A Fairly Honourable Defeat

by Iris Murdoch

  ‘Oh Morgan. I do wish it could have been all right. Julius is so much more the kind of person—’

  ‘I think we do live through each other’s consciousness, even if painfully. There must be inwardness and spirit—and wit and grace and style—’

  ‘I’m sure you ought to eat something, darling. We were going to have a cold supper—’

  ‘Oh do stop saying that. You eat if you want to. I know I’m drunk but it’s doing me good. I have so much to tell you.’

  ‘When did you last write to Tallis?’

  ‘Oh ages ago. Near the start. I wrote saying I was going to stay with Julius.’

  ‘And Tallis replied?’

  ‘He wrote a very kind understanding letter, as you can imagine, thanking me for being so frank, and if I changed my mind etc. etc. etc. God!’

  ‘And did he write again?’

  ‘Yes. He wrote several rather painstaking letters—they were like exercises really—just describing what he was doing and talking about the political situation. Christ! And mentioning in passing that he still loved me. The letters made me feel so sick I started tearing them up without even opening the envelopes. I didn’t reply of course. Then he stopped writing. He never could write letters. ’

  ‘There’s something awfully flat about Tallis. I can imagine those letters.’

  ‘You know, it’s a pity Tallis just missed being in the war. It might have given him a shot of ordinary natural toughness.’

  ‘He does rather tiptoe about.’

  ‘Sometimes he seemed to me almost like an apparition. And there’s something fey about him, as if he attracts ghosts or something. Hilda, I must become free. It’s not just Tallis.’

  ‘You must get over Julius.’

  ‘I’ll probably never get over Julius, well yes I will, but I must learn to live. Oh Hilda, it was so terrible when his will just sent me away. I knew it was finished. And he put the burden of going onto me. Yet nothing was said. Sorry to talk so, Hilda. It’s been all bottled up. I haven’t talked properly to anyone, not since the last good days with Julius. And I haven’t mentioned Tallis’s name for a year. Hilda, have you got a picture of Tallis anywhere handy? I can see those eyes. I can see what you used to call his rosebud mouth. But I can’t see his whole face. I’ve forgotten what he looks like.’

  ‘Wait a minute.’

  Left alone for a moment Morgan dabbled her hand in the bowl of melted ice cubes. The water was warm. She lifted her wet fingers and felt the pulse beating in her closed eyes. The great storms of tears, when would they cease?

  ‘Here you are, Morgan. You remember, that’s the one that Rupert took at the cottage.’

  Morgan reached out for the photo. She looked at it in silence for quite a long time. Then she tore the photograph into small pieces and handed the pieces to Hilda.

  ‘Why did you do that?’

  ‘I’d forgotten what he looked like.’

  ‘But why? Hate, love, fear—?’

  ‘How should I know? I think I’ll rest for a while. Well no, I’ll have a bath first. And if you could let me have a sandwich or something, no nothing much, I should be sick. Why it’s getting darker, it must be evening. I’ve lost all sense of time.’

  ‘I’ll bring you sandwiches and coffee. Have your bath. I think you should go to bed early. And don’t worry about anything. Neither Julius nor Tallis will come to bother you. You must rest and feel quite safe.’

  ‘You always made me feel safe.’

  ‘You remember when we were in trouble when we were children we used to say, “Hang out our banners on the outward wall”?’

  ‘You always made me feel brave too. I’m afraid my banners are in tatters. How long is Julius staying in London?’

  ‘I don’t know, my dear.’

  ‘Hilda, it is inconceivable, isn’t it, that those two should meet each other?’

  ‘Julius and Tallis? I don’t know about inconceivable, but it’s extremely unlikely. I can’t see anyone introducing them! And I don’t imagine they’ll look each other up!’

  ‘Yes, yes, it is terribly unlikely, isn’t it. Somehow I couldn’t bear it if they met. It would be frightful, destructive, like some huge catastrophe in outer space.’

  ‘Don’t fear it, sweetheart, it won’t happen.’

  ‘Hilda, don’t go yet. Oh Hilda darling, I do love you.’

  Morgan slid off the bed onto the floor and embraced Hilda’s knees, putting her head into her lap. She began to sob again, wetting her sister’s skirt with her tears. The fragments of the photograph were scattered round about as Hilda, her own tears rising, caressed the shuddering dark head.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ‘WHAT A RUBBISHY ARRANGEMENT SEX IS,’ said Leonard Browne. ‘And I don’t just mean the machinery of it, though that’s stupid enough in all conscience. A projection upon one body is laboriously inserted into a hole in another. It’s the invention of a mere mechanic, and a very fumbling and unimaginative one at that. I remember when someone told me about it at school I simply didn’t believe him, I thought it couldn’t turn out to be something so totally grotesque. Later on when I had more of a stake in it I persuaded myself otherwise. But now that it’s all past and done with I can see it again for what it is, a pitiful awkward ugly inefficient piece of fleshy mechanism. And consider flesh too, if it comes to that. Who could have dreamed up such stuff? It’s flabby and it stinks as often as not or it bulges and develops knobs and is covered with horrible hair and blotches. The internal combustion engine is at least more efficient or take the piston rods on a locomotive and it’s quite easy to oil them too. While keeping flesh in decent condition is almost impossible even leaving aside the obscene process of ageing and the fact that half the world starves. What a planet. And take eating, if you’re lucky enough to do any. Stuffing pieces of dead animals into a hole in your face. Then munch, munch, munch. If there’s anybody watching they must be dying of laughter. And the shape of the human body. Who but a thoroughly incompetent craftsman or else some sort of practical joker could have invented this sort of moon on two sticks? Legs are a bad joke. Twinkle, twinkle, twinkle. However, as I was about to observe, sex is a rubbishy invention even apart from this absurd up it goes and in it goes. It’s supposed to be something to do with love, at least that’s the legend, but love is just a comforting myth and even if it wasn’t it couldn’t possibly have any connection with sex. We don’t mix up love with eating do we? Or with farting or hiccuping or blowing one’s nose? Or with breathing? Or with the circulation of the blood or the operation of the liver? Then why connect it with our curious impulse to shove parts of ourselves inside other people, or with our in some ways equally curious impulse to thrust our damp evil-smelling mouths and decaying teeth up against other such unsavoury gluey orifices in other bodies? Answer me that, dear lady.’

  ‘Is Tallis at home?’ said Hilda.

  ‘I know not, dear lady, I know not and neither do I care. It would be difficult indeed to determine which is the stupider, your son or mine. Mine probably. He still imagines that his petty agitations and solemnities make some kind of difference to this stinking dung heap. He’s eaten up with vanity, always busy making pronouncements, disapproving of this, condemning that. He can strut about and sit on his piffling committees and write his piffling manifestos, but the human kind is just an animal that lifts a sad eye and the plough goes over it. Just time to cast a glance upward and then crunch. It’s not worth troubling about. Take me for instance. I’ve been expendable all my life, what has my life been? I didn’t love my parents, I didn’t love my wife, I didn’t like my job, I had no talents and no fun. I’ve got a son who’s half-witted and hates my guts. When my wife left me for another man I couldn’t stop worrying in case she was happier with him than she was with me. Well, she couldn’t have been unhappier. I had no peace of mind about her until she was dead. Oh that was splendid news. And even then I couldn’t stop wishing her retrospective catastrophes. Does something like me deserve to exist? No. But that’s no
t the point. I didn’t ask to exist, did I? Why did this space in the universe have to be filled with a lump of smelly flesh attached to a guttering intelligence? You don’t have to tell me it would be cleaner and more wholesome if it weren’t. The point is, has the universe been just to me? No, it has not. If I was forced to exist I ought to have had something in return, oughtn’t I? I don’t mean anything vulgar like happiness. I daresay that’s another myth anyhow. But a little grain of significance, as tiny as a pearl or a droplet of water or a mite of dust that you could hardly see as it settled on the tip of your finger—’

  ‘You’ll get psittacosis from feeding those pigeons,’ said Hilda.

  ‘One gets psittacosis from parrots, dear lady.’

  ‘It was called psittacosis because people thought you could only get it from parrots, but in fact you can get it from any bird. Pigeons are notorious carriers of psittacosis.’

  ‘You don’t say,’ said Leonard. ‘Well, well. I’ve got arthritis and cystitis and colitis and fibrositis and hay fever and chronic catarrh and varicose veins and Ménière’s disease, and now I shall have psittacosis as well. I suppose you are going to visit your loathsome idle spineless ill-mannered brat of an offspring. Imagine it is inconceivable that you should have covered the distance between your expensive and salubrious neighbourhood and this swinish sink of misery and vice with any idea of passing the time of day with me. I ask myself and I answer. Inconceivable.’

  Leonard was sitting on a wooden bench in the sun in the churchyard of St Luke’s church, his stick leaning against his thigh and a now almost empty bag containing fragments of bread clutched against his waistcoat. Round about him on the ground and on the seat a surging mass of blue pigeons scrambled and clawed, climbing upon each other’s backs as they tussled without dignity for the crumbs. Soft wings beat fussily and hard little eyes peered and glittered. A pigeon perched on Leonard’s knee was now eating out of the bag. A pigeon sat upon either shoulder and another one upon his head. Leonard, who did not resemble his son, was tall and thin with watery dark eyes, a large skull and a small jaw. He still had quite a lot of stringy white hair round a bald spot. His face was flabby and pouchy, composed of little layers of flesh like pallid fungus, very lightly sketched over with wrinkles. He had no teeth and would not wear false ones, and this besides affecting his enunciation gave him a peculiar appearance when he spoke, since he used his lips very vigorously, thrusting them forward and then drawing them back to reveal tracts of moist red gum, as if his mouth were a sea anemone trying to turn itself inside out. He affected an old-fashioned mode of dress and always wore a stiff collar and a waistcoat and a watch and chain. His clothes however were filthy.

  Hilda, who had witnessed the scene with the pigeons before, stood watching it with some amusement, though she was feeling in an odd frame of mind, worried about Peter and curiously exalted about Morgan. She hoped to avoid seeing Tallis and so to avoid the occasion of a sort of lie. Rupert had telephoned from the office to say that Axel had agreed not to mention Morgan’s return for the present.

  ‘I did come to see Peter,’ said Hilda, ‘but I didn’t forget you. Here’s a new matchbox for you. At least I hope it’s a new one. Rupert brought it back from his last trip to Brussels.’

  Leonard accepted the matchbox with dignity and inspected it. ‘Yes. A good format dating from about nineteen hundred. A pretty one and in sound condition. Pray thank your noble husband for recalling the existence of this pitiful piece of flotsam and jetsam. My arthritis is bad today. I have a shooting pain at the base of my spine and a peculiarly insidious ache in my thigh. I am not long for this world.’

  ‘How has Peter been lately?’ asked Hilda. ‘Anything special?’

  ‘He rejects the universe. That at least we have in common. Only I reject it with screams of rage standing up on my two feet, while he rejects it by falling over backwards onto his bed and lying there limp and stupefied.’

  ‘You don’t think he’s taking drugs, do you?’

  ‘I don’t know, dear lady. You must ask my idiot son. Incapable no doubt, quite apart from the fact that his wife has understandably left him for another, of procreating children of his own, he fusses round your bratling like an old hen.’

  ‘Well, Leonard, it’s been nice to see you.’

  ‘Surely you exaggerate.’

  ‘And I must be getting on now to see Peter. Or are you coming back to the house and we could walk there together?’

  ‘Never fear, never fear. I am fixed here until the hour of luncheon engaged in the burdensome task of passing the time. Ten minutes passed scarcely noticed as we conversed. The next ten will doubtless be correspondingly distended. And then the next ten. And thus laboriously we draw towards the hour and moment of our death.’

  ‘I must go, Leonard dear.’

  ‘It’s all a myth, dear lady. Love, happiness. They can’t do it, they can’t do it. It all went wrong from the start.’

  ‘I think a few people love each other, Leonard, and there are some pleasant moments. I’ve enjoyed talking to you and seeing you feed the pigeons.’

  ‘You lie. Don’t forget to tell your husband it all went wrong from the start. He can put that in his book.’

  ‘I’ll tell him. Cheerio then, Leonard.’

  Hilda turned away and hurried across the road. By the time she reached the opposite pavement she had forgotten Leonard’s existence. The vague optimism which she had felt last night about Peter had entirely vanished. The impact of Morgan’s return, more violent than anything that she had expected, had laid her soul open to fears. And when the prospect of meeting Peter was close it was now always rather alarming.

  The door was still slightly off its hinges and lurched back, grinding along the floor. It only needed five minutes’ work with a screwdriver. When Hilda had mentioned the door to Tallis once he had said that it was never locked at night as if this was an answer. Hilda went in, tugged and lifted the door back into its place, and found herself in semi-darkness. The indescribably horrible smell of the house assailed her. The smell was really mysteriously unpleasant. Hilda had never experienced anything quite like it. Old dirty lodging houses usually have a stale odour, stale sweat, stale food, stale urine and the dark brooding smell of dirt. The smell in Tallis’s house was fresh and bitter and at the same time nauseating. Hilda wondered if it were not caused by some extremely recherché form of dry rot. Or possibly by some insects too loathsome to think of. She shuddered and listened. Silence. She pushed open the kitchen door.

  There was no one in the kitchen, which was a relief. When Tallis was at home he was usually in the kitchen during the day, where he worked at the big kitchen table. In fact an open notebook and several well-worn and learned-looking volumes from the London Library were lying about on the table together with stained newspapers, jam-smeared plates, brown-rimmed tea cups and a milk bottle half full of solidified sour milk. Hilda moved over to the table and looked at the notebook. At the top of the empty pages in Tallis’s rather large hand was written In my last lecture I.

  Hilda inspected the kitchen. It looked much as usual. The familiar group of empty beer bottles growing cobwebs. About twenty more unwashed milk bottles yellow with varying quantities of sour milk. A sagging wickerwork chair and two upright chairs with very slippery grey upholstered seats. The window, which gave onto a brick wall, was spotty with grime, admitting light but concealing the weather and the time of day. The sink was piled with leaning towers of dirty dishes. The draining board was littered with empty tins and open pots of jam full of dead or dying wasps. A bin, crammed to overflowing, stood open to reveal a rotting coagulated mass of organic material crawling with flies. The dresser was covered in a layer, about a foot high, of miscellaneous oddments: books, papers, string, letters, knives, scissors, elastic bands, blunt pencils, broken biros, empty ink bottles, empty cigarette packets and lumps of old hard stale cheese. The floor was not only filthy but greasy and sticky and made a sucking sound as Hilda lifted her feet. She resisted her usua
l impulse to start washing up straightaway. She did not want to dally in case Tallis returned. And the tap gave no hot water and the gas stove would take at least ten minutes to boil a kettle.

  Hilda mounted the stairs feeling a bit sick inside and knocked on Peter’s door. She entered on his murmur. Peter was reposing on his bed as usual, propped up against a grey mound of pillows, dressed in shirt and trousers, barefoot. His hands were clasped upon his breast and his eyes were dreamy. Peter was a good-looking boy, very blond like his father, and inclined to plumpness in the face. He had a good straight nose and long intelligent eyes of bright blue which gave him, possibly through some reminiscence of the youthful Napoleon, the look of a young soldier. He looks like a leader, Hilda thought, surveying the limp form of her son with tenderness and exasperation. He greeted his mother with a yawn and with an agitation of his fingers, his hands remaining clasped.

  ‘Is Tallis in the house?’ said Hilda.

  ‘Tallis is doubtless somewhere if he is still alive. He is not here.’

  ‘You haven’t any reason to think he’s not still alive, have you?’

  ‘None whatsoever.’

  ‘You got my note?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Peter, the scene in the kitchen is revolting. Why don’t you at least wash up?’

  ‘I’ll think about it.’

  ‘And I think you ought to fix the front door. All you need is a screwdriver. Isn’t there a screwdriver somewhere in the house? I thought I saw one on the dresser.’

  ‘You might have done.’

  ‘And I think you ought to lock that door at night.’

  ‘The people upstairs come in and out at all hours.’

  ‘Why can’t they use latch keys like ordinary Christians?’

  ‘They aren’t Christians they’re Muslims. And they would lose their latch keys and knock us up.’

  Hilda sighed. She sat down rather carefully on the edge of the chair. The seat was a snare. Reflected sunshine lighted up the room revealing its nakedness. Hilda shuddered. A stripped room is a place of fear. Apart from Peter’s iron bedstead and the chair there was little furniture. There was a large cardboard box full of old shoes—not Peter’s—and pieces of rope and what appeared to be leather belts. A dressing table from which the mirror had been unscrewed was littered with objects. The floor was of unstained wooden planks, grainy with dirt, and the whitish walls were scrawled over with spidery cracks and lightly festooned with cobwebs.