by Iris Murdoch
As he estimated the distance involved and braced his body for it he heard from far above a loud echoing clang which he immediately understood. The bronze doors at the top had been slammed shut. A second later all the lights went out.
Emma turned on the lamps in the room where for some time he and his mother had been sitting by the light of a flickering fire.
It was Saturday evening, the end of a long day. Emma had returned to London that morning from Ennistone by an early train. He had got into the Underground to proceed to King’s Cross and so to his digs. But the idea of being alone in his room seemed so appalling, he suddenly decided to go to Heathrow instead and fly to Brussels. His mother’s joy at his unexpected arrival cheered him up a little.
The room in which they were sitting had existed for a long time, ever since just after his father’s death. It was a Belgian not an English room. Not that his mother had especially willed it so. She had taken over some articles of furniture with the flat, and inherited others from her sister (now dead) who had been married to the Belgian architect. Perhaps too, in deciding to ‘live abroad’ she had adopted a kind of old-fashioned bourgeois style suited to that part of Brussels, a modification of old vanished rooms in Belfast which continued to exist only in her imagination. The (extremely handsome) lace curtains on the tall windows were yellow, the velvet curtains which enclosed them were stained and discreetly moth-eaten and had torn linings. The Turkey carpet was worn with tracks of feet. The embroidered shawl on the grand piano, always replaced in the same position, was faded on top where the sunlight reached it. The silver frame of the photo of soft-faced soft-eyed sixteen-year-old Emma, also upon the piano, looked always from the same place at the same angle. Emma’s father was present too. A portrait of him upon the wall (painted by a fellow student at Trinity) showed him boyish, twinkling-eyed and jaunty, wearing a green tie. Emma did not like this picture. The photograph in his mother’s room showed his father older, sadder, shy and diffident, with soft drooping moustaches and a look of gentle intelligent puzzlement. Both his parents looked ‘dated’. His father looked like a subaltern in the first war. His mother looked like an early star of the silent screen, with her short pale fluffy waved hair, and her little straight nose and small mouth and beautiful eyes. She still did not manage to look middle-aged, but looked fadedly youthful, preferring to sit on the floor or on a low stool or hassock, displaying her excellent silky legs and slim ankles and glossy high-heeled shoes. There was always a wistful not unpleasant sort of tension between Mary (nee Gordon) Scarlett-Taylor and her son, she nervously anxious not to annoy him by her love, he irritated, remorseful, aware of his prudent miserly concealment of his great love for her, at which, perhaps, she could only guess. In this way, he knew, he deliberately deprived her of a happiness to which she had, perhaps, a right. Her voice, soft and almost but not quite without an Ulster accent, reminded him that he was Irish. Sometimes they were like young lovers together.
‘I like this room.’
‘I’m glad.’
‘It’s so dusty and stuffy and quiet and nowhere in the world.’
‘Shall I open a window?’
‘Of course not.’
‘I wish you were in it oftener.’
‘It’s like visiting the past, I like the past. I hate the present.’
‘Tell me about the present.’
‘I read books, I write essays, I stuff my head.’
‘And your heart?’
‘Empty. Hollow. Cracked like a broken drum.’
‘I don’t believe it at all. And you sing.’
‘I’m going to stop singing.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Forever.’
‘You’re blathering. I wish you’d bring your friends here.’
‘I have no friends.’
‘Don’t be so morose.’
‘Morose. I like morose.’
‘Tom McCaffrey.’
‘You wouldn’t like him.’
‘I would.’
‘I wouldn’t like that either.’
‘Get away with you!’
‘He’s bouncy and self-confident and beautiful, not a bit like me.’
‘No girls?’
‘Yes, a maidservant with a London accent who looks like an old dry wooden carving.’
‘Be serious. I wish you’d marry.’
‘You do not.’
‘I do so! I wish you’d bring your real life here.’
‘It is here. I visit it occasionally. The rest’s a fiction.’
‘You work too hard at those books. You ought to sing more. You’re happy when you sing.’
‘I hate happiness and hereby forswear it.’
‘Oh darling, you upset me so — ’
‘Sorry.’
‘Shall we play the Mozart duet?’
‘I’ll do the piano.’
Emma removed the embroidered shawl and a lamp and the photograph of his young undefiled self and opened the piano. He had telephoned the Slipper House from Heathrow, again from Brussels airport, and twice from the flat. No answer.
He drew up the second piano stool and sat down beside his mother. They smiled at each other and then suddenly, holding hands, began to laugh.
Brian McCaffrey rang the bell at George’s house in Druidsdale. Stella opened the door. It was late Saturday evening.
‘Stella!’
‘Hello.’
‘Is George there?’
‘No.’
‘Can I come in?’
‘Yes.’
Stella led the way into the dining-room where she had evidently been sitting at the table writing a letter. One lamp was on. There was a book on the table, at which Brian peered. La Chartreuse de Parme. The surviving netsuke were also there in a jumbled bunch. George had taken away the one he had stamped on.
The dining-room looked dead, like a pretentious office. It had a naked artificial unused look with its self-conscious ornaments all in (Stella’s) good taste: Japanese prints, engraved glass, plates perched on stands. Everything was dusty, including the unoccupied end of the table.
‘You’re back.’
‘Yes.’
‘And George?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘But is he all right?’
‘So far as I know.’
‘You’ve seen him?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is he likely to turn up?’
‘He says he’s living with Diane Sedleigh and they’re going to emigrate to Spain.’
‘But that’s splendid! Isn’t that good?’
‘I don’t know. It may not be true. Whisky? I’ll get some.’
Brian looked quickly at the letters on the table, a long one written in a tiny precise hand, one just started written in an italic hand. He had never, he thought, seen Stella’s writing. He guessed the long one was from her father.
‘What did you want with George?’ said Stella coming back with the whisky and one glass.
‘Won’t you drink?’
‘No, thanks.’
‘Gabriel wanted me to come.’
Brian and Gabriel had been talking and arguing ever since the scene with George earlier in the afternoon. Gabriel had been very upset, and then to Brian’s surprise very angry, about Brian’s suggestion that she had deliberately displayed her breasts to George at the seaside. Brian had withdrawn the suggestion, then, when Gabriel had continued to reproach him, had become angry too. They went over the whole usual fruitless argument about George, in the course of which Gabriel remembered that she had had a nightmare last night in which she had seen George floating somewhere, drowned. She then became persuaded that something terrible had happened to him.
‘He was in such a terrible state of mind.’
‘He seemed to me rather pleased with himself.’
‘He’s in despair, I know, please let’s at least ring up.’
Brian rang George’s number but there was no answer. Gabriel then begged him to go round and see whether Geor
ge had not taken an overdose of sleeping pills and were lying semi-animate on the sofa at Druidsdale. She was so upset by her dream, and likely, if Brian did not go, to go herself, that he had set off.
‘I’m not answering the telephone,’ said Stella, who had listened in silence to a curtailed and improved version of this account.
Brian looked at his handsome sister- In-law of whom he was a little in awe. Stella looked older, her face thinner. Two light hairlike lines rose up between her brows giving to her face a greater concentration. Her dark immaculate hair rose in a stiff springy dome above her brow, like to a crown or ceremonial helmet. Her clever mouth, with its indelible ironic shape, was calm. Her dark eyes gleamed with a light which Brian had but rarely seen in them before, not a quiet communicative luminosity, but a fanatical light, a light of will. She was to him an alien, a phenomenon, a kind of being whom he absolutely could not understand. The whisky emboldened him, however.
‘Where were you?’
‘With N at Bath Lodge. Then with May Blackett at Maryville.’
‘Ruby knew you were there. She finds lost things. She went and stared at the house. Why didn’t you come back sooner? We were worried.’
‘N wanted me to, but — ’
‘You mean you didn’t do what N wanted? Most people do.’
‘I wanted to see what would happen.’
‘To George?’
‘To me. To George too.’
‘So George is getting off scot free, off to Spain with that woman! Fancy old George gone at last, we’ll have nothing to talk about! Aren’t you relieved he’s clearing off? It solves a lot of problems, doesn’t it? You can find someone else, get out of this rotten little town. Go to Tokyo and find a nice man, someone clever, an English diplomat, or a French one. I can see you married to a Frenchman. Forget about us. Why not? God, you can’t love that swine, can you?’
‘Do you mean George?’
‘Sorry, excuse my vocabulary.’
‘You don’t think it possible.’
‘Oh it’s possible, half the women in this town are in love with George or imagine that they are, even Gabriel is. But you, you’re a cut above - I mean you’re special, like royalty - you know, I’ve always admired you so much, though I’ve never had a chance to say so, I hoped you knew - we’ve hardly ever had a real talk together, I wish we could - I feel now, now that you’re going — ’
Stella was frowning and narrowing her eyes, deepening the two new lines on her brow. She straightened her shoulders and leaned back.
Brian thought, whatever possessed me to spill all that, I must be drunk, and I’ve been disloyal to Gabriel, Stella will despise me utterly.
Stella said, ‘But I’m not going.’
‘Why not, if he is?’
‘We’ll wait and see.’
‘God, do you want revenge on George? You can’t forgive him, is that it? Are you still waiting … for something to happen …?’ Stella, who had been writing something down, pushed a slip of paper towards Brian.
‘What’s that?’
‘Mrs Sedleigh’s address. But perhaps you know it?’
‘God, I’m not going there.’
‘Then you’d better go home, Gabriel will be anxious.’
Brian walked home cursing. He felt drunk. He thought, she’s a witch. She made me say all those incredibly stupid things and then threw me out. She’s worse than George. I do believe she’s capable of murder. What is she waiting for?
It was Saturday night, late, dark. Alex had just come out of the drawing-room to find Ruby standing at the top of the stairs. The house was silent. Alex felt frightened.
‘What are you doing? Why are you standing there?’
Ruby said nothing. She stared at Alex with a frown, biting her lip. Her face expressed anguish.
‘Is anything the matter?’
Ruby shook her head.
‘Have you locked all the doors?’
Ruby nodded.
When George had gone away Alex had finished the bottle of whisky and fallen asleep. Then she had eaten some of the supper which Ruby had set out as usual for her in the dining-room. Then she had come upstairs again and drunk some more and fallen asleep again. Now she felt giddy, dislocated in time and space. She had, at some stage, she could not remember when, taken off her dress and put on her dressing-gown. So she would live in a Spanish village with George and Diane? Would that be?
Ruby kept on staring. Alex thought, does she want me to do something? To ask her into the drawing-room and pet her? Does she want me to … to kiss her …? These were such odd things to think that Alex felt that Ruby must have actually put them into her mind. Nothing stopped her from taking Ruby’s hand and saying, Ruby, dear, we’ve been together a long time, ever since we were children really, and now we are old. Come in and sit with me. Do not be afraid. Are you afraid? I will care for you, I will look after you. Then Alex wondered, does she know I’m going away? She has second sight or something. Perhaps she knows? Nothing stopped Alex from speaking those comforting words to Ruby and questioning her gently, except that all the years which should have made it possible had made it impossible, and Alex felt so sick and so frightened and so confused and so tired.
She said impatiently, ‘Don’t stand there. Go to bed. It’s past your bedtime. Go on.’
Ruby did not move. She stood like a heavy large wooden figure, larger than life, at the top of the stairs.
Alex said, ‘You talked about us. You gave away things about us at the Baths. You did it on purpose. Didn’t you talk?’
Ruby’s face changed, expressing distress. She said, ‘I told the boy. I only told the boy.’
‘What boy?’
The boy in question was Mike Seanu, the ‘little scamp’ of a reporter on the Gazette. What had happened was this. When John Robert had made his first visit to the Slipper House to apprise Hattie of his ‘plan’, Ruby had followed him down the garden, primed with jealousy and curiosity, and had eventually posted herself close enough to the sitting-room window to overhear some of what was said. From this she gathered that Rozanov had arranged for Hattie to marry Tom. She carried this interesting information away but, being more given to silence on family matters than Alex gave her credit for, did nothing with it. Young Seanu had not been present at the ‘riot’. He was ‘covering’ the masque for the Gazette and had come on as far as the Green Man, but had been too shy to stay long and returned to his local, the Ferret, on the wasteland where he lived. (A pub where drugs used to change hands, now an innocent enough little hole where Sikhs and gipsies amicably rub shoulders.) He was filled with chagrin on the next day to hear that he had missed so much newsworthy fun, but consoled by being given some immediate detective work to do. Someone (it was never clear who) had indeed (as they surmised) overheard some of Tom and Emma’s drunken conversation about John Robert and Hattie. This titbit, as it reached the ears of Gavin Oare, did not however amount to more than amused and unserious guesswork. Gavin promptly (on Sunday) sent Mike Seanu out to discover more, suggesting in particular that he should visit Ruby. The ‘young scamp’ was a gipsy and in fact (as Oare knew) related to Ruby, and the old servant, who would not have talked to anyone else, talked to this boy, of whom she was fond. Seanu, coached by his editor, put his question in terms of ‘so it is true, is it, what everyone says that’ (and so on), to which in good faith Ruby replied yes, she believed that John Robert had arranged for Tom to marry Hattie. This was enough for Gavin Oare. The further speculations were his work. (I am told that Mike Seanu was very upset and disgusted by the resultant article and considered resigning, but sensibly did not.) This was the way in which the rumour, which had so many consequences, gained currency in Ennistone.
However, Alex never received an answer to her question, not because Ruby was ashamed to give it (though the matter did trouble her) but because at that moment Ruby’s poor head was entirely filled up with something else.
She moved back a step, away from the stairhead, and said to Alex, ‘The foxes
— ’
‘What about the foxes?’
‘They are evil, evil things, bad spirits. They bring bad luck. They make bad things to happen.’
‘Don’t be silly. That’s stupid superstitious gipsy nonsense. Don’t talk like that to me. Go away, go to bed.’
‘They are dead.’
‘What?’
‘The foxes - they are dead. The men came and killed them - here in the garden - I showed them where.’
Alex screamed out, her lips wet with a foam of rage - ‘You what, you let them do it? You showed them? You devil - without telling me - you let them kill the foxes - oh I could kill you for this - how could you do it - let them kill my foxes - why didn’t you tell me—?’
‘You were asleep, you were drunk, the man came with the gas, all the foxes are dead.’
‘You hateful vile wicked thing, get out of this house forever, I never want to see you again!’ Alex moved fiercely, raising her hand as if to strike Ruby. Ruby pushed her away.
In a moment Alex was tumbling headlong down the stairs. She rolled to the landing, then all the way down to the hall where she lay curled and motionless.
Wailing, Ruby ran down after her. She pulled at her mistress, trying to lift her head, weeping. Then withdrawing her hands Ruby began to howl like a dog. Alex lay still.
