An Unofficial rose

by Iris Murdoch

'Ah well, said' Felix. He inhaled his brandy. He said, 'Have you heard anything from Randall? I hope you don't mind my asking.

  'No. She looked blankly at the electric fire. For some reason Felix's presence was making her feel dreadfully sorry for herself.

  'I'm sorry I came rushing over last week, said Felix. 'I realized afterwards that it was impertinent and tiresome to intrude at such a time. But I was getting rather tired of cooling my heels at Seton Blaise.

  'I didn't even know you were there, said Ann. 'You should have come over sooner.

  Felix bowed his head, looked intently into his brandy, and muttered something about' didn't know if you wanted to see me'.

  'You know I'm always glad to see you, said Ann. The words, although true, had a casual lying ring. It was not like that. She was speaking as if she did not know things which she did know. She was talking to him as if he were just an old friend. But was he then not? Ann felt confused. She found herself thinking that through sheer tiredness and blankness she might kill something in the conversation, and she recalled Randall's taunts: she killed gaiety and spontaneity, she banished life. The spirit that says no. But why did it matter so, much now?

  'Ann, forgive me, said Felix, straightening up, 'but will you give Randall a divorce if he wants one?

  Ann took a quick breath. She was not ready for this directness. But she felt immediately more alert. 'He does want one, and if he goes on wanting it long enough I suppose I'll give it to him. But I'm not going to do anything about it at the moment.

  'Do you think Randall will come back?

  Ann felt the touch of something deadly. She wanted to cry out with wild tears, 'I don't know, I don't care! Catching herself she said coldly 'I really can't say, Felix, I've no idea. She added, in spite of herself, in a tone of bitter bad-tempered weariness, 'I've no idea. I've no idea. I've no idea.

  'Well, quite. I'm sorry, said Felix. He seemed discouraged.

  'I do apologize, said Ann. 'I'm in a rotten state of mind tonight. I'm not fit for human company. I think perhaps you'd better go now, Felix. She could not think why she felt so wretchedly nervous and cross. She didn't really want him to go.

  'Let me stay a little longer, he said gently.

  Ann replied with a weary gesture and went on staring at the fire.

  Her body felt strange.

  'I hope I didn't — offend you last week, he said suddenly.

  'No, when?

  'When I —’ he fell silent.

  She looked at him quickly. 'No, no, of course not. ; Ann thought, I must gather my wits. Something is going to happen. Something is happening.

  'Oh, Ann — he said. He put the brandy down on the floor. It was a declaration of love.

  Ann sat quite rigid for a moment. Then she turned her face full to his and they looked steadily into each other s eyes. Such gazing is crucial; and Ann did not even see the barrier until she had sped far beyond it. Nothing now, between them, could ever be the same again.

  'Well- she said, and looked away. Her cheeks were burning, her throat was painfully constricted and she shivered with something which was like terror.

  Felix leaned back in his chair, stretching out his long legs, rotating his brandy and looking at the ceiling. He said 'Mmm. It was scarcely an eloquent scene, but much happened in those minutes.

  'I'm sorry, he said at last. 'I really didn't mean to spring this on you tonight. It's damned unfair. Though I suppose you've known it in a way for some time.

  'Yes, said Ann. 'I've known, in a way. But knowing in a way was very unlike knowing like this. She felt a little sick and concentrated on the electric fire while Felix continued to look at the ceiling.

  Felix went on, 'You needn't pay any attention, of course. I mean, I don't want you to worry about this for a second. I'll have to ask your help over just one thing, and even that's not urgent. I'm still not quite fixed about my next job. If you feel later on — I'm not asking you anything now — that you'd prefer me off the scene I can clear off to India. But if you don't say that, I'm sure you know that I wouldn't ever be a trouble to you. I'm in love with you, and there's no point in saying I'm not. But I'm good at being kind and reasonable and quiet. If you thought even that I could be of any help to you, practical help, or as a friend, I'd be very glad, I'd be very very happy to be allowed to stay around. And of course I wouldn't expect anything. It will be months, years, before you get over what's just happened here. What- ever happens in the end. All I'm asking is to be allowed to see you a little and help you. I can't tell you, Ann, what a joy that would be to me. I'm glad, after all, that I've come out with this thing. And I can't help saying, please don't send me away. I assure you I expect nothing.

  He spoke with more feeling than she had ever heard him display.

  After his normal muteness, it was almost terrible to her to see him so moved, although he spoke quietly and with averted eyes. Yet the next moment she was wondering: why does he expect nothing?

  'I hardly know what to say, Felix, she said, wanting to slow things down while she got her thoughts in order. It was very important what she said to him.

  Felix, interpreting these words as some kind of negative, said hastily, 'Forgive me, forgive me. Let us drop the subject if you will. I should not have troubled you. And of course I can perfectly well go to India. Yes, really, it would be more sensible.

  'Felix I' said Ann. 'Stop it I You really exasperate me I'

  He gave her his eyes again, his wide' blue puzzled scrupulous soldier's eyes. He did not know what to make of her reaction. She hardly knew herself.

  'I'm sorry, she said, ready for nervous laughter or tears, 'but you are so foolish! Of course we must talk about it now that it's come up. And of course I don't want to send you to India. But I must see what I'm doing. Could you be quiet for a moment instead of bounding around like a frightened horse?

  Felix looked at her gratefully, entreatingly, and opened his hands towards her.

  'You put me in a difficult situation, she said. 'You know I'm very fond of you. What more can I say? I can't tell you either to stay or to go. Don't you see? Oh dear — she floundered. She must not let him see what she really felt. So there was something which she really felt? She added suddenly and as if irrelevantly, 'Randall might come back: tomorrow. It had a cold dreadful sound. She felt her face harden in response to Felix's changing look.

  'And if he came back tomorrow you'd take him back?

  'Of course.

  'And if he came back next year or the year after you'd take him back?

  Ann looked away from him and out of the window. She saw outside in the last light the figure of Penn examining the dashboard of the Mercedes. She must be very very careful what she said. 'Yes, yes, I expect so. That was the right answer, wasn't it?

  Ann went on hastily, 'I'm sorry to sound unsympathetic, Felix, but we mustn't be a pair of fools about this. I mean, you mustn't be a fool. This — about me — is a sort of nonsense. You must — attach yourself to someone younger, to someone — free. She almost choked on the word. 'There was a girl, wasn't there, a French girl? Mildred said something about a girl.

  'There was a girl, said Felix. He hated this bit. 'There was a girl I was fond of in Singapore. But that's over and it wasn't important. Ann, please, I don't want to trouble you at all, but don't just thrust me aside like this. I've been in love with you for years, and it's not a sort of nonsense. I don't want to have to roar at you to convince you, but I'm prepared to roar if necessary.

  '. What's her name?

  'The Singapore girl? Marie-Laure. Marie-Laure Auboyer. But really, Ann —’

  'Have you got a picture of her?

  'Yes, but look here —’

  'Could I see it?

  'I haven't got it with me I' said Felix, his voice rising. 'But I tell you that's all over I' Then he murmured' Sorry.

  What am I saying? thought Ann. Does he realize I'm jealous? She put her hand to her head. She had momentarily lost her balance. She said as calmly as she could, 'Felix, you
really had better go now. I'm so tired and you startled me and I'm probably being stupid. We are old friends, and I certainly don't want to send you away, but I don't exactly want to «keep» you either if that means any sort of encouragement. Forgive me.

  'I startled you —’ he said. 'I'm a brute. I think I will stay in England, if you don't mind. Perhaps I ought just to have waited without telling you I was waiting. But I assure you I'm not at all encouraged. I hope nothing and I expect nothing. I only ask you to let me see you a little and help you a little. I want the joy of serving you, even if it only lasts for a while. I want it, and I feel that because I love you I have a kind of right to it.

  They both got up and stood rather stiffly beside their chairs. It was the moment of departure. Ann felt a strange heaviness of the limbs. It was as if for a little time she had been separated from her body and had rejoined it to find that it had lived, it had changed, in the interim. 'Perhaps it had been inhabited by an angel. She shivered again as at the light touch of some image, some thought. What was it? Then she realized that it was, absent from her for so long, the idea of happiness. No wonder she had not recognized it.

  Felix moved after her towards the door. Then they stopped and stared at each other. Ann said to herself, and the thoughts came quite clearly, Felix assumes it may be years before I get over Randall, years before I am ready to fall in love again. But I am ready to fall in love again now.

  It was not that she had suddenly ceased to love Randall. But she was certainly able now, if she relaxed her grip for a moment, to fall in love with Felix. She felt a terrible weakness at the knees. Did love really come upon one like this? Yet this love had been long enough in preparation. Was this falling in love? It was certainly falling. Falling. Falling. She held on to the back of a chair. As Felix inclined his head and began to move on in the direction of the door she realized with anguish that he was going to go without kissing her.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  PENN GRAHAM found the behaviour of his English relations really incomprehensible. His uncle Randall had gone off publicly with another woman. Yet everyone was behaving quite calmly and cheerfully as if nothing had happened. Even Miranda, though restless and rather sulky, was scarcely more so than usual. Penn knew that if his own parents had parted he would have run mad.

  They were over at Seton Blaise. Humphrey, Mildred and Felix were all in evidence, and Ann had come over with Miranda and himself. They had had a bonzer lunch with a butler waiting, and now they were walking in the chestnut grove which lay between the loop of the river and the little lake. Penn, who was walking by himself, could see the pale blue water between the trunks of the trees. It was a beautiful day, and a shifting yellowish green fell in elliptical coins of light through the gently moving branches. Penn was miserable.

  His first feeling on realizing that he was in love with Miranda was a certain sense of achievement. He too, Penn Graham, was suffering from that famous ailment; and it did not take him long to realize that he had it in a very acute and probably quite exceptional form. Since then he had, he felt, lived through the whole history of love, and the dialectic of his suffering seemed to have spanned, in a few weeks, the whole of human experience. He began with a sense of exhilaration and with a pure unquestioning delight in the sheer existence of the beloved object. That Miranda should be: that was enough of joy. He contemplated, lying in bed that night, her marvellous beauty, her grace, her cleverness, her wit, her impish sharpness, and that sweet childishness which still hung like a veil upon her qualities of a lovely girl. Turning over and burying his face in the pillow he groaned with ecstasy and fell into a sleep of happiness.

  The next morning to which he woke with an undifferentiated sense of bliss, produced however, as it wore on, a state of mind somewhat less solipsistic. Penn strayed forth into the world on that morning as into the Garden of Eden. He was a new man. A first man. A man. And since he had been made new it seemed to him somehow deeply evident that Miranda had been made new as well, and he wandered towards her through a rose-entangled forest full of sweet airs that gave delight and hurt not. He felt positively magnetic with the power of love, and did not doubt that since he loved Miranda so much he would be able irresistibly to draw her to him.

  What this conjunction would, exactly, consist in was less clear to him nor did he give it thought. He did not avert his attention from the problem of sexual desire, the problem simply did not exist for him. His image of Miranda rose like a column of flame from the pure re-created form of his new life, and he and she existed in a golden haze of love and worship and diffused desire. And in so far as he precisely pictured himself at all as keeping company with the new Miranda, he saw them wandering eternally hand in hand in some flower-scattered field of bliss.

  He absented himself from breakfast that morning, partly because he felt that if he ate anything he would be sick, and partly because he wanted to see Miranda in a more spiritual atmosphere than that induced by questions about eggs and cornflakes. He wandered instead upon the lawn, waiting for her to come out, as she always did after breakfast, to see if her hedgehogs had eaten up their bread and milk in the night. When she did appear he approached her, spoke to her, followed her. She was, as usual, detached and impish, full of the rather malicious gaiety which had confounded Penn from the first; and in the midst of the acute sensations occasioned by her presence Penn was forced to suspect that she was still the unregenerate old Miranda.

  Penn shook himself at this point and reproached himself. He had learnt, he told himself, an important lesson. The lover readily imagines that he and his mistress are one. He feels he has love enough for both and that his loving will can swathe the two of them together like twin nuts in a shell. But what one loves is, after all, another human being, a person with other interests, other pains, in whose world one is oneself an object among others. While Penn glided after her in tune with the music of the spheres, Miranda was more concerned about the hedgehogs and about whether Hatfield had perhaps come to steal their milk, a question upon which she condescended to ask Penn's opinion. That she so consulted him disconcerted him at first but later delighted him. He must learn, he realized, to live in the real world with Miranda.

  The real world however was a thorny place. Penn at this stage pictured himself somewhat as a disciple of Courtly Love. He imagined himself Miranda's slave, devoted to her service, running errands for her or, preferably, rescuing her from terrible dangers. And he envisaged this too, though less clearly, as a process which would transform Miranda, which would, in short, make her love him. His desert, he felt, was infinite and must in time be evident and then compelling. Service would call forth love and the new Miranda would arise, an apotheosis of the sweetness and power which he so powerfully divined as hidden within the puckish gamine who, alas, sometimes enjoyed teasing and tormenting him.

  But the process did not work out quite like that. At least, as Penn told himself, the early stages did not. Miranda very quickly guessed what was the matter with him. It would have been difficult not to. And when she had guessed, the tormenting and the teasing got worse. And the more she teased him the more owlish and donkey-like he felt himself becoming. He could not toss back witty remarks, he could not fence with her, he could only, with patient stupid smiles, endure the continual piercing of her wit. The injustice of the situation tortured Penn. There was within him so much that was marvellous. If he could, even for a short while, have made Miranda quiet, he could have unfolded a seriousness and an eloquence that must have impressed her. He could have talked deeply to her. But at the superficial level at which she continually disported herself he was tongue-tied.

  He was made very miserable by this situation, yet one inestimable blessing kept him from despair, and that was the almost continual company of his beloved. The blessed German measles quarantine turned up just at the right moment, and he could now see her every day and indeed most of the day if he dared to brave her annoyance by pursuing her. He did not cease to hope that he would make her love him;
and he noted with a recurrent joy that if ever, wounded by some particularly malicious or irritable sally, he wandered away from her by himself, she would after a little time come to find him. She came, it seemed, merely to torment him more, but she came: and he could sometimes persuade himself that he loved the torment.

  During all this time Penn had not of course said anything about love to Miranda. It was not only that he was not able to find, in the sparkling play of her conversation, any place for his more solemn words: he was also restrained by certain scruples. She was, after all, very young. It was easy to forget this most of the time, so ready and so sophisticated was her mastery of him. He never for a second questioned that she was far cleverer than he was. But she was younger.

  And even apart from this, a sort of shame possessed him at the thought of uttering words about love. The hidden eloquence which he felt himself so marvellously to possess was not exactly about that. He felt able to tell Miranda the wonders of the universe and the secrets of the seas but not exactly to say in words that he was in love with her; Miranda was often out of temper; and at these times Penn suffered most. It was as if, almost absent-mindedly, she were taking it out of him because of pains and troubles of her own of which she would tell him nothing. Penn told himself that he must make allowances. He knew that Miranda was devoted to her father; and he conjectured that it must have been torture to her to see Randall gradually withdrawing from Grayhallock. All the same, it was difficult sometimes to be patient with her, and he wondered if perhaps his whole approach was wrong. It was the first time that he had thought explicitly about strategy, and he felt, at the first touch of the idea, ashamed, as if he were profaning something innocent. Miranda gave him no peace, however, and began at this time literally to pinch him. She would come suddenly up behind him, seize the skin of his Ann or some other part of him between her little pincer-like fingers, and squeeze as hard as she could. Penn became covered with bruises. At first he was pleased and excited by this treatment. But Miranda put so much malice into the pinches and was so unpleasant if he touched her in response even so far as to push her off; that this new policy soon reduced him to a state of black almost revengeful agitation. He began to see her as a demon; and deep within him there was some darkness that gave answer.