by Iris Murdoch
‘But, Tamar, who put all this –’
‘All this nonsense into my head? Father McAlister. I’ve seen him several times. He wants me to be baptised and confirmed.’
The telephone rang in the hall and Jenkin got up to answer it.
Jean had not, on the previous evening, told Duncan about Tamar’s visit or her revelation. The evening passed as usual except that Jean was more full of gaiety, jesting and laughing wildly. Duncan seemed in good spirits too. They had their customary pleasurable argument about Provence versus the Dordogne, and whether it might not be a good idea after all to live in north Italy. The following morning, Friday, Duncan went away at his usual time.
After he had gone Jean returned to the abominable task of thinking through in detail everything which Tamar had revealed. Jean could not comfort herself by imagining that Tamar was deluded or lying, or that the child was not Duncan’s, or that the child was still alive. She felt sure that Tamar had told the truth. How was such an enormity to be thought about at all, how was it to be survived, what was the worst of it? Was there anything which could be in any way mended? Jean did not believe that this new horror could destroy her new relation, obscure as it still was, with Duncan. But it would wound it, perhaps change it in ways which were hard to foresee. There was the sheer surprise, the sense of the miraculous, that Duncan could after all produce a child; and there was the agony that it was not her child. And the separate and strange agony that the child was dead. There was also the particular shock of discovering that Duncan could go to bed (yet why ever not?) in her absence and do it so casually, with so young and vulnerable a creature. Wild peripheral considerations also tormented Jean. Told early that children were impossible, Jean and Duncan had not distressed each other by perpetual moaning about this. Jean had kept her own desire for a child as a secret sorrow. Perhaps Duncan had done the same. Together they were philosophical about it, even professing relief at being spared the horrors of parenthood. But now, since it appeared that Duncan could do it, would it not be possible to find a woman, any woman, who would bear his child and hand it over? Would Jean love such a child? Was it not, for both of them, too late? Then there was the awful question of whether she should tell Duncan at all? Was it true that the news was likely to ‘get round’? The weird elation she had felt at first at having ‘found him out’ and ‘knowing what he did not know’ now appeared as a small nasty psychological oddity.
Tormented, walking up and down the room, Jean felt a piercing growing need to do something, anything, to relieve the pain of continuous reflection. Another form of distress came to her aid, a new hurtful hypothesis: perhaps during her absence Duncan had had many love affairs. Why should the escapade with Tamar be the only one? And perhaps it had not been by any means as brief, and on his side carnal, as she had suggested? Duncan had told Jean that he had not been near any woman during her absence and she had believed him. Evidently she had been naive.
Jean suddenly decided that there was one thing she could do, even if it were only to pass the time, she could search Duncan’s desk. She went into his study and began carefully opening the small drawers and examining the papers. Almost at once she came upon Crimond’s note. There is unfinished business between us. She looked at the date upon the note and at the time of the rendezvous. Today. She looked at her watch. It was ten thirty.
She put the note back in the desk and ran to the telephone and rang Duncan’s office. He was not there. Was he at a meeting? No one knew. Then she thought. There could be no doubt about the meaning of the note, that it meant confrontation, not reconciliation or discussion. She at once thought of the games of Russian roulette which she had always taken to be charades. Could this be a charade, some sort of frightening or humiliating force – or the real thing? There had been the Roman Road… It could simply be a lethal trap. Whatever it was, there was no doubt in her mind that Duncan would go. He would never let Crimond vaunt, even in his mind, that Duncan was afraid.
Jean seized the telephone again and dialled Crimond’s number. Of course this was crazy. On this morning Crimond would never answer. Besides what could she say to him? The number was unobtainable. Suppose she were to get out the car and drive there at once? Might not her presence enflame both men and make what might have been some harmless display into a murdeous fight? Jean rang Gerard’s number. There was no answer. Then she rang Jenkin.
‘Hello.’
‘Hello, Jenkin, it’s Jean. Look, this sounds mad, but I think Duncan may have gone round to Crimond’s place to fight some sort of duel –’
‘Oh – no –’
‘At least, well, perhaps he hasn’t, I’m not sure, he may have done, and I can’t go round myself –’
‘I’ll go – when did he –?’
‘Crimond asked him to go at eleven, I’ve just found the note – if you go at once you might arrive first – but oh hell you haven’t got a car – and ours – I’ve just remembered it’s at the garage, or I could drive you round, oh hell –’
‘Don’t worry, I can get a taxi, I can usually get one on Goldhawk Road and there’s a taxi rank on the Green. Have you told Gerard?’
‘He’s not in. Oh Jenkin, I’m so sorry to trouble you, it may be nothing, now I come to think of it Duncan probably didn’t go at all – he may have answered the note and – but please go at once, I feel if you’re there nothing bad can happen. You know where Crimond lives, don’t you, and the downstairs room –’
‘Yes, yes. I’ll go at once, don’t worry –’
‘And you’ll ring me.’
‘Yes – I’ll fly now.’
Jenkin dropped the telephone and ran for his overcoat. He said to Tamar, ‘I’m sorry, my dear, there’s an emergency and I have to leave you for a while. Would you like to stay here till I come back?’
‘Yes – yes, please – I’d like to stay.’
‘I don’t know how long I’ll be, just stay and keep warm, I’d like to think you were here. There’s lots to eat in the larder and you can rest on my bed – turn on the electric fire – I’m sorry I haven’t made up the other bed.’
‘I’ll be all right, Jenkin, dear Jenkin.’ She had risen and now threw her arms round his neck.
He kissed her. ‘Stay here till I come back.’
Jenkin hurried along toward Shepherd’s Bush Green. There were no taxis. He waited at the taxi rank.
As soon as Jean put down the telephone she thought, perhaps I ought to tell the police? Why didn’t I think of that at once? Then she hesitated. Perhaps Duncan had decided not to go, perhaps he had replied suggesting another meeting place. This now seemed possible, even likely. She telephoned Duncan’s office again. He was not there. She telephoned Gerard, and then Rose – no answer. Should she tell the police? If she did, whatever happened she would have to explain everything, it would all get into the papers. Even if it was a farce of some kind, Duncan might get into serious trouble and would be furious with her for interfering. And the police might be glad to have an excuse for picking on Crimond, and she might have to give evidence and this would involve her horribly with Crimond again just when she was trying to think that he did not exist. It then occurred to her that this sort of false frightening blackmail must be a part, perhaps only the beginning, of Crimond’s revenge upon her. Unable to decide what to do she sat and wept.
Duncan had of course left Crimond’s letter behind on purpose. If anything ‘happened’, if for instance Crimond were to do him some damage, he would like to have in a safe place, and not removed from his pocket by his assailant, the evidence that Crimond had, in an aggressive style, asked him to come. This could be important if Crimond were to plead self-defence against a hostile intruder. If Crimond did, Crimond must pay. Equally, if Duncan were to damage Crimond, it would be helpful to prove that Crimond had been asking for trouble. The idea that Jean might find the ‘challenge’ did not enter his head for a moment. Jean was not a searcher in desks, and he knew that she believed him when he had said there had been ‘no one arou
nd’ during her absence. This indeed was true, apart from the little incident with Tamar, which he would perhaps tell Jean about one day.
Since their car was being serviced Duncan took a taxi which put him down near his destination. His anxiety brought him there too early, and he had to walk about for some time round squares of little streets trying to keep warm. An appalled misery overwhelmed Duncan’s heart. What on earth was he doing here walking about in these bleak squalid streets, with a hammer in his overcoat pocket? The hammer was heavy and jarred against his thigh. His hands inside his gloves were freezing. The cold made him feel weak and strengthless. He could not imagine holding, let alone using, any weapon. Why had he felt it impossible not to come when it would have been perfectly easy to ignore Crimond’s ridiculous letter? It would have been better, it would have been right. Of course having said he would come, he had now to come. Yet why was that, what stopped him from going back to the office at once, where he ought to be, where important matters awaited his attention and decent ordinary work was to be done? Why was he walking about intending to kill somebody, if that was what he was doing – or gratuitously running the risk of being killed or maimed himself? And Jean – would she ever forgive him if he let Crimond wound him? Or – suppose he were to hurt Crimond, to hurt him badly? Would not this awaken Jean’s sympathy, even perhaps reawaken her love? He was in a situation where he couldn’t win, and had wantonly put himself there. Was there still a way out? He thought, I must keep my head, I’m imagining all sorts of improbable horrors. I’ll be frank with bloody Crimond, I’ll tell him I came to tell him there was no point in this farcical business, and that he could go to hell, I wouldn’t co-operate with his play-acting, and he could keep out of my way and not communicate with me again. Surely nothing could stop him saying this and walking out, without letting Crimond start on whatever welcome he had contrived. This idea, with a rehearsal of its angry authoritative tone, cheered Duncan a little.
At eleven o’clock precisely Duncan mounted the steps to the door of Crimond’s house. He pushed a bell which did not ring. He waited a moment. Then Crimond, who had evidently been waiting in the hall, opened the door.
It was not until that moment that it occurred to Duncan that, apart from what he had seen at the summer ball, he had not set eyes on Crimond since the meeting in the tower so many years ago. Yet oddly what shook him when he saw Crimond standing before him was how young he looked, and how like the quite different, far more distant person he had known at Oxford; and for an instant Duncan thought we can’t fight – what on earth put the idea of a fight into my head at all! I’m mad. We are to talk, that’s what this meeting is about. Perhaps it will end in reconciliation after all. And a glow of confidence and strength entered into him. Talking, conference, diplomacy, that was his subject. He would talk Crimond down.
Crimond was dressed in an old black corduroy jacket and trousers, and had obscured the neck of his shirt with a dark green knotted scarf. He looked at first sight dandyish, almost raffish. His hair was quite long, longer than at the dance, and, perhaps recently washed, a little fluffy. He was very thin and his pale eyes stared out of a face which seemed inordinately lengthened as in a caricature. His complexion, which in the summer had glowed with freckles, was sallow, and the skin strained over the bones as if ready to split. The only colour in his face was the extremely red, damp, rims round his eyes, and a red area at the end of his long nose. His eyes in the staring face seemed alien, dry, like blanched stones. Duncan’s second impression was that he was confronting a mad person. The sense of Crimond’s youth had come from the slim figure, the corduroy, the scarf, the hair. Now he looked like a wraith.
Crimond said nothing, but moved his head to indicate that Duncan was to follow him. Duncan followed, closing the door behind him, across the icy hall and down some dark stairs into the long large basement room. This room was faintly warmer and smelt of a paraffin stove which was lurking somewhere at the far end. It was dark, very little light coming from outside, and only one lamp alight which was placed on the floor at the far end. The middle of the room was taken up by two long tables, placed longways opposite to each other, one at each end. There was a bed near the door, a great many books piled against the walls, two chairs, an open cupboard, a desk pushed into a corner near the lamp, no sign of activity upon it, the top swept clean. Otherwise the room was bare. As Duncan’s eyes became accustomed to the dim light he saw the target. A contest of that sort? The lighting did not suggest target practice of any kind.
Duncan felt encouraged and ready to carry out his resolve to dominate the scene. Crimond closed the door. Duncan followed him down the room. Crimond picked up the lamp and put it on the desk. The lamp light fell on Crimond’s hand which was trembling. Duncan felt calmer. He began to speak.
‘Well, Crimond, as you see I’ve come in answer to your curious little note, but let me say this at once. I think I understand your wish, your craving perhaps to see me. Perhaps we both need to be convinced that we can be in the same room without the world coming to an end. You have done appalling damage to my life and to Jean’s life and it would be ridiculous to talk here of forgiveness or reconciliation of any sort, which may conceivably, I say conceivably, have been in your head when you wrote that letter. What is perhaps worth proving for your, possibly also for my, state of mind is that we can look at each other, and this we have already managed to do. You may also have envisaged some kind of discussion. This, I must tell you, is entirely impossible. A crime of the magnitude of the one which you have twice committed does not allow of any place or topic for a meeting of minds. Do you really imagine that we are to sit down and have some sort of masculine discussion about Jean, or confess to each other that we are both sinners? You see that I have been able to mention her name in your presence and this is in itself remarkable, but is as far as we can go. I am sure you will agree. Your impertinent letter stirred me to anger. Having had time to reflect I see it in a different light. I suspect you yourself, in writing it, had no clear intention. I also suspect that in the interim you may have come to conclusions similar to mine. The meeting itself, what has happened in these last minutes, is the point. Of course my hatred, my detestation of you remains. One cannot magic such deep and just emotion away. But these things have to be lived with. Sometimes for one’s own sake one must attempt to purge and calm one’s imagination. If I were to spend the rest of my life in a state of crazed obsession that would be one more injury which you could boast of having done me. I don’t want to have to think about you every day and wonder what would happen if we met. We have met and nothing has happened. There has been a release of tension, nothing to do with mutual understanding, just something automatic, almost physical. I am sure you understand. I suggest we leave this matter just as it is at this point, that is, we have looked at each other. What threats I might utter against you I leave to your imagination. I am certain that you will not willingly cross my path again. That is all I have to say.’
This extraordinary speech, quite unpremeditated, surprised Duncan very much. He had not, even when he was coming down the stairs, had any thoughts of this kind. But even as he spoke he saw both the good sense of what he was saying and also its immediate efficacy. Perhaps it arose too from the particular confidence which he derived from seeing Crimond’s hand trembling. It was a vast relief to him, in a way he had not at all foreseen, to find that he could be in the same room with Crimond without some kind of terrible collapse or explosion. He had intended, as ‘talking him down’, to utter some vague angry rhetoric. But what, as it happened, he had uttered actually had point, and constituted an appeal to Crimond’s intelligence. He even felt that he had impressed Crimond. With his last word he turned to go, but not hastily. Crimond would certainly want to say something, and a brief coda would round off the event.
Duncan’s speech, which he had not attempted to interrupt, had certainly held Crimond’s attention. He even waited pointedly at the end of it in case Duncan did after all want to add anything. He
stared intently at Duncan, raising his light reddish eyebrows whose long fine hairs were unusually illumined by the lamp. His face relaxed, and he was opening and shutting his hands as if to calm his body. He said in a quiet interested tone of voice, ‘Oh, but it was not at all my idea to discuss anything with you, or, heaven forbid, to talk about Jean. There, I have mentioned her name too.’
It was at this moment that Duncan, with some sort of dismissive gesture, should have turned and walked away in a manner signifying: I don’t care what your idea was, I’ve made my statement and I’m going. If he had done that Crimond would probably not have impeded him. But Duncan felt so full of power just then that he was tempted to indulge his curiosity. He made the mistake of asking, ‘Well, what did you want us to do?’
‘Fight, of course,’ said Crimond, now giving a curious pained smile.
‘Oh don’t be a fool,’ said Duncan, not yet alarmed but already being caught in the silken threads of Crimond’s will. ‘I’m not keen on theatre.’
‘Why did you come?’
‘I came to say what I said just now.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ said Crimond. ‘The rigmarole you uttered just now was something you thought of on the spur of the moment, it was empty rhetoric. What you said about hatred and anger was true though. You came because you had to come. Otherwise you could easily just have ignored my letter, which as you say was impertinent. You could have ignored it. I expected you to ignore it. I’m surprised that you’re here. But since you are here –’
‘I’m going,’ said Duncan, now turning away with more determination.
‘Oh no you’re not.’ Crimond moved quickly round Duncan, now standing between him and the distant door. He said, ‘That door’s locked, I locked it after I came in.’
Duncan stood where he was. In any case Crimond now represented a serious barrier. If he tried to move past, Crimond might touch him, seize hold of him. The idea of being touched by Crimond filled Duncan with a paralysing repulsion. Standing face to face with the man in this large cold dark room all Duncan’s old vague furious ideas of hurling himself upon his enemy shrivelled up. No such lively impulses came to his aid. His concern now was simply to be able to leave with dignity. He felt that he had been able, for a time, to dominate Crimond, at least to silence him, and must try to do so again. But he was now in a position of weakness. He said in a firm voice, ‘I’m not going to fight you. How can you imagine that to be possible? I haven’t come here to humour your fantasy life.’