A Severed Head

by Iris Murdoch

  ‘Nonsense about doubting your capacity to love, or nonsense about simply wanting you?’ I said. I was terrified of putting a foot wrong.

  ‘You don’t know me,’ she said.

  ‘Let me know you. I have an apprehension of you which is deeper than ordinary knowledge. You realize this also or you would not be talking to me now. You are not a woman who wastes her time.’ I trembled too, yet irrationally and almost with exasperation I felt that only some thin brittle barrier divided us from a torrent of mutual surrender. If I could only see what act of mine would break it.

  ‘Return to reality,’ she said. ‘Return to your wife, return to Antonia. I have nothing for you.’

  ‘My marriage to Antonia is over,’ I said. ‘Palmer is right. It is dead.’

  ‘Palmer spoke out of his own conventions. You are not a fool. You know that there are many ways in which your marriage is alive. In any case, do not think that this is more than a dream.’ And she repeated, ‘Return to reality.’ Yet still she did not dismiss me.

  ‘I love you,’ I said, ‘and I desire you and my whole being is prostrate before you. This is reality. Let us indeed not be blinded by any convention about where it is to be found.’

  ‘Convention!’ she said, and laughed again. I laughed too, and then we were both tense and solemn once more. I was stiff with concentrating and with bending my eyes and my will upon her. She stood there in her ancient dark green suit, feet apart and hands behind her back, staring at me.

  She said, ‘Your love for me does not inhabit the real world. Yes, it is love, I do not deny it. But not every love has a course to run, smooth or otherwise, and this love has no course at all. Because of what I am and because of what you saw I am a terrible object of fascination for you. I am a severed head such as primitive tribes and old alchemists used to use, anointing it with oil and putting a morsel of gold upon its tongue to make it utter prophecies. And who knows but that long acquaintance with a severed head might not lead to strange knowledge. For such knowledge one would have paid enough. But that is remote from love and remote from ordinary life. As real people we do not exist for each other.’

  ‘I have at least with you,’ I said, ‘paid all the time. This precisely does make you real for me. You give me hope.’

  ‘I do not intend to. Be clear about that.’

  ‘What anyway does a love do which has no course?’

  ‘It is changed into something else, something heavy or sharp that you carry within and bind around with your substance until it ceases to hurt. But that is your affair.’

  I felt that I had displayed weakness and that this perhaps was fatal. She moved and her shadow moved upon the floor in the cold sunshine. As she fumbled for cigarettes in the pocket of her overcoat I felt sure that in a moment now she would send me away.

  I began to advance down the room and as I did so she froze for a moment; and then with deliberation went on lighting her cigarette. She finished and looked at me, her hands hanging loosely at her sides, one holding the smouldering cigarette. Her solemn face of a Hebrew angel regarded me, ready, stripped of expression. But I could no more have touched her than if she had been the Ark of the Covenant.

  When I was near to her I fell on my knees and prostrated myself full length with my head on the floor. It happened as spontaneously as if I had been knocked to the ground. It was strange, but I could have lain there for a long time.

  After a moment or two she said, ‘Get up,’ in a steady voice, very deep.

  I began to rise. She had moved back and was leaning against the mantelpiece. I could not prevent myself from supplicating. On my knees I said, ‘Honor, let us not fight like this. Only see me a little. I ask only that. I know nothing of how you are situated yourself or what you want. But I feel certain that this thing which has been shivering and trembling between us in this half-hour is a real thing. Do not kill it. That is all I ask.’

  She jerked her head, frowning in an exasperated way, and I realized that I had broken whatever precarious spell it was by which I had in these decisive minutes held her. I got up.

  She said, ‘We are not fighting. Please do not deceive yourself. You are living on dreams. You had better go now. Palmer will be here soon, and I had rather you went first.’

  ‘But you will see me again?’

  ‘There would be absolutely no point in my doing so. Palmer and I are going away almost at once.’

  ‘Do not speak so,’ I said. ‘I want you abjectly.’

  ‘Dear me,’ she said mockingly, ‘and whatever would you do with me if you had me?’

  These words, conveying to me the simple truth that she could not regard me as an equal, stopped my mouth at last.

  As I got into my car I saw Palmer getting out of a taxi near by. We waved to each other.

  Twenty-eight

  It was nearly lunch-time on the following day and I was getting very worried about Antonia. She had not returned home on the previous evening or all night. Fairly late in the evening I had telephoned her mother and one or two friends, but could pick up no trace of her. I rang Rosemary’s flat, but there was no reply. I sat up with a bottle of whisky expecting her to come, and had fallen into a deep sleep lying on the sofa. I woke stiff and desolate in the early hours of the morning. At seven I rang Rosemary again, and Rembers on the off-chance, but could get no answer. At nine o’clock I telephoned the hairdresser and was told that Mrs Lynch-Gibbon had had no appointment with them recently. I concluded that Antonia must have changed her hairdresser; or else she had been lying. I could not bring myself to ring Palmer.

  At about ten o’clock the bell rang, but it was only the removal men with the rest of the furniture from Lowndes Square. They carried it in, and managed to knock a chip off the Carlton House writing table while bringing it through the door. After they had gone I stood sadly beside the thing, licking my finger and dabbing it on the scar to darken the wood. Then I got some polish and rubbed it all over, but without persuading it to settle down. It retained a derelict temporary air as if it thought it was already at Sotheby’s. The room had never recovered.

  I did some telephoning, including calls to local police stations to inquire about accidents, and still to no avail. Just after eleven the telephone rang, but that was Mytten ringing up about the hock. I was, to an extreme and irrational degree, upset and worried. It was not like Antonia to disappear without warning, and I could not help imagining her lying unconscious in a hospital bed or floating face down in the Thames. The quality of the anxiety brought back to me my frantic distresses as a child about any prolonged absence of my mother; and as then, I tried to comfort myself by saying: in an hour, in two hours, she will have returned, everything will be explained, everything will be as usual. But meanwhile the minutes ticked silently past without bringing any news.

  Of course it was true, and this was the proof of it, that my marriage was still in many ways very much alive. It may sound abject, but I came home from Honor wanting to be comforted by Antonia. I had made her Martini as usual, expecting her soon after six o’clock. There is no substitute for the comfort supplied by the utterly taken-for-granted relationship; and after all, in spite of all that had happened, Antonia and no one else was my wife. It did not occur to me to reflect that there was anything illogical in this; and indeed there was nothing illogical’.

  When I left Honor I was in extreme pain, a pain produced by our last exchanges. However, as I sat waiting for Antonia and before I began to be anxious, I had been invaded rather by a profound exhilaration. Considering the extreme difficulties and dangers of the enterprise the interview had not gone too badly. I was impressed by the fact that Honor had been willing to talk at all. I was pretty certain that she had even now not told Palmer of my condition. I recalled with delight her trembling hand. She had told me that she intended to give me no hope. But she had, effectively, given me hope; and she was no fool. Of course I knew soberly that it was a small, a very small hope. But when one is in love a little light shines a long way. What I mo
st needed was a sense of reprieve. I could not believe that Honor and Palmer were really going away, far away or for long; and I was certain that I should see her again. Of the claims of my wife and of her brother I made, by a double method of thought, nothing; either I would lose Honor, in which case all would be as before, or else, per impossible, I would gain her, and this would create a new heaven and a new earth and the utter sweeping away of all former things. I would be a new person; and if she were relentlessly to draw me I would come to her even if I had to wade through blood. To this soliloquy my worries about Antonia broke in; and it was not until nearly noon on the following day, when sheer exhaustion brought about a pause, that my thoughts returned fully to Honor, and I thought of her words about the severed head. I had been glad on the previous day to reflect that I had not sent her my original letter in which my behaviour had been, in such dreary terms, explained. I did not love her as a substitute for Palmer, whom I loved because he had seduced my wife: I was certain of that; and I had as little sympathy for her own method of explanation. I did not love her because incest inspired irrational horror; although, as I thought, I knew that the scene in Cambridge was something still active and scarcely touchable in my imagination, something unassimilated and dangerous. I closed my eyes and saw again what I had seen then.

  There was a flurry at the door and Antonia came running into the room. I leapt up, both relieved and oddly frightened to see her. I ran to her and shook her shoulders. She laughed as I did so, and then took off her hat and coat and threw them on a chair. She looked elated, almost drunk. I stared at her in amazement.

  I said, ‘Damn you, I’ve been nearly off my head. Where were you?’

  ‘Darling,’ said Antonia. ‘We’re going to have a drink now, a nice big one. Just be patient. I’ll tell you everything. I’m sorry I couldn’t let you know. But you’ll see. Sit down and I’ll get the glasses.’

  I sat down on the sofa. Now that she had come back I felt only weariness and irritation. I decided I had better go off to bed. Last night’s comatose sleep had done me no good.

  Antonia sat beside me, put the drinks on the table, and then turned my head gently with one hand so that I faced her. Then she poured most of her drink out of her glass into mine. There was something vaguely reminiscent about the gesture. She returned to looking at me with her bright moist tawny eyes. Her hair shone like pale copper, and I could not think how I had seen her as growing old. Her reddened mouth worked with inarticulate tenderness.

  ‘All right, all right,’ I said, ‘I’m glad to see you!’ I took her hand.

  ‘Darling,’ said Antonia, ‘I don’t know how to say this, because I don’t know how much you know.’

  ‘Know about what?’

  ‘About me and Alexander.’

  ‘You and Alexander?’ I said. ‘Are you sure you’ve got the name right?’

  ‘Oh, darling,’ said Antonia, ‘I’m afraid it’s serious. But surely you knew? You must have known for ages.’

  ‘Known what?’

  ‘Well, that I and Alexander - well, to put it quite bluntly that Alexander has been my lover.’

  ‘Oh, Christ,’ I said. I got up. Antonia tried to retain my hand, but I pulled it away.

  ‘You mean you didn’t know at all?’ said Antonia. ‘Surely you must have guessed. I was sure you knew. Alexander wasn’t so certain.’

  ‘What a fool you must both think me.’ I said. ‘No, I didn’t know. Of course I realized you were very fond of each other. But I didn’t know this. Do you imagine I would have tolerated it? How little you know me.’

  ‘Well, you tolerated Anderson so well,’ said Antonia. ‘That was one thing that made me feel you must have known, you must have understood, about Alexander. Besides it was so obvious.’

  ‘You are stupid,’ I said. ‘Palmer was different.’

  ‘I don’t see why,’ said Antonia. ‘And what do you mean by saying you wouldn’t have tolerated it? I loved you both, you loved both of us, Alexander loved –’

  ‘You make me feel ill,’ I said.

  ‘You knew I had to have both of you,’ said Antonia.

  ‘Well, from now on you’re only having one of us.’

  ‘Don’t say that, darling,’ said Antonia with urgency. She got up and tried again to take my hand. I put it in my pocket. ‘It’s true that we both love you and we can’t do without you and we won’t do without you. You were so splendid about Anderson. Don’t spoil things now.’

  ‘I’ve spent all my splendour.’

  ‘Be rational, my dearest Martin, my child,’ said Antonia. ‘And, oh darling, don’t look like that. After all, this situation has existed for a long time. It isn’t as if I’d only just thought of it.’

  ‘Well, I haven’t known about it for a long time,’ I said. ‘How long in fact has it existed?’

  ‘Oh, always,’ said Antonia. ‘I don’t mean that we always met very often. That varied. But the situation existed.’

  ‘Always? You mean ever since we got married?’

  ‘Really since before we got married. I fell in love with Alexander practically as soon as I met him. Only I didn’t start to believe in my love until it was too late. You remember you wouldn’t let me meet Alexander until after our engagement was announced. You said he always took your girls away. And then everything was so public. I hadn’t enough nerve.’

  ‘You mean our marriage never really existed at all?’

  ‘Of course it existed, darling. I loved you both. I love you both.’

  ‘I don’t think you understand that word,’ I said.

  ‘You hurt me terribly,’ said Antonia. We looked at each other. Her face had a hard dignity and she withstood my gaze. She had certainly, since the last occasion, travelled. She still looked like an actress. But a great actress.

  I walked away to the window and looked out at the magnolia tree. The weak sun revealed the moss upon its old trunk. It looked dead.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ I said.

  ‘As I say, I thought you knew. I thought you preferred it all being gentle and inexplicit.’

  ‘Well, why are you making it all nasty and explicit now?’

  ‘Anderson woke me up,’ said Antonia. ‘He made me in some ways more absolute. After that it was impossible to go on in quite this way. I was in love with Anderson, I was terribly carried away by him. I couldn’t help myself. It was both wonderful and terrible. I’d never felt the earth give way under me quite like that. Of course it nearly killed Alexander. He saw it coming from miles off - and I was practically afraid for his reason. He suffered far more than you did.’

  ‘Did he know before I knew?’

  ‘Yes. I couldn’t deceive him. And anyway he guessed.’

  ‘But you could deceive me.’

  ‘You deceived me,’ said Antonia.

  ‘That was different,’ I said.

  ‘You keep saying things are different that aren’t,’ said Antonia. ‘Of course our marriage could never have been quite right. You realized it, after all. You had to have someone else too. I would have forgiven you.’

  ‘No marriage is ever quite right,’ I said. ‘But I believed in ours. Now you tell me it never was. I haven’t even got the past left.’

  ‘You are such a dreamer, Martin,’ said Antonia. ‘You like to dream along without facing things. Well, you must face things now. And do stop being so sorry for yourself.’

  ‘Don’t be brutal to me, Antonia. I just want to understand. You say that Palmer woke you up?’

  ‘Yes, he made me honest. Made me braver, perhaps. It is better to be explicit and to try to hold things all the same. It was wonderful how I managed it with you, over Anderson. And somehow I held on to Alexander as well. However much he suffered, we never lost touch. That was wonderful.’ ‘Wonderful. I see. So you’re trying it out on me again?’ ‘Dearest,’ said Antonia, ‘I knew you’d come round!’ She came up behind me and I could feel her gentle touch on my shoulder. I still stood looking out at the magnolia, my hands behind
my back.

  ‘What makes you think I’m coming round?’ I said. ‘You must, you must!’ she said with tender urgency, and began to undo my hands and take them in hers. Without turning I let her hold them. ‘But what about Georgie?’

  ‘Oh, that was sheer despair,’ said Antonia. ‘Alexander had been so dreadfully hurt by the Anderson business. While it was going on he was in too much pain to be angry. He kept his anger until after it was over. Then he wanted to punish me.’

  ‘You mean he never really intended to marry Georgie at all?’

  ‘Well, he thought he did,’ said Antonia, ‘but he deceived himself, poor dear. We were estranged from each other for a short time, and it was hell for both of us. Surely you must have seen me suffering. He imagined he wanted something new, and he started it off with Georgie just as a distraction.

  He was half mad. But then of course he realized that it was no good. That was why Georgie tried to kill herself, when she found out that Alexander really loved me.’ Her voice droned on quietly over my shoulder.

  ‘Is that right?’ I said. I was becoming dazed and stupid. I felt like an empty vessel that is struck again and again. Even Georgie’s love was being taken away from me. It would take little now to make me believe that Georgie had loved Alexander all along. At any rate she had been waiting for Alexander all along. Yet she had sent me her dear hair.

  I turned round and faced Antonia and we stood together in the window. She caressed my arms, leaning her head forward with the old look of possessive tenderness.

  ‘Poor Georgie,’ said Antonia. ‘But she’s young, she’ll soon find someone else.’

  ‘You must be pleased with yourself,’ I said. ‘It turns out everyone loves you in the end.’

  Antonia smiled her triumphant smile. ‘I’m good at it!’ she said. Then she touched my cheek. ‘Don’t resist my love, Martin. I must keep you in my loving net. We’ll hold you, you know, we’ll never let you go! After all, you were unconsciously living it before. Perhaps we were all a little in a dream. Now it has come fully to consciousness, and things will be put right, as they would have been at the start if I had had more courage. And if we are brave and good it will all be better now that we are truthful, oh better, far better!’ She spoke softly, rubbing my cheek as if she were rubbing into it some spell-binding ointment.