The Unicorn

by Iris Murdoch

  The ‘music’, while simple enough, turned out to be more ambitious than Marian had expected. One or two of the handsome redheads from Riders were to be seen sitting in the group of servants near the piano, and one of these, a big girl called Carrie, had opened the programme by playing with little expression but great correctness a small piece of Mozart. This had been applauded frenetically; and Marian, although she had grave and painful matters on her mind, could not help being rapt into the touchingly absurd and endearing atmosphere of an amateur performance. She smiled and clapped with the rest, catching Hannah’s eye. It was hard to believe that all in this cheerful little family party was not as it seemed.

  The next item was a performance by two of the black maids of Gaze upon a sort of stringed instrument which Marian had not seen before, rather resembling a Jew’s harp. The noise was twangy and confused, but not unpleasant. Everyone liked that too. Then another pair of black maids sang songs, one in English and two in their own language. The songs were pretty and sad, the voices thin. After that there was a pianola performance. Marian had not noticed that the grand piano had a pianola attachment Operated by another maid, the pianola played, a little jerkily in places, the Moonlight Sonata of Beethoven.

  Marian had not expected this assault upon her feelings. She had expected to be embarrassed and touched, but not to hear any serious music. Marian was not musical and on the whole shunned musical occasions. She did not understand music and it upset her, it had only sad, tragic things to say. These leaping forms, these pursuits and insistences, these elusive desperate repetitions, always seemed to her like one long cry of agony. She could not, in this company, allow herself the luxury of self-pitying tears, which was her highest tribute to the art. She looked about her and let the music gather to her the people with whom she was so deeply concerned.

  The gentry were seated in a semicircle stretching across the middle of the room from the fire to the open windows. The circle was curved enough for everyone to be able to see everyone else, and there was a lot of polite exchanging of nods and smiles during the applause. The relations of the inhabitants of Gaze were, in public, remarkably formal. Hannah sat in the middle. She was wearing the mauve silk evening-dress and a collar of blue stones. She looked very young in the soft light. Effingham was on her right, on the side nearest the fire and Jamesie next to him in the bright glow of the logs. Gerald sat on Hannah’s left, and Violet a little behind her. Marian sat near the window. Denis, who didn’t count as gentry, was sitting, one leg crossed over the other, against the wall. Alice had been asked but had pleaded a cold. The maids were scattered, some near the piano, some behind the semicircle. Some very large men, whom Marian had not seen before, were standing at the back near the door.

  Marian raised her eyes cautiously. The music, almost unheard now, had drawn her into a solemn meditation wherein she must try, so much more deeply, to understand these people for whom she suddenly felt responsible. Jamesie was looking enchanting, wearing a sort of Teddy boy evening-dress composed of tight black trousers, dark blue corduroy coat, white silk shirt, and purple choker. He had sleeked his curly hair well back and looked older, his long bony face, from which the light of play and mockery had been withdrawn, grave and in repose. His gaze, which had been cast down, lifted quietly to rest upon Gerald. He looked, as if taking a long draught, and looked away again. Marian recalled Denis’s words about Jamesie having changed. He had been broken and remade by Gerald Scottow. With a long internal shuddering sigh she looked now at Gerald. His big face looked brown and southern and he inhabited his evening clothes hugely and yet with ease. His slightly bloodshot brown eyes glowed reddish in the hazy light. He was looking up, his expression quite serene, and yet he was patently not listening to the music. He turned his head slightly and caught Marian’s eye. Something went through the middle of her like a shot and she looked away. Gerald might be untamable, unattainable, taboo; yet he was still for her the centre from which the furies came.

  She now turned her gaze upon Effingham. Dear Effingham. Dear, dear Effingham. Dear, dear dear Effingham. What was she saying? Able now for a moment to contemplate him, as he sat there large and round and bland in the hurly-burly of the music, Marian measured how deep was her sense of relief at having Effingham upon the scene. The more dangerous that scene appeared to her, the more she needed Effingham; for he was one of her own kind. She would indeed need him, and for most precise services, she would need him now to drive the car: if she ever carried out her plan. At that moment Effingham looked at her and smiled. Marian smiled back, warmed by a sudden rush of affection for him; and found herself reflecting that it was perhaps something of a pity that the rescue of Hannah was so likely to be equivalent to the definitive withdrawal of Effingham from circulation.

  Yet how seriously did she intend her rescue plan? Was it not merely a dream? Hannah was a provoker of dreams, her many shadows fell round about her in the fantasies of others; and the plan of the rescue, which had seemed the product of plainest sense and reason, was already beginning to look a little crazed. The very solidity of Marian’s only possible confederate made her idea now seem flimsy. It was not just that she would never persuade Effingham to help her; his very mode of being, felt as so kin to her own, now made her lose confidence. The whole notion was too mad: it must figure as but one more of those lurid private consolations which those concerned with her plight continued to generate about the unconscious and unconcerned figure of Hannah.

  The music came abruptly to an end. There was clapping, and Marian, startled and shivering a little with cold beside the open window, turned her head and saw behind her the stony figure of Violet Evercreech. Violet, who had been clapping, had her hands held up before her in an attitude of prayer. She was looking at Hannah. Marian looked away quickly. The strange guilt which she had always felt before Violet had been a shadow of which she now confusedly apprehended the sub-stance. With what hope of good or malicious intent toward confusion and chaos, out of what love or what hate, had Violet spoken to her today? For Violet too had her fantasies, her own version of an imperfect and frustrated love.

  Denis had moved to the piano. There was some expectant whispering, and Marian’s embarrassment returned. She blushed already on Denis’s behalf. She looked down at the floor while in a profounder silence he touched the keys. Then he began to sing. Marian lifted her head. With a relieved surprise, with a strong shock of pleasure which drove all other thoughts from her mind, she realized that Denis had got an exceedingly beautiful tenor voice.

  There was a slight nervousness in the first notes, but then with confidence and authority the rich sound took possession of the room. Nothing is more beautifully and acceptably self-assertive than good singing. The sound filled and honeycombed the collected room, making the rapt audience one with itself, a great golden object rising slowly through space. The song ended, and after a homage of acute silence there was rapturous applauding. Marian exclaimed aloud, and found that several people were looking at her, evidently enjoying her surprise. She leaned forward to exchange looks with Hannah, smiling and nodding her head.

  The song had been simple enough, a local ballad sung to a sad monotonous little tune. There followed two Elizabethan songs full of grieving intervals and grave spondaic cadences. There was in the singing an elusive sense of drama, a mounting atmosphere, as if the audience were sitting forward in their chairs ready to participate in some marvellous transfiguration. Yet Denis himself seemed by now almost invisible, so much had he made sound sovereign over vision.

  He began another song. She knew it slightly, had heard it somewhere long ago.

  O what if the fowler my blackbird has taken?

  The roses of dawn blossom over the sea;

  Awaken, my blackbird, awaken, awaken,

  And sing to me out of my red fuchsia tree.

  O what if the fowler my blackbird has taken?

  The sun lifts his head from the lap of the sea -

  Awaken, my blackbird, awaken, awaken,

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sp; And sing to me out of my red fuchsia tree.

  O what if the fowler my blackbird has taken?

  The mountains grow white with the birds of the sea,

  But down in the garden forsaken, forsaken,

  I’ll weep all the day by my red fuchsia tree.

  As the last notes died away, in the breathless moment before the crack of the applause, there was a cry of pain. Hannah was sitting with her head thrown right forward in her lap. It looked for a moment as if she had been physically struck. Then she gave a moan, lifted her face and covered it, and there followed the sharp rhythmic wails and gasps of a hysterically sobbing woman. The applause, which had begun uncertainly, faltered to silence and was succeeded by a rising murmur of voices.

  Marian stood up. People all round her were getting up and either hurrying forward toward Hannah or else retreating from her with a sort of fearful respect. In the centre the dreadful sobbing continued. As Marian moved she caught a glimpse through the throng of Denis, who was standing by the piano, looking down at his hand on one of the keys. She tried to get to Hannah and had almost reached her when she was thrust aside. The tall figure of Violet Evercreech loomed and swayed over the little group in the centre where Effingham distractedly and Gerald with a kind of sympathetic annoyance were patting and exhorting Hannah from either side. Violet said, ‘Get up.’

  Hannah rose, still hiding her face, and let Violet lead her away stumbling toward the door. The hubbub rose as people pushed each other back out of the way. The bowed, weeping figure seemed to inspire fear as well as pity. They shrank from her. The door closed behind the two women. A moment later, from farther, and then farther, away in the house there arose a sort of howl, the scarcely human cry of a soul in agony.

  Marian found that there were tears upon her cheeks. She looked around for Effingham and saw that he was standing beside her. He instantly took her hand and led her toward the open window. There was a desperate childish spontaneity in their departure together, as Marian’s last glimpse of the room took in the figure of Denis, seated now by the piano, frowning, his eyes closed, and the alert, interested glance of Jamesie as he observed her flight with Effingham. Gerald was giving instructions to two of the maids. He still wore his air of annoyance. The noise subsided behind them. The musical evening was at an end.

  There was no moon, but the stars gave a kind of light. Effingham held on to her hand as they half ran across the terrace and over the drive and on to the soft peaty grass among the fuchsia bushes. At last they stopped in the middle of the blackness and the stillness and turned to face each other.

  ‘Oh, Effingham -‘ The cold sea breeze chilled her cheeks where the tears were yet coming.

  ‘Marian,’ said Effingham, and there was a coolness, even a coldness, in his manner which affected her with an increased sense of the violence of the occasion, ‘You were quite right.’

  ‘Right-?’

  ‘Your reaction was right, was the right one. The rest of us have been bewitched. We must get her out of this.’

  Marian reflected; and I was just about to become bewitched too. She said, ‘Yes. We have thought her sane when she was half mad and serene when she was in torment.’

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ said Effingham. ‘She has achieved a kind of peace, a kind of centre for herself - it’s not just an illusion. But it suddenly seems to me that the whole structure is just too dangerous. There are these - awful cracks. And she might lose her nerve.’

  ‘What would happen then?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m just suddenly terrified. We’re all eating her up somehow, all of us. It’s got to stop. I suggest we do exactly what you proposed, the other day - take her off in the car and hope to God she won’t want to come back.’

  ‘All right,’ said Marian. Her teeth were suddenly chattering with cold and fear. ‘Shall we fix the details now?’

  ‘No. You must go back to her now. She mustn’t be left with Scottow and Violet tonight. Come to Riders tomorrow afternoon. Of course, I won’t tell Max or Alice.’

  ‘Nor I anyone. Goodnight, Effingham.’

  They stood staring at each other’s darkened faces. Then in a quick movement they drew together, once more like frightened children, and without kissing hugged one another fiercely. Marian thought, soon we shall leave them all behind, soon we shall be off on the road together, Hannah and Effingham and I.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The day had come. They had been over the details a number of times and there seemed to be nothing now which could possibly go wrong. The main uncertain factor had been the weather and that, as Marian rose early from a sleepless bed, seemed likely to be perfect.

  She could scarcely believe it, as she dressed herself, trembling and shivering already with excitement, that she, today, was to be the one to break the spell which had dazed and defeated so many. This day, whatever it brought, and whether it would count in the end as victory or disaster, would surely be the last day of the prison and the end of the legend. What would come after would be inconceivably different, would be real life.

  That she was on the brink of some terrible act of destruction had at moments occurred to her, but without in any way affecting her resolution. It did at those moments seem possible that the sudden violence might produce, not the vanishing of the dream and the reassuring appearance of the ordinary good world, but some shapes yet more Gothic and grotesque. There might be some terrible shaking to pieces of Hannah, some terrible dissolving of the beloved face; and once late at night Marian shuddered to find herself half believing that by removing Hannah from Gaze she would indeed procure her death. Yet with daylight, and recalling again the cries, the howls, which she had heard on the evening of the music, she told herself that it was leaving her here, not taking her away, which would be the end of Hannah.

  Hannah herself had apparently recovered almost at once from the musical upset. When Marian had returned from her brief talk with Effingham she had found her employer in her room drinking whiskey with Violet Evercreech and laughing shamefacedly over her exhibition. Yet Hannah had been somehow exhausted by that overflow of feeling and for the next few days was, with Marian, more touchingly dependent and apologetic than usual. Violet had visited Hannah assiduously, and with something of the air of a doctor, on the two days following, and had then withdrawn again into her isolation. She had ignored Marian.

  Effingham was now splendidly firm. Having made up his mind, he was fiercely anxious for action, as if he feared the relentless movement of a clock which might suddenly bring down with a clang some impossible portcullis. Of course, they were both quite straightforwardly afraid of discovery. Their looks, their meetings, must sooner or later suggest that something was afoot. But apart from this, Effingham conveyed to her, infected her with, a dreadful sense of urgency. Half sadly she reflected that in him it was, it must be, the desire, how exquisitely fearful at the last, to gain possession of what he had so long worshipped. What her own role would later on be she did not pause to consider. Her thought ended with the breaking of the barrier.

  They had decided to proceed like this. Marian was to accustom Hannah to taking a little walk in the grounds in the late afternoon. This was easily done, as the stroll was already half customary and Hannah never in practice opposed any suggestion which Marian made. On the day in question they were to walk down the drive toward the entrance gates. Effingham would then appear in Max’s Humber and offer them a lift back to the house. The likelihood of Hannah’s refusing a lift back to the house was small, especially as Marian would at once profess exhaustion. Once Hannah was in the car, Effingham would turn it round and accelerate out of the gates.

  They would then drive very fast, not to Blackport, which Effingham thought was too obvious and risky, but to a remote little hotel in the mountains which he knew of, which was also reasonably on the road to the airport. There they would stop, lock themselves in a private room and reason with Hannah. It was unlikely that they would be successfully pursued. The hotel, one after a
ll of many possibilities, was hard to find; and they had chosen a day when Scottow and Jamesie would be absent on one of their regular jaunts. ‘Going to market,’ Gerald called these expeditions, but the two usually came back late, smelling of burgundy and not especially laden with merchandise. The Land Rover then would be absent; and the Morris, Effingham explained, could easily be disabled by pouring sugar into the petrol tank. The plan seemed simple enough to be foolproof, provided Scottow and Jamesie departed as usual, and provided it did not rain.

  Recalling what Jamesie’s blunder had been on a similar occasion, Marian very carefully and surreptitiously packed for Hannah a small selection of old and out-of-favour clothes whose absence would not be noticed. She then packed for herself a little bag containing the precious minimum of her belongings, and both bags had been conveyed to Riders by Effingham on the previous night. Marian was resigned to losing the rest of her things; for although she tried to be open-minded about what Hannah would want them to do, she could not really conceive of herself returning to the castle, she could scarcely indeed conceive of the castle as, after today’s act, continuing to exist.