by Iris Murdoch
I pity him, she thought, that’s what I must tell myself ever after. I love him, I love him, but it’s no use. How can I make sense, how can something like this happen so quickly? But it has happened – and it’s impossible, it’s deadly, it must simply be stopped and killed, I must drown these thoughts. The least weakness could make a catastrophe, a desolation. No one must know. How could I live if Gerard knew? If anything were to happen – it could only go wrong – and that would break me, it would break some integrity, some dignity, some pride, something by which I live. I can’t risk my life here. But, oh, what pain, a secret pain that will be with me forever. I must be faithful to my real world, to my dear tired old world. There is no new world. The new world is illusion, it’s poison. God, I am going mad.
She went into her bedroom. She thought, and he wanted to marry me! She threw herself on the bed and wept bitterly.
During the short time when Rose was with them at Boyars, Jean and Duncan had kept up a pretence of some sort of instant recovery. Rose had been amazed at their calmness. At dinner that evening they were able to be almost like their old selves. This was not a prearranged ‘act’, it was an instinctive façade set up to make endurable Rose’s embarrassing presence, her status as a witness who would eagerly report what she had seen in other quarters. It was necessary to ‘impress’ Rose before she could be got rid of. Rose was duly impressed and described their achievement to Gerard; at once however she and Gerard set to work to correct any misleading rosy impression which might have been made. They agreed that the ‘calmness’ was itself an effect of shock, the ‘jollity’ to be compared with the nervous cheerfulness of bereaved people at funerals, who then go home to weep. They sketched out many trials and difficulties, and wondered whether the reunion would work at all. Perhaps it might even collapse at once through Duncan’s uncontrollable resentment, or Jean’s flight back to Crimond. Rose and Gerard did not however try to imagine in detail what their friends were now up to, and did not continue their speculations beyond generalities; it was necessary to wait and see. Such temperance was characteristic of these two.
Rose had considered leaving Boyars at once, on the evening of Duncan’s arrival, but thought it wise to wait until the next morning just to see a little how things were going on. She thought her presence, just at first, might be helpful, imposing a calming limiting formality. She had asked Annushka to make up a bed in the room at the back of the house which Duncan had occupied on the weekend of the skating. She said nothing about this and did not attempt to discover where he had spent the night. In fact Duncan had spent that night by himself in that room. After the first discovery that ‘they did not hate each other’, Jean and Duncan fell into an amazing shyness, a kind of mute fear, a time of not uncomfortable silences, when sitting in the same room was enough. They were soon aware, and as a short prospect this was a relief (so Rose was right), that they were simply waiting for Rose to go. At lunch, even at tea, there was an air of slightly crazy cheerfulness, but at dinner they were acting a part. They sat with Rose briefly after dinner, then disappeared saying, truly enough, that they were ‘absolutely exhausted’. As soon as they were out of sight Rose ran to her bedroom up the back stairs so as not to pass Jean’s room, noisily closed her door, and exhausted too, went early to bed and to sleep. The scene in Jean’s room was brief too. Jean and Duncan wanted a rest from each other. They were aware too of the proximity of Rose. They hardly needed words to agree that tonight they would sleep apart. Duncan, also using the back stairs so as not to pass Rose’s room, which lay between, tiptoed to his former bedroom, not surprised to find the bed made up and the room warm. Jean took one of Dr Tallcott’s sleeping pills and went to sleep at once. But Duncan stood for a long time in the darkness at the window. At first he did not turn on his light because he was waiting for Rose to turn out hers. He could see the faint glow of her light on the lawn and on the curving wall of the turret. But when it went out he stayed there standing in the dark. He opened the window and let in the chill but moist air which even carried very faintly the smell of wet earth. The rain had ceased and a few stars were visible. He stood at the window uttering deep breaths like little soundless sobs. He felt the exalted anguish of a man in a spiritual crisis who is struck down by a sudden visitation, a mixture of shock, prostration, fear, and a weird painful joy. He was glad to be alone and able to tremble and gasp over it all. His irritable coldness to Gerard and Jenkin had not been entirely simulated. He had to stay cool, to stay cold, so as not to expect too much, not to expect anything, not to imagine the future at all; and he was, helpfully, annoyed by the gleeful faces of his friends bringing the good news and expecting him to be excited and grateful. He had inhibited his hopes, deliberately feared the worst, even nursed his old huge resentments, and did not know until he was actually in Jean’s presence that he still absolutely loved her, and that she at least sufficiently seemed to love him. That was enough of a miracle to rest upon for one night at any rate.
Rose breakfasted early the next morning, and said goodbye to her guests who duly came down and seemed to be orderly and sane, and for whom Annushka’s more elaborate breakfast arrangements were now waiting. The sun was shining upon the wet garden. They waved Rose off; but before the sound of her car had died away Jean broke down. She ran upstairs and locked herself in her bedroom. Duncan, outside, could hear her sobbing hysterically. At intervals he knocked and called. He was not impatient. He sat down on the floor in the corridor and waited. Annushka brought him a chair and a cup of coffee. As Duncan sat, listening to Jean weeping, a kind of resigned calm descended on him. He would have preferred to sit on the floor, but had to sit on the chair out of politeness to Annushka.
At last the door was opened. Jean unlocked it, then rushed back to the bed and lay there crying more quietly. Duncan looked round the familiar room, where the wood fire was blazing brightly. He noticed, which he had scarcely taken in yesterday, the demoted picture and the rectangle of blue paper. He picked up the octagonal table, decanted the books upon it onto the floor, put it beside one of the windows and placed two upright chairs beside it. Then he went to the bed, sought for Jean’s two hands, pulled her up and led her to the table. They sat, half facing each other, half facing the sunlit view over little green hillsides, some distant village houses and the tower of the church. As soon as Duncan seized her Jean stopped crying. She sat now with her hands palm downwards on the table, her lips parted, her face wet, her hair tousled, looking away out of the window. She was still wearing Rose’s tweed dress, but had taken the belt off. Duncan watched her for a while in silence. Then he drew out a handkerchief and leaned over and carefully dried her face. He drew his chair closer and began to caress her hands, and her arms, thrusting back the loose sleeves of the dress, then to stroke down her hair, combing it out with his fingers. Jean began to sigh quietly, bowing her head to the rhythmical movement of his big heavy hand.
After a while, moving away from her, he said, ‘So the Rover is a write-off?’
‘Yes.’
‘What happened?’
‘I was running away, too fast.’
‘Will you run back equally fast?’
‘No. That’s smashed – too.’
‘Aren’t you still in love?’
Jean said, gazing out of the window, ‘It’s over.’
‘I shall take some convincing.’
‘I will convince you.’
‘It’ll take a long time, you know, to put us together again. Many tears. We must show all our wounds, tell each other the truth, abstain and fast. Time must pass. We do not know what we shall be or what we shall want.’
‘But we’ll be together.’
‘I hope so.’
‘You pity me.’
‘I pity you very much, that is something you will have to put up with.’
‘I am afraid of you.’
‘Oh good – but, oh my darling, let us be happy at last.’
‘Just when everything’s going well, you spoil it all!’ cried Lil
y.
‘Sex is going well,’ said Gulliver. ‘Nothing else is. And don’t say “what else is there”. I’m tired of your smartness.’
‘I’m not smart. I just try to be. You’re hurting me deliberately. You’ve become mean and cruel. What’s the matter with you?’
‘I’ve told you what’s the matter, I’m worthless.’
‘That’s what I say! So we’re both worthless! So let’s stick together!’
‘No, you’re real, you’re something. I’m nothing. You’ve got money, that’s something.’
‘Then let’s celebrate, let’s go to Paris.’
‘No. And you’ve got some inside, you’ve got courage, you’re naive, that’s something too, you’ve got being, you are uneducated and stupid, but you actually want to do things, you’ve got joie de vivre.’
‘I wish you had. You’ve been a perfect misery for days. All you need is a job.’
‘All I need is a job! How dare you taunt me! You despise me!’
‘I don’t. You’re tall and dark and good-looking.’
‘I shall never be employed again, never. Do you realise what it’s like to face that? You don’t care, you actually like doing nothing. I don’t.’
‘You can write can’t you? You started writing another play.’
‘It’s no good. I can’t write.’
‘Couldn’t we do something together, set up a small business, money could do that.’
‘What sort of small business? Manufacturing ball-bearings or face cream? We haven’t any skills. We’d just lose your money. Anyway, I’m through with your money.’
‘Oh stop it, you bloody man! Can’t Gerard get you a job? He tried before, didn’t he?’
‘Yes, and he’s just tried again, he oh so kindly sent me to a man who ran a literary agency who told me to get lost! Gerard doesn’t care. He only does fake good works to make people admire him.’
‘That’s not true. You said he led you on and dropped you! That’s why you’re against him!’
‘He didn’t even lead me on!’
‘Gull, don’t be so awful when things are getting better. We’re better, Tamar’s gone home, thank God, and she’s back at work, Jean’s come back to Duncan, it’ll soon be Christmas –’
‘Tamar’s another damned soul who’ll kill herself with drugs or cancer. And Duncan will kill Jean, he can’t forgive her twice, he’s just pretending, I bet she’s scared stiff. One night when they’re in bed she’ll find him staring at her like Othello, and then he’ll strangle her.’
‘You’d better go to a doctor and get yourself seen to.’
‘Why do you talk about them as if they cared about us? You’re a snob. You’d like to belong to that horrible set, but they’d never regard you, or me, as one of them, not in a hundred years, so you needn’t try so hard!’
‘Oh shut up! Go and join the Foreign Legion!’
‘I’m going away, I’m serious. I’m giving up my flat, I’ve sold the furniture to the next tenant, I’ve sold my books –’
‘No!’
‘Well, most of them, what do you think was in those boxes I asked you to store for me? I can’t afford to live like that any more, and I’m not going to sponge on you. I’m going to the north.’
‘To the north?’
‘I want to be where people are really suffering and not just pretending to. I want to join the dregs of humanity, the bottom people, I want to be really poor. I’ve got to stop thinking I’m a bourgeois intellectual. If I can stop thinking that I can get a job. But not here, not with you lot, not with bossy Gerard and smarmy Jenkin and aristocratic Rose –’
‘I’ll come with you –’
‘Don’t be silly. You’re another thing I’ve got to get away from, you’re a bad symbol, you’re an idle woman.’
‘I think you hate women, I thought that when I first met you. I wish you’d let me do your horoscope.’
‘And you’re superstitious, and your grandmother was a witch, and –’
‘Gull, do stop terrifying me, you’re not yourself.’
‘I have no self.’
‘Now you’re being smart. You don’t mean all those horrid things you said about –’
‘About them, no, all right, I didn’t. But can’t you recognise a man in despair?’
‘Well, I’m in despair too, only I don’t make such a fuss about it. All right, I’ve got some money, but I can’t do anything with it or myself – then you turned up and I thought life made sense at last, and now you bother me with your bloody despair!’
‘There comes a time when a man has to be alone, really alone.’
‘Gull, please, won’t you go and talk it over with someone, with Jenkin, I’ll ring him up –’
‘You won’t. He’s running away too, and I don’t blame him, he’s going to South America.’
‘How did you know, did he tell you?’
‘Marchment told me, that schoolmaster, I even went crawling to him for a job. Jenkin’s fine, only he’d tell Gerard, and I don’t want to go to South America.’
‘I should hope not! You’re ridiculous. Why not stay in London and live here with me? If you want to work with bottom people there are plenty in this city, I could work with you –’
‘Lily, I don’t want to work with people, like a social worker, I want to be with people! It’s no good, I’m through with compromises.’
‘Gulliver, don’t leave me. You’re the only person who has ever really made me exist. We love each other, we agreed that the night before last. Let’s get married, please let’s get married.’
‘No. I’m leaving.’
‘Where do you imagine you’re going to?’
‘Leeds, Sheffield, Newcastle, I haven’t decided. Everyone’s unemployed up there.’
‘You’re mad – I’ll tell Gerard to stop you –’
‘If you do I’ll never forgive you.’
‘But you’ll let me know where you are?’
‘I’ll write, probably, but not at once. Now please don’t make a scene.’
Lily jumped up and began to cry. ‘You’ll never write, you’ll disappear, you’ll marry a girl in Leeds and get a job in a factory and I’ll never never see you again!’
Jean and Duncan, now back in London, seemed to their anxious friends to be coming to terms with each other more easily than had been predicted. They were both very tired. They had been carrying heavy burdens and were glad now to lay them down, together, exhausted. There was a mutual agreement to tend themselves and each other. They were assisted here by a deep and determined hedonism, an early bond between them. With Duncan again, Jean soon rediscovered the pleasure principle. They made jokes about this. They fell over each other trying to invent consolations, gratifications, treats. They felt that, after surmounting mountainous difficulties to be together again, they deserved to be rewarded. Once they were known to be back they were showered with invitations.
The goal of being happy united them. The healing of deep terrible wounds was another matter. The question ‘Can I forgive her?’ had made, for Duncan, the concept of forgiveness so murky and complex that he ceased employing it. There were many other ways of handling the situation. They both referred to precedent; they had managed it last time, and hadn’t they managed it fairly easily? It seemed so, but they could not remember too clearly. It had seemed, at the beginning, that they must simply work at their reconciliation by long talks about the past, telling the truth, showing every scar, probing every misunderstanding. But this comprehensive programme of mutual revelation proved difficult, and was felt by both, privately, to be dangerous. They did talk a great deal however, and told each other how valuable this was. They talked, selectively, about what had happened in Ireland. That first drama seemed sometimes closer, more real, more full of pictures, than what had happened more lately, over which so many clouds now hung. Duncan told Jean, for instance, what he had never recounted before, how, when he was in Wicklow, he had sat in a public house among the damned. This evocation of Dun
can’s state of mind seemed to have significance for both of them. He had never told Jean, and certainly did not tell her now, of how he had found Crimond’s hair on the floor of their bedroom. This detail, utterly revolting to Duncan, had with the years gathered all kinds of filth in his mind, and he had no intention of giving it more power and form by putting it into Jean’s mind. Neither of course did he tell her about Crimond’s blow and its long frightful sequel, the damage to his eye, the damage to his soul; of these terrible things he was bitterly ashamed. In fact, although they talked and reminisced a lot, and carefully handled a good deal of interesting material, neither of them had much to say about Crimond. It was as if, in that important central spot, there was a curious lacuna. They constantly talked round him but not about him. Well, was it really so important to talk about him? Duncan had wanted to be convinced, and Jean had engaged to convince him, that her relation to Crimond was finally over. But it became evident that this could not be done in any direct or simple way. Of course time would show. But how much time would be needed, perhaps the rest of their lives? Duncan watching her, thinking about her, could not but believe her still in love with Crimond. Such a passion could not suddenly vanish, it could only die of long starvation. Let it starve then. But he found it difficult to ask straight questions about this mystery. ‘Telling each other everything’ was to have included a long and detailed reliving of her whole relationship with Crimond, including the details of exactly how they came to part, so as to determine to the satisfaction of both of them that it was now at an end. This did not come about. A look of such misery came over Jean’s face when he put certain questions that Duncan felt too sorry for her to proceed. He wanted to know what exactly they had said to each other which constituted ‘an agreement’; but Jean was vague, made contradictory answers, changed the subject. Nor could he, talking to her, make any sense of the car crash, which on reflection seemed to have something odd about it. One subject after another was clumsily handled and postponed. Perhaps that was the only way to proceed and perhaps they were thereby making progress. In fact they did make progress, but not by the clarification and truthfulness method. The ‘fasting and abstaining’ which Duncan had had in mind concerned or included sex. He had had, at Boyars, no idea of how, when, or whether, they could establish anything like their former sexual relation. He sometimes wondered whether it was conceivable that she could move from Crimond’s bed to his, or that he could accept her with the aura of Crimond upon her. But a greater and more impersonal power, to which they both silently and readily submitted, brought it about that after a due time they found themselves in bed together again. This significant reunion was blessed and hastened by a sort of gentle tenderness with each other, an eagerness to please, which perhaps adequately took the place of showing wounds and telling the truth. They did not ask, ‘Do you still love me?’ But love was there, busily moving about inside what still seemed, at times, the awful mess of their damaged marriage.