A Severed Head

by Iris Murdoch

  Georgie’s windows were inaccessible. There was no way in but through the door. I threw myself against it once or twice in a futile manner. Then I remembered the decorator’s tools which were still lying about downstairs. I rushed down and began to turn them over. The street door was open as usual and outside on the bright rainy pavements people were going to and fro. I selected a heavy flat-ended cementing trowel and a hammer and raced back upstairs. I dug the edge of the trowel as deeply as possible into the crack of the door beside the lock and drove it farther in with blows of the hammer. Then I used the trowel as a lever. Something cracked inside. A moment later the handle of the trowel broke off. I pushed the door but it was still firm. I took the hammer and struck the door with all my strength in the region of the lock. There was more cracking and then I could see a crevice growing wide. I gave it my shoulder and the door came open.

  I went in and pushed it to behind me. There was a heavy silence within. The room was dark, as the curtains were still drawn. The place was airless and smelt vilely of alcohol and stale tobacco smoke whose fumes seemed to linger visibly in the air as I pulled the curtains apart. Or perhaps I only imagined that there was a grey haze. Someone was lying on the floor. It took me a moment to be certain that it was Georgie. It was not just that her shorn head made her hard to recognize: her face too, in a deep slumber of unconsciousness, had quite lost the semblance of her usual self, had become as it were anonymous. It seemed as if she had almost, already, gone.

  I leaned over her and spoke her name and shook her by the shoulder. She was completely inert and I realized that she had passed beyond any such immediate recall. Her face was puffed and blueish, and she was breathing raucously through her mouth. I did not hesitate for long. I found the telephone book and dialled the number of Charing Cross Hospital and explained that someone had accidentally taken an overdose of sleeping pills. They promised an ambulance at once. In that area it was a daily occurrence.

  I knelt down on the floor beside Georgie. I wondered if I ought to go on trying to wake her, but decided not to. I felt obscurely that I might do her harm by touching her; her condition imposed a taboo and the limp half-inhabited body filled me with a sort of revulsion. She looked like a drowned girl. At first I kept looking at her face whose strangeness fascinated me. It was indeed as if she had become a different person, as if an alien being had taken her body. I could have been persuaded that this was merely a rough semblance of Georgie; and as she lay there completely limp with her mouth open, the lifeless air and the deep regular breathing made her seem like a waxwork. She was lying on her side with one hand extended above her head. She was wearing a blue shirt and black trousers. These I recognized. Her feet were bare. I contemplated her feet. These I recognized too. I touched them, They felt cold and waxen and I covered them with a cushion. I looked at her long trousered legs and at the curve of her thigh. The shirt was unbuttoned and I could see the rise of a breast within. I looked at her neck and at one ear now more fully revealed by the shorn hair. I looked at her extended familiar hand, the palm uppermost and open as in a gesture of appeal or release. All these I had possessed. But now it was as if all had disintegrated into pieces, the pieces of Georgie, the person lost.

  I was scarcely at that moment capable of memories or speculations. But I seemed again to hear her voice saying, ‘Martin, you don’t know how near the edge I am.’ Indeed, there was so much I did not know, had not cared to know. Georgie’s stoicism had helped to make me a brute. She had so cunningly spared me her sufferings. I had enjoyed but never had to pay. But someone had paid. As I looked down at her slim inert body I recalled the nightmare of her pregnancy which had ended in relieved embraces and champagne. If she died, I had killed her. I thought this, but stupidly and without feeling. There was no whole presence in the flesh before me and I still could not bring myself to touch her. It would have been like fingering parts of a corpse. Yet with a sense of abasement in which there was an element of desire I lay full length on the floor beside her with my face close to hers. I could feel her breath.

  Some moments passed. I heard a sound at the door and began to rise. Reclining on one elbow I saw a figure enter. The door closed again. Honor Klein was looking down at me.

  I got as far as a sitting position and said, ‘The ambulance is coming.’

  Honor said, ‘I was afraid of this. She sent me a very strange letter.’

  I said, ‘She sent me her hair.”

  Honor stared at me. Her face was closed and stiff. Then she looked at Georgie and said, ‘I see. That’s it. I thought she looked rather odd.’ She spoke with detachment and precision.

  I thought, she is pitiless. Then I thought, so am I.

  Honor was wearing a shabby unbelted mackintosh. She was hatless, her black hair a little sleeked by the rain. As she stood there, hands in pockets, surveying the room she had a sharp business-like air. She might have been a detective. I rose to my feet.

  She said, ‘As she let us both know let us hope that she has not made a serious attempt. Have you found the tablets?’

  I had not thought of that. We began to hunt, shifting books and papers, upsetting loaded ash-trays and piles of underclothes, and tipping the contents of drawers on the floor, stepping to and fro over Georgie’s inert legs. I undid the dishevelled bed and looked under the pillow. Turning back to see Georgie still lying there amid the disordered sea of her belongings and glimpsing for a second the intent face of Honor as she rifled another cupboard I wondered into what half-ludicrous nightmare I had strayed. At last we found something, an empty bottle which had contained a well-known brand of sleeping drug, and we left off our search.

  I looked at my watch. It was hard to believe that it was less than ten minutes since I had telephoned the hospital. The ambulance must arrive soon. Suddenly still, Honor and I looked at each other across the recumbent Georgie. It occurred to me that this was the first time that I had been alone with Honor since the night in Cambridge. Only I was not alone with her. We had a terrible chaperone. She was present to me, but only as a torment, as an apparition; and I knew that I was looking at her as I had never looked at any human being but as one might look at a demon. And she looked back out of her shallow Jewish mask, the line of her mouth dead straight between the curving lips, the narrow eyes black. Then we both looked down at Georgie.

  Honor knelt down beside her and began to clear away from round her the various papers, garments, and other oddments which had a little snowed upon her during our rifling of the room. I saw with a curious surprise that Georgie was lying in exactly the same drowned attitude as when I had arrived. When Honor had cleared a space about her she put her hand on the girl’s shoulder and turned her on to her back, moving her outflung arm down to her breast. Then she put a cushion under her head. I shivered. As I knelt on the other side the two women composed for me for an instant into an eerie pietà. Honor with bowed head, suddenly gentle with concern, and Georgie slain, alienated, sleeping.

  Honor was still touching Georgie’s shoulder. As if this contact lent an articulate presence to the sleeping girl, I now felt able to touch her too and I drew my finger down her thigh. I could feel the soft warm leg through the material. But what I felt more, as in an electric circuit, was the shiver of connexion between Honor’s hand and mine; and I remembered our two hands almost touching on the blade of the Samurai sword. I covered my face. The ambulance came.

  Twenty-six

  The scene round Georgie’s bed was animated by a feverish gaiety. We were all there, like a family reunited at the bedside of a sick child. Brightly coloured wrapping-paper, chocolate boxes, toy animals, Penguin books, and exotic cigarettes strewed the counterpane, and the rows of flower vases on the dressing table and the window ledge made the little white hospital room look like a florist’s shop. There was something of the atmosphere of Christmas Day in the nursery.

  Georgie lying back, propped up with pillows, seemed indeed like an over-excited little girl. Her face was rather red and retained a new look of p
lumpness. Her hair, which she had shorn roughly at the nape of the neck, had been a little trimmed up by the Sister, but was still jagged and stuck out awkwardly on either side of her head, making her look very juvenile. She nervously caressed a white fluffy toy dog which Antonia had brought her, and looked at each of us in turn with a bright diffident imploring smile. We leaned benevolently over her.

  It was now the third day since Georgie’s exploit. She had been in a coma for more than twelve hours, but was now out of danger and considerably recovered. Palmer was sitting close to her at the head of the bed and I was sitting opposite him. Antonia was perched on the bed, her legs curled under her, and Alexander was leaning on the iron rail at the foot. Honor Klein leaned against the window ledge behind Palmer.

  ‘Oh dear, I’ve caused you all so much trouble!’ said Georgie. ‘I do feel bad.’

  ‘All’s well that ends well!’ said Antonia, her hand impulsively meeting Georgie’s in the soft fur of the toy dog. Antonia had been positively rejuvenated by the news of Georgie’s attempt. On hearing of it she had completely cast aside her listless and defeated air. After three days of exhilaration and excitement she looked distinctly handsomer and like her old self. Yesterday she had bought three hats.

  “And so you should feel bad!’ said Palmer. ‘Strictly speaking, we should have given you a good thrashing, instead of spoiling you like this!’ He passed his hand affectionately over her dark cropped head, turning it slightly towards him.

  I could feel Honor Klein’s eyes upon me, but I did not look at her. She leaned there with a bland cat-like expression which was almost a smile, and did not join in the chatter. Alexander too was subdued, brooding on Georgie with a sad gentle stare, immersed in the enjoyment of his private emotions. I envied his evident ability to feel. I was hollow.

  ‘I felt such a sham when I came round,’ said Georgie, ‘and I thought to myself, all the other women on this corridor are here with real illnesses, and I am just a trouble-maker. But do you know, they’re all in for the same thing as me! The woman in the end is quite proud because she took the largest dose!’

  We laughed. Alexander murmured, ‘ “To sleep! Perchance In dream …” ‘ half audibly and then would not repeat what he had said.

  I looked at Georgie’s nervously twisting hands. I felt com-passion for those hands as they jumpily fondled the toy dog. But I could no longer apprehend Georgie as a whole. She had never, after that strange scattering of her, come together again. I felt no grain of passionate interest in the once familiar body which lay extended so close to me. Something, even, in her still changed and alien face repelled me. It was as if she had died indeed. I wanted, when I thought of this, to kneel by her bed and bury my face and groan as a sort of desperate act of mourning. But I went on sitting there with a fixed half-smile. I wondered if, supposing I were to reach out and pat her hands, the gesture would look intolerably artificial. I could still feel Honor’s eyes upon me like a cold sun.

  ‘Well, it all makes employment for members of my profession,’ said Palmer. ‘Though I must admit it doesn’t usually bring me in such delightful patients!’

  Georgie, as was usual in such cases, had been asked to undergo some psychiatric treatment, and Palmer had under-taken to satisfy the requirements by enrolling her as a patient. She was soon to travel to Cambridge for a short stay.

  ‘It’s absurd, of course,’ said Georgie. ‘I’m perfectly sane, in fact - far saner than most psycho-analysts!’

  ‘Thank you, my dear!’ said Palmer. ‘I’m sure you are. But a little sorting out will do us no harm.’

  I thought, soon Georgie will be telling Palmer all about her sex life. I reached out and patted one of Georgie’s fidgeting hands. She shuddered.

  Antonia said, ‘Well, my child, I mustn’t spend all day on your bed! I’ve got a hairdressing appointment. I must dart off.’ She pulled herself off the bed without looking at me and smoothed down her smart spring suit. She looked radiant.

  Alexander said, ‘I’ll drive you. I’ve got to fix up about that exhibition.’ He gave Georgie his deep sad look, pressed his two hands over her feet through the bed-clothes, and left the room in the wake of Antonia.

  The sun was shining, the bright, cool late-January sun, with misleading hints of springtime, and the white room was gay with it. I wondered if I had better go too and leave Honor and Palmer with Georgie. I ought to have been tasting hock that afternoon. There was still time to get along. Only it seemed to have become extremely difficult to move or speak, as if I were being subjected to some paralysing ray. Palmer was holding Georgie’s hand. He too looked exceptionally well, with his hard clean look, the skin brown and unwrinkled, his crop of light grey hair as smooth and dry as an animal’s fur. When I saw him too so positively glowing it passed through my mind that he might conceivably have re-established some relation with Antonia. But that was impossible. I looked at Honor Klein over Palmer’s head. She was still smiling like an archaic statue.

  ‘Suppose you kids run along,’ said Palmer. ‘I want to talk seriously to my patient!’

  I got up and said, ‘Well, good-bye,’ and kissed Georgie on the brow. She murmured something and smiled after me, her feverishly brilliant eyes wrinkled up with anxiety. I went out and down the stairs. I could hear footsteps behind me.

  Twenty-seven

  Honor Klein caught up with me at the door of the hospital and I said without looking at her, ‘May I give you a lift?’

  She said ‘Yes’ and I led the way in silence to the car.

  I retain little memory of the drive to Pelham Crescent. Oddly, in retrospect that journey is jumbled in my mind with my first journey with Honor from Liverpool Street Station. I recall only a blaze of exhilaration which came with the certainty of what I was about to do. Through the rush-hour traffic the god that protects drunken men protected me.

  When we arrived I got out of the car and followed her to the house, which seemed not to surprise her. She opened the door, held it for me, and then went into the drawing-room. The bright sun made the sombre room seem bleak and soulless, taking the warmth out of its rich colours. It looked dusty. I came in and shut the door behind me. We faced each other down the length of the room.

  It was now indeed that I felt that I might faint, and I remember grinding my wrists against the panel of the door so that the pain might steady me. She was watching, still with a trace of the archaic smile, and I felt the power in her. I controlled my breathing.

  With an evident and relentless attention Honor waited for me to speak.

  I said at last, ‘I suppose you realize that I am in love with you?’

  She considered this, with head slightly on one side as if listening, and said, ‘Yes.’

  I said, ‘I doubt if you realize how much.’

  She turned away, giving me her shoulder, and said, ‘It doesn’t matter.’ She spoke quietly but without weariness.

  ‘That I love you, or how much?’

  ‘The latter. I’m touched that you love me. That’s all.’

  ‘It’s not all,’ I said. ‘Honor, I want you savagely and I shall fight for you savagely.’

  She shook her head and turned back now to meet my eyes. She said, ‘There is no place for such a love.’ Her ‘no place” seemed to search the universe and fold it into a box.

  I would not take this. I said, ‘When did you know I loved you?’ It was a lover’s question.

  ‘When you attacked me in the cellar.’

  ‘So you know what it meant when I appeared in Cambridge?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you did not tell Palmer.’

  She simply stared at me and I saw the old snake in her looking coldly out through her eyes; and I saw again in a vision the darkness of her breasts and how I had found her with her brother, and I shuddered not so much at what I had seen as at the fact that I had seen it. She could never forgive me.

  ‘You wrote me a lying letter,’ she said. She stood looking at me, her head thrust forward, the collar of her o
vercoat turned up behind her black wig of hair, her hands in her pockets.

  ‘I wrote you a foolish letter,’ I said. ‘I didn’t know at the time it was lying.’

  There was a slight pause and I was afraid she would dismiss me. I flattened my hands against the door behind me and almost prayed. I divined distantly within her some obscure hesitation. If I could only find the right words I could keep her talking, I could in this brief and vital moment for a little longer hold her; but for a single blunder I would be sent away.

  I said, picking my words carefully, ‘I am glad that you are not sceptical about my being in love. If anything is evident at least this must be. And you must also see my difficulties, since you and the circumstances have not allowed me much opportunity for self-expression. It would profit me little now if I were to tear your clothes off. But I would walk through sea and fire if you called me.’ I spoke this in a low reasonable voice; and as I spoke I thought of Palmer’s return and of the perilously limited time that remained to me.

  She listened as if attentively to this, her dark eyes pondering me, and said, ‘You do not know what you are asking. Do you want my love?’

  This startled me and I said, ‘I don’t know, I don’t even know if I think you capable of love. I want you.’

  After a moment she laughed, and then said, ‘Martin, you are talking nonsense.’ She turned away and pulled off her overcoat with a sudden gesture and went to the side-table where the drinks and the glasses stood. She poured out two glasses of sherry. I noticed with ecstasy that her hand was trembling.

  I did not leave my post. She placed one of the glasses on a little table half-way down the room and retired to the fireplace. I came and fetched it and returned to the door. I felt that if I came too near her I might tear her in pieces; and I felt a quivering joy in my blood which was my sense of her realizing this too. Then with a delayed reaction I apprehended her having used my first name, and I had to make an effort not to cover my face.