The Nice and the Good

by Айрис Мердок

  'Better read it quickly,' said Ducane. He turned away squinting into the sunlight, trying to discern the swimming children.

  He noticed that it must be low tide since a bank of purple seaweed, only visible at that time, was making a darker blur in the clear greenish water, which had already receded by several feet since he and Paula had sat down. Theo's aimlessly purposeful figure diminished steadily.

  After a moment Ducane heard a strange sound beside him.

  He turned to see that Paula had covered her face with her hand.

  Her shoulders shook.

  'Whatever is it, Paula?'

  Paula went on shaking, and a low raucous sound came from behind the shielding hand. The other hand stretched out and tossed Eric's letter to him. Ducane read.

  SS Morania

  Suez

  My dear Paula, not to beat about the bush, this letter comes to tell you that I have met somebody perfectly marvellous on the boat and I am going to marry her. How very strange life is! I have always had a sense of being in the hands of the gods, but often they work in such unexpected ways! I knew I had to come back to England and I thought it was because you needed to see me. But how unimportant this seems now. Forgive me for putting it in this way, but I can be kindest to you by being plainest. What seemed the necessity of seeing you was really just the wanderlust, or rather the magnetism of my destiny pulling me away. Everything has worked out quite wonderfully. We are getting off the boat here and will fly to Cairo. (If you remember I have always wanted to see the pyramids.) After that we –fly to New York and on to Chicago to meet Angelica's people. (Her father is a big man in the art world, incidentally, and she has a lot of money, though of course that's not important and I didn't even know it at first. She is a marvellous person.)

  I am sorry, dear Paula, to burden you with this recital of my felicity, but there is no point in delaying the happy news. I know how much you must have been waiting and expecting. Believe me I have thought about your needs. But I think it would be unwise for us to meet now. There is much that it would be hard for Angelica to understand. She is a very unshadowed person, and I have not upset her by any of the grimmer things out of my past.

  (I say this in case you should ever happen to meet her, though I imagine this is unlikely. We are going on a world tour after the marriage and will probably settle in San Francisco, which will be a good place for my work.) I feel confident that you will forgive this defection on my part. You are a woman of many resources and not given to envy, jealousy or moping. I trust and believe that you will soon be able to rejoice in my good fortune without feeling resentment at my failure to render to you an aid which you may have persuaded yourself that only I could give. May it in some way please you to hear me say: I am happy and feel set free from the past. It is my very earnest wish that you will one day be able to say the same.

  Eric

  P.S. Please be sure to destroy this letter.

  Ducane turned to look at Paula. Paula's face was transformed.

  It expanded smoothly, blandly, seeming to have increased in area, with eyes and mouth extended, and he realized that she had been laughing. Her face, which had been pinched in behind a narrow mask, was relaxed and shining. As she shuddered again and gasped into laughter Ducane began to laugh too, and they laughed together, rocking to and fro and sending the mottled pebbles rolling down the slope towards the water.

  At last Paula picked up the letter which had fallen between them and tore it to pieces. She scattered the fragments about her. 'See how soon a bogeyman can be blown away.'

  'I see what you mean about absurd!' said Ducane.

  'Things seem to happen to Eric on ships!'

  'Good old Angelica, God bless her! V 'I think he'd really persuaded himself that I'd asked him to come!'

  'Paula, you're out in the sun again,' said Ducane. He took hold of the hem of her yellow dress.

  'Yes. John, I can't thank you enough '

  'You don't regret having told me, now?'

  'No, no. I know already that it's made a difference, the difference – '

  Ducane got up rather stiffly. He pulled his jacket on, pushing up the collar of his shirt and rumpling his hair. He could see Barbara and the twins running along the beach towards them.

  He said suddenly, 'Paula, do you still love Richard?'

  'Yes,' she replied without a second's hesitation. And then began to go on, 'But of course there's no '

  'Why, whatever's the matter? Look at the children. Barbie, what is it, what is it?'

  'It's Pierce. He's swum into Gunnar's cave and he says he isn't coming out and he's going to stay there –till the tide comes in, and he means it, I know he means it!'

  It was extremely quiet inside the cave. Pierce swam breast stroke with long quiet strokes, letting his body glide fish-like through the water with as little exertion as possible. He was dressed in trousers and a jersey and woollen socks and rubber shoes. An electric torch, guaranteed waterproof, was tucked into his trousers pocket and attached to his waist by a string.

  He was wearing his watch, also waterproof. He was already farther into the cave then he had ever been before and the daylight from the low are of the entrance was becoming dim. He could see before him, almost phosphorescent, the regular movement of his hands breaking the dark surface of the water. He could see nothing of his surroundings.

  Pierce's intent to spend the duration of a tide inside the cave had become, in the long course of its maturing, so huge and obsessive in his mind that it excluded any explanation in terms of something further. It was certainly connected with Barbara, but it might be truer to say that the idea of the cave had swallowed up the idea of Barbara. A great black dart pointed him into this magnetic darkness. Humiliation and rejection and despair had blended into a thrust of desire which no longer had Barbara for its object. That the ordeal might end in death was an essential part of its authority. Yet the hypothesis of this factual death was almost incidental. The concept of death had been growing in Pierce's mind, an expanding, curiously dazzling object which was not a physical possibility or even a consolation, but the supreme object of love.

  The distant light from the cave entrance was shut out and Pierce glided into a sphere of total blackness. He checked his stroke and looking over his shoulder could see a suggestion of light upon the water but no low whitish are of day. He must have turned a corner in the cave. He fumbled down for his electric torch and treading water turned it on. The beam was long and powerful but the air seemed to have a powdery physical quality which narrowed and contained the light.

  Pierce made out the roof of the cavern fairly high above him and the sides, running sheer into the water and festooned with brown seaweed like a display of glistening necklaces. The cave seemed to be about twenty yards wide. Keeping his torch trained on the roof Pierce swam a few strokes back and the distant line of the daylight suddenly materialized in the dark. ness on his left, like a long flake of some whitish substance laid out close to his head. It was as if he could have touched it. At the same time the moving spot of the torch above him seemed to plunge and vanish.

  Pierce trod in the water and got a better grip on the torch.

  He began to shine it all round him. The roof here was much higher and he realized that he was at a point where the cave divided. There were two caverns, seemingly of equal size, one leading away to the left, and the other, which he had just been following, to the right. This discovery slightly unnerved Pierce.

  His traditional mental picture of the cave showed a single roomy cavern penetrating upward into the cliff and culminating in a dry airy chamber possibly full of treasure. Not that treasure mattered or even dryness and air. The final chamber might simply be the last hole or cranny in which the rising tide finally kissed the roof and drowned its trapped rat in black oblivion. Only Pierce had not realized that he would have to make choices. The idea of a choice brought with it the idea of life, of future, and this brought a first wrench of fear.

  Pierce shone the to
rch up at the roof of the left hand cavern.

  It was some twenty-five feet above water level and covered in seaweed. He turned the light on to the right hand cavern. The roof was a trifle higher, also covered in seaweed. Which fork would lead him upward? He decided, as he had no other guide, to follow the chance which had led him to the right. He switched off the torch and swam on. The flake of daylight disappeared.

  He swam slowly now, trying to sense the position and close tress of the walls by a kind of radar. He felt that he was able to do it. But the darkness oppressed him. It had become even thicker and more physical, fitting over his head like a casing of black fungus. It seemed that if he lifted his hand he might be able to break off a piece. His breath suddenly became quick and short, and he had to tread water to make his breathing regular again. The water, which had seemed warmer inside the cave than out in the sea, still seemed unusually warm, and he felt no tiredness and no chill. He hauled up the torch again and shone it about, shining it back over the way he had come and then ahead.

  Just in front of him the cavern divided again. Another choice. The thought came to Pierce, suppose that I survive the sea but simply get lost in this awful labyrinth and never manage to find my way back? Would the tide running out show him the way? He was not sure. He swam slowly forward and pointed the thin line of light at the cavern ahead. The torchlight seemed narrow and ragged, devoured by the dark. He could see less than before. His eyes seemed to be becoming less and not more accustomed to the thick fungoid murk. Here the left-hand channel seemed slightly wider and its wet weedy roof higher above the sea. Pierce swam slowly into the opening.

  He thought first right, and then left. I must remember. First right and then left.

  He shone the torch ahead of him examining the roof and walls. The cavern showed no diminution in size, but equally no tendency to rise, and the cave walls still descended sheer into the water. There was not even a projecting rock upon which one might rest. Pierce thought, it can't go on like this.

  Then he thought, why not? The cavern was winding about, bearing quite sharply away to the left. Why should not these worm holes, so neatly cleanly drilled in the rock, wind about indefinitely below the level of the high tide? They might afford him hours of this black featureless swimming before the rising waters finally pressed the crown of his head against the slow descent of the slimy roof.

  A shiver of panic went through Pierce like an electric shock and he began at once to feel cold. He thought, supposing I were to swim very fast back the way I came would I be in time to get out of the cave before the tide covered the entrance? He lifted his arm from the water and shone the torch on his watch. His watch, dripping, but with its familiar everyday face, looked weird and lonely under the black bell of the darkness. He had only been inside for fifteen minutes. He might be able to get out if he turned back at once. Pierce switched off the light and began to swim vigorously ahead of him, deeper into the cave.

  He paused again and flashed the light about, wanting to be sure that he had passed no more divisions. It looked as if there was another one coming ahead. He paddled cautiously forward and came into a wider space from which there seemed to be no less than four issues, black rounds, like clenched fists above the very faintly moving water over which the torch-light slid in long fragments of pale chocolaty brown. Here Pierce saw to the right of him, as the cavern in which he was swimming enlarged itself, an irregularity in the wall which formed a sort of sloping shelf. Pierce made for the shelf and tried to haul himself on to it. This was not easy, as the rock was covered with a light green seaweed, like fine hair, which was extremely slippery. At last he managed to perch uncomfortably, half out of the water, and to use his torch with greater care. There were four openings ahead. Pierce saw that all four had roofs considerably lower than the roof of the chamber out of which they led. The cave seemed to be descending.

  At that moment Pierce heard a noise in the water. It was not a noise made by himself. He was lying quite still, seal-like, stretched upon the sloping rock, and holding himself in place rather painfully with one hand clamped upon the abrupt end of the shelf. He stiffened, listening. There was a splashing sound as if something large and clumsy were swimming nearby.

  Pierce turned awkwardly, holding on and turning his head over his shoulder. The pale brown light of the torch moved on the surface of the water. Something was there, splashing in the water in the centre of the cavern. It was Mingo.

  'Mingo!' said Pierce. He let go abruptly both of the torch and of his hold on the edge of the shelf. As he slid down, the string which attached the torch to his waist caught on a pro jection of the rock and snapped. The torch balanced on the edge of the rock and then quietly tilted over and vanished into the water.

  Pierce lay still against the slippery rock, the water round his shoulder, one arm still clutching at the seaweed. The darkness was thick, total. The splashing sound approached and Pierce's outstretched hand touched Mingo's collar and the dry fur of his head. Mingo scrabbled at the rock, trying to get himself out of the water.

  'Oh Mingo, Mingo,' said Pierce. He pushed the dog up a little on to the slimy incline of the seaweed and laid his head against the wet warm flank, holding himself close to the rock with a stiffening grip. Hot tears began to run suddenly down his face.

  Thirty-five

  'Whatever shall we do?' said Paula. She looked at Ducane. Barbara clutched the sleeve of his coat. The twins clutched each other.

  'A motor boat?' said Ducane.

  'There's one in the village,' said Paula, 'but by the time –'It's hired out for the afternoon,' said Edward. 'We saw it going away.'

  'We'd better ring up the coastguards,' said Ducane. 'Not that that – How long is it since he went in?'

  'It must be nearly fifteen minutes,' said Barbara.

  'More,' said Henrietta.

  'You see,' said Barbara, her voice becoming high and tearful, 'I didn't really believe him at first. I kept waiting for him to come out again. Then I suddenly felt sure he meant it. Then it was quite a long way to swim back.'

  'We were there too,' said Edward. 'I was sure he meant it, I said so at once.'

  'We may see the young fool swimming back any – '

  'No, no, no!' wailed Barbara. 'He's inside, he's going to stay inside, I know it!'

  Ducane held his head. He thought as quickly as he could, his eyes fixed on Paula, who seemed to be trying desperately to help him. 'How long is it before the entrance closes?'

  'Half an hour,' said Edward.

  'Twenty-five minutes,' said Henrietta.

  Ducane looked at his watch. 'Look,' he said to Paula. 'We'd better assume the worst. You give the alarm. Ring the coastguards, ring the village. If you see a motor boat stop it. Find out if anyone knows the cave. Find out if there's frogman gear available and anyone who can use it. Though I don't see what the hell – I'll swim round now and investigate. He may be hanging about just inside the entrance trying to frighten us.'

  'We'll come with you!' cried the children.

  , No, you won't,' said Ducane. 'You're chilled, you've been in too long.' All three children were shivering. 'Anyway it's you pierce is trying to impress, especially you, Barbara. If he thinks you're there he may not come out. You go along with Paula.'

  'John, you won't go into the cave, will you?' cried Paula.

  'No, no. Just a little way. I'll probably meet Pierce swimming back. Go on, the rest of you, and don't panic.'

  Ducane took off his jacket and his tie. He kicked off his shoes and socks and stepped out of his trousers. 'Go on!' he shouted at them.

  Paula and the children set off over the pebbles at a run.

  Ducane put his shoes on again and began to run in the opposite direction along the beach to the point where the red cliff descended.

  He abandoned his shoes and slipped into the sea.

  He swam with a quick vigorous sidestroke, keeping as close as he could to the foot of the cliff. He could feel the tug of one of those currents which made the re
gion unpopular with bathers. It seemed to be coming against him and his progress was slow. He had never felt swimming to be so like an agonized strenuous standing still. He was panting already. The sleeves of his shirt now clinging, now ballooned with water impeded him and, still swimming, he began to try to pull the shirt off. He got it over his head and abandoned it in the water. Then the current seemed to give as he turned the point of rock which took him into the next bay and out of sight of Trescombe.

  Now nothing was visible except the still sea and the sky and the inward and outward curve of the cliff which hid the land on both sides. Ducane felt suddenly very small and alone. The red cliff, which close to showed a brownish terracotta streaked with slatey blue, descended sheer into the sea, looking so dry and crumbling it seemed it must dissolve at the touch of the water. A broad stripe along its lower half marked the level of the high tide, and seaweeds, baked already in the sun since the sea had last abandoned them, hung in dark ugly bunches like superflous hair. Up above clumps of white daisies floated, ad hering somehow to the rising wall. Ducane could smell their light odour mingled with the baked sea smell of the half-dried seaweed.

  He could see the entrance to the cave now, an irregular dark brown streak above the water. As he approached it he looked at his watch, which seemed to be still going. On Henrietta's estimate there was just under fifteen minutes before the mouth was closed. A few more strokes brought Ducane suddenly in out of the sunshine, and as the shadow of the cliff fell upon him he called out, 'Pierce! Pierce!' Silence.

  The roof of the cave was about seven feet above the water at the entrance. Ducane swam a little farther in, noticing that the roof seemed to fall a little. Farther on it rose into invisibility in the darkness and the cave grew wider. Ducane swam into the larger space and called again.

  Ducane had said that he would swim to the cave because that was the only thing he could think of to do. He had vaguely imagined that he would easily be able to find Pierce and would use his authority to make the boy come out. Now everything seemed different. The sheer solitude of the sunlit bay, followed by this plunge into the cool half-dark, had already done something to him. He felt removed from reality. He called again. He became aware that the sea was now running fairly fast in through the cave mouth and had already carried him farther away from the entrance. He swam a few strokes back to make sure he could easily get out again. Then he allowed the current to carry him a little farther on in the darkness, still shouting at intervals.