A Fairly Honourable Defeat

by Iris Murdoch

  There was a loud crash and a wail from Hilda. Peter had hurled his glass across the pool where it broke into fragments against the farther edge. Peter turned and disappeared through the drawing room doors, banging them behind him. Hilda struggled with the doors and followed him in. Morgan poured herself out another drink. She said, ‘Well, well, well.’

  Rupert walked round the pool and started picking up pieces of glass from the flagstones.

  ‘I’m very sorry, Rupert,’ said Axel.

  ‘That’s all right,’ said Rupert. ‘It was Peter’s fault. I simply don’t understand that boy.’

  ‘Have a drink, Rupert,’ said Morgan. ‘You need one.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘It wasn’t Peter’s fault,’ said Axel. ‘At least not entirely. And I ought not to have lost my temper. The fact is he said something that was true and it upset me extremely.’

  ‘You don’t mean—?’ said Morgan.

  ‘I probably ought to tell everyone in Whitehall. Only I’m not going to. Simon, we’re leaving. I do apologize, Rupert.’

  Axel marched away and through the French windows. Simon said ‘Oh dear, oh dear’ and was about to follow him when Morgan said ‘Wait’. She turned him round by the shoulders and very carefully took off the crown of roses and laid it down on the table. Then she kissed him lingeringly upon the cheek. ‘Don’t worry, Simon.’ Simon said ‘Darling!’, fluttered his hands and ran after Axel. Rupert sat down.

  ‘Cheer up, Rupert,’ said Morgan. She touched his hair. ‘Young people are terribly cruel. But it’s because they don’t know. I think young people really don’t know how wretched and vulnerable every human heart really is.’

  ‘Hilda and I have failed,’ said Rupert.

  ‘Nonsense. It’s just that you’re probably the last people who can help Peter just at the moment.’

  ‘Will you have a try, Morgan?’ said Rupert. ‘Will you really have a try, really take him on? I’m sure you could get through to him.’

  ‘Of course I’ll try,’ said Morgan. ‘After all I’m a professional tamer of adolescents! I should be able to communicate with young Peter.’

  ‘Bless you—’

  ‘I think I’ll just see what’s going on inside, if you don’t mind. I’m afraid I was rather disgracefully fascinated by the whole scene. I adore violence!’ She left him and went cat-like into the house, her lips moist, her eyes bright with interest.

  Rupert put his head in his hands. His open eyes could see through his fingers glittering fragments of glass upon the bottom of the pool. He felt ready to weep. The violence had hurt him, Peter’s words, Axel’s words. Perhaps Axel was right about Peter’s refusal to compete. In any case, Rupert felt deeply, it was somehow all his own fault. Calm of mind, he thought, calm of mind. If only he could be wise. He had been far too stiff with Peter all along. He ought not to have tried to admonish him this evening. He should have embraced his son, nothing else really mattered except that indubitable show of love. But a show of love was something for which Rupert was entirely untrained. He did not even know how to lay his hand on Peter’s arm without the gesture seeming artificial. How could he possibly convey to his son the tenderness with which his heart was now so over-brimming that it stretched his bosom with a physical pain? Love, love was the key. Suppose he were to write Peter a letter. Yet what kind of letter would serve his turn and would not his pen just stiffen in his hand? ‘My dear Peter, I should like you to know—’ Love was the key. But Rupert knew too that his whole training, the whole of the society which kept him so stiffly upright and so patently and pre-eminently successful, had deprived him gradually of the direct language of love. When he needed gestures, strong impetuous movements to overturn barriers, he found himself paralysed and cold. There is a path, he said to himself, because for love there is always one. But for him it was a mountain path with many twists and turns.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  ‘MRS BROWNE!’ said Julius.

  He opened the door a little wider and Morgan walked into the flat.

  ‘I’m sorry to arrive unannounced,’ she said. ‘I hoped I’d find you in. So this is where you live?’

  She began to look around. The flat was small but richly furnished. A tiny bedroom and bathroom, a rather larger sitting room, a well appointed kitchen with a huge refrigerator. The sitting room had a very thick dark yellow Indian carpet. Low fitted bookshelves on either side of the electric fire supported a pair of greeny yellow Chinese horses which looked as if they were genuine T’ang. Sofa and chairs were covered in fine light-brown velvet and scattered with petit-point rose-embroidered cushions. Modern abstract paintings of orange shapes adorned the walls. A glass-topped table with a green marble cigarette box and a neat pile of scientific periodicals. The sun glowed in a veil of white nylon at the window between great looped back folds of darker stuff. Double glazing muted the roar of Brook Street.

  ‘Mmm. Posh,’ said Morgan. She turned to survey Julius.

  Julius was unsmiling. He was not frowning. His face expressed a slightly distracted weariness. He looked at his watch. ‘What did you want, Mrs Browne?’

  ‘To see you. Is that strange?’

  ‘Your unexpected arrival does not move me to speculation. I have to go out very shortly, I am afraid.’

  ‘Well, let me stay until you go. Won’t you offer me a drink?’

  Julius reflected. ‘No.’

  ‘You aren’t very polite, Professor King. In that case I shall have to find one for myself.’

  Morgan went into the kitchen. She looked into several cupboards and then into the refrigerator. There were some bottles of Danish lager. Further search revealed nothing stronger, so she took a bottle opener from the dresser and poured herself out a glass of lager. She tasted it. It was unfriendly and very cold. She hated lager. She went back to the sitting room where Julius, who had not followed her, was sitting on the sofa reading The Times.

  ‘May I give you some lager, Julius?’

  ‘No thank you.’

  ‘Haven’t you got any whisky in the house?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You always used to have Bourbon.’

  He looked at her in silence and then tossed The Times aside. ‘You presumably had some special purpose in coming here, something you wished to say perhaps? Could you say it please?’

  She stood before him holding her glass. She looked at the long mouth and the violet-brown eyes and the weird pallid hair. ‘My God, Julius, you are beautiful!’

  He got up and went to the window. ‘Did you come here to tell me so?’

  ‘Yes. Why not? Mayn’t I tell you?’

  Julius turned back to her. ‘If you knew, my dear Mrs Browne, how extremely repellent I find the simpering coy manner which you have thought fit to put on you would doubtless select some other act.’

  Morgan put her glass down on the table. ‘I am incapable of simpering! ’

  ‘I have little time. Say what you want to say, please.’

  ‘I love you, Julius.’

  He sighed and looked at his watch again. ‘Is that all?’

  ‘Isn’t it a great deal? Oh Julius, please listen to me. Since I left you I’ve been lost and crazy. But I haven’t stopped thinking about you for a single second. I’ve breathed you and eaten you and drunk you and wept you. Perhaps I needed to leave you for a while just to find out how much you meant to me. You drove me away, you know you did. You were trying to test me, and I seemed to fail. But, Julius, I haven’t really failed. Oh if you only knew how I’ve suffered, how I’ve cried and cried in awful hotel bedrooms and talked to you endlessly in my heart. Your absence has clung to my side like an animal devouring my entrails. I’ve wanted you minute after minute halfway across the world. And I’ve come to realize it now, that you’re the most important thing that has ever happened to me, you’re the only important thing that has ever happened to me, and if I’m to live with the truth I must live with this for the rest of my days even if it burns me, even if it kills me!’

&
nbsp; Morgan was shaking the table. The tumbler of lager jumped and rattled upon the glass surface. Julius took it off the table and placed it carefully on top of the bookshelves beside one of the horses. ‘Well?’

  ‘What do you mean “Well?” Julius, I love you and I need you. I thought that I loved you over there in South Carolina. I was completely carried away, I was laid low by that love, you saw that, you had the evidence of all your senses. I was yours, yours, yours. But now it seems to me that that was just a beginning, a shadow. I love you now a thousand times more, a thousand times better. Julius, I could be your slave.’

  ‘I don’t want a slave.’

  ‘Julius, please. I only ask you not to drive me away. I must see you. Just let me see you. We could learn about each other again. And if you want to suffer I could suffer. Only let me do so with you, in your sight, and not alone, not alone any more—’

  ‘I don’t want you to suffer. Your sensations no longer interest me.’

  ‘You must want me to suffer or you wouldn’t behave in this way.’

  ‘Please try to think more clearly.’ He spoke in a quiet precise voice, not looking at her, pulling aside the pearly nylon curtains and looking down at the moving lines of cars in sunny Brook Street below. ‘I did not ask you to come here. I did not ask you to come and torment yourself in front of me. If you reflect you will see that you have acted wrongly. I really do not want to see you any more. The interest has gone. I’m afraid you must just attempt to face this fact, however unpleasant you find it.’

  ‘I would do anything you wanted, perform any penance. Oh Julius, let me find the way back to you, show me the way back, help me, help me.’

  ‘You deceive yourself. Suffering is amusing and may even do work in a situation where two people are connected with each other. Where there is no mutual connection it is undignified, grotesque and ugly. It is seen to be something totally pointless and unnecessary, like all the rest of the suffering human beings do every day. There is now no relationship between us and I find your contortions merely embarrassing.’

  Morgan was silent for a moment, still leaning on the table. ‘Is it because of the child?’ she said.

  ‘You ask a rather elliptical question. No, I am not taking revenge on you because of that, if that is what you imply.’

  ‘But you—blame me—about the child.’

  ‘That is not a concept which I employ.’

  ‘Yes, you do. Oh Julius, I can’t bear your disapproval—’

  ‘These are quaint words. You surprised me, that is all. A woman who is fortunate enough to have a child and who then murders it seems to me a rather odd phenomenon.’

  ‘Please don’t use that horrible word. You must be very hurt really. I’m sorry.’

  ‘You are beginning to annoy me. It seems to me that you have asked your question and you can be in little doubt about the answer.’

  ‘You started it all—over there in America—you were mad keen to get me.’

  ‘I find your language rather lacking in taste. As I recall, you were not particularly difficult to get. I’m sorry to be so unpleasant. You are forcing me to be rude and I assure you I am not enjoying it. Now will you please go? I have to change.’

  ‘Well, change then. I’ve seen you in your underclothes. Oh Julius, don’t you see that you can’t get rid of me? You’ll have to do something about me. At least now we’re talking to each other and it relieves the pain even to hear you curse me.’

  ‘I haven’t cursed you. The strong emotions are all yours.’

  ‘We could talk about all kinds of things like we used to. You could tell me about DNA—’

  ‘You don’t want to know about DNA. Like so many academic women you want to use superficial intellectual chat as an instrument of seduction.’

  ‘Let me seduce you then. Let’s make a new start. I’m going to leave Rupert and Hilda’s. I’ve found a little flat in Fulham—’

  ‘You will not have me as a visitor.’

  ‘Julius, see it as a problem. Couldn’t it even interest you? You are the most important thing that has ever happened to me—’

  ‘So you observed before. But what about your husband? Was it not important that you once undertook some solemn obligations towards him?’

  ‘You didn’t care much about those solemn obligations when you wanted me in bed!’

  ‘True but irrelevant. I don’t care about them now. But as I no longer want you in bed I commend them to your consideration.’

  ‘I find that rather funny.’

  ‘I am not trying to amuse you. As you know, I detest the spectacle of self-deception of any kind. You are pretending to an exclusive passion when there is no such thing in question. You can easily get over me. You can easily interest yourself in your husband. I suggest you attempt both these things.’

  ‘Why are you on his side?’

  ‘I am not on his side. I am tired of hearing you tell lies and I think you could be profitably occupied elsewhere.’

  ‘I can’t stand the idea that you two met. What did you think of him?’

  ‘I formed no impression. I only saw him for a minute. He was at a disadvantage.’

  ‘Then you did form an impression. You thought he was—what was it you once said of someone on the staff at Dibbins?—“a negligible wisp”.’

  ‘That appears to be what you think.’

  ‘No. Tallis is somebody. At least he’s something. I’m not sure that he’s quite a person.’

  ‘Well, these unpersons are no concern of mine.’

  ‘He was hopeless in bed. Everything happened all at once.’

  ‘I have no desire to discuss your husband’s sexual performance. ’

  ‘Julius, I am really through with Tallis. You may have been wondering—’

  ‘I haven’t.’

  ‘Well, it is at an end.’

  ‘If you are relying on me to help you with your divorce I’m afraid you must look elsewhere.’

  ‘I hadn’t even thought of that. I am relying on you for much more important things.’

  ‘Well, don’t. I appreciate that you want some sort of drama, and you desire me to enact a part. You feel guilty and mixed up and you want to go through some sort of ritual of purification or even punishment. But I cannot assist you, my dear Mrs Browne. I am no actor. I always told you the truth. I told you my feelings were probably temporary and should not be called by serious names.’

  ‘Every moment you go on talking to me gives me more hope.’

  ‘You drive me to tell you that I now realize that you are fundamentally stupid. And I cannot care for what is stupid. Will you go now?’

  ‘Julius, do you remember this dress?’

  Morgan was wearing a sleeveless white dress with a little-girl collar and navy blue spots, rather unfashionably long.

  ‘Yes. You were wearing it on the first occasion that we met.’

  ‘Ah, you remember!’

  ‘An involuntary matter.’

  ‘You said it was a sexy dress.’

  ‘The fashion has changed.’

  ‘And this handbag and these shoes—’

  ‘You remind me fruitlessly of things which are old and stale and dead.’

  ‘And do you remember this?’ Morgan picked up the copy of The Times from the sofa and laid it on the table. She shook the outer pages of the paper free and began to fold them. She produced a pair of scissors from her handbag. ‘You taught me to make those extraordinary chains of paper just by folding and cutting.’

  ‘And you seem to have forgotten what I taught you. You are not reducing me to tears by your reminiscences.’

  ‘Yes, I was folding it wrong. That’s better. Do you remember what happened on that other evening? We were sitting in your office after walking round the campus. I’d written you a letter only you’d said nothing about it. It was terribly hot. And you started very quietly folding the newspaper, not saying anything. Then when you started to cut it you kept looking at me and I realized suddenly that this was a sort
of love scene—’

  ‘I don’t want The Times cut up. I have not read it yet.’

  ‘You do remember. You can’t deny the past. And we’re still talking. You must forgive me if I believe in magic. Most women do. And it’s need need need that makes people turn to it. You said you adored the dress. Don’t you like it any more?’

  ‘Please go away.’

  ‘All right then, I’ll take it off.’

  Morgan stepped quickly away from the table. She unzipped the dress down the back and let it fall and stepped out of it, revealing a very pretty black lace petticoat. Julius, who had half turned to the window, playing with the curtain, turned to look. He studied her.

  ‘You are still interested,’ said Morgan in a soft voice. ‘You must forgive this rather shameless device. But I do love you, you see, I do.’

  ‘A youngish and moderately good-looking woman half undressed attracts the attention,’ said Julius. ‘Now put your dress on and get out.’

  ‘No.’ Holding her dress, Morgan darted to the door. She ran into Julius’s bedroom and kicked off her high-heeled shoes. She took off her glasses. She began to pull the rest of her clothes off. She dragged back the pale green bedspread and undid the bed. More leisurely, she took her stockings off last, now watched by Julius from the doorway. She seated herself in the nest of crisp pale green sheets, her long legs tucked sideways under her, and waited. Her eyes grew big and dazed.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Julius. ‘I appreciate your device, which has a certain elementary picturesqueness. But I am fundamentally bored. Now if you will excuse me I will follow your advice and change. I am already late.’