A Fairly Honourable Defeat (62 page)

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Authors: Iris Murdoch

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‘
You
, Julius—but—?’
‘I stole your letters, the ones that Rupert wrote you, from the secret drawer in your desk, and I sent them to Morgan as if they came directly from Rupert. And I sent Rupert’s letters which Morgan once wrote to me. Never mind the details. They were each persuaded of the other’s love. They met a few times to discuss the situation. Nothing else has happened at all, there is nothing else to it, and when they find out, apart from being naturally a trifle annoyed with me—’
‘I can’t believe you, Julius,’ said Hilda. ‘Please don’t jest with me, this is making the nightmare worse, you are just trying to help us by inventing this, I
know
about this thing, I’ve got proof, I’ve seen—’
‘What have you seen, my dear Hilda? You found a letter from Morgan in Rupert’s desk? That letter was written to me, and I planted it there for you to find. They’ve both behaved like people with a guilty secret, but their secret was simply the mutual delusion of each other’s love. There is
nothing there
—it is all a magical emanation which the utterance of the truth will blow quite away. You have all three been deceived by mere appearances and apparitions. ’
‘Julius—this can’t be—Rupert behaved so strangely and—’
‘Rupert is always irrationally anxious to blame himself, and he thought that he was protecting Morgan.’
‘But how could they both be
mistaken
—?’
‘Quite easily. People are never too unwilling to believe themselves valued. Ordinary natural vanity led them into this maze. I will tell you the details later. The important thing now is that you should
believe me.
I invented it all, Hilda, I invented it and made it happen.’
‘Julius, I can’t accept this, it’s too fantastic, why should you do something so extraordinary, and anyway it’s utterly impossible that—’
‘She won’t believe me. Would you like to have a word with Tallis? He’s here beside me. Wait a moment.’
Hilda heard Tallis’s voice saying, ‘It’s true, Hilda. Julius has deceived all three of you, and Rupert and Morgan are quite innocent, they’re simply victims like you. Julius really did send the letters as he said and made both Rupert and Morgan imagine that the other had fallen in love. There is honestly nothing more to it than that. It was a sort of joke, that’s all. And no one else knows anything about it, there haven’t been any rumours or any talk. So you see, nothing’s changed really—’
‘But I—Have you told them, Rupert and Morgan?’
‘Not yet. What do you want us to do? You do believe this, don’t you?’
‘Yes—if you say it—but it’s so weird—’
‘Yes, it is. But Julius will explain later. Listen, Hilda, shall I telephone Rupert?’
‘Yes. No, I’ll telephone him. I’ll tell them both. Don’t you do anything more. Please leave it to me now. Thank you for—Tallis, did Julius
really
do that?’
‘Yes, he did. You will ring Rupert at once, won’t you?’
‘Yes, at once, at once. Thank you, Tallis. Good-bye.’
Hilda began to put the telephone back onto its rest. Her hand was shaking and she pushed the instrument a little towards the edge of the table. The next moment it had tilted and crashed to the floor. The receiver clattered away under the table. Hilda knelt awkwardly in the obscurity, pulling at the tangled wire. She lifted the telephone up, replaced the receiver, and began to dial for the exchange.
But something seemed to have gone wrong. The telephone was an old-fashioned one with a projecting dial. As Hilda put her finger into the hole to spin the dial she realized that something or other must be broken. The outer part of the dial moved easily, too easily and unresistingly, while the inner part with the circle of numbers appeared to be shifting too. In the receiver the dialling tone continued unchecked. The dial was no longer properly attached to the interior of the instrument. Hilda stared at it. It was projecting too much and tilting slightly sideways. She tried to push it back into place, to screw it in, but could get no purchase, and there seemed to be some sort of resistance behind it. She tried again to turn the dial and again it spun idly and the numbered circle lurched round together with the outer casing. She looked at the machine and tried to think. In a second the telephone had been transformed from a natural means of communication, an extension of herself, into a grotesque senseless object, useless and even sinister. Hilda shook it desperately and put it down.
She lit two more candles and ran to the kitchen and found a screwdriver. She turned the instrument over and began to unscrew the bottom of it. A mass of little wormlike wires of different colours were swarming about inside the dark box. What
happened
inside a telephone when one dialled? It wasn’t magic. There must be some way of doing what the dial did. Something had broken. Could she not see what it was and mend it? If only she could get through to the exchange. She put the telephone down on the table and it fell apart, disgorging entrails of pink wire.
This is no good, thought Hilda, I must put it together again. But now there was too much wire, fat coils and bundles of it, hanging down and refusing to go back inside. The dial was hanging off the instrument like a dislodged eye. She began to pull on the wires from within, hoping to pull the dial back into place. It seemed to be coming back into position. Only now the moving section of the dial had shifted round so that only half the holes were opposite the numbers and the other holes were blank. Moaning with exasperation Hilda seized the outer casing and tried to twist it back. Something cracked and the metal disc came away loosely in her hand. She threw it on the floor and tears streamed down her face. She must talk to Rupert, she must talk to him
at once,
she must tell him that all was well, that all was unchanged, she must ask him to forgive her. Why had she in an instant judged Rupert? Why had she had so little faith in her husband and her sister? All those years of love and trust should have made her at least wait, at least keep quiet. Hilda pulled on her mackintosh. She would have to drive to the village, to the telephone box there.
The rain was sizzling down, thickening the air, as Hilda splashed her way towards the car. She tumbled into the driver’s seat and switched on the headlights which revealed lines of rain, tumbled yellow stones, nettles. The ignition key was still in the dashboard. She turned it. There was a brief fruitless mutter from the starter motor. She turned off the headlights and pulled out the choke and tried again. The same dry empty whirring sound. Again. Again. Again. Oh
no
, thought Hilda, and the tears were leaping out of her eyes. She sat still for a minute, then tried once more to start the car. The starter motor whirred idly. The engine would not turn over. ‘Rupert!’ cried Hilda aloud,
‘Rupert!’
She jumped out of the car and found a torch and opened the bonnet with the intention of drying the distributor head. Perhaps rain had got in. But so much more rain immediately rushed past her in the light of the torch, blown by the wind in great watery gusts, that she began hastily to close it up again. In any case the engine looked incomprehensible and lumpish and she could not remember what it was that she was supposed to do.
Hilda turned and began to run stumbling along the muddy stony track, lamenting as she went. Her torch jerked and flickered over glittering boulders and black pools and brambles and heather and watercress and swathes of old wire. Calling out to Rupert she plunged ahead into darkness and the square dimlighted window of the cottage grew smaller and smaller behind her.
CHAPTER TWENTY
 
MORGAN RANG THE BELL at Priory Grove. It was ten thirty in the morning. Rupert would be at the office. There was no reply. She tried the door. Locked.
When Morgan had written her
we shall not be divided
to Hilda she had felt cold and hard. Her love had been resolute and purposive. She would not be destroyed, she would survive this mess, she would regain her sister. It could all be explained after all and Hilda would see that it was certainly not Morgan’s fault. As she wrote her second explanatory letter she felt, as she covered the pages, that the nightmare thing was really being unravelled. Telling Hilda the truth calmed her heart and made her feel confident that all would be well. She delivered the letter by hand late at night.
The next day she felt a little less certain. She telephoned Priory Grove several times but got no answer. She went round, risking Rupert, and knocked on the door. No one there. Then came Hilda’s curt card to say that she was going to Paris. This frightened Morgan. She ran to the public library and asked for the Paris telephone directory. There were several Ruabons. She telephoned them all but none of them was Hilda’s friend. Hilda had said Paris, but of course she might have meant somewhere, anywhere near Paris. Morgan then cautiously telephoned one or two of Hilda’s charitable acquaintances, but none of them could help her. Morgan’s need to see her sister was by now becoming extreme. It seemed idiotic to cross to France and search, but she felt almost ready to do so out of the sheer need to do something. She told herself that of course Hilda would very soon come back. It was not in Hilda’s nature to leave everything in confusion and run away. She might return at any moment. Indecision and the sheer multiplication of possibilities racked Morgan. She lay aching and sleepless till the early hours of the morning and then dozed wretchedly to see in dreams Hilda’s dear face, that orb of kindliness which had always shone forth in her life with more than a mother’s love. She awoke again to tormented puzzlement. If only she could see Hilda, hold her quietly by the hand and
explain.
Morgan could not bring herself to ask Rupert for Hilda’s address. Rupert might not know. In any case communication with Rupert had now become unimaginable. Morgan now saw Rupert as a blind instrument of destruction. In tampering with his marriage he had damaged more than he knew. Rupert’s grand passion had been essentially something frivolous, or so it now seemed in the outcome. And Morgan blamed herself for not having rejected this dangerous frivolity at the very beginning. She ought to have
laughed
at Rupert’s love. She could not even quite remember what she had felt about Rupert at the start. She had been touched, tender, sentimental and she supposed somehow rather thrilled. She groaned with remorse. The sight of Rupert now would make her sick with shame and about the future of her relations with him she forbore to think. She reproached herself constantly with Hilda’s voice, falling down in abject and passionate supplication before that accusing shade.
Everything that I have done lately has been a disaster, thought Morgan, and yet each thing when it came along seemed absolutely
natural.
It was natural to fall in love with Julius, it was natural to feel sentimental pity for Rupert. How can one live properly when the beginnings of one’s actions seem so inevitable and justified while the ends are so completely unpredictable and unexpected? The only thing I ever did in my life, she reflected, which was unnatural was to marry Tallis. And that turned out to be a disaster too. That had seemed inevitable and unnatural. Whatever had she hoped for? She had certainly hoped for something. Had she simply
forgotten
that hope? The idea came to her sometimes that she should go to Tallis and tell him all about Rupert and Hilda, tell him everything, everything, everything. If only Tallis had that much more authority, that much more dignity and stature, she could have put her head on his knees. As it was he could not compel her at a distance. And it seemed to her that to confide in Tallis would be disloyal to Hilda.
Morgan began to walk down the side of the house, through the wooden gate into the garden. She had decided that she must get into the house somehow and find out from Hilda’s address book the whereabouts and telephone number of this Ruabon.
A little rain was falling and the wind was beating the roses against the trellis. Wet rose petals adhered to the pavement in a design of heart-shaped pink and white blobs. The rain pitted the surface of the swimming pool, making it look like a grey metal grill. Morgan tried the kitchen door, but it was locked. With less hope she tried the French windows and found that they were open. She stepped in on tiptoe, closed the doors carefully behind her, and stood quiet and suddenly breathless in the drawing room. A clock was ticking. The house felt inward, mysterious, full of thoughts. It brought to Morgan quite automatically a breath of peace, though she told herself at the next moment: all is changed. Only the house does not know it yet. The house still keeps for me a smiling Hilda. Then she told herself, perhaps the change is not too terrible after all. Hilda will forgive Rupert. But she will ever after be closer to me.
Morgan opened the cupboard where the drink was kept. There was no whisky, but she found the remains of a bottle of gin and poured some into a glass. She had drunk a good deal in the last two days. Then holding her glass and instinctively treading quietly she went on up the stairs. She went into Hilda’s boudoir. The room was tidy, full of stretched velvets and fragrant chintzes. There were some dead roses in a silver cup. Morgan dropped them into the wastepaper basket. Then she began to search Hilda’s desk. Piles of impersonal letters, bills, pamphlets, circulars. She soon had her hand on the address book and with triumphant anticipation turned to the letter R. No Ruabon was listed. Morgan put the book down in puzzlement. Hilda was usually so methodical about these things. Then it occurred to her that of course if this Ruabon was married and was an old friend Hilda might have listed her under her maiden name. Morgan sat down and began to go through the whole book. There were no Antoinettes and no addresses in France. Hilda’s note had just said ‘old friend’. Had they been at school together? Would it be any use asking the school? Owing to the difference in their ages Morgan had not known many of Hilda’s school friends. She could not recall Hilda mentioning this Antoinette. Or had there been some talk about a French girl, a long time ago? She dimly remembered something of the sort. It came to Morgan that of course the reason for the absence of the address was that Hilda knew it so well that it was unnecessary to record it. Morgan began to think seriously about this Antoinette Ruabon.

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