An Unofficial rose

by Iris Murdoch

  'I don't know, she said. 'It's a matter of your deserts, isn't it? Don't for a moment forget that we're very well off as we are.

  'We are well off, of course, said Randall cautiously. He was not sure how serious Lindsay was and he wanted to say nothing wrong. 'All the same, he said, 'I'm going quietly crazy.

  'I'm not! said Lindsay, with an affected little pout of complacency. 'But you will come? said Randall. He desperately wanted to feel her spurs in him. 'You do love me, Lindsay, for heaven's sake?

  She looked at him sombrely, and as he gazed in supplication he seemed to see another symbol taking shape in her eyes, as if her beloved initial, on which he had used to meditate as upon one of the names of God, had transformed itself into the relevant question.

  'Money, he said. 'Yes.

  Lindsay nodded.

  'Yes, he said. 'We must have money. That's the trouble, isn't it? He did not insult her by saying, 'I can earn money, if you help me. That was not a thing to say to a girl such as Lindsay. The turn which the discussion had taken was a sobering one; but the cold touch of even a hostile reality, after the substanceless fantasy of the last year, thrilled his blood. He felt, blindly, almost hopeful.

  With a coldness which matched her own, and which he felt as deliciously provocative as the tenderest badinage of love, he said, 'will you get her dough?

  Lindsay smiled faintly and respondingly and her hand sought his.

  'Not unless I stay till the end.

  'And how near is the end? Lindsay shrugged her shoulders.

  'She pretends to be old, doesn't she, said Randall, 'and she isn't really so old at all. Do you think she's ill?

  'She's not ill. She'll live forever.

  'Hmm, said Randall. 'Then we must think of something else.

  'You must think of something else.

  'You're bloody helpful, aren't you. He squeezed her hand. 'I tell you one thing. I must go to bed with you soon, my darling, or I'll die of unreality. The two of you have made me into a bloody dream object. I've got to have you Lindsay, or I shall just cease to be. So I suggest the programme is, first we go to bed, then I get hold of some money, then we think what to do next.

  'No, said Lindsay, withdrawing her hand again. 'The programme is, first you think, then you get the money, — then we go to bed.

  'Ah, he said, 'you're going to put me to the question. He trembled but he adored her for it. 'Yes?

  She said impatiently, 'Yes, if you will!

  He would, he would. He murmured submissively, 'You are a tormentor —’

  'Oh, don't be so feeble, Randall, Lindsay said with irritation. She looked at her watch. 'It's time for us to go back now.

  'Not already, said Randall. 'God! He regarded her, frowning. 'Suppose I were just to take you away now, not to let you go back?

  'You couldn't, she said simply, rising.

  It was so patently true that Randall did not even trouble to think in what sense it was true. He followed her dejectedly out of the pub.

  'Don't look so hangdog, said Lindsay, thrusting her Ann through his as they went up the hill. 'After all, you must think, mustn't you? You must count the cost in detail. You may not really want me at all. Think of all that lovely furniture at Grayhallock!

  'You bitch, said Randall softly. 'I count the cost day and night. Miranda. Everything. I've counted, and I want you, as you bloody well know.

  'Miranda, said Lindsay. 'Yes. She sighed a long sigh and leaned more heavily upon his Ann.

  He knew that she feared this topic and he was at once in a flurry lest he should have discouraged her. He did not want to have thrown into her consciousness any hard thing round which hostility to him might quietly collect. He said, 'That will be all right, you know. Miranda is nearly grown up and she's a very wise little person. You'll see. You'll like her and she'll like you.

  'I doubt that, said Lindsay. 'But never mind. There, there! Never mind.

  They reached the door of the flats and paused in the dark vestibule.

  He took her two hands now, regarded her, and then took her slowly in a strong embrace. A moment later, as he almost groaned aloud with desire, he wondered why, in that sacred hour, he had accepted her idea of going to the pub, instead of taking her by taxi to his little room in Chelsea. But that was just another thing that, in that undefined way, he couldn't do. Then he felt in the sway of her body to his such an unambiguous answer to his fierceness that he became unaware of all else.

  'Randall, Randall, she whispered, as if waking him from a long sleep, and gently undid his clasp. 'Come, she said.

  'No, said Randall. 'I'm not coming in. You em go alone.

  'She'll be disappointed if you don't come. Don't displease her. She's an old lady.

  Randall hesitated. 'No, he said again. He could feel himself swelling with strength. 'I'll come tomorrow. But not now. I want to be quite alone now and think about you. I don't want this lovely piece of your presence to be spoiled before I quite make it over into my soul.

  'Think, yes, she murmured. 'But not about me. Think practical thoughts, will you, Randall darling, practical thoughts.

  Subdued by her tenderness he said 'Yes, yes, yes. And with a sort of triumph born of his recent abstention he watched her go down the long corridor. The green door opened and shut again and all was silence. He waited a minute or two. What in the world were they saying to each other now?

  Chapter Fourteen

  'THE Reverend Swann! Miranda announced with a giggle, putting her head round the door. She: never tired of this simple jest. She could then be heard pounding away down the stairs.

  Ann was dusting Randall's room. She paused now with the duster in her hand. She did not want to see Douglas. She desired to stay quiet and melancholy, to be: left alone. The melancholy itself was a sort of precious achievement. She came sometimes to Randall's room, though never without a pretext. She looked about her for a moment before going down. The sun shone brightly into the small bright room. Everything was neat. The little row of gold-rimmed Dresden cups stood in descending order on the mantelpiece. The bright blue bird-woven William Morris tiles glowed on either side of the grate. The two quartets of rose prints, with their dark red mounts, paraded upon the wall. The blue and white Welsh bedspread swept smoothly up the incline of the pillow. The only shabby things in the room were the two toy animals. Toby and Joey, who had their place on the bed, their limp threadbare paws intertwined. Toby was brown and Joey was white, and each had lost an eye and a good deal of fur in the course of the years. Ann felt an affinity with them, as if she too were an old dusty object off which from time to time pieces of vague woolly substance fell. She was glad they were still there. Randall had taken his big Redoute away with him when he left; she had noticed at once its absence from the white-painted bookshelves in the alcove. But where Toby and Joey were Randall would come back. She still had in keeping the innocent part of him. She paused again at the door. It was so oddly like a boy's room: the room of an aesthetic slightly feminine boy.

  Ann had scarcely met Douglas Swann since the evening of Randall's departure, when the unfortunate priest had been made to retire with so little dignity, since Swann's mother had become very ill and he had had to depart almost at once to sit by her bedside. So that she had not yet had an opportunity to discuss her new situation, if it was a new situation, with her clerical friend. She was not sure if she was glad or sorry at the prospect of now receiving his consolation, perhaps his advice. Douglas Swann often seemed to her to take, perhaps for professional reasons, too rosily optimistic a view of Randall's character. The same could not be said of Clare, whose enthusiastic sympathy Ann had had in abundance, and whose picture of Randall tended rather to the lurid. Clare was not of course unaware of Douglas's chaste concern for Ann. As a counterpart to this, she maintained a somewhat morbid interest in Ann's husband, over whose excesses there was a certain licking of the lips. In some curious way, Ann had long felt, Randall played an important part in Clare's imagination; and when, after some Randallian ou
trage, Clare cried with particular vehemence 'I wouldn't stand it from my husband. I'd leave! Ann felt in her friend a positive yearning for violence: a yearning which could scarcely have been satisfied by the gentle and rational Swann.

  Just lately, however, Ann suspected because of admonitory letters from Douglas, Clare's 'Don't you stand it, dear! had changed into 'He'll come back, dear, you'll see.’ This doubtless would be the tone of Swann's own admonitions now that he was returned to offer them in person; and Ann felt, as she descended the stairs, a sense of guilty discouragement. The particular quality of her long battle with Randall had seemed progressively to empty the certainties by which she lived, as if the real world were being quietly “taken away, grain by grain» and stored in some place of which she had no knowledge. This did not make her doubt the certainties. There would be for her no sudden switch of the light which would show a different scene. But there was a dreariness, a hollowness. She could not inhabit what she ought to be. She felt this, anticipating the things which Douglas would certainly say. Though as she approached the drawing-room she felt also a simple pleasure in the visit of a friend.

  Douglas Swann turned from the window with an exclamation of welcome. As Ann greeted him she saw that Miranda had tiresomely taken up the whole centre of the room with what she called her 'Dolls' Durbar'. The whole gang of them was mustered, the 'little people', or the 'little princes', as Miranda sometimes called them, all sitting up in a wide-eyed semicircle. The effect was rich and rather startling, since the little people had exotic and barbarous tastes in clothes and jewellery.

  'My dear Ann, said Douglas, skirting the dolls, 'my dear —’ He took her two hands and drew her with him towards one of the window-seats. He gave her an intense look of wordless sympathy.

  Ann freed her hands and said briskly, 'Well, Douglas, it's nice to see you back, and sweet of you to come over so soon. Then she remembered guiltily the cause of his absence and rebuked her own self-centred condition. 'But how is your poor mother? I do hope she's a little better?

  Douglas shook his head. 'I'm afraid not, he said. 'There is little possibility of improvement. Indeed it must be faced that there is now no possibility of improvement. The end of her journey is in sight. He sighed deeply.

  'I am so sorry! said Ann. She pressed his hand and they both sat down.

  «'Change and decay in all around we see», said Douglas. 'One must accept it. But it is terrible how one grieves over these partings. I'm afraid it shows a lack of faith.

  A lack of faith, thought Ann. Had she got faith? Did she imagine that she would ever see Steve again? No. And yet she believed in God, she had to. 'Poor Douglas.

  'I always found my parents such a support, he said, 'a support that never failed. I suppose I was lucky.

  Ann looked out of the window. Miranda was capering across the lawn, swinging in her two hands like tambourines the white enamelled bowls in which each night she put out the milk for her hedgehogs. Did Miranda find her a 'support'? Her daughter had been exceptionally cold with her lately, and had stopped calling her 'mummy', attracting her attention when necessary by cries of 'Oh' and 'Ah'. Something had been wrong, indeed, with her relations with Miranda ever since Steve died. The same was true of her relations with Randall. It was as if everyone blamed her for Steve's death. Or as if, she sometimes a little resentfully thought, since the others wanted to blame someone and she did not, she made a vacuum into which their blame ran.

  In the distance under the beech trees Ann made out a solitary figure.

  It was Penny. He watched Miranda cross the lawn, and then faded back into the shifting green shadows. He seemed like a poor faun watching human affairs. To distract Douglas from his grief, and also to put off the moment of talking about Randall, she said, 'It was so kind of you to take such an interest in Penny before you went away. He's very fond of you, you know.

  'He's a thoroughly decent boy, said Douglas. 'I expect you'll miss him?

  'Yes, said Ann. It occurred to her that she would miss Penny dreadfully. She sighed, and then said, 'Do you know, I think he's a bit in love with Miranda. Isn't it Absurd? I believe he's positively suffering, poor child.

  Douglas smiled. 'How one suffers when one's young! Then, as if thinking that this was tactless, he added. 'You wait till Miranda's old enough to be in love. Then the sparks will fly!

  'That was probably why he decided not to go to London with Humphrey. He couldn't bear to leave Miranda. I couldn't understand it at all at the time.

  'I imagined you'd thought otherwise of it because of Humphrey's er—

  'No, no, Humphrey has plenty of sense. And Penny can see no evil. But I'm sorry for him now.

  They were silent. Ann twisting her hands and sighing again in spite of herself, and Douglas leaning forward with an air of gathering solicitude, his hands dangling at his knees in the attitude of one about to rise to make a pronouncement..

  He did not rise, but said in a softened voice, not looking at her, 'No news from Randall, I suppose?

  'Nothing, said Ann. 'He hasn't written. I've written, of course, to Chelsea, but I don't even know if he's there. She stared at the dolls, whose ranks were drawn up facing her, little hostile presences. The fantasy occurred to her that Miranda had put the dolls there to keep an eye on her mother.

  'We must have good hope, good hope, said Douglas. 'Of course, said Ann. She felt irritated. She added, 'Don't let's exaggerate, Douglas dear. You know as well as I do that all sorts of catastrophes can happen inside a marriage without destroying it.

  'I most heartily believe it, said Douglas, with the slightly self-conscious accent of the happily married man who knows about such things by hearsay. 'Marriage is a sacrament. And we must believe, in such cases, a special grace assists our love.

  'My love just exasperates Randall, said Ann. She wanted to bring the discussion down to earth. 'But he'll come back, for hundreds of reasons of habit and convenience. Thank God marriages don't depend on love!

  Douglas seemed a little shocked. He said, 'In a purely temporal sense, perhaps not. But the marriage service contains the word «love». It is the first thing that we promise to do. The continuation of love is a duty, and it is a matter much more genuinely subject to the will than is commonly supposed nowadays. Even if we leave divine grace out of the picture.

  Ann felt tired and disinclined to consider the picture with or without divine grace. She could feel Swann's attention like a plucking of many strings. It was as if he wanted to break her down. Perhaps he did, even if unconsciously, want her to break down so that he could console her. There were a hundred things that she ought to be doing. She had promised Bowshott that she would help with the spraying. The proofs of the catalogue must be corrected. Miranda's clothes needed attention. She said, 'Well, I doubt if Randall has any love left for me by now. It doesn't matter. But it did matter. What else mattered if this didn't?

  'You must enclose him in a net of goodness and loving kindness, said Douglas.

  The image of the enraged Randall so trammelled almost made Ann laugh, and with that an agonizing protective tenderness towards her husband brimmed up in her heart, so that at the next moment she almost wept. She said, 'I don't know about that! My love for Randall is terribly imperfect. I can't see it having any miraculous effect!

  'Most of our love is shabby stuff, said Douglas. 'But there is always a thin line of gold, the bit of pure love on which all the rest depends and which redeems all the rest.

  Ann thought he was talking sense, but the slight tone of exaltation wrought terribly upon her nerves. 'Perhaps, she said. 'But one can't see things like that. All that one sees is shapeless and awkward.

  As she uttered the words she felt, shapeless and awkward is what I am. She had been awkward at school, and had been told that it would pass. It had not passed, and she had learnt to live with it, and it had become no easier as she grew older. She had had, she must have had, some grace when Randall first loved her and when her hair was almost as red as Miranda's: some wild grace lent
her by the very fact of the dazzling, the enchanting Randall's love. But that time was hard even to imagine now. What remained was awkwardness and effort, the endless effort of confronting people with none of whom she had any sense of fitting. Had she and Randall ever' fitted'? Perhaps, in the days of their happiness, their personalities had been too hazy for the question to arise. Now the haze had cleared and they had hardened into incompatible shapes. Yet 'fitting' was still something that was possible. With Douglas, for instance, she felt almost perfectly at ease. And with Felix. Her thoughts touched this and took flight at once. It was a place where thoughts must not go. I am always saying no, said Ann to herself, all my strength has to go into saying no. I have no strength left for the positive. No wonder Randall finds me deadly, no wonder he says I kill all his gaiety. But why is it like this? And she recalled dimly and with puzzlement some quotation which said that the devil was the spirit which was always saying no.

  'Shapeless and awkward, said Douglas. 'Precisely. We must not expect our lives to have a visible shape. They are invisibly shaped by God. Goodness accepts the contingent. Love accepts the contingent. Nothing is more fatal to love than to want everything to have form.

  'Randall wants everything to have form, said Ann. 'But then he's an artist.

  'He is a man before he is an artist, said Douglas with magisterial severity.

  Ann felt she could not stand much more of this discussion. She hated this sense of their cornering Randall. She said. 'I must get on with my work, and began to rise.

  Douglas Swann detained her. He inclined his smooth face towards her, drawing his chin back over his clerical collar and opening a little wider his dark brown eyes which were let with such startling immediacy into the sweep of his cheek. He said, 'Ann, you do pray, don't you?

  Ann said almost furiously, 'Yes, of course. I pray every night that Randall will come back. Then she burst into wild tears.

  'There, my child, my child, murmured Swann. They had both risen. He spoke with a sense of achievement, as of one who has brought a difficult piece of navigation to a successful conclusion. He began to draw the sobbing Ann to rest against his shoulder.