by Iris Murdoch
Adelaide sat on the edge of her bed crying. She had rehearsed in her mind a hundred scenes of reconciliation, of throwing herself before him and accepting his anger and receiving his forgiveness. But she knew really that it would be profitless to try to see him, she knew him well enough. He was capable of assaulting her, hurting her, and this would have none of the splendour of imagined violence. It would be ugly, humiliating, final. She had thought of asking Nigel to intercede for her, even of asking Auntie. But for all she knew Will detested Nigel, and she dared not go near Auntie for fear of an encounter with Will. She had written him a letter. Please forgive me. I know now I love you. But it looked unreal, flimsy, utterly unlike the terrible force which she now felt rising up underneath her heart. She had posted the letter just for something to do, as an unbeliever might light a candle in a church. He would never forgive her now. He would hate her for ever.
‘Adelaide!’
He had called before and she had taken no notice. Dully she got up and began to mount the stairs.
‘Adelaide!’
‘I’m coming, I’m coming, don’t shout.’
It was cold in Bruno’s room. The centre light and the lamp were both on. The uncurtained window was a shiny black void full of beating drumming rain. Bruno’s bed was disordered and one pillow had fallen to the floor. He lay sideways in the bed, his head drooping awkwardly toward one side as if the neck were broken. A spider book fell heavily off the side of the bed.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Where’s everybody?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Where’s Danby, where’s Nigel?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘This rain is so awful.’
‘Do you want tea or something?’
‘No. I feel rotten. Could you arrange my pillows, Adelaide? No one looks after me. I could be dead and no one would even notice.’
Holding her breath and gripping the thin fleshless bone of his shoulder Adelaide threw the vagrant pillow in behind him. She straightened the blankets and the counterpane. Bruno with some difficulty arranged his two thin arms upon the counterpane, pulling down the sleeves of his red and white striped pyjamas.
‘Could I have that book? Could you pull the curtains?’
Adelaide dragged the curtains across the window and threw the book on to the bed. ‘Anything else you want?’
‘Could you turn on the electric fire? It’s like winter in here.’
‘If you didn’t disarrange your bed so you wouldn’t feel so cold.’
‘All my limbs are aching so, I can’t stay still. Adelaide, the wireless says the Thames is flooding.’
‘They’re always saying that.’
‘There’s a north westerly gale blowing and the flow over the weir at Teddington–’
‘Oh don’t worry your head.’
‘Could you bring up the Evening Standard?’
‘It hasn’t come.’
‘Adelaide, could I have a hot water bottle? I’m so cold. I’m sorry to trouble you.’
Adelaide went to the bathroom and filled a bottle at the hot tap. She dried it hastily on a towel and brought it back and held her breath again as she pushed it in at the bottom of the bed underneath the foot cage. ‘Can you reach it?’
‘Yes. It’s terribly hot.’
‘I’ll wrap it up in something.’
‘No, don’t bother.’
‘Do you want another blanket?’
‘No, no, I couldn’t stand the weight. Adelaide, could you go out and see if it’s really flooding?’
‘Don’t be silly! They’d warn us if it was. It’s just a high tide. They’re always making something out of nothing.’
‘Adelaide, please go out and see. Oh God, I wish Danby would come back.’
‘I don’t know what you mean go out and see! There’s nothing to see but rain. And if I go out in that I’ll be soaked to the skin.’
‘Well, ring up someone, would you, ring up the police–Please, Adelaide–’
‘I can’t think what you’re so fussed about. All right, I’ll ring up.’
Adelaide closed Bruno’s door and went down the stairs. The stairs seemed darker than usual. In the hall she fumbled for the telephone book and had to take it into the drawing room to look up the number. The drawing room looked empty and crazy, the big front bow windows black and roaring. Adelaide saw that a stream of water was finding its way in from the window and making a long dark stain upon the carpet. She went back to the telephone and lifted the receiver. She began to dial. Then she realised that there was no dialling tone. The telephone was dead. She put the receiver down and lifted it again. Still dead.
Adelaide left the telephone. She stood in the dimness of the hall, cramming a hand into her mouth. She went to open the street door, but closed it quickly again as a blast of violent rain screamed against her out of the darkness. The rain was so thick that the street lamps were obscured by it and all seemed dark outside. If only someone could help, she thought, if only someone would come. The neighbours were all elderly people and anyway she scarcely knew them. If only Danby would come. The loneliness, the noise, the terrified Bruno were suddenly intolerable. Adelaide thought, I’ll just go out as far as the Kings Arms on Cheyne Walk. There would be bright lights there and joking people who would laugh at her alarm. She called up the stairs to Bruno, ‘It’s all right. The police say it’s all right. I’m just going out for a moment to look. I won’t be long.’
She put on her mackintosh and drew a scarf over her head and, holding the latch key in her hand, opened the door. Once she was outside it was quite difficult to close the door again. The sheer weight of the rain and the wind, driving obliquely, pressed the door away from her hand. She pulled it to, went down the few steps and began to go along the street. The gutters were overflowing and the pavements were running with water. The road was like a stream and the water was squelching inside her shoes. After a few steps she paused, already soaked to the skin. The air was a blackness of thick water. It was insane to go through this deluge. But then she thought again of the lights and laughter of the Kings Arms and she began to hurry on.
By the time Adelaide got to the turning into Cremorne Road she was panting with exhaustion and with terror. Her clothes were clinging to her and impeding her movements. The water appeared to be round her ankles. With the rain hissing and splashing so it was hard to tell. Some way off, beyond the curtain of the downpour, she could now hear a strange awful roaring noise. She stood at the corner, looking towards Cheyne Walk, but the rain was too thick for her to see anything. Someone called to her from a doorstep, then banged the door against the rain. Adelaide could feel the water now, tugging at her ankles, moving with greater force. A man appeared out of the darkness, running or trying to run. He shouted to her, ‘Don’t go down there!’
‘What’s happening?’ shouted Adelaide. The noise almost drowned her voice.
‘The water’s coming over the embankment wall. Don’t go there, get back! The police–’ The figure disappeared, plunging and splashing and hopping in the stream of rising water.
‘Oh, oh, oh!’ Adelaide cried to herself with fear as she began to run back along the road. Already it was not any more like running. It was more like wading. Each foot as it came down was gripped by the moving water. One of Adelaide’s shoes came off and she kicked off the other one. She grabbed at railings, gasping. Then she began to lift her feet higher and splash along, wailing in panic. Someone at an upstairs window was calling out hysterically. Just as Adelaide reached her own front door and had mounted the steps out of the stream and thrust the key frantically into the lock something happened. She had been seeing the glint of the rain, a diffused glitter of swirling water, little chips of light moving about in the dark. Now there was only blackness as if a velvet band had been wrapped around her head. She thrust the door open and stumbled in. It took her a moment to realise what had happened. The lights in the house had gone out. The power station must be flooded.
‘Adelaide, Adelaide, come quickly, the lights–’
She blundered, hands outstretched, to Bruno’s door.
‘Adelaide, what’s happening? Is there a flood?’
She crossed the room and felt in the dark for his hand. It was like holding a few dry twigs. ‘It’s all right. It’s just rain water. The power station must have got swamped.’ Not to frighten the old man. If he gets panic-stricken I shall break down.
‘You didn’t ring the police at all, I heard–’
‘Yes, I did. Everything’s all right.’
‘No, it isn’t. That noise isn’t just rain. The Thames must be coming over the walls. It’ll be coming in downstairs. Go and see. And bring some candles, it’s so awful in the dark–’
Adelaide groped her way to the door and descended the stairs holding on to the banisters on each side. It’s only water, she told herself, it doesn’t matter if it does come in, we should be safe upstairs. If only the noise was not so terrible. If only Danby would come. But through that downpour nobody could come. She thought, there’s a torch in the drawer of the hall table. Her sense of direction and distance seemed to have been destroyed. She blundered about, found the table and got her fingers on to the torch. She switched it on and directed the beam down the stairs which led to her bedroom and the kitchen. There was a strange new sound coming from down there, a gurgling and a hissing. The little light pointed down into the darkness and was quenched. Adelaide took several steps down the stairs. The circle of light revealed the surface of moving water. Adelaide stared, appalled, fascinated. Then she thought, my clothes, my things!
She splashed down into the water which was now almost ankle deep at the foot of the stairs, and on into her bedroom. There were two suitcases on the floor and one on the bed. She seized her handbag, picked the cases out of the water and began to struggle with them back up the stairs, holding the lighted torch against her thigh. She bumped them up stair by stair as far as the ground floor landing. Bruno was shouting. She paid no attention but darted back down the stairs for the third suitcase. What else should she take? Her overcoat. She took it off the peg and began fumbling with it trying to put it on over her soaking clinging mackintosh. It was impossible. Her arms felt like putty and she was shuddering and crying with cold. She dragged the suitcase and a bundle of overcoat and dressing gown up to the landing and ran down again. There were candles somewhere in the kitchen, but where? She stood on the stairs flashing her torch on to the race of water just below her. She could not make out if it was rising. The gurgling hissing sound was now very close to her and she made out that it was caused by the water from the street running down the steps at the side of the house and into the yard at the back which was below street level. The water must be coming in under the side door.
Must find things, rescue things, thought Adelaide. She stepped down into the water, forcing her legs against it, and went into Danby’s room. She flashed the torch at the window trying to see into the yard but could see nothing beyond the glass. She moved over and pushed up the sash of the window.
The hissing and the roar filled the room with a chaotic hubbub. There was no light outside. Adelaide shone the torch, bringing it low down outside the window. There was a strange biting sensation in her hand. She realised she was touching water. The flood was mounting up in the yard and had reached a higher level than the water inside the house. The yard was like a lake. Adelaide began frenziedly to try to shut the window again but it seemed to have stuck and her hands were without power. Before long the water outside would have reached the level of the window sill. Crying, almost screaming, she pulled at the sash, then turned back to the room flashing her torch. A large hairbrush of Danby’s was lying on the dressing table, looking curiously peaceful and ordinary and separated from the din of its surroundings. She picked it up and with the light of the torch flickering wildly from her left hand, began to bang the frame of the open window. There was a crash of glass and she could feel the fragments of the pane falling all about her.
Adelaide staggered back from the window. She felt a sharp pain in one foot and sat down abruptly upon Danby’s bed. As she did so the wavering torch light showed her something which was floating upon the water quite near to one of the legs of the bed. It was the big black wooden box which contained the stamp collection.
‘Adelaide! Adelaide!’ Bruno’s voice had somehow pierced the uproar which seemed to possess the house.
Adelaide tried to pick up the box with one hand, then used two hands and put it on to Danby’s bed. She sat back and lifted her stocking foot. It felt as if a piece of glass was sticking into the sole. Holding the torch carefully she examined her foot, running her hand over it cautiously. A rapid stain of red was tingeing the soaking stocking. Adelaide stared and moaned. Her questing hand was stiff with cold.
‘Adelaide, get the stamps!’ Bruno’s scream reached her again.
Adelaide turned the torch on to the wooden box. It was tilting over sideways and several of the drawers had fallen open. The familiar coloured faces of the stamps could be seen inside their cellophane wrappings. Something fell down over Adelaide’s eyes. It was the dripping scarf which she had not thought to remove from her head. She thrust it back. She could hear herself still moaning amid the roaring darkness of surging water and driving rain. Her body was shuddering with cold and her feet had contracted into balls of pain. She stared at the stamps. The thought occurred to her, suppose I took some of these stamps to Will. Would he forgive me then? I could pretend they had been lost in the flood. They might have been. If I hadn’t been here they would all have been lost. It’s the deluge, it’s the end of the world anyway, so what does it matter what one does. She steadied the torch and reached out a wet hand clumsy with cold. Where were the Cape triangulars? If only she knew which ones were valuable. Get it up the stairs, she thought. Upstairs, dry clothes, get warm again, think what to do. She stood up and felt the sharp pain in her foot again. Crying, standing on one foot, she tried to lift the box, but it was too heavy.
‘Adelaide, the stamps, the stamps!’ The screaming voice seemed suddenly nearer.
Adelaide, with one knee on the bed, began trying to pull the drawers out of the box, but the drawers seemed to be attached at the back. They only came out so far and then stopped. With hands clumsy with cold, she pulled helplessly at the cellophane envelopes. They were attached too.
Suddenly there was a new echoing splashing spilling sound and something gripped Adelaide about the leg. She let go of the box and clasped the end of the bed. The piled-up water must be coming in through the open window. Adelaide cried out and plunged toward the door. It was now impossible to lift her feet out of the racing water. She pulled herself round the door and fell towards the stairs, grabbing at the banisters. She managed to get her foot on to the lowest stair. The lighted torch was clasped in the palm of her hand and she saw the illumined flesh like alabaster as her hand reached out before her.
‘ADELAIDE, THE STAMPS, GET THE STAMPS!’
Bruno’s terrible cry was just above her.
As she reached the next step she managed to shift the torch and cast its ray up ahead of her. She shrieked. Bruno was standing at the top of the kitchen stairs, leaning against the newell post. He was wearing only the jacket of his pyjamas and his thin legs, like the legs of an insect, were bending at the knees. The great swollen head swayed above, checkered by the light into huge cubes, like a wooden head in a carnival. Bruno swayed, leaned forward, his thin twigs of hands grasping for the banister, his knees crumpling. The next moment he had fallen headlong, his head hurtling down into her shoulder. Adelaide dropped the torch and fell straight backwards, with Bruno on top of her, into the black surge of water below.
29
‘YOU KNOW,’ SAID Miles, ‘one can ac
tually hear the crack of the swallows’ beaks as they catch the flies. Listen.’
‘They’re early this year,’ said Diana. ‘I wish they’d stay here with us and not go on somewhere else.’
‘I don’t blame them. They’re making for some peaceful country farm house.’
It was a quiet sunny evening, one of those spring evenings which have the intensity of autumn, when growing things vibrate with colour and seem to breathe out silence. Miles and Diana were walking very slowly through Brompton Cemetery. They were near the centre now, where sounds from the Fulham Road and the Old Brompton Road had faded to a distant hum like the murmur of insects. Miles and Diana sat down on a seat. Miles put his arm round her shoulder.
‘How quiet it is here, it’s like the country. I don’t see why the swallows shouldn’t stay.’
