The Flight From the Enchanter

by Iris Murdoch

  ‘It’s not a sensible arrangement,’ said Mrs Wingfield, ‘but it’s the arrangement we’ve adopted.’

  At that moment Miss Foy came into the room carrying a champagne glass. ‘I thought you might want another glass,’ she said.

  ‘You thought right,’ said Mrs Wingfield, ‘but a bit late in the day, as usual. Don’t go away, you fool. Leave the glass, now you’ve brought it. You can take that cup down, I don’t know how we overlooked it. Have you got any drink left, girl? Well, pour it into the glass, and give Foy the cup to take away. That’s right.’

  Miss Foy turned to go. ‘By the way, Foy,’ Mrs Wingfield shouted after her, ‘this is Rosa Keepe.’

  Miss Foy came running back, her pale eyes glistening with excitement. ‘Why, Miss Rosa,’ she cried, ‘what a pleasure this is, and what an honour!’

  ‘Honour my foot,’ said Mrs Wingfield. ‘It’s Miss Keepe, not her mother.’

  ‘I remember your mother well,’ said Miss Foy. ‘I often heard her speak in the halls round Holborn and Kingsway. What a speaker she was! Of course, I was very young then.’

  ‘Not so damn young,’ said Mrs Wingfield. ‘How old do you think Foy is?’ she asked Rosa.

  Rosa looked embarrassed. ‘I’m not very clever at guessing people’s ages,’ she said coldly.

  ‘Look at her!’ said Mrs Wingfield, ‘she’s putting me in my place! Well, make a guess. But take a good look first. She’s like an old mop, isn’t she? Have you ever seen a human being look more like an old mop? And look at her legs. Lift your skirt up, Foy. They’ve got no shape at all. They’re like two posts. Have you ever seen anyone with legs more like a couple of posts?’

  ‘Don’t you mind her, Miss Rosa,’ said Miss Foy, who appeared to be fairly used to this. ‘She doesn’t mean it.’

  ‘Don’t I just mean it!’ cried Mrs Wingfield with passion. She swung her legs down again with the same energetic gesture and sat pointing at Miss Foy, who now turned a shade paler under her grey. ‘Look at her hair. Did you ever see such a frizz? It shows one of her attacks is coming on. Mad people’s hair always stand up like that. They say a lunatic is a lunatic to his fingers’ ends.’

  ‘Don’t!’ said Miss Foy. ‘Please stop it! You’re giving me the creeps.’ She turned and fled from the room.

  ‘What a frump!’ said Mrs Wingfield. ‘She thinks I’m serious. I was much jollier before I met Foy. All the same, if it wasn’t for her I’d be sunning myself in the porch of some damned hotel. Would you say old Foy was a virgin?’

  ‘I have absolutely no opinion on the subject,’ said Rosa savagely, who was very much disapproving of this persecution of Miss Foy. She had by now decided that Mrs Wingfield was by no means mad.

  ‘What do you mean, you’ve no opinion?’ said Mrs Wingfield. ‘You must think something about it, one way or the other!’

  ‘I mean,’ said Rosa, ‘that I think you’ve been very rude to Miss Foy.’

  ‘Well, why the hell don’t you say what you mean?’ said Mrs Wingfield. ‘I’m not a thought-reader. I’ll tell you something. Of course you think she’s a virgin. Everyone does. And I’ll tell you something else. She isn’t! You’d be surprised. But I’ll tell you all that some other time. Could you go to that cupboard and get out another bottle of champagne? That’s right. Do you know how to open a bottle of champagne? Well, open that one, and don’t let it spurt all over the furniture.’

  Mrs Wingfield was sitting up now, her trousered legs sturdily apart, leaning back against the cushions of the sofa. As Rosa poured her out a glass of champagne, she was struck by the extraordinary dry texture of her face, which seen at close quarters had an alarmingly artificial appearance. The surface was more like smooth slightly dusty cardboard than like skin. In the midst of this desert the two eyes gleamed alarmingly, like weedy pools. Rosa felt almost terror at the thought that if those eyes were ever to spill a tear it would surely cut a strange furrow in the dry powdery surface, revealing heaven knew what beneath. There was a sweet dusty smell, as of old linen preserved in lavender.

  ‘You’re thinking,’ said Mrs Wingfield, ‘that I’m a fine one to talk about age. I make no secret of my age. I’m eighty-three. You think I’ve got an enamelled face, like Queen What’s-her-name. Would you like to see a picture of me when I was twenty? Pass me that album.’ Rosa passed over a thick book with a red velvet cover which lay amid a miscellany of vases and brass animals on top of a nearby piano.

  ‘There I am,’ said Mrs Wingfield.

  Rosa looked at the picture of a proud sweet-faced girl with a cloud of dark hair and glowing dark eyes under an enormous hat. ‘You were beautiful,’ said Rosa. ‘You’re not terribly unlike this now,’ she said seriously. She suddenly saw, as in a vision, the young face looking through Mrs Wingfield’s old one. It was startling.

  ‘You’re a little flatterer,’ said Mrs Wingfield, ‘and a flatterer is a liar. That’s not like your mother. She would never have flattered anybody. But then, of course, you want to get something out of me. There’s me again a bit later.’

  She turned the page, and Rosa saw a confused picture of a tall woman in an ankle-length skirt standing with her arms held out in an unnatural position, with a crowd gathered round her. ‘That was when I chained myself to the railings at Wellington Barracks. I’ve still got a mark on my wrist from that day.’ She showed Rosa a small red mark on her left wrist.

  ‘Really!’ said Rosa.

  ‘Do you believe me?’ asked Mrs Wingfield, and then laughed fiendishly. ‘Never mind! Look, here I am being arrested at Ascot. I got those photos from the newspapers. They always sent a polite man round next day to ask if we wanted pictures. Your mother must have had quite a collection.’

  ‘Yes, she had,’ said Rosa. ‘I remember one of her and you throwing leaflets about in a theatre.’

  ‘That’s right!’ said Mrs Wingfield, her eyes kindling. ‘It was Covent Garden. II Trovatore. Royalty was present. You clever little thing, you’re working hard for whatever it is you want!’ She turned the page again. ‘There’s a picture of me talking to Bernard Shaw.’

  Rosa studied the picture respectfully. ‘Old Wingfield was jealous about me and Bernard,’ said Mrs Wingfield. ‘That was before I crowned the old blighter — old Wingfield I mean. I killed him with an axe, you know. He needn’t have minded about Bernard. Him I despised, the conceited ass. Left his money to Spelling Reform! And now you’re wondering,’ Mrs Wingfield went on, ‘what I’m going to leave my money to! Well, I shan’t tell you. Old Foy thinks she’s going to get it, but I haven’t left her a penny!’ Mrs Wingfield cackled and threw herself sideways among the cushions.

  Rosa backed away slightly and found herself a chair. She didn’t want the situation to get out of hand.

  ‘And don’t you say to me,’ Mrs Wingfield went on rather breathlessly, ‘that I needn’t care what happens to my money when I’m gone. I won’t care then, but I care now. After all, we all live in the future, even if it’s a future where we aren’t to be found anywhere upon the earth. We all live in the future, so long as we live at all, which in my case won’t be much longer. Another few months and they’ll be digging in the bureau looking for the will. Did you believe what I said just now?’

  ‘What?’ asked Rosa. She felt a growing distress for Mrs Wingfield, who was beginning to look a little wild-eyed.

  ‘About how I coshed old codger Wingfield, with an axe!’

  ‘No!’ said Rosa.

  ‘How right you were!’ cried Mrs Wingfield, beginning to laugh and cough. ‘When people are as old as I am they get to be terrible liars! I didn’t cosh him with an axe, I broke his head open with a flat-iron!’ She nearly choked herself laughing.

  ‘Mrs Wingfield, please!’ said Rosa. ‘Please be calm.’

  ‘I’m perfectly calm,’ said Mrs Wingfield. ‘And as for what you think of me, do you imagine I care? Lust and rage! Lust and rage, as the poet says! When you’re as old as me you begin to lose your identity. What’s the difference between me and an o
ld soak in the Bayswater Road, except the memories that we trail behind us? And what are they? Old tales that nobody wants to hear and we scarcely believe in ourselves. Old stories and photographs. And don’t tell me the old soak is a better woman. That’s what your mother would have said. I haven’t forgotten what a bolshy she was!’

  ‘Please, Mrs Wingfield,’ said Rosa, who felt that she had indeed let the situation get out of hand. ‘I’m sorry, perhaps I’ve stayed too long, and —’

  ‘You certainly have!’ said Mrs Wingfield. ‘You’ve been here for an hour and you haven’t even had enough spunk to say why you’ve come. Out with it!’

  ‘I came to consult you on a matter of business,’ Rosa began.

  ‘I knew it was money!’ said Mrs Wingfield. ‘Well, I’ve told you, you can’t have any. And now you can go. I’m tired.’

  ‘I’m sorry!’ said Rosa. She was red with mingled distress and annoyance. She picked up her coat. ‘I’ll come back if I may another day.’

  ‘You’ll do nothing of the sort!’ said Mrs Wingfield. ‘Another day I may be underground. I’m dying with curiosity to know what you want. I shan’t sleep tonight unless you tell me. Sit down, girl, and relax. I’m not as mad as I seem.’

  Rosa sat down again and looked doubtfully at her hostess. ‘It’s about the Artemis,’ she said. She was feeling tired too.

  ‘The what?’ asked Mrs Wingfield.

  ‘The Artemis,’ said Rosa. ‘It’s a periodical.’

  ‘Oh, you mean the Artemis’ said Mrs Wingfield. ‘Of course. You pronounce it so oddly. Well, what about it?’

  ‘It needs money,’ said Rosa. She thought she had better be simple. ‘Unless we get some financial help, we shall have to close down. I thought you might perhaps be willing to make a contribution. You are one of the major shareholders.’

  ‘I know that,’ said Mrs Wingfield. ‘Don’t treat me as if I were something out of the Pyramids. I suppose you run the thing youself?’

  ‘Well, not exactly,’ said Rosa. ‘In fact, my young brother runs it.’

  ‘Your young brother!’ said Mrs Wingfield. ‘A fair-haired ninny, if I remember. Resembled your father. Why Maggie ever married him was beyond us all. I saw your brother a few years ago at Oxford. Yes, I got as far as Oxford. I went to a college play. Someone pointed him out to me. He was acting. He was supposed to be some sort of gentleman. It was Shakespeare. He had three lines to say, and even then he forgot one of them. So you want me to rescue the Artemis to be a plaything for your brother? You’re going to be disappointed, Miss Keepe.’

  ‘My brother is a perfectly competent editor,’ said Rosa. ‘All he lacks is funds. But in any case that isn’t the point. What is urgent is to prevent the Artemis from going bankrupt.’

  ‘Well, why come to me?’ asked Mrs Wingfield. ‘Why don’t you auction it in Fleet Street?’

  It was by now abundantly clear to Rosa that Mrs Wingfield was indeed not something out of the Pyramids. She smiled faintly. ‘No one in Fleet Street wants to buy it just now,’ she said; ‘at least not anyone to whom we wish to sell it.’

  ‘So you’ve had an offer?’ said Mrs Wingfield. She was leaning forward, her bright liquid eyes popping out slightly as she stared at Rosa. ‘Cards on the table!’

  ‘Yes,’ said Rosa, ‘we’ve had an offer from Mischa Fox. But we don’t want to have to accept it. We would prefer the Artemis to remain independent. That would be better than selling out to anyone. But if we sell to Fox he will change the character of the magazine completely.’

  ‘Your brother’s probably changed it already, for all I know,’ said Mrs Wingfield.

  ‘You receive a free copy every month,’ said Rosa coldly.

  ‘Do I?’ said Mrs Wingfield. ‘I wonder what happens to it. Foy must scoff it up in her room. Well, why come to me with this tale of woe? Do you imagine I care whether this Fox or the Devil himself buys the Artemis? Why don’t you try Ada Carrington-Morris? She still has ideals. I’m too old. Lust and rage, lust and rage, Miss Keepe!’

  Rosa could see that Mrs Wingfield was saying this simply to see how she would react. ‘We don’t want to be helped by Mrs Carrington-Morris,’ she said coolly. ‘We want to be helped by you.’

  ‘More flattery!’ said Mrs Wingfield. ‘Here, have some champagne, I quite forgot to offer you any, or would you rather have some tea?’

  ‘Don’t bother about the tea,’ said Rosa. ‘I’ll drink champagne.’

  ‘She says don’t bother about the tea, she’ll drink champagne!’ cried Mrs Wingfield. ‘Do you realize how much this champagne costs a bottle? And the tea we use is elevenpence a quarter. Ring for Foy and ask for tea! I told you I was a skinflint!’

  ‘All I mean,’ said Rosa desperately, ‘is please don’t bother. I don’t really want either tea or champagne.’

  ‘So you’ve been drinking my champagne without really wanting it, have you!’ cried Mrs Wingfield.

  ‘I do beg you,’ said Rosa, ‘to consider this matter of the Artemis. There’s a shareholders’ meeting in a week’s time and a decision ought to be reached before then. My brother has given a great deal of work to the periodical. He receives no salary, and in fact he’s put savings of his own into keeping it alive. Unless we can get a substantial sum of money from somewhere, I can’t honestly advise him against selling out to Fox. The Artemis is deeply in debt.’

  ‘I thought it was a matter of closing down, not of selling out,’ said Mrs Wingfield.

  ‘Whichever it is,’ said Rosa, ‘it means the end of the Artemis as we know it, the periodical that was founded by my mother and yourself.’

  ‘Flattery!’ said Mrs Wingfield. ‘Soft soap! Why should it gratify me now to be associated with that bolshy? I can see you want to look after your brother. A natural reaction. Even animals have it. As for this man Fox, is he a friend of yours?’

  Rosa looked sharply into Mrs Wingfield’s dewy intelligent eyes. ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘I’ve heard of him,’ said Mrs Wingfield. ‘He’s a bit of a press lord and general mischief-maker, isn’t he?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Rosa.

  ‘There are too many men in this story,’ said Mrs Wingfield. ‘The Artemis as I knew it was a women’s periodical. And now it’s my bedtime. I get around a lot during the day. If I lay down now I’d never get up again. But it means I have to go to bed early. Could you call that wig-face as you go out?’

  Rosa stood up and prepared to go. ‘We should be very grateful,’ she said, ‘if you would consider helping us.’

  ‘Of course, you realize that I could rescue you with my little finger,’ said Mrs Wingfield. ‘I’m as rich as a Jew!’ She leaned back into the sofa cushions and swung her legs up on to the arm, ‘Whether I will or not is quite another matter.’

  ‘May I hope —’ said Rosa.

  ‘Oh, you may hope,’ said Mrs Wingfield; ‘that doesn’t cost me anything! But not a word to your blond brother.’ She closed her eyes and folded her hands on her stomach.

  Rosa saw that it had become quite dark in the room. She picked her way around the various obstacles to the door. As she opened it, she said, ‘Good afternoon.’ Mrs Wingfield did not reply or open her eyes, and Rosa left the room on tiptoe.

  Ten

  JOHN RAINBOROUGH was standing in his garden. It was Sunday afternoon, and the sun, which had been shining now for several hours, was beginning to warm the earth. Rainborough had always made a serious effort, so far successfully, not to think about SELIB when he was at home. His home was a safe stronghold; it had been the home of his childhood, and it was full of myths and spirits from the past, whose beneficient murmur could be heard as soon as he had stilled his mind and put away the irritations of his day at the office. Then these spirits would come flocking about him, comforting him and brushing against him with their soft substance until he was lulled into a contentment and a sense of knowledge deeper than any thought. It was many years now since Rainborough had put it to himself that the only matter which really concerned him was
the achievement of wisdom. Sometimes he called this: the achievement of goodness; but just now, for various reasons, he preferred the other title.

  It was true that since the phenomenon of Miss Casement had made its appearance in Rainborough’s life he had found it more difficult to observe the rule about forgetting the office when he came home. Today it seemed likely to be especially hard. On the previous day, Miss Casement had startled him by suddenly producing a long report which she had been writing about the reorganization of SELIB. This report, which was clearly the fruit of researches not only into the files of the Finance Department but into the files of the other departments as well, was extremely detailed and thorough. It opened with a clear survey of SELIB’s present staff and activities, it proceeded to an analysis of SELIB’s functions, including a history of their development, and it went on, through a section on the international significance of SELIB, to a number of concrete proposals for streamlining the organization of the office and producing a greater efficiency at a smaller cost. These proposals involved the virtual abolition of several departments and the curtailment of others; and Rainborough noticed at once that in the new regime, as envisaged by Miss Casement, the Finance Department would occupy that leading position which he had himself so often felt it should occupy, but which he had so far failed to capture.

  This report had been presented to him by Miss Casement in a submissive and modest manner. She had produced it with a show of reluctance and misgivings, saying that it was just something which she had written in her spare time, to clear her own mind, and that it might perhaps be useful to him as a rough draft when he made proposals to Sir Edward about reorganizing the office. Rainborough was not aware that he had at any time suggested to Miss Casement that he was likely to make such proposals, though he might possibly have dropped some remark which could be so interpreted in the early days of his appointment. Rainborough accepted the document with vague thanks and read it with curiosity.

  He discovered to his extreme chagrin that it was very good indeed. Apart from one or two inelegancies of style, he would have been proud to have written it himself. It was in fact precisely the document which he had dreamed of producing when he first arrived in SELIB. It combined an accurate and detailed knowledge of the Board’s organization with an imaginative interpretation of its essential functions. The section on SELIB and the international scene was positively statesman-like. The only thing which could be said against Miss Casement’s report was that, if carried into effect, it would damage a great many existing interests. Rainborough noticed, for instance, that in the proposed new office the department of Evans would disappear altogether.