The Nice and the Good

by Айрис Мердок

  'Why then?»

  'He wants to get on with his research, and maybe do some more teaching. He's been talking of resigning for years.'

  'I expect he wants to make a break, a new life and all that.'

  'I hope he'll go on coming here – I mean they will.'

  'I suppose I hope it. Octavian, I must get another housekeeper.

  Can we afford it?'

  'Yes, darling. Only don't hurt Casie's feelings.'

  'Damn Casie. Well, no I won't. I wonder if anyone would understand if I advertised for a head parlourmaid? Oh Octavian, it's so sad, all our house seems broken apart, everyone is going.'

  'Darling, you'll soon get other ones.'

  'Other whats?'

  'I mean, well, people.'

  'I think you're being horrid.'

  'Dear love, don't let go.'

  'You disgraceful old hedonist. I just can't get over John and Mary. Do you think he's the sort of homosexual who has to get married to persuade himself he's normal? T 'You think he must be homosexual because he was moderately able to resist you!'

  'Octavian, you beast. Mary is rather the mother figure isn't she?'

  'I don't think John's queer. Mary just is his type, serious and so on.'

  'Yes. I suppose I just wasn't his type. I feel now I made an awful ass of myself about John.'

  'You're an affectionate girl, Kate.'

  'Well, don't say it in that tone!'

  'John wasn't up to it. It was too complicates for him. He didn't really understand you.'

  'He didn't really understand me.'

  'John's a very nice chap, but he's not the wise good man that we once thought he was.'

  'We thought he was God, didn't we, and he turns out to be just like us after all.'

  'Just like us after all.'

  'Are you ready, darling?'

  'Ready, sweetheart.'

  'Octavian, I do love you. You cheer me up so much. Isn't it wonderful that we tell each other everything?'

  In fact there were a few details of Octavian's conduct, concerning long late evenings when he stayed in the office with his secretary, which Octavian did not think it necessary to divulge to Kate. However he easily forgave himself, so completely forgetting the matter as to feel blameless, and as he frequently decided that each occasion was the last he did not view himself as a deceiver of his wife. His knowledge that there was indeed nothing which she concealed from him was a profound source of happiness and satisfaction.

  The apricot moon shone and the night owl hooted above the rituals of love.

  'They are going,' said Theo.

  'Yes,' said Willy.

  , you are saa.

  'I am always sad.'

  , Not always. You were almost cheerful a fortnight ago. I thought you were changed.'

  'Something happened that time in London.'

  'What happened?'

  'I made love to a girl.'

  'Good heavens, Willy! I mean, with all due respect '

  'Yes, I was surprised too.'

  'What was she like?'

  'A gazelle.'

  'And when are you seeing her again?'

  'I'm not.'

  'But Willy, why not? Didn't she want to?'

  'She did. But no, no, Theo. I am a dead man.'

  'Dead men don't make love.'

  'That was just a miracle. But a miracle need have no consequences.

  It is outside causality.'

  'I should have thought a miracle would have consequences by definition. And you admit to being changed.'

  'I don't. You said I was changed. I am just a past with no present.'

  'That's a cowardly lie, if ever there was one.'

  'What can one do with the past, Theo?'

  'Forgive it. Let it enter into you in peace.'

  'I can't.'

  'You must forgive Hitler, Willy. It is time.'

  'Damn Hitler. No, I will never forgive him. But that's not the problem.'

  'What is the problem?'

  'Forgiving myself.'

  'What do you mean?'

  'It's not what he did. It's what I did.'

  'Where?'

  'Da unten. Ld-bas Dachau.'

  'Willy, Willy, Willy, hang on.'

  'I'm all right.'

  'I mean, don't tell me.'

  'You used to say tell me. Now you say don't.'

  'I've gone that much more to bits, Willy. I feel so ill all the time. All right, tell me in general terms. What happened?'

  'I betrayed two people because I was afraid, and they died.'

  'In that inferno –. You must pity yourself too, Willy.!

  'They were gassed. My life wasn't even threatened.'

  'We are clay, Willy. There is no man whose rationality and goodness cannot be broken by torment. Do not think «I did it».

  Think it was done.'

  'But I did do it.!

  'That sense of ownership is pride.!

  'They were gassed, Theo.'

  Willy was sitting in his armchair, his lame leg extended into the soft grey powdery pile of wood ash in the fireplace. Theo was sitting with his back to the fireplace on an upright chair which he had drawn up close. He looked away past Willy's head towards the long window full of glittering blue sky. His arm lay heavily upon Willy's arm, his hand cupping and caressing the curve of the shoulder.

  Willy stroked back his longish white hair and relaxed his face into a bland steely calm: You might be right, but I can't think in your terms. It's not even like memory. It's all just there.!

  'All the time, Willy?'

  'Every hour, every minute. And there's no machinery to shift it. No moral machinery. No psychological machinery.'

  'We'll see, my dear. Where there's been one miracle there could be another one. Maybe you should tell me the whole thing after all.!

  'Yes, I think so too.'

  I won't listen though, thought Theo. He's not really telling it to me.

  Theo moved his hand upward a little, fingering the collar of Willy's shirt at the neck. He fixed his eyes upon the dazzling window. The sunlight seemed to have got inside the glass and the blue sky was visible through a sparkling screen of splintered light. As Willy's voice murmured on, Theo tried hard to think about something else. He thought about the seagull with the broken wing which the twins had found and brought to him. Henrietta was crying and carrying the seagull which was sitting on one of her hands, while she held and caressed it with the other. The twins came running to Theo across the stones. When an animal was hurt the twins became helpess and confused. Could anything be done, could the broken wing be mended, should they go to find a vet? Theo said no, there was nothing to be done with a broken wing. He would take the bird from them and drown it quickly. It was the kindest thing, the only thing. The bird would not know what was happening.

  He took the seagull carefully from Henrietta's outstretched hands and told the twins to go away. They ran off at once together, Edward now in tears as well. Theo did not pause to take off his shoes or roll up his trousers, he walked straight into the sea, his shoes crunching on the sunny underwater stones. The seagull lay perfectly still in his hands, its bright eyes seeming impassive, as if calm. The bird was light, light, and the grey feathers soft, soft. Theo bent down and quickly plunged the soft grey parcel of life down underneath the water. There was a faint movement in his hands. He stood there bent for a long time, with his eyes closed, feeling the hot sun upon his neck.

  At last he straightened himself. He did not look down at the bedraggled thing in his hands. He dared not leave it in the sea in case the twins should see it again. He mounted the shingle and walked with wet clinging trouser legs along to the far end of the beach where he knelt and dug with his hands as deep a hole as he could in the loose falling pebbles. He put the dead bird into the hole and covered it up carefully. Then he moved a little away and lay face downward on the stones.

  Willy's voice continued to speak and Theo, only half listening, pressed the thought of the seagull aga
inst his heart. There was silence in the room at last.

  'Would you like some tea?' said Theo.

  'Yes. Would you make it?'

  Theo got up and went into Willy's little kitchen. He thought, what is the point here, what is the point. What can I say to him.

  That one must soon forget one's sins in the claims of others.

  But how to forget. The point is that nothing matters except loving what is good. Not to look at evil but to look at good.

  Only this contemplation breaks the tyranny of the past, breaks the adherence of evil to the personality, breaks, in the end, the personality itself. In the light of the good, evil can be seen in its place, not owned, just existing, in its place. Could he explain all this to Willy? He would have to try.

  As he filled the kettle he could see, from the corner window, a girl in a blue dress with long loose fair hair coming up the path from the beech wood. He called out, 'You've got a visitor, Willy:'

  'Is it Mary?'

  'No. A girl unknown.'

  Willy darted up and was beside his shoulder. 'Oh my God Theo, whatever shall I do? It's Jessica.'

  'Who's Jessica?'

  'The gazelle.'

  'Aren't you pleased?'

  'However did she find-out?'

  'You can give her tea. I'll go away.'

  'Theo, don't abandon me! Look, Theo, I can't face it. Would you mind? I'll go and hide in the graveyard. Tell her I've left Trescombe and you don't know my address and you live here now. Will you tell her? And make her believe it. Get rid of her. Come and find me when you're certain she's gone. I'll go out the back door.'

  The back door banged. Theo thoughtfully made the tea.

  The long-legged long-haired girl came resolutely up the hill.

  'Hello, Jessica,' said Theo, meeting her at the door.

  She looked surprised. 'I wanted to see '

  'Yes, yes, you want Willy. He's not here at the moment but you can easily find him.' Theo gave Jessica minute instructions about how to reach the graveyard.

  He closed the door again and poured himself out a cup of tea. He felt sad, sad.

  'Why look, Mingo and Montrose are sharing the basket.'

  'So they are. Good-bye Mingo, good-bye Montrose.'

  'They're too lazy to get up. I do hope Casie liked her present.'

  , of course she did, Mary. She's just miserable that you're going.'

  'I couldn't get her to stop crying. Oh dear. Is it wicked to be so happy when someone else isn't?'

  'No, I don't think so. It's one's duty to be happy. Especially when one's married.'

  'Then I will be your dutiful happy wife, John. Have we got everything.'

  'We've got a hell of a lot of things. I don't know whether we've got everything.'

  'I'm rather relieved Octavian and Kate aren't here. Where was it they said they were going?'

  'Petra.'

  'Pierce and Barb got off all right. Wasn't it nice of the Pember-Smiths to invite Barb too?'

  'Hmm. I suspect young Barb is going to keep young Pierce in order.'

  'Oh John, I'm so happy. Could you just hold my handbag?'

  'Your bag weighs a ton. Are you still carrying that paperweight about?'

  'I won't be parted from that paper-weight.'

  'Come along then, you sentimental girl.'

  'I think that's everything. It's so quiet here now the cuckoos have gone.'

  'Come on, the car's waiting.'

  'Is that really your car?'

  'Our car, sweetheart.'

  'Our car.'

  'You ought to recognize it by now!'

  'It's so improbably big.'

  Ducane and Mary, laden with suitcases and baskets, walked out of the front door of Trescombe House and across the lawn to the sweep of the drive. The big black Bentley awaited them.

  A red-haired man leapt out and opened the boot and the back door of the car.

  'Mary,' said Ducane. 'I want you to meet my new chauffeur, Peter McGrath. He's a very useful man.'

  'Hello, Peter,' said Mary. She shook hands with him.

  The bundles were stowed in the boot and Mary got into the back of the car and tucked her white dress in around her knees. McGrath got into the front. Ducane, who had supervised the loading of the boot, began to get into the front of the car too. Then recollecting himself he quickly climbed into the back beside Mary. He began to laugh.

  'What are you laughing at? T 'Nothing. Home, McGrath.' He said to Mary, 'Watch this.'

  Ducane pressed a button and a glass screen rose up silently between the front and back of the car.

  Ducane looked into the eyes of Mary Ducane. His married life would not be without its problems. But he could explain everything to her, everything, in time. He began to laugh again.

  He took his wife in his arms.

  'Uncle Theo, may I have that Indian stamp? T 'Yes, Edward. Here.'

  'Edward, you pig. I did see it first!'

  Theo quickly tore the stamp off the corner of the envelope.

  The writing was unknown to him. But the postmark made him tremble.

  'Where are you going, twins?'

  'Up to the top of the cliff. Like to come? T 'No, I'm just going to the meadow.'

  Theo thrust the letter into his pocket. He watched the twins depart. Then he walked across the lawn and through the gap in the spiraea hedge and sat down on the seat. Out to sea a small pewter-coloured cloud was coming up over the horizon.

  Theo squinted into the sunshine and pressed the letter, still in his pocket, against his side. Then with a sigh he slowly drew it out and opened it.

  The old man was dead. Theo had known this from the first moment of seeing the letter. Only to tell him this would someone else have written to him now from that place. The old man was dead. He had spoken kindly of Theo just before he died. The old man was dead with whom he might have made his peace and who alone of mortals could have given him peace.

  Theo had never revealed to his family that while he was in India he had taken vows in a Buddhist monastery. He had thought to end his days there. But after some years he had left, lied from it, after an incident involving a young novice. The boy was later drowned in the Ganges. Everyone who wrote to Theo about it said that it was certainly an accident.

  Only the old man could release me from this wheel, Theo thought as year after year he wondered if he should go back and year after year felt it all recede from him past hope, past endeavour. He saw in dreams the saffron robes, the shaven heads, the green valley where he had thought to end his days.

  He could not find his way back there. He remembered the doubts the old man had had at the start. 'We like to take people young,' he said, 'before they are soiled by the world,' and he had looked doubtfully at Theo. But Theo was ardent then, like a man in love. He wanted that discipline, that silence, and the thing which lay beyond it.

  I am sunk in the wreck of myself, thought Theo. I live in myself like a mouse inside a ruin. I am huge, sprawling, corrupt and empty. The mouse moves, the ruin moulders. This is all. Why did I ever leave them, what was I fleeing from? What spoilt scene that I could not then endure? He had fled from a broken image of himself and from the very certainty of understanding and of being drawn back into the structure which he had damaged. He had seemed to leave his past utterly behind when with a passion which seemed a guarantee of renewed life he had entered into the community of these men. To find himself even there the same being as before shocked his pride, the relentless egoism which he now saw had not suffered an iota of diminution from his gesture of giving up the world. The place was spoiled for him. He had given it his free and upright self. He could not humbly surrender to it his broken self.

  Perhaps he had loved the old man too much.

  Yet was it just this broken image, or was it something more terrible still which he had feared, and fled from, the appalling demand made upon his nature? Theo had begun to glimpse the distance which separates the nice from the good, and the vision of this gap had terrified his
soul. He had seen, far off, what is perhaps the most dreadful thing in the world, the other face of love, its blank face. Everything that he was, even the best that he was, was connected with possessive self-filling human love.

  That blank demand implied the death of his whole being. The old man was right to say that one should start young. Perhaps it was to calm the frenzy of this fear that he had so much and so suddenly needed to hold tightly in his arms a beautiful golden-skinned boy as lithe as a puma. What happened afterwards was hideous graceless confusion, the familiar deceitful jumble of himself breaking forth again in a scene from which he thought it had disappeared for ever. He had not really changed in those years. He had experienced joy. But that was the joy of a child at play. He had played out in the open, for those years, beside the unchanged mountain of himself.

  How does one change? Theo wondered. He might have gone back some time and asked the old man that question. And yet he knew the answer really, or knew its beginning, and this was what his nature could not bear.

  Theo got up and began to walk slowly back to the house.

  As he came into the hall the inward smell of the house conjured up for him the image of Pierce, with his long straight strokable animal brow and nose. The kitchen was empty, except for Mingo and Montrose curled up together in the basket.

  The door of Casie's sitting-room was ajar and a sound came from within. Casie was watching television.

  Theo entered behind her in the twilight of the contained room, and taking a chair sat down beside her as he often did.

  He saw that she was crying and he averted his face, stroking her shoulder with a clumsy pawing movement.

  Casie said, mumbling into her handkerchief, 'This play's so terribly sad. You see this man was in love with this girl and he took her out in his car and crashed the car and she was crippled for life and then…'

  Theo kept his hold upon her shoulder, kneading it a little with his fingers. He stared into the blue flicker of the television screen. It was too late to go back. There was a hand which could never, in grace and healing, be laid upon him now.

  Yet was it not for that very reason, that it was too late, that he ought now to return? The old man would have understood this, the action without fruits. The image of return had been the image of a very human love. Now it was the image of that other one. Why should he stay here and rot? Perhaps the great mountain of himself would never grow less. But he could keep company with the enlightenment of others, and might regain at least the untempered innocence of a well-guarded child. And although he might never draw a single step closer to that great blankness he would know of its reality and feel more purely in the simplicity of his life the distant plucking of its magnetic power.