A Fairly Honourable Defeat (15 page)

Authors: Iris Murdoch

BOOK: A Fairly Honourable Defeat

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‘Apart from the finale, I think the evening went quite well, don’t you?’ said Axel. ‘Julius didn’t eat you! I could see you were nervous beforehand.’

‘I’ve been nervous for days, actually.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me, you little ass!’

‘I know, I should have done. Somehow the
idea
of Julius is a bit frightening. But now that I’ve seen him it’ll be all right. He is so awfully nice. Isn’t that stammer charming?’

‘Yes. I must confess, I was a little nervous too.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I have my dignity to keep up.’

‘Have I no dignity?’

‘None. Come here. On your knees. No, I’m not going to beat you, even though you did ignore my signal, I just want to put my arms round your neck. Good heavens, I see you’ve removed those plastic bulrushes.’

‘Well, you said you didn’t like them.’

‘You mustn’t let me influence you so much, dear boy. I can be wrong too.’

CHAPTER SEVEN

‘MORGAN, you look a different person.’

‘I’m feeling so much better, Rupert. So rested. You and Hilda have been angelic.’

Morgan and Rupert were sitting in Rupert’s study. The evening sun was shining in and making the room tingle with soft lustrous light. There was a smell of tobacco and roses. Rupert was sitting at his desk and Morgan in an armchair, with her feet propped up on another chair. She was rolling her dark boyish head about, smelling the glazed cretonne of the chair and gently agitating some whisky in a cut glass tumbler. She looked indeed much better and, Rupert thought, distinctly handsome in a short silk shirt-looking dress with blue and white stripes and little blue flowers on the white stripes which she had bought that day in the sale at Marshall and Snelgrove. Her face was lean and sun-burnt and with dark roses in her cheeks. She was, Rupert thought, wearing no make-up.

‘Rupert, are these chair covers new? I don’t remember them.’

‘Yes, they’re just new.’

‘They have that lovely fresh furnishing-material smell. Mmm. I love smells. Where did you say Hilda was this evening?’

‘She’s at a meeting of the Chelsea Preservation Society.’

‘Hilda has so much energy. I feel I have enough to do to preserve myself without preserving Chelsea. Did Simon come for his swim?’

‘Yes. He and Hilda had another set-to about the new bathroom plan. He was very sorry to miss you. He keeps missing you.’

‘There will be a time for Simon. I’m only just beginning to feel human again.’

‘More whisky?’

‘Yes, please, Rupert, I depend terribly on this stuff. Is it wrong?’

‘You keep asking me that question about all sorts of things! Well, you’d better watch it. I must say, I depend on it too.’

‘What a bloody wreck my life is.’

‘Don’t be foolish, Morgan. If you use your mind and your heart you can put everything together again.’

‘My mind is bedlam and my heart’s dead.’

‘That’s not true and it’s treachery to say so.’

‘Treachery—to whom, to what? There isn’t a God.’

‘You know quite well what I mean.’

‘Oddly enough I do. How’s your book getting on, Rupert? Could I read part of it? Do you explain about treachery?’

‘I try to explain. You’ll see it when it’s finished.’

‘Is that it over there, that huge pile of yellow notebooks?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh God, there’s all that stuff of mine over at Tallis’s place. At least I hope it’s there. I don’t imagine he’ll have torn it up in a rage. All that stuff on language theory. I wish Hilda had managed to get it away.’

‘Tallis wouldn’t give it up.’

‘I know. Hell.’

‘Morgan, what are you going to do about Tallis?’

‘I knew you’d ask me that. When you asked me to come in this evening I knew you were going to tell me off, to put me through it.’

‘Morgan, don’t be ridiculous.’

‘Well, why not? In a way, Rupert, you’re really the only person who can help me. I’m too close to Hilda. And there isn’t anyone else I really respect.’

‘You know I’d love to help you, Morgan. But there are things you’ve got to do for yourself.’

‘Do have another drink, Rupert. I hate drinking alone. It makes me feel even more immoral.’

Rupert poured himself out some more sherry. He tried to keep off spirits until late in the evening, but did not always succeed. He sighed. He had had a long tiring day at the office including an extremely exhausting session with the Computer Forecast Working Party. He felt weary now but fairly satisfied with himself and his tired body was filled with compassion for his sister-in-law. Without at the moment being able to think very clearly, he wished for her sake that he could become wise and good.

‘You’ll have to go and see Tallis, you know,’ said Rupert.

‘Yes. But I can’t even think about it yet. Thank God he doesn’t know I’m here.’

Rupert frowned uneasily. He had heard from both Simon and Axel of the curious encounter between Julius and Tallis, and how Tallis had been told of Morgan’s arrival. He had informed Hilda, who had persuaded him to say nothing to Morgan. Hilda did not want Morgan rattled. And she seemed to think that Morgan would detest the idea that Tallis and Julius had met. ‘Spare her feelings for a little while longer,’ she pleaded with her husband. Rupert did not fancy the deception and could not understand or picture Morgan’s state of mind, but he agreed. If he had been in Morgan’s place he would have been incapable of recuperating in someone else’s house while the person whom he had offended was kept waiting in ignorance. To have delayed the meeting would have been torment.

‘Have you seen Julius again?’ said Morgan.

‘No.’ Rupert was to see Julius for lunch the next day, but he saw no reason to tell Morgan that.

‘I do wish Julius would move on. I expect he will soon. Someone from Dibbins told me he was on his way to a job in Germany. I don’t want to run into him in Oxford Street.’

‘Have you got over him, Morgan?’ Rupert asked. He felt intensely curious about the mind and heart to which he had just so confidently alluded, but he was much less good than Hilda at asking the right questions.

‘I don’t know. I don’t want to see him. I want a clear head.’

‘You’ll need one.’

‘Yes, yes, yes. Keep me to it, Rupert. I feel such a bloody coward at the moment. How’s Peter by the way? Are you going to see him?’

‘I’ve asked him over here. Perhaps he’ll come, perhaps he won’t.’ Rupert shrank from the possibility of encountering Tallis.

‘I’d like to see Peter. I wish he wasn’t living—over there.’

‘So do we, now.’

‘He must look so different. Have you got a recent picture of him?’

Rupert leaned over to forage in the drawer of his desk. Hilda kept the fat family photograph album meticulously up to date. ‘Here.’

‘Good heavens. He’s a man. He looks like you.’

‘Handsomer.’

‘No, you’re handsomer. But he must be taller. You both look awfully
noble
actually. I love those big blond commanding faces. You look awfully young, you know, Rupert, with that floppy fair hair and that shy smile you look just like a boy.’

‘Sounds more like an ass. I’ve put on weight, I’m afraid. So has Hilda.’

‘It suits you. Let me look at some of the earlier ones. Being with you and Hilda makes me feel continuous again. One ought to feel continuous, oughtn’t one? Lately I’ve just felt like a sort of stump. Why there’s Hilda and me. That must be ages ago. How stunning Hilda looks, she’s got her angel-look. Of course Hilda looked marvellous in those days. Well, she still does.’

‘You’ve changed,’ said Rupert. He looked at the photo. A much slimmer Hilda with the dark hyacinthine locks and the radiant brave face. Morgan looking shrunken and sulky, shoulders hunched and hands stiffly in pockets. ‘You’re—in flower—now.’

‘Marriage and adultery have evidently done me good. Hilda—yes—’

‘Do persuade Hilda to dye her hair. She can’t make up her mind.’

‘Dye her hair? Is it going grey? I didn’t notice.’

‘A little. I don’t see why she shouldn’t dye it. That sort of dark hair dyes quite successfully.’

‘You amaze me, Rupert. I would have expected you to view hair-dyeing as a falsification! Remember that great lecture you read me about smuggling that time I smuggled the camera from Switzerland.’

‘Smuggling involves lying.’

‘Rupert, I do admire you so much!’

‘Stop teasing!’

‘I’m not teasing, I mean it. And oh God I envy you. I envy you and Hilda. You’ve got what I need. Order, order, order. I told Hilda I envied her having a husband that functioned. As a spouse poor old Tallis was just a broken spring.’

‘I can’t imagine Tallis providing order! But he has other qualities.’

‘Living with Tallis was like living in a gipsy encampment. At first all seemed very unworldly and spiritual and free. Later it was depressing. Later still it was frightening. It made me lose my sense of identity. I resented the muddle but I couldn’t dominate it. The trouble was that Tallis didn’t expect me to, he didn’t expect the right things of me. With Tallis there were no forms and limits, things had no boundaries. Oh it’s hard to explain. In the end everything about him began to irritate me terribly, even his freckles.’

‘Why
even
his freckles?’

‘I adore it when you’re a little catty, Rupert. You’re so confoundedly charitable most of the time.’

‘What did Julius expect of you?’

‘To respond to his magic. To be predictable. To be gay at the right times, quiet at the right times. To live to his timetable. To cook. Julius is quite a good cook himself, actually.’

‘I can see it was different.’

‘And yet not easy either. With Julius everything was ritual. Oh Rupert, there are people who communicate with the deep abysses of one’s mind and these people are frightening.’

‘Julius did this.’

‘Yes. And Tallis too. Why couldn’t I have found an ordinary man?’

‘Like me.’

‘You aren’t ordinary, silly. Tell me, Rupert, what did Julius do during the war? I asked him once and he wouldn’t tell me.’

‘I don’t know either.’

‘I suspect he was doing something absolutely
beastly
for the Americans. Some awful biological thing.’

‘He said to me once, “I had a cosy war.” I expect he was doing research of some kind.’

‘I’m sure it was something horrible. Do you mind if I help myself to some more whisky?’

Morgan got up and began to prowl around the room swinging her glass. She stretched her long legs. She stood on her toes. She was wearing navy blue stockings and blue sandals. She went to look out of the window, pushing the open sash a little bit further up. Rupert watched her. He felt that his tiredness was making him stupid. Morgan was in an electrical mood. She needed to be questioned, cornered, pinned. She wanted to be, to use her own words, put through it, told off. Rupert wished that he could be swift, accurate, compassionate and stern instead of clumsy and vague and somehow sentimental.

‘How strange these summer twilights are,’ said Morgan. It was darker in the room. ‘The light becomes so intense and yet it dissolves forms instead of revealing them. Your garden looks so odd. There’s such a peculiar bluish lustre on the pool. It’s a light for seeing ghosts in. One could easily imagine—it looks as if—You know, Rupert, I think Tallis used to see things, things he didn’t tell me about. It was rather alarming sometimes.’

‘Tallis never hit the bottle much, did he?’

‘Oh no, nothing like that. How luminous your roses are. And the air gets heavy and you can smell the dark. Oh Rupert, Rupert, Rupert—’

‘I know, my dear. I wish I could help. I feel a dolt with you this evening. Shall I turn the light on?’

‘No, no light! There speaks a guilty voice. Tell me what I need, Rupert. Do I need an ordeal, punishment or something? What will make me stop feeling like a piece of filthy screwed up newspaper?’

‘Do you really want me to talk to you, Morgan?’

‘I’m screaming for it! I need your help, Rupert,
absolutely.
’

‘Is it clear that Julius is over?’

‘For the sake of argument, yes.’

‘Do you still in any way love Tallis?’

‘I suppose I must do. He obsesses me.’

‘You
did
love him?’

‘There was a terrible
fatal
tenderness. He was so unutterably touching—before he started to annoy me.’

‘Suppose someone were to say: why not try going back to Tallis?’