An Accidental Man

by Iris Murdoch

  It was rush hour. He pushed his way into a crowded train to return to Notting Hill. He felt pleased with himself yet sad. His fellow beings pressed him with their bodies and fanned him with their breath. The swaying carriage smelt of sweat and pneumatic darkness and ordinary life. Garth felt drained and sad but somehow pleased. He felt complete in himself, whole, competent, young and full of will. Matthew’s cheque was in his pocket. He studied the surrounding faces with interest. He began to think about his novel.

  My dear Ludwig,

  you will be glad to receive this letter from us to say that Mom and I have decided after all to see it your way. I am sorry that I was not able to talk to you properly on the telephone. I cannot speak with any power on that instrument and you too seemed unable to explain yourself upon it. We must see each other and as you have declared yourself so inflexible we have no choice but to give way. We think in any case after yet further reflection and after a long talk with Mr Livingstone that it would now be inadvisable for you to return. As Mr Livingstone put it, as far as the USA is concerned you are finished. Having in view the lapse of time and your determination not to avail yourself of the suggested expedients, your return here would almost certainly involve you in a court case, prison, and all the subsequent misery of being an outsider in this society. Your chances of further study would probably be nil. We spoke with Mr Livingstone about the parable of the talents, and we think now that you are acting certainly wisely and possible rightly in staying at Oxford. We have all prayed about this. (In fact the whole congregation prayed for you last Sunday, though without having been given any details.) And I trust and believe that we have reached a just decision. This is not what your mother and I would most have wished for you, as you know, but I hope that you will feel that your parents are able to face new and alien facts without a failure of their love for you — and that love now unambiguously dictates a surrender of our former position. Equally we have come to feel that we cannot further oppose your marriage. I trust you have not communicated our misgivings to your pretty bride. Parents should not withhold their countenance on such an occasion except in extreme circumstances which we feel do not obtain here. Our instincts were to caution you. But that done, we have done our duty and are now resolved to accede cheerfully to your firm and declared wishes in this matter. After all, as you say, we cannot judge the young lady without meeting her and this we are determined to do very shortly. We had decided that we would attend the wedding, but now feel it unnecessary and undesirable to wait for so long. So we are booking a passage on the boat, tourist class, for the end of next week or the beginning of the week following. We will send details by another post. We trust you will make bookings for us in a modest hotel. It will be a great joy and blessing to see your face and to meet your no doubt charming wife-to-be. Your mother joins with me in sending our most cordial love.

  Your loving father,

  J. P. H. Leferrier

  My dearest Gracie,

  I cannot go through with it. I am sending the ring back to you not to put upon your finger but because you paid for it and it is yours. I have been in hell these days and I hope you will — yet how can you — forgive me for my failure to communicate — and for what I communicate now. I cannot marry you. The deepest sources of my spirit, the most sacred things I know, simply forbid it. I love you and perhaps I shall always love you — but that makes no sense. If I leave you now, as I must, it will be my duty, as well as the order of nature, to forget you. Of course I cannot forget you, but I mean that my feelings must cool, must cease to be love, love must die, my love and your love, which seemed the greatest thing in the world. At least it seemed to be a monument which nothing out-topped. I had never loved so before, and I think you had not, and there was, alas there is, a glory which can never be again. I love you more at this moment as I write than I have ever done in all our happy times. But it cannot be, Gracie. What makes it so bitter is that there is not, I believe, any fault in our love. It is just that I am not in my right place in the universe. And if I married you I would be increasingly not in my right place, and this would be true to eternity however happy we were together. There is a completeness I must seek elsewhere or else fail utterly as a man. Perhaps it is not in my stars to marry at all. I know now that you would come anywhere with me and share my fate, and this knowledge is precious. But wherever I now go in life I must go alone. To marry now would be to enter a realm of compromise which I am commanded not to enter. And since I am not a gentleman volunteer I have no choice but to obey. When I think of your sweetness and your perfect love for me and your grief my will faints. But I must speak truth now or become everlastingly corrupt. Please do not try to see me, it would only increase the pain. Pardon me. Please tell your parents. If there is lost expense over the wedding clothes I will pay — Oh Gracie —

  Ludwig

  Dearest Hester,

  Gracie has definitely broken with Ludwig. I don’t know the details, but she came to the conclusion (which of course I knew all along) that he was simply not the right man. I must say I am very relieved indeed. In fact he has behaved very oddly and irresponsibly, just clearing off to Oxford and shutting himself up with his books. Well, let him stay there, say I. I always thought him a conceited priggish humourless young man, and he is after all a foreigner. I doubt if we should have got on at all well with his family, and there would always have been the threat of his taking her back to America hanging over our heads. Gracie is very relieved too at having had the courage to terminate this situation and to be free once more. She is delighted to be back again in her own world. She is quite restored and gay. I wonder if you and Charles and Sebastian could come to dinner next Tuesday? Gracie will be here and she joins with me in looking forward very much to that. I will telephone. You and I must meet soon to discuss things.

  With love

  Clara

  Funny old Char is still being stiff and proud about our scheme, but she’ll come round!

  Dear Dr Seldon,

  thank you very much for seeing Gracie and for, partially at least, reassuring us. I did not realize it took such a long time for somebody to die of starvation. She still refuses to eat and lies all day on her bed crying and talks a good deal about suicide. We have done all we can and hope that she will recover soon or we shall have to cancel all sorts of arrangements. I am glad that you think she is not a suicidal type. But when you send the prescription for the sleeping pills please be sure they are not the kind you can kill yourself with. We do not leave her alone. Thank you so much for coming. I am sorry that she refused to talk to you.

  Yours sincerely,

  Clara Tisbourne

  Dearest Hester,

  is it true that Gracie and the Leferrier boy have broken it off? Someone told me this at a party, but I could hardly believe it, after the dresses are made and everything. What a blow to poor Clara. But perhaps it is just a rumour, I hope so. And what on earth is this about Charlotte living in a lodging house at Shepherds Bush with a drunken woman who beats her? Surely Charlotte is too old for games of this sort, but really one can expect anything these days.

  The boutique is closing down. It was doing very well and I am quite sorry, but I just find I am too busy. Geoffrey is selling the pigs and thinking of setting up a market garden, and I can see I shall have to help him, as I am the only business head in the family! I wonder would you and Charles and Sebastian like to come down to the Mill House next weekend? Karen will be there and she joins with me in looking forward very much to that. Please come for dinner on Friday if you can. The garden is a dream and the young people can splash in the pool. Tell Sebastian to bring his swimming gear.

  With love

  Mollie

  Dear Ludwig,

  just to say that Oliver and I are having a super hol in Greece and even Kierkegaard is enjoying it, although a policeman did hit him yesterday with his truncheon because he was parked in a naughty place. I got a card, by the way, from MacMurraghue who says he will do us a paper on the Aristop
hanic Socrates, so now our glorious programme is complete. For once I almost look forward to term! (MacM. is back with his old ma and full of Irish gloom. He requests us to kick the Pope on our return journey. Always a bad sign.) Meanwhile Oliver and self, just leaving for darkest Peloponnese, are having, in every respect, a thoroughly Grecian time. (I know you are a tolerant fellow.) The ancients had the root of the matter in them, don’t you think? Though I suppose I shouldn’t say so to a man about to marry the sweetest girl in the world! Looking at the great Artemision Zeus in the museum today I was somehow reminded of you! That beautiful stern brow spoke of relentless things and absolutes. What has that either to do with the sweets of marriage? and even Zeus etc. Excuse this letter, am drunk with ouzo and retsina. Oh the bright awful air of this country! No wonder the ancient Greeks were, contrary to what is popularly supposed, such a truly appalling lot.

  With love to you,

  Andrew

  PS Oliver, who is writing his daily report to his sister, sends love. PPS Guess who we saw down by the Piraeus tucking into their avgolemono? Richard Pargeter and Ann Colindale! They blushed a bit when they saw us. Old Annapurna Atom was tied up by the quay. They must have sneaked off by themselves! Sorry, retsina bottle upset at this point. Drunk.

  Dearest dear Gracie,

  I am very sorry indeed to hear about the demise of your engagement. What happened exactly? What rotten luck. Though better not repent at leisure etc. I am personally sorry too, as I respect Ludwig. I do see though that perhaps after all he isn’t quite our sort? I mean, definitely not a funny man. Ma implies telephonewise that you are prostrated; I trust she exaggerates as usual. What kind of philosophy can I offer you? One recovers from love. The echoes are faint at last. (At least I personally do not recover, but it is established that other people do.) Also, at your age you ought to recover. One must not weep upon the shore. The best cure for love I’m told is falling in love again. So lift your beautiful head up and look about you. (Seen anything of young Sebastian lately?)

  I won’t tell you about me. It might make you feel even sadder! Much much love from

  yrs (glorified)

  Patricius

  PS Henrietta Sayce sent me a large stink bomb through the post. It soaked my desk and person. I fear her sports are yet but childish.

  Cheer up, Sis.

  Dearest Matthew,

  you are being very kind (but of course you would be) and I am so deeply glad that you understand. To cope with Austin now is the least I can do for Dorina. It seems mad to say it, but I cannot help feeling that she somehow died for us, for you and me, taking herself away, clearing herself away, so that our world should be easier and simpler. And not to profit at once and grossly by that simplicity is our penance. It is, after all, a long way round and a long way through. But we will find the path, my darling. I cannot ask Austin to move at the moment. I honestly think that my concern stands between him and breakdown. For the present, I have to be absolutely available and absolutely there. I cannot ask about ‘plans’. We live from day to day in a denuded world the atmosphere of which I cannot quite convey to you, but some great Renaissance Italian could have painted it. I have never felt so sorry for anybody. (It isn’t exactly pity and it isn’t exactly compassion.) And being able to feel this empty aching sorriness does me good too as perhaps nothing else could. I know you will understand, and wait lovingly for this strange time to be over. If you can pray, pray for Austin now.

  Ever, with so much love, your utterly devoted

  Mavis

  Dearest,

  love is time’s fool, one knows however much in bliss. Having achieved the universe I am all anxiety. Love lives with dread. In the instant I undo all, see myself, in the first moments of happiness, undone. We are young. Let us be cunning, O my love, to keep somehow what we have. This is the thing itself, or else it does not exist. Let us cozen it with a golden shrewdness. This is for a lifetime surely? Oh we are young, we are young. I have never felt this before as such an agony. We are pure in heart but cannot stay so. We are fine but will be made coarse, free but will be bound. If there are gods for this I pray to them and embrace their knees. Be ingenious, my very dear, and keep with me our present in our future, keep our great love forever, growing, changing, overlaid, besieged, surrounded, ageing, and yet in its heart utterly uncontaminated and clear as Grail crystal.

  I’ll see you this evening. This comes as usual by Williamson minor.

  My dear Ludwig,

  I am sorry to hear of the final termination of your engagement. Yet also I confess I am, for your sake, relieved. I am sure you have done right. There are moments when one must choose spirit rather than joy or be forever diminished. You are young and the choice for you is meaningful. When one is older distinctions become unclear and this perhaps is damnation. Thank you for telephoning me and for speaking so frankly. May I come and see you in Oxford? I will ring tomorrow morning.

  Yours

  Matthew

  FATHER PLEASE CANCEL YOUR SAILING I AM COMING HOME LUDWIG.

  Gracie lay back in the boat, limp, her light dress of papery thin cotton tacky with sweat, gently plucking the warm flesh at her thighs, at her neck. The trees were green, were black, floated and swayed dizzily and were taken away. Now there was only sky, almost colourless with its brightness, quiet and empty and sizzling with light. Hollow sounds of distant voices came over the water, weightless wooden balls of sound bouncing lightly on the azure ripples, skipping and echoing away into the slumbrous afternoon. A coolness crept upon the water, concentrated now in her trailing hand as it silently broke the surface. A hand made of peppermint, made of coconut ice. Gracie’s eyes closed and she existed floating in the midst of a warm pink sphere, lying limp and boneless, her body light and extended and drooping like a plucked tossed flower. The hollow sounds boomed far distantly, buzzed and droned.

  Gracie was in a woody glade. Her mother’s white dress had mingled with green leaves and faded. Her mother, leading Patrick by the hand, had gone away down another vista. This was Gracie’s place and she was alone in it and suddenly panting with a sense of significance and fear. Before her, across a little lawn of cropped velvety grass, there was standing all by itself a single tree with a smooth shaft of light grey close textured trunk of a glowing colour between silver and pewter. Above the high shaft a thick cloud of leaves moved, though there was no wind, with intricate tiny curtsying movements, and seemed to wink noiselessly, turning dark and pale sides alternately in the absorbed still complex light. The dim leafy cone swelled and diminished, its fine top thinning into an extremity of pure sky. Gracie knew of the leaves, of the pencil-thin peak and of the void beyond, but she gazed at the trunk of the tree, at its perfect smoothness and roundness and she felt a shudder of urgency pin her to the earth as if an arrow from directly above her had passed through her body and her feet and pierced the earth below with a long thin electrical thrill.

  She was conscious of herself with a fullness she had never known before, and yet also she was absent, or something was absent, there was no anxiety, no thought even, just this thrilling sense of full and absolute being. She stood quite still for a while breathing deeply and staring at the tree. There was fear but now it was uninhibited, impersonal. She kicked off her shoes and stood barefoot, feeling the cool grass creasing the soles of her feet with little precious patterns. She thought, I must walk to the tree, and in doing so I shall make a vow which will dedicate me and alter my whole life, so that I will be given and will never belong to myself again ever. I have to do this. And yet at the same time I am free, I can stay here, I can run back into the wood. I can break the spell which I know I am in some way weaving myself. I can make the tree cease to glow and shimmer, make my flesh cease from trembling, unbind my eyes and disavow this vision. Or I can walk to the tree and make everything different forever.

  She began to take off her clothes, her dress fell from her. She stood there white and lithe as a boy, compact and dense, an arrow, a flame. Still in the midst of fe
ar, she began to walk springily across the grass. If she could but keep this visitation pure and whole some greatness would come to be, if she could but cover this precarious space and lay her hands upon the tree she would be filled with angelic power, the world would be filled with it. She moved without sound or sensation upon the grass. She reached the tree and knelt, circling it with her arms, laying her lips upon its cool close-textured silvery bark, a little pitted and dimpled to the touch. As she knelt upright now, pressing her whole body against the shaft, she felt an agony of shame, impossibility, achievement, joy. She lost consciousness.

  Something was rubbing softly against her ankle. She stirred and groaned, tried to sit up but seemed to fall, her head rolling away into the dark. She opened her eyes and saw slowly moving green branches above her, saw blue sky, heard hollow sounds of voices over water. She began to pull herself up.

  Garth’s bare foot, which had been pressing upon her leg, withdrew. He sat resting on the oars, smiling, blinking.

  ‘Oh dear, I fell asleep!’ said Gracie. ‘Was I asleep for long?’ She pulled down her skirt.

  ‘Only a few minutes. You’d got into such a funny position, I thought you might hurt your arm. And you were squashing your pretty hat.’

  ‘My arm does feel stiff — ooh — pins and needles. Fancy my going to sleep like that.’

  Gracie streaked back her loose hair, tugged at the neck of her dress, patted a little dew of sweat from her temples. ‘I’m all hot and crumpled. Oh how strange, I had a dream, just in that little time, so vivid.’

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘Well, it wasn’t really a dream, it was a memory, something which really happened, one doesn’t dream real things, does one.’

  ‘I think one does sometimes — one sort of embroiders them — and then one doesn’t know what one’s remembering and what one’s imagining.’