by Iris Murdoch
He reached out and turned on a lamp. After a moment he began to speak again, in a quite different voice, a clearer higher voice like that of a younger man. ‘Jesse, you’ve come back after all, back to your old Maxie, the only one who really loved you, never had anyone else, I knew you’d come — that bitch May Barnes is dead, isn’t she, she never mattered, someone said she’s dead — Jesse, we’ll be together again, like you said and I’ve hoped — that’s love isn’t it, you die without hope — you’ve forgiven me, I’ve forgiven you — You’re the real painter, I’m a bloody sod, we never argued about that, did we — the only good thing in me is you — and you’ve been here, here in this bloody rotting boat all these years — God, how often I’ve seen you here and you weren’t — and now it’s really you — it is, it’s true, isn’t it, old man, old darling — touch me, hold me, make me young again, save me, my old magician, my king, my love — ’
Max Point reached across the table and seized Edward’s arm in a claw-like arthritic hand. Edward could feel the finger nails through his sleeve. He pushed back his chair, dragging his arm away. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m not Jesse, I’m only his son, I’m Edward Baltram, not Jesse, I’m looking for my father, I’m so sorry, I know I look like him — ’
‘Jesse. Don’t deceive me again — don’t leave me now for the love of Christ. I’ll die of it — ’
‘I’m not Jesse!’ Edward cried, and leapt up, evading the poor skinny hands outstretched across the table.
‘You’re not Jesse — then who are you?’
‘I’m his son.’
‘You lie. He has no son. You’ve come to torment me.’
‘No — please — I want to help you — let me help you.’
‘Foul fiend, apparition, I know you, you’ve been here before, pretending to be Jesse. You can’t fool me. Jesse’s dead and you killed him, you devil. You killed him, and put on his skin, I know your ways, you’ve put on his face, underneath you have no face, only mud and blood and mess, I’ve felt you near me at night, pressing up against me, filthy vile ghost — and Jesse is dead, my beautiful Jesse is dead — go away from me, I’ll kill you — ’
Max Point jumped up and seized the palette knife from behind him. Edward saw the gleam of the blade and turned and ran toward the light of the half-open door. As he scrambled up the steps to the deck he looked back over his shoulder. Max Point had plunged the knife into one of the canvases.
‘So he thought you were Jesse,’ said Thomas.
‘Yes, and then that I was the devil pretending to be Jesse. And he said that Jesse was dead and that I had killed him.’
Edward had changed his mind and come to see Thomas after all. The need to tell somebody had become too pressing; and Thomas was the only person he could tell. About Seegard, Edward had told everything, except of course about Harry and Midge, or about Stuart. He did not want Thomas to summon Stuart and question him. There was enough muddle without that. It was only after Edward had decided to talk to Thomas that he had really set up in his mind the clarified idea that his stepfather was having a secret love affair with Thomas’s wife. The weird charade at Seegard, the arrival of ‘Mr and Mrs Bentley’, Jesse’s incursion, Jesse embracing Midge, had almost seemed to Edward like a dream, a phantasmagoric prelude to what happened on the following day. Edward did not feel it his duty to inform Thomas, nor did he know whether or not Thomas knew or had known. Edward’s own woes were of more pressing concern. All that was a mysterious and nasty blur on the side of the picture. But just as Edward had felt sad about not being able to enjoy the boats, he mourned a little that he could not now care more about his stepfather whom he loved, and about Midge about whom he had felt childishly romantic, and could not even be interested in this other drama which was taking place so close beside him. Another’s pain is often, to the wicked heart, a consolation, only not in extreme grief. About Thomas he did not worry. Thomas was a man of power, whatever happened Thomas could look after himself. And in thinking this he was momentarily afraid for Harry, afraid for, after all in an important sense, his father. There were things it was better not to think about.
‘And he called me an apparition. God, not only seeing one, but being one!’
‘You think he said: Jesse’s dead, drowned?’
‘No, I think I imagined that, I tagged it on later — I just can’t trust my thoughts and my memory any more. He said he dreamt about a false Jesse all bloody and muddy.’
‘Well, let’s leave Max Point — ’
‘That sounds so terrible,’ said Edward, ‘everyone’s left him. Can’t we do anything for him? He’s all alone and drinking himself to death.’
‘Well, if that’s what he wants to do. People do awfully want to do such things and it’s extremely difficult to stop them.’
‘They ought to get him off the drink.’
‘Would he be happy then? And who’s “they”? You for instance?’
‘I couldn’t do anything. I mean social workers or something. He said some woman brought him food — ’
‘Then she has probably assessed the situation.’
‘But I still feel — couldn’t you go?’
‘No. But I’ll ring up the local welfare folk.’ Thomas made a note on his pad. ‘Now about you, who are going to thrive on disasters.’
‘Thomas, don’t make jokes.’
‘I’m perfectly serious.’
‘Stuart said, let it burn, but draw something good into it.’
‘He wanted you to suffer, not to evade anything, then to find, in your own soul, truth and hope. That’s what I want too.’
‘He’s religious, you’re scientific, neither’s any good when one’s in hell.’
Thomas paused and looked carefully at Edward. ‘You seem to attach importance to Point’s seeing you as an apparition. Let’s get back from there to what you thought you saw. Do you feel any clearer about it now? We’ve been talking for over two hours.’
‘I’m wasting your time.’
‘Shut up, get on.’
‘No. I thought if I could only describe it to you, you could settle the question, at least I’d remember something crucial. It couldn’t have been real — yet I touched the ring — I think his eyes were open — I’d had that drink, and I’m sure it was drugged.’
‘And you said you’d been feeling ill, feverish? Does the fact that you didn’t tell Brownie count for or against your believing then that it was an illusion?’
‘Thomas, don’t muddle me, I can’t think like that — I don’t know — I’d already decided it was something awful — ’
‘Had you already conjectured that he might have been in a trance and you could have rescued him?’
‘I don’t know — I felt I couldn’t commit myself by telling anybody, putting myself like that in anybody’s power. If anybody knew everybody would know, or I’d think so anyway, and it would be a final doom, I’d be branded. And I especially couldn’t tell her, I couldn’t bring up something else, she’d see me as a diseased creature, a leper, bringing death everywhere. She’d stop seeing Mark’s thing as an accident. She’d been so wonderful about that, but that was her special subject — telling her the other thing would have messed it all up — ’
‘It got messed up anyway.’
‘Yes — I ran off, like someone who’s got another appointment!’
‘You’ll meet her again. But do concentrate. From what you’ve said about that house you must have been in a pretty anxious state, under a lot of psychological pressure. The mad sage imprisoned by his wife and daughters, as you put it. The idea of Jesse’s death must have been continually before you. Even, you say, the idea that they urgently wanted him dead and might be planning to murder him.’
‘I shouldn’t have said that. I never thought it and don’t think it, I’m not that crazy. Oh if only I could find him. I don’t even know if Ilona would tell me if he came home, if they’d let her. I’ll have to go there. Oh if only I knew he was alive — then I could get back to Mark where
it all began.’
‘You speak of it as if it’s a life task.’
‘It is.’
‘We’ll see. I can’t resolve this thing about Jesse for you, I wish I could. It seems improbable that it was real, and not some sort of hallucination, but the improbable constantly happens. We must wait. Meanwhile I have a suggestion for you, which is this. I think you should go back to your old digs for a while.’
‘You mean — to that room?’
‘Yes. Try it for a few days. You seem to have a deep feeling that you have to go through it all, as if you were living it all through again, that’s the picture of the “task”. This, unless you do it, is a bit left out. Of course it will be very painful being there — but you must imagine it often enough.’
‘All the time.’
‘Well, go back, live right up against it, see it for real.’
‘But they’ll have let the room.’
‘It’s not let. I rang up this morning when I knew you were coming.’
‘Oh — Thomas — ’
‘Think it over anyway. You don’t regret having talked to me?’
‘No. I trust you completely.’
‘Good. By the way, I never asked you when exactly was the last time you saw Jesse before that river scene?’
‘It was just the night before, when — ’ Edward flushed and bit his lip. He said lamely, ‘When he came down suddenly when we were having supper.’
‘What happened?’
‘Nothing. He looked at us and went back again.’
‘Nothing else? Is that true?’
‘Nothing else.’
Thomas, staring through his glasses with his enlarged eyes, said, ‘Mmm.’
Edward said after a moment or two, ‘You don’t think I’m mad?’
‘No. Do you?’
‘I have such mad ideas. I didn’t tell you — when I was going up the hill to that strange place with the pillar — there were lots of little brown things on the ground — ’
‘Little brown things?’
‘Yes, natural things, I mean like acorns, beechnuts, things like old chestnut husks, little dry brown things, very brittle. I stepped on them and they crunched and went to nothing — and I felt, I imagined, perhaps they, I mean the women, somehow put this into my head — that one of these — was Jesse — and that I’d crushed him and destroyed him. Then I began to think — perhaps this was out of a dream — that they were all Jesses, thousands, millions, innumerable Jesses. Isn’t that madness?’
‘It’s beautiful,’ murmured Thomas.
‘You see they seemed like little talismans, little images of gods, if you see what I mean — and I was treading them under foot — ’
‘Yes, yes, you have travelled far. The soul responds, it gives back healing images. There is no end to its power to create new being. Perhaps in every grain of dust there are innumerable Jesses. Did you think that if there were so many it did not matter if you destroyed some?’
‘I felt that I had destroyed my one.’
‘The seed dies in order to live. Don’t be afraid of your ideas, they are signals of life. Come to see me again soon. I must go to the clinic now.’
Edward stood up. For over two hours he had been studying Thomas’s face, as if he were to draw his portrait, tracing his wavery Jewish mouth, scanning the neat fringe of his light grey hair, looking into the deep well of his glasses. With a sigh he turned away from Thomas, closed his eyes for a moment, then allowed the room to reappear, clear in the sunshine, some dust upon the desk, a speckled stone holding down a page of notes, books leaning sideways on a shelf, a little red figure which he had never noticed before in Cleve Warriston’s picture of the mill.
Going down the stairs Edward saw Meredith crossing the hall. Meredith made a beckoning sign and Edward followed him into the drawing-room. The afternoon sun shone through the climbing flowers upon the half-drawn curtains onto the tiny flowers upon the wallpaper, the formal flowers under-foot, and the roses and irises dotted in various jugs. The room smelt of roses and summer. The familiar room gave Edward a shock of pain, a woman’s room, an old familiar room where he had indulged his childish love for Midge, a room not knowing of grief and fear, wherein, even now, she had arranged the flowers. He had not been there since the night of the dinner party when he had sat in a corner and pretended to read a book and Meredith had come and touched his sleeve.
Meredith said, ‘It’s Edward.’
‘It’s Meredith.’ He’s taller, he’s older, Edward thought, he’s capable of irony, he’s capable of malice. How has he learnt, what does he know? Does he regard me as an enemy?
Meredith said, smiling, ‘You’ve been seeing my pa?’
‘Yes.’
‘He knows everything except one thing, and that’s the thing he keeps searching for while it’s under his nose all the time.’
‘That sounds like a parable,’ said Edward.
‘It’s a novelty, like what you get at Christmas time. What do you know, Edward?’
‘Oh stop it, Meredith,’ said Edward, ‘remember you’re only thirteen.’
‘Who says you can’t go mad at thirteen? Can you do this?’ Meredith suddenly did a handstand, his head went down, his elegantly trousered and now so long legs went up, his light brown hair flopped forward, his heels clapped together. Edward saw his spread hands upon the carpet, white with the weight. Then his elbows moved outward as he slowly lowered his head to touch the floor. He remained poised so for a moment, then in a whirl of legs and arms sprang upright. Looking at Edward now, his face was red and grim. He said, ‘Go away. I’ve got a pain in my heart.’ He did another handstand. His face, unintelligibly reversed, glared up at Edward. Edward went out, quietly shutting the drawing room door and the front door.
Why do I torment him so, thought Thomas, why do I keep sending him into danger? Suppose he goes back to that room and jumps out of the window?
He sat for a while holding in his hand the comb which he had automatically brought, together with a clean white handkerchief, out of the drawer of his desk. Then he began very carefully to comb his hair, feeling for the crown of his head and sleeking the silky hair down with his other hand. After that he pulled a little bunch of errant hairs out of the comb and dropped them in the wastepaper basket, put the comb away, and cleaned his glasses with the handkerchief. He set things in order on his desk. He straightened the page of notes and the speckled stone which had come from Scotland. He set out his well-sharpened pencils in a neat row. He often wrote in pencil. He liked sharpening pencils and using different coloured ones.
He thought, most unlikely. Then he thought, all the same I must stop practising, I must retire, I really must stop it. He sat back in his chair. Thomas, who did not always tell the truth, did not have to go to the clinic. It was his research day.
He started thinking about the menopause, and how much false mythology this concept had generated. It was a favourite topic of many of his female patients, determined to connect their nervous crises with this phenomenon, and if they had no nervous crisis to induce one. In fact, he thought, there is no typical menopause, there are as many menopauses as women. A smattering of popular science caused so much unnecessary trouble, anxious schoolgirls counting the days to their exams, middle-aged women led to anticipate breakdowns by magazines picked up in their hairdressers. Of course there were cases. This was one subject upon which Thomas and Ursula Brightwalton were in agreement. He wondered if Midge thought about it and whether the prospect was worrying her? Ought he to say something, in general terms of course? It was characteristic of their marriage that they did not discuss such things. Thomas’s puritanism, both Catholic and Jewish, shunned physiological conversation about sex. Some couples made verbal directness, even coarseness, a part of their intimacy. Thomas and Midge had retained a sort of shyness which Thomas valued. Of course, as a doctor, he tended his wife and said what was necessary, but not as chat. He loved his wife deeply with a dignified and reticent passion and continually felt how
fortunate he was to be married to her. His ancestral sense of the absoluteness of marriage had never, in their long relationship, been shaken, he took their permanence for granted. He was never worried by the luncheons with men friends from her ‘model’ days, which she amusingly (not always un-maliciously) described to him afterwards. Their life together was orderly and ceremonious. As a young wife she had matched her ways with his, being in love with his authority. Later the difference of age between them had seemed to disappear. It will no doubt appear again, thought Thomas, but we are past danger.
Midge had seemed restless lately, short-tempered with him and with Meredith in an uncharacteristic way. Their love-making, dependent on mute signals, had over many years decreased in frequency and lately ceased, no doubt temporarily. Thomas, who certainly did not desire this state of affairs, had said nothing. He wondered if he should talk to Midge or continue to rely upon the telepathy which had always made them so close and happy together. He decided to reflect upon the matter. He recalled Ursula saying, long ago, that of course Thomas ought to have married a busy Scottish body who was always in the kitchen, and Midge ought to have married a rich industrialist with a yacht who would enable her to have a salon full of the rich and famous. A joke of course, and another false generalisation. The same was true of Ursula’s idea that Thomas was an autocrat and a bully. We are happy, he thought, we know what ‘living well’ is. Meredith was one proof of that. Thomas, who, in his work, so skilfully talked and probed and pressed, did not do so at home. He did not ‘confront’ his wife or his son. He had very rarely been overtly angry with Meredith or chided him harshly; but when Thomas was displeased Meredith knew and knew why. The child’s intelligent eyes, at an early age, met his in a silent compact. Sometimes alone together, Thomas writing, Meredith reading, they would raise their heads and look at each other, unsmiling. Later, alone, they would smile.