A Fairly Honourable Defeat (26 page)

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Authors: Iris Murdoch

BOOK: A Fairly Honourable Defeat
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‘All right. Do something. Yes.’ She sprang up.
Simon got up too. ‘Look, I’ll go and get you some clothes. I can get to Rupert’s in a taxi in fifteen minutes, well, twenty. Hilda will show me where to find your things.’
‘No,’ said Morgan. ‘I’ve got a better idea.’
‘What?’
‘I’ll take your clothes.’
‘
What?
’
‘Only for a little while, silly. Just to fetch my own. I’ll come back again at once.’
‘But Morgan—’
‘Don’t be an ass, Simon, nobody’s going to see you. You can wrap yourself in the curtains if you like. I’ll only be half an hour away. I’d buy something in Bond Street, only all the shops are shut.’
‘Morgan, isn’t it much more sensible if I go? After all—’
‘You know quite well it doesn’t matter what women wear nowadays. No one will even look at me. It isn’t as if I were going into the bar at Claridges.’
‘But what about me? I mean, I shall be—Really, Morgan, I’d much rather not. It wouldn’t take a minute to—’
‘Simon, I don’t want Hilda to know about this little drama. And if you went and asked for my clothes you’d have to tell her
something.
Do understand and be a sport. And whatever would Rupert think? He’d be
shocked.
’
‘I could tell them that you’d—I don’t know—fallen in the river.’
‘Now Simon, don’t be
silly.
Off with them, dear. I’m tired of having nothing on, and honestly I’m beginning to get claustrophobia in this flat.’
‘So am I!’
‘You’ll have to lend me some money, though. My handbag is in the bedroom. Damn, my glasses are in there too. Come on, let me undo your tie.’
Simon stood helplessly as Morgan undid his tie and began to unbutton his shirt. Then he groaned and began to take off his jacket.
‘That’s right. Dear Simon, you really must forgive me. I’m just suddenly cram full of purpose. I told you it was one of my great moments. You see, the test was to get out of here somehow. And your coming was such luck, and now I just can’t wait to be out. I couldn’t bear it if Julius came back and found me, even if help was on the way.’
‘Came back! But you said he’d gone away for the weekend. Is he likely to come back?’
‘Well, he might. And I wouldn’t want him to find me here all naked and shivering.’
‘I wouldn’t want him to find
me
here all naked and shivering!’
‘You needn’t shiver. I pulled the curtains down just to spite him actually, but you’ll find them handy if you’re cold. I’m sorry about that T’ang thing. I won’t be long away. What a lovely colour your shirt is. Does it suit me?’
Groaning again, Simon stepped out of his trousers.
‘You can keep your underpants. But I’ll need your socks and your shoes. I think our feet are about the same size.’
Morgan began to pull the black trousers on, tucking in the purple shirt. She zipped them up. She fumbled with the tie. ‘Could you do this for me? I’ve never tied a tie.’
‘You can’t do it on someone else,’ said Simon. He was shivering. ‘You can do without it.’
‘No, I can’t. I want to be properly dressed. I
must
have the tie as well. Do please try.’
Simon tied the tie rather clumsily and Morgan slipped into the jacket. ‘My God, Morgan, you look just like a chap!’
‘I feel I look
terrific.
Your trousers fit me marvellously. And look, so do your shoes. Let me look at myself in the bathroom. Oh Simon, I look so smart in a tie! I must wear one always!’
It was getting dark outside now and Morgan had turned the light on in the bathroom. Shuddering a little, his bare feet chilled by the tiles, he looked over her shoulder into the mirror. Morgan was transformed again. The bony face, the dark cropped hair, the narrow eyes, sentient now, seemed to belong to a clever boy, not even raffish, not even a dandy, just hard and clever. Morgan put on a stern stare and tightened her lips. Simon, feeling vulnerable and frail, saw his own white naked shoulder behind the square shoulder of the black jacket. He was only very slightly taller.
‘We resemble each other a little,’ she said. ‘I’ve often thought it. Only your hair is flowrier. If your hair were straight—’
She turned to Simon and began to strain his locks back behind his ears. ‘Morgan, you make a lovely lovely boy.’ He clasped his hands together in the small of her back and drew her up against his body. They were silent for a moment.
‘I must go.’ Her lips warmed his skin. ‘The sooner I go the sooner I’ll be back. I don’t want to see anybody but you this evening. Thank you for your clothes.’ She slipped from his embrace. ‘Where do you keep your money?’
‘In that pocket.’
‘It’ll seem strange without a handbag. Au revoir.’
The front door opened and closed and Simon was alone. He surveyed himself for a while in the mirror and ran his hand up and down the narrow band of curly black hair which ran from his chest to his navel. His navel was absurd and always caused him shame. His body was horribly pale and in this light looked faintly bluish like watery milk. His collarbones jutted out grotesquely. He was distinctly
skinny
and he looked a good deal less keen-eyed without his clothes. He was beginning to feel seriously cold. He went into the kitchen hoping to find some gin or whisky, but could discover nothing except refrigerated Danish lager. He went back into the sitting room where it was now rather dark.
Simon could not decide whether he thought the whole thing amusing or whether it were not thoroughly frightening, the beginning perhaps of those horrors of which he had felt the cold premonition in Bond Street. He imagined himself telling the story to a lot of people who were shrieking with laughter, ‘And there I was left all alone in my underpants …’ It would certainly sound madly funny. Except that I won’t want to tell anyone, he felt suddenly.
The twilight was a little eerie and the room looked different. He moved to turn on the light, but then realized that he would be visible through the denuded window. He went to the sofa and piled up a few cushions. He reclined, and dragged one of the velvet curtains up to cover himself.
There were distant sounds from the street. But the room had an incapsulated silence of its own, a slightly dramatic silence as if a clock had only just stopped ticking. It grew darker. The walls seemed to be changing into huge hanging shadows charged with positive obscurity. They became menacing and deep, tall mahogany bookcases that reached to the ceiling, immense carved wardrobes with open doors and soft furry interiors of dark suspended clothes. Places where a child might get lost. A very long time seemed to be passing.
Simon was moving through a dark twilit garden underneath huge plane trees through whose leaves a luminous but darkening sky could intermittently be seen. There was different light under the trees, strange light, dark and yet lurid. He was following his mother who was walking some ten paces ahead of him and guiding him. He felt terrible choking anxiety and had difficulty in walking. His mother moved onward like a dog, turning every now and then to look back at him, and when she turned the luminosity under the trees was reflected in the steel rimmed spectacles which she was wearing, and her eyes gleamed cold like those of a nocturnal animal caught in a ray of light. Simon knew that she was going to show him something appalling. The garden seemed to go on and on and the plane trees grew thicker and darker overhead. At last his mother stopped and pointed at something on the ground. In the illuminated darkness Simon saw a long mound of ashes, like the ashes of a bonfire. There were sticks and fragments of branches and withered flowers lying all about as if they had been part of the bonfire but had not been consumed. He felt an urge to touch the ashes and leaned down. Then he saw, only a few inches from his hand, a piece of brown tweed. It was a trouser leg. He saw the turn-ups of the trouser, and then a protruding leg with a dark sock and a shoe. He withdrew his hand with horror, thinking instantly, this is my father’s grave. My mother has led me to my father’s grave. Yet that cannot be. My father was cremated. Would he be lying like this in his clothes underneath a pile of ashes? Is that what happens to people when they are cremated? He began to stir the ashes with his foot. The material of the brown suit, filthy with ash, began to emerge from the mound. Simon fell on his knees and dug. He dug his way up the recumbent body, clawing the cold sticky ash away frantically with his hand. He dreaded to uncover the face which his digging fingers were now touching. He brushed the ash aside. The dead face was that of Rupert. Suddenly there was a great deal of light.
 
Simon woke with a gasp. The terror of the dream made him breathless and his heart was beating violently. He panted for breath, struggling against a great weight upon his chest. He saw his bare arm and his hand clasped upon some heavy blue and gold material. He thrust the stuff away, trying desperately to sit up.
The light had been switched on in the sitting room and Julius was standing in the middle of the room regarding him. Simon had the impression that Julius had been there for some time. He was in evening dress, looking grave and thoughtful as if by now he was really looking at something else. Simon remembered, succeeded in sitting up, then pulled the curtain back about him. He looked at Julius with appalled staring eyes.
‘This is certainly a day of surprises,’ said Julius. He went out of the room and Simon could hear him turning the key in the bedroom door.
‘Julius! Julius! I’m sorry—’ Simon began to stagger up. He tried to lift the curtain to wrap it round him, but it was too heavy. He ran after Julius.
Julius was opening a cupboard in the bedroom and taking out a bottle of Bourbon whisky.
‘Julius, I must explain—’
‘Get two glasses from the kitchen, there’s a good boy.’
Simon ran to the kitchen. He looked at his watch. It was midnight. What on earth could have happened to Morgan?
‘I’m most terribly sorry—’
‘Would you like to borrow my dressing gown? You are shivering in a most unbecoming manner and you do look a trifle quaint with nothing on but those openwork pants. You really should try to put on a little weight. I see somebody has destroyed my curtaining and you must be plainly visible from across the street.’
‘It wasn’t me—I mean—’ Simon pulled on Julius’s dressing gown of quilted dark red silk.
‘And I see one of my T’ang horses has been broken. A pity.’
‘Morgan pulled the curtains down because she hadn’t any—she was very sorry—and about the horse—I can’t think what can have happened to her.’
‘I leave a naked girl and I return to find a naked boy.’
‘You see, I arrived—’
‘All right, I can reconstruct it. Morgan took your clothes and fled. She would, of course.’
‘You mean she won’t come back?’
‘I have no idea whether she’ll come back or not. Have some whisky. You seem to be in a rather disturbed state.’
‘She said she’d just get her own clothes at Rupert’s and come back here. But that was hours ago.’
‘The point that puzzles me is what you are doing here.
Why
did you arrive?’
‘But you asked me to!’
‘Did I?’
‘Don’t you remember? When you came to dinner with us. You whispered to me in the hall, “Come on Friday. Don’t tell Axel.” ’
‘Did I? Well, I may have done. Oh yes, I do recall it now. I’m afraid it had entirely slipped my mind. Did you tell Axel?’
‘No. I couldn’t think what you wanted. I thought you might be planning something for Axel’s birthday, you know, some treat or something.’
‘I wasn’t actually. When is Axel’s birthday?’
‘The twentieth.’
‘Well, I must try and give him a treat!’
‘But Julius, if it wasn’t that what was it? Why did you ask me to come and not to tell Axel?’
‘Oh I forget. I expect I just wanted to see if you would.’
‘If I would—?’
‘If you would come. And not tell Axel. And you have come. And not told Axel. Would you like some water in your whisky?’

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