A Fairly Honourable Defeat

by Iris Murdoch

  ‘Oughtn’t you to try.’

  ‘What about Julius?’

  ‘Julius is my godfather. My father in god with a small “g”. He has shown me myself.’

  ‘I mean do you want to marry Julius or go on living with him or something?’

  ‘I have a free relationship with Julius. He understands about these things. Have you any objection?’

  ‘No,’ said Tallis, ‘but that’s not the proper question. There’s something absolutely wrong here. I mean it’s the wrong policy, you can’t do it, you don’t understand the meaning of the words you use—’ How could he explain it? He got up and went to the window and looked out at the rows of parked cars like fat multicoloured pigs and the white wall and neat black well-painted woodwork of the expensive little house opposite. Or should he just seize hold of her and shout? Would that work?

  ‘Sorry, Tallis, but I think I do understand at last. When I married you I was childish and half asleep.’

  ‘Maybe. But all the same—’ He concentrated on the cars.

  ‘Well, now I’m wide awake. Julius woke me. Tallis, I thought you were my virtue. But I realized you were really my vice.’

  ‘I’m your husband.’

  ‘That ugly heavy word. That cannot name anything here.’

  ‘It names an important fact, Morgan. I think you are mistaken about your nature. You need deep belongingness and connections and stability.’

  ‘And why shouldn’t I have them all over the place? Or are you trying to use your authority?’

  ‘Funny. Rupert talked about authority. But it’s nothing to do with authority or property rights. What can I do or ask for in the ridiculous position I am in now? I am sure that you love me. I just want that love to have a decent chance.’

  ‘You think I’m not telling the truth?’

  ‘I think you’re hopelessly theory-ridden.’ He turned to look at her. ‘You’re chasing empty abstractions. What happens will be quite different.’

  ‘You have power, Tallis,’ she said. ‘You have power, I don’t deny it. But I’m not going to undergo you again. You always somehow made me feel ashamed. You and your false simplicity.’

  Tallis was silent.

  ‘Sorry, Tallis, I don’t want to be unkind. But the path for me is away from guilt and shame. I think I wanted to sink down into some deep deep sea with you. When I married you I felt I was killing myself. It seemed somehow wonderful at the time. But I couldn’t kill myself. I couldn’t even love in the end, down in that deep sea. I have to be outside, in the open, in the clear air, on the high places, free, free, free. It’s only out in that clear fresh air that I can really love people. I have to follow the kind of love that I am capable of. Everybody must be guided by that.’

  ‘It sounds like sense,’ he said, ‘but somehow—Oh how stupid you make me feel. Perhaps I am stupid, especially about you.’

  ‘No. It’s just that I’m a much more complicated person than you are.’

  ‘You see, I feel that we’re related, as if we were blood relations. I could as soon think of abandoning you as I’d think of abandoning Daddy.’

  ‘Really, Tallis, what a comparison! It’s hardly flattering to me! Surely nothing but the grimmest sense of duty ties you to that dear old bore!’

  ‘Sorry, I’m putting it terribly badly. Marriage is a symbolic blood-relationship, it’s the creation of a new family bond.’

  ‘Well, I don’t care for bonds, family or otherwise.’

  ‘I don’t mean constraint. I mean real connection.’

  ‘Don’t be sentimental, Tallis, I can’t bear it. And don’t talk about marriage as if it were a condition.’

  ‘It is a condition. All kinds of things are conditions and it’s one. It relates the past to the present.’

  ‘As far as I’m concerned it was an arrangement. And as far as I’m concerned the past is finished, done for, gone.’

  ‘Morgan, please. I’ve searched—Let it not have been in vain.’

  ‘Now you really are going to pieces, Tallis. Come, how deeply have I hurt you? I’m interested!’

  ‘Don’t speak so.’

  ‘Tallis dear, don’t appeal to my pity. If you want to impress me you must appeal to my normal nature and not to my compassion. Only you can’t. You’re not on the wavelength, you don’t understand what I’m saying half the time. Oh Tallis, if you could only change a bit, just a little bit, be a little bit different from yourself! But it’s no good, you’ll never change.’

  ‘You do love me still.’

  ‘Of course I do, silly. We can talk to each other. I’ll hope to meet you a lot in the future. We can have a more adult relationship. ’

  ‘It doesn’t make sense, kid.’

  ‘And don’t call me “kid” like that or I shall cry. Oh Tallis, you can make yourself look so beautiful sometimes. I wish you wouldn’t. You’re doing it on purpose. Come over here.’ He came to her slowly. ‘Tallis, let’s be quiet together for a minute.’

  ‘That’s a good idea at last.’

  Tallis sighed very deeply. Morgan was still sitting on the writing table. He stood in front of her, studying her. Then he leaned against her knees and drew one hand down her leg. He took off one shoe and held the warm foot in his hand. He leaned closer until his cheek touched hers.

  He felt a warm touch. Morgan had slipped the necklace of dark amber beads over his head and round his neck.

  ‘What’s that, Morgan? A charm?’

  ‘An experiment. I don’t want to do without you, Tallis. I want to have everything and you as well. I want to keep you on a lead.’

  ‘I love you,’ said Tallis.

  ‘If you kneel down I shall kick you in the face.’

  ‘I’m not going to kneel down, damn you.’ The shoe clattered to the floor. Tallis slipped his arm round her waist and pulled her off the table.

  ‘Yoo hoo, Morgan!’ There was a loud knock on the door.

  Tallis released his wife.

  Peter bounded in.

  ‘Oh Morgan, darling! Hello Tallis. Morgan, I just got your letter and came straight round, the char let me in. I’ve got the stuff. I’ve got a screwdriver and a hammer and those picture hooks and string and the light plugs and all the things you said. I got them all at the ironmonger’s just here, and I’ve got you lots of things for your kitchen as well, drying up cloths and pan-scrubbers and cleaning stuff and a mop! Look!’

  Peter emptied out the contents of two shopping bags onto the floor in between the cardboard boxes.

  ‘Peter, you’re super!’ she kissed him. ‘Have a drink. Tallis, don’t go. I asked Peter to come and help me put everything in order. Lord, what a mess, Just look at it all.’

  ‘I must go,’ said Tallis.

  ‘Oh must you?’

  ‘I’ve got to see those students.’ He moved to the door.

  ‘Peter, you’re a hero! Good-bye, Tallis dear, see you. Don’t forget what I said.’

  He went down the stairs hearing their laughter.

  Once out in the street he quickly began to push the handcart down into the Fulham Road and then up Hollywood Road. He pushed it into the side of the kerb and paused. The dark brown amber beads were still hanging round his neck. He took his tie off and tucked them down inside the collar of his shirt. A little later as he was pushing the cart across Redcliffe Square he stopped again and took his jacket off. The mounting sun shone down out of a sky of unflecked light blue. Sweat was pouring down his chest. The handcart was empty, but it was uphill all the way back.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  ‘GOOD HEAVENS, Julius, you made me jump!’

  Julius had suddenly materialized in the half light upon the stairs in Rupert’s house. It was about nine o’clock in the evening.

  ‘Sorry, Rupert. I couldn’t find anybody so I went to the lavatory. ’

  ‘I was in the garden.’

  ‘Do you always leave your front door open like that? Anyone could walk in and steal the Cézanne reproductions.’

  ‘
Hilda must have left it open. She’s just gone out to a meeting about the abatement of aeroplane noise.’

  ‘Hilda is so altruistic. Always busy serving others.’

  ‘She has a social conscience. And that’s partly self-interest after all.’

  ‘Well, could I trespass on your altruism, social conscience and self-interest to the extent of a glass of whisky?’

  ‘Of course. I was just going to offer it. Come on up to my study. Have you dined?’

  ‘Yes. I was at a dinner party. But there were no attractive women. So I came away early. You said you wanted to see me?’

  ‘Yes, but I didn’t mean urgently. I’m so glad you’ve come now, though, it’s a good moment.’

  Rupert turned the lights on in his study and pulled the curtains against the blue darkening evening. ‘Let’s be shut in, shall we?’ He produced whisky and glasses. Rupert sat at his big desk in the middle of the room. Julius pulled up an upright chair and sat at the other side of the desk. He stretched his feet out underneath the desk so that Rupert had to withdraw his. He yawned and stretched elaborately.

  ‘No water thanks, Rupert. I’ll have it neat. I need some strong clean stuff after that ghastly dinner. Why are English hostesses so pretentiously inefficient? I’ve scarcely had a proper meal since I reached England.’

  ‘You need a holiday across the Channel.’

  ‘Even Paris couldn’t feed me decently last time. Everything seems to be getting worse. Or else I’m getting intolerably old and finicky.’

  ‘Hilda and I discovered an excellent restaurant last time we were in Paris, quite cheap too. It’s called A la Ville de Tours. In the Rue Jacob.’

  ‘La cuisine Tourangelle. I shall try it if I’m over. What are your holiday plans?’

  ‘Oh we’re holidaying in England this year. I feel we should with the pound so rocky. We’ll spend the second half of September at our cottage in Pembrokeshire.’

  ‘Nature, the countryside. How I hate all that. And no more small-town life for me either. From now on I want great big European cities. That was why I left Dibbins.’

  ‘Surely there were other reasons for that decision.’

  ‘Well, I was bored with that detestable squawky little campus and that unspeakably insipid main street. I can’t think how I stood it for so long.’

  ‘You’re the only man I know who enjoys presenting himself in an unfavourable light.’

  ‘Yes, I got fed up with the research too, but not for the reason you think. In the end it was aesthetically unpleasing.’

  ‘I can imagine that one’s general respect for the human race—’

  ‘I have no general respect for the human race. They are a loathsome crew and don’t deserve to survive. But they are destroying themselves quite fast enough without my assistance.’

  ‘You always profess cynicism, Julius. I wonder how many people you take in?’

  ‘It isn’t cynicism. These little games will end civilization and probably end human life on this paltry planet in the not too distant future. Why are people ill now so much of the time with mysterious virus ailments? Little escapees from establishments like Dibbins—and there are such establishments all over the place and there will be more of them and more and more and more—filter into the outside world at regular intervals. It’s practically impossible to prevent it, though of course these accidents are always hushed up. One day some really sensational virus, the absolute pet of some biochemical hack like myself, will get out and all human life will cease in a matter of months. This isn’t science fiction, Rupert. Of course you won’t believe me. A truth like that can’t be believed. That’s why the whole thing will go merrily on until it brings the whole rotten human experiment to an end for good and all.’

  Rupert was silent for a moment, studying his friend. Julius’s face was calm and rather inward. It might have been the face of a man listening to music. The heavy-lidded violet-brown eyes were drowsy and unfocused, the long mouth serene and faintly smiling.

  ‘I hope you’re wrong,’ said Rupert. ‘Meanwhile we have to work on the assumption that there’s a future. And of course there are plenty of things which we as free responsible citizens can do to make our leaders realize—’

  ‘Rupert, Rupert, Rupert, your voice comes to me out of the past, out of some old history book, millennia away.’

  ‘I don’t understand you, Julius.’

  ‘You just don’t see what makes things happen in this locality. Never mind. You’ll be accusing me of cynicism again. What was it you wanted to talk to me about?’

  ‘Oh well,’ said Rupert, shifting his chair. ‘I just wanted to see you. And to be quite honest I’m rather worried about Morgan.’

  ‘Aha,’ said Julius, his attention now keenly on Rupert. ‘So you summoned me. The action of a free responsible citizen, of a free responsible brother-in-law. If you intend to horsewhip me you haven’t got off to a very convincing start.’

  ‘Don’t be an ass, Julius. I want your help. Hilda and I saw Tallis on Tuesday and he’s obviously not going to make any move, and I thought—’

  ‘Rupert, confess that you despise Tallis.’

  ‘Of course I don’t,’ said Rupert irritably. ‘I think he’s completely spineless—’

  ‘But you don’t despise him. All right, all right. Now where do I come in?’ Julius took off his glasses and leaned forward with an air of enjoyment, his dark eyes a-glitter with a benign twinkle.

  ‘I should have thought you are in!’ said Rupert.

  ‘Ah. In a moment you will say “We are men of the world” and “What are your intentions”. How wonderfully you illustrate the unreality of time!’

  ‘We are not men of the world,’ said Rupert. ‘Let us pay ourselves that compliment. As for your intentions—well, what are they?’

  ‘None, none, my dear Rupert. I have never been more innocent of intentions in my life!’

  ‘Come, come,’ said Rupert. ‘You know how unstable Morgan is. And as far as I can see she’s still in love with you.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So, to be extremely crude and blunt, I think you ought either to come to her and at least help her to decide whether she wants to divorce Tallis, or else you should clear off altogether.’

  ‘You mean leave London?’

  ‘Yes, for the time being.’

  ‘Oh but Rupert, I adore London. I’ve just decided to buy a house in the Boltons.’

  ‘Have you?’ The thought of having Julius living two hundred yards away down the road struck Rupert as surprisingly alarming. Not exactly unpleasant, but alarming.

  ‘Well, it’s an idea. Perhaps I shall change my mind.’

  ‘You must be a rich man,’ said Rupert rather sourly.

  ‘But it is the place to live. Don’t you agree?’

  ‘Yes, yes. But about Morgan—She can’t make balanced decisions while you’re sort of here and not here. You obviously paralyse her.’

  ‘Why don’t you persuade her to go away?’

  ‘She has duties here,’ said Rupert. ‘Surely you see—’

  ‘Tormenting her husband? Of course. Poor old hubbie.’

  ‘Have you seen her lately, by the way?’

  ‘Not since a rather curious encounter some days ago. But I’ve had a long letter from her.’

  ‘What sort of thing did she say, if that’s not an indiscreet question? ’

  ‘Not at all. I’ll show you the letter. Oh dear, I haven’t got it on me. I must have thrown it away. It was rather ecstatic. All about some new era of love and freedom which she proposed to inaugurate. She is such an intense girl.’

  ‘Morgan’s a fool,’ said Rupert. ‘She’s always lived in one dream world after another.’

  ‘Don’t we all?’

  ‘Tallis was one of Morgan’s dreams. Tallis represented holy poverty or some such stuff. Then she woke up one morning and saw she just had a weak and unsuccessful man for a husband. That hurt her pride.’

  ‘So you don’t blame me too much?’r />
  ‘No. You were an efficient but not a formal cause.’

  ‘You relieve my mind! Tell me something about Tallis. Do you think he’s epileptic?’

  ‘Epileptic?’ said Rupert, surprised. ‘No. That’s never been suggested. As far as I know Tallis enjoys perfect health. He’s tough as nails. Whatever put that idea into your head?’

  ‘A passing thought, never mind. May I say that I think you are worrying too much about Morgan?’

  ‘I just want the girl to be happy.’

  ‘Few people just want other people to be happy, dear Rupert. Most of us prefer our friends in tears. If by any unusual chance anyone does want others to be happy, he invariably wants them to be so as a result of his own busybodying.’

  ‘Possibly. But at my age, Julius, I don’t worry too much about my motives. It’s enough for me if I can see the right thing to do and do it.’

  ‘That’s beautiful. I hope it comes in your book. Is that your book over there on the table, all those fat yellow notebooks? May I look at it?’

  ‘Yes, certainly. It’s pretty well finished now. Hilda wants us to celebrate. She’ll be sending you an invitation.’

  ‘How charming. Shall we all have to make philosophical speeches like in the Symposium? I should enjoy that.’

  Rupert watched uneasily while Julius adjusted his spectacles and leaned over the table, opening the notebooks at random and tilting them towards the light of the nearest lamp, blinking and smiling his sly coy smile.

  ‘You are well defended against pessimism, Rupert. All this cosy Platonic uplift. You ought to have been a parson.’

  ‘I hope it doesn’t sound too high-minded. It’s supposed to be philosophy, of a sort.’

  ‘Philosophy, philosophy,’ said Julius, returning towards his chair. ‘All human beings fly from consciousness. Drink, love, art are methods of flight. Philosophy is another one, perhaps the subtlest of them all. Even subtler than theology.’

  ‘One can at least attempt to be truthful, Julius. The attempt has meaning.’

  ‘About these things, no. The Venerable Bede observed that human life was like a sparrow that flies through a lighted hall, in one door and out the other. What can that poor sparrow know? Nothing. These attempted truths are tissues of illusion. Theories.’