my hand and I put it down on the table. One of the water buffalo’s legs was crumpled. It fell over lopsidedly. I stared at it. The lady smiled. She resembled Rachel. When I looked up Francis was gone.

  I went softly into the bedroom. Priscilla was sleeping high up on her pillows, her mouth open and the neck of her blouse pulling at her throat. Relaxed in sleep, a softer less peevish dejection made her face look a little younger. Her breath made a soft regular sound like ‘eschew ... eschew ...’ She still had her shoes on.

  Very gently I undid the top button of her blouse. The neck fell open, revealing the badly soiled interior of the collar. I eased off her shoes, holding them by the long pointed heels, and pulled the blankets over her plump sweat – darkened feet. The breathing-murmur ceased, but she did not waken. I left the room.

  I went into the spare room and lay down on the bed. I thought about my two recent encounters with Rachel and how calm and pleased I had felt after the first one, and how disturbed and excited I now felt after the second one. Was I going to ‘fall in love’ with Rachel? Should I even play with the idea, utter the words to myself? Was I upon the brink of some balls – up of catastrophic dimensions, some real disaster? Or was this perhaps in an unexpected form the opening itself of my long – awaited ‘break-through’, my passage into another world, into the presence of the god? Or was it just nothing, the ephemeral emotions of an unhappily married middle – aged woman, the transient embarrassment of an elderly puritan who had for a very long time had no adventures at all? Indeed it is true, I said to myself, it is a long time since 1 had an adventure of any sort. I tried to think soberly about Arnold. But quite soon I was conscious of nothing except a flaming sea of vague undirected physical desire.

  It is customary in this age to attribute a comprehensive and quite unanalysed causality to the ‘sexual urges’. These obscure forces, sometimes thought of as particular historical springs, sometimes as more general and universal destinies, are credited with the power to make of us, delinquents, neurotics, lunatics, fanatics, martyrs, heroes, saints, or more exceptionally, integrated fathers, fulfilled mothers, placid human animals, and the like. Vary the mixture, and there’s nothing ‘sex’ cannot be said to explain, by cynics and pseudo-scientists such as Francis Marloe, whose views on these matters we are shortly to hear in detail. I am myself however no sort of Freudian and I feel it important at this stage of my ‘explanation’ or ‘apologia’, or whatever this malformed treatise may be said to be, to make this clear beyond the possibility of misunderstanding. I abominate such half baked tosh. My own sense of the ‘beyond’, which heaven forbid anyone should confuse with anything ‘scientific’, is quite other.

  I say this the more passionately because I think it just conceivable that an obtuse person might mistake some of my attitudes for something of that sort. Have I not just been speculating whether Rachel’s sweet unexpected affections might not set free the talent which I had so long
known of, believed in, and nursed in vain? What sort of picture of me has my reader received? I fear it must lack definition, since as I have never had any strong sense of my own identity, how can I characterize sharply that which I can scarcely apprehend? However my own delicacy cannot necessarily cozen judgement and may even provoke it. ‘A frustrated fellow, no longer young, lacking confidence in himself as a man: of course, naturally, he feels that a good fuck would set him up, release his talents, in which incidentally he has given us no good reason to believe. He pretends he is thinking about his book, while really he is thinking about a woman’s breasts. He pretends he is apprehensive about his moral uprightness, but really it is quite another sort of rectitude that is causing him anxiety.’

  I would like to make it clear that any explanation along these lines is not only over-simplified and ‘coarse’, it is also entirely wide of the mark. In so far as I thought about the possibility of making love to Rachel (which by this time I did, but with a deliberately controlled vagueness) I did not, I was not such a shallow fool as to, imagine that a trivial sexual release would bring me the great freedom for which I had sought, nor had I in any way confused animal instinct with godhead. And yet, so complex are minds and so deeply intermingled are their faculties that one kind of change often images or prefigures another of, as it seems, a quite different sort. One perceives a subterranean current, one feels the grip of destiny, striking coincidences occur and the world is full of signs: such things are not necessarily senseless or symptoms of incipient paranoia. They can indeed be the shadows of a real and not yet apprehended metamorphosis. Coming events do cast shadows. Writers know that their books are often prophetic. One gratuitously imagines what is really going to happen. Though since these fates are as teasing as oracles, the happening may be curiously different from its prefigurement. As it was in this case.

  It was not frivolous to connect my sense of an impending revelation with my anxiety about my work. If some great change was pending in my life this could not but be part of my development as an artist, since my development as an artist was my development as a man. Rachel might indeed be the messenger of the god. She was certainly confronting me with a challenge to which I would have to respond boldly or otherwise. It had often, when I thought most profoundly about it, occurred to me that I was a bad artist because I was a coward. Would now courage in life prefigure and even perhaps induce courage in art?