by Iris Murdoch
Thomas despatched a missive about his wife to his unconscious mind and turned his thoughts to Mr Blinnet. Mr Blinnet continued to puzzle Thomas. He sometimes found himself considering the theory apparently held by Ursula that Mr Blinnet was an impostor. Yet of what kind? With what motive? If he simply enjoyed spending his money year after year to deceive Thomas did not that in any case betoken an abnormal state? He had come to Thomas after ineffectual hospital treatment by drugs. (He had refused shock therapy.) Mr Blinnet apparently lived a normal life, he enjoyed a private income which he managed by himself, he drove an expensive car. He was (it seemed) entirely without family and had never been married. Everything about him was normal except that he was mad. (Thomas had met similar cases of which Mr Blinnet’s was the most striking.) He had frightening delusions, he was persecuted by laser beams, by telepathic probes that entered his brain, by aliens with ray guns, by packs of mad dogs which followed him in the street. He was particularly afraid of dogs. He also had a continuing fantasy about a dead woman who was growing into a tree. This woman was sometimes described as his wife, whom he had killed, intentionally or accidentally, and (in various versions) buried on a common, sunk in a lake, burnt in an oven, or dismembered and strayed in the sea. Yesterday he had handed Thomas a long poem on this subject. Mr Blinnet often wrote poems, dull banal insane poems, the fantasies of the insane are usually inertly uninventive. His latest poem (he was much given to assonance) began, ‘So she grows old in her grave under the tree, so she grows cold in her skirt of earth, yet still grows from her clothes of mould, sprouting from the dirt of her clouts, I have found her above ground as a green mound’ (and so on, rambling without form or conviction). Was Mr Blinnet a homicidal maniac in a period of repose? He did not seem to be that kind of madman; but suppose he were not a madman at all? Suppose Mr Blinnet, a sane man, had committed a serious crime, and had then set up an elaborate pretence of being insane, for use in court should the law catch up with him? Ingenious — but would such a long deception be necessary? Mr Blinnet would seem to be of the stuffsecret agents are made of. He was indeed very like a secret agent as portrayed in a film, whose appearance so perfectly belies his real nature, which yet, to the discerning eye, looks slyly through. Mr Blinnet’s calm beautiful face was like that of a simple sage or holy man, yet the eyes, caught sometimes unexpectedly, were watchful, even amused. Mr Blinnet, for all his sufferings with sprouting corpses and laser beams, often enjoyed a secret joke. If it was all a charade, why did he need to go on, how could he? Of course he loved Thomas. (Thomas loved him.)
Thomas’s thoughts returned to Edward. Edward wanted Thomas to tell him whether that vision of Jesse was an hallucination. Thomas could not. He was inclined to think it was. If a drowned man had been there what Edward had seen would have had a different quality and the idea of hallucination would not have arisen. It was important that Edward had classed it in this way at once. But what was the use of speculating? Time might show something. It was better for the present to let Edward occupy himself with his continued ordeal, until he could feel that he had done everything. In the end he would tire and come back and fall unconscious at Thomas’s feet. Then another phase would begin, a convalescence in which Edward’s youth, his simple and robust nature, his instinctive desire for happiness, would effect his cure. But it would be a serious mistake to start this process too soon.
Thomas felt tired. He had been concentrating upon Edward. Now he would concentate on his book and forget Edward. I must stop, though, he thought. I’ve got away with it so far. I might be found out at any moment. I long to be free, art and reason have led me to this place, from now on I’ll be guided by desire. I can’t go on exercising this ingenious skill, this power, bending and contorting people’s lives like a Japanese flower arranger. It must come to an end — before something goes wrong, before I lose what, after all, I still treasure so much, my reputation, my — honour. What poor Edward has lost, and seeks. For me, there could be no authority, no magisterial healer. Then he thought, how much I would like to discuss some of these things with Stuart. Could that happen? Perhaps later. But first of all I must retire from all this, I must let it go. We’ll live at Quitterne, and I’ll think and I’ll write. Magic must come to an end. Of course Theseus must leave Ariadne and Aeneas must abandon Dido, Athens must be saved, Rome must be founded, Prospero drowns his book and frees Ariel, and the Duke marries Isabella. And Apollo tames the Furies. Thomas sat for a while and then added half aloud, ‘And flays Marsyas.’ He smiled.
‘I want you to teach me to meditate,’ said Midge.
‘I don’t know how,’ said Stuart, ‘I just do it. I mean, there are those very long disciplines — I just invent it for myself, perhaps all wrong. You must ask someone else.’
‘You want to get rid of me.’
‘No, I just can’t help.’
‘You must help. You’re supposed to be doing good. Is it because it’s personal?’
Stuart said, after a pause, ‘I doubt if I could help anyway, but as it is — I mean my father being involved — I feel it’s better that we don’t talk.’
‘Who else can I talk to? Surely you have a special duty, a special obligation. You’re the only person who can see it all. You must help me to thirik, no one else can. I want to tell you everything about myself and about the situation, telling you would make so much difference — then I could make the right decision. Don’t you want me to do that?’
‘Yes, but — ’
‘Aren’t you even interested?’
Stuart considered. ‘Yes, I am “interested”. But that sort of interest is a mean low instinct and one I can’t follow.’
‘You think it wrong to imagine other people’s sufferings?’
‘No possible good could come of your telling me all this.’
‘How do you know, why are you so certain, why not try, what are you afraid of?’
‘I’m able to see all sorts of bad consequences, which perhaps you can’t. None of this conversation should be happening at all — ’
‘How can you say anything so dry and heartless — ’
‘It’s a device, it’s a way of putting off telling Thomas.’
‘You mean if I don’t tell Thomas you will!’
‘No. I won’t tell him.’
‘Ever?’
‘That question doesn’t arise. Thomas is bound to know sometime soon. My father might tell him. It’s better if you do. Once the secret doesn’t just belong to you and to my father it’s just very likely to come out somehow — ’
‘I suppose Edward might tell him. Or those devils at Seegard might send it around. But — it doesn’t matter — I feel as if he knows already — ’
‘Do you think so?’
‘No, he doesn’t know, but as you say he’s bound to, so there it is. What I want is to understand what I’ve done — that’s what I want to talk to you about — and about it all, and what such things mean anyway. How can I judge? I need you, I need your help, I beg you to help me, I want to confess, I want to pour it all out in front of you — ’
‘I understand, but pouring out is just what won’t help. It’s no use telling me. That’s just a diversion, another emotional experience, a way of experiencing — of continuing — that relationship — Go to Thomas. Telling him is what will make everything clear and real. You’ve been living in some sort of dream — that’s how I see it anyway — until you tell Thomas you won’t know what you are doing. Once you’ve told him you’ll be a different person.’
‘That’s what I’m afraid of.’
‘Part of you is afraid. But you do want to be another person, to stop deceiving — ’
‘You seem to think a woman can love no one except her husband. You think any other love is worthless — but it may be the most valuable thing in the world. And it happens all the time. You just want to separate me from your father. The whole thing makes you sick. Can’t you be objective?’
‘Yes, it does make me sick,’ said Stuart, ‘but that’s
not the point. The point is to tell the truth. Telling a lot of lies, particularly systematic lies, gradually detaches one from reality, one can’t see. My own view, which isn’t important, is that this thing with my father is wrong — there’s Meredith to consider, and — ’
‘Don’t be vile, don’t be so crude and boorish, you’re envious, you’re spiteful — you don’t understand, how can you — ’
‘All right, I can’t, I’m sorry and it’s no use trying to make me understand, I’m not involved at all and I mustn’t be.’
‘You’re afraid of your father.’
‘I don’t think so. I’m sorry I said just now it was wrong. The deception was wrong. It’s only when it’s all in the open that you will be able to see what’s been done and what to do next. It’s no use recounting it to me, that’s just for thrills, you just want a distraction, like going to the cinema to forget your troubles, it’s a fantasy.’
‘You call my telling you the whole truth about this business a fantasy?’
‘Yes. You can’t and wouldn’t. It’s with Thomas that the truth can emerge, not with me. This is just setting up an emotional atmosphere, some sort of disturbing pseudo-connection — ’
‘I see — what you are afraid of is an emotional relationship with me. Do you feel you are in danger?’
‘No. I feel you are in danger.’
‘You flatter yourself. Do you think I might fall in love with you?’
‘No, of course not! I mean you could just become addicted to endlessly talking about yourself to somebody — anybody — ’
‘It sounds like analysis!’
‘In a way that would do you no good. It’s just continuing the dream, the untruth, and putting off what has to be done — ’
‘You think I might disturb you.’
‘No!’
‘You said it was “disturbing”.’
‘Please let’s not argue like this — ’
‘I’m not arguing, you are. I just want help. You set yourself up as something amazing — you’ve created this sort of — vacuum — all round you — you can’t complain if afflicted people rush into it. Is your idea of holiness driving everyone away? You ought to be on a pillar.’
‘It’s only — you — ’
‘I’m so special — perhaps a temptation!’
‘No. You know what I mean. Let’s stop this conversation, it’s such a mess — ’
‘You hate mess. Where there are people there’s mess.’
‘Look, this involves my father — I can’t discuss his — his — ’
‘Adventures.’
‘With you. It’s not seemly.’
‘I love your vocabulary.’
‘He would — rightly — dislike it. That’s one good enough reason for asking you to please go.’
‘It’s the other reasons I’d like to get at.’
‘You just want a nervous emotional scene, a plucking at the nerves, it’s no use — ’
‘If you’re so anxious about not hurting your father, why did you travel back with us in that car’
‘That was a mistake,’ said Stuart, ‘I regret it. I just wanted to get away.’
‘Mistakes have consequences. Oh Stuart, help me, just a little, any little thing could help me. Don’t be so cruel. I want something you can give — just give me something — like a sort of absolution — no, I mean some forgiving understanding, compassion, feeling — ’
‘I’m sorry for you — ’
‘That’s something.’
‘But I can’t help you. Please don’t ask for anything here, it’s the wrong place.’
‘So there is nothing you have to give to someone who is mad with grief?’
Stuart reflected. ‘In this context — nothing.’
‘Oh you — devil — you and your mistake — ’
‘I don’t want to make any more, here.’
‘It’s too late. You think a single slip might demoralise you. You’ve got to be perfect even if everyone else perishes. At least I’m beginning to know you better!’
They were sitting in Stuart’s little room, he on the bed, she on a chair. They spoke in low voices. Oblique watery sunshine entered through a spotty window which Stuart had closed when Midge arrived unexpectedly. The walls were a tear-stained pale green, the shiny new linoleum, which rose to obstruct the door, a more vivid green. There was a washbasin and a thin white towel. There were papers on a small table, pamphlets, forms to be filled in. Stuart’s broken-backed suitcase, half unpacked, the lid fallen back onto the floor, was visible in the fluff under the bed. The wainscots were lightly piled with dust. The room was cold and smelt of unwashed clothes and damp.
Stuart felt cold and awkward. He had been shaving. He had been vigorously dashing cold water onto his face, and his hair was wet. His shirt was undone. He had tried to button it up but the buttons felt wrong and he had not wanted to look down and check them, Midge had so immediately started her attack and he had had to concentrate. He looked at Midge with his amber animal eyes which he could make so cool and unexpressive.
Midge, who had tossed her coat onto the floor, was soberly dressed; she wore a brown skirt and a white blouse and very little make-up and no jewellery, but her neat leather belt and her shoes somehow, like a distinguished signature, guaranteed and illuminated the smart ensemble. She sat gracefully, turned a little sideways, her skirt unconsciously hitched. Her small hands, with darkly red-painted nails, wandered nervously as she talked, along the hem of her skirt, over her knees, up to her throat, to her hair, like two anxious harmless little animals. She was no longer slim, but she looked, now, well composed, elegantly caparisoned, young, alert like a young soldier in a spotless rig. She constantly drew back her thick mane of bright hair, tugging at it nervously.
‘Stuart, don’t you understand what I’m saying to you, what this scene is all about, what it means when you have to see someone, when you want more than anything in the world to talk to him, to be with him? I love you. I’ve fallen in love with you.’
It was true. It had happened, Midge later realised, in the car coming back from Seegard, when she had so much felt that she did not want to touch Harry, must not touch him. Gradually she had felt her whole body change, first dreadfully chilled, then slowly warmed, by the rays which came from behind. She had sat stiff at first with mingled horrified fear, misery, anger, embarrassment, remorse. She wished Stuart away, dead, never to have existed, his dreadful consciousness, his knowledge, utterly extinguished. She apprehended his big white clumsy body, so close behind her, heavy in the back of the car, as a contaminated corpse, full of a fatal disease, disgusting, dangerous. Then after a while she began to feel simply tired, surrendered to a hopeless quiet sense of ‘it’s too much’. Then a physical warmth began to steal over her and somehow, without altering her posture, she relaxed and let herself be warmed. She was conscious of an aura of emotion, unfocused desire, new desire. How could that be? There was a physical effect, a happening, as if her whole body were being remade, as if by radiation, the atoms of it changed. She felt soothed, as if ready for sleep, yet was also intensely alert, alive. She was, had been as she later thought, aware that it was Stuart who was in some way affecting her, simply by his proximity doing something to her. What did it mean when something like that happened? But nothing like that had ever happened to her, this, like herself, her altered self, was entirely new. She was not tempted to turn round, to turn round would have been impossible. As she sat there staring ahead with wide open amazed eyes, conscious of Harry’s profile in the dark car and of his jerky angry movements as he drove, she breathed deeply and meditated upon what was so indubitably going on. It was as if this were something beyond personality, a cosmic chemical change wherein he was a pure force and she was a pure substance. So strong was her sense of the impersonality, the ineluctable objectivity of the happening, that it could not have occurred to her then to wonder if Stuart too were in any way conscious of it.
When, back in London, Thomas had taken her a
way to Quitterne, she was glad to go, to rest, to find out what had happened to her. Of course she would have to go to Stuart to tell him, but first simply to see him, to be in his presence. That was clear. But now she began to see everything else as well. Had the dangerous proximity, the being of Stuart, fatally damaged her love for Harry, that beautiful mutual desire which she had cherished so, which had filled her consciousness and glorified her body and dictated her meticulously organised timetable for nearly two years? It was surely impossible that she could have stopped loving Harry, of course she loved him, but was it now different? Dreamily, alone at Quitterne with her husband and her son, segregated in an absolute interval, she tried not to worry about that, or about what she would do, but simply to indulge and protect and strengthen her awareness of Stuart. It was as if Stuart had already been given to her, as a subject to be thought through, in its entirety. She summoned all her memories of him from earliest childhood, she meditated upon him, she collected him. She was relieved, though at the same time hurt, when, in London again, she had found Harry absent, not anxiously and lovingly waiting. She had not planned to see Stuart on that morning, she had not envisaged seeing him, but Harry’s absence had served as a signal. By now however Midge had begun to see what a terrible situation she was in. She had been agonisingly touched by Harry’s little flat, by his familiar beseeching, by the pressure upon her of his utter ignorance. Old deep habits of love and loyalty fought for life against the new revelation. How could she not still love Harry, how could he not be her absolute? She felt an agony of tenderness and pity, which came as a new intensity of her awareness of her lover, while at the same time, even as she talked to him, she was planning her next encounter with Stuart, wondering how soon and with what mien she was to go to him again. Letting Harry make love to her had been touching and strange, as if he were now young and to be looked after, and she fled from thought by falling asleep before the end. She promised to telephone Harry, to fix something, on the next day, but did not, and went to Stuart instead.