by Iris Murdoch
‘You ought to be grateful to us.’
‘I am grateful. But –’
‘But what?’
‘That’s what I came about.’
‘Well, then, what is it?’
‘I want to know you better.’
Rose was amazed. ‘You want all of us to be your friends again, after everything that’s happened, after –?’
‘No, not all. Just you.’
‘Why just me?’
‘Perhaps I had better be more frank.’
‘Perhaps you had.’
‘I came here to ask if you would consider marrying me.’
Rose flushed scarlet, and pushed her chair back. She felt almost faint with a mixture of anger and amazement. She could hardly believe that she had heard rightly. She said, ‘Could you say that again?’
‘Rose, I want you to marry me. Of course this must seem to you premature –’
‘Premature –!’
‘It would have been possible for me to proceed more indirectly, asking you out to lunch and so on, but such – gambits – would have been in the nature of subterfuges. I thought it better to announce my – my wish – at once, and let the other things follow from that.’
Rose clutched the collar of her dress and shrank back in her chair. She felt very frightened. ‘Mr Crimond, I think you are mad.’
‘Please, if you will, don’t call me “Mr Crimond”. I would like you to call me “David”, but if at the moment you cannot, I would rather you just called me “Crimond”, as other people do. I know that I am sometimes thought to be mad, but you must surely, and surely now, see that I am not.’
‘This must be some sort of awful joke,’ said Rose, ‘or else a wicked premeditated insult.’ She felt angry, she felt cornered. The electrical field, perceptible when he had first entered the room, increased in intensity, surrounded her and made her tremble, almost shake.
Crimond, now a little more relaxed, said in an explanatory tone, ‘You know that I am not joking or trying to insult you. A proposal of marriage is not usually regarded as an insult.’
‘But – you must be totally out of touch with reality! I can’t understand how you can suddenly say this! It can’t be anything to do with me! You must be doing it as a sort of crazy revenge, against Gerard, or against Jean, to hurt them – except you can’t – it’s something horrible –’
‘Rose,’ said Crimond, ‘it’s not horrible, and it’s not any of the things you say –’
‘You can’t imagine that I could take such a “proposal” seriously! Are you so impertinent – or so naive? I don’t know you, I don’t like you. You have wantonly damaged the life and destroyed the happiness of my best friend, whom you appeared to be so madly in love with! And now you come to me with this insulting nonsense!’
‘I can imagine,’ said Crimond, ‘that you may resent the proximity of my relations with your friend –’
‘I don’t “resent the proximity” – really, you are outrageous! I cannot interpret you except as false and wicked – there isn’t any – any context – which could make what you say otherwise!’
‘You argue well –’
‘I’m not arguing!’
‘What you say, and what you imply, deserves an answer. And this is just what I want to offer you. Of course I was in love with Jean. But my relation with her was an impossibility – we twice tried to live it, and proved it twice impossible.’
‘Because she was married –’
‘No, that was nothing. Because of the peculiar, the particular, intensity of our relationship. I could explain this at more length –’
‘Please do not!’
‘We attained an apex – after that we were bound to destroy each other. We both realised it. I was devouring her being and making her less. And after a time, she would have hated me. It was better to leave it behind as something perfect, and finished with. It was doomed.’
‘So you parted by agreement – it was not just that you left her?’ Rose could not help asking that question. In the midst of her fear and anger she could not help feeling a stirring of curiosity. It was all so extremely unexpected.
Crimond said thoughtfully after a moment, ‘Essentially it was mutual. I thought there was a certain solution. I expect she has told you.’
‘She has told me nothing.’
‘I will tell you perhaps later on.’
‘Mr Crimond,’ said Rose, ‘there is no later on. I want you to go away and I won’t see you again.’
Crimond ignored this. ‘My feeling, my love for Jean has nothing to do with what I want to discuss with you. Of course this shock tactic – I admit it is a shock tactic – needs to be talked over, to be understood –’
‘I do not know what to think about you,’ said Rose. ‘I am now again inclined to think you are mad, unbalanced anyway. There is something vulgarly called being on the rebound. I think you are in a state of shock because of the ending – if it is the ending – of your long involvement with Jean. This together perhaps with finishing your book has temporarily unhinged you – this is the most charitable explanation of your tiresome and upsetting approach to me.’
‘I did not mean to upset you – or rather I did – but not in an unpleasant way. I have always had a unique feeling for you, a unique sense of your being. Only two women have ever interested me. Jean was one, you are the other. I saw you before I saw Jean. I loved you before I loved Jean – No, let me go on. Of course this was a silent captive love, something inward and abstract. I had at once assumed you to be unattainable. Perhaps I was wrong –’
‘Really –’
‘I had the impression that you liked me. But I had not the courage to speak to you. I never expressed my love in any way. I regretted this later. I regret it now. Much later on I loved Jean, imagining that to be the only real love of which I was capable. Again I was wrong. My love for you had not died in captivity. But I never thought I could release it – until now – when I am brave enough to appear before you and ask you to believe me. Surely you can understand such a thing?’
‘Please don’t give me these explanations,’ said Rose. ‘You are half out of your mind because Jean is gone, and you want me to console you because you think you remember something you felt when you were twenty! A proposal of marriage in this situation is senseless.’
‘I thought,’ said Crimond, looking at her intently, ‘that you were then, and are not now, indifferent to me.’
‘I was, I am!’
‘I thought this at our last meeting.’
‘Our last meeting? You mean when I came to your house to find out –?’
‘To find out if I was still alive. You were relieved.’
‘Yes, but because of Jean, not because of you! And of course I didn’t want to find you dead on the floor. I never cared for you, I find your ideas abhorrent –’
‘Oh my ideas – but my person –’
The word ‘person’, sounding suddenly so archaic, almost made Rose laugh. ‘Your person – are you suggesting –?’
‘I mean my whole being. Look, Rose, don’t be angry with me, and please forgive me for the suddenness, the shock – I couldn’t do it any other way. We have neither of us been married, nothing prevents us from thinking in these terms. Love has to be awakened. I want to awaken yours. I think you are capable of loving me.’
There was a moment’s silence. Rose said, ‘I don’t believe this stuff about the past, it’s a fantasy, which occurred to you a few days ago, it’s part of your own state of shock, and I’m sure, whether you admit or not, that this visit is really a revenge on Jean, and an attack on Gerard.’
They were silent for a moment, staring at each other across the table. Rose saw her hands trembling, and hid them on her knees.
Crimond murmured, ‘It isn’t so, it isn’t so –’ He went on, ‘I felt it necessary to say what I have said. I hope you will, when you reflect, see how utterly serious it is, and must be. Naturally I don’t expect any clear response from you now. Let us wait a while and t
alk of it again. I said at the beginning simply that I wanted to know you better. And I felt in honesty that I couldn’t say just that without saying all the rest as well. But now that the rest is said, and I certainly do not and will not unsay it, let us return to that first idea. Please, let us know each other better. That cannot be an offensive idea. I suggest that we meet again in a week or so –’
‘You persist in misunderstanding me,’ said Rose, ‘and you evidently don’t listen to me!’
‘Perhaps you find me rather – provincial – but –’
‘Oh don’t drag that in! If you think it’s class –! It’s perfectly simple, I don’t like you!’
‘I don’t believe that,’ said Crimond, and he flushed and drew back his thin lips to show his teeth. ‘As for Gerard, what has he ever given you in return for your caring for him so –?’
Rose stood up and Crimond at once stood too. She was relieved to find herself more eloquently angry. ‘How dare you speak like that of Gerard! You’re envious of him, you’re spiteful to him and insulting to me. You seem to imagine that I feel friendly, even warmly, towards you – I do not! And what your ridiculous “proposal” amounts to is that after being madly in love with Jean and wrecking her marriage you suddenly drop her and run to me in order to get your revenge on everybody, and – and you offer – you exhibit – some crazy feeling you have – it certainly isn’t love – which consists of spite and vanity and sentimental nostalgia and inferiority complex – people thinking you’re “provincial” – and you expect me to console you and – and justify you – oh, and what conceit, to imagine that I once cared for you and still do –’
‘It is love,’ said Crimond. ‘You are misunderstanding me.’
‘When did you think of all this, three days ago? How can I take you seriously?’
‘Of course you must be surprised, and perhaps you resent my direct approach, but –’ Then he suddenly cried out loudly, ‘Oh God, I could explain it all!’ Then he said, quietly again, ‘When can we meet – please –’
‘I don’t “resent” it,’ cried Rose, ‘I’m not interested enough to resent anything! I don’t want to discuss your feelings. You are an enemy of people that I love, you are a person whom I utterly reject. I don’t want to see you, I ask you to go and not to trouble me with any more of this nonsense. Now please go away, and understand that I don’t want to see you again!’
She moved from the table and went to open the door. Looking back at him she saw his face for a moment blazing with emotion. The next moment, still flushed, he resumed his impassive expression. He walked as far as the middle of the room where he stopped, drew his heels together and bowed slightly. Then he went past her through the doorway, picked up his coat in the hall, and left the flat closing the door quietly behind him.
Rose stood still. His sudden departure, his absence, came to her as a strange shock. He was no longer there – and she was standing alone in the most terrible storm of her own emotions. How could he have come to say such a thing, to upset her so, to hurt her so! She felt, in that moment, dreadfully dreadfully hurt, wounded, as if he had rejected her, not she him. How could he so unfeelingly, so brutally, have put her in a situation where she was forced to behave as she had just behaved! I shouldn’t have spoken like that, she thought, I lost my head, I should have been cool and collected and courteous, and not let him stay so long and say so much. I should have asked him to go away at the start. Of course I ought not to have let him come at all. I was too unkind, and it wasn’t exactly what I felt either. I did like him then, at Oxford, I admired him, we all did. Oh I shall regret this so much, it will cause me so much pain later, that I behaved so stupidly, so badly.
Then she thought, I’ll run after him. Then she thought, but it would be undignified and would give the wrong impression. Then she found herself dragging open the door of the flat and running down the stairs.
The air outside met her with a tidal wave of cold. She stood on the frosty slippery pavement and looked up and down. Had he come by car? Had he driven off already? He was not in sight. She ran to the corner and looked both ways along the next road. A car some distance away was just pulling out and disappearing. She ran back, past her house, slipping on the pavement and grasping the railings to prevent a fall. She scanned another road but could not see him. She walked slowly back and in again at the wide open door and up the stairs. She shut herself into the flat and leaned back against the door. She was gasping aloud. What was the matter with her? Why did it now seem the most important thing in the world to find Crimond and bring him back and talk to him and go on talking to him? Why ever had she let him go? Why had she spoken to him in such a crude cruel way? What could he be thinking of her now, he so proud a man, who had trusted her with so amazing an admission? He had said, surely she would understand such a thing. Yes, yes, she would, she did. She was deeply moved by that captive love which had never died. She believed him. She ought to have thanked him for loving her with such a love.
Rose began to walk about in her sitting room, up and down, up and down. The sun had gone, and she turned on the lights. Was it possible that somehow, within a period of minutes, she had fallen in love with Crimond? Why was I so aggressive, so final, she thought. Really, he has done me an honour – even if he only thought of me as a life-line. I was so haughty, so awful, so vulgarly conceited, talking of his insulting me by saying he loved me. I ought to have been grateful. I didn’t have to reject him like that, to drive him away, to be so rude. I could have said I’d see him again. I ought to have done so anyway out of compassion. Why couldn’t I even feel sorry for him, there would have been no harm in that. He looked so tired and so sad. I can still tell him, I can hear that explanation he said he could make. Only he won’t forgive me for what I’ve said, he won’t think I’m sincere. Oh what is happening to me, and what have I done!
Rose was aware, now, that she was intensely flattered by Crimond’s homage. He, so fastidious, so aloof, had come to her as a suppliant. He said he loved her and had always loved her. Of course he is mad, she thought, I always believed he was mad. But how different that madness seemed now when it was expressed as love for her. I must see him again, she thought, I must see him today. I can’t go on without seeing him. I’ll ring him up, he may be home by now. She began to look in the telephone book, then remembered he had said he had no telephone. She thought, I’ll drive to his house. But what could she say when she was there, what reason could she give, her appearance could only seem like a total surrender, and supposing he rejected her. Then I should go mad too, she thought, I am mad – but it’s such a pain, I must relieve the pain somehow, oh why didn’t I keep him here at least while I thought about it! I’ll write him a letter and then run out and post it. I’ve got to do something or my heart will burst. I’ll write a careful letter and suggest that we have another talk soon, I’ll say I was sorry I was so rude, and I didn’t mean to be, I’ll say…
With a sense of relief she set out pen and paper and sat down at the table. She began hastily to write.
My dear David,
I am sorry I spoke so ungraciously to you today. What you had to say took me by surprise, it frightened me and I instinctively thrust it aside. I want now to thank you very much for the honour you have done me. I believe that you are sincere and I appreciate your feelings. I confess that you have disturbed me. I would like to see you again in order to efface the unpleasant impression which I must have made. I hope you will forgive me. It would, I think, be a good thing for both of us if we could talk together more peacefully and quietly. I will, if I may, write to you again shortly and suggest another meeting. With affectionate regards,
Yours,
Rose.
Rose read this through carefully, then crossed out the sentences about being disturbed and hoping to be forgiven, and wrote the letter out again. The writing of it relieved the pain. She was still looking at it when the telephone bell rang. Her immediate thought was, it’s him, he feels just as I do, that we must meet agai
n. She ran to the telephone, fumbling clumsily to pick it up.
‘Hello, Rose, it’s me,’ said Gerard’s voice.
Gerard. She had so completely forgotten Gerard’s existence that she gave a little exclamation of surprise, and then was silent holding the instrument away from her. She could hear Gerard saying, ‘Hello, Rose, is that you?’
She said, ‘Could you hold on a moment, I must turn something off in the kitchen.’
She went away into the kitchen and looked at a row of matching red saucepans standing in order of size. She went back to the telephone.
‘Yes?’
‘Rose, what’s the matter?’
‘Nothing’s the matter.’
‘You sound very odd.’
‘What did you want?’
‘“What did I want?” What sort of a question is that? I’m just ringing you up! Are you ill?’
‘No, no, I’m sorry –’
‘I did want to ask you something actually, do you know when Jean and Duncan are coming back?’
Gerard? Jean and Duncan? Who were these people? Rose tried to concentrate. ‘Very soon, I think, Tuesday or Wednesday, that’s what Jean said when I rang her yesterday evening.’
‘I’m so glad, I thought they might be afraid to show their faces in London. Look, could we have supper this evening, at your place, or I’ll take you out?’
‘I’m sorry, I can’t.’
‘Lunch then.’
‘No, I’ve got to see someone –’
‘Ah well – it’s short notice, I’ll try again. Darling, are you sure you’re all right?’
‘Yes, of course. Thanks for ringing. I’ll give you a ring soon.’
Rose, who had no engagements that day, returned to the table. She thought, I am out of my mind. It is impossible, because of Gerard, because of Jean, for me to have any relation of any kind with Crimond. If I were to go round to his house now, which is what I want to do more than anything in the world, I am capable of falling into his arms, or at his feet. I ought to be locked up, I must lock myself up. This is dangerous insanity and I must get over it. Perhaps I could just send him the letter though – just the letter to take away that awful impression, to make peace somehow between us, otherwise I shall be in pain forever, thinking of what he must think of me. I could cut out the bit about seeing him again. But of course he might take the letter as encouragement, he might come again, simply turn up. Oh how I wish he would! She went back to the table and took up an envelope. Then she read the letter again and crumpled it up. Tears came into her eyes.