A Fairly Honourable Defeat (33 page)

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Authors: Iris Murdoch

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‘Oh, thanks for sending the necklace, by the way. I meant to acknowledge it but I’ve been so busy with the move.’
‘Uh-hu.’
‘Say something, Tallis.’
‘What are you going to do?’ said Tallis.
‘Nothing.’
‘That’s one thing you can’t do,’ he said, ‘in this situation.’
‘I mean gloriously nothing. I propose to give myself to the situation like a swimmer to the sea.’
‘I’m in no mood for metaphors,’ said Tallis. ‘Do you want a divorce? ’
‘Not particularly.’
‘Do you want to come back to me?’
‘Not particularly. Things aren’t going to be like that. I think I’m going to live quite differently. Why not after all, there are plenty of ways of living. Did you have anybody while I was away?’
‘No. Only fantasies.’
‘No one special living in the house?’
‘Only Daddy and Peter.’
‘You know I took Peter to Cambridge?’
‘Yes.’
‘And all’s well. Peter eats out of my hand.’
‘So I gather,’ said Tallis, ‘but be careful.’
‘Peter just needs a little love.’
‘No. Peter needs a great deal of love. Don’t mess around with Peter unless you’ve got a great deal to give.’
‘Well, I seem to have succeeded where you all failed. And don’t look so sullen.’
‘Don’t mess around with Peter,’ Tallis repeated, ‘unless you’re really prepared to commit yourself to him in some serious and sensible sort of way. Peter needs permanencies.’
‘Why shouldn’t I be serious and sensible? I’m going to love people. That’s what I mean by living differently. That’ll be my new way of life. I’m going to be free and love people.’
‘Oh don’t talk such sickening rot, Morgan!’ said Tallis. He kicked the nearest box and several old powder compacts and a jar of cold cream came out of the bottom. He moved back to put his glass on the bookcase. He wanted to stop all this talk and take her in his arms but if only he could
think.
He sat down on one of the pretty but extremely hard armchairs.
‘I thought you’d approve!’ said Morgan, and she laughed self-consciously. ‘You were always one for love.’
‘You’re mixing me up with Rupert. How does marriage fit in with this new policy of freedom and love?’
‘I’m not sure that it does. Marriage is so old-fashioned and exclusive. But I don’t at all mean that I don’t want to see you.’
‘Do you or don’t you want a divorce?’
‘You haven’t understood. It’s just not important. Let it drift.’
‘I see. You might even love me too, in your free way, along with the rest?’
‘Yes. Why not? If you’re generous enough to accept my love. Or are you worrying about your property rights?’
‘I’m worrying about not being able to bear it.’
‘Oughtn’t you to try.’
‘What about Julius?’
‘Julius is my godfather. My father in god with a small “g”. He has shown me myself.’
‘I mean do you want to marry Julius or go on living with him or something?’
‘I have a free relationship with Julius. He understands about these things. Have you any objection?’
‘No,’ said Tallis, ‘but that’s not the proper question. There’s something absolutely wrong here. I mean it’s the wrong policy, you can’t do it, you don’t understand the meaning of the words you use—’ How could he explain it? He got up and went to the window and looked out at the rows of parked cars like fat multicoloured pigs and the white wall and neat black well-painted woodwork of the expensive little house opposite. Or should he just seize hold of her and shout? Would that work?
‘Sorry, Tallis, but I think I do understand at last. When I married you I was childish and half asleep.’
‘Maybe. But all the same—’ He concentrated on the cars.
‘Well, now I’m wide awake. Julius woke me. Tallis, I thought you were my virtue. But I realized you were really my vice.’
‘I’m your husband.’
‘That ugly heavy word. That cannot name anything here.’
‘It names an important fact, Morgan. I think you are mistaken about your nature. You need deep belongingness and connections and stability.’
‘And why shouldn’t I have them all over the place? Or are you trying to use your authority?’
‘Funny. Rupert talked about authority. But it’s nothing to do with authority or property rights. What can I do or ask for in the ridiculous position I am in now? I am sure that you love me. I just want that love to have a decent chance.’
‘You think I’m not telling the truth?’
‘I think you’re hopelessly theory-ridden.’ He turned to look at her. ‘You’re chasing empty abstractions. What
happens
will be quite different.’
‘You have power, Tallis,’ she said. ‘You have power, I don’t deny it. But I’m not going to undergo you again. You always somehow made me feel ashamed. You and your false simplicity.’
Tallis was silent.
‘Sorry, Tallis, I don’t want to be unkind. But the path for me is away from guilt and shame. I think I wanted to sink down into some deep deep sea with you. When I married you I felt I was killing myself. It seemed somehow wonderful at the time. But I couldn’t kill myself. I couldn’t even love in the end, down in that deep sea. I have to be outside, in the open, in the clear air, on the high places, free, free, free. It’s only out in that clear fresh air that I can really love people. I have to follow the kind of love that I am capable of. Everybody must be guided by that.’
‘It sounds like sense,’ he said, ‘but somehow—Oh how stupid you make me feel. Perhaps I am stupid, especially about you.’
‘No. It’s just that I’m a much more complicated person than you are.’
‘You see, I feel that we’re related, as if we were blood relations. I could as soon think of abandoning you as I’d think of abandoning Daddy.’
‘Really, Tallis, what a comparison! It’s hardly flattering to me! Surely nothing but the grimmest sense of duty ties you to that dear old bore!’
‘Sorry, I’m putting it terribly badly. Marriage is a symbolic blood-relationship, it’s the creation of a new family bond.’
‘Well, I don’t care for bonds, family or otherwise.’
‘I don’t mean constraint. I mean real connection.’
‘Don’t be sentimental, Tallis, I can’t bear it. And don’t talk about marriage as if it were a
condition.
’
‘It is a condition. All kinds of things are conditions and it’s one. It relates the past to the present.’
‘As far as I’m concerned it was an arrangement. And as far as I’m concerned the past is finished, done for, gone.’
‘Morgan, please. I’ve searched—Let it not have been in vain.’
‘Now you really are going to pieces, Tallis. Come, how deeply have I hurt you? I’m interested!’
‘Don’t speak so.’
‘Tallis dear, don’t appeal to my pity. If you want to impress me you must appeal to my normal nature and not to my compassion. Only you can’t. You’re not on the wavelength, you don’t understand what I’m saying half the time. Oh Tallis, if you could only change a bit, just a little bit, be a little bit different from yourself! But it’s no good, you’ll never change.’
‘You do love me still.’
‘Of course I do, silly. We can talk to each other. I’ll hope to meet you a lot in the future. We can have a more adult relationship. ’
‘It doesn’t make sense, kid.’
‘And don’t call me “kid” like that or I shall cry. Oh Tallis, you can make yourself look so beautiful sometimes. I wish you wouldn’t. You’re doing it on purpose. Come over here.’ He came to her slowly. ‘Tallis, let’s be quiet together for a minute.’
‘That’s a good idea at last.’
Tallis sighed very deeply. Morgan was still sitting on the writing table. He stood in front of her, studying her. Then he leaned against her knees and drew one hand down her leg. He took off one shoe and held the warm foot in his hand. He leaned closer until his cheek touched hers.
He felt a warm touch. Morgan had slipped the necklace of dark amber beads over his head and round his neck.
‘What’s that, Morgan? A charm?’
‘An experiment. I don’t want to do without you, Tallis. I want to have everything and you as well. I want to keep you on a lead.’
‘I love you,’ said Tallis.
‘If you kneel down I shall kick you in the face.’
‘I’m not going to kneel down, damn you.’ The shoe clattered to the floor. Tallis slipped his arm round her waist and pulled her off the table.
‘Yoo hoo, Morgan!’ There was a loud knock on the door.
Tallis released his wife.
Peter bounded in.
‘Oh Morgan, darling! Hello Tallis. Morgan, I just got your letter and came straight round, the char let me in. I’ve got the stuff. I’ve got a screwdriver and a hammer and those picture hooks and string and the light plugs and all the things you said. I got them all at the ironmonger’s just here, and I’ve got you lots of things for your kitchen as well, drying up cloths and pan-scrubbers and cleaning stuff and a
mop!
Look!’
Peter emptied out the contents of two shopping bags onto the floor in between the cardboard boxes.
‘Peter, you’re super!’ she kissed him. ‘Have a drink. Tallis, don’t go. I asked Peter to come and help me put everything in order.
Lord,
what a mess, Just look at it all.’
‘I must go,’ said Tallis.
‘Oh must you?’
‘I’ve got to see those students.’ He moved to the door.
‘Peter, you’re a hero! Good-bye, Tallis dear,
see you.
Don’t forget what I said.’
He went down the stairs hearing their laughter.
Once out in the street he quickly began to push the handcart down into the Fulham Road and then up Hollywood Road. He pushed it into the side of the kerb and paused. The dark brown amber beads were still hanging round his neck. He took his tie off and tucked them down inside the collar of his shirt. A little later as he was pushing the cart across Redcliffe Square he stopped again and took his jacket off. The mounting sun shone down out of a sky of unflecked light blue. Sweat was pouring down his chest. The handcart was empty, but it was uphill all the way back.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
 
‘GOOD HEAVENS, Julius, you made me jump!’
Julius had suddenly materialized in the half light upon the stairs in Rupert’s house. It was about nine o’clock in the evening.
‘Sorry, Rupert. I couldn’t find anybody so I went to the lavatory. ’
‘I was in the garden.’
‘Do you always leave your front door open like that? Anyone could walk in and steal the Cézanne reproductions.’
‘Hilda must have left it open. She’s just gone out to a meeting about the abatement of aeroplane noise.’
‘Hilda is so altruistic. Always busy serving others.’
‘She has a social conscience. And that’s partly self-interest after all.’
‘Well, could I trespass on
your
altruism, social conscience and self-interest to the extent of a glass of whisky?’
‘Of course. I was just going to offer it. Come on up to my study. Have you dined?’
‘Yes. I was at a dinner party. But there were no attractive women. So I came away early. You said you wanted to see me?’
‘Yes, but I didn’t mean urgently. I’m so glad you’ve come now, though, it’s a good moment.’
Rupert turned the lights on in his study and pulled the curtains against the blue darkening evening. ‘Let’s be shut in, shall we?’ He produced whisky and glasses. Rupert sat at his big desk in the middle of the room. Julius pulled up an upright chair and sat at the other side of the desk. He stretched his feet out underneath the desk so that Rupert had to withdraw his. He yawned and stretched elaborately.
‘No water thanks, Rupert. I’ll have it neat. I need some strong clean stuff after that ghastly dinner. Why are English hostesses so pretentiously inefficient? I’ve scarcely had a proper meal since I reached England.’
‘You need a holiday across the Channel.’
‘Even Paris couldn’t feed me decently last time. Everything seems to be getting worse. Or else I’m getting intolerably old and finicky.’
‘Hilda and I discovered an excellent restaurant last time we were in Paris, quite cheap too. It’s called
A la Ville de Tours.
In the Rue Jacob.’
‘
La cuisine Tourangelle.
I shall try it if I’m over. What are your holiday plans?’
‘Oh we’re holidaying in England this year. I feel we should with the pound so rocky. We’ll spend the second half of September at our cottage in Pembrokeshire.’

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