A Severed Head

by Iris Murdoch

  It was strange too how little this passion which involved, so it seemed, a subjection of my whole being had to do in any simple or comprehensible sense with the flesh. It had to do with it, as my blood at every moment told me, but so darkly. I preserved the illusion of never having touched her. I had knocked her down but I had never held her hand; and at the idea of holding her hand I practically felt fault. How very different was this from my old love for Antonia, so warm and radiant with golden human dignity, and from my love for Georgie, so tender and sensuous and gay. Yet, too, how flimsy these other attachments seemed by comparison. The power that held me now was like nothing I had ever known: and the image returned to me of the terrible figure of Love as pictured by Dante. El m’ha percosso in terra e stammi sopra.

  It occurred to me later as remarkable and somehow splendid that one thing which I never envisaged in these early moments was that my condition was in any way bogus or unreal. Where-ever it might lead, it was sufficiently what it seemed and had utterly to do with me: I would not, I could not, attempt to disown it or explain it away. If it was grotesque it was a grotesqueness which was of my own substance and to which, beyond any area of possible explanation, I laid an absolute claim. I had no idea what I would do when I saw Honor. It seemed quite likely that I would simply collapse speechless at her feet. Nothing of this mattered. I was doing what I had to do and my actions were, with a richness, my own.

  I glided, motley and all, into the great checkered picture of King’s Parade. Beyond the slim street lamps the great crested form of King’s chapel rose towards the moon, its pinnacles touched to a pallid blue against the starry distance beyond. The moon-shadow of the Senate House lay with a thicker obscurity across the grass until dispelled by the lamplight. The majesty, the familiarity, of these buildings seemed to add solemnity to my rite, as when old patriarchs come to grace a marriage. I felt now extremely sick again and practically suffocated with excitement and with something which I supposed must be desire. I turned into the street where Honor Klein lived.

  I checked the numbers and could see ahead the house which must be hers. There was a single light on upstairs. The sight of that light made my heart increase its pace so hideously that I had to slow down and then stop and hold on to a lamp-post while I tried to breathe evenly and quietly. I wondered if I had better wait a while and attempt, not to calm myself which was impossible, but simply to organize my breathing so as to be sure not to swoon. I stood for a few minutes and breathed steadily. I decided that I must wait no longer in case Honor should take it into her head to go to bed. I knew she could hardly be in bed at this hour, and pictured the upstairs room as a study. Then I pictured her there sitting at a desk surrounded by books. Then I pictured myself beside her. I advanced to the door and leaned against the wall.

  There was a single bell. I had not until that moment envisaged the possibility that she might have lodgers. In any case there was only one bell and I pressed it. I heard no sound within and after a moment I pressed the bell again. Still no sound. I stepped back and looked up at the lit curtained window. I returned to the door and pushed it gently, but it was locked. I peered through the letter box. The hall was in darkness and there was no sound of approaching feet. I held the letter box open and pressed the bell again. I decided that the bell must be out of order and I wondered what to do next. I might either call out, or bang on the door, or throw stones at the window. I stood meditating on these various courses for a little while, and they all seemed insuperably difficult. I was uncertain whether I could control my voice sufficiently to produce the right sort of cry, and the other methods were too brusque. In any case I did not relish a head thrust from a window, a confused encounter at a street doorway. What I really wanted was to slink quietly into some room and find myself at once in Honor’s presence.

  It then occurred to me that this was precisely what I might be able to manage. I noticed a little gate at the side of the house which doubtless led into the garden. I tried it and it was open. I passed down a narrow passageway of mossy bricks which divided the houses and found myself in a small garden. I stepped back a little. Above the black shape of a drooping tree the high moon revealed the back of the house, which was in darkness. French windows of a lower room gave on to the garden. I tiptoed back across the grass and put my hand against the windows. Here I had to pause again to subdue a wave of sheer panic. My breathing, even my heart-beat, must I felt already be audible through the house like the panting of an engine. I tried the doors, got my finger into a crack and pushed them sharply away from me. They gave; I was not sure whether they were unlatched anyway or whether my violent push had broken some weak fastening. I opened them wide with both hands.

  A dark room gaped before me, very faintly illuminated by the remains of an open fire. By now I scarcely knew what I was doing. My movements took on the quality of a dream. Things melted before me. I crossed the room and opened a door whose white surface I saw glimmering in the darkness. I came out into the hall. A little light from the street lamp in front, coming through the open door of one of the front rooms, showed me the stairs. I began to mount the stairs, leaning hard on the bannisters and stepping softly. Once on the upper landing I could see the line of light under the door of Honor’s room. I hesitated only a moment.

  I advanced to the door and knocked. After so much breathless silence the sound of the knock seemed thunderous. I let it die away and then as there was no reply to it I opened the door. For a moment the light dazzled me.

  I saw opposite to me a large double divan bed. The room was brightly lit. Sitting up in this bed and staring straight at me was Honor. She was sitting sideways with the sheet over her legs. Upwards she was as tawny and as naked as a ship’s figurehead. I took in her pointed breasts, her black shaggy head of hair, her face stiff and expressionless as carved wood. She was not alone. Beside the bed a naked man was hastily engaged in pulling on a dressing gown. It was immediately and indubitably apparent that I had interrupted a scene of lovers. The man was Palmer.

  I closed the door and walked back down the stairs.

  Twenty

  I turned a light on in the hall, finding the switch instinctively, and went back into the room through which I had come. I turned the switch here and various lamps came on. I vaguely took in a white book-lined room with chintz armchairs. I went over and closed the french windows which were hanging ajar. It appeared that I had broken the fastening after all. I pulled the curtains which were also chintz. I turned back towards the fireplace. On a low table before it stood a tray with two glasses, a decanter of whisky, and a jug of water. I poured out some whisky, spilling a good deal of it on the table. I drank it. I poured out some more, poked up the fire a bit, and waited.

  Ever since the moment near Waterloo Bridge when I had come to consciousness of my condition, I had felt like a man running towards a curtain. Now that I had so suddenly and with such exceedingly unexpected results passed through it I felt dazed and in great pain but also curiously steady. I had entered the house like a thief. I stood in it now like a conquering general. They would come, they would have to come, to attend upon me.

  I felt this steadiness, this setting as it were of my feet sturdily apart; yet with it I was in a confusion amounting to agony. I had so rapaciously desired and so obtusely expected to find Honor alone. The simple fact of her not being alone was a wrench almost separately felt, even apart from the nightmarish significance of who her companion was. From this there shivered through me a violence of amazement not distinguishable from horror; and I felt as a physical pain the shock of what I had done to them. How naively had I imagined that Honor must be free; I had even, it now occurred to me, imagined that she must be virgin: that I would be the first person to discover her, that I would be her conqueror and her awakener. Caught in the coils of such stupidity I could not yet even begin to touch with my imagination the notion that she should have had her brother as a lover.

  Palmer came in. He shut the door softly behind him and leaned against it
. He was wearing a dark silk dressing-gown and as was again apparent was naked underneath it. He was barefoot. He leaned back against the door and looked at me with a steady wide-eyed gaze. I looked back at him meditatively, looked into the fire, looked at him again. I willed myself not to shiver. We remained so in silence for a minute. Then I poured some whisky into the other glass and motioned Palmer to approach.

  He came forward and took the glass and stared into it for a while. He seemed to be quietly and carefully deciding what he was going to say. I resolved to let him begin. His first words surprised me. ‘How did you know I was here?’

  I hesitated and my mind began to waken up. This remark revealed two things, two doubtless interconnected things: that Honor had not told Palmer about the episode in the cellar and that Palmer imagined that I had come to Cambridge in pursuit of him. If he had known of the cellar episode he would surely at least have conjured that I might have come in pursuit of Honor. Although my passion for Honor was something so improbable and out of nature yet, given the fact of my violence, a psycho-analyst particularly would be likely to have guessed at it. But no such idea seemed to be in Palmer’s head and he appeared to believe that I had come suspiciously on his track, that I had come positively to unmask him. My first and overwhelming sensation was gratitude to Honor. I could not but regard it as somehow significant and propitious that she had not told her brother. My second and more obscure apprehension was that I was in possession of an advantage which I must not lose.

  I said, ‘Need we go into that?’ I hoped he would not press me.

  ‘Well, it doesn’t matter,’ said Palmer. ‘You’ve found out what you came for and that’s what’s important. Does Antonia know?’

  I thought for a moment. ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Are you going to tell her?’

  I was completely cool by now. I said, ‘I don’t know, Palmer. I honestly don’t know.’

  Palmer turned to face me. His voice was deep with earnestness and his countenance had a stripped quality which I had never seen before. He put his whisky on the mantelpiece and took a step towards me. For a moment he put his two hands on my arms, pressing me slightly. Then he let them drop to his sides. It was a supplication. He said, ‘This is desperately grave, Martin. There are some things we must get clear.’

  Looking back on the scene, I felt admiration for the way in which, from the start, Palmer took it that something catastrophic and irrevocable had occurred. He did not attempt -and indeed it would have been difficult - to explain away the scene I had witnessed upstairs. Nor did he attempt to minimize its importance or cover it with any veil of distracting mystification. He faced me frankly as one faces a conqueror or a judge; and as our interview progressed it was with a certain sick giddiness mingled with an agony of compassion that I so felt, for the first time, the scales of power inclined in my direction. We were indeed on the other side of the mountain.

  I said, out of an immediate sympathy for him, ‘Palmer, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t,’ said Palmer. ‘You’ve acted cleverly, resolutely, doubtless properly. I didn’t know you had it in you. Let’s have no nonsense here. It’s just that what has happened may prove fatal. And I want us to understand each other.’

  ‘Please,’ I said, ‘in one way at least don’t misconstrue me. I don’t disapprove of incest. I don’t think that you’re committing any sin by embracing your sister: that is, not any sin that arises from the fact that she’s your sister.’

  ‘You are being frivolous as usual,’ said Palmer. ‘You don’t disapprove of it. You feel total horror of it. You are trembling with horror at this very minute. But your feelings are not important. The person we must think of is Antonia.’

  ‘And Honor,’ I said. I saw again the vision of her dark breasts; and I felt in a sudden agony her presence close to me in the house and the probability that if she did not detest me already she would detest me for this. I found I was indeed trembling and with an effort made myself still.

  ‘Honor is my business,’ said Palmer. ‘Honor will be all right in any case. She is a great person. What is at stake is Antonia’s happiness. I will not say exactly her sanity. But a revelation of this kind could disable her for life.’

  ‘You are positively suggesting,’ I said, ‘that I say nothing of this to Antonia?’

  ‘Of course I am positively suggesting that. It is not, you understand, like the revelation of an ordinary unfaithfulness. We have to do with something which can shake the mind to its foundations. Antonia stands on the brink of a new life and a new happiness. Either she goes forward into that - or she suffers a shipwreck from which, given her temperament, she may take years to recover. It depends on you which of these things will happen.’

  ‘What about you?’ I said. ‘Are you also on the brink of a new life and a new happiness, with her?’ I eyed him closely. I was trying to see him as a man desperately fighting himself free from a binding obsession. I could see nothing. He retained his wide-eyed resolute look which by its very frankness revealed nothing.

  ‘I want Antonia,’ said Palmer, ‘and I want only Antonia. And let me say to you in the profoundest and most faithful seriousness that what you saw tonight will have no sequel. No sequel. Do you believe me, Martin?’

  ‘But it had antecedents,’ I said.

  ‘That is not your business.’

  ‘It might concern Antonia.’

  ‘If you are here to torment and blackmail me,’ he said, ‘you had better go at once. But if you want to understand what you are doing before you do it, then stay.’ He was desperate to keep me with him.

  ‘Sorry, Palmer,’ I said. ‘I have no desire to torment you, you know that perfectly well. I am confused and shaken and I honestly don’t know what I shall do.’

  ‘If you imagine,’ said Palmer, his voice becoming sharper, ‘that you can get any advantage for yourself out of destroying Antonia’s peace of mind, if you imagine that you can settle down again happily with her after -’

  ‘Oh shut up,’ I said. ‘It’s enough that my marriage has been wrecked. Don’t now accuse me of selfishness because I hesitate to shield an adulterer who has got himself into a muddle.’

  ‘You are the adulterer,’ said Palmer. ‘Stop thinking of yourself and think of Antonia. I beg you, Martin, to reflect carefully. Do not be offended at my words. You and I know each other too well to play at scoring points. As I have said, the thing has no sequel.’

  I wanted, in this perhaps unique moment, to find out something more. I sought for the right words. I said, ‘I think I have a right to know a little more. I conjecture that you have had a long-standing liaison with your sister. Many things point to it. Am I to understand that now by mutual consent it is coming to an end?’

  Palmer was silent, staring, and breathing hard. Then he moved away from me and put one hand to his brow for a moment. I found the gesture, the sign of weakness, infinitely touching. He spread his hands. ‘I have nothing to say here,’ he said. ‘There are things which are not one’s own property. I have told you what is relevant. If Antonia is never told you may be quite certain that I shall never betray her by thought or deed. What you saw tonight was an ending. Indeed your arrival sealed it as such. But it was an ending in any case.’

  ‘If I had not appeared there might perhaps have been a sequel?’

  ‘No, I have told you no,’ said Palmer impatiently. ‘Martin, have the grace to understand plain words.’

  ‘I don’t know how much to believe you,’ I said. ‘I don’t say this to persecute you, but just to express what is the case. And I don’t know what I shall do. I can tell you now that I think it is very unlikely that I shall tell Antonia. But I can’t at the moment promise not to tell her.’

  ‘You will be wise and generous not to tell,’ said Palmer. He had recovered himself and gazed at me, dignified, his cropped head thrown back, his dressing-gown falling open to reveal a white chest shadowed with grey hair. He looked touchingly old, an old warrior.

  I said, ‘My arriva
l at any rate has sealed the end of my friendship with you.’ I said this to provoke him, indeed in some wild need myself of comfort.

  Palmer, and again I admired this as I remembered it, took it full in the face. He replied quietly, ‘We shall have to see about that, Martin. This has been a terrible shock for both of us — we do not yet realize how terrible. We shall begin to realize it tomorrow morning. And you will find that it is scarcely less of a shock for you because you saw what you expected to see. There are some things which imagination cannot do for one. After such an experience a friendship, if it is to survive, must be very deeply altered and reorganized. It remains to be seen whether our friendship can be so altered. I hope sincerely that it can - and for myself I shall make every effort to see that it is.’

  ‘Provided I don’t tell Antonia,’ I said.

  He looked at me sombrely. ‘If you tell Antonia we are all done for.’

  In the silence that followed I finished my whisky, and then addressed myself to departure. With a strange spontaneous formality I bowed to Palmer. He inclined his head; and as I left the room I saw him with head still bowed staring into the fire. He caressed the fender with a naked foot. But even as I closed the front door I could hear him emerging from the room and making for the stairs.