by Iris Murdoch
Adelaide’s father died when she was about twelve and her helpless vague mother became entirely dependent on Joseph Boase, the father of Will and Nigel. So did Adelaide. Her own brother was already in Manchester. Joseph’s wife, who had once been an actress, had left him some time ago because he was so bad-tempered and returned to the stage, and the trio of men became an irresistible focus and magnet to the bereaved mother and daughter. In fact the Boase family had long fascinated Adelaide and as a young child the twins, who were only three years older than her, had been much closer to her than her own brother. She was in love with both of them, in those days slightly favouring Nigel. She was a bit in love with her Uncle Joseph too, though she was afraid of his bad temper. He was an extremely handsome person with a black moustache and beard who worked in a shipping office and imagined himself a seafaring man.
Her childhood with the twins had been the happiest part of Adelaide’s life and she often felt its most real part. She was a tomboyish child and joined as an equal in all their games, which consisted largely of exploring building sites, climbing scaffolding, making marks in wet cement, escaping from watchmen, and stealing bricks. ‘May Will and Nigel come to tea?’ ‘May I go to tea with Will and Nigel?’ On Saturdays they played cricket with other children in the Boase’s back garden. But of course they were superior to other children. They were a little secret society. It was their times as a trio that were special. Then when the twins were nineteen they ran away from Uncle Joseph and joined their mother and went on the stage.
Adelaide was working in the insurance office at the time. Their flight was a great shock to her. Although they had passed the brick-stealing stage she still saw a great deal of them. They went to plays and films together and the boys, who had stayed on in the sixth form of their grammar school, were insensibly educating their young cousin. She listened to their talk and read the books they talked about. They seemed scarcely to notice that she was growing up though they spoke teasingly of her prettiness. She was jealous of their girl friends. She was just beginning to think that one day she would marry one of them, she could not quite decide which.
Then there was a long interval during which the twins were heard of but not seen. Great things were hoped of their careers. Then Nigel was said to have left the stage and to be working at something or other in Leeds. Will appeared once on television in a small part, but Adelaide was working at the time and could not see him. The actress mother died, allegedly of drink. Adelaide’s mother died, and Adelaide moved into digs. She changed jobs. She had a number of boy friends, some quite ardent, with whom she could not decide to go to bed. After the twins, they all seemed so undistinguished and insipid and dull. Will was working in repertory in Scotland. Then he suddenly started to write her love letters.
He’s lonely up there, he’s thinking sentimentally of when we were children, it doesn’t really mean anything, Adelaide told herself. But she was very pleased all the same. She replied affectionately, trying at first to be non-committal, but soon her letters were as romantic as his. They both enjoyed the correspondence and the letters became positive works of art. Adelaide kept carbon copies of hers. Will went on saying that he was coming south but did not come. Uncle Joseph retired from the shipping office and went to live at Portsmouth. Will hinted at a big job coming up in the West End. At last he turned up in London, out of work, moved in on Auntie, and proposed to Adelaide.
Adelaide simply did not know what she felt. She had not seen Will for a long time and he had changed. He was a good-looking chap and getting to look more like Uncle Joseph. He was stouter, he had grown a moustache. He had always been more thick-set than Nigel, and now he looked like a sort of Victorian rugger player. He was big and heavy and rather mechanical in his movements, ruddy in the face, wearing his straight almost black hair neatly cut and rather long. He also seemed to be developing Uncle Joseph’s temper, as Adelaide, who was not able to conceal the fact that she was dithering, soon learnt.
The trouble was that as soon as she saw Will she decided that she wanted Nigel. If only there hadn’t been two of them! She had not seen nor heard from Nigel for years and no one knew his whereabouts. But she was haunted now by a vision of a slim dark-haired boy about whom she could not decide whether he was Nigel or whether he was Will as he used to be. She hoped Will would not guess. Will guessed and broke all Auntie’s Meissen parakeets. Nigel turned up in London, working at the Royal Free Hospital. Adelaide told fervent lies to Will and went secretly to see Nigel. It was no good. Nigel was cool, vague, abstracted, not quite unkind. Adelaide was frantic. She answered Danby’s advertisement. She fell in love with Danby. Will felicitously left London to work in a film at East Grinstead. By the time he came back Adelaide was Danby’s mistress.
Adelaide never talked to Danby about Will except in the most casual terms and of course concealed from Will that she had any special interest in Danby. She managed to persuade Will that he had been wrong about her and Nigel, and this was easier to do now since it was true. She no longer had any tender feelings about Nigel, though he still occasioned obscure and unnerving emotions. She could not forgive him for having been so calmly unresponsive to her undignified and unambiguous appeal. He had changed too, and she felt almost a little frightened of him. He seemed to be living in another world. She had most unwisely told Danby that Nigel was a half-trained nurse and now out of work. Danby, who took to Nigel instantly, could not be prevented from summoning him and engaging him. At first she thought that Nigel’s presence in the house would make her life impossible, but she had got used to it, though it still upset and frightened her. There was no reason why Nigel should know what went on behind the closed door of the annexe at night, and even if he did speculate she was sure that he would say nothing to Will, with whom he seemed to have broken off all relations. He had never told Will that Adelaide had been to see him.
Her feelings about Danby had changed without rendering her any the less slavishly in love. She had been completely captivated by his easy charm, his good looks, and the atmosphere of cheerfulness which he carried about with him. She was also strangely moved by the legend of the dead wife, whose photograph she dusted on the drawing room piano. Big dark brooding eyes, heavy serrated dark hair, pale intense oval face, pouting finely-shaped small mouth. Whenever Danby spoke of his wife, which he did quite often, the note of his voice changed and his eyes changed and there was something serious and almost alien about him, even if he was supposed to be laughing. Adelaide liked this. It gave an alluring touch of mystery to what might otherwise have seemed too easy-going, too open. She found Danby altogether god-like, a sort of smiling vine-leaf-crowned forest deity, full of frolics but also full of power. From the first he used to smack and pat her a good deal, but then he smacked and patted the men at the printing works and the barmaid at the Balloon and the girl in the tobacconist’s and the temporary charwoman and the milkman. One day he came into her bedroom, looked at her very gravely for some time in silence, then kissed her, and said, ‘What about it, Adelaide?’ She nearly fainted with joy.
Danby as a lover was a little less godlike. It was not that she felt that he was unreliable. He had most seriously, at the start, informed her that he intended their liaison to be lasting and that he would provide for her in her old age. Adelaide, who was not thinking about her old age and who would have accepted Danby’s suggestion on any terms whatsoever, listened with some puzzlement to those protestations. Later she was glad of them. At moments when she felt, as she later occasionally felt, that she was giving up a great deal for Danby, it was a consolation to think that at least she had gained something permanent.
She did not really mind not altogether enjoying it in bed. She was anxious about contraception. She was pleased that he was pleased, and had been very moved by his tenderness and delight on learning that he was the first. It was just, she reflected, that any man, as soon as you get to know him well, turns out to be totally selfish. Danby did exactly what he wanted and never seemed to think that this might
not suit Adelaide perfectly. Adelaide found it difficult in fact to recall the specific issues upon which he had crossed her, but she retained a vague sense of not being sufficiently considered. Perhaps, working deep in the whole situation, was Danby’s assumption that she was not socially his equal. Adelaide sometimes felt the assumption, nebulous, pervasive, profound. She felt, almost physically, his selfishness and her own defencelessness, on long nights, after they had made love, as she lay awake wondering what that huge paunchy sweating hairy body was doing in her bed. But the discovery of his frailty, even his ordinariness, only made her love him all the more.
Will meanwhile remained terrifyingly single-minded. He settled into a condition of amazement at Adelaide’s reluctance and confident expectation of her imminent capitulation. She put a great deal of energy into persuading him that there was no one else. She began to build up a picture of herself as a natural spinster. Once she thought it might be helpful to hint that she was a lesbian, but Will got so upset and angry that she decided not to develop that idea. He never seemed to suspect Danby, largely because Will belonged to the sector of humanity that was entirely blind to Danby’s charm. Will thought Danby an ass. Time, who will take over the most improbable arrangements and make them seem steady and commonplace, took over this one. Adelaide stopped being frightened of Will finding out about Danby, though she still had occasional moments of panic. She got used to coming over on Sundays and accepting Will’s touchy nervy electrical devotion. She gave him money out of a small store which she was building up out of donations which Danby gave her to spend on clothes and which she promptly banked. There was usually a bad patch after lunch, after Auntie had retired, when Will would be pressing and possibly cross. But she was getting better at managing him. She had even begun a little to enjoy having, in this rather inconclusive sense, Will as well.
Although Adelaide had received, where Will was concerned, the same revelation of masculine total selfishness as she had received about Danby, she still thought of him as somehow noble and distinguished. She admired his social confidence, his sturdy conviction that he was ‘working class’. In fact he was not really ‘working class’. A versatile Bohemianism had rendered him classless. She even admired his ability to be unemployed without anxiety. He really was talented. He had lately shown her a series of drawings of monsters which he had done, weird embryos and hideous bristly creatures with half human faces, which frightened and impressed her. There were some pornographic drawings too of which she had accidentally seen one and it had made her feel quite sick. There was a force of violence in Will which she feared but which also a little thrilled her. But she remained circumspect and wary in her dealings with him and fell into playing the part of a sort of nagging sister.
Auntie was pottering in the hall, about to retire to rest. Adelaide was washing up. Will was sitting at the table smoking.
‘What does old Bruno do all day?’
‘He plays with his stamps. He reads those books about spiders over and over. He rings up wrong numbers on the telephone. He reads the newspapers.’
‘It must be awful to be so old, Ad. I hope I don’t ever grow old.’
‘He’s got awfully hideous too. He looks like one of your monsters.’
‘Well, I suppose it doesn’t matter what he looks like now, poor old bastard. Those stamps of his must be worth a packet.’
‘Twenty thousand pounds, I heard Danby say.’
‘Who’ll get them?’
‘Danby, I suppose.’
‘Do you know anything about stamps, Ad?’
‘No. You used to collect them, do you remember?’
‘Yes. Nigel used to pinch my best ones. Nigel’s a natural thief.’
‘And you used to punch him. You’re a natural bully.’
‘Maybe. I wonder if Bruno has any Cape Triangulars.’
‘What are Cape Triangulars?’
‘Cape of Good Hope triangular stamps.’
‘He has some triangular ones. I saw them. Don’t know what kind they were. Could I have your coffee cup?’
‘Ad, do you see a lot of those stamps?’
‘How do you mean? Yes. I spend half my life picking them up off the floor and putting them away and bringing them out again–’
‘How are they mounted? Are they in books?’
‘They live in a box, in drawers, between sheets of cellophane. A lot of them are just loose in the box. He’s got them into an awful jumble.’
‘Could you look and see if he has any Cape Triangulars? I’ll show you a picture of one.’
‘Why are you interested? You chucked stamps long ago. It’s a child’s game.’
‘Twenty thousand pounds isn’t a child’s game, Ad.’
‘People must be mad to pay that money.’
‘A Cape Triangular sold last week for two hundred pounds, I read in the paper.’
‘I expect you wish you had one.’
‘I’m going to have one, Ad.’
‘What do you mean? How are you going to get it?’
‘You’re going to get it for me out of Bruno’s collection.’
‘Will!’
‘Just one.’
Adelaide stopped washing. She turned round from the sink and stared at her cousin. Will was sitting with his thick legs stretched straight out, the heels of his heavy boots making yet another pair of permanent dints in the soft brown linoleum. He was looking up at Adelaide with a dreamy sly expression which she remembered from childhood.
‘You want me to steal one of Bruno’s stamps! You’re not serious!’
‘I am, Ad. That camera I told you about. In fact I’ve got it. The only trouble is I haven’t paid for it. I need two hundred pounds.’
‘Will, you’re mad. Anyway, Bruno would see it was gone.’
‘No, he wouldn’t. You said he was getting terribly vague and gaga. And you said they were in a jumble. And no one else looks at the stamps, do they?’
‘No. But I think Bruno would see. And anyway it would be perfectly wicked to steal from an old man.’
‘Much less wicked than stealing from a young one. You’re being soppy, my dear. He won’t miss the stamp. It probably won’t make any difference to the total value of the collection anyway. And it’ll solve my camera problem.’
‘Well, I won’t, that’s all!’
‘You selfish bitch! Don’t you want me to make money? There’s hundreds of things I could do with that camera, I’ve got hundreds of ideas!’
‘Why don’t you sell those duelling pistols?’
‘Because I don’t want to.’
‘Or get a cheaper camera. I can give you ten pounds.’
‘I’m not asking you to swipe the lot, Ad. It isn’t even as if Bruno collected the stamps himself. He just inherited them. Things like that shouldn’t be allowed. Property is theft, really. Isn’t that so, Auntie?’
Auntie had come in to fetch her orange cardigan before retiring.
‘Seezara seezaroo, boga bogoo.’
‘And boo to you.’
‘Will, I think you’re crazy.’
‘So you won’t do it, just to please me?’
‘No.’
‘You’re always saying no, Ad. Come and sit beside me now Auntie’s gone. Leave the washing up, I’ll do it later.’
‘I’ve got to go soon.’
‘Stop saying that or I’ll hit you. Come and sit here.’
They sat awkwardly side by side in upright chairs under the electric light. Adelaide rested her arms on the red and white check table cloth, grinding the crumbs a little to and fro under her sleeve. She looked ahead out of the darkened window at the rain and the jagged creosoted fence of the side passage and the dripping grey roughcast wall of the house next door. Will, sitting sideways and staring at her with his knee pressing hard into her thigh, laid a hand on her shoulder and drew it down her arm, thrusting up her sleeve and bearing down toward the wrist. The crumbs pressed painfully into her flesh. Will’s other hand was beginning to fumble at her skirt. A
delaide released her arm. She captured Will’s two hands and squeezed them rhythmically, still looking vaguely out of the window.
‘Oh Ad, you know I’m in a state about you. I can’t stop. When’ll it be yes?’
‘Will, don’t tease me so. I don’t want to.’
‘I’m not teasing, damn you. This is serious, it’s real, Adelaide. Sometimes I think you just live in a dream world. You ought to be shaken out of it.’
‘I’m sorry, Will. I can’t want things just by wanting to want them.’
‘Have a try, my darling. I do love you. I can’t bear my life going on and on without you. It’s such a waste. Oh Adelaide, why not?’
‘Just not.’
‘I can’t understand it. You must love me.’
‘We’re first cousins. You’re like my brother.’
‘Rubbish. I know I excite you. You’re trembling.’
‘You just upset me. Please, Will, don’t be horrid, don’t quarrel. We quarrelled last week and it was so silly.’
‘Adelaide, is there somebody else? Be honest, please. Is there somebody else?’
‘No.’
‘God, I think if there were somebody else I’d bloody well kill him.’
6
Why does one never see dead birds?
How can they all hide to die?
MILES CLOSED HIS notebook and moved over to the window. Earlier he had been trying to describe a dead leaf which the rain had glued to the window pane. It was a last year’s leaf, in a shade of luminous dark brown, a sort of stocking brown, which reminded Miles of girls’ legs. The veins of the leaf made the pattern of a tree, of which the stalk was the trunk. Only the stalk was, from Miles’s side of the window, concave, a funnel divided by a narrow opening, at the base of which a raindrop was suspended, almost transparently grey around a point of yellow light.
