The Black Prince

by Iris Murdoch

  ‘What’s the situation?’ I said to Arnold. I thought he looked as if he was drunk, and immediately after I could smell drink.

  Arnold, making some sort of effort, said slowly, ‘She locked herself into our bedroom. After it – happened – She was bleeding a lot-I thought-I don’t quite know what – the injury was – At any rate – At any rate -’ He stopped.

  ‘Go on, Arnold. Look, you’d better sit down. Hadn’t he better sit down?’

  ‘Arnold Baffin,’ said Francis, to himself.

  Arnold leaned back against the hall stand. He leaned his head back into a coat that was hanging there, closed his eyes for a moment, and then went on. ‘Sorry. You see. She was sort of crying and wailing in there for a time. I mean in the bedroom. Now it’s all quiet and she doesn’t answer at all. I’m afraid she may be unconscious or—’

  ‘Can’t you break open the door?’

  ‘I tried to, I tried to, but the chisel, the – outside woodwork just broke away and I couldn’t get any—’

  ‘Sit down, Arnold, for Christ’s sake.’ I pushed him on to a chair.

  ‘And you can’t see through the keyhole because the key—’

  ‘She’s probably just upset and won’t answer out of – you know—’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I didn’t want to – If it’s alla-I don’t know quite what – You go and try, Bradley – ’

  ‘Where’s your chisel?’

  ‘Up there. But it’s a small one. I can’t find – ’

  ‘Well, you two stay here,’ I said. ‘I’ll just go up and see what’s going on. I bet you anything – Arnold, stay here and sit down!’

  I stood outside the bedroom door, which had been mildly disfigured by Arnold’s efforts. A lot of paint had flaked off and lay like white pearls upon the fawn carpet. The chisel lay there too. I tried the handle and called, ‘Rachel. It’s Bradley. Rachel!’

  Silence.

  ‘I’ll get a hammer,’ I could hear Arnold, invisible, saying downstairs.

  ‘Rachel, Rachel, please answer – ’ The real panic had got inside me now. I pressed all my weight on the door. It was solid and well made. ‘Rachel!’

  Silence.

  I hurled myself at the door, shouting, ‘Rachel!’ Then I stopped, and listened very carefully.

  There was a tiny sound from within, a sort of little creeping mouse-like sound. I said, ‘Oh let her be all right, let her be all right.’

  More creeping. Then very softly in a scarcely audible whisper. ‘Bradley.’

  ‘Rachel, Rachel, are you all right?’

  Silence. Creeping. Then a little hissing sigh. ‘Yes.’

  I shouted to the others, ‘She’s all right! She’s all right!’

  I heard them saying something behind me on the stairs. ‘Rachel, let me in, can you? Let me in.’

  There was a scuffling sound, then Rachel’s voice, breathy and low down, close against the door, ‘You come in. Not anyone else.’

  I heard the key turn in the lock and I pushed quickly into the room catching a glimpse of Arnold who was standing on the stairs with Francis behind him a little lower down. I saw the two faces very clearly, like faces in a crucifixion crowd which represent the painter and his friend. Arnold’s face was distorted into a sort of sneer of anguish. Francis’s was bright with malign curiosity. Suitable expressions for a crucifixion. Inside I nearly fell over Rachel who was sitting on the floor. She was moaning softly now, trying frantically to turn the key again in the lock. I turned it for her and then sat down on the floor beside her.

  Since Rachel Baffin is one of the main actors, in a crucial sense perhaps the main actor, in my drama I should like now to pause briefly to describe her. I had known her for over twenty years, almost as long as I had known Arnold, yet at the time that I speak of I did not really, as I later realized, know her well. There was a sort of vagueness. Some women, in fact in my experience many women, have a sort of ‘abstract’ quality about them. Is this a real sex difference? Perhaps this quality is really just unselfishness. (In this respect, you know where you are with men!) In Rachel’s case it was certainly not lack of intelligence. There was a vagueness which womanly affection and the custom of my quasi-family friendship with the Baffins did not dispel, even increased. Of course men play roles, but women play roles too, blanker ones. They have, in the play of life, fewer good lines. This may be to make a mystery of what had simpler causes. Rachel was an intelligent woman married to a famous man: and instinctively such a woman behaves as a function of her husband, she reflects, as it were, all the light on to him. Her ‘blankness’ repelled even curiosity. One does not expect such a woman to have ambition: whereas Arnold and I were both, in quite different ways, tormented, perhaps even defined, by ambition. Rachel was (in a way in which one would never think this of a man) a ‘good specimen’, a ‘good sort’. One relied on her. There she was. She looked (then) just like a big handsome sweet contented woman, the efficient wife of a well-known charmer. She was a large, smooth-faced, slightly freckled, reddish-blonde person, with straightish gingery wiry hair and a pale complexion, a bit tall for a woman and generally on a larger scale physically than her husband. She had been putting on weight and some might have called her fat. She was always busy, often with charities and mild left-wing politics. (Arnold cared nothing for politics.) She was an excellent ‘housewife’, and often referred to herself by this title.

  ‘Rachel, are you all right?’

  There was a darkening reddish bruise under one eye and the eye was narrowed, though this was hard to see because the eyelids of both eyes were so grossly red and swollen with weeping. Her upper lip was also swollen on one side. There were traces of blood on her neck and on her dress. Her hair was tangled and looked darker as if wet; perhaps it was literally wet with the flow of her tears. She was panting now, almost gasping. She had undone the front of her dress and I could see some white lace of her brassière and a plump pallor of flesh bulging above. She had been crying so much that her face was almost unrecognizably puffed up, all wet and shiny and hot to look at. She started now to cry again, pulling away from my convulsive sympathetic gesture and plucking at the collar of the dress in a distraught way.

  ‘Rachel, are you hurt? I’ve got a doctor here – ’

  She began awkwardly to get up, again pushing away my assisting hand. I got a whiff of alcohol from her panting breath. She knelt upon her dress and I heard it tear. Then she half ran half fell across the room to the disordered bed, where she flopped on her back, tugging at the bedclothes, ineffectually because she was half lying on them, then covering her face with both hands and crying in an appalling wailing manner, lying with her feet wide apart in a graceless self-absorption of grief.

  ‘Rachel, please control yourself. Drink some water.’ The sound of that abandoned weeping was scarcely bearable, and something far too intense to be called embarrassment, yet of that quality, made me both reluctant and anxious to look at her. A woman’s crying can sicken one with fright and guilt, and this was terrible crying.

  Arnold outside shouted, ‘Please let me in, please, please – ’

  ‘Stop it, Rachel,’ I said. ‘I can’t bear this. Stop it. I’m going to open the door.’

  ‘No, no,’ she whispered, a sort of voiceless whine. ‘Not Arnold, not—’ Was she still afraid of him?

  ‘I’m going to let the doctor in,’ I said.

  ‘No, no.’

  I opened the door and placed my hand on Arnold’s chest. ‘Go in and look at her,’ I said to Francis. ‘There’s some blood.’

  Arnold began to call out, ‘Let me see you, please, darling, don’t be angry, oh please – ’

  I pushed him back towards the head of the stairs. Francis went inside and locked the door again, whether out of delicacy or professional caution.

  Arnold sat down on the stairs and began to moan. ‘Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear – ’ My awkward appalled embarrassment mingled now with a horrible fascinated interest. Arnold, beyond caring about what impression he ma
de, was running his hands again and again through his hair. ‘Oh I am a bloody fool, I am a bloody fool—’

  I said, ‘Steady on. What happened exactly?’

  ‘Where are the scissors?’ shouted Francis from within.

  ‘Top drawer dressing-table,’ Arnold shouted back. ‘Christ, what does he want scissors for? Is he going to operate or something ?’

  ‘What happened? Look, better move down a bit.’

  I pushed Arnold and he hobbled stooping, holding the banisters, past the turn of the stair, and sat on the lowest step, holding his head in his hands and staring at the zig-zag design of the hall carpet. The hall was always a bit dim because of the stained glass in the door. I went down past him and sat on a chair, feeling very odd, upset, excited.

  ‘Oh Christ, oh Christ. Do you think she’ll forgive me?’

  ‘Of course. What — ?’

  ‘It all started with such a damn silly argument about one of my books. Oh God, why is one so stupid – we just went on arguing, neither of us would stop at all – We don’t usually discuss my work, I mean Rachel thinks it’s fine, there’s nothing to discuss. Only sometimes if she’s not feeling very well or something she picks on a thing in a book and says it refers to her, or that it’s a picture of something we did or found or something together. Well, you know I don’t draw from life like that, all my stuff is imagined, only Rachel suddenly thinks she spots something which she says is hurtful or spoiling or insulting or something, it’s like a sudden persecution complex, it upsets her terribly. Most of one’s friends are dying to be in one’s books, they see themselves everywhere, but Rachel hates it if I even mention somewhere we’ve been together, she says it spoils it and so on. Anyway, oh Christ, Bradley, what a bloody fool I am – Anyway this started up with this sort of tiff and then she said something hurtful about my writing in general, she said, well never mind – Anyway we started rowing and I suppose I said some pretty critical things about her, just to defend myself, and we’d been drinking brandy after lunch – We don’t usually drink much, but when we started to fight we just went on and on drinking, it was crazy. Then she got terribly angry and lost control and screamed at me, and I hate that. I sort of pushed her to stop her screaming and she clawed my face, see, she made quite a mark on me, God, it still hurts. I felt quite frightened and I just hit her to make her stop. I can’t stand screaming and noise and anger, and they are frightening. She was yelling like a fury and saying awful things about my work and I just hit her with my hand to stop the hysterics, but she went on coming at me and coming at me, and then I picked up the poker from the fireplace just to hold it between us as a barrier, and just at that moment she jerked her head, she was dancing round me like a wild animal, and she jerked her head down and met the poker with a most ghastly crack – oh God – Of course I didn’t mean to hit her, I mean I didn’t hit her — And then she went down on the floor and she was so bloody quiet lying there with her eyes closed, I wasn’t sure she hadn’t stopped breathing – Well, I was in a complete panic and I got a jug of water and poured it over her and she just lay there and I was frantic – And then when I went to get some more water she jumped up and ran upstairs to the bedroom and locked herself in – Then she wouldn’t open, wouldn’t answer – I didn’t know if she was shamming and it was spite or if she was really ill or what, so you see I didn’t know what to do – Oh Christ, I didn’t mean to hit her—’

  There were sounds upstairs, the unlocking of a door, and we both jumped up. Francis, leaning down, said, ‘She’s OK.’ His shabby blue suit was covered with dampish reddish silky siftings, which in a moment I recognized as Rachel’s hair, which he must have clipped in order to examine her head. I saw his extremely dirty hand grasping the white banister.

  ‘Thank God,’ said Arnold. ‘Do you know, I think she may have been shamming all the time. Anyway, thank God. What should – ?’

  ‘There’s nothing seriously wrong. She’s got a very nasty lump on her head and she’s a bit in shock. Could be a touch of concussion. Keep her in bed and keep the room dark. Aspirins, any of her usual sedatives, hot water bottles, hot drinks, I mean tea and that. Better let her see her own doctor. She’ll soon be herself again.’

  ‘Oh thank you so much, Doctor,’ said Arnold. ‘So she’s all right, thank heaven.’

  ‘She wants to see you,’ said Francis to me. We had all moved back up to the landing.

  Arnold began again calling, ‘My darling, please—’

  ‘I’ll deal,’ I said. I half opened the bedroom door, which was unlocked.

  ‘Only Bradley. Only Bradley.’ The voice, still almost inaudible, was firmer.

  ‘Oh Christ. This is awful. I’ve had enough—’ said Arnold. ‘Darling – ’

  ‘You go down and give yourself another drink,’ I told him.

  ‘I wouldn’t mind a drink,’ said Francis.

  ‘Oh don’t be angry with me, darling—’

  ‘Could you chuck out my mac,’ said Francis. ‘I left it in there on the floor.’

  I went in and threw the macintosh out and closed the door again. I heard retreating steps as Arnold and Francis went away down the stairs.

  ‘Lock the door, please.’

  I locked it.

  Francis had pulled the curtains and there was a sort of thick pink twilight in the room. The evening sun, now palely shining, made the big floppy flowers on the chintz curtains glow in a melancholy way. The room had the rather sinister tedium which some bedrooms have, a sort of weary banality which is a reminder of death. A dressing-table can be a terrible thing. The Baffins had placed theirs in the window where it obstructed the light and presented its ugly back to the road. The plate glass ‘table’ surface was dusty and covered with cosmetic tubes and bottles and balls of hair. The chest of drawers had all its drawers gaping, spewing pink underwear and shoulder straps. The bed was chaotic, violent, the green artificial silk coverlet swooping down on one side and the sheets and blankets creased up into a messy mass, like an old face. There was a warm intimate embarrassing smell of sweat and face powder. The whole room breathed the flat horror of genuine mortality, dull and spiritless and final.

  I do not know why I thought then so promptly and prophetically of death. Perhaps it was because Rachel, half under the bedclothes, had covered her face with the sheet.

  Her feet, with glossy high-heeled shoes on, protruded from under the green coverlet. I said timidly, almost as if making conversation and to establish a rapport, ‘Here, let me take your shoes off.’

  She remained stiff while, with some difficulty, I pulled off both shoes. I felt the soft warmth of the damp brown stockinged foot. A pungent sour odour joined the vapid smell of the room. I wiped my hands on my trousers.

  ‘Better get properly into bed. Look, I’ll straighten out your bedclothes a bit.’

  She shifted slightly, removing the sheet from her face, and even lifting her legs so that I could pull out a blanket from under them. I arranged her a little bit, pulling the blankets up and turning the sheet back over them. She had stopped crying and was stroking the bruise on her face. The bruise seemed bluer, creeping round the eye socket, and the eye itself was reduced to a watery slit. She lay there, her moist disfigured mouth slightly open, staring at the ceiling.

  ‘I’ll fill you a hot water bottle, shall I ?’

  I found a hot water bottle and filled it from the hot tap in the wash basin. Its soiled woolly cover smelt of sweat and sleep. I got it a bit wet on the outside, but it felt quite warm. I lifted the sheet and blanket and thrust it in beside her thigh.

  ‘Rachel, aspirins? These are aspirins, aren’t they?’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘Do you good.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’ll be all right, the doctor said so.’

  She sighed very deeply and flopped her hand back on to the bed, lying now with both hands symmetrically by her side, palms upward, like a limp disentombed Christ figure, still bearing the marks of ill-treatment. Tufts of cut hair adh
ered to the dried blood on the bosom of her blue dress. She said in a hollow louder voice, ‘This is so awful, so awful, so awful.’

  ‘You’ll be all right, Rachel, the doctor says—’

  ‘I feel so utterly – defeated. I shall – die of shame.’

  ‘Nonsense, Rachel. It’s just one of those things.’

  ‘And he asks you round – to see it all.’

  ‘Rachel, he was shaking like a leaf, he thought you were unconscious in here, he was terrified.’

  ‘I shall never forgive him. Be my witness now. I shall never forgive him. Never, never, never. Not if he were to kneel at my feet for twenty years. A woman does not forgive this ever. She won’t save a man at the end. If he were drowning, I’d watch.’

  ‘Rachel, you don’t mean this. Please don’t talk in this awful sort of theatrical way. Of course you’ll forgive him. I’m sure there were faults on both sides. After all you hit him too, you put your monogram on his cheek.’

  ‘Ach – ’ Her exclamation expressed harsh, almost vulgar, disgust. ‘Never,’ she said, ‘never, never. Oh I am – so unhappy—’ The whimpering and the spilling tears began again. Her face was flaming hot.

  ‘Stop, please. You must rest. Do take some aspirins. Try to sleep a little. I’ll get you some tea, would you like that?’

  ‘Sleep! With my mind in this state! He has sent me to hell. He has taken my whole life from me. He has spoilt the world. I am as clever as he is. He has just blocked me off from everything. I can’t work, I can’t think, I can’t be, because of him. His stuff crawls over everything, he takes away all my things and turns them into his things. I’ve never been myself or lived my own life at all. I’ve always been afraid of him, that’s what it comes to. All men despise all women really. All women fear all men really. Men are physically stronger, that’s what it comes to, that what’s behind it all. Of course they’re bullies, they can end any argument. Ask any poor woman in the slums, she knows. He has given me a black eye, like any common brawler, any drunken husband like you hear of in the courts. He has hit me before, oh this isn’t the first time by any means. He didn’t know it, I never told him, but the first time he hit me our marriage came to an end. And he talks about me to other women, I know he does, he confides in other women and discusses me with them. They all admire him so and flatter him so. He has taken away my life from me and spoilt it, breaking every little piece of it, like the breaking of every bone in one’s body, every little thing ruined and spoilt and taken away.’