by Iris Murdoch
The prospect of the crazy ‘duel’ had been, to his desperate mood, almost a relief. It had seemed the image of something destructive and mad, and also of something appropriate and necessary. The aching and deprived heart yearns for necessity. Danby would have been glad to be arrested, imprisoned, scourged, judged. Now in his dreams, in some huge echoing courtroom, a woman’s voice rehearsed misdoings which dated back to his earliest childhood. Anything which could show his present situation as inevitable would have been an alleviation of his pain. It was not enough that his rational mind could display to him the utter improbability of his success. It was its impossibility that he needed to have the proof of. As it was, the torment of accidents continued. If only he had met her earlier, if only there were not this other man, if only she had not seen him kissing Diana, if only he were the different and better person which it seemed to him he might easily be. He had accepted and even welcomed the idea of the duel because it seemed somehow to belong to the other order of things, the legal, the necessary.
But now, shivering in the cold cramped little office underneath the electric light, with all the familiar things looking alienated and eerie, the craziness of the plan took on a different and more sinister air. From the moment of the tapping on the window and the receipt of Will’s pompous letter, Danby had thought of nothing but himself. He had thought of the encounter in relation to himself, as something that he was going to bring about or do. He had not thought of Will except as of a blind agency destined somehow to act upon him. Now, as he poured himself out another glass of whiskey, he thought about Will more carefully. He really knew very little about him. The one thing which he certainly knew about Will was the degree of his hatred. But how exactly would that hatred make him behave? Will had loved Adelaide since they were children. He had thought of her as ever the pure sweet maid who was somehow reserved for him. This much Danby had gathered from Adelaide’s tearful outpourings after the delivery of the letter. How would Will feel towards a man who had casually, unseriously, seduced this dream woman, and what fate would he deem appropriate for such a man? That Will intended in some way to humiliate him became clearer to Danby now. Had he proposed the dawn hour, the deserted place, for some quite other purpose of his own? Perhaps he and Nigel would arrive with other men, tie Danby up and thrash him? He had heard of such things.
He put the glass down and came out into the main workshop. The windows were paler. He switched off the lights and could now see the nearer shore and the surface of the water gleaming and shifting in flakes of very pale yellowish grey. The opposite shore was veiled by a mist which seemed to quiver and vibrate, casting out a diffused yellow radiance which revealed the debris-strewn river bank below the printing works in a faint but horribly clear morning light. Danby shuddered.
He heard a sound behind him and jerked round. He had left the outer door open, as they had agreed. There were two figures on the other side of the room, one tall and thin, the other shorter, stouter.
‘Oh,’ said Danby, ‘good morning.’ He did not like to turn the electric light on again. There was just enough illumination to recognise his visitors. His heart beat violently.
Will, who was carrying a large case under his arm, stayed by the doorway. Nigel came forward, tiptoeing or gliding across the floor. When he came up to the window Danby could see his face quite clearly.
‘You’ve no one with you?’
‘No. I thought I’d dispense with a second!’
‘That’s a bit irregular, you know,’ said Nigel. He stood for a moment staring at Danby. His face seemed stretched, beaming with a blissful excitement, the purple bruise still visible along the cheek and under the eye.
‘Isn’t this all rather absurd?’ said Danby in a loud voice. ‘I think we should forget it and go home. I can’t think why I came at all.’
Will moved forward from the door. He stopped about five paces away, put the case down on the level tray of one of the colour-printing machines, and looked at Danby with a gaze of cool intense hatred.
‘All right,’ said Danby. ‘Do what you like. Play out your little game. But let’s do it quickly. I want to get home.’ He thought, this man is in the theatre, and yet he’s horribly in earnest too. I can’t get away now. If I tried to go he’d spring on me. At any rate there seemed to be only the two of them.
‘Let’s go down then,’ said Nigel. ‘The tide’s out, isn’t it? It was a good idea of yours to have it here.’
Danby opened the door. The cold water-scented air filled the doorway. He could smell the sea. He took a deep breath and went a little unsteadily down the steps, trailing his hand on the wall. He crossed the wharf and began to climb slowly down the iron ladder to the river shore. As he stepped off on to the yielding gravelly mud, he could see the large rubber-soled boots of Will on the upper rungs of the ladder.
The expanse of shore, some twenty feet from the base of the wall to the water, was quite clearly lit now by a light still faint but rather lurid which seemed to emanate from the curtain of mist which hung now at the centre of the river and arched over the shore, enclosing it in a capsule of bright haze. A quietness, which seemed also to be coming out of the mist, held the scene poised, and Danby was startled by the sound of his own footsteps moving over the rather sticky gravel. He stood staring at the water’s edge. The tide had not yet turned and the river was still running steadily downstream. A sleek line of mud was reflecting the yellowish light. Above it, the surface was more irregular, lumpy, stony, strewn with plastic bags and old motor tyres and bottles of green and clear glass and very pale smooth clean pieces of driftwood which the Thames had long had for her own. The clear glowing light made the littered scene seem over-precise, purposive, as if one had wandered suddenly into the very middle of a work of art.
Will was still standing beside the ladder, leaning the edge of the case against one of the rungs and fumbling with the clasp. Nigel, with the same lilting gliding motion, came over to Danby. The light fell on his face which was strained into a semblance of an archaic smile.
‘How would you like to proceed? Have you any special wishes?’
‘Anything you like,’ said Danby.
‘There are various possibilities–’
‘You decide. Only get on with it.’
‘What Will wants is the system where you measure out twenty paces in the middle and draw a line on each side. Then you each stand another twenty paces behind the lines. After I give the word you can walk forward as far as the line and fire at any point before you reach it, or when you reach it. No order of firing, just fire when you want to.’
‘Look, Nigel, can’t we call off this farce?’ said Danby in a low voice. ‘Couldn’t Will and I just have a talk? I know how he feels–’
‘Do you want to apologise to him?’
‘No! I just mean a sort of civilised talk–’
‘It’s impossible. You don’t understand. Will couldn’t talk to you, he couldn’t.’ Nigel had laid his hand on Danby’s arm. Nigel’s teeth were chattering.
‘It’s all perfectly insane–’
‘Wait here. I’ll just report to Will.’
Nigel’s footsteps, crunching, sucking, moved away over the gravel and Danby could hear the murmur of voices. He felt light-headed, a sensation as at the onset of extreme drunkenness. The lurid detailed scene seemed to be tilting a little sideways. Nigel was back beside him and was thrusting something into his hand.
‘Here. You know how to fire a pistol, don’t you?’
Danby lifted his hand, which was holding a rather beautiful duelling pistol with a long slim barrel. The handle, very smooth and already warm in his hand, was made of a rich rosy-brown wood with a curly grain. The barrel and the butt end of the handle were ornamented with a flowery silver inlay. Danby stared with fascination at the strange weighty object.
‘You sight along the barrel. Better keep a straight arm. It doesn’t kick much.’
‘I trust you and your brother are enjoying yourselves,’ said Danby.
‘You ought to be in films!’
Danby, who was well acquainted with revolvers and had sometimes played with pistols, examined his weapon. It was indeed loaded. A blank of course, but loaded. It appeared that the twins were going to carry their theatre scene through to the end.
‘I’ll drop a handkerchief, and after that you can fire when you like.’
‘All we need now is a surgeon!’
Nigel gave him the ecstatic beaming stare, giggled and glided away.
The light was growing. Will had moved away on the other side of the iron ladder. Danby watched Nigel pacing the shore, making marks with pieces of driftwood. A chilly breeze had begun to blow and the mist had receded a little without yet revealing the other side of the river. Danby turned up the collar of his mackintosh. He thought, supposing this were all real and I was perhaps going to die. He thought, Lisa, where are you now.
‘Back here please,’ said Nigel. He motioned Danby back behind a line which he had scored in the stony mud. A long way ahead of him he could see the figure of Will, rigid, upright, compact, small, a focused pellet of menacing significance. He could see a blotch of purple which must be Will’s scarf, perhaps his shirt.
‘Sixty paces between you,’ said Nigel. ‘The next line is there, marked with driftwood, which you mustn’t cross, but you can fire before you reach it.’ His hand touched the sleeve of Danby’s raincoat, gathered up some of the stuff and fingered it.
‘I’m sorry I pushed you into that lamp post,’ said Danby. ‘I didn’t mean to.’ A very fine misty rain had begun to fall. Nigel’s black hair was filmed over with glittering pinheads of rain.
‘That’s all right. Good luck. If you fire first, stand sideways, there’s less risk. The light’s still a bit uncertain, he’ll probably miss you.’
Nigel moved away. This performance is designed to frighten me, thought Danby. They want me to break down, lose my nerve, beg them to stop, run away. It’s all ridiculous. But all the same he found that he was trembling.
Nigel had returned to the middle point, half way between Will and Danby. He was flourishing a white handkerchief above his head. The two lines marking the twenty paces in the centre were plainly marked with wood. A boat on the river hooted distantly. The handkerchief fluttered to the ground.
Will had begun to walk very slowly forward, carefully lifting his pistol with outstretched arm and gazing along the barrel. Danby stared. Then as if compelled by a magnetic line of force stretched between himself and his opponent he began to move too. His heart seemed to be pounding and rattling at an incoherent speed. He put his left hand to his breast. It’s theatre, he said to himself, just theatre. But the power of the scene had already made him its actor and he found himself raising the pistol, feeling for the trigger. It was all idiotic, but it was also awful, a grotesquerie, a piece of obscene unworthy mumming. Get it over with, he thought. Instinctively he turned the gun away from the slowly advancing but still distant figure of Will, and lowering the barrel in the direction of the river he pulled the trigger.
The leap of the gun, the deafening noise of the report, overlaid another event. A green glass bottle which had been lying upon the mud at the very edge of the water disappeared into fragments with a high splintering clang.
Danby stood quite still, the echoes of the report still roaring in his ears, and stared at the bottle. So the pistol had been really loaded after all.
He dropped the pistol, which was wreathed in white smoke, and it fell with a dull thump into the glistening greyish mud. He stooped to pick it up again and saw straight ahead of him in the enclosed dome of golden luminosity the still advancing figure of Will. Danby tried to think. He said to himself, I must do something quickly, I must stop him, it’s all a mistake. He tried to move, but his limbs seemed too heavy to stir. He stood paralysed, watching with fascination as the figure with the pointing pistol grew larger. Yes, he was wearing a mauve shirt. A mauve shirt.
Danby thought, supposing this man kills me. He wants to kill me, he wills my death. I should have known it wasn’t play acting. But he must know that I’m harmless, I didn’t mean to hurt him, I must explain it’s a mistake, I mustn’t die by mistake. Who would understand? He raised his hand. He tried to move his foot but it seemed to be rooted in the mud. He stood there with a raised hand, like a signal, a totem. The rain was increasing.
Will had reached the line of driftwood and stopped, pointing the pistol with care. There was about thirty yards between them.
He must be stopped, thought Danby, I must call out to him. But his body had become rigid with fear and expectation of the impact of the bullet. His mind seemed to float above him in some other sphere. He saw himself lying dead on the bank of the Thames with Will’s bullet in his heart. He thought I am dying for a girl I didn’t love, I am dying because I failed to love, I am dying just upon the brink of love. I was not worthy. He tried to will to move, to sidestep, even to stand sideways as Nigel had advised. But he could not stop staring at Will, who was still taking aim, clear and detailed in an ellipse of bright vision.
‘No, no, no!’ Something black had shot across the centre of the scene, something capering, agitated, Nigel waving, shouting, spreading out his arms. He capered in front of Danby, dancing in the gravelly mud, his feet spraying pebbles.
‘Get out of the way, damn you!’
As Will shouted Danby rushed forward and seized Nigel around the waist. They swayed together. Over Nigel’s shoulder Danby could see the steady pointing pistol. Danby crooked his foot round Nigel’s ankle and threw him stumbling to the ground. Will shouted again and fired.
As Danby heard the bullet whistle past his head the explosion loosened his limbs and he sat down heavily on the stones. Nigel was lying full length. He gazed on Danby. Then his eyes closed and there was an expression of bliss upon his face. The echo of the shot died away and there was a curiously intense silence.
Danby reached out to Nigel’s shoulder with the intention of shaking him, but he had no force in his arm and remained leaning there, staring down into the swooning beatific face. There was a sound of crunching footsteps.
Will, the still smoking pistol hanging limp at his side, said ‘Which of you have I hit?’ His face was white, his mouth open and shuddering.
‘Neither of us, fortunately for you,’ said Danby. He began to get up.
‘Nigel, Nigel–’ Will fell on his knees beside his brother.
Nigel’s eyes opened. ‘Hello, Will. I think I’ve been in heaven.’
‘Are you all right, you bloody fool?’
‘Yes. But look. I spy police.’
A uniformed figure had appeared on the next wharf, which belonged to the cattle cake mills. Somebody was distantly shouting. Danby turned about and began to walk in the opposite direction along the slippery shore. Then he decided it was silly to walk and began to run. The mist was lifting and he could see through the light now rather luminous curtain of rain a line of barges, the outline of the bridge, and the surface of the river smoothed and pitted with rain.
The water was lapping the base of the brick wall below the churchyard. The strand was coming to an end. Danby’s feet splashed in the water. He heard shouts behind him. He plunged in deeper, wildly splashing, and then with a sudden sense of blissful release gave himself to the Thames, losing his footing and falling forward into the deeper water. He began to swim toward the line of barges. He passed under the stern of the last barge and the shore behind him was blotted out.
Now there was a sudden peace and silence. Danby swam slowly, breast stroke, scarcely stirring the surface of the quiet water. It did not seem cold. The still flowing tide took him gently with it. He felt a strange beatific lightness as if all his sins, including the ones which he had long ago forgotten, had been suddenly forgiven. The mist had lifted and the rain was abating. A little pale sunlight began to glow from behind him, an
d he saw that a perfect rainbow had come into being, hanging over London, bridging the Thames from north to south. Danby swam towards it. He swam under Battersea Bridge.
28
IT WAS RAINING, raining, raining. Adelaide stood in her bedroom with the light switched on. She felt frightened. It had been dark outside for so long now that it was hard to know if it was evening or night. The rain had darkened the whole afternoon. Her watch had stopped. It must be night by now.
There had been another flood warning. But there had been so many and nothing had happened. The darkness was just so hard to bear and that continual violent rain battering the windows. The house had become terrible to her. It was as if it had been taken over by an evil spirit. She could not bear even to look into the kitchen. She feared Nigel, she feared Danby, she feared Bruno. She was afraid that Bruno would suddenly start to die when there was no one there but herself. The others came and went mysteriously. Perhaps one day they would go and not come back. She wanted to go herself, she had packed her bags days ago, but she had no will to move herself and nowhere to go to.
I can’t stay here, Adelaide kept thinking, I must go to a hotel. But she did not want to spend her money on a hotel. She had never stayed in a hotel in her life, and did not know how to choose one to go to. She thought, I must find another job. But the idea was nightmarish. She felt utterly incapable of working, of seeing new people. She felt incapable of living any more. She had at last understood that the person she had always loved was Will. That jerky violence which had so plucked at her nerves now merged magnetically with the sovereign forces of her own nature. She responded, she submitted, but too late. The years with Danby seemed an insubstantial dream. She should have recognised this lord out of her childhood, she should never have questioned his authority over her. Beside that brute reality the charm of Danby faded to a wisp. Adelaide had forgotten her love for Danby. It seemed to her that she had been kind to him for some other reason which she could not now understand. She had ceased to feel animosity against Danby, though she was still very anxious not to meet him. She did not feel that he had used her unjustly. Her sense of being, through her new indifference to him, Danby’s equal, had removed all sense of grievance. Her anger was against herself, for her frivolity and her blindness. She had had him at her feet, the only one, for years and years, and now had lost him utterly.
