by Iris Murdoch
‘But, Monty, Monty -’ Edgar had risen.
‘Go, go. Here, take this.’ Monty reached out to the chimney-piece and took up a Coleport mug brightly painted with sprays of red roses. Take it, take it away. It’s nothing personal. It’s just that I want to dismantle the place, like Aladdin’s palace. Whenever anybody comes, I give them something to take away.’
‘Oh thank you – how pretty – I’ll put it in my room in college. Monty, do you think, later on I mean, when you’ve had time to sort things out, you could give me something of Sophie’s?’
‘No.’
‘Anything, anything at all, one of her shoes —’
‘No!’
‘Monty, you don’t mean it about not seeing me tomorrow? I’ve got to see you, I’ve got to talk about her, I shall go mad. You may have had time to get used to it, but I haven’t -’
‘Go away,’ said Monty. ‘I don’t want to see you. / don’t want to see you. Understand. Go away. Please.’ He opened the drawing-room door and went out into the hall.
Edgar followed. He stood, arms hanging, holding the Cole-port mug by the handle. Then suddenly he gave a little whine and began to cry. His face grew red and seemed to be instantly wet all over with tears. He said, ‘I can’t bear it, I can’t bear it.’ He continued silently to cry, staring at the ground and not wiping his tears.
Monty studied him for a moment or two. Then he went to the front door and opened it wide. A spurt of bird song entered into the house. Edgar set off along the hall and, with a powerful whiff of whisky, went past Monty and out of the door, still crying.
Monty went back up to his bedroom and darkened it again by pulling the curtains. He got back into bed. He wondered if the sight of Edgar’s tears might now help him to cry. He tested himself hopefully, but it was no good. His heart was beating hard and his head was aching and he lay sleepless. It was nearly six o’clock.
‘Blaise is away,’ said Harriet. ‘He’s with Magnus Bowles.’
‘Oh really,’ said Monty. He got up and wandered restlessly to the window. They were in the little Moorish drawing-room which the intense evening sunshine was illuminating with a rich powdery light, making the turquoise ducks upon the tiles to glitter like jewels and the saffron and grey lentil trees to glow with a pearly radiance. Harriet was sitting among the patchwork cushions upon the purple canopied sofa, looking with her pale mauve robe and her half-tumbled glinting brown hair, like some sultan’s delight. The room was somnolent and the garden fragrances were lacking in freshness, heavy like incense. Monty felt a little faint, perhaps from lack of food, perhaps from lack of air. A large pink-silver-paper-covered milk chocolate fish (a salmon perhaps?) which Harriet had brought with her lay upon the low table beside Edgar’s empty whisky glass. It was once again six o’clock.
The morning post had brought another letter from Monty’s mother, who was mercifully still at Hawkhurst.
My darling boy,
I am thinking of you all the time and will come to you soon. I just brood over your grief, wishing so much that my loving thoughts could make it well. I know by intuition, telepathy, what you will, how much you are suffering. We have always been so close and known each other’s minds. I would draw off that pain if I could. I can at least share it. Be quiet within yourself, dearest child, try to be quiet in your mind. I don’t mean resignation, you are not a resigned person. We know what we think, don’t we, of ‘the will of God’ and all that false comfort that weak people fly to. Just be gentle and relaxed with your sorrow. And be sure to take all those pills the doctor gave you, won’t you, dear. I was so glad of your letter though it said so little. I may telephone you soon. I did ring on Tuesday actually, but I got no answer. I expect you were in the garden. Do not make any decisions about property until I have seen you, you are in no state to do so. We shall have to think it all out carefully together, won’t we. I look forward to a long quiet conference about practical matters. Taking decisions will make you feel that time has passed, and time does heal, you know. It will do you good to face these ordinary things, but you must not attempt to do so alone. Our job is to get you writing again, isn’t it, to get you and Milo on the road again! You will feel so much better then. And we shall arrange your future for the best, and decide what to do about Locketts. So leave all these tiresome things until I come, dearest. Do not worry about me. Your little mother is perky, and full of her own concerns. Do you know, I have just bought a new dress? It is a lovely cornflower blue, I think that you will like it. I send you, dearest boy, like little birds, so many loving thoughts. My heart flies to you. I think about you with such an intensity of love. Know that, as you read these words, I am thinking of you.
Ever your loving and faithful Leonie.
Harriet was looking at Monty and wondering what he was thinking. He was not thinking about his mother. He was not afraid of Leonie’s telephone calls, since he had silenced the telephone bell with a piece of plastic wire. He was thinking: I must destroy that bloody tape recording. He had played it again that morning.
Harriet had spent the afternoon at the National Gallery. She usually did this on Magnus Bowles days. Blaise would drive her into town in the afternoon and drop her off at the Gallery, or at some other art exhibition, while he went on to the British Museum Reading Room. Then in the evening he would drive to the southern suburb where Magnus lived, and Harriet would make her way home by train and bus. She had never learnt to drive the car.
She had felt very strange that afternoon in the National Gallery. An intense physical feeling of anxiety had taken possession of her as she was looking at Giorgione’s picture of Saint Anthony and Saint George. There was a tree in the middle background which she had never properly attended to before. Of course she had seen it, since she had often looked at the picture, but she had never before felt its significance, though what that significance was she could not say. There it was in the middle of clarity, in the middle of bright darkness, in the middle of limpid sultry yellow air, in the middle of nowhere at all with distant clouds creeping by behind it, linking the two saints yet also separating them and also being itself and nothing to do with them at all, a ridiculously frail poetical vibrating motionless tree which was also a special particular tree on a special particular evening when the two saints happened (how odd) to be doing their respective things (ignoring each other) in a sort of murky yet brilliant glade (what on earth however was going on in the foreground?) beside a luscious glistening pool out of which two small and somehow domesticated demons were cautiously emerging for the benefit of Saint Anthony, while behind them Saint George, with a helmet like a pearl, was bullying an equally domesticated and inoffensive little dragon.
Hypnotized by the tree, Harriet found that she could not take herself away. She stood there for a long time staring at it, tried to move, took several paces looking back over her shoulder, then came back again, as if there were some vital message which the picture was trying and failing to give her. Perhaps it was just Giorgione’s maddening genius for saying something absurdly precise and yet saying it so marvellously that the precision was all soaked away into a sort of cake of sheer beauty. This nervous mania of anxious ‘looking back’ Harriet recalled having suffered when young in the Louvre and the Uffizi and the Accademia. The last visit on the last day, as closing time approached, indeed the last minutes of any day, had had this quality of heart-breaking severance, combined with an anxious thrilling sense of a garbled unintelligible urgent message. This experience had been a stranger to her for some time now since Blaise was not interested in pictures and she had not visited the foreign galleries. Why suddenly this emotion, on this occasion, for this picture? Was it something prophetic? Already a number of times she had walked away, determined not to look back, and had looked back. It was absurd. After all, these were her very own London pictures which she could see again any time she wished. She had intended to tell her little story to Monty, but by the time she reached him it already seemed too trivial. She knew better than to tell it to B
laise. He would say it was something to do with sex.
How very much I depend on people, she thought, looking at Monty’s profile. What a charming short straight nose he had. Everything about him was proportioned and neat, not like the knobbly looks of most men. Any girl would be pleased to have a nose like that. Harriet had no impersonal abstract world, except perhaps the world of pictures, and that seemed to come to her as pure ‘experience’, not anything she could possibly talk about. What I feel with the pictures is different, she thought, it’s like being let out into a huge space and not being myself any more. Whereas what I feel looking at Monty is so absolutely here and now and me, as if I were more absolutely my particular self than ever, as if I were just throbbing with selfhood. It’s odd because I love the pictures and I love Monty, but it is so different.
Monty had a hard and rather fixed gazing face, not like Blaise’s face which was so mobile, always changing and dissolving into laughter or annoyance or thought, as if it had no surface but were actually part of what it confronted. Blaise lived his face; Monty peered through his, looking from behind it, and not necessarily, Harriet sometimes uneasily felt, through the eyes. Monty had a sort of intent voyeur face, yet livened at times by a sort of puzzlement or chronic surprise. Only since Sophie’s illness his face had hardened further into a mask. There was a pale smile he smiled for Harriet, but it was quite unlike his old real smile. Harriet loved Monty, not of course in a ‘sexy’ way, but in the way that she loved almost anybody whom she got a chance to love, and perhaps a little bit especially because he always seemed to her so clever and yet so lost. That woman whom he mourns so has ruined his life, she thought to herself.
Monty did not in fact want to see Harriet at all. He let her come to him in this emotional impetuous way out of a kind of politeness, because this was something which she needed and wanted. She needed the sense of helping him, she wanted the flavour of his grief. A weary sense of duty upheld him in receiving her, in giving her that little wan smile which she so rightly recognized as peculiar. On the other hand she did not irritate him as his mother would certainly have done. Harriet was capable of being silent, and although she very much wanted to touch him (to hold his hand for instance) she accepted his renewed evasions with tact and grace. She had qualities of physical repose which his mother entirely lacked and which poor Sophie had lacked too.
How awfully neat he is, Harriet was reflecting, and how much I have been looking forward all day to seeing him. Even now he has put on a clean shirt and a tie and such smart cuff-links which he must have chosen to wear, I’m sure I’ve never seen them before, and he is so fantastically clean-shaven, and so clean, even his fingernails are clean, which Blaise’s never are. Of course Monty’s father was a curate, I’m sure that’s significant, he looks so absurdly clerical. And he’s so compact and small-scale, though he is quite tall, he seems so dainty after Blaise’s untidy smelly masculineness.
‘Don’t grieve, my dear,’ she said, just to say something. ‘She had a happy life.’
‘Oh Harriet, please don’t talk rubbish. You don’t know whether Sophie had a happy life or not. Even I don’t know. And what does it matter now what sort of life she had?’
‘I always felt that Sophie—’
‘Please.’
Harriet kept trying to make him talk about Sophie, she wanted to hear him rehearse his loss, she wanted, unconsciously of course, to triumph over Sophie. Any woman is glad when a man loses another woman. Harriet wanted, in a sense, to ‘move in’. It was natural and Monty did not resent it.
‘Are you eating? Your kitchen looks too tidy.’
‘I open tins.’
‘I do wish you’d let me deal with your letters.’
‘I sort out my mother’s ones, the rest don’t matter.’
‘But aren’t there any letters from friends —’
‘I have no friends.’
‘Oh nonsense!’
It was true, thought Monty. Sophie had pretty well cleaned him out of friends.
‘Well, I’m your friend, Monty.’
Thanks.’
‘Oh Monty, don’t – do break down or something – don’t bottle it all up – it’s not good to be so remote and calm about it all.’
‘Women always want men to break down,’ said Monty, ‘so that they can raise them up again. I am quite sufficiently broken down, I assure you, without any demonstrations. In fact I’m behaving in an extremely unmanly way. If I had an ordinary job to do I’d have to get on with it Being self-employed I can brood all day. It’s undignified and bad. Bereavement is not uncommon. One might just treat it like the ’flu. Even Niobe stopped crying eventually and wanted something to eat.’
‘You mustn’t blame yourself —’
‘I don’t. I ceased some time ago to believe in goodness. My judgements are purely aesthetic. I am behaving like a milksop.’
Harriet got up and moved to stand beside him. A ragged-winged white butterfly, resisting the slight warm evening breeze, was clinging on to a tassel of mauve wistaria just outside the window. Monty and Harriet watched the butterfly together in silence. Beyond, upon the close-cut lawn, three of the dogs, who had come round with Harriet by the road, were waiting to escort their mistress home. (The only dog who, at great danger to his organs, Harriet felt, could jump the orchard fence was Ajax.) Babu and Panda, who usually went about together, were playing a familiar game of taking it in turns to he down and be sniffed over, and then to leap up when least expected. Nearer to the window Ganymede, his tail now languidly set in motion by the sight of Harriet, was stretched out in his typical slug-like pose, his muzzle on the ground, his front and back legs fully extended.
‘Dogs are normally pack animals unless redeemed by attachment to an individual master. But your collection of creatures seem to display both characteristics.’
Harriet’s hand gently sought out Monty’s hand and took it in a firm cautious gentle grip like a retriever holding a bird. Monty smiled the wan smile, lightly pressed the intrusive hand, and moved away. He repressed a shudder at the unwelcome contact. His flesh mourned. Harriet sighed.
Oh get out, get out, get out, thought Monty. He said, ‘Please go, Harriet dear.’
‘All right, all right. Aren’t we going to eat our chocolate fish? Just a little bit.’
‘It’s melted,’ said Monty. He began to pull off pink silver paper coated with gluey pale brown chocolate.
‘Not really.’ The fish lay disclosed, staring-eyed, a little amorphous but quite whole. Harriet swooped on it, detaching its tail and conveying it to her mouth, licking her fingers. Monty pretended to eat a stick fragment. He wiped his fingers on a (Harriet noticed) freshly laundered white handkerchief.
‘Can I ask you something else quite abruptly?’ said Harriet. ‘You know Blaise’s doctor plan. Well, if we go ahead with it, could you if necessary lend us some money?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘And if you leave Locketts, though of course we hope you won’t, would you consider selling us the orchard? You know how much Blaise has always wanted it.’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘It seems awful to ask both things! We may have to sell Hood House anyway.’
‘Don’t worry about money for Christ’s sake. And of course you mustn’t sell Hood House.’
‘Thank you, Monty, you’re perfect. Yes, yes, I’m going. And you will talk to David, won’t you, about his not giving up Greek? He’s so attached to you.’
‘It’s mutual.’
‘Thank you, dear Monty. May I have just another little bit of our fish?’
‘Thank you, dear Harriet. Here wait a moment, take this.’ Monty picked up a large blue and white Chinese vase from the table in the hall and bundled it into Harriet’s arms.
‘Monty, you are absurd, you mustn’t give away all your things, whatever will your mother say! It’s so huge, and you gave me that Persian plate thing last time!"
‘The apparent scene is slowly falling to pieces revealing the re
ality behind.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, and I don’t think you do either!’
The opening door revealed Monty’s front garden, a large paved area dotted with dwarf veronica bushes, lavender, rosemary, hyssop, santolina and sage. The declining sun made a pattern of long rounded shadows upon the grey paving. Rushing round the side of the house the three dogs began to race about among the bushes, lifting their legs against them, almost without pausing, like canine athletes. The door also revealed, half-way up the path from the gate, Edgar Demarnay, now dressed in a light brown summer suiting and a very large green tie, his fluffy pale hair neatly combed, and carrying a straw hat.
Harriet, who had emerged, stepped aside. Edgar, reaching the door, also stepped aside, placing his straw hat upon his heart and bowing to Harriet. He then turned and bowed to Monty.
‘Professor Demarnay, Mrs Gavender,’ said Monty.
‘Not Professor any more actually,’ Edgar murmured, staring at Harriet.
‘Thanks, Harriet. Good night.’
Harriet moved away. As Edgar began to say something to him Monty said quietly, ‘I’m sorry, but I meant it. I really don’t want to see you. At all. Good-bye.’ He shut the door in Edgar’s face and went back into the drawing-room feeling very upset.
A moment later he realized that he had made a ridiculous mistake. He ought to have held Edgar in play long enough to let Harriet leave the scene. As it was he had practically thrust them into each other’s arms. Cursing, he crept into the dining-room and peered through the curtains.
Harriet and Edgar were standing at the gate in close converse, Harriet holding the large Chinese vase as if it were a baby. Damn, damn, damn, thought Monty. Did he then feel possessive about Harriet? Evidently. And how very much he did not want Edgar hanging around. Edgar typified all that messy mysterious side of Sophie’s life which had so much tormented him. And all those bloody letters and giving her his telephone number! Now Harriet would feel sorry for Edgar. She must have been intrigued by Monty’s treatment of him. She was a woman, that is an inquisitive interfering busybody. Edgar would be questioned. Edgar would be delighted to tell all. Edgar would acquire a contact, a foothold. Edgar would be back. Oh damn, damn, damn.