A Fairly Honourable Defeat

by Iris Murdoch

  ‘No,’ said Simon. He felt suddenly cold as if the sun had gone in.

  Simon had felt unhappy, at moments very unhappy, about not having told Axel. But he had had little difficulty in not telling him. Axel, very overwhelmed by Fidelio, had made only the most cursory inquiries about Simon’s evening. And afterwards it would somehow have seemed unbearably artificial to raise the matter apropos of nothing. Simon thought, it’s over, it will now drift without consequences into the past, it is after all completely trivial and it doesn’t matter. He found himself worrying about it all the same, partly because the incident itself had been distressing and in some way nasty, partly because he was afraid that Axel would discover that he had concealed it, and partly because he could not now quite make out why he had concealed it. He had been struck by Julius’s saying that Axel was dignified and would feel let down. That was undoubtedly true. And could one tell such a story about a girl, especially if she asked you not to? Yet were these reasons good enough and were they the real reasons? Simon had an uneasy feeling that in keeping silent he was protecting himself rather than sparing Axel or Morgan. Axel must never see him in a certain light. Yet surely it was all unimportant, he told himself, and not worth worrying about.

  ‘Good. I was sure you wouldn’t,’ said Morgan. ‘I rather wanted to ask you though. Let that be a little secret between us.’ She kissed his cheek and rubbed her own cheek against his. ‘Let me decorate you!’ She took off the necklace of dark amber beads and put it round Simon’s neck. ‘There! It suits you all right. Though I think it would improve the effect if you took off your jacket.’

  Simon laughed and pulled his jacket off. He was wearing a duck egg blue cotton shirt today. Oh the soft caress of very fine cotton after the slippery touch of nylon! It meant he had to iron it, though. He lifted the beads a little, surveying them against the blue background. The effect was delightful. ‘You see what I mean, Morgan? You should wear these beads with a plain dress, preferably a blue dress.’

  ‘They quite transform you, Simon dear!’

  ‘How pretty they are. I think I remember them, you’ve had them for years.’

  ‘Yes. They got broken. Tallis mended them just now. He sent them through the post.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Simon, don’t ask me about Tallis.’

  ‘I wasn’t going to, darling.’

  ‘You’ve got so much more tact than your brother. I’ve decided that time will arrange everything for the best. I’m just not going to worry about it. You don’t feel you have to take sides, do you?’

  ‘No. But if I did I’d be on your side.’

  ‘There’s a good boy. You look so sweet, Simon. Let me complete the effect.’ Morgan took off the blue velvet cap and set it upon Simon’s head, adjusting it on the dark slightly curly hair.

  They were both laughing and Simon was just getting up to look at himself in the mirror when Axel came in through the door.

  Simon exclaimed and hastily pulled the cap off. He got entangled with the necklace and took a moment to drag it with clumsy frantic fingers over his head. Morgan rose to her feet. Simon thrust the cap and the necklace at her rather unceremoniously and she put them into her handbag. Axel stared expressionlessly.

  ‘Hello, Axel,’ said Morgan. She looked bland.

  ‘Good evening.’

  ‘I just called on Simon. I’m so sorry I’ve got to go now.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ said Axel.

  ‘Well, good-bye Simon darling. Don’t forget about what we said. And you will come and see me, won’t you?’ She patted Simon’s cheek. ‘Good-bye, Axel. Simon’s been telling me all about how you both flirted with a statue in Athens. It sounded most amusing. Bye bye.’

  Axel stood aside and Morgan went down the stairs. Simon hesitated, fluttered, ran down after Morgan and waved her out of the front door. She kissed her hand to him and then put her finger on her lips. He ran upstairs to Axel.

  Axel was leaning against the mantelpiece. His face was cold and hard. ‘You told that woman all about those sacred things.’

  ‘Oh Axel,’ cried Simon, ‘I’m sorry, I see now I shouldn’t have done, I’m terribly sorry. She asked and I—’

  ‘She asked?’

  ‘She asked about how we met, and then I just enjoyed remembering it and—’

  ‘I shall never forgive you.’

  ‘Axel, please don’t say that!’

  ‘Can’t you see that she’s completely malevolent, that she enjoys destroying things?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Really she—’

  ‘Well, she has destroyed this thing anyway.’

  ‘Axel, you don’t—’

  ‘You can take that photograph down, I don’t want to see it any more, it’s spoilt.’

  ‘Axel, I know I shouldn’t have talked, please—’

  ‘And letting her dress you up like a pet monkey!’

  ‘Axel—’

  ‘She’s vulgar and horrible.’

  ‘Just let me say—’

  ‘I’m going out to dinner. Alone.’

  ‘But I’ve cooked an Irish stew!’

  ‘You can eat it yourself.’

  ‘Axel, please forgive me.’

  Axel turned to go to the door. Still protesting, Simon shrank away to give him room. Axel paused in the doorway. ‘You’d better keep Friday night free. I suppose we may as well keep up appearances for the moment anyway. Julius rang up and said he wanted to meet Tallis again.’

  ‘But will Tallis come?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve fixed for us to dine at the Chinese restaurant.’

  ‘But couldn’t we dine here? I’d love to cook—’

  ‘What you’d love to do is of little consequence. Julius likes Chinese food.’

  ‘Axel, please don’t leave me like this. Don’t be angry with me, I can’t bear it.’

  ‘I shall never forgive you for having babbled to that bloody woman.’

  Axel shut the door sharply and marched away down the stairs. A moment later the front door banged.

  Simon dissolved into tears. How could he have been so inconceivably foolish? He saw it all now, the vile indiscretion, the betrayal. Why had he not seen it earlier? He did not in his deepest heart believe that Axel would reject him utterly for this. But he knew that the wounds which he had inflicted upon them both would take long to heal and he wept bitterly over his own folly.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  ‘YOU’RE LATE,’ said Morgan to Tallis, opening the door of the house in Seymour Walk. It was ten in the morning.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘And what’s that there?’

  ‘A handcart. Or barrow.’

  ‘Good God, are those my things on it?’

  ‘Yes. I thought you wanted them brought.’

  ‘Of course I did, but I imagined you’d bring them in a car.’

  ‘I haven’t got a car,’ said Tallis.

  ‘Well, you must know people with cars. Even you. Do you mean to say you pushed that cart all the way from Notting Hill through all the traffic?’

  ‘It’s downhill,’ said Tallis.

  ‘That’s just the sort of thing you would do to upset people and put them in the wrong. It’s not funny.’

  ‘I didn’t mean—’

  ‘If I’d known I’d have borrowed Hilda’s car.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Better get the stuff upstairs anyway. I’m on the first floor.’

  ‘Those cardboard boxes with the books in may bust. Better unload them a bit.’

  ‘You are a fool, you’ve brought all those tins. I don’t want the tins.’

  ‘Leave them on the cart then.’

  ‘No, I’ll have them. They may come in handy. And they seem to be mixed in with all the rest.’

  They began to carry the cardboard boxes up the stairs, boxes of books, boxes of clothes, boxes containing hairy jumbles of brushes and combs and tins of asparagus and dried up cosmetics and old handbags. The boxes, propped crazily on top of each other, splitting apart at
the edges and giving way at the bottom, covered the floor of Morgan’s sitting room.

  ‘You might have sorted out the junk first,’ said Morgan.

  ‘I didn’t know which was junk.’

  ‘I don’t want all this stuff. Half of it will have to be thrown away. Look at those old moth-eaten jumpers. I don’t want moths here.’

  ‘I didn’t know—I didn’t look properly.’

  Tallis felt sick with emotion and aching with tiredness. He had not slept. It was partly nervous anticipation of seeing Morgan. He had wanted to be alert and decisive. He had spent the first part of the night lying rigid and telling himself how important it was that he should sleep. Later there had been familiar and wearying phenomena: the booming sound, the sense of imminent light which never quite became light. He was restless, physically exasperated, his nerves ringing with awareness and expectancy. Was he supposed to be pleased? His body took on a peculiar quality at these times, a sense of his feet not touching the ground. He knew that this was an illusion, but the sensation was very definite and persistent. If he lay down he seemed to float. If he knelt down he seemed to fly. Had this been ecstasy when he was younger? He could not remember. Now it just tired him out.

  In a mechanical and repetitious way these exhausting manifestations were accompanied by the idea of love. The connection was mechanical and puzzling and Tallis seemed to know merely by some sort of external association or semiconscious memory, and not by direct experience, that this concept was somehow involved. He accepted the connection, since he had by now almost entirely given up speculation. He felt a bond at such moments not with anything personal but with the world, possibly the universe, which became a sort of extension of his being. Occasionally the extension was gentle and warm, like the feeling of a river reaching the sea. More often it was uncomfortable or even horrible as if he had immense dusty itching limbs which he could not scratch. Sometimes he felt an awful crippling weight, as if a steam hammer were very slowly coming down on top of his head. On two extraordinary occasions the steam hammer phenomenon had been immediately combined with the feet-off-the-ground phenomenon and Tallis had lost consciousness.

  He never spoke to anybody about these matters. It was, he believed, from some other region that his sister visited him. Or the fantasm that seemed to be his sister. There were principalities and powers, tall cool detached things. Her visitations were enigmatic and often even menacing, yet perhaps she shielded him from what was other and worse. Perhaps because of her he did not suffer certain temptations. He suspected this because of a deep sense of lack of merit in certain regions where he was blameless. Can one shield another from evil and if so must the shield itself grow dark? But about this too he had long since ceased to speculate. She came only in those clear and vivid night appearances. Yet at times increasingly he had seemed to feel her presence in the house and had opened doors with fearful expectation upon empty rooms. The demons were other again. They were minor presences, riff raff of creation, debris, and had merely a nuisance value. Occasionally they were even diverting. When there were other visitations they kept away, but annoyed him the more on their return. The great perils of his soul were formless.

  ‘Well, that seems to be the lot,’ said Morgan. ‘Thanks.’

  They stared at each other across the boxes.

  ‘What a nice flat.’

  ‘It’s quite cheap,’ she said defensively.

  ‘I mean, how nice you’ve made it.’

  ‘I can’t get over that handcart.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘If you say “sorry” again I shall be sick.’

  It had seemed to Tallis quite natural to cart the stuff by hand. It was more than an ordinary car-load. And he had often pushed people’s furniture round the streets. But he ought to have thought how it would look to Morgan. Had he really done it to embarrass her or to make her feel compassionate or ashamed?

  ‘Well, what have you been up to, Tallis, since we last met?’

  ‘Nothing special. Usual stuff. This and that.’

  ‘Same old things? Tell me what you’re doing during the rest of today, for instance.’

  ‘There’s a meeting of student volunteers, they’re going to paint houses. Then there’s someone just out of jug I’ve got to see. Then there’s a United Churchmen’s Committee on prostitution. Then I’ve got a class. Then there’s a probation officer’s study group I promised to talk to. Then I’ve got to write a—’

  ‘All right, all right. I can’t think how you stand it. The boredom must be lethal. And it isn’t as if it did much good anyway. You take on too many things and you don’t do any of them properly. Isn’t that so?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I see you’re all spruced up. Is that for me or for the United Churchmen?’

  ‘For you.’ Tallis was wearing a cleanish shirt and a tie of sorts.

  ‘You even look as if you’ve had a shave for once. Your hands are filthy however.’

  ‘Sor—I was cleaning out your room. There was an awful lot of dust. I meant to wash.’

  ‘My room?’

  ‘I mean the room where your stuff was. I’ve let it from tomorrow. ’ God, that was another thing. He would have to find time to dash round the junk shops and find something for furniture, since the room was supposed to be being let furnished.

  ‘Haven’t lost much time, have you.’

  ‘I need the money,’ said Tallis.

  ‘Are you getting at me again?’

  ‘No,’ he said with exasperation. ‘I’m just damn tired. I’ll wash my hands now, if you don’t mind.’

  He went into the bathroom and shut the door and pressed his hands into his eyes. This sort of nervy aggressive non-communicative conversation was worse than no talk at all. If only he could be calm and gentle and eloquent and firm and all the excellent things he had resolved to be. And now there was the distracting irrelevancy of physical desire, whose promptings all seemed to have gone crazy. Even his physical love for Morgan was becoming unhinged and getting all mixed up with the muckheap of his mind. If only it could be simple and tender once again. He tried to look at himself seriously in the mirror but his image looked stupid and mad. He dashed a good deal of cold water into his face and remembered to wash his hands. A lot of dirt came off on the towel. He went back to the sitting room.

  The flat was simple but pretty with small Victorian chairs, gay flowery cushions matching the design of the curtains but a different colour, clean rush matting, a small roll top desk and an elegant writing table beside the window with a square of worn red leather upon it. Morgan’s letters were neatly piled under a paperweight of grainy green stone. There was a vase of freesias upon the white bookshelf.

  ‘Have a drink, Tallis.’

  ‘No, thanks, I’ve got to—Yes, maybe I will.’

  ‘Gin? Nothing else in stock and nothing to dilute it with except water, I’m afraid. Here.’

  Tallis stood in the middle of the room holding his glass and surrounded by boxes. He tried to shift one of them a little with his foot, but a lot of very funny looking stuff started to come out of the bottom. Morgan had seated herself upon the writing table and was swinging her legs. She was wearing a plain blue cotton dress and the necklace of amber beads. Tallis looked at the beads.

  ‘Oh, thanks for sending the necklace, by the way. I meant to acknowledge it but I’ve been so busy with the move.’

  ‘Uh-hu.’

  ‘Say something, Tallis.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’ said Tallis.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘That’s one thing you can’t do,’ he said, ‘in this situation.’

  ‘I mean gloriously nothing. I propose to give myself to the situation like a swimmer to the sea.’

  ‘I’m in no mood for metaphors,’ said Tallis. ‘Do you want a divorce? ’

  ‘Not particularly.’

  ‘Do you want to come back to me?’

  ‘Not particularly. Things aren’t going to be like that. I think I’m goin
g to live quite differently. Why not after all, there are plenty of ways of living. Did you have anybody while I was away?’

  ‘No. Only fantasies.’

  ‘No one special living in the house?’

  ‘Only Daddy and Peter.’

  ‘You know I took Peter to Cambridge?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And all’s well. Peter eats out of my hand.’

  ‘So I gather,’ said Tallis, ‘but be careful.’

  ‘Peter just needs a little love.’

  ‘No. Peter needs a great deal of love. Don’t mess around with Peter unless you’ve got a great deal to give.’

  ‘Well, I seem to have succeeded where you all failed. And don’t look so sullen.’

  ‘Don’t mess around with Peter,’ Tallis repeated, ‘unless you’re really prepared to commit yourself to him in some serious and sensible sort of way. Peter needs permanencies.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I be serious and sensible? I’m going to love people. That’s what I mean by living differently. That’ll be my new way of life. I’m going to be free and love people.’

  ‘Oh don’t talk such sickening rot, Morgan!’ said Tallis. He kicked the nearest box and several old powder compacts and a jar of cold cream came out of the bottom. He moved back to put his glass on the bookcase. He wanted to stop all this talk and take her in his arms but if only he could think. He sat down on one of the pretty but extremely hard armchairs.

  ‘I thought you’d approve!’ said Morgan, and she laughed self-consciously. ‘You were always one for love.’

  ‘You’re mixing me up with Rupert. How does marriage fit in with this new policy of freedom and love?’

  ‘I’m not sure that it does. Marriage is so old-fashioned and exclusive. But I don’t at all mean that I don’t want to see you.’

  ‘Do you or don’t you want a divorce?’

  ‘You haven’t understood. It’s just not important. Let it drift.’

  ‘I see. You might even love me too, in your free way, along with the rest?’

  ‘Yes. Why not? If you’re generous enough to accept my love. Or are you worrying about your property rights?’

  ‘I’m worrying about not being able to bear it.’