An Unofficial rose

by Iris Murdoch

  He wished heartily that Mildred had not consulted him. She had now given him, against his will, a glimpse of the machinery, and the pattern which was emerging, with what she wished him to think of as necessity, was the more alarming since it was also so attractive. It was an involvement indeed, but an involvement which precluded any confrontation of himself and Randall. With a Randall spectacularly, scandalously and definitively withdrawn, a Randall sought, branded and gone, he might at last approach Ann in a straightforward fashion. By the extraordinary device, invented after all by Randall himself, of which his sister had told him, it could be quickly and cleanly done, what might otherwise drag out hideously, what was in any case truely in the end inevitable. It was just that he would have preferred not to know; and in a way that was almost superstitious he felt that by thus forcing the pace he might lose what by a slower course of nature might more securely have been his.

  Mildred was watching him, leaning back in the other comer of the window. She said slowly, 'Look, Felix. I might have let you off this. I might have advised Hugh as I pleased without telling you. But why should I let you off? Why shouldn't you take your share in this like the rest of us? Randall wants it. Hugh wants it. The result of it will be good. Neither you nor Ann are getting any younger. As for its having a nasty look, anything to do with Randall will have a nasty look. As far as I can see, all you object to is having to put even your little finger into the pie that you propose to eat.

  Felix frowned at her and got off the window-seat. He found a cigarette, crumpling Marie-Laure's letter in the process. His consolation of honour, which Mildred saw as cowardice, seemed indeed a little tarnished. To be involved or not to be involved now seemed equally unsound, and he had a disconcerting vision of new shades of shabbiness in his behaviour. Lighting the cigarette, he lifted his head ond saw outside upon the gravel the very dark blue Mercedes, waiting.

  He wondered if it was only an effect of Mildred's cleverness that it now seemed to him all one to be involved or not to be involved. For if it was indeed all one then he might as well do what he wanted; and with this thought there came suddenly a vision of himself as active, as able at last to do something Without secrecy, without indirectness, without dishonour. Then, dissolving all else, came the image of Ann: Ann, near, Ann attainable, Ann his. Darling, darling, darling Ann.

  He threw his cigarette into the fireplace and said to Mildred 'All right.

  'What does «all right» mean?

  'It means advise Hugh as you think fit and count me in.

  Mildred let out a sigh and got up. 'Thank you, Felix. She swept the debris of white flowers into the waste-paper basket.

  Something in her now strangely dejected acceptance of his surrender reminded him of its significance for her. He had, for a moment, rather lost sight of their conflict of interests. He said, 'I'm being selfish, of course.

  'Ah yes, she murmured, 'be selfish, be selfish, dear boy. It's your privilege after all, being younger and a man. It's still in front of you, the whole goddam business.

  He said, 'God knows what is for the best.

  'Doubtless. But now at least something will happen. Her head, thrown back to look up at her tall brother, she stroked her fluffy hair and caressed the soft skin beneath her eyes. She seemed now after the excitement of the argument, tired and flat, a frail old person cherishing herself.

  He felt sorry for her. But he was already breathing a larger air.

  Tonight he would say farewell to Marie-Laure. He said as dryly as he could so as not to offend her, 'Sorry, Mildred.

  'I shall take my chance. Who knows?

  'Quite, he said, as he drew her to sit down again and sat himself close beside her. With his new resolution, Mildred seemed suddenly eclipsed and the leadership of the conversation passed naturally to him. 'To begin with, Hugh may not take your advice.

  'He will.

  'And even if Hugh does take your advice, he may get nowhere with Emma.

  'He'll have an open field. And Hugh tries»

  'Randall may not clear off. And even if Randall does clear off, Ann may still not want to marry me.

  'Here we go again!

  'And even if Ann does want to marry me, she may feel she oughtn't to, on religious grounds, for instance.

  'And even if-?

  'And even if she doesn't feel she oughtn't to on religious grounds, she may feel she oughtn't to because of — Miranda.

  'To the devil with Miranda, said Mildred. 'You're getting neurotic about that child. You must take the brat in your stride.

  'She alarms me, said Felix. 'Who knows what is locked up inside a child, especially a child like that? She could oppose it passionately. She could refuse to let her father go.

  Mildred looked at him wearily. She said, 'If you want Ann enough, you'll get her. You will have justice, Felix, you will have justice. And don't then complain of your lot. I think this is my last piece of advice to you before you go over the top. And now I must go and deal with Humphrey.

  She went out into the darkening garden; and a little later Felix saw them Ann in Ann upon the lawn walking slowly up and down, an elderly pair of married people. As he smoked in the unlighted room cigarette after cigarette he heard the distant murmur of their voices. The sound went on without interruption through the long twilight and into the darkness.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  RANDALL pushed the cheque across the counter. The cashier, who was well trained, betrayed no interest or surprise. After all, most of their clients were men of substance. Randall, less well trained, could not control his face, which burst intermittently into nervous beaming as at the jerk of a string.

  The Tintoretto, sent promptly to Sotheby's, had been purchased by the National Gallery, who outbid several American dealers, to the satisfaction of the cultivated public. It had reached a suitably high figure. Randall received Hugh's cheque on the following day.

  Out in the street now, Randall walked along in a daze, fingering the paying-in slip in his pocket. He had a sense of liberation so total that he almost staggered. It was as if he had grown to some enormous size and at the same time everything solid, every resistance, had been removed. He floated in the air like a huge undirected balloon. He wanted nothing.

  He did not even want to see Lindsay. He had a luxurious, positively. Oriental, sense of having Lindsay stored away; but he did not want to see her. She had in any case, with a sort of pudeur, arranged to be out of London at the moment of the crime, like a great lady who delicately and fastidiously absents herself from a scene of violence which she has ordered. Violence it was, and Randall loved every moment of it.

  Looking back on his interview with his father, it seemed as if he had gone through it in a dream, as if he had inclined the scales in a moment of unconsciousness; and a certain fatalism, a sense of being carried by larger forces, had also prevented him from worrying about how his suggestion would be received and whether it would be adopted. The good news was conveyed laconicaIly, and the cheque with the briefest note in Hugh's neat writing, Dear Randall, please find enclosed — But what his father's emotions and opinions about the matter really were Randall no longer cared. He felt as if he had killed his father. The sensation was not unsatisfactory. He was himself the more increased.

  He jumped into a taxi and told the driver to take him to Jermyn Street. It was still early in the day. Arrived there, he went into a shop and ordered six shirts of very fine striped flannel. The assistants treated him with a special deference, almost with a special love. It was as if they knew. Everything is going to be different now, thought Randall, from now to the end of my life, everything is going to be quite different. He left the shop in a state of ecstasy verging on coma. Even the image of Lindsay was dissolved in a big golden consciousness, vast and annihilating as the beatific vision.

  He entered a pub, smiling uncontrollably, and absorbed two double whiskies into his nebulous floating being with as little consciousness of what was going on as an amoeba swallowing its prey. He began at last
to wonder where he would have lunch, and gained sufficient contact with his surroundings to enable the names of Prunier and Boulestin to flicker attractively before him. He decided on Boulestin and, found himself without apparent transition sitting in the murky and distinguished gloom of that establishment eating a magnificent piece of steak. The claret, which had appeared magically with the steak, was chateau-bottled. The waiters murmured about him like cherubim about the risen Lord.

  It was after lunch when he had been somehow transported to a Renoir landscape which was a heavenly version of Hyde Park that the curious idea came to him of going to call on Emma Sands. This idea brought him rocketing back to earth. But he stood thereupon like a giant. He would go and see Emma, he would go and triumph over Emma: and it would be the lifting of a burden, the breaking of a chain. The perfection of his condition lacked only this.

  Since Randall had set in train the events which were to bring to such a spectacular outcome the practical thinking recommended by Lindsay, a curious silence had fallen between the lovers. It was as if they were, during the count down holding their breath. And when Lindsay had announced to him that she was going to Leicester to pay her annual visit to her mother, no significant looks had been exchanged although they both knew perfectly well that they were entering a sacred and dangerous time. Randall had told her nothing f his plans, though he was well aware that his prophetic bearing, a certain glorious stricken look in the eyes, must sufficiently have proclaimed that he had plans. He had not heard from her since she left, except for a postcard, and he did not know whether she had seen the news about the Tintoretto in the paper, and whether if she had seen it she had understood it. Above all, he did not know if she had spoken to Emma.

  This doubt, once it came to him, was sobering and painful. He had, in the last days, during his symbolic assassination of his father, during his trance-like pursuit of the golden grail, rather lost sight of Emma. He had in the end lost sight even of Lindsay. Like the mystic who pursues the great other only to find at the last that there is only Himself, Randall, through the very labouring of his spirit, had entered a region of beautiful solitude. All the same Emma existed, and with what authority, with what horrible contingent power, he suddenly felt as he neared the raucous whirlpool of Hyde Park Comer. He felt himself in the mood for another assassination.

  There was a flower stall outside St George's hospital, and he paused there. Roses. The long-stemmed neatly rolled and elongated buds affected him sadly. They were more like City umbrellas than flowers. They were scarcely roses, those skinny degenerate objects, meanly and hastily produced by a coerced and cynical Nature for a quickly turning market, and made to perish unnoticed by bedsides, or to be twisted in the nervous hands of girls in long dresses. And Randall was for a second blind to the outer scene as he saw the hillside at Grayhallock turning purple and lilac and pink with an abundance of plump formal Centifolia and Damask. All the same, with a sort of gloomy relish, he bought a bunch of the poor unscented London roses; and then thought after all that they were like little girls' breasts, small and pointed. But that made him remember Miranda. He hailed a taxi.

  It was almost his usual tea-time, his usual time of going to see Emma and Lindsay'. His usual time, that is, in the old days. He was staggered, as one in the first days of a war, to feel how far off already those old days were. The old days were gone forever, and never again would he enter that drawing-room to find the two together, busy with their embroidery, and the tea-trolley thrusting its side into Emma's voluminous skirt. He thought of this with awe, with a certain curious sadness, and with ecstasy. Now it was war.

  As he rang Emma's bell he thought: but she will have to answer the door herself. And for a moment he felt a thrill of compassion which almost made his errand seem improper. But the next moment, when Emma stood before him, there was nothing but the old fear, attraction, puzzlement and hostility, which had once together composed a sort of enchantment, but which now rose up, grim, separate and unadorned.

  Emma did not seem especially surprised to see him. She said, 'Oh it's you, Randall, good, and shuffled back to the drawing-room, leaving a trail of Gauloise smoke behind her.

  Randall followed. Without Lindsay the room was empty, weird and he read as if for the first time that he had never seen Emma without Lindsay. He had never seen Emma alone.

  He laid the roses down on the little table with a gesture of donation. Emma had sat down in her usual chair and was regarding him with a lively yet sombre expression. She said, 'How very sweet of you, my dear. And how especially sweet of you to pity my abandoned state. Would you like some whisky? With my gaiety girl away I haven't had the heart for tea.

  Randall was penetrated again by a demoralizing sense of pity. He wondered whether he should drink her whisky or not. He decided that a murderer need not boggle at an error of taste, and set out two glasses. He thought, does she realize that it's the end?

  Emma went on chattily, 'I'm a dreadful old malade imaginaire, but I do feel really helpless without someone to look after me. I've been spoilt, of course.

  Randall poured out the whisky and brought it to her. As she was just taking another cigarette he produced his lighter and offered her the flame. Their hands touched, and he felt her eyes upon him, dark and inquisitive. Seeing her without Lindsay was somehow obscene, it was seeing her as bare and terrible: pitiable too but terrible. And he thought, she has brought me here, she has drawn me here, witch-like, out of London, it is she who has summoned me.

  Emma was watching him. Her frizzy hair had a tangled unkempt appearance as if she were becoming already a neglected old woman. Her skirt was covered with cigarette ash, and an overflowing ash-tray strewed cigarette ends at her feet. But her ferret nose pointed at Randall like a dagger and her mouth narrowed slowly with an irony and humour which were a menacing prelude to a smile.

  'I had such a charming postcard this morning, from her I mean, Emma continued. But she uttered the words absently, as one whose attention is elsewhere.

  Randall sat staring at her. He had just realized that he had not spoken since he arrived when Emma said, 'Well, Randall, has the cat got your tongue?

  Randall had intended to say to her at once: Lindsay is mine. But he found now that he had no words ready with which to make the disclosure. What had happened was not so easily named. He stammered a moment, and then said thickly, 'I had a postcard too. This was pathetic.

  Emma, who had been leaning forward to study him, relaxed back in her chair, and said, 'Perhaps you'd put those flowers in water that you so kindly brought. It makes me nervous to see flowers out of water. Doesn't it you?

  Randall got up quickly, seized the flowers and went into the kitchen. He sat down on a chair and covered his face. He decided that he was still drunk. It could not be just the effect of Emma, this tongue-tied state of confusion. His recent exercises in violence had evidently not trained him in the technique of destruction required on this occasion. He drank a lot of water and looked at his face in the mirror. He looked stupid. He found a vase and filled it and jammed the roses in. The miserable things were dying already. They were never intended to be more than buds. They probably had no insides. Then he saw Lindsay's coat hanging behind the door.

  This gave him a dreadful shock. He stared at it, guessing at meanings before his mind could formulate them. Would Lindsay have gone away without her coat? Yet he had a postcard. But had she really gone away? In this warm weather she might have gone away without her coat, she might have taken her light mackintosh. Then the nightmarish idea occurred to him that Lindsay was somewhere in the flat, hiding. She was somewhere in the flat, waiting to be produced gaily by Emma, like a girl whom an enchanter has changed into a doll. Or waiting, not to be produced. He put the flowers down.

  He emerged into the hall and looked about him. The drawing room was closed. He looked quickly into the dining-room, and then cautiously opened the door of Lindsay's bedroom. The room was empty. But there was a clock ticking, and with it a sense of presence. Randall
shivered and retreated. He took two paces to Emma's bedroom door and opened it. The big fatal room with the red expanse of the double bed and the ltalian light was quiet as before. There was no Lindsay, no angel poised in the corner. He was taking in its attentive emptiness when he realized that Emma was watching him from the' open door of the drawing-room.

  Randall returned Emma's look, closed the door, and went to fetch the roses. When he came back to the drawing-room she was settled again in her chair.

  'She isn't here, you know, said Emma softly.

  Randall could hardly bear it, that she should have witnessed his doubt. He felt at last a blind rage coming to his aid. He said clumsily, Of course I know!

  'Then why were you looking into my bedroom?

  'Look, Emma, said Randall. 'I've come to say that it's the end for you and Lindsay, I'm taking Lindsay away with me. He was not quite conscious of the words he used and wondered afterwards if he had really composed a sentence.

  'Yes? said Emma, as if expecting more.

  Had he made sense? He began to say it again 'I've come to say — but Emma interrupted him. 'But-didn't Lindsay tell you?

  'Tell me what? said Randall, spluttering. 'About our agreement.

  'What agreement?

  'About you.

  'Good Christ! said Randall. He got up and stood by his chair. He felt baffled and at bay and vaguely conscious that his scene was being taken from him. He said, 'There can't be any agreement. I mean, it's Lindsay and I who arrange things now, not Lindsay and you. That's certain.

  Emma looked at him coolly. 'You don't seem very certain of anything Just now. But don't worry, Randall. It'll be all right.

  'You're telling me not to worry? His voice rose.

  'You see, when I saw how things were at Grayhallock —“