A Fairly Honourable Defeat

by Iris Murdoch

  Simon, spitting water and panting, stared furiously up at his tormentor. ‘Stop doing that. I’m getting cold. And I’m not a strong swimmer.’

  ‘In the soup. That is an English expression, isn’t it? You have to swim when you are in the soup.’

  ‘I’m going to tell Axel everything,’ said Simon.

  ‘No, you aren’t, little one. If you do I shall give Axel a circumstantial account of how you and I had our little romance.’

  ‘But we haven’t had any little romance!’

  ‘Come, come, have you forgotten our intimate luncheons at my flat at Brook Street and the long afternoon you took off from the museum?’

  ‘He wouldn’t believe you. Anyway everything’s so terrible now—’

  ‘Do not imagine that it could not be worse. That would be a great mistake. Axel is deeply attached to you. Your little tiff will probably pass. Nothing irrevocable has happened—yet. If you are good I may even help you to regain Axel’s confidence. If you are not good—’

  Simon made a dart for the other side and had one leg stretched sideways on the pavement before Julius’s foot hooked him gently in the stomach. He rolled back into the pool with a loud splash and the foaming water closed over his head. He rose gasping.

  ‘You’ll drown me. Let me out.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. I just want your assurance that you will be discreet. ’

  ‘I’m cold and exhausted. Let me get out. I shall get cramp.’

  ‘No. I am going to step on your fingers. Look out.’

  Simon withdrew to the middle of the pool. He was beginning to feel very cold and very tired.

  ‘Please, Julius.’

  ‘That’s better. I will let you out if you will say after me—’

  ‘Oh damn you!’

  ‘If you will say after me, “I will not tell Axel.” ’

  ‘What’s the use of my—’

  ‘Say it. Fingers! Say it.’

  ‘I will not tell Axel.’

  ‘All right. Now you may get out.’

  Simon held onto the edge of the pool and struggled to pull himself up. He felt limp with exhaustion and sick from swallowing water. He fell back, hauled himself up again with weak trembling arms, and got one leg out onto the slippery edge. Julius, who was watching and laughing, did not assist him. Simon got onto his knees on the pavement and slowly rose to his feet. He was shivering with cold. Then he turned and with a quick rush, hands outstretched, he pushed Julius into the deep end of the pool.

  At that moment Axel and Rupert and Hilda emerged from the drawing room. Hilda screamed.

  The pool surged and boiled, suddenly filled by an immense bulk of struggling blackness. The water tilted and leapt up. Julius’s limbs were everywhere. A dark sleeved arm lifted and clawed the air. Julius’s head seemed to have vanished. It emerged for a brief moment, red-faced, gulping, gasping, the mouth round and open. Julius’s tongue showed red, his eyes were visible suddenly like wild sea-eyes in a contorted creature, his arms whirled aimlessly, and his head sank like a great stone. The frenzied water rushed back and closed again above the bulky twisting helpless mass.

  ‘Simon, you crazy fool, he can’t swim!’

  Simon threw himself onto the ground and stretched out his hands. The others were rushing forward. He felt his wrist gripped and jerked. The next moment he had been dragged head first back into the pool and something was clasping him about the neck. His body was liggoted, weighted, sinking. He choked and fought desperately with knees and arms to free himself. Green water was arching over his head, a green glassy dome was above him, an iron bar was pressing on his throat. My next breath, he thought, my next breath, my next breath. There was agony in his mouth and lungs.

  Then his head was in light and air and he was gasping and spitting. His breath came in with a moan, with a screech. He saw, very clearly and brightly coloured, the sunny garden above him, the roses, frightened faces, blue sky. Something broad and dark in front of him was Julius’s back. Julius had been drawn up against the edge, with Rupert and Axel supporting his arms.

  ‘Hang on, Julius, you’re all right, we’ve got you, just breathe quietly, we’ll pull you along to the steps, you’ll be able to stand in a minute.’

  No one paid any attention to Simon. He tried to put his hands onto Julius’s waist from behind and help him along, but there was no strength left in him and he found that he was clinging weakly to the soaking velvet of Julius’s jacket. He let go. Julius was being towed towards the steps. He was being steadily hauled out. Simon followed.

  Julius lay immense and limp upon the stones, water pouring off him. Hilda, her green dress darkened and stained, was kneeling beside him. Axel and Rupert, their sleeves soaking, were jostling each other, both talking at once.

  ‘Turn him over.’

  ‘No, not like that.’

  ‘Artificial respiration.’

  ‘Water in his lungs.’

  ‘He’s lost consciousness.’

  ‘No, he hasn’t,’ said Julius. ‘I am perfectly all right. I am breathing normally. Just let me be for a minute, let me be.’ He lay with his eyes closed, breathing deeply. Then he turned slowly on his side and began to sit up. He pulled at the neck of his shirt. Rupert began to unbutton it.

  ‘Have you become dangerously insane or what?’ said Axel savagely to Simon in a low voice. Simon was shivering, hopping from one foot to another.

  ‘Bring that towel, would you,’ said Rupert. Simon’s towel was brought. Julius began to mop his face and push back his hair, darkened by the water, which had been plastered to his cheeks and brow.

  ‘I think I’m going to faint,’ said Hilda. She sat down in one of the chairs and drooped her head between her knees. Rupert ran to her. Julius began to get up.

  ‘I’m terribly sorry,’ said Julius, ‘to have occasioned all this fuss.’

  ‘You didn’t occasion it,’ said Axel.

  ‘I’m all right, I’m all right, leave me alone!’ said Hilda. She began to cry.

  ‘Are you really recovered, Julius?’ said Axel.

  ‘Yes, I’m fine. A change of clothes, if Rupert doesn’t mind. Hilda, my dear—’

  Hilda ran into the house. A low weird wail echoed in the drawing room.

  Rupert hesitated, turned to Julius. ‘Yes, yes, come inside—I’ll give you some clothes—’

  ‘I think we’d better go,’ said Axel. ‘It’s scarcely the evening for a dinner party.’

  ‘If you don’t mind—’ said Rupert. He half ran towards the drawing room, then came back again. Julius was standing, rubbing his face and neck with the towel.

  ‘Get dressed,’ Axel said to Simon.

  They began to move towards the house.

  ‘One moment,’ said Julius. He beckoned to Simon.

  Julius’s back was towards the others. Simon stepped towards him. Then he thought, he is going to hit me. He began to raise a hand to protect himself. Then he saw Julius’s eyes glowing at him. His hand was seized, lifted, and he felt the warmth of Julius’s lips upon his cold fingers. Julius murmured something. It sounded like ‘Well done!’

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  ‘HILDA! HILDA! Open the door!’

  Julius was changing his clothes. Simon and Axel had gone.

  The lock turned in the bedroom door and Rupert went in. Hilda had gone back and was sitting on the bed. She had taken off the green silk dress which lay damp and twisted across the back of a chair. She was wearing a white lacy petticoat, sitting hunched and shuddering, staring away into the corner of the room.

  ‘Hilda, what is it? What’s the matter?’

  ‘You know what’s the matter,’ she said in a dull heavy voice, still staring and frowning a little as if she were trying to discern something in the corner.

  Rupert felt terror. He moved closer, made as if to kneel but did not, touched her light green stockinged knees with a finger. She flinched away, not looking at him.

  ‘Hilda—I beg you—whatever—’

  ‘Oh don’t,�
� she said. ‘Don’t pretend. It makes it worse. It makes me sick. And don’t come too close to me, please.’

  ‘Hilda, I don’t know what you think, but—’

  ‘Don’t lie any more please. Oh Rupert, if it had been anybody but Morgan. I wouldn’t be silly and conventional about a—At least I’d try—But this—You don’t know what you’ve done to me between you, you’ve simply killed me.’

  ‘Hilda, there’s nothing between me and Morgan, it’s just—’

  ‘I know everything. So don’t talk. I won’t stand in your way.’

  ‘Hilda, listen,’ said Rupert. ‘There has been a misunderstanding, which I will explain. Meanwhile just keep sane will you, and help me to keep sane. We must hold up the world and not let it collapse on top of us. I love you and you are my wife. I will tell you the whole truth, as I ought to have done at the start. I blame myself terribly—’

  ‘Don’t you see it’s no good? There is nothing you can say. The facts say it all. You can’t explain something like this. You have this pathetic belief in words. But words can’t console me or make whole again what you’ve irrevocably spoilt and broken.’

  ‘But nothing is spoilt, Hilda, nothing is broken! I’m not having a love affair, I swear to you—’

  ‘I am afraid that I know otherwise. And I hate to see you lying so shabbily and so stupidly. Can’t you see the extent of what you’ve done?’

  ‘You can’t know what isn’t the case.’

  ‘You shouldn’t leave ecstatic letters lying around.’

  ‘I haven’t left anything lying around, I destroyed—’

  ‘All right, there were ecstatic letters, only you destroyed them. You can’t even lie efficiently. Oh Rupert, I loved you so completely, I revered you, I admired you, I trusted you—’

  ‘Hilda, listen.’ He sat down on the bed. ‘I have deceived you a little and I have acted wrongly, but it’s not what you think. You see, Morgan fell very much in love with me—’

  ‘I don’t want to hear the details,’ said Hilda. ‘These anecdotes about who first caught whose eye are for you and Morgan to entertain yourselves with. I don’t want to hear.’ She got up and went to sit before the dressing table. She began with slow weary movements to smooth some lotion into her face.

  ‘Will you listen. She fell in love with me. I couldn’t ask her to go away. I was trying to talk her out of it—’

  ‘Of course. Such fascinating talk. And then you talked yourselves into bed. You’re not denying that you’re in love with her.’

  ‘I care for her,’ said Rupert. ‘I love her. But—’

  ‘Oh well, what does it matter,’ said Hilda. ‘Men of your age often fall in love with younger women and have love affairs with them. I should be thankful it hasn’t happened before. Well, perhaps it has happened before, for all I know. On all those evenings when you said you had to stay on at the office and I felt so sorry for you when you came home tired! It’s just that here you’ve chosen the one person whom I can’t and won’t tolerate in this role. Because I love her as well as because I love you. I don’t mean that I’m going to insist that you part. It wouldn’t make any difference to me anyhow, if you and Morgan never met or communicated from this day forth, it wouldn’t be any good. Something like this is eternal, it lives inside one forever, and what you have broken you have broken forever and there is nothing that either of us can do to re-establish our marriage as it once was.’

  ‘But Hilda, nothing’s happened—I feel I’ve already exaggerated it—Morgan was emotional and upset—I just talked kindly to her—we were both very worried about you—’

  ‘How extremely kind of you to be worried about me. I’m sure you were both very concerned about poor old Hilda. I find your solicitude vile. As vile as your treachery.’ She turned to him for a moment, her face glowing and shining with the lotion, her mouth and eyes wrinkled up. Then she gave a sob and turned back to the mirror.

  Rupert stood in the middle of the room gasping for breath. He could not believe that something so unspeakably dreadful was happening to him. There must be some way to halt the destruction, to switch off the machine.

  ‘Hilda, I will not let you destroy our marriage.’

  ‘I am not destroying it. Rupert, don’t you see that these things are completely automatic? My will can do nothing here. I can’t undo this change any more than I can make the sun turn back. You and Morgan have simply altered the world.’

  ‘But nothing is altered, Hilda, nothing! There must be a mistake somewhere, you’ve made a mistake. I am not in love with Morgan, I am not having a love affair with Morgan—’

  ‘Oh do stop, Rupert. I don’t want to discuss it all. Maybe you shouldn’t have ever married me. You and Morgan are obviously ideally suited to each other. In a way I’m sorry for you, having to step over me. I won’t roll about and scream, I assure you. In fact I’ll do whatever you want, except that I think I must just go away for a little while to rest and be by myself. I suppose I shall have to learn to be in myself alone. Later on if you want me to stay in this house and keep things going I’ll do that. Only I don’t want to see Morgan any more. You must see her somewhere else and not talk to me about it. I dare say it could all settle down into some sort of—Except that, oh Rupert—how could I bear it—when we’ve been so happy—’ She began to sob, working her hands into her eyes.

  ‘Hilda, Hilda my darling!’ He knelt beside her now and smelt the soft familiar cosmetic smell of her body and saw the white satiny shoulder straps pressing into the plump flesh of the shoulder. The humble friendly familiarity of these things came to him with a sense of terrible doom. ‘Hilda, we will be happy again, we will—You’ll understand how it was—I’ll explain—’

  ‘Please go away, Rupert. I’m suffering from shock. I don’t see how I’m going to be able to live with myself any more. My whole being is connected with you, we’ve grown together. But now I see you so differently. I don’t know whether I could stay with you in a sort of pretence. And anyway Julius seems to think that everybody knows—’

  ‘Julius? Does he know?’

  ‘Yes. He’s been wonderfully wise and sympathetic. Oh Rupert, that everyone should see you in that horrible light—you, whom they all admired so and looked up to—and they’ll be so pleased to find out—that you’re just like they are after all—’

  Rupert clutched his head in his hands. ‘Julius? How on earth could Julius have known?’

  ‘Oh apparently everyone does.’

  ‘But it’s impossible. Besides—’

  ‘Oh I’m sure you and Morgan were very careful and discreet,’ said Hilda, ‘but people are so curious and it’s not easy to conceal these things. I seem to have been the last one to find out.’ She began to brush her hair.

  ‘But this is just a nightmare,’ said Rupert. ‘I don’t understand. Morgan and I—it was just beginning—we only met a few times—it’s only a short while—no one could have known—’

  ‘A lot can happen in a short while,’ said Hilda, ‘and there can be a lot of talk. If it was, as you say, “just beginning”, you certainly got off to a flying start. Could you leave me now, please, Rupert. I’m weary weary weary of the whole thing. I think I’ll probably go away somewhere tomorrow.’

  ‘But you must believe me!’ cried Rupert. ‘It’s all become exaggerated and twisted somehow. Morgan will tell you how it was. Morgan will be horrified when she hears—’

  ‘She’s already heard,’ said Hilda. ‘I wrote her a long letter this afternoon and delivered it by hand. I’ve asked her not to communicate with me any more. Now go away, will you please, Rupert, go away, and don’t come in here tonight. You can spend the night wherever you like. And don’t worry about me. I’m not going to commit suicide or anything. I just want to be by myself. You’d better go and look after Julius. I suppose he’s still in the house.’

  A door banged loudly downstairs.

  ‘Nothing’s—hurt really—’ said Rupert. He could hardly speak now for the utter heaviness of his whole
being. ‘Nothing’s hurt, Hilda—you’ll understand—and we’ll be together always—’

  ‘Go away, please.’

  Rupert went out of the door. He heard it being locked behind him. He went down the stairs and into the drawing room.

  Julius rose politely. He was wearing Rupert’s dark blue silk dressing gown and holding a glass of whisky.

  ‘I hope you will forgive me for having helped myself to a drink, Rupert.’

  ‘Why are you—still here—’ said Rupert. The sun had stopped shining and the garden was darkening, full of dark brown sombre light. A small wind touched the roses. Julius had turned on a lamp but the room was dim.

  Julius was standing, leaning forward a little, his face blurred, large and pale, smiling, his hair dry and fluffy after its immersion. ‘I quite appreciate, it’s not a very good evening. But I could hardly go away in your dressing gown, and I hesitated to choose one of your suits without consulting you. I’m afraid my own clothes are still rather damp.’

  ‘Did you tell Hilda I was having a love affair with Morgan?’ said Rupert.

  ‘No,’ said Julius. ‘I know there’s a rumour to this effect. I told Hilda not to pay too much attention to it.’

  Rupert stared at Julius’s blurred face and at his big shadow on the wall. He said, ‘Something insane has happened.’

  ‘I know how you feel,’ said Julius. ‘Here, let me give you some whisky. Did you meet Peter, by the way?’

  ‘No. Was he here?’ Rupert automatically accepted the glass of whisky.

  ‘Yes, he was here. He left a few minutes ago. That was him banging the door.’

  ‘What do you mean, you know how I feel?’ said Rupert. ‘The rumour is entirely false.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ said Julius.

  ‘Then what on earth are you talking about, and why have you been discussing the whole thing with Hilda?’

  ‘My dear Rupert, Hilda was anxious to discuss it with me. I did my best to reassure her. I told her that these things soon blow over and it’s better to pretend not to notice—’