A Severed Head

by Iris Murdoch

  Until the truant Mytten’s return my two excellent secretaries, Miss Hernshaw and Miss Seelhaft, could get on perfectly well on their own. I prized these girls exceedingly as they could write accurate and even witty business letters in French and German, and by now knew the business very well indeed, though, quaintly, they had no understanding of wine and praised anything that was offered to them. They had been with me for some years now and I had been very worried in case one or other of them should take it into her head to get married, until the day when I realized, through some imperceptible but cumulative gathering of impressions, that they were a happy and well-suited Lesbian couple.

  Today I had, with each of them separately, gone through the painful business of telling them about my divorce: I was made aware that they already knew. So gleefully fast does bad news travel. They stood now by the door waiting without visible impatience to see the last of me. Their faces and attitudes expressed their respective modes of sympathy: tall fair Miss Hernshaw, long vainly courted by the imperceptive Myt-ten, swaying moist-eyed and ready to hold my hand, short dark Miss Seelhaft, frowning with concern as she polished her spectacles, darting me glances of brisk commiseration. I left them at last to the debris of the Christmas orders and the joys of each other’s company and drove my car to Pelham Crescent.

  Antonia was wearing a brown cashmere pullover and a string of pearls, neither of which I had seen before. She had never used to buy so much as a handkerchief without consulting me. I noticed too, half relieved, that she was in a state of restless irritation and in no mood to ply me with her tenderness. She jumped up when she saw me and said, ‘Really, I think she might have waited a bit before dismantling the house!’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Honor Klein.’

  I recalled this lady’s existence. ‘I suppose she’s taking her own stuff away?’

  ‘Darling, shut the door,’ said Antonia. ‘I feel haunted. I suppose she has a right to her own things, but really, when she appeared here this morning it was like being hit by a tornado. Did you see all the junk piled up in the hall?’

  ‘Appeared this morning? Isn’t she staying here?’

  ‘No. That was another thing, and after I’d spent ages getting her room ready. She decided last night she wanted to stay in a hotel in Bloomsbury to be near the British Museum or something, and poor Anderson had to take her away in a taxi and he’s not at all well, and he took ages getting back in the fog.’

  ‘How is Palmer?’

  ‘His temperature’s still up. It was ninety-nine this morning. I do think she’s inconsiderate. All the same, I like her.’

  I laughed at the determined way Antonia said this. ‘You have to. She’s Palmer’s sister. I confess, I don’t feel myself obliged in this respect!’

  ‘About the furniture, darling,’ said Antonia, ‘may we do it tomorrow afternoon? Anderson and I are just off to Marlow. We thought we’d stay at the Compleat Angler, just for the night. It’s such a nice warm hotel. Poor Anderson is so overtired, I thought the little change would do him good, and we both hate seeing Honor mauling the house. I’m terribly sorry not to be able to ask you to lunch, but we’re having it early in rather a rush and leaving immediately after.’

  I had introduced Antonia to the Compleat Angler. It had been one of our haunts in the early days of our marriage. ‘I couldn’t anyway,’ I said. ‘I’m just leaving town myself. But I’ll be back early tomorrow. See you at Hereford Square any time after three.’

  I told this lie instinctively, as a rejoinder to Antonia’s air of somewhat patronizing solicitude; and I had the satisfaction of seeing her inhibit her impulse to ask me where I was going. She had, after all, surrendered certain rights. The thread was not broken, but without our notice and without our will the gulf had inevitably grown wider. She sighed; and I took my leave before she could discover the words with which to draw me gently once more towards her.

  I closed the drawing-room door upon Antonia and almost fell over Honor Klein, who was half carrying half dragging a large box of books across the hall.

  I said, ‘May I help you?’ and together we hauled the box into the big front room which Palmer always called the Library, although it contained only one small bookcase. The room was in disorder now, piled up with tea chests containing books, papers, and photographs. A number of pictures were stacked against the wall, including the series of Japanese prints from the study. I noticed too, half hidden by a heap of letters, a framed photograph of what was obviously Palmer as a boy of sixteen. In the dining-room opposite I saw through the door the table for lunch and an open bottle of Lynch-Gibbon claret. Only two places were laid.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Honor Klein. ‘Now would you mind helping me stack these boxes on top of each other? I shall need the space.’

  When we had finished this and I wished to take my leave, but could think of no suitable formula, I bowed rather awkwardly and was about to withdraw when she said, ‘Yesterday you asked me what I thought of my brother’s exploit. May I ask you what you think of it?’

  This took me greatly by surprise and I hesitated for words. I was at once aware that I must be very careful what I said to Honor Klein.

  She went on, ‘Do you think they are doing the right thing?’

  ‘Do you mean morally?”

  ‘No, not morally,’ she said almost with scorn. ‘I mean for their life.’ She contrived to give the word a metaphysical ring.

  I said, ‘Yes, I do think they are doing the right thing.’ There was something hideously improper in discussing Antonia’s business with this woman. Yet I found suddenly that I wanted to.

  ‘Do you mind if I close the door?” she said. She stood with her back to it staring at me with a concentrated calculating expression. She was wearing a dark green coat and skirt which had once had some pretension to smartness and she looked rather less dumpy than she had seemed at the station. Her blunt laced shoes had been polished since yesterday. Her short straight oily hair, a lustrous black, sat like a cropped wig about her pale rather waxen Jewish face. Her narrow eyes were like two black chips.

  She said, ‘I wonder if you realize how much your soft behaviour dismays them?’

  I was surprised again. ‘You are wrong,’ I said. I added, ‘In any case I am powerless. If I choose to be civilized it is my own affair.’ I glared back at her. All the same, there was something refreshing, even exhilarating, even liberating, after so much of the tender and the polite, after Antonia and Palmer’s masterly ‘wrapping’, about this direct talk.

  ‘Civilized!’ she said it again with scorn. ‘As you must know perfectly well, you could get your wife back if you wanted her even now. I don’t say that you should have beaten her and kicked my brother; but there was no need to press them so into each other’s arms. They are both persons with a great capacity for self-deception. They have enchanted themselves into a belief in this match. But they are both crammed with misgivings. They want to be let off the final decision. They look to you for help. Can you not see that?’

  I was amazed. I said, ‘No, frankly I can’t see it. I can best help them by being gentle and I propose to go on being gentle. I am after all in a position to know the truth about both of them.’ I spoke firmly, but I was very upset by what she had said, and confused, and unaware whether I ought not to be offended. I took a step forward to indicate that I wished to go. But she stood her ground, throwing her head back against the door and looking up at me.

  ‘Truth has been lost long ago in this situation,’ she said. ‘In such matters you cannot have both truth and what you call civilization. You are a violent man, Mr Lynch-Gibbon. You cannot get away with this intimacy with your wife’s seducer.’

  ‘I am not one of your primitive savages, Dr Klein,’ I said, ‘and I do not believe in vendettas.’ With that I recalled how she herself had been called primitive. Strained back against the door, close to me now, she seemed something black and untouchable.

  ‘You cannot cheat the dark gods, Mr Lynch-Gibbon,’ she sa
id softly. ‘Perhaps it is no business of mine if you choose to be powerless and to abandon your wife. But everything in this life has to be paid for, and love too has to be paid for. Why does my brother, who is rich, always charge high fees even to poor patients? Because without payment he could not speak to their condition. Without payment they would be wretched. They would be captives. I believe you love my brother. But you do him no good by letting him off. He wants, he needs, your harshness, your criticism, even your violence. By gentleness you only spare yourself and prolong this enchantment of untruth which they have woven about themselves and about you too. Sooner or later you will have to become a centaur and kick your way out.’

  I listened to her with great attention. I wanted to understand exactly what she meant. ‘You said earlier that you thought they both wanted to back out,’ I said, ‘but what you say now could imply that if I were violent it might make them happier with each other.’

  Honor Klein gave a tired gesture. The tension left her body and she drooped, moving a little away from the door. ‘Could imply, could imply!’ she said. ‘Where logic breaks down anything can imply anything. While you are all so soft nothing can be clear. It seems to me now that you do not really want your wife back after all. And as I am surprised that you have not yet told me, it is nothing to do with me, your side of the matter. If you want to let them steal your mind and organize you as if you were an infant I suppose that is your affair. All I say is that only lies and evil come from letting people off.’

  I looked at her harsh and melancholy profile. I said, ‘I don’t imagine that you ever let people off, do you, Dr Klein?’

  She turned towards me and suddenly smiled, revealing strong white teeth, her eyes narrowing further to two black luminous slits. She said, ‘With me people pay as they earn. You have been patient. Good morning, Mr Lynch-Gibbon.’ She opened the door.

  Ten

  ‘Now you’re in a fix, aren’t you, you old double-dealer?’ said Georgie.

  I could have wept with relief. I loved her so much at that moment that I nearly knelt down then and there and proposed. I kissed her hands humbly. ‘Yes, I am in a fix,’ I said, ‘but you’ll be kind to me, won’t you? You’ll let me off?’

  ‘I love you, Martin,’ said Georgie. ‘You never seem to get this simple point into your old head.’

  ‘And you don’t mind if we keep our thing secret still? I just can’t cope otherwise, my darling.’

  ‘I don’t understand why,’ said Georgie. ‘But if you want to. For myself, I’d like to publish our liaison in The Times!’

  ‘It would hurt Antonia so if she knew,’ I said. ‘And the least I can do is make things easy for her. The way we’ve managed it all is really a remarkable achievement. Without bitterness, I mean. I don’t want to add any more strains at present.’

  ‘This “without bitterness” idea seems to me rather obscene,’ said Georgie. ‘And I suspect you of wanting to play the virtuous aggrieved husband so as to keep Palmer and Antonia in your power. But perhaps I underrate your goodness!’

  ‘In my power!’ I said. ‘I’m in their power, it seems. No, it’s all much simpler. I just want to finish the thing off perfectly without any more complications. If Antonia knew, she’d want long intimate talks about it. She’d want to understand. And I couldn’t bear that. Don’t you see, little imbecile?’

  ‘You speak of “the thing” as if it were a work of art,’ said Georgie. ‘Sometimes I think you’re a very odd fish, Martin. However, I do see, about the intimate talks. Promise you’ll never have an intimate talk about me with Antonia?’

  ‘I promise, my darling, I promise!’

  ‘Anyhow, don’t worry,’ said Georgie. ‘You don’t have to do anything special, here I mean. It’s only me.’

  ‘Thank God it’s only you,’ I said, ‘and thank God for you, Georgie. You save my sanity. I knew you would.’

  ‘Well now stop looking so tall,’ said Georgie. She stroked down the tip of her nose. The action and the words were beautifully familiar. I blessed her in my heart and sat down at her feet.

  Georgie was sitting back in the shabby green armchair in her lodgings. A cold staring afternoon light revealed the room, the humpy half-made bed, the bowl of cigarette ends, the table strewn with opened letters and dirty glasses and half-eaten biscuits and books on economics. She was wearing very tight oatmeal-coloured trousers and a white shirt, and had her hair in a chaotic bun. Her face was pale, and in the creamy transparent pallor of her skin the rose of her cheek glowed faint and deep. A few golden freckles, revealed in the cold light, were scattered on the bridge of her uptilted nose, which she was still absently mauling. Her large blue-grey eyes, lucid with intelligence and honesty, held my gaze steadily. She was wearing no make-up. Yet even as I adored her, looking to see in those eyes which held nothing but good will, beyond the granular iris some more distant shapes of my destiny, I realized that I did not desire her.

  I was intensely grateful to her. It now seemed absurd to imagine that, being herself, she could have reacted otherwise, less humanely, with less sheer sense and kindness. I must have been in some irrational state of fear to have been so nervous about Georgie’s reactions. I had feared some persecution of her love, the exaction now of pledges half given. But she was all gentleness and filled with so genuine a concern to save me here and now from distress and anxiety; and as I thanked her from my heart I reflected a little guiltily that after all there was nothing very much that Georgie could do to me. Her power was limited. Here at least I was free.

  ‘Because of something craven and disloyal in these thoughts, and because of a strange sense of guilt because I did not at that moment desire her, I wished to do after all something significant which would please her. I said suddenly, ‘Georgie, I want to take you to Hereford Square.’

  Georgie sat up straight and put her hands on my shoulders. She studied me, grave and intent. ‘Surely that is not wise.’

  ‘If you’re thinking of Antonia, she’s gone to the country with Palmer. There’s not the slightest chance of her turning up.’

  ‘It’s not exactly that,’ said Georgie. ‘Do you really want to see me there, so soon?’

  We looked at each other, trying to guess at thoughts.

  Georgie added, ‘Don’t misunderstand me, Martin.’ She meant that her words held no implied expectation of ever living at Hereford Square.

  ‘I don’t misunderstand you,’ I said. ‘You mean it may upset me to see you there. On the contrary. It will be good and liberating and somehow natural. It will break down some of the doubleness.’

  ‘You don’t think you will just feel resentment?’ said Georgie. ‘I can see that all this has made you fall in love again with Antonia.’

  ‘You’re a clever girl,’ I said. ‘But no, no resentment. I want to give you something, Georgie. I want to give you that.’

  ‘You want to do something hostile to Antonia.’

  ‘No, no, no!’ I said. ‘I’m not in that sort of emotional state about Antonia. I just want to break an obsession. I want you to know that Hereford Square really exists.’ Georgie had never questioned me about my home, and I knew how carefully she had averted her thoughts from all my life away from her.

  ‘Yes,’ said Georgie softly. She stroked my nose now. ‘I do want to know that it exists. But not yet, Martin. I’m frightened. You will see me there as an intruder. As for breaking down the doubleness, we can’t really do that until we stop telling lies.’

  I didn’t want this argument. I said, ‘It will symbolize breaking down the doubleness. I want to see you there, Georgie. It will do something very important for me to see you there.’

  ‘It’s odd,’ said Georgie. ‘I’m not usually superstitious. But I feel that something disastrous will happen if we go to Hereford Square.’

  ‘You make me all the more determined to take you, primitive child,’ I said. ‘I tell you, it will help me. I need air, Georgie. I need to recover a sense of freedom. Seeing you there will open up a new wo
rld.’ Even as I spoke I realized more fully that what I had thought of as a somewhat bizarre treat for Georgie was in fact, as she had immediately seen, a move of great importance: not something I would give her, but something she would do for me, would do to me; and I conjectured, with a thrill both of joy and of fear, that what I had just said might indeed prove true.

  The drawing-room seemed mysteriously untouched since the evening of Antonia’s declaration, as if a drowsy spell had been put on it at that moment. The Christmas decorations and the cards were still there, covered now with the dust which, since the departure of the daily help whom, contrary to Antonia’s wishes, I had turned away, had rained down quietly, a grey sleeping-powder, to dull the glow everywhere. I noticed that the silver was tarnished. Outside the French windows, in the yellowish overcast afternoon, the great magnolia grandiflora which occupied most of the small garden drooped, its leaves still pinched and edged by last night’s frost. The room felt damp and very cold, and we kept our coats on. My copy of Napier was still on the sofa.