The Nice and the Good

by Iris Murdoch

  In fact John Ducane’s “You have power” had already made a difference to her relations with Willy. She could not yet imagine herself proposing marriage to him, though she had tried to picture this scene. Yet, between them, things were changing. I think I was too obsessed with the idea that he should talk to me about the past, she thought, about what it was like there. I felt that this was a barrier between us. But I know now that I can leap over the barrier, I can come close to Willy and hustle him just by a sort of animal cheerfulness, just by a sort of very simple love. It isn’t my business to knit up Willy’s past, to integrate it into a present I can share with him. It may be impossible to do this anyway. I must be loving to him in a free unanxious sort of way, even ready to make use of him to procure my own happiness! I already feel much more independent with him. Mary had felt this greater independence as a sense of almost bouncy physical well-being as she moved, differently now, about Willy’s room. And she had seen Willy being positively puzzled by it. When she saw that look of puzzlement upon his dear face she laughed the best laugh she had laughed for a long time.

  Kate was thinking how wonderfully cool the water goes on feeling upon my ankles, a marvellous feeling of something cool caressing something warm, like those puddings where there’s a hot cake hidden inside a mound of ice cream. And what an intense heavenly blue the sea is, not a dark blue at all, but like a cauldron of light. How wonderful colour is, how I should like to swim in the colour of that sea, and go down and down a revolving blue shaft into a vortex of pure brightness where there isn’t even colour any more but just bliss. How wonderful everything is and Octavian isn’t the least bit hurt about John, I know he isn’t, not the least little bit, it doesn’t worry him at all. Octavian is happy and I’m going to make John happy. He’s still worried about Octavian but he’ll soon see that all is well, that all is perfectly well, and then he’ll settle down to be happy too. How wonderful love is, the most wonderful thing in the whole world. And how lucky I am to be able to love without muddle, without fear, in absolute freedom. Of course Octavian is great. He has such a divine temperament. And then, if it comes to that, so have I. We were both breast-fed babies with happy childhoods. It does make a difference. I think being good is just a matter of temperament in the end. Yes, we shall all be so happy and good too. Oh, how utterly marvellous it is to be me!

  Fifteen

  “OH it’s you, is it,” said Willy Kost. “Long time no see.” Theo came into the cottage slowly, not looking at his host, and closed the door, by leaning his shoulder against it. He moved along the room, setting the bottle of whisky down on the window ledge. He went into Willy’s kitchen and fetched two glasses and a jug of water. He poured some whisky and some water into each glass and offered one glass to Willy, who was sitting at the table.

  “What’s the music?” said Theo.

  “Slow movement of the twelfth quartet, opus 127.”

  “I can’t bear it.”

  Willy switched the gramophone off.

  “A consciousness in agony represented in slow motion.”

  “Yes,” said Willy.

  Theo leaned against the long window, looking out. “Wonderful binoculars these. Did Barbara give them to you?”

  “Yes.”

  “I can see our Three Graces walking along by the edge of the sea. Each one more beautiful than the last.”

  “Oh.”

  “You know why I haven’t been for so long?”

  “Why?”

  “I think I’m bad for you.”

  Willy was drinking the whisky. “You know that’s not so, Theo.”

  “It is. You need brisk ordinary people. You and I always talk metaphysics. But all metaphysics is devilish, devilish.”

  “There is no good metaphysics?”

  “No. Nothing about that can be said.”

  “Sad for the human race, since we are such natural prattlers.”

  “Yes. We are natural prattlers. And that deepens, prolongs, spreads and intensifies our evil.”

  “Come, come,” said Willy. “Very few people know of these devilish theories you speak of.”

  “They have their influence. They pervade, they pervade. They produce illusions of knowledge. Even what we are most certain of we know only in an illusory form.”

  “Such as what?”

  “Such as that all is vanity. All is vanity, Willy, and man walks in a vain shadow. You and I are the only people here who know this, which is why we are bad for each other. We have to chatter about it. You and I are the only people here who know, but we also know that we do not know. Our hearts are too corrupt to know such a thing as truth, we know it only as illusion.”

  “Is there no way out?”

  “There are a million ways out on this side, back into the fantasy of ordinary life. Muffins for tea is a way out. Propertius is a way out. But these are just boltholes. One ought to be able to get … through … to the other side.”

  “You may be right about Propertius,” said Willy, “but I would like to say a good word for muffins for tea.”

  “Mary.”

  “No, no, not Mary. Mary is something else. Just muffins for tea.”

  “There are muffins and muffins,” Theo conceded. “But let us take Propertius now. What is the point of all this activity of yours, what are you really after? Senseless agitation, senseless agitation, the filling of a void which for your eternal salvation had much better be left unfilled. Is your edition of Propertius going to be a great work of scholarship?”

  “No.”

  “Is it necessary to the human race?”

  “No.”

  “It’s not great, it’s not even necessary. It’s mediocre, it’s a time-filler. Why do you do it?”

  Willy reflected for a moment. He said, “It expresses my love for Propertius and my love for Latin. Love needs to be expressed, it needs to do work. This may be something which cannot be stated in your devilish metaphysics without being somehow falsified, but it is … an indubitable good. And if there is an indubitable good within one’s reach one stretches out one’s hand.”

  “Permit me to correct your description, my dear Willy. The object of love here is yourself, this is the value which you attempt with Latin and with Propertius to exalt and to defend.”

  “That is possible,” said Willy. “But I don’t see why one should necessarily know. You are a great one for not knowing things. Let’s not know that, shall we?”

  Theo had left the window and was standing by the table leaning down upon his knuckles and regarding his host. The front of his jacket was hanging open revealing a crumpled shirt, stained brown braces and a dirty woollen vest. From this inwardness of Theo a mingled smell of sweat and dog was beamed across the pile of open books and dictionaries. Willy shifted, rubbing a thin ankle with a small delicate hand.

  “And after Propertius, what?”

  “Another time-filler, I suppose.”

  “Did they tell you about that chap who committed suicide?”

  “No,” said Willy, surprised. “Who?”

  “Oh, no one we know, as Kate would say. Just some meaningless fellow in my dear brother’s office. They’re all agog. It’s the jolliest thing that’s happened since Octavian’s CBE. They’re keeping it from you, you know why! You’re becoming a sort of sacred object to the people down there.”

  “They shouldn’t worry about me,” Willy mumbled. “I shall stay out my time.”

  “Yes, I think you will,” said Theo, “though I don’t know why. I don’t know why I do. I feel ill all the time now. And I can’t stand it down there, that’s why I came up here to torment you. It’s getting worse down there. They’re all watching each other ever so sweetly. Homo homini lupus, Willy, homo homini lupus. They’re all of them sex maniacs and they don’t even know it. There’s my dear brother, that perfect O, getting erotic satisfaction out of seeing his wife flirting with another man—”

  “Why not pardon them a little,” said Willy. “They don’t do much harm. You rail on us all
for not being saints.”

  “Yes, yes, yes. And when I stop that railing I shall be dead. It is the only thing I know and I shall cry it out again and again, like a tedious little bird with only one song.”

  “If you know that much you must know more. There is then a light in which you judge us.”

  “Yes,” said Theo. “The light shows me evil, but it gives me no hope of good, not a shred of hope, not a shred.”

  “You must be wrong,” said Willy. “You must be wrong.”

  “You express a touching and very fundamental form of religious faith. Nevertheless there are the damned.”

  “Theo,” said Willy. “Tell me sometime, tell me perhaps now, what really happened to you in India, what happened?”

  Theo, his narrowed pointed face thrust well forward over the table, shook his head. “No, no, my heart, no.” He said after a moment. “You, Willy, tell me sometime, tell me perhaps now, what it was like for you … in that place.”

  Willy was silent, regarding one hand and seeming to count the fingers with the thumb. He said slowly, “It might be possible … some time … to tell you.”

  “Bosh,” said Theo. “You mustn’t tell me, you must never tell me, such things can’t be told, I wouldn’t listen.” He lurched back from the table and came round behind Willy. He put his large thick hands down on to Willy’s shoulders, feeling the small cat-like bones. He kneaded the flesh with his fingers. He said, “I am a very foolish man, Willy.”

  “I know you are. A certain kouros—”

  “Damn kouroi. You must forgive me, absolve me.”

  “You’re always wanting to be forgiven. What do you want to be forgiven for? Presumably not for being rude and negligent and disloyal and selfish and.…”

  “No!” They both laughed.

  “I can forgive you, Theo. I can’t absolve you. You must absolve yourself. Pardon the past and let it go … absolutely … away.”

  Theo leaned down until his brow was touching the silky white hair. He closed his eyes and let his arms slide forward over Willy’s shoulders to receive the comfort he had come to receive, the close caressing pressure of Willy’s hands upon his.

  Sixteen

  “OCTAVIAN, I’ve discovered something rather odd.” “Sit down, John. I must say I’m glad you’ve discovered something, odd or otherwise. What is it?”

  “Listen,” said Ducane. “I went to see McGrath yesterday evening at his house—”

  “Was McGrath blackmailing Radeechy?”

  “Yes, he was, but that’s not important. McGrath mentioned Biranne. He said Biranne was often at Radeechy’s place.”

  “Biranne? I thought he didn’t know Radeechy at all.”

  “So he led us to suppose. Well, I didn’t express any surprise, I just made McGrath go on talking, and I got him back on to what exactly happened when he came to Radeechy’s room after the shot was fired, and something else emerged. Biranne had locked the door”.

  “Locked the door of Radeechy’s room? On the inside?”

  “Yes. McGrath said, ‘And then Mr Biranne let me in’.”

  “Was McGrath telling the truth?”

  “I’m assuming so.”

  “I suppose one might—do it instinctively?”

  “An odd instinct. Of course the door could only have been locked for a moment. McGrath reached the door, he reckons, less than a minute after the shot. But why was it locked at all? However, wait, there’s more. I began to think then about that scene, what might have happened in those few moments, and I noticed something which I ought to have noticed straight away as soon as I saw the police photographs.”

  “What?”

  “Radeechy was left-handed.”

  “I never spotted that. So—?”

  “No, you mightn’t have. But one left-handed man notices another. One of the few serious conversations I ever had with Radeechy was about the causes of left-handedness. He told me he was completely helpless with his right hand.”

  “Well—?”

  “The gun was lying on the desk beside Radeechy’s right hand.”

  “Good heavens,” said Octavian. Then he said, “I suppose he might have used his right hand—?”

  “No. You just imagine shooting yourself with your left hand.”

  “Might it have fallen there somehow out of his other hand?”

  “Impossible, I think. I looked at the photographs carefully.”

  “So what follows?”

  “Wait a minute. Now Biranne did say that he’d moved the gun—”

  “Yes, but he said he only moved it an inch to see Radeechy’s face and then pushed it back where it was.”

  “Precisely—”

  “Oh God,” said Octavian, “you don’t think that Biranne killed him, do you?”

  “No, I don’t—”

  “Biranne hasn’t the temperament, and besides why—”

  “I don’t know about Biranne’s temperament. Anyway, find the motive and the temperament will look after itself.”

  “Of course that could be the perfect crime, couldn’t it. Go into a man’s room, shoot him, and then ‘discover’ the body.”

  “Possibly. Though consider the difficulties in this case. The shot was fired from very close quarters into the mouth. However, let me go on with the tale. I went over to Scotland Yard. You remember I asked you to get the PM to say a word to those boys over there. Evidently he did, because they were all dying to help me for a change. I wanted to check the finger-prints on the revolver, to see whether they were left-hand prints and whether they were in the right place.”

  “And—?”

  “They were left-hand prints all right, and they were, as far as I could see, in the proper place. Not that that proves anything conclusive, but at any rate he’d had his hand on the gun in such a way that he could have fired it himself. Now Biranne said he’d touched the gun. How did he say this? Did he seem particularly nervous and upset?”

  “Yes!” said Octavian. “But we were all jolly nervous and upset! We’re not used to death after lunch!”

  “Naturally. Well, there were Biranne’s finger-prints all right upon the barrel of the gun only. You remember he gave his finger-prints to the police.”

  “Yes. Rather officiously, I thought at the time. None of this proves he didn’t shoot Radeechy, wipe the gun clean and press the thing into Radeechy’s hand. Hence perhaps the locked door.”

  “No. But if he’d had the knowledge to press it into Radeechy’s left hand he’d have had the knowledge to leave the gun on the left side of the desk.”

  “That’s true. I suppose that lets Biranne out. Unless it’s all fiendish cunning.…”

  “No, no, I don’t believe anything of that sort. Well, to continue. I then followed up an idea I’d had. You remember those old fashioned stiff starched collars Radeechy used to wear?”

  “Yes.”

  “Biranne’s finger-prints were also on Radeechy’s collar.’

  “On his collar? You don’t think there was a fight or something?”

  “I rather doubt that. There was no other evidence of a fight. I think it means that Biranne moved the body.”

  “An odd thing to do. And he didn’t say he did. Why ever—?”

  “You remember,” said Ducane, “that you were puzzled because there was no suicide note, it seemed so out of character?”

  “You think—You think Biranne searched the body and took away the note?”

  “Well, it’s a possibility. If Biranne and Radeechy were in something together, Biranne might have been afraid of what Radeechy might have in his pockets. I feel sure he searched the body, whether to get hold of the suicide note or of something else. The mistake with the gun also suggests that Biranne was taken by surprise. He panicked, knew he’d only got a moment for his search, locked the door—a rather dangerous thing to do—and then, one can picture it, pushed the gun out of the way, pulled Radeechy back in the chair in order to get at all his pockets. Then when he’d let Radeechy fall back on the desk h
e instinctively put the gun beside his right hand.”

  “Could be, could be,” said Octavian. “I thought at the time—at least I didn’t think, it was just vaguely in my mind—how neatly the gun was lying beside the right hand. Whereas it might have fallen anywhere but there.”

  “Yes,” said Ducane ruefully. “I thought of that afterwards. I’m afraid I haven’t been very bright, Octavian. And I ought to have noticed at once that the gun was on the wrong side, and if I’d been there I might have, only in the photographs it was harder to see.”

  “But isn’t it an odd coincidence that Biranne was there, the nearest person, when it happened? Can we be certain Biranne didn’t—kill him—it’s an awful idea and I can’t believe it, but it is all so strange.”

  “We can’t be certain, but I don’t believe Biranne killed him. If he had he would have pressed the gun into Radeechy’s right hand or laid it on the left side of the desk. He wouldn’t have got one thing right and the other thing wrong. I don’t believe it anyway. As for the coincidence—well, it might be a coincidence. Or Radeechy might have done it suddenly as a result of something Biranne said to him. We don’t know that Biranne wasn’t in the room before the shot. Or Radeechy might have summoned Biranne to see him do it.”

  “It’s weird,” said Octavian. “And pretty disconcerting. Radeechy didn’t know anything which had any security interest, but Biranne knows practically the whole bag of tricks. What could they have been up to?”

  “Not that, I feel pretty sure,” said Ducane. “No. I think it’s something much odder, something to do with Radeechy’s magic.”

  “McGrath didn’t say anything about what Biranne did at Radeechy’s place?”

  “No. McGrath just saw him arriving there. I think McGrath was telling the truth. I frightened him a bit.”

  “We’ve sacked the blighter now, by the way.”

  “That’s all right. I’m afraid I’ve got everything I can out of him.”