The Red and The Green

by Iris Murdoch

  Andrew had been extremely upset by his encounter with Pat Dumay. The memory that he had been so undignified and stupid as to taunt his cousin made him hot with shame and on the following day he had been able to think of nothing else. Immediately afterwards he had wished to apologize but had been prevented, perhaps fortunately, by the presence of Cathal. A straight apology stammered out upon the occasion of the fault would only have made things worse. He had, however, very much wanted to see Pat alone, had in fact all through Tuesday pined and fretted simply with this desire. He felt, with an almost physical humiliation, how absurdly much he had counted on achieving with Pat, now that they were both grown-up, some quite remarkable friendship. Pat’s magic for him had not faded, and entering the Blessington Street drawing-room on Monday he had felt the pang of a delicious fear.

  On Wednesday morning, in order to escape from his mother and to think some decisive thoughts about Frances, he walked over from Dalkey to Killiney and stood on the beach in a hollow of blue conical mountains. Here there came to him a great enlightenment and a great peace. He would never be friends with Pat. Pat belonged to some other race of men. Even if he were to seek Pat out and somehow beg his pardon, even if he were to seek Pat out and somehow defy him, the response would be the same. Pat would be cool, ironical, amused, polite, distant, and finally bored. The realization that there are people we shall never conquer comes to us as a part of the process of growing up. With a clarity of mind which he felt did him credit, and which brought with it a new moral vigour, Andrew faced the fact that Pat was a lost cause. Now was the time to think of Frances and of Frances only.

  Standing with his bare feet in the freezing sea he told himself that he had become a realist. He would take Frances away to England, at once if possible. And after the war he would insist on his mother’s return to England. After all he was a man and a soldier and must be expected to exert some authority over a female parent. The obvious idea that his mother need not stay over here forever came to him with a revelation of how much, up to now, he had sheerly been afraid of Ireland. It had seemed like a dark pit full of demons. Now it was suddenly clear that he had only to snap his fingers at these chained-up bogeys. Having ‘given up’ Pat Dumay was perhaps the crucial step. Henceforth he would act like a free person. He saw himself suddenly in the future, a strong pater familias, ruling his womenfolk and his children with a benevolent firmness. Even the idea of making Frances pregnant before he returned to the Front was no longer distasteful. Even the idea that he might never survive to see his son was now something at which he could look.

  The sand and pebbles in the shallow foam beat on his feet which were almost too cold to feel pain. He stepped back and hobbled to a rock and began to dry his benumbed feet on his socks. A moving shaft of sunlight came across the beach and made the sea sparkle in front of him and gave him a shadow on the sand. His thoughts reverted to the matter of his Aunt Millicent. Millie, as he now rather self-consciously thought of her, had never in fact been very far from his mind since the incident of the lapis lazuli earring. He had wondered again and again whether she had dropped the earring into the pool on purpose. He kept coming to the delightful conclusion that probably she had, and smiled every time he reached it. The situation in which she had put him, of having to make teatime conversation while at the same time keeping the earring under control in some reasonably secure part of his underclothing, had embarrassed him exceedingly at the time and amused him exceedingly afterwards. He felt, about it all, a sense of achievement. He had returned the earring in an envelope next day with a short note which, after numerous re-writings, simply read: And thank you for my tea! Really the little drama had excited Andrew quite considerably. He was not sure whether he had been played with as a child or flirted with as an adult, but again successive examinations of the subject brought the more flattering conclusion. His charming aunt had flirted with him. Andrew had never been flirted with in quite this way by an older woman. There came with it, with Millie herself, the faintest whiff of wickedness which he laughed to find so attractive. Women were gay and beautiful and he was young and free. But of course he knew this in any case. And Millie was only his aunt.

  He was young and free, but now he was going to bind himself to the dearest girl in the world. He was so happy to find himself eager, to find, when it came to it, no grain of regret. He could give his whole heart. He had rehearsed the scene so often in imagination. Only he had not anticipated the sonnet. That arrived, sent by the gods at just the right moment, like an engagement present. He decided that he would, her clothes permitting, tuck the sonnet into the front of Frances’ dress. Then he laughed to think that he was copying Millie. There was also the matter of the ring. On the previous day Hilda, displaying for once some sense of the tempo of others, had produced for him a gold ring set with a ruby and two diamonds which she had got in Dublin with Christopher’s help and which she said she was sure would fit Frances. She handed it over to him with no further admonitions. The ring, when Andrew brooded over it later, seemed an almost heartbreakingly beautiful and significant object. Suddenly the romance, the sweetness, the innocence of his union with Frances came before him with an intensity which wrought him to tears.

  Now on Thursday morning he was waiting in the garden, waiting near the red swing for Frances to come out of the house. She had been busy with some domestic task when he arrived and had told him to await her outside. Andrew, who had earlier envisaged, indeed planned, the scene quite calmly, now felt dizzy with excitement. He had the sonnet in one pocket of his jacket and the ring wrapped up in his handkerchief in the other pocket. He kept fingering them both and the sonnet was becoming rather crumpled. His heart was hitting his side as if it wanted to fly out of him like a cannon ball and his breath came in short desperate sniffs of the quiet stifling morning air. The day, bright to begin with, had clouded over. He began to fiddle with the swing, and then turned to find Frances quite close to him.

  The dear girl was looking so beautiful this morning, her plump round face rosy and smooth, cool and sleek as the surface of an apple. It was one of the days when she revealed her big brow, and her hair was pushed back, still in something of an early morning tangle, behind her ears. She was wearing a long grey dress of coarse cotton, rather like a nurse’s overall, caught in at the waist, and over it rather quaintly one of Christopher’s tweed jackets, caught up no doubt as she left the house. She had turned up the collar of the jacket round her neck and her hands were thrust into the pockets. She had never looked sweeter.

  Seeing something portentous in Andrew’s look, Frances was silent waiting for him to speak.

  Trembling all over he began. ‘My dearest Frances, I have something of very great importance to ask you. I wonder if you can at all guess what it is?’ His voice trembled and quavered too.

  ‘No,’ said Frances.

  ‘I wish you to do me the honour of becoming my wife.’

  There was a silence. Then Frances abruptly turned her back upon him.

  Andrew stood quite still, staring at the tousled pile of Frances’ dark hair appearing over the top of Christopher’s jacket. He felt startled and breathless as if he had inadvertently struck her. He had not realized that his sudden words would arouse so much emotion in her. But of course the gracious imaginary Frances was not thus taken by surprise. He put out a reassuring hand to touch her sleeve. Without turning she moved a step away.

  ‘Frances—’

  ‘Hang on a minute, Andrew.’

  The silence continued. Andrew stood staring at her back. His hands in his two pockets twisted the sonnet and fumbled the ring. A light wind was blowing now from the sea, stirring the chestnut tree and the tall leaves of the montbretia, stirring the red swing.

  Frances began to turn slowly about. Her hands had not left her pockets. But now she raised one and drew it over her face as if erasing whatever expression had been there before. She coughed, as if a cough would set some helpful tone of ordinariness. Then she said, ‘Thank you very much, Andre
w.’

  Andrew stared at her face. It was the strongest face he had ever seen her wear and the grimmest. Her long mouth curved downwards at the corners with a positive force and her eyes were wrinkled into what seemed two dark narrow rectangles.

  ‘Frances—’

  ‘Oh , my dear—’

  ‘Frances, darling, what is it? Don’t be upset.’

  ‘Andrew, it’s that I can’t say yes. At least, I can’t just say yes.’

  Andrew opened his fingers and drew them out of his pockets. He wiped his hands together. ‘I see—’. He felt completely confused and frightened. He felt as if he were in the presence of Frances for the first time, as if the real Frances had just broken through a screen upon which a picture of her had been painted. It was difficult to put words together. Speech between them had been a kind of silence. Now suddenly it had become something noisy, crackling, arduous. ‘What do you mean by “just”, that you can’t “just” say yes?’

  Frances seemed to find it equally difficult to speak. She stared down at the ground. ‘Well, I can’t say yes. But I mean it isn’t that things are different. It’s just—oh dear—’

  ‘But, but—you do love me? You haven’t stopped loving me?’ He had never known a world without Frances’ love.

  ‘Of course I love you.’

  ‘And I love you, dearest Frances, and I want you to be my wife. I expect you’re cross with me because I didn’t say anything sooner, but you see—’

  ‘It’s not that and I’m not cross with you. I’m cross with myself.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘We’ve both taken it—so much for granted—too much for granted. And, everyone else assuming it too. It hasn’t somehow been quite right—’

  ‘I see. You feel I ought to have courted you properly—that we know each other too well. But I will court you—’

  ‘No, no nonsense like that. You see in a way we are like brother and sister.’

  ‘I don’t feel we are like brother and sister at this moment,’ said Andrew. He had never found Frances more ferociously attractive. She looked up at him quickly. ‘And neither do you,’ he added.

  She gazed at him, her fiercely controlled face relaxing a little. ‘Yes. Odd. Well, not odd. But, Andrew, I’m sorry. I’ve given you a rotten answer.’

  ‘You’ve given me an incomprehensible answer. But I do understand about—how it’s all been taken for granted. As if we weren’t private people. I’ve felt funny about that too. But that can’t have spoilt everything. Suppose we were to start again at the beginning as if we’d never met?’

  ‘But we can’t—’

  ‘I don’t know. For the last five minutes I’ve been talking to a most exciting stranger.’

  ‘I feel like that too. But it’s just that our friendship has had a shock. Oh, dearest Andrew, I do love you—’

  ‘In that case—Frances, is there somebody else?’

  ‘No, of course not,’

  ‘Well, then—is it just that you’d like to wait a bit? We may have known each other since childhood, but we haven’t seen a lot of each other lately. Maybe we need time to get used to each other again.’

  ‘There’s been so much sort of—quiet pressure—’

  ‘Of course, of course. I know, all these people expecting us to get married next week—it’s awful—and I know—for a girl —Oh, Frances, I’m sorry I’ve been so stupid. What you’re really saying to me is yes, only let’s wait a longer time before getting married. That’s it, isn’t it?’

  ‘Well, no it isn’t quite. I’m not saying that.’

  ‘Then you’re saying no?’

  ‘Not exactly—but I have to be fair—I can’t tie you—’

  ‘But I am tied—I love you. You mean you are saying no?’

  ‘You’re forcing me to say no!’

  ‘No, I’m not. I’m just trying to understand,’ he said, miserably.

  ‘I can’t tie you,’ she repeated, ‘so if you force me to say something I’ve got to say no.’

  ‘I’m not forcing you to say anything. I’m just asking you to marry me. I would have asked you much sooner if I’d thought you’d changed.’

  ‘But I haven’t changed.’

  ‘You must have. I just want to know what your feelings are. Do you want me to wait a while and ask you again?’

  ‘Perhaps I do—but this is so unfair, so unfair. I should only say no again. It’s that I don’t want to hurt you and I want everything to be happy like it was.’ She closed her eyes and a great many tears streamed down her cheeks. She took a large white handkerchief smelling of tobacco out of the pocket of Christopher’s jacket and blew her nose. It was beginning to rain.

  ‘Well,’ said Andrew, ‘I’ll ask you again later.’

  ‘I should only say no again,’ she said in a frantic tone.

  ‘I’ll ask you all the same.’

  They stood for a moment silently in the light rain, each looking down at the other’s feet. Frances said, ‘Please don’t say anything about this to anyone just yet, not for a few days. I’ll have to break it to my father first—and I’ll have somehow to find the right moment.’

  ‘All right. But I can’t hold out very long. My mother will be so upset—and I’m not very good at telling lies.’

  ‘Oh, Andrew, forgive me. Oh dear, I must think, I must think. Won’t you come in and have some coffee? It’s really going to rain hard.’

  ‘No,’ said Andrew, ‘I won’t come in. I suppose I won’t be able to come here any more.’

  ‘But of course you must come here—’

  ‘I don’t think I’ll want to, with everything different.’

  They looked at each other suddenly terrified. Even the most dreadful words can be treated as a bad dream through which one reels with a kind of intoxication of horror. But the cold touch of action awakens the spirit to a world where what is dreadful has slowly and minutely to be lived.

  For a second Andrew felt it all beyond his strength. He reached out clumsily to Frances as if to seize her arm, perhaps embrace her. But she drew back. They faced each other for a moment. Then she whispered, ‘I am sorry, I am so very sorry,’ and turned and ran into the house.

  Andrew went out of the garden gate, turning up the collar of his greatcoat against the rain. He walked down the road to the sea. The very calm sea was lazily washing the rocks and for miles and miles over its level grey surface the heavy rain was falling.

  Chapter Twelve

  PAT was giddy with impatience. It was still only Thursday morning. Sunday rose up in front of him like a black cliff. The mountain must open to admit him, how he knew not. He could foresee nothing except that he would be fighting. This time next week he would have been fighting. Perhaps he would be dead. His first startled fear was diffused now into an aching desire for action, and his body was weary of the interim. In the two days since he had been told he had grimly lived the reality of it into himself. To the mystery of Sunday he was dedicated and resigned, become in every cell of his being a taut extension of that violent future. When it came he would enter upon it coldly. It was only the waiting which was an agony and a fever. He could hardly sleep at night but lay telling himself vividly and lucidly how much he needed sleep. His flesh twitched and ached with expectation.

  There was much to do each day. He had attended a staff conference at Liberty Hall about the dovetailing of plans between the Citizen Army and the Volunteers, and had been impressed, as always, by the efficiency of Connolly’s men. He had visited a quarry at Brittas where some gelignite was hidden which was to be rushed into Dublin on Sunday morning. He had checked over all the ammunition allotted to his own company, which was hidden, often in small quantities, in various places throughout the city, and made arrangements for it to be moved at short notice. He had made a point of seeing individually all the men under his command, and, without revealing anything, satisfying himself that they were equipped and ready.

  Pat was one of the most junior officers to have been told
of the plan. The great majority of the Volunteers, including some officers, knew nothing except that ‘very important manoeuvres’ were to take place on Sunday and that ‘the absence of any Volunteer would be treated as a serious breach of discipline’. Of course, the men had been told, from long ago, that they must be prepared for anything on any occasion when they marched out in arms. But they had marched out in arms so often and returned afterwards to their tea. There was a ferment in Dublin all the same, which it was to be hoped was not attracting the attention of the Castle. Visiting Lawlor’s gun shop in Fownes Street, Pat had found it almost emptied of stock. Streams of people had been in to buy bandoliers and water bottles and even sheath knives; and it was said that you could not get hold of a bayonet from one end of Dublin to the other. Perhaps the men were simply ‘stocking up’, for the ‘important manoeuvres’. Or perhaps the news was gradually leaking out to the rank and file. If so, this was dangerous. It was still only Thursday.