by Iris Murdoch
“And then—?”
“And then he wrote from there to say he’d met somebody perfectly marvellous on the boat and was going to marry her. I was jolly relieved. Then I heard nothing till about four weeks ago when he wrote to say he hadn’t got married after all and that the only thing he needed and wanted in the world was to see me and he was coming back. His boat’s due next week.”
“You’re frightened of him,” said Ducane.
“Yes. I always was a bit frightened of him. Funny, I was never frightened of Richard, though Richard’s a violent man in a much more obvious way.”
“You said Eric was a demon.”
“Yes. It’s odd, because he’s a man one might easily see as absurd. I think I saw him as absurd at first, a sort of pompous play-actor. But he’s got in some literal sense magnetism, an animal force, such as quite a stupid person might have. Not that Eric’s stupid, but I mean this is nothing to do with the mind, at least not with the rational mind. It’s a quasi-physical thing. Perhaps that’s what attracted me. Richard is so cerebral, even his sensuality is cerebral. Eric was like a piece of earth, or maybe more like the sea. I always associated him with the sea.”
“Do you in any way want to see him?”
“No. But I’ve got to see him. I’ve got to—undergo it again.”
“I can see,’’said Ducane, speaking carefully, “that you feel you as it were owe him something. It’s like a precise bond—”
“Exactly. A blood bond. I think he believes that there’s a spell that only I can break. There’s a sickening awfulness in his life which only I can remove. This is why I’ve got to face him and face him alone.”
“Do you really believe that you could do anything for him? Given that you don’t love him? Or do you think it possible you might begin to love him again?”
“No! I don’t know if I could do anything. At times I think he wants somehow to punish me. There are days, hours, when I think he’s coming back to kill me. Or it might be enough if he could find some way of humiliating me. I just don’t know what’s going to happen. All I know is that whatever it is it’s got to happen. Next week.”
Ducane was frowning into the sea light. “Who else knows this story?”
“No one. Except Richard and Eric.”
“Why have you kept silent about it?”
She hesitated. “Pride.”
“Yes. And this is what’s made it into something dreadful. You’ve been infected by the demon in Eric.”
“I know. The whole thing, the way it all happened, was shattering. And what it shattered most of all was some conception I’d had of myself, some wholeness. It’s odd. That was why I never tried to stop Richard divorcing me. Something was utterly broken in me by that scene in the billiard room. Something which hadn’t been broken by my going to bed with Eric. It was as if one’s guilt had been made into a tangible object and rammed into one’s guts.”
“You’ve got to relive this thing, Paula, and not just for Eric but for yourself.”
“Maybe. But when Eric comes—”
“You must use your common sense about it. I understand how you feel. And obviously you’ve got to meet Eric alone. But I think you ought to meet him in a sane context. I mean with other people all round you. He must meet your friends and see that you have support, a world of your own. Now I shall be in London next week—”
There was a quick crunching of pebbles and a shadow moved near them like a lizard. It was Uncle Theo.
Theo looked pale and dry in the bright sun, the big rounded dome of his skull surmounting his shrunken doggy face like a helmet. He looked down on them with a puckered expression of slightly quizzical disgust. He said, “Paula, Letters for you.” Three letters fell on to the stones. He hesitated, as if awaiting a summons to stay, and then marched quickly off, stooping well forward from the waist and digging his feet noisily into the pebbles before Ducane could get out more than an “Oh Theo—”
Paula looked after him. “He seems so depressed these days. I wonder what on earth goes on inside his head? Poor Theo. John, I do wish you’d talk to him seriously. Make him tell you what’s the matter. He’d talk to you.”
Ducane gave a small snarling laugh.
“Oh!” Paula had just looked at the letters. ‘‘There’s one from Eric. He’s at Suez.”
“Better read it quickly,” said Ducane. He turned away squinting into the sunlight, trying to discern the swimming children. He noticed that it must be low tide since a bank of purple seaweed, only visible at that time, was making a darker blur in the clear greenish water, which had already receded by several feet since he and Paula had sat down. Theo’s aimlessly purposeful figure diminished steadily.
After a moment Ducane heard a strange sound beside him. He turned to see that Paula had covered her face with her hand. Her shoulders shook.
“Whatever is it, Paula?”
Paula went on shaking, and a low raucous sound came from behind the shielding hand. The other hand stretched out and tossed Eric’s letter to him. Ducane read.
SS Morania
Suez
My dear Paula,
not to beat about the bush, this letter comes to tell you that I have met somebody perfectly marvellous on the boat and I am going to marry her. How very strange life is! I have always had a sense of being in the hands of the gods, but often they work in such unexpected ways! I knew I had to come back to England and I thought it was because you needed to see me. But how unimportant this seems now. Forgive me for putting it in this way, but I can be kindest to you by being plainest. What seemed the necessity of seeing you was really just the wanderlust, or rather the magnetism of my destiny pulling me away. Everything has worked out quite wonderfully. We are getting off the boat here and will fly to Cairo. (If you remember I have always wanted to see the pyramids.) After that we fly to New York and on to Chicago to meet Angelica’s people. (Her father is a big man in the art world, incidentally, and she has a lot of money, though of course that’s not important and I didn’t even know it at first. She is a marvellous person.)
I am sorry, dear Paula, to burden you with this recital of my felicity, but there is no point in delaying the happy news. I know how much you must have been waiting and expecting. Believe me I have thought about your needs. But I think it would be unwise for us to meet now. There is much that it would be hard for Angelica to understand. She is a very unshadowed person, and I have not upset her by any of the grimmer things out of my past. (I say this in case you should ever happen to meet her, though I imagine this is unlikely. We are going on a world tour after the marriage and will probably settle in San Francisco, which will be a good place for my work.) I feel confident that you will forgive this defection on my part. You are a woman of many resources and not given to envy, jealousy or moping. I trust and believe that you will soon be able to rejoice in my good fortune without feeling resentment at my failure to render to you an aid which you may have persuaded yourself that only I could give. May it in some way please you to hear me say: I am happy and feel set free from the past. It is my very earnest wish that you will one day be able to say the same.
Eric
P.S. Please be sure to destroy this letter.
Ducane turned to look at Paula. Paula’s face was transformed. It expanded smoothly, blandly, seeming to have increased in area, with eyes and mouth extended, and he realised that she had been laughing. Her face, which had been pinched in behind a narrow mask, was relaxed and shining. As she shuddered again and gasped into laughter Ducane began to laugh too, and they laughed together, rocking to and fro and sending the mottled pebbles rolling down the slope towards the water.
At last Paula picked up the letter which had fallen between them and tore it to pieces. She scattered the fragments about her. “See how soon a bogeyman can be blown away.”
“I see what you mean about absurd!” said Ducane.
“Things seem to happen to Eric on ships!”
“Good old Angelica, God bless her!”
“Paula, you’re out in the sun again,” said Ducane. He took hold of the hem of her yellow dress.
“Yes. John, I can’t thank you enough—”
“You don’t regret having told me, now?”
“No, no. I know already that it’s made a difference, the difference—”
Ducane got up rather stiffly. He pulled his jacket on, pushing up the collar of his shirt and rumpling his hair. He could see Barbara and the twins running along the beach towards them.
He said suddenly, “Paula, do you still love Richard?”
“Yes,” she replied without a second’s hesitation. And then began to go on, “But of course there’s no—”
“Why, whatever’s the matter? Look at the children. Barbie, what is it, what is it?”
“It’s Pierce. He’s swum into Gunnar’s cave and he says he isn’t coming out and he’s going to stay there till the tide comes in, and he means it, I know he means it!”
Thirty-four
IT was extremely quiet inside the cave. Pierce swam breast stroke with long quiet strokes, letting his body glide fish-like through the water with as little exertion as possible. He was dressed in trousers and a jersey and woollen socks and rubber shoes. An electric torch, guaranteed waterproof, was tucked into his trousers pocket and attached to his waist by a string. He was wearing his watch, also waterproof. He was already farther into the cave than he had ever been before and the daylight from the low arc of the entrance was becoming dim. He could see before him, almost phosphorescent, the regular movement of his hands breaking the dark surface of the water. He could see nothing of his surroundings.
Pierce’s intent to spend the duration of a tide inside the cave had become, in the long course of its maturing, so huge and obsessive in his mind that it excluded any explanation in terms of something further. It was certainly connected with Barbara, but it might be truer to say that the idea of the cave had swallowed up the idea of Barbara. A great black dart pointed him into this magnetic darkness. Humiliation and rejection and despair had blended into a thrust of desire which no longer had Barbara for its object. That the ordeal might end in death was an essential part of its authority. Yet the hypothesis of this factual death was almost incidental. The concept of death had been growing in Pierce’s mind, an expanding, curiously dazzling, black object which was not a physical possibility or even a consolation, but the supreme object of love.
The distant light from the cave entrance was shut out and Pierce glided into a sphere of total blackness. He checked his stroke and looking over his shoulder could see a suggestion of light upon the water but no low whitish arc of day. He must have turned a corner in the cave. He fumbled down for his electric torch and treading water turned it on. The beam was long and powerful but the air seemed to have a powdery physical quality which narrowed and contained the light. Pierce made out the roof of the cavern fairly high above him and the sides, running sheer into the water and festooned with brown seaweed like a display of glistening necklaces. The cave seemed to be about twenty yards wide. Keeping his torch trained on the roof Pierce swam a few strokes back and the distant line of the daylight suddenly materialised in the darkness on his left, like a long flake of some whitish substance laid out close to his head. It was as if he could have touched it. At the same time the moving spot of the torch above him seemed to plunge and vanish.
Pierce trod in the water and got a better grip on the torch. He began to shine it all round him. The roof here was much higher and he realised that he was at a point where the cave divided. There were two caverns, seemingly of equal size, one leading away to the left, and the other, which he had just been following, to the right. This discovery slightly unnerved Pierce. His traditional mental picture of the cave showed a single roomy cavern penetrating upward into the cliff and culminating in a dry airy chamber possibly full of treasure. Not that treasure mattered or even dryness and air. The final chamber might simply be the last hole or cranny in which the rising tide finally kissed the roof and drowned its trapped rat in black oblivion. Only Pierce had not realised that he would have to make choices. The idea of a choice brought with it the idea of life, of future, and this brought a first wrench of fear.
Pierce shone the torch up at the roof of the left hand cavern. It was some twenty-five feet above water level and covered in seaweed. He turned the light on to the right hand cavern. The roof was a trifle higher, also covered in seaweed. Which fork would lead him upward? He decided, as he had no other guide, to follow the chance which had led him to the right. He switched off the torch and swam on. The flake of daylight disappeared.
He swam slowly now, trying to sense the position and closeness of the walls by a kind of radar. He felt that he was able to do it. But the darkness oppressed him. It had become even thicker and more physical, fitting over his head like a casing of black fungus. It seemed that if he lifted his hand he might be able to break off a piece. His breath suddenly became quick and short, and he had to tread water to make his breathing regular again. The water, which had seemed warmer inside the cave than out in the sea, still seemed unusually warm, and he felt no tiredness and no chill. He hauled up the torch again and shone it about, shining it back over the way he had come and then ahead.
Just in front of him the cavern divided again. Another choice. The thought came to Pierce, suppose that I survive the sea but simply get lost in this awful labyrinth and never manage to find my way back? Would the tide running out show him the way? He was not sure. He swam slowly forward and pointed the thin line of light at the cavern ahead. The torch-light seemed narrow and ragged, devoured by the dark. He could see less than before. His eyes seemed to be becoming less and not more accustomed to the thick fungoid murk. Here the left-hand channel seemed slightly wider and its wet weedy roof higher above the sea. Pierce swam slowly into the opening. He thought first right, and then left. I must remember. First right, and then left.
He shone the torch ahead of him examining the roof and walls. The cavern showed no diminution in size, but equally no tendency to rise, and the cave walls still descended sheer into the water. There was not even a projecting rock upon which one might rest. Pierce thought, it can’t go on like this. Then he thought, why not? The cavern was winding about, bearing quite sharply away to the left. Why should not these worm holes, so neatly cleanly drilled in the rock, wind about indefinitely below the level of the high tide? They might afford him hours of this black featureless swimming before the rising waters finally pressed the crown of his head against the slow descent of the slimy roof.
A shiver of panic went through Pierce like an electric shock and he began at once to feel cold. He thought, supposing I were to swim very fast back the way I came would I be in time to get out of the cave before the tide covered the entrance? He lifted his arm from the water and shone the torch on to his watch. His watch, dripping, but with its familiar everyday face, looked weird and lonely under the black bell of the darkness. He had only been inside for fifteen minutes. He might be able to get out if he turned back at once. Pierce switched off the light and began to swim vigorously ahead of him, deeper into the cave.
He paused again and flashed the light about, wanting to be sure that he had passed no more divisions. It looked as if there was another one coming ahead. He paddled cautiously forward and came into a wider space from which there seemed to be no less than four issues, black rounds, like clenched fists above the very faintly moving water over which the torch-light slid in long fragments of pale chocolaty brown. Here Pierce saw to the right of him, as the cavern in which he was swimming enlarged itself, an irregularity in the wall which formed a sort of sloping shelf. Pierce made for the shelf and tried to haul himself on to it. This was not easy, as the rock was covered with a light green seaweed, like fine hair, which was extremely slippery. At last he managed to perch uncomfortably, half out of the water, and to use his torch with greater care. There were four
openings ahead. Pierce saw that all four had roofs considerably lower than the roof of the chamber out of which they led. The cave seemed to be descending.
At that moment Pierce heard a noise in the water. It was not a noise made by himself. He was lying quite still, seal-like, stretched upon the sloping rock, and holding himself in place rather painfully with one hand clamped upon the abrupt end of the shelf. He stiffened, listening. There was a splashing sound as if something large and clumsy were swimming nearby. Pierce turned awkwardly, holding on and turning his head over his shoulder. The pale brown light of the torch moved on the surface of the water. Something was there, splashing in the water in the centre of the cavern. It was Mingo.
“Mingo!” said Pierce. He let go abruptly both of the torch and of his hold on the edge of the shelf. As he slid down, the string which attached the torch to his waist caught on a projection of the rock and snapped. The torch balanced on the edge of the rock and then quietly tilted over and vanished into the water.
Pierce lay still against the slippery rock, the water round his shoulder, one arm still clutching at the seaweed. The darkness was thick, total. The splashing sound approached and Pierce’s outstretched hand touched Mingo’s collar and the dry fur of his head. Mingo scrabbled at the rock, trying to get himself out of the water.
