by Iris Murdoch
Annette liked to believe that Nina was always working for her. Annette had a mystical feeling about her clothes. It was as if the task of clothing her must never come to an end. She must be like a princess for whom all over her realm people toiled day and night to make her trousseau. There was no feeling Annette liked so much as the feeling that someone else was making or doing something for her the fruit of which she would soon enjoy. This feeling was perhaps for her the essence of freedom. Annette hated the notion that things should ever be complete and that she should have to live on what she had. She had disliked desert island stories when she was a small girl for just that reason. She had quarrelled with Nicholas about this, for he was always fascinated by the idea, which was hateful to Annette, of being isolated and living on one’s wits with a few given resources. Certainly where clothes were concerned she abhorred completion, and however big her wardrobe, and it was already colossal, it would have been torture to her to have to make do with what was there.
Nina lived in a large light room on the top storey and Annette arrived at the door panting. The door opened into a forest of clothes. The room was criss-crossed with a number of steel rods, fixed near to the ceiling, from which hung garments in various stages of completion. As Annette entered, the draught made a rustle of silks and a murmur of velvets that swept like a sigh along the hanging rows of garments towards the mirror, which was fixed to the wall at the far end. The mirror was very tall and luminous, and in the light that fell from it were grouped the white full-breasted dummies, some clothed and some unclothed, between whom Annette, her eyes big with anticipation, now as she entered saw her own reflection. Nina’s room was mysterious to Annette. She was not sure whether or not Nina lived there. Apart from the clothes and Nina’s big treadle sewing-machine there was very little furniture and only a few objects of any personal significance. The most notable of these was a finely carved wooden crucifix which hung over the doorway. This thing embarrassed Annette. Her parents had always been indifferent to religion, but she herself had picked up a certain number of superstitions at a convent school which she had once attended for a short time. She had even for a while said nightly prayers, until she noted that a strangely sneering tone was creeping into these utterances — and she had discontinued them through fear. Shortly after that Nicholas had demonstrated to her satisfaction that the concept of God was contradictory. All the same, the presence of the crucifix upset her, and she found something strangely disagreeable in the thought that Nina believed in God.
Annette shut the door, and Nina came towards her, zigzagging soft-footed through the lines of clothes.
‘Miss Cockeyne!’ said Nina smiling. ‘I was just thinking about you. The short evening-dress is ready for fitting.’
‘Thank you, Nina, so much,’ said Annette. ‘May I try it now? I’m sorry I didn’t let you know I was coming.’
Nina pushed the clothes away to each side along the rails and made a wider lane in the centre of the room down which Annette walked towards the mirror. Nina followed behind her. Looking into the mirror, Annette could see the top of Nina’s head just appearing above her shoulder.
One of Nina’s dummies was wearing Annette’s evening-dress. It was a low-necked dress made of a stiff sea-green brocade. When Annette saw it, every other idea went out of her head and she exclaimed with joy. Her eyes glistened with admiration for the dress, and for herself.
‘Quick!’ she said to Nina. ‘Let me put it on!’
‘It will need some adjusting,’ said Nina. ‘I’ve left it quite free at the waist. None of my dummies are as slim as you, Miss Cockeyne. It will look even better on.’ Nina always flattered Annette.
Annette had already jumped out of her skirt, revealing a red-and-whitc check silk petticoat, and was tearing off her blouse and her scarlet scarf with the sort of haste she had used when going swimming as a child. ‘Quick!’ said Annette. ‘Quick! Quick!’
Nina was carefully unpinning the dress from the dummy. It came apart into apparently shapeless pieces and Nina carried them over her arm to where Annette stood before the mirror, braced, one foot before the other and arms hanging free, like a circus dancer before a leap. Nina began to help her into the dress, and as she felt the cold smooth material slipping along her flesh, Annette closed her eyes with sheer joy. When she opened them again she was transformed. The dress was a triumph. The stiff material cascaded outward from Annette’s narrow waist to a wide hem, an inch or two above her ankle, and the deep oval neckline swept inward to a high collar behind Annette’s long neck. Her white bosom, revealed in the shape of a tear, lying between the formal complication of the tightly buttoned bodice and of the lofty collar, gave the strange impression as of a woman both elegantly dressed and naked at the same time. This was exactly what Annette had wanted.
‘It’s marvellous!’ she said to Nina. ‘It’s what I dreamed of! I felt I would die for such a dress!’
Nina looked critically at the dress. She was pleased with it too. For the moment, Annette had faded away. Annette was merely another dummy. Annette was nothing more than the dress. ‘Yes,’ said Nina, ‘it will do.’
She took a mouthful of pins and began to pull the material more tightly in at the waist and to deepen the darts in the bodice. As Annette felt the dress clinging more and more closely to her, and her two breasts lifting like a ship lifted by the tide, she thought that she loved Nina. Nina stood back for a moment, the pins still in her mouth, to survey her work in the glass. It was then that Annette realized that someone else had entered the room. A man had come in and was standing by the door at the far end of the lane of clothes. Annette could see him in the mirror. She could see their three heads, her own bright and close, Nina’s below her, a little in shadow, and the man’s head, far back over her shoulder, and quite darkened. Yet she knew that he was looking into her eyes. A second later Nina, as she looked into the mirror, also saw him; and before Nina turned round Annette caught in her face a look which might have been anger or fear, or both.
As Nina turned about, the man began to walk towards them down the room. Annette felt like a queen in her green dress, and it did not occur to her to turn to face him. She merely watched his reflection curiously as he approached. Nina had stood aside, pressing herself back into the thick bank of clothes. The man stopped level with her, gave her a nod, and then stared directly at Annette in the mirror. She saw him clearly now. He was a stranger to her; and the most striking characteristic of his face was noticeable immediately, making everything else about him for the moment invisible. He had one blue eye and one brown eye.
Annette turned round slowly, lifting her heavy skirt slightly with one hand. She looked at Nina, and then back at the man, who was standing close to her and scrutinizing her without embarrassment. He was a slight man of medium height, with soft brown hair and a small moustache and a long tenderly curving mouth. But Annette could not help staring at his eyes. The blue one was not brownish, nor was the brown one bluish. Each one was its own clear unflecked colour. There was thus a brown profile and a blue profile, giving the impression of two faces superimposed.
‘You must introduce us, Nina,’ said the individual with the eyes.
‘Miss Cockeyne,’ said Nina, ‘may I introduce Mr Fox.’ She mumbled the words in a tone of exasperation, and as she spoke she drew her hand across her mouth and took it away marked with blood; in her surprise at seeing the newcomer she must have cut her lip on the pins. Annette, who heard thousands of names mentioned every year, and had a deplorable memory, could recall having heard the name of Fox in connexion with something or other, but could not remember exactly what.
‘I low do you do?’ she said, stretching out her hand. She was still fascinated by the eyes, and rather wishing that hers were like that. At any rate it would make one memorable.
The man kissed her hand with a quick graceful movement and stepped back. ‘You resemble your mother,’ he said. He spoke without any accent, but with a sort of precision which marked him as foreign.
/> Annette, who had heard this remark repeated ad nauseam, placed him roughly as an admirer of her mother and felt a corresponding decrease of interest. ‘Ah, yes, how nice,’ she said vaguely.
Fox had stepped back now into the shadow of the hanging clothes and stood there like a man on the edge of a forest.
‘Might I have a chair?’ he said to Nina. She brought him one, and he sat down where he was and crossed his legs. ‘Don’t let me interrupt you,’ he said.
Nina stood stiffly for a moment, as if she were about to cry out. Then she moved back towards the mirror, spun Annette round as if she had been a dummy, and began to attend once more to the dress. Suddenly now Annette felt helpless. Nina was moving her arms and her head about as if she were made of wood. She felt like a puppet. She tried, by staring into the glass, to see what the expression was on the man’s face; but his face was in shadow again: and in a moment Nina had turned her head in the other direction, taking hold of it firmly as if it had been a ball and swinging it round as if what she would really have liked would have been to send it spinning into the far corner of the room. Now Nina had hold of Annette’s left arm and had raised it straight up to point at the ceiling, now she took her right arm and bent it vigorously at the elbow, and all the time her hands fled about here and there over Annette’s body, nipping in the material. Annette could feel the pins pricking her flesh. She saw herself in the glass with her arms lifted stiffly like a doll and thought that she looked ludicrous. She began to feel the need to be unpleasant to somebody.
With an inspiration of memory she said suddenly, ‘Are you the person they call Mischa Fox?’
‘Yes,’ said the man behind her. She saw his teeth flash, but he said no more.
‘I believe you’re famous for something or other,’ said Annette, ‘but I’m afraid I can’t remember what it is. I have a very bad memory.’
‘I am not surprised that you do not remember,’ said Mischa Fox, ‘for in fact I am not famous for anything in particular. I am just famous.’
‘I see,’ said Annette. ‘I hope I shall manage that too. As I shall certainly never be famous for anything in particular, the best I can hope is to be just famous.’ She felt that she was being impertinent, and this gave her a pleasure mixed of exhilaration and shame.
Mischa Fox said, ‘It is not difficult.’ He smiled again. There was something lazy and relaxed about his attitude which annoyed Annette. He was clearly not exerting himself. He was simply watching her, as one might watch a bird.
Then Annette realized that Nina was beginning to unpin the dress. She lowered her arms and instinctively held the material together at her bosom.
‘Keep still, Miss Cockeyne, or I shall go wrong,’ said Nina tonelessly. She bent both Annette’s arms at the elbow and stretched the forearms out to point towards the mirror, so that she looked like a person preparing for a dive. Annette stood rigid. Nina undid a pin, and in a moment the heavy skirt had fallen to the floor. Then Nina began carefully to unfasten the bodice. Annette stared at her own image in the mirror. Like someone upon a high place who is only saved from vertigo by looking straight ahead, she looked into her own eyes. She held her breath, and for a second the other two ceased to exist. Gently manipulating Annette’s arms, Nina had removed the bodice. Then she picked up Annette’s blouse and skirt from the place where they had been carelessly left on the floor and thrust them at her with a gesture of violence. Annette sprang to life, and in a moment she had slipped them on. She felt that she had been defeated. She was blushing violently.
‘Nina,’ said Mischa Fox, ‘I wonder if you would mind making a cup of tea for Annette and myself?’
Nina turned, and without looking at either Annette or Mischa, left the room. He was still sitting in an idle way upon the chair, with one leg tucked under him in a posture which was more feminine than masculine. He got up slowly, in the graceful loose-limbed manner of an animal rising, and came out into the bright light beside the mirror. Annette noticed the long and gently curving line of his mouth. She looked upon him with nervousness and surprise. Mischa Fox was studying her face meanwhile. Then he smiled at her. Then he reached out a long arm, and taking her by the shoulder turned her round so that more light fell upon her face.
Annette sprang back. ‘Don’t touch me!’ she said. This cry brought them closer together than any physical contact.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Mischa Fox. ‘I simply wanted to see your face.’
They stood facing each other, a few feet apart. Annette could feel her shoulder burning where Mischa had touched it. He was unsmiling. She could see his blue eye. His brown eye was in shadow.
‘Oh!’ said Annette with a kind of moan. She raised her hand to her head.
Nina came in with the tea. Mischa Fox turned to her and began saying polite things. Annette stepped away from them. A velvet hem was brushing her cheek and some sort of gauze hung before her eyes. She would have liked to have plunged deep into the forest of hanging clothes. She suddenly did not know what to do with her body. She picked up her scarf and her handbag and began to rummage inside the bag, partly to give herself something to do and partly in the hope of finding some charm against the incomprehensible pain of the present moment. She found her powder compact and began to powder her nose. Then Nina was pressing a cup and saucer against her wrist, and she had to lay the handbag down on the floor.
‘I’ve stayed too long!’ Annette said suddenly.
The other two turned to look at her. Annette gave Mischa Fox a firm fierce stare. ‘I’m late,’ she said. ‘Will you take me in your car to my next appointment?’
Mischa Rox smiled his lazy tender smile. ‘Alas,’ he said, ‘I came here on foot. Otherwise I should have been delighted. May I telephone for a taxi?’
‘No,’ said Annette. ‘Don’t trouble yourself. I shall just run away. Good-bye.’ As she said these words she darted away down the lane of clothes and out of the room.
After the door had shut, the dresses rocked gently and came to rest in a subsiding murmur of silk and velvet and nylon. Mischa Fox continued to sip his tea, and his glance wandered about, from the crucifix to the sewing-machine, and from the sewing-machine to the pale heavy-breasted dummies. At last his eyes came to rest upon Nina, who was looking expressionlessly into her tea-cup. It was a long time before she would consent to return his gaze.
Eight
JOHN RAINBOROUGH was sitting in his office. His legs were stretched out rigidly under his desk. The heels of his shoes bit deep into the carpet and the soles of his shoes rose there from at an angle of approximately eighty degrees. He held his hands lightly together, meeting at the finger-tips. He looked down at the blank sheet of paper before him, and his eyes had a soft penetrating look, as if he could see right through the paper into a subterranean cavern. He was absorbed in the problem of Miss Casement.
Miss Casement was Rainborough’s personal assistant. She had been appointed by one of Rainborough’s predecessors, and he had inherited her together with his office and the files. In those days Miss Casement had been a typist. There are certain human species whose members appear to be indistinguishable one from the other. What these species are will vary with the observer. Some people find it impossible to distinguish undergraduates. Rainborough had never been able to distinguish typists. They all looked to him exactly alike. He could see their smile, but no other features. So it was that, without giving the matter a second thought, he had taken over his new post, and with it Miss Casement’s clicking typewriter and her radiant grin.
Very soon, however, Rainborough discovered that there was a great deal more to Miss Casement than her smile. Miss Casement’s appointment had been a special one, made personally by the then head of the department and not routed through Establishments. Such appointments, though officially frowned upon, were not uncommon in the office of SELIB; and notwithstanding the slight irregularity attaching to her advent, Miss Casement seemed to be on the best of terms with Establishments, since she received a considerable increase in sa
lary during the first weeks of the Rainborough regime. Shortly after that, Miss Casement was upgraded from the position of typist to that of Organizing Officer grade II. These happy events occurred without any recommendation having been made by Rainborough, and indeed without his having been officially informed. On both occasions, since Miss Casement modestly refrained from enlightening him, he found out only by accident.
It was a peculiarity of SELIB that promotions were made upon some obscure system known only to Establishments and which dispensed with such traditional features as testimonials from superior officers. This system, which was described by a member of Establishments as ‘thoroughly democratic’, had as one of its results that it would often happen that a sectional or departmental head, when giving orders to someone whom he took to be his junior, would be shyly informed by that individual that a recent promotion had reversed their relative positions. Thus the staff of SELIB were kept in continual and irregular motion, jerking past each other like wooden horses racing at a fair, all involved in the movement, which though governed by mysterious forces continued to operate in the long run to the satisfaction of all, towards the upper ranges of the hierarchy and the higher income levels. The only difficulty about this liberal, and on the whole uninvidious, system was that it was hard to see what would happen when all members of the staff had achieved the maximum promotion and, as it were, all pawns had become queens. This happy millennium, in which all differences would be forgotten and all officers would be united in blissful union at the highest salary range, though not unimaginably distant provided the present speed of promotions was maintained, had, however, not yet arrived; and meanwhile the happy ferment continued at all levels of the organization, providing continual employment for Establishments and for the rest of the staff a daily interest with which it was as well to provide them, since they certainly took none in their work.