by Iris Murdoch
What happened then seemed to Clement to occur in a dream, in a hypnotic vision, or another dimension. He stood paralysed and spellbound. He saw that Peter was holding in his left hand his familiar green umbrella. Peter’s right hand had seized the slightly curving handle of the umbrella. He drew it away. Out of the inside of the shaft, materialising quietly, not suddenly, but as if by magic, there appeared a long gleaming steel knife. Clement did not move, he could not. Lucas, looking down at the knife, did not move either. He looked back at Peter. The other part of the umbrella fell to the floor with a soft sound. Peter now looked down toward the point of the knife. With his left hand he gently touched Lucas’s side. Then he advanced the knife and thrust it in between the ribs.
Clement tried to move, he tried to cry out, he uttered an incoherent sound. He fell to his knees, then stretching out his hands lay prone on the floor in a dead faint.
‘Pull him up onto the chair, get his head down between his knees, that’s right, leave it to me.’
Clement felt sick, he felt he was suffocating, a black canopy was hovering above his head, his eyes were blinded by something, perhaps tears, he uttered sounds, protesting incoherently as Peter’s large strong hand, gripping his neck, thrust his head down. The pressure was removed. He sat up, his head drooping. Peter caught hold of him again as he was about to fall from the chair. He lifted his head and sat open-mouthed, gasping, breathing deeply, seeing in a haze the faces of Peter and Lucas bent solicitously towards him. He heard Peter’s voice saying, ‘He’s all right now, he hasn’t hurt himself. You haven’t hurt yourself, have you, Clement?’
Clement, not sure whether this was true or not, murmured, ‘No, no – ’ He saw, as if reflected in a round mirror, Lucas standing near, smiling, holding his shirt in his hand. There was a small red smear upon Lucas’s side.
Sitting steady on the chair Clement was able to see, now clearly, the two of them, smiling at him and actually laughing. ‘You are all right, aren’t you?’ said Lucas. ‘You came quite a cropper.’
‘I am perfectly well, thank you,’ said Clement, looking with amazement as Lucas dabbed his side with his shirt and then put the shirt on. Clement said to Lucas, ‘Are you all right?’
Lucas replied, ‘Yes, very much so.’ He and Peter began laughing again.
Clement looked about him. There was no sign of the long knife. He saw Peter’s green umbrella lying innocently on the floor, now in front of the desk. What had happened, what had he seen?
Ignoring Clement now, and moving away from him, the two were talking to each other. Lucas was saying, ‘I always knew that you were something of an artist.’
Peter said, ‘I was afraid, you know.’
‘I can imagine that. You are a brave man. It was well done.’
‘I needed you – to make this – it was necessary – ’
‘I entirely understand.’
‘I thought you would.’
‘The sword and the scales have had their day.’
‘That is well put. Of course it was a flaw in my – ’
‘In your new being.’
‘Yes. I suppose I ought to have quenched that tiny spark of – ’
‘Quite!’
‘Like in a fairy tale, everything is right except for one little thing – ’
‘Now it is gone.’
‘With your co-operation.’
‘I said it would be dangerous to get things clear – ’
‘But now things are clear. You agree?’
‘Yes.’
Clement listening to this conversation thought again: they are mad, they are behaving like drunks, what on earth are they talking about, what do they mean, it doesn’t make sense! It was true that Lucas and Peter, now standing face to face near the desk, were punctuating their elliptical conversation with expressive gestures and frequent bursts of laughter. They seemed indeed to be intoxicated with their subject and enchanted with each other, it was as if at any moment they might start to waltz. At last however they stepped back and gazed at each other. Peter picked up his umbrella and mackintosh and cap.
He said, now visibly exhausted, in a quiet solemn tone, ‘So, I take my leave. We shall meet again. All is well.’ He bowed. Lucas bowed. Turning towards the door he seemed suddenly to notice Clement. ‘My dear Clement, how are you, are you feeling better?’
Clement rose to his feet. ‘Oh yes, much better.’
‘Good, good.’ He moved towards the door, then turned. ‘I quite forgot something important. I am going to give a party.’
‘A party?’ said Clement.
‘Yes, a party to celebrate – my recovery, my return to my own house – that shall be quite soon, next week perhaps, I shall send out invitations to you, to you all.’
Lucas stood smiling, then leaning back against his desk, Clement opened the drawing-room door for Peter, then ran before him to open the front door. It was raining. Peter descended the steps, donned his mackintosh and pocketed his cap, and began to put up his umbrella as he waved goodbye.
When Clement returned to the drawing-room Lucas was sitting behind his desk, where he had turned on the green-shaded lamp. He had put on his narrow spectacles and was examining his pen. He looked up at Clement as if mildly annoyed at being interrupted. ‘Thank you for coming. Now please go. I must get on with my work.’
Clement picked up his chair and carried it forward and placed it opposite to Lucas. The chair which Peter had lately occupied had been moved back against the wall. The final phase of the argument, or duel between the two mages had taken place standing. Clement now seemed to remember this as if it had all taken place long ago.
Leaning his arms on the desk he said to Lucas, ‘What happened?’
‘You saw what happened.’ Lucas frowned slightly but did not immediately repeat his dismissal. He removed his glasses and began to clean them on a piece of yellow duster.
‘No, I didn’t, I fainted.’
‘Oh yes, of course. Well, nothing happened when you were unconscious except that we rushed forward anxiously to revive you.’
‘Yes, but before – I don’t understand. There was a knife, wasn’t there, I saw a knife.’
‘There was a knife.’
‘And – I think – I saw blood.’
‘Yes, there was blood. I’ll show you. Dear me, this is like doubting Thomas. Do you want to touch me too?’ Lucas set down his glasses, turning pulled up his shirt and showed Clement a small red slit between two of his ribs. ‘Is that enough?’
‘But – is it a deep wound? Oughtn’t you to go to the doctor? Oh dear – ’
‘Of course not. Please don’t faint again. It was the merest pinprick. A little blood was drawn, that was all.’
‘I thought he was going to kill you.’
‘Did you? It was kind of you to be so upset.’
‘But did you expect – I mean – was it all a show – I mean was it fixed beforehand, did you know – ?’
‘No, of course not! Anything like that would have been senseless.’
‘So he might have killed you. With that long knife, he could – ’
‘Well, he was a surgeon once. I’m sure it would have been painless.’
‘Luc, don’t jest.’
‘I am not jesting. I am just trying to find for you a mode of explanation. In fact there is, now I come to think of it, no reason why I should offer you any explanation. I assume you followed his argument. If you did not you are a fool and better off left in ignorance.’
‘Please, Luc – suppose I hadn’t fainted, would he have gone on, would he have killed you?’
‘So you think you saved my life?’
‘Please – ’
‘I doubt if he ever intended to kill me. But of course I wasn’t sure. That was the essence of the matter.’
‘So you would have sat there and let him do it?’
‘At that point resistance would have been useless. He is far stronger than I am.’
‘So you offered yourself?’
&n
bsp; ‘As I told you before, Clement, he could kill me, or have me killed, at any time. He still can. Only I think now he probably won’t. He is an artist and a gentleman. He chose to despatch me with a symbolic retribution. That’s all. He is a very remarkable person.’
‘So you’ll meet him again, you’ll go to his party?’
‘You know I never go to parties. Now please go away, will you, dear boy. You have been the privileged spectator of what I hope is the conclusion of a rather strange drama, about which I know that you will never speak. Now let us at last say farewell to this matter. Please be off.’
Clement continued to lean his elbows on the desk. He said, ‘But what about me?’
‘Well, what about you?’
‘I’m left out. Oh dear, I’m so confused – you said I must have followed his argument, but I can’t follow it. Was it all about forgiveness?’
‘Roughly.’
‘So he let you off?’
‘A crude expression.’
‘But what about me?’
‘What indeed?’
‘I thought he was against you not only on his account but on my account.’
‘I daresay he thought that you could look after yourself and deal with your own case in any way you thought fit.’
‘You are deliberately confusing me.’
‘I am trying to offer you a bit of clarity, but if you don’t want it, never mind – just go away.’
‘Luc, please tell me – now – did you intend to kill me?’ ‘No, of course not. Now go. And let that matter too go to rest.’
Clement got up. He felt giddy, and wondered if he were going to faint again. Where was his overcoat? Oh, out in the hall. He began to walk slowly toward the door. When he reached the door Lucas suddenly called after him. ‘Wait a moment. I have something more to say to you.’
Clement turned. ‘What?’
‘I forgive you.’
‘What ?’
‘For all the suffering which you caused me when we were children, I forgive you.’
‘Oh – thank you – ’
‘Now clear off.’
‘Maman, please, I must go, I said I’d see Aleph before she goes away with Rosemary.’
‘She’ll miss the party.’
‘Oh hang the party!’
‘So we’ve all been invited!’
‘When are you going to Paris?’
‘I’m not going to Paris. I’m staying here.’
‘You can’t stay here, we’ll go mad!’
For two nights now Harvey had slept on the floor in the narrow space between the extended bed and the bathroom door. The bed, on his mother’s insistence, remained extended all day, instead of being folded into its cupboard. Progress from the front door to the bathroom was over the bed. Harvey had been unable to sleep. He lay on his back listening to his mother’s quiet snoring and thinking how increasingly awful his life was becoming. It was as if he were being squeezed out of the world. For two mornings he had gone to the local library to work, but could only continue to read I Promessi Sposi which was beginning to bore him. He ‘went shopping’ for food. He bought cheap white wine. He refused to buy champagne, even with his mother’s money. In any case she kept on announcing that she was penniless. He went to his bank and cashed a cheque. He did not dare to ask how much money there was in his account. He could not ask Emil for any more taxi money. He assumed that Clement and Lucas were continuing to finance him. But suppose they had forgotten, or suppose Lucas had decided to stop paying. Bellamy of course could not now be expected to contribute. He did not believe his mother’s penniless story. How was he going to get her out? No one seemed to be inspired to assist him. Supposing she became ill? She seemed to be living on white wine and oranges. Lying in bed, now wearing an old pyjama jacket which Harvey imagined he could remember from his childhood, she consumed oranges, dropping the peel around on the bed and on the floor. He hated to see her eat the oranges, she was like an animal. Harvey spent his time tidying and cleaning the flat. This activity provided his only form of satisfaction. He cleaned the bath, he even cleaned the windows. On the two previous days when Harvey had returned from the library, carrying wine and oranges and tins of beans and ravioli and macaroni cheese, he had found her gone. The bed was chaotically undone, her nightdress and pyjama jacket half buried in it, her one suitcase overflowing with garments. There was nowhere in the flat to hang anything up except a hook on the door. She returned, on each occasion, about nine o’clock in the evening. To annoy her, he did not ask where she had been. Also, on each occasion, they had both promptly become thoroughly drunk together on the white wine. Was this strange mode of life to go on and on? It seemed already to be establishing a regime. Since Harvey had perforce moved in with his mother he had not shaved. Why? Was this the beginning of some long penitential incarceration during which he would be destined to grow a beard? Aleph had once said how beautiful he would look with a golden beard, like some heroic Scandinavian. Harvey hated beards. Perhaps the omnipresence in the bathroom of Joan’s strong-smelling cosmetics made him realise that he was the intruder. He could not look at himself. He tidied up her clothes, including her night clothes and her underclothes. Sitting on the side of the bed he ate half of a small tin of macaroni cheese with a spoon. He had no appetite. His leg was hurting. He lay down on the bed and gazed at the ceiling. On the first day he had telephoned Clifton but had found only Moy, who was incoherent and unhelpful. ‘Going into one of her trances’ as Bellamy used to say. On the second day he rang again and got Louise, who warned him of Aleph’s imminent departure. She said, ‘Do come tomorrow, Aleph wants to see you before she goes in the morning, she’s leaving about eleven, she’s just rushing about today.’ Harvey then thought in order to pass the time, of going to see Bellamy in his awful cell, but shuddered away from it. That place was unclean, his flat, despite his efforts, was unclean, his mother’s clothes were unclean, there was orange peel in the bed, he could not shave, he could scarcely even eat. Now it was the morning of the third day and he had engaged himself in a horrible time-consuming row with his mother.
‘You are a coward. Why didn’t you just go to Italy, never mind your foot. You just wanted an excuse. Why don’t you take a job?’
‘Oh shut up, maman, I haven’t any skills. Look I must go – ’
‘You could be a waiter, anyone can be a waiter.’
‘Besides, I’ve got to read, I’ve got to study – ’
‘I don’t believe it. Who is supporting you, I presume someone is.’
‘I don’t know. Who is supporting you, if it comes to that?’
‘I have been selling myself to pay for you.’
‘Don’t play that dreary old card. I don’t understand why you don’t go back to Paris, if you don’t want to you can sell your Paris flat, didn’t you tell me you were selling it?’
‘I can’t, I don’t own it, I only pretended to, someone else owns it! Oh God, I need a man!’
Harvey had by now set aside his notion that he had seen a woman at Lucas’s house and that that woman was his mother. He had been so overwhelmed by the shock of the loss of his stick and its even more terrible return that this anguish had somehow swept away his earlier speculations. He had even begun to conjecture that the ‘woman’ whom he had ‘seen’ might have been a boy, or else an illusion created by the dim light and the rain. He passionately did not want to think about Lucas.
‘Oh please, chère maman, let us not have this senseless argument again! I must go to see Aleph!’
‘Couldn’t you occupy her room while she’s away?’
‘Perhaps you could!’
‘Well, we both know we can’t. Who’d want us in that house? It would just embarrass them. There remains Clement, he loves me, I shall ring him up.’
‘Oh, it’s all so contemptible!’
‘I know. Why are we both so stupid? We are both cowards. I shall have to resort to Humphrey Hook after all.’
‘The final solution. Maman, do not frighten me.�
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‘At least I’d have peace then and no more worries!’
‘Oh stop it!’ He had searched his mother’s luggage for drugs or sleeping-pills but found none. However, he knew that she had left several cases with Louise at Clifton, and probably others with Cora.
Harvey was sitting on the end of the bed. His mother, barefoot, clothed now in smart narrow black trousers and a loose dark green shirt, was leaning back against the pillows, raising her head awkwardly. Her mass of hair was tangled, her face devoid of make-up looked pale and hungry.
He thought, how beautiful she is, she is profoundly beautiful, she is a gipsy. Staring at Harvey she touched her hair as if timidly with her frail hand. She said, ‘It’s cold.’
Harvey leaned forward and kissed her cold feet, enclosing them in his warm hands. Her eyes closed, then sparkled, then slowly filled with tears.
‘Oh darling maman, I love you so much! I must go now.’
Harvey relied on finding a taxi. He usually had luck with taxis. When he appeared, a taxi appeared. This time, however, he was not lucky. He walked, turning his head this way and that, increasingly upset as he looked at his watch and saw how late it was. He walked slowly, leaning on his stick, the clinical one, not the smart one tainted by Lucas. Thoughts about his mother soon vanished, he was possessed by anguish about Aleph. How had he idiotically spent so much time arguing with his mother? Distant live taxis were constantly seized by others. He stood at crossroads impotently waving his stick. Nearly half an hour had passed. Harvey was almost in tears. At last the longed-for cab obeyed his signal. He climbed in and leaned back closing his eyes. He thought, Aleph wanted to see me alone. Still, surely I won’t be too late. Oh why is she going away just when I want so much to be with her! She is the answer to the riddle of my life.
He reached Clifton and paid the taxi. There was a long sleek black car outside. Rosemary Adwarden’s car. As he hurried toward the door of the house it burst open and, with a medley of voices, the Cliftonians poured out onto the pavement. Rosemary was opening the boot of the car and putting in Aleph’s suitcase. Rosemary was as tall as Aleph, a lithe blonde destined by her barrister father for the legal profession. She already had a place at Edinburgh University. Harvey, who liked her, had not seen her for some time. She was the first to notice him. ‘Why, Harvey, you poor lame duck, I’m so sorry! Get better soon, won’t you!’ Sefton, standing by, said censoriously, ‘You’re late!’ Aleph, handsome in her tweed travelling clothes, was being kissed by the others. She threw her overcoat and mackintosh into the back of the car. She turned to Harvey. He wanted a message but there could be none. She kissed his cheek, clasping one of his hands and squeezing it. ‘Goodbye, Harvey, thank you for coming, goodbye!’ She stepped into the car. The car sped off, Aleph’s hand fluttering at the open window. Harvey did not wave. He felt a stone on his heart, the terrible weight of remorse. She had wanted to talk to him alone, and he had not been there. Would he ever be able to win back what he had in this minute lost? He thought, she will never forgive me, she will lose her love for me forever.
