by Iris Murdoch
‘It’s nothing, sir. You’ll walk soon.’
‘Don’t call me “sir”. I think I can walk now. If you’ll help me up.’
‘No hurry. There. Try your legs a little. I’ll just undo the donkey. It’s a little wild one. We can leave it here.’
‘Won’t it fall into the bog?’
‘No, those creatures know the paths. It’ll follow us along a bit, you’ll see, and then it will go off to its own people.’
‘How beautiful the bog looks in the sun. So many colours, reds and blues and yellows. I never knew it had so many colours. I can walk now, Denis.’
‘We’ll go, then. The path is firm but quite narrow, and it’s hard to see. You’d better take my hand.’
They set off along the path in the first sunshine, Denis leading Effingham by the hand and the donkey following.
Chapter Twenty-one
‘Lift your arm, Effie, into the sleeve, that’s right.’
‘Forward a bit, let me tuck your shirt in at the back.’
‘Feet up, while I put these slippers on.’
He was dressed in Gerald’s tweeds, fragrant with Hannah’s bath-salts, and alone with the three women. Their handsome faces, lit with tenderness and love, hovered over him angel-like.
‘In the eastern church,’ said Effingham, ‘the Holy Trinity is sometimes represented as three angels.’ He had drunk a great deal of whiskey since his return. Now he seemed to be being patted all over by three pairs of hands. He added, ‘Automatically, quite automatically.’
‘What do you mean, Effie? You’ve said that several times already. You were saying it when Denis brought you in.’
‘I’m trying to remember something -‘
‘It’s just as well Denis was here. None of the village people would have gone up at night. Had you been shouting for long when Denis heard you?’
‘Oh, I called out “Help” every now and then. I expected someone would turn up.’
‘You’re very brave. I should have just panicked. Wouldn’t you, Marian, Alice?’
That wasn’t quite right though, what he had just said, Effingham thought. He tried to focus his gaze upon the women, but they drew together into a single fuzzy golden orb. His body felt limp yet glorious, as if he had been reborn, as if he had crawled forth into a new element and lay yet upon the shore, weary but transfigured. He wished he could remember what he was trying to remember.
‘I’m sure I should have panicked. It was such a long time.
Whatever did you think about, Effingham, when you were just sinking in?’
‘I’d rather not know,’ he said. That was a nonsensical sort of answer. But he could scarcely yet bear to think of the recent past as real. It was a vague blackness rapidly receding like a nightmare which remains present to the waking mind as a terrible dissolving something.
‘Don’t worry him, Marian. Give him more whiskey, Alice.’
‘I want to help him to remember. I’m sure it’s better. What is it that happens “quite automatically”, Effingham?’
Effingham concentrated. The three angels were a radiant globe out of which light streamed forth. He had seen this before. The globe was the world, the universe. He said, ‘I think it is love which happens automatically when love is death.’
‘I think you’re sozzled, Effie.’
‘Sssh, Alice, let him talk.’
He sat up. He was still not sure, but he thought now that he could explain it to them. Perhaps after all he could recapture his vision, though he did not yet know its name and awaited his own words to tell him. He could not in memory determine how long the vision had lasted. It might have been only a minute or only a second; and it had faded utterly with the return of his will to live. Yet he felt that it was in some sense still there, hidden in the core of the nightmare object. He must fix his attention upon it before it was engulfed and darkened and made as black as the bog itself.
He ‘OhGod! And then?’looked up at Hannah and found himself suddenly able to see her quite clearly as if a light had been shone on her and as if the other two faces had been merged in hers leaving only one image. ‘You see,’ he said laboriously. If only he could play a little for time the vision might announce itself quite simply through his speech. ‘You see, it’s not a bit like what Freud and Wagner think.’
‘What do you mean, Effie darling? What about Freud and Wagner?’
He stared at Hannah. Her beautiful tired face was smiling down upon him. After all she was his guide, his Beatrice. It came to him that she must have been somehow connected with the revelation which was made to him in the bog. Perhaps this was the truth, this the very truth, which resided in her in a sort of sleeping state and which made round about her the perpetual sense of a spiritual disturbance. Surely she would understand him. ‘You see. You see. You see, death is not the consummation of oneself but just the end of oneself. It’s very simple. Before the self vanishes nothing really is, and that’s how it is most of the time. But as soon as the self vanishes everything is, and becomes automatically the object of love. Love holds the world together, and if we could forget ourselves everything in the world would fly into a perfect harmony, and when we see beautiful things that is what they remind us of.’
‘I think he’s delirious. That’s just a garbled version of something Father -‘
‘It can’t be quite as simple as that, Effingham -‘
‘I see what you mean, Effie, go on.’
Effingham looked up imploringly into the angelic face. No it couldn’t be as simple as that, and yet he was sure these were the right words. He felt that it was all fading and that he was going to forget it after all. He would be left with an empty description, the thing itself utterly gone from view. He tried to repeat the words again, like a prayer, like a charm. ‘It’s automatic, you see, that’s what’s so important. You just have to look in the other direction -‘ But he no longer believed what he was saying. And as he looked he saw the three heads sliding apart, unfolded, unwrapped, spread out in front of him. The big thing had gone; and yet perhaps something remained.
He loved Hannah. But did he not in loving her love the others too? How beautifully they were now drawn together in spiritual amity, in a lovely configuration by their joint concern for him, and what a perfect object of love they made, they-loving-him, together. So love, making an unchecked circuit, returned to himself. He contemplated them. This at least he could explain. It was not the big thing, but it was surely an exquisite little thing.
He began again. ‘Us four, for instance. With so much good will between us, why aren’t we perfect with each other? What stops us being? We can’t make the whole world into a republic of love, but one can make a little corner of our own here -‘
I’m sure we are ready to try, dearest Effie -‘
The trouble is, until the whole world -‘
‘Effie, I think you’d better come home -‘
‘You and Alice, for instance. You both love me. Well, you ought to love each other too. And, Marian, I love you of course. Love is so easy, it’s practically necessary, if only -‘
‘I’m sorry to break in on this metaphysical discussion, but I have some very grave news for all of you.’ The voice of Gerald Scottow spoke from the door.
Hannah, who had been sitting close to Effingham, rose at once, and the group drew apart, as Gerald closed the door and advanced upon them. He was a little breathless and plainly agitated or excited. For Effingham the scene was suddenly collected, focused, over-vivid in its precision, and dark. The golden glow had faded. He was aware of a rainy light at a murky window pane.
‘What is it, in God’s name?’ said Hannah, her hand going to her throat.
‘Peter is on his way back to Gaze.’
‘Peter?’ said Effingham stupidly.
‘Peter. Peter Crean-Smith. Hannah’s husband.’ Gerald raised his voice.
‘When will he arrive?’ said Hannah. Her voice was quiet but suddenly weak and thin.
‘In a few days. He sent off th
e cable as he was getting on to the ship.’
‘So the seven years are at an end,’ said Effingham. He tried to get up. Something seemed to be wrong with his legs.
Hannah stood perfectly still with her arms hanging at her sides. She was wearing her long robe of yellow silk and she looked like a priestess in the moment before the rite, pregnant with some strong emotion. She stared at Gerald. ‘Peter,’ she said softly. Effingham had never heard her utter that name and it rang and jangled mutedly about the room. ‘Peter. Coming here. In a few days. Is that really true, Gerald?’
‘It is really true, Hannah. Would you like to see the cable?’
She gave her head an irritated little shake and twitched away the sympathetic hand which Marian had laid upon her shoulder. She said again, ‘Peter,’ as if trying to get used to the sound. And then, ‘It’s not possible. Is it really true, Gerald?’
‘Really true. Sit down, Hannah. Have some whiskey.’
I’ve had enough,’ she murmured, and turned away to the window and looked out. They all looked at her figure, so decisively detached from them. There was silence in the room.
Alice said at last, clearing her throat, ‘I’m sorry, I’m afraid we’re in the way. Effie and I had better go. Come on, Effie.’ With a quick pull she had him on his feet.
Hannah said without turning round, ‘Don’t go Effingham, please.’
Alice, surly and firm, said, ‘He’s drunk. He’d better sleep it off. I’ll bring him back when he’s sober. Come on, Effie, lift your big feet.’ She began to propel him towards the door.
‘Effingham, please stay here, please -‘
‘I tell you I’ll bring him back.’
‘It happens quite automatically,’ said Effingham to Scottow.
Effingham was unsteadily descending the stairs, clinging on to Alice’s arm. The sunlight hurt his eyes. As he went out of the glass doors he heard a sound behind him in the depths of the house. It was his own name uttered in a cry which rose to a shriek. He got into the Austin Seven and went to sleep.
Chapter Twenty-two
‘Effingham! Effingham!’
They were shouting and calling again. He listened lazily for a while. The voice came from far far away across the dark bog. He turned a little and sank again into blackness.
‘Effingham!’
I won’t wake up, he thought. In a moment there would be silence. But now someone was shaking him roughly by the shoulder and going on and on. He murmured protestingly and half opened his eyes. It was night and there was a dim lamp burning on his bedside table. Max was sitting on his bed.
‘I’ve been trying to wake you for so long -‘
The great shadowed bulk of the old man, suddenly so heavy and close, was menacing. Effingham shrank away into the bed. Something appalling had happened which he could not at the moment remember. He began to close his eyes again.
Max was shaking him once more, digging his fingers savagely into his shoulder. ‘That hurts!’ murmured Effingham petulantly. He had always disliked Max’s hands, feared them. He had a violent headache and his legs were hurting. He remembered the night in the bog and more vaguely the morning at Gaze. Peter Crean-Smith was coming home. ‘What time is it, Max?’
‘Late, late, Effingham. It’s nearly eleven o’clock.’
‘Have I slept so long? How did I get here?’
‘You fell asleep in the car. Alice and I put you to bed. How do you feel?’
‘Terrible!’ It was too late to go to Gaze now, everyone would be in bed. It was a comforting thought. Whatever was happening it was not happening now. There was nothing he could do now. Sleep was overwhelming him again, great clouds and folds of sleep like a warm fog.
“Wake up properly, Effingham. It’s time to get up now.’
Effingham felt weak and prostrate and sorry for himself and safe in his bed. The darkness crouched behind Max, thick and heavy and full of strange smells. He said, ‘My legs are hurting and there’s no point in getting up now.’ Sleep, sweet oblivion, had not yet abandoned him, it still covered half of his consciousness. ‘Let me sleep again, Max, for God’s sake.’
‘No. I oughtn’t to have let you sleep for so long. You must get up now, Effingham. Oh, why did you have to be drunk on this day of all days!’
‘It wasn’t my fault! Didn’t Alice tell you what happened? I can’t go to Gaze now anyway, it’s too late.’
Peter Crean-Smith was coming back. This was a terrible yet quite incomprehensible fact. Peter’s actions seemed to belong to some other dimension of being. Surely tomorrow he would go to Gaze and find that all was as usual. Hannah would make all well. She would swallow it all up, she would assimilate the evil news and make it not to be, she would suffer Peter internally as she had always done, and there would no more be heard.
‘You must go there at once, Effingham. Do you think there is any sleep in the castle tonight or that anything is in its place? God only knows what today has been. You must go back.’
Effingham lay still and looked at Max’s huge shadow crouching on the wall and ceiling. Only let it be tomorrow, let it be daylight. He shrank utterly from the idea of a night-time arrival at Gaze. He had always feared the violence that lay behind the legend of the sleeping beauty. It had hung behind the figure of Hannah like a dark cloth, perceptible but not stirring. He now feared dreadfully to find that background suddenly alive with movements, with faces. And what he feared most of all was to see Hannah afraid. Then he suddenly remembered the cry which had rung through the house as he went out through the doors. He sat up abruptly.
‘But what could I do if I did go over now?’
‘Just be there. Your presence in the house will prevent some things. You ought never to have come away.’
‘You’re being very alarmist,’ said Effingham. But he began to get up all the same. ‘Damn it, how much strength and sense do you think Hannah’s got?’
That is just what we don’t know. But she’s certain to need help. And if you aren’t there she may take it from someone else.’
Effingham brought the Humber to a halt close to the front door and switched off the engine and headlights. The bulk of the house crept into view above him, against a clouded almost black sky, with lights very faintly glimmering in several windows. He got out on to the terrace and stood still, afraid of the sudden silence and of the sound of his own footsteps. The noise of the car would have announced his arrival; yet he felt himself, before the dim consciousness of the house, unwanted, ignored, invisible. He began to walk quietly along the terrace, stumbling every now and then against the soft clumps of wild sea pinks until he could see Hannah’s window. There was the same faint light there. He went back to the front door, found it unlatched and entered.
The hall was dark, but a lamp on the upstairs landing murkily suggested the stairs, and a faint glow came from the open drawing-room door. He cautiously pushed the door.
‘Effingham! Thank God!’
Marian appeared in the half darkness and in a moment he was holding her tightly in his arms. Only then did he re-member what he had been saying to the three women that morning. He must have been thoroughly drunk. He realized that there were other people present in the room and he let her go.
The room was lit by two lamps and by the irregular flickering of the log fire Denis Nolan was sitting in front of the open piano staring at the keys. In a corner beside one of the lamps Jamesie was sitting at a table with a whiskey decanter and a glass. Neither of them paid the slightest attention to Effingham or to the little scene which had just occurred.
