An Accidental Man

by Iris Murdoch

  ‘I’m glad to hear there’s anything inside it!’ said Garth. ‘Well — there is — or was — a dark green sponge bag, with a sort of silver-coloured toothbrush in it —’

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘And — I hope — there’s a — er — novel — called — er — The Life Blood of the Night.’ Garth blushed.

  ‘That’s right, sir. What have we here? A novel entitled The Life Blood of the Night. Not much doubt about that, is there, I mean there can’t be many of them knocking around! Here we find also a few articles of clothing and toilet articles. What else was in the bag, sir?’

  ‘Oh an electric shaver, a camera, they’re gone, and some of the clothes. Nothing that matters, really. How did you find it?’

  ‘We found it abandoned, sir, on a building site. Lucky you put your London address inside. The ladies who now occupy the flat told us where to find you.’

  ‘The ladies — ? Oh yes, well, I’m so glad. I never thought I’d see it again.’

  ‘Never give up hope, sir. Now perhaps you would just sign here? That’ll be all then, good day. And may I express the hope that your novel will be a best seller?’

  When the policeman had gone Garth eagerly pulled the novel out. He leafed it through. It was all there. He pulled the bed together and settled down. He was soon absorbed, spell-bound. The novel really was rather good.

  ‘I should think it over if I were you, Charlotte,’ said Matthew wearily. He unfolded a clean handkerchief and drew it down the side of his face and inspected the dirty damp smear. The weather was stupidly hot again.

  ‘Really, Matthew,’ said Charlotte, ‘how can you imagine that I need to reflect? Why ever should I consent to be the grateful pensioner of such a ghastly band of wellwishers? Even if it is your idea. Which I doubt, actually. Now be honest, wasn’t it really Clara’s idea?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Matthew, ‘it was Clara’s idea.’

  ‘And you were to be the front. I thought so. It has the Clara stamp.’

  ‘Clara is a very kind woman. It’s a very kind idea. There’s no need to swear at me about it.’

  ‘I’m not swearing at you. Dear me, you do look hot. You also, if I may say so, need a shave.’

  ‘But you are short of money, Charlotte.’

  ‘If I’m desperate I’ll borrow from you. As it is, I propose to get a job.’

  ‘Oh. What kind?’

  ‘I’m not sure yet. After all, I’m not a dolt.’

  Charlotte, looking radiant and full of vitality, was striding up and down the drawing-room at the Villa. Matthew lay stretched out in an easy chair. Charlotte was wearing a rather long dress of coarse linen with wide blue and white stripes and a wide belt. She had a very good figure. Her grey hair had been newly set and slightly tinted with mauve. Her blue eyes blazed with life and purpose. Matthew watched her puzzled, exhausted.

  ‘Well, all right,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell Clara. Have another drink.’

  ‘Thank you. There’s something I wanted to tell you.’

  ‘Oh yes, you said in a letter —’

  ‘Need you look so bloody limp? When I was young, men didn’t loll about like that in the presence of a woman.’

  ‘Sorry —’

  ‘I’m sorry to be so abrupt, but as I hardly ever have the pleasure of seeing you I have to make the best of my time. It’s about Austin.’

  ‘Austin —’ Matthew rocked his bulk in the chair in an attempt to lean forward.

  ‘Austin and Betty.’

  ‘Oh no, not that.’

  ‘You mean you know?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re going to say. I just don’t feel in the mood for Austin and Betty just now. Could you shove the decanter along?’

  ‘Matthew, please. How did Betty die?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ said Matthew.

  ‘How did Betty die?’

  ‘She fell into a deep lock on the river near my cottage. She couldn’t swim. She was drowned. What are you at, Charlotte?’

  ‘She could swim,’ said Charlotte. ‘I found a swimming certificate of hers at Austin’s flat. She could swim very well.’

  ‘All right,’ said Matthew, wiping his face with his hand. He was somehow sitting on the handkerchief. ‘She could swim. Swimmers can drown too. She knocked her head on something.’

  ‘But Austin said she couldn’t swim. He said so at the inquest.’

  ‘Did he? I can’t remember.’

  ‘You must remember, you’re lying, I can see you are. And another thing. You were meeting Betty secretly.’

  ‘How do you know?’ said Matthew. He rocked himself again to try to extract the handkerchief.

  ‘I’ve seen a letter of Betty’s to you, making a secret appointment. Austin must have found it. It was torn and stuck together again.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Matthew. ‘I was meeting Betty secretly so as to help her buy a tennis racket for Austin’s birthday. It was to be a surprise. I’ve told Austin this since. So there’s no drama there, Charlotte, sorry.’

  ‘But why did Austin say she couldn’t swim? And why did he go round later on hinting that she’d committed suicide? You know he did that. He can’t work it both ways. If she could swim she was unlikely to get drowned by accident in a river on a summer’s day. And if she could swim she was even more unlikely to have chosen drowning as a method of suicide. Nor would she have been able to kill herself by drowning unless she’d tied on weights or something. And nothing of that sort came up at the inquest. And if it really was an accident and she fell and hit her head and so drowned why was this never said, and what were Austin’s motives for saying that she couldn’t swim and then for hinting later that she killed herself?’

  ‘Well, what do you think happened?’ said Matthew. He hauled out the handkerchief, now a stringy rag. He noticed that the seat of the chair was damp with his perspiration. Perhaps it would make a permanent stain.

  ‘I think Austin killed her,’ said Charlotte, ‘and I think he did it because he believed rightly or wrongly that she was carrying on with you.’

  ‘I’ve explained,’ said Matthew, ‘that we were going to buy a tennis racket for Austin’s birthday. That was the only secret meeting I ever had with Betty.’

  ‘Well, never mind that. I’m not accusing you. I’m accusing Austin.’

  ‘Oh, let it go, Charlotte,’ said Matthew. ‘Austin never killed or tried to kill anybody except in his imagination.’

  ‘He might kill you.’

  ‘I know how it all was, Austin is no murderer —’

  ‘Matthew, he might kill you.’

  ‘Only he won’t. And now, dear Charlotte, since we’ve had our talk and I now know what to tell Clara let us call it a day. I’ve got to see the Monkleys and then give Mavis dinner and then I’ve promised to call on Charles Odmore since Hester, as you probably know, is down at the Arbuthnots for the pig festival or whatever it is —’

  ‘Matthew, I simply don’t understand you,’ said Charlotte. ‘No, don’t try to get up, I’ve got you cornered and I’m not going to let you go. I have accused your brother of the murder of his first wife. You seem quite unmoved and you don’t even answer the charge.’

  ‘I know he didn’t, that’s all,’ said Matthew. ‘I know him better than you do. You’re just thinking all this up to make an exciting drama and a thrilling secret between us and so on.’

  ‘You swine,’ said Charlotte quietly. ‘And I didn’t invent the swimming certificate and —’

  ‘Oh let it go, Char.’

  ‘Are you going to marry Mavis?’ said Charlotte.

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘Matthew, I am not amusing myself. Sit still and listen! I seriously want to warn you, you could be in serious danger —’

  ‘Oh stop it, Charlotte. And do stop playing amateur detective.’

  ‘Do you know that I’ve loved you all my life?’ said Charlotte. She stood in front of him.

  ‘You haven’t known me all your life.’

 
‘Don’t be a fool. I’ve loved you ever since I’ve known you. Ever since George introduced us. I’ve been in love with you.’

  ‘I thought you loved George.’

  ‘Clara invented that myth in order to humiliate me.’

  ‘Come, come, Charlotte —’

  ‘Matthew, I love you. You are the one, the only one. I love you and it relieves my heart so much now to tell you so. I have remained single because of you. I have lived all these years in the thought of you, in the lack of you, in the hopeless hope of you —’

  ‘Char, this won’t do,’ said Matthew. ‘I’m sure you feel something now, but I can’t believe this and I’m sure you don’t really. I know one has to account for one’s sufferings somehow —’

  ‘How can you be so cruel!’ said Charlotte. Tears started suddenly into her eyes, and she turned away, brushing them roughly.

  Matthew leaned forward and managed to get up out of the chair. ‘I’m sorry, but I just don’t believe that you have wasted your life because of me.’

  ‘Don’t believe it, then. I don’t interest you enough for you to work up any guilt about me, that’s what it comes to.’

  ‘If you’ve thought about me, I’m grateful —’

  ‘You set up in business as a sort of sage. All right, you probably don’t do it on purpose, it’s an instinct. But all it means is that you’re prepared to muddle about with people you feel connected with, where the connection is amusing or flattering. It’s a sort of sexual drive, really. You want power where it’s interesting. Where you could use it to some decent purpose, but the interest’s lacking, you put on the other act, frankness and simplicity and not saying more than you really feel and so on. All right, I’m just on the wrong side of the barrier. But I should have thought that even politeness, to say nothing of gallantry, might have made you behave a little less cynically to me.’

  ‘Oh God, Char, I’m sorry,’ said Matthew. ‘I won’t argue with you. I’m just so tired out with emotion at the moment. Please forgive me and let’s be friends.’

  ‘You never came near me, even when I wrote to you. You wrote me a smarmy hypocritical letter.’

  ‘I’m sorry —’

  ‘Thank God I’ve got the dignity of real love to support me. I haven’t got anything else. I doubt if you really know how to love at all.’

  ‘You should never say that to anybody,’ said Matthew.

  ‘Well, I’m going,’ said Charlotte, picking up her handbag. ‘I won’t bother you any more. I came to warn you about Austin. I really think he’s capable of killing you. I didn’t intend the declaration of love. But as you don’t believe it it won’t worry you. Goodbye.’

  ‘Charlotte, wait a minute —’

  With a swing of blue and white skirt she was gone and the front door banged as Matthew reached the hall.

  He returned to the drawing-room. The chipped white Sung bowl with the peony pattern was sitting in the middle of the mantelpiece. He picked it up and looked down into the creamy white ocean of its depth. He saw again the scene in the square, the black gawky group of protesters and the man walking across to join them and the miraculous shaking of hands and the trodden snow and the empty scene after the police had taken them all away.

  ‘It must have been accidental,’ said Mavis.

  She and Austin were sitting over tea in the drawing-room.

  ‘Oh God, it haunts my dreams so,’ said Austin.

  ‘Yes. Have some more cake.’

  ‘I blame myself —’

  ‘I don’t see that you should.’

  ‘Oh I do. I think — some people — think I blame everyone except myself, but it’s not so.’

  ‘For this, no one was to blame.’

  ‘Oh well, who knows how networks of causes can make one blameworthy. I expect that every time we do anything even slightly bad it sets up a sort of wave which ends with someone committing suicide or murder or something.’

  ‘That could be,’ said Mavis. ‘That was the sort of thing which when I believed in God I handed over to Him.’

  ‘But now —’

  ‘There’s nothing to be done. Except to try as usual. One can’t see the network.’

  ‘Still, one is haunted.’

  ‘But I can’t see how it can really be your fault.’

  ‘Well, I was showing off. He was so fat, you see.’

  ‘Fat?’

  ‘Yes, even then. He wasn’t as agile as I was and he was afraid to do the climb down. The pool looked so attractive at the bottom of the quarry, all turquoise blue, you know, among golden rocks, and the day was hot. I got down there and paddled and splashed around and sort of taunted him and he sat up at the top in the heat. He must have hated it. I meant him to.’

  ‘And then —’

  ‘Then I took off all my clothes and swam. I can remember it now. One of those hot days when one’s body remains warm inside the cool water and the water is like a sort of silver skin. Strange. That must have been about the last happy moment of my life.’

  ‘Surely not. And then —’

  ‘I thought he’d come down then, he must have been so envious. I could see him casting around, trying to find an easy way down, but he funked it. Then I got my clothes on and started to climb up, and he threw stones down at me as I was climbing and I fell.’

  ‘Wait a moment, Austin. Are you sure he threw the stones? Perhaps you loosened the stones yourself.’

  ‘I’m sure he threw one stone at least — it doesn’t matter — I can’t remember.’

  ‘But, Austin, it does matter. You say you’ve always blamed him for this — But if he didn’t really do anything at all —’

  ‘He laughed —’

  ‘But only before you fell.’

  ‘He saw that I was in difficulties and he laughed.’

  ‘But that’s not bad. You’d been mocking him just before —’

  ‘I’m sure he threw a stone — anyway — it doesn’t matter — it was terribly much harder to get up than to get down — I got into a panic — then lots of stones started rolling down on top of me — a sort of avalanche — and I couldn’t hold on — and I fell all the way down to the bottom and — there it was.’

  Austin, who had been sitting stiffly staring at the wall as he spoke, put his cup down with a clack, gasped, and was suddenly breathless. He panted, lowering his head and supporting his brow, then half sidled half slipped out of his chair on to the carpet beside the window. He pushed the sash up a little and sat there, leaning his head against the bottom of the window, panting and gasping.

  Mavis thought, he is going to have hysterics, in a moment he will be screaming. She ran to the door, ran back again, stared down at him. His face was contorted and he drew long slow shuddering breaths. Then she saw that he was trying to smile.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Austin, ‘it’s just the pollen.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘The pollen. Asthma, you know. I’ll take a tablet in a minute or two. Funny thing, I know the garden’s full of beastly pollen, but it does help to breathe fresh air. When one gets a fit any room seems too airless. Of course it’s worse for other people, it must look as if I’m dying or something.’

  ‘Can I get you anything?’

  ‘A little milk — perhaps I could have the milk jug — thanks — milk helps — don’t know why — probably psychological —’

  Mavis watched Austin sitting on the floor beside the window drinking milk in gulps out of the Crown Derby milk jug. She felt very odd herself, suddenly breathless and weird. Austin smiled up at her, almost perkily. His golden hair was bushed up, his handsome face scarcely wrinkled, bronzed and glowing. He had left off his spectacles. He looked like a successful actor. She sat down on the floor opposite to him on the other side of the window, tucking her dress in under her knees.

  ‘Better now?’

  ‘Better now. Sorry if I startled you.’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘Where was I? Oh yes. Well, there it was. I broke my right wrist — I f
ell like that, you see, stretching out my arm — and I broke a lot of little bones in the hand, rather unusual — and it all went stiff — then I couldn’t write for ages and ages — and that was, well that was really the end of me.’

  ‘Oh nonsense, Austin, you’re a fighter, there’s a huge will inside you.’

  ‘I’ve got to survive — that’s what my will’s been for — it’s been all used upon that — it’s always been touch and go.’

  ‘Anyway it wasn’t his fault. Even if he threw a stone it wasn’t. He didn’t mean to hurt you. And you aren’t even sure he did throw a stone.’

  ‘Oh well — if it wasn’t this it was something else — he would have — it’s done now —’

  ‘You’re so vague. You mustn’t be.’

  ‘One can be vague about the details. The main thing is overwhelming.’

  ‘But if all the details are wrong the main thing may be just in your imagination.’

  ‘Well, the imagination is real too.’

  ‘But, Austin, think, it may be real to you, but that doesn’t mean anything is somebody else’s fault. I mean, there is a rather important difference between an awful thing and an imaginary awful thing!’

  ‘There’s always fault in such cases. Imagination sniffs out what’s real. It’s a good diagnostician.’

  ‘This sounds to me like madness,’ said Mavis.

  ‘No, no. There’s too much proof. Look at my poor old hand. That’s real enough. Stiff as a branch of a tree. I can bend it this way and that, but I can’t close my fingers. See. No wonder people shun me. It’s like a claw, a beastly witch mark.’

  ‘There’s nothing repulsive about it,’ said Mavis.

  ‘But you notice it?’

  ‘Well — yes — but only because I know you.’

  ‘Oddly enough I don’t think it’s ever made me unattractive to women. Rather the opposite in fact.’

  ‘You’ve had treatment for it?’

  ‘Then. Not now. Not for years. It’s hopeless.’

  ‘You might try again,’ said Mavis. ‘They find out things. Let me look at it.’

  Austin stretched out his right hand, revealing a grubby frayed shirt cuff. Mavis took his hand in both of hers. Austin’s fingers were red and plump at the end from continual nail-biting. Mavis moved the stiff fingers a little to and fro. ‘Does that hurt?’