A Word Child

by Iris Murdoch

  She came towards me and I took her in my arms at once. I could not speak. She was quiet for a moment, then began to release herself. ‘Hilary. Please. Just listen to what I say, believe what I say and don’t think there is anything else. We’re going to Italy. I couldn’t just go away. I thought I could. But I kept worrying about you. I couldn’t leave without seeing you again. So, I just came to say good-bye. Just that. Don’t suffer, oh don’t suffer, don’t — Good-bye — ’ And she darted out of the door. I stood where I was, transmuted. Ah if only, if only she had not come! Without that visit I might have managed myself, have savaged my love into hopelessness and the saving lie of appearance. Without that, I would not have let myself believe in her interest, not felt again the complice beating of her heart with mine. As it was, I now had enough and more than enough to live on for the whole vacation. I knew now that I should see her again, that I should hold her in my arms again. I became suddenly blissfully happy. I could even work. Crystal came down and I drove her round the Gotswolds in the car. However I curtailed her visit and could not talk to her of the future. Of course I said nothing about Anne. I spent the rest of the vacation in my rooms, reading, working. I read poetry and enjoyed the grammar and the poems too. I luxuriated in Russian. I played with Turkish. I made progress in Hungarian. I prepared my lectures for next term. And now I waited.

  The Joplings returned just before term. I met Anne in the quad. Gunnar was over near the gate, out of earshot, talking to the college organist. (He was a great arranger of concerts.) He waved to me. I waved back. I said to Anne, ‘I’ve got to make love to you, I’ve got to, I don’t care if I die afterwards, I’ve got to and I’m going to.’ Gunnar approached across the grass. ‘Hello, Hilary.’ ‘Hello. Had a nice time in Italy?’ ‘Marvellous. We were in Calabria. We nearly bought a farmhouse. Why don’t you come in to dinner tomorrow? That would be OK, wouldn’t it, Anne?’ I went to dinner. I drove my ankle hard against Anne’s under the table. She drew away. Three days later she came to my room.

  It was on a Wednesday afternoon in the fourth week of Trinity Term that she gave in at last. She came first out of pity, so she said, and because she feared I might make some desperate move. I think if I had not told her that I was virgin and that it was bed I wanted, if I had talked more tenderly and sentimentally of being in love, she might have been able to resist. As it was, I think it began to seem to her something simple and quickly given, which she had and I needed, and which out of her generosity she would have to give me sooner or later. She wanted to show me that I could love a woman. In fact I never doubted that I could, but it helped both of us if I let her think of it in this way. I was totally in love, but I wanted to make love, to screw her, more urgently than I had ever wanted anything, and this was the role my love played to her, and the guise, which had its own sort of pseudo-innocence, in which it presented itself. Of course she understood the rest of it too and would not have consented had she not known that my whole being was her slave. But it was my pressing need that she met, not the rest. The rest could wait. We pretended that this huge love did not exist, while at the same time we knew that it was the only possible ground of our proceeding. And thus complicitly we cheated each other. In fact Anne was by this time, though she tried to conceal it, physically very much in love with me. I could hardly believe at first that this was so. What a black glory shone around when I realized it. I drew her like a magnet and she had to come to me. She flew south through Oxford, she flew to my rooms, distraught with need, dissolving into relieved joy as she entered. And still I talked simply of her kindness, my gratitude.

  After the great holy enactment of that Wednesday afternoon, after we had dressed, we stood dazed, hand in hand, gazing haplessly as if we pitied each other, stunned by the immensity of the tornado which had picked us up and deposited us in another country. There was no simple thing now which was needed and could be given. We had created a maze and were lost. And now we could see the possibilities of pain, our pain and that of others. After Anne’s first visit to me, after her return from Italy, I had put a complete stop to all Crystal’s arrangements. Crystal had intended to spend most of Trinity Term in lodgings in Oxford. I told her it was impossible, there was no suitable accommodation, I was working too hard, everything would have to wait. Of course Crystal did not complain. I had cleared the decks for action, but what action was possible? What was there for me to do except to continue to beg a married woman to visit me in secret? In any case how much longer could it be secret? Anne visited lots of people, but it was still a fact that every time she crossed the quad dozens of curious eyes could mark where she went. We parted passionately, but without any plan. We could not bear even to talk of a plan. I heard nothing from her for a week.

  At the end of the week I received a letter from her saying that we had better not meet again. I did not reply. I stayed in my rooms and waited. She came. We made love. It sounds as if it was a pretty heartless business. Any story can be told many ways; and there is a kind of justice in the fact that this one could be told cynically: a young wife and mother secretly amusing herself, a libertine deceiving his best friend, and so on. There is no escape here from damnation by the facts. I do not in any case want to excuse myself, but I do want to try to excuse Anne. It was all so complicated and it happened, not all at once, but in little movements each one of which seemed to have its own inevitability and its own sense. We were young and gripped by the awful compelling force of physical love. I was in total love from the start. Anne became so. She was sorry for me. Pity changed imperceptibly into enslaving fascination. She felt the grains of violence in me and yearned over them. I talked about my past. I told her things I had not told even to Crystal. She talked about her past. I could communicate with her, miraculously, totally. She saw me, she attended to me more than anyone had ever done, even Mr Osmand. It was like being seen by God. She bathed my hurt soul in a reviving dew. Yet at the same time we were both in hell. She suffered hideously. I saw her bright face changing, losing its joy, and I ground my teeth with despair and fury against the Fates. If only this woman were not married, if only things were different, if only — She did not want to come to me and yet she did and she came. She loved her husband and her son, but she loved me too and she desired me in a way in which (I suspect: she never said this) she had never desired her husband. We suffered so much together during that May and that June, and comforted each other, and resolved to part, and could not part, and wept.

  Then one day she came and I knew at once from her face what had happened. Gunnar had found out. We never discovered how, but it would not have been difficult. He asked her and (as we had agreed she must) she told him. I did not ask her how he behaved. She went away from me in a misery such as I had never seen, like a dead woman walking. The next morning I got a letter from Gunnar which just said, Please leave Anne alone. Please. Then nothing for several days. Gunnar did not appear in College. Term came to an end. I was in a frenzy, but now there were dreadful hopes. I had no intention of giving her up. We had, as it were, waited for Gunnar’s knowledge, as we had waited for Anne’s surrender, treating these things as blank wall-like barriers beyond which things would have to change, beyond which it was fruitless to try to look beforehand. Now that this last one was past I knew that I must simply persuade Anne to come to me, to come to me forever, to break and abandon her marriage, and marry me instead. And I knew too, with the strength of the hold which I had at that moment on her being, that this was possible. I must, as a first move, simply take her away, kidnap her if necessary, be alone with her for a long time: for a long time without lies at last. Waiting was anguish now, since I felt that every hour which she remained with Gunnar was diminishing my power. On the fourth day I telephoned her and asked her to meet me in St John’s garden. My college rooms were not safe any more. I met her and she cried for an hour. We hid ourselves in the wildest part of the garden and she cried and cried. I told her all that I felt, all that I intended. She was incoherent, practically hysterical. I was
demented with distress. Nothing could be planned or even discussed.

  The following evening at about nine o’clock she arrived in my rooms with a white rigid face, trembling and shuddering. I gave her some whisky and took a stiff drink myself. She said, ‘I simply had to run out of the house.’ This was what I had been waiting for. I said, ‘I’ll take you away. Come.’ I seized a few things and threw them into a suitcase, then led her down the stairs and put her into my car. I was in a sweat of terror all the time in case Gunnar should turn up. Not that I feared any violence which he could put upon me, but I wanted to take this god-given chance to carry her right away while she was in a mood of absolute flight. I was trembling so much myself I could hardly start the car. Anne sat beside me in a trance, staring blankly ahead. As we careered through Headington towards the London road she said, ‘Where are we going?’ ‘To London.’ ‘No — please — take me home — ’ ‘Certainly not. I am running away with you forever. I am your home now.’ She began to cry. Before we got to the motorway she said, ‘Hilary, stop please. There’s something I’ve got to tell you.’ ‘There’s nothing more to say, darling. We love each other. It’s too late for regrets now. You’re mine.’ ‘Stop, please, I’ve got to tell you something. Stop.’

  I slowed down and drew the car into a lay-by. There was a blue midsummer dusky light, the sky still glowing but the earth darkening. I turned to her in the dimness. Passing cars, their headlights just switched on, momently revealed her face.

  ‘Anne, darling, I love you. Don’t leave me. You’ve come to me now, don’t leave me, I should die.’

  She put her arms round my neck with such a gesture of confidence and absolute love that for a moment all fear left me. Then pulling back she said, ‘Hilary, it’s no good.’

  ‘Don’t. I shall start the car. We’ve escaped, we’re going on. You’re mine.’

  ‘No, no, listen. We can’t go. I’m pregnant.’

  I stared at her dim white face in the gathering darkness. I could not see her eyes, but I knew from the convulsive trembling of her body that she was crying. ‘So soon,’ I said. ‘Well, surely that is it, the final bond between us. You can’t leave me now. Are you sure?’ I was however instinctively appalled.

  ‘Yes. But Hilary, you haven’t understood — ’

  ‘What — you mean — ’

  ‘Yes. It’s not your child, it’s Gunnar’s.’

  A flood of icy coldness filled my heart and my veins. I kept my voice hard and steady. ‘You mean it might be?’

  ‘No. It is. Because of the time. There isn’t any doubt. I thought perhaps — but I kept wanting not to know. I only found out just now for certain — I thought it just couldn’t be — and I really meant earlier to leave you — I meant to leave you as soon as Gunnar found out, I thought I’d have to — so I just — let things drift — and kept hoping it wasn’t — and didn’t go to the doctor — oh I’ve been so wicked, so stupid — ’

  ‘I see,’ I said. ‘You intended to leave me as soon as Gunnar found out. You never told me so.’

  ‘I didn’t intend anything. What could I do? I couldn’t see what I would do. I’m caught. I love Gunnar. I love Tristram. It’s my doom that I love you too. You don’t know, even you don’t know at all, what I’ve had to suffer in these last months — ’

  ‘You sound quite resentful,’ I said, keeping the cool hard tone.

  ‘I suppose I am in a way. I was so happy — before you came along.’

  ‘Too bad. I was so happy before you came along too.’

  ‘Then it’s plain — isn’t it — we must part — oh God — we must both try to be — as we were before — it’s such agony — I’m sorry, my darling, I’m very very very sorry — Please will you drive me home? Oh my God, I do love you, I do love you — But it’s just hopeless — ’ She was shuddering and wailing.

  I said, ‘Does Gunnar know?’

  ‘About the baby? Yes.’

  If only she had lied at that point. If only she had not told me that as well.

  ‘So he thinks you’re tied to him — because of the bloody baby?’

  ‘I am tied.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m afraid you aren’t. You’re wrong there. You’re coming with me, baby and all. Wherever we’re going now we’re going together, my darling.’ Fearful rage and misery possessed my body, making it violent, mechanical, precise. I started the car again and drove on.

  ‘Hilary, please take me home, please, please, please — ’

  I said nothing. We came onto the motorway.

  ‘Hilary, please don’t drive so fast, do you want to kill us both — Hilary don’t drive so fast — Hilary, Hilary — oh please please take me home — oh stop, stop, stop, don’t drive so fast — ’

  The car crossed the central reservation at about a hundred miles an hour. It was a matter of chance which car on the other side we hit. We hit a Bentley driven by a stockbroker and travelling almost equally fast. Both cars were completely smashed and six other cars were severely damaged. The stockbroker escaped with two broken legs. No one else was badly hurt except me and Anne. I had multiple injuries. Anne died in hospital on the following day.

  I never doubted that I had behaved wickedly. That knowledge I carried away with me into the years to come. But the thing itself as we lived it was such a complex of contradictions and misunderstandings and mistakes and little makeshifts and sheer blind muddled waiting and hoping. How could we know that it was wending its way to that end? I was dreadfully in love with the sort of black certain metaphysical love that cuts deeper than anything and thus seems its own absolute justification. On n’aime qu’une fois, la première. I think this is true of the one and only Eros. Though also perhaps the one and only Eros is not the greatest of all the gods. Anne was dreadfully in love too, but her love was crazed, crazed with the hopelessness of it all, which perhaps she saw and I did not. She loved her husband; and I could remember, even at the times of blackest glory, how happy she had been when I first met her; and I could see too how destroyed she was later, destroyed by me and by my terrible love.

  I thought later on, as the years passed in almost uninterrupted meditation upon the events of that summer, that I had perhaps overestimated the force of her passion. It may have been so. Even if she had not discovered that she was pregnant would she ever really have decided to leave Gunnar and come to me? What went on between them after Gunnar found out? This I did not know or want to know. On the other hand, if I had not become mad with rage at what she told me, if I had simply driven her away with me on that night, was it conceivable that she would have stayed with me, would not her tears have forced me finally to take her home to Gunnar and Tristram? Of course she loved me, that could not be doubted. Perhaps she was impressed by the force of my love; being thus impressed is as good a cause of real love as another. If only she had not come back to me after that first kiss. If only she had not told me that Gunnar knew she was pregnant. That revelation had some sort of terrible importance at that moment. If she had not told me it would all have seemed a problem, an obstacle, something to be dealt with by me, I would not have been precipitated straight into fury and despair. There are those who hold that the world is well lost for love. I did not think this. I loved Anne with a concentration of my whole being which could only happen once. But I wished forever that I had not. I wished I had never met her. For the world was lost indeed, and I had lost it not only for myself but for Crystal.

  I resigned my fellowship of course. Gunnar also resigned. He went into politics for a short time, contested a Labour seat, then entered the Civil Service and began to become a successful and famous man. I was (I think this describes it) ill for years. Not really mentally ill. I never thought I would go mad. But I was simply crushed, unmanned. I had lost my moral self-respect and with it my ability to control my life. Sin and despair are mixed and only repentance can change sin into pure pain. I could not clean the resentment out of my misery. Did I repent? That question troubled me as the years went by. Can something
half crushed and bleeding repent? Can that fearfully complex theological concept stoop down into the real horrors of human nature? Can it, without God, do so? I doubt it. Can sheer suffering redeem? It did not redeem me, it just weakened me further. I, who had so long cried out for justice, would have been willing to pay, only I had nothing to pay with and there was no one to receive the payment. I knew I had killed Anne (and her unborn child) almost as surely as if I had hit her with an axe. The business was brilliantly hushed up by Gunnar. (No wonder he succeeded later in high level diplomacy.) He put it around that I was kindly giving Anne a lift to London. Later my name was dropped from the story altogether. I disappeared from Oxford as if I had never existed. Much later I heard someone say that Gunnar Jopling’s first wife had died by crashing her car. I imagined that I would carry the placard Murderer around my neck forever. But people have their own troubles and tend to forget. One is not all that interesting. Even Hitler is being forgotten at last.