The Black Prince

by Iris Murdoch

  ‘No one has ever been sick for me before,’ said Julian.

  ‘Don’t flatter yourself. It was partly Strauss.’

  ‘Good old Strauss.’

  I was sitting Egyptian style, square, with my hands on my knees, looking away into the darkness where the shadow – cat had made himself a play – fellow out of the stuff of the night. A warm hand came questing lightly over my tensed knuckles. ‘Don’t, Julian. I really am going in a minute. Please try to make it easy.’

  She withdrew her hand. ‘Bradley, don’t be so cold to me.’

  ‘I may behave like a fool, but that’s no reason for you to behave like a bloody bitch.’

  ‘To a nunnery go and quickly too. Farewell.’

  ‘I know this amuses you immensely. But please stop, be silent, don’t touch.’

  ‘I won’t be silent and I will touch.’ She put her tormenting hand upon my arm again.

  I said, ‘You are behaving – so badly – I wouldn’t have – believed —you could be so – frivolously — unkind.’

  I turned round to face her, taking the offending hand in a strong grip just above the wrist. There was a shock wave, as I apprehended rather than saw her excited half – smiling face. Then I put my arms very evenly and strongly around her shoulders and kissed her with very great care upon the mouth.

  There are moments of paradise which are worth millennia of hell, or so one may think, only one is not always fully conscious of this at the moment in question. I was fully conscious. I knew that even if the ruin of the world were to ensue I had made a good bargain. I had imagined kissing Julian, but I had not prefigured this concentrated intensity of pure joy, this sudden white – hot rapturous pressure of lips upon lips, being upon being.

  I was so utterly transported by the quite unexpected experience of holding and kissing her that it was only, I think, in some secondary moment inside this moment that I became aware that she was also holding and kissing me. Both her arms were round my neck and her lips were ardent and her eyes were closed.

  I turned my head and began to push her away and she withdrew her arms from my neck. I was aided in releasing her by the innate awkwardness of seated kissing. We drew apart.

  I said, ‘You shouldn’t have done that.’

  ‘Bradley, I love you.’

  ‘Don’t talk lying rubbish.’

  ‘What am I to do? You won’t listen properly. You think I’m a child, you think I’m playing, it’s not so. Of course I’m confused. I’ve known you such a long time, all my life. I’ve always loved you. Please don’t interrupt. Oh if you only knew how much I always looked forward to your coming, wanted to talk to you, wanted to tell you things. You never noticed, but lots and lots of things weren’t real to me at all until I’d told you about them. If you only knew how much I’ve always admired you. When I was a child I used to say I wanted to marry you. Do you remember ? I’m sure you don’t. You’ve been my ideal man for ever and ever. And this isn’t just a silly child’s thing, it isn’t even a sort of crush, it’s a deep real love. Of course it’s a love I’ve not questioned or thought about or even named until quite lately – but I have questioned it and thought about it – as soon as I felt and knew that I was grown up. You see, my love has grown up too. I’ve so much wanted to be with you, I’ve so much wanted to get to know you properly, since I’ve been a woman. Why do you think I made all that fuss about discussing the play? I did want to discuss the play. But I much more wanted and needed your affection and your attention. God, I wanted just to look at you. You can’t think how I’ve longed to touch you and kiss you sometimes in these last, oh years, only I didn’t dare to and thought I never would. And lately, oh ever since that day you saw me tearing up the letters, I’ve been thinking about you almost all the time – and so especially since last week whenI – when I had a sort of premonition about – what you told me tonight – I’ve thought about nothing else but you.’

  ‘What about Septimus?’ I said.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Septimus. Septimus Leech. Your boy – friend. Haven’t you been able to spare a couple of minutes to think about him?’

  ‘Oh that. I just said that. I think I may even have said it out of some sort of instinct to tease you. He isn’t my boy – friend, he’s just a friend. I haven’t got a boy – friend.’

  I was staring at her. She was sitting side saddle on the bench, the strained silk outlining one knee. I looked at the little row of blue buttons that led upward in between her breasts. Her hair, disordered, a turban now and not a casque, bushed over the top of her head, where her nervous thoughtless hand was tossing it back from her brow. Her face glowed with a sort of intellectual passion and with emotions which I dared not name. She was certainly no child any more. She had taken full possession of her womanhood and its authority and its power.

  I said, ‘I see.’ I got up lightly and quickly and made for the gateway. I turned along Bedford Street in the direction of Leicester Square station. As I crossed into Garrick Street Julian, walking beside me, thrust her left hand into my right hand. With my left hand I carefully detached hers and dropped it again by her side. We walked on in silence as far as the corner of St Martin’s Lane.

  Then Julian said, ‘I see that you’re determined not to believe or attend to anything that I say. You seem to think that I’m still about twelve.’

  ‘No, no,’ I said. ‘I attended carefully to your statement and found it interesting, even touching. And remarkably well expressed considering you invented it on the spur of the moment. It was not however very detailed or very clear, nor do I yet see what implications it has if any.’

  ‘God, Bradley, I do love you.’

  ‘That’s very kind of you.’

  ‘I’m not inventing it, it’s true.’

  ‘I am not accusing you of insincerity. Just of not having the faintest idea what you are talking about. You admitted to being confused.’

  ‘Did I?’

  ‘The main source of your confusion is fairly obvious. You have liked me, or as you are gracious enough to say, loved me, when you were a little ignorant innocent child and I was an impressive visitor, a writer, a friend of your father’s and so on. Now you are an adult and I am a man, a good deal your senior, but suddenly seen as inhabiting the same adult world. Even leaving aside the little shocks which you have had this evening, you are naturally surprised, possibly a bit elated, to find that we are now somehow equals. What in this new situation do you do with your old feeling of affection for the man whom the child used to admire? Is this question important? In itself probably not. My inexcusable proceedings have made it so, just for the moment at any rate. Startled, amused, and thrilled by my idiotic declaration, you have felt impelled to make a counter – statement which is totally muddled and unclear and which you will certainly regret tomorrow. That’s all. Here we are at the station, thank God.’

  We went down the steps into Leicester Square station. We stood face to face in the bright light near to the ticket machines, quite still in the middle of a scattered crowd of moving people. Our concentration upon each other was so great that we might have been alone together in the quietest of gardens or upon the great empty plateaux of Tibet.

  ‘Was that kiss I gave you muddled and unclear?’ said Julian.

  ‘You’re going home by train,’ I said. ‘I’ll say good night now.’

  ‘Bradley, have you taken in what I said?’

  ‘You don’t know what you said. Tomorrow it will seem a bad dream.’

  ‘We’ll see about that! At least you’ve talked to me, you’ve argued.’

  ‘There’s nothing to talk about. I’ve just been irresponsibly prolonging the pleasure of being with you.’

  ‘Look, I don’t have to go now.’

  ‘Yes, you do. It’s finished.’

  ‘It isn’t. You won’t leave London, will you, please?’

  ‘I won’t – leave London,’ I said.

  ‘You’ll see me tomorrow?’

  ‘Maybe.’
/>   ‘I’ll ring up about ten.’

  ‘Good night.’

  Without putting my hands on her I leaned down and brushed her lips very lightly with mine. Then I turned at once and went back up the steps into Charing Cross Road. I walked along blindly. grimacing with joy.

  I slept, I suppose. I kept being nudged awake by a sort of bliss and then sinking again. My body ached with a painful delightful sensation of desire and gratified desire, somehow merged into a single mode of being. I groaned softly over myself. I was made of something else, something delicious, in which consciousness throbbed in a warm daze. I was made of honey and fudge and marzipan, and at the same time I was made of steel. I was a steel wire vibrating quietly in the midst of blue emptiness. These words do not of course convey my sensations, no words could. I did not think. I was. In so far as any stray thoughts attempted to intrude into this heaven I sent them packing.

  I rose early and shaved with majestic slowness and dressed with indulgent care and spent a long time inspecting myself in the mirror. I looked about thirty – five. Well, forty. My recent regime had made me even thinner and this suited me. Faded silky grey – blond hair, straight and quite a lot of it, a large – nostrilled bony nose, not unsightly, granity blue – grey eyes, good cheek bones, a large brow, a thin mouth: an intellectual’s face. The face, too, of a puritan. What of him?

  I drank some water. Eating was, of course, once more out of the question. I felt sick and shuddery but the night had been heaven and the glory of it had not yet left me. I went into the sitting – room and once again perfunctorily dusted the more obvious surfaces which had once again become dusty. Then I sat down and let a few thoughts set themselves end to end.

  I could mainly congratulate myself on having been fairly cool last night. It is true that I had been sick at her feet and had told her that I loved her in accents which, I noted, had conveyed the gravity of the situation to her at once. But after that I had behaved with dignity. (Which of course I had been enabled to do partly by the intense cozening delight of her presence.) I could not accuse myself of having then hustled her in any way. But what, oh what, was she feeling about it all by now? Suppose when she telephoned she said coldly that after all she agreed that the matter had best be dropped ? I had exhorted her to be adult enough to let go. Perhaps maturer reflection had already made her see the point of this good advice. What had her speech about ‘love’ meant? Did she know what she was talking about? Was it not just a rigmarole which she had invented because she was touched and flattered and excited by my exhibition? Would she draw back? Or if it were the case that she really loved me, what on earth would happen next? But I did not really wonder about what would happen next. If she really loved me it did not matter what happened next.

  I looked at my watch and it said eight o‘clock. I dialled ‘TIM on the telephone and he said eight o’clock too. I went outside into the court, though not out of earshot of the telephone, and stood there in a stupor. Rigby and one of his louche friends came out and I gave them such a slow strange salute that they kept turning back to stare at me. I wondered if I dared make a dash to the flower shop but decided I dared not. Suppose she simply didn’t ring? I went inside and looked at my watch again and then shook it madly. Hours had passed, and it said eight – fifteen. I went into the sitting – room and tried lying on the rug but for some reason this position was no good any more, I had to keep moving and fidgeting. I moved round the flat with my teeth chattering. I tried the hissing noise again, but it didn’t serve. I tried deep breathing, but seemed to lose contact with myself between each breath, so that the next one was always an emergency. I began to feel faint.

  At about nine o’clock the front – door bell rang. I crept out and peered at the frosted glass panel. It was Julian. With a quick small effort of self – control I opened the door. She flew in. I managed to kick the door to before she pulled me into the sitting – room. She had her arms round my neck and I held her in a sort of vivid darkness and then my chattering teeth had become a laughing and crying act, and she was laughing and shuddering too and we had sat down on the floor.

  ‘Bradley, thank God, I was so afraid you might have changed your mind since yesterday, I couldn’t wait till ten.’

  ‘Don’t be a fool, girl. Oh – Oh – You’re here – you’re here – ’

  ‘Bradley, I do love you, I do, it’s the real thing. I realized it for absolute certain last night after I left you. I haven’t slept, I’ve been in a sort of mad trance. This is it. I’ve never had it before. One can’t be in doubt, can one?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘One can’t. If there is any doubt it’s not it.’

  ‘So you see—’

  ‘What about Mr Belling?’

  ‘Oh Bradley, don’t torment me with Mr Belling. That was just a nervous craving. He doesn’t exist, nothing exists but this – surely you see Besides he had no real feelings, no strength, not like you – ’

  ‘I’ve impressed you. You’re sure you’re not just impressed?’

  ‘I love you. I feel shattered but at the same time I feel quite calm. Doesn’t that show that something extraordinary has happened, that calm? I feel like an archangel. I can talk to you, I can convince you, you’ll see everything. There’s plenty of time after all, isn’t there, Bradley?’

  Her question, which was really an assertion, touched me in the midst of my joy with a coldish finger. Time, plans, the future. ‘Yes, my darling, there’s plenty of time.’

  We were sitting, I with my legs tucked sideways, she kneeling a little above me, her hands caressing my hair and neck. Then she began taking off my tie. I started to laugh.

  ‘All right, Bradley, don’t panic, I just want to look at you. I don’t want to think about anything except looking at you just now, and touching you so, and feeling what a miracle it is—’

  ‘That A loves B and B loves A. It’s rare enough.’

  ‘You’ve got such a beautiful head.’

  ‘I thrust it through the curtains of your cradle.’

  ‘And I fell in love at first sight.’

  ‘I’d lay it under the wheels of your car.’

  ‘I wish I could remember when I first saw you!’

  It occurred to me suddenly as odd that I could probably establish from an old engagement book, for I had kept them all, what I was doing on the day Julian was born. Resolving some tax problem, lunching with Grey – Pelham.

  ‘When did you first start feeling like this about me? We can talk about that now, can’t we?’

  ‘We can talk about that now. I think it came on when we were discussing Hamlet.’

  ‘Only then! Bradley, you terrify me. Honestly, I think you should think twice about this. Aren’t you just acting out of some momentary emotional impulse? Aren’t you all mixed up? Won’t you feel quite different next week? I thought at least – ’

  ‘You’re not serious, Julian? No, no – you can see that this is something very absolute. The past has folded up. There’s no history. It’s the last trump.’

  ‘I know—’

  ‘One can’t calculate, measure. But – oh my dear — we are in a fix, aren’t we. Come here.’ I drew her to me and got her liony head up against my chest.

  ‘I don’t see any fix about it,’ she said into my clean blue pin – striped shirt, of which she was undoing the upper buttons. ‘Of course we must move very slowly and test ourselves against time and – not be in a hurry to do – anything – ’

  ‘ I agree,’ I said, ’ that we should not be in a hurry to do – anything.’ She was not making it easy, however, thrusting her hand inside my shirt, and sighing, and grasping the curly grey hair of my front.

  ‘You don’t think that I’m behaving badly, shamelessly?’

  ‘No, Julian, my dear heart.’

  ‘I have to touch you. It’s so marvellous, such a sort of privilege —’

  ‘Julian, you’re mad, dotty – ’

  ‘But I think we must get to know each other slowly and quietly and tell each
other the truth and tell everything and look into each other’s eyes like this and – Ifeel I could spend years just – looking into your eyes – it’s like – nourishing oneself — just looking — do you feel that?’

  ‘I feel a lot of things,’ I said. ‘Some of them were expressed by Marvell. But what I mainly feel — no, let me talk — is this. I’m totally unworthy of this love which you are offering to me. I won’t go on boringly about my unworthiness, but it’s there. I am prepared to carry on slowly as you say and let you convince me and convince yourself that you really feel what you now seem to feel. But meanwhile you mustn’t be in any way bound or tied—’

  ‘But I am tied—’

  ‘You must be completely free – ’

  ‘Bradley, don’t be—’

  ‘I think we even shouldn’t use certain words.’

  ‘What words—’

  ‘“Love”, “in love”.’

  ‘ I think that’s silly. But while we’ve got eyes I suppose we can give words a rest. Look. Can’t you see what you won’t name?’

  ‘Please. I honestly think we shouldn’t define this thing at all. We must just be quiet and patient and see what happens.’

  ‘You sound so anxious.’

  ‘I’m terrified.’

  ‘I’m not. I’ve never felt braver in my life. What are you afraid of? And why did you say we were in a fix? What fix are we in?’

  ‘I’m very much older than you are. Very much. That’s the fix.’