The Nice and the Good

by Iris Murdoch

  Edward was now explaining to Uncle Theo about some birds called “honey guides” who lived in the Amazonian jungle and these birds had such a clever arrangement with the bears and things, they would lead them to where the wild bees had their nests and then the bears and things would break open the nests to eat the honey and so the birds could eat the honey too. Henrietta was explaining to Kate how there were loops and voids in the space-time continuum so that although it might take you only fifty years to reach the centre of the galaxy in your space craft, thousands of years would have passed here when you got back. (“I don’t think I quite understand,” said Kate.) Octavian, who had been discussing with Paula the prospects of reform in the trade union movement, was now anxiously asking her if she felt well, since she had eaten practically no lunch. Ducane and Barbara were flirting together in French, a language which Ducane spoke well and enjoyed any chance of showing off.

  Mary, who got up to help Casie at various points during the meal, was left, as often happened, in a conversational vacuum. She liked this, feeling at such moments a sort of maternal sense of ownership toward the group of chattering persons all round her. Casie was now putting fruit and cheese on to the table. Octavian was reaching for the decanter of claret. Everyone was drinking wine except the twins who were drinking Tizer and Paula who was drinking water. Mary began to observe the face of her son who was sitting opposite to her.

  Pierce too, seated between Edward and Kate, had no one to talk to. He was watching with fierce concentration the conversation between Barbara and John Ducane. Mary thought, I hope no one else is noticing him. He is looking so intense and strange. Then she thought, Oh dear, something is going to happen.

  “Quand est ce que tu vas me donner ce petit concert de Mozart?”

  “Jamais, puisque tu ne le mérites pas!”

  “Et pourquoi ça, petite égoiste?”

  “Tu n’y comprends rien à la musique, toi.”

  “Tu vas m’enseigner, alors.”

  “Tu seras docile?”

  “Mais oui, mon oiseau!”

  “Et qu’est ce que tu vas me dormer en retour?”

  “Dix baisers.”

  “C’est pas assez.”

  “Mille baisers alors!”

  Pierce got up abruptly, scraping his chair noisily back over the paved floor of the hall. The chair fell over backwards with a crash. Pierce walked to the front door and went out through it, slamming the door behind him. There was a startled silence.

  “Public school manners,” said Casie.

  Mary began to rise. Both Uncle Theo on one side and John Ducane on the other put out restraining hands. Mary sat down again. Uncle Theo said to Edward, “Do go on telling me about dolphins.” Kate started to say, “Don’t worry, Mary dear—”

  Mary decided she could not stay. She got up and went out quietly through the kitchen and out into the garden. The garden was hot, brooding, and quiet, even the cuckoo was silent in the afternoon heat. Mary began to walk up the pebble path, brushing the plump veronica bushes with her hand. The bushes exuded heat and silence. She passed through the gate in the wall. It was not in her mind to look for Pierce. She knew he would have started to run once he was outside the front door. He would be half way to the graveyard by now, and there, buried in the ivy, he could lie hidden even if she were to follow him. In any case she had nothing to say to her son and she had already stopped thinking about him. His tormented nerves had wrought upon her nerves, and it was the sudden burden of her own nebulous and uncertain anguish which had made her rise from the table.

  I am making a complete ass of myself, thought Mary, and it’s getting worse too. I’m not eighteen. I just must not give way to these vague emotional storms of self-pity. It isn’t as if there was anything definite the matter. There’s nothing the matter at all.

  She walked up the enclosed funnel of the lane through the smell of hot moss and reached the little wood and sat down on the tree trunk, kicking a hole for her feet in the dead leaves. Perhaps I need a holiday, she thought, perhaps it’s as simple as that. Sometimes I just feel so shut in, with all those people and they’ve all got something while I’ve got nothing. I really ought to try to get some sort of proper job. But I suppose they do need me here, the children need me. When the twins are grown up I shall take a teacher’s training course and have quite a different sort of life.

  Then she thought, is this really all I have to look forward to, is this what I have to comfort myself with? Years more of managing someone else’s house and then a job as a school teacher? But my wants are huge, my desires are rapacious, I want love, I want the splendour and violence of love, and I want it now, I want someone of my own. Oh Willy, Willy, Willy.

  A shadow moved in the dappled light. Mary looked up. It was John Ducane. In a flurry she rose to her feet.

  Mary was very fond of Ducane and admired him, but as Kate had quite accurately said she was a little afraid of him.

  “Oh, John—”

  “Mary, do sit down. Please forgive me for having followed you.”

  She sat down again, and he sat beside her, perched side-ways on the log, regarding her. “Mary, I’m so sorry. I feel what happened was my fault. I behaved in a silly insensitive way. I do hope you aren’t upset.”

  Upset—I’m frantic, thought Mary. I’m frenzied, I’m desperate. She said, “No, no, don’t worry. I’m afraid Pierce behaved abominably. I do hope Barbara wasn’t too hurt.”

  “No, she was very sensible about it,” said Ducane. “I’m afraid I hadn’t realised, well, quite how serious things were. I’ll be more tactful in future. Please don’t you be distressed. These young people have got to suffer, we can’t save them from it—”

  Damn their sufferings, thought Mary. She said, “Yes. Of course they have great powers of recovery.”

  Mary thought suddenly, this is an abomination, sitting here and having this conventional conversation when I feel so desperate and deprived and torn inside. She thought, is there nothing I can do about it? Then there seemed to be only one thing she could do about it and she did it forthwith. She burst into a storm of tears.

  “Good heavens!” said John Ducane. He took out a large clean handkerchief, unfolded it, and handed it to Mary who buried her face in it.

  After a minute or two, as the tears abated a little and she began to blow her nose on the handkerchief he touched her shoulder very gently, not exactly patting it but as if to remind her of his presence. “Is it about Pierce?”

  “No, no,” said Mary. “I’m not really worried about Pierce. It’s about me.”

  “What? Tell me.”

  “It’s about Willy.”

  “What about Willy? You’re not frightened that he—?”

  “No. I’ve never thought that Willy was likely to kill himself. It’s just that—well, I suppose I’ve fallen in love with Willy.” The uttered words surprised her. Her diffused tender agitation had not the relentless finality of her older loves. Yet it was beginning to fill the whole of her consciousness and it was, it must be, the deep cause of these sudden storms of misery.

  Ducane took the information gravely and thoughtfully, as if Mary were a client explaining her case. He said after a moment, “My feeling is that I’m glad of this because it can’t fail to do Willy good. What does he feel about it? Does he know?”

  “Oh, he knows. As for what he feels— you know Willy as well as I do. How can one discover what he feels?”

  “I thought he might perhaps behave—quite differently with you?”

  “No, no. We seem to know each other well but I think that’s just because I parade my feelings. He’s affectionate, detached, passive, absolutely passive.”

  “He’s never told you about that place?”

  “He’s never talked about himself at all.”

  “Are you going to see him now?”

  “No. He said not to come today. You know how he is.”

  “I know how he is,” said Ducane, “and I can see he’s not a convenient man to be in l
ove with. But let’s think, let’s think.”

  There was silence in the wood as they sat side by side, Mary slowly rubbing her face over with the handkerchief, Ducane, frowning with concentrated attention, leaning forward and pulverising a dry beech leaf in his hand. A pair of brimstone butterflies, playing together, passed flittering in front of them. Mary stretched out her hand toward the butterflies.

  She said, “I’m sorry I’ve inflicted this on you. One should bear one’s own burdens. I’m perfectly all right really. After all, I’m not in my first youth! It’ll blow over, it’ll settle down.” Settle down! she thought. Yes, settle down into dreariness and quietness and forgetfulness and boredom. Yet she knew that it was not really the sharp tragic knife of passion that disturbed her now, it was some vaguer nervous storm out of her unsatisfied woman’s nature. The dreariness was already with her, it had its part in her present jumpiness, her present tears. This thought was so heavy with despair that she almost began to cry again.

  Then she saw that Ducane had got up. He stood in front of her, staring at her with his round surprised-looking blue eyes. He said in an excited voice, “Mary, do you know what I think? I think you should marry Willy.”

  “Marry Willy?” she said dully. “But I’ve told you what he’s like with me.”

  “Well, change him. I’m sure it’s a matter of will. You let him infect you with his passivity, you accept his mood.”

  It was true that she accepted his mood. “Do you think I really could—?”

  “You must try, try with all the forces you can summon. You’ve been too humble with him. It’s often an act of charity to treat someone as an equal and not as a superior! A woman in love is a great spiritual force if only she wills properly. You have no idea how much power you have over us! I’ve known it for a long time, that, for Willy, only you can do it. But I hadn’t thought enough to see that you’d have to fight him, surprise him, wake him, hurt him even. Mary, you must try. I think you should marry Willy and take him right away from here.”

  Have I this power, she wondered. Ever since she had first met Willy she had been totally subservient to him. The ‘parade of feelings’ had not altered that. For all these gestures she had really extinguished herself in his presence, wanting simply to let him be. It now seemed to her that this had been all wrong, that this was the very policy which produced, for both of them, the frustrating melancholy which she had taken to be his defence against her.

  “Tell yourself,” said Ducane, “that anything is possible.”

  Mary thought, yes, I will marry Willy and I will take him away. With this idea so much happiness entered into her that she stood up lightly and involuntarily as if two angels had lifted her up, their fingertips underneath her elbows.

  “I’ll try,” she said, “I’ll try.”

  “I hear you behaved intolerably at lunch-time today.”

  “Who told you?”

  “The twins.”

  “Well?”

  “Well nothing. Let’s have a look at your Latin prose.”

  “Oh Willy—I’m so wretched—sorry.”

  “Barbara?”

  “Yes.”

  “And she?”

  “I just annoy her.”

  “I have no comfort for you, Pierce. You will suffer. Only try to trap the suffering inside yourself. Crush it down in your heart like Odysseus did.”

  “Is it true that the first time of falling in love is the worst?”

  “No.”

  “Oh God. Willy, I think I’ll have to go away from here. If only she wouldn’t play that damned flute. It nearly kills me.”

  “Yes, I can imagine the flute is—terrible.”

  “Do you mind if I walk about the room. You can’t imagine what it’s like when every moment you’re conscious you’re in the most frightful pain.”

  “I can a little.”

  “Who were you first in love with, Willy?”

  “A girl, a girl, a girl—”

  “What was she like?”

  “It was a long time ago.”

  “It must be good to be past the age of falling in love.”

  “Like Cephalus in the first book of the Republic.”

  “Yes. I never understood that bit before. I envy you. Do you think she’ll change?”

  “Hope nothing.”

  “Is there a cure?”

  “Only art. Or more love.”

  “I should die of more love.”

  “Dying into life, Pierce.”

  “No, just dying. Oh hell, I’ve broken one of those eggs the twins brought you. I’ll just go and wash it off.”

  Why did this little shattered egg which he was washing off his fingertip, with its fragments of speckled blue shell and its fierce yellow inside make him think so intensely of Barbara? ‘My name is death in life and life in death.’ A love without reservation ought to be a life force compelling the world into order and beauty. But that love can be so strong and yet so entirely powerless is what breaks the heart. Love did not move toward life, it moved toward death, toward the roaring sea-caves of annihilation. Or it led to the futility of a little broken bird’s egg whose remains were now being washed away by water from the tap. Even so one day God might crack the universe and wash away its fruitless powerless loves with a deluge of indifferent power.

  “Sorry, Willy. Let’s look at my prose now.”

  “I’ve changed my mind. I’ll see your prose tomorrow. Today we will read love poetry. You shall read aloud to me and we will weep together. Here.”

  “Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus,

  rumoresque serum severiorum

  omnes unius aestimemus assis.

  soles occidere et redire possunt:

  nobis cum semel occidit brevis lux,

  nox est perpetua una dormienda.…”

  Thirteen

  THE lazy sinister summer evening thickened with dust and petrol fumes and the weariness of homeward-turning human beings drifted over Notting Hill like poison gas. The perpetual din of the traffic diffused itself in the dense light, distorting the façades of houses and the faces of men. The whole district vibrated, jerked and shifted slightly, as if something else and very nasty were trying, through faults and knots and little crazy corners where lines just failed to meet, to make its way into the ordinary world.

  Ducane was hurrying along, consulting a little map which he had made in his notebook to show him the way to where Peter McGrath lived. He felt a certain amount of anxiety about this surprise visit to McGrath. Ducane did not like playing the bully, and deliberate and calculated bullying was what it was now necessary to produce. He was also anxious in case he should bully to no purpose. If he had to use force he should at least use it quickly and efficiently and get exactly what he wanted. But he unfortunately knew so little about his victim that he was uncertain how best to threaten him, and once the advantage of surprise had been lost McGrath might refuse to talk, might stand upon his rights or even ‘turn nasty’.

  There was behind it all the unnerving fact that so far his enquiry had got nowhere. The Prime Minister had asked for an interim report and Octavian, who had had nothing to tell him, was getting nervous. The newspaper was still withholding the story, George Droysen’s further investigations in Fleet Street had produced nothing, it had proved impossible to trace ‘Helen of Troy’, Ducane had searched Radeechy’s room in the office without finding anything of interest, and the promised authorisation to examine Radeechy’s house and bank account was held up on a technicality. Ducane might reasonably have complained that as his enquiry had no status it was not surprising that it was unsuccessful. But he had undertaken the task on precisely these terms and he hated the idea of defeat and of letting Octavian down. McGrath was still his only ‘lead’ and everything seemed to depend on what more he could now be bullied into telling. This thought made Ducane even more nervous as he turned into McGrath’s road.

  McGrath lived in a noisy narrow road of cracked terrace houses, some of which contained small newsagen
ts’ shops and grocers. Most of the front doors were open and most of the inhabitants of the street, many of whom were coloured, seemed to be either outside on the pavement or else hanging out of the windows. Not many of the houses bore numbers, but by counting on from a house which announced its number Ducane was able to identify an open doorway where, among a large number of names beside a variety of bells, the name of McGrath was to be seen. As he hesitated before pressing the bell Ducane felt his heart violently beating. He thought grimly, it’s like a love tryst! And with this the thought of Jessica winged its way across his mind, like a great black bird passing just above his brow. He was going to see Jessica again tomorrow.

  “Bells don’t work,” an individual who had just come down the stairs informed him. “Who d’yer want?”

  “McGrath.”

  “Third floor.”

  Ducane began to climb the stairs, which were dark and smelt of cats. In fact as he climbed three shadowy cats appeared to accompany him, darting noiselessly up between his ankles and the banisters, waiting for him on the landings, and then darting up again. On the third floor there was a single well-painted door with a Yale lock and a bell. Ducane pushed the bell and heard it ring.

  A woman’s voice within said, “Who is it?”

  Enquiries at the office had not revealed that McGrath was married, and Ducane had assumed him to be a bachelor.

  Ducane said, “I wanted to see Mr McGrath.”

  “Wait a minute.” There were sounds of movement and then the door was opened about an inch. “Don’t let those rats in for Christ’s sake.”

  “Rats?” said Ducane.

  “Cats, rats, outsize rats I call them, I’m going to open the door and you must rush in, otherwise they’ll get in too, quick now.”

  The door opened and Ducane entered promptly, unaccompanied by a cat.