by Iris Murdoch
‘Oh you will be alive enough, somewhere else. I hope you will be very happy, I really hope it.’
‘You don’t. You are trying to curse me, to destroy my happiness forever. You won’t share my life so you want to blacken it.’
‘Please don’t think that.’
‘You’re so sorry for yourself, you’re so stupid. I do care for you, I do love you, you’re lucky to be loved by me, why throw it all away, why do we have to think what it means, let’s see what it means. All right, this has been a crazy stupid conversation, you made it so. Why not let’s just go away now, to the railway station, to the airport, to America.’
‘Hattie, don’t do this to me.’
‘Let’s go away together.’
‘Hattie, stop, listen. I want you to leave this house at once and return to the Slipper House. You can have Pearl back if you want, I don’t care now so long as I don’t see you again.’
‘You’re mad.’
‘I will send you money, arrangements about your English college, all that. You can do what you like, I’ll be in America, but now go, will you, it’s still early, no one will see you, just go.’
‘I will not go, why should I? I hate all this tormenting repetitive talk just tearing at our nerves. I can’t bear being so close to you, feeling so close, and feeling - and not — ’
‘Go away, now, please.’
Hattie sprang up. She was flushed and her face was dirtied like a child’s with traces of tears. She had not plaited her hair or even combed it and now it had been tangled by her anxious clutching tugging fingers. Her dress was buttoned awry. Her lips, her jaw were trembling, her hands shaking, she breathed with audible shudderings. Her pale milky-blue eyes shone with tears and anger. John Robert who was sunk deep in the sagging armchair, like a huge half-hidden toad, struggled to rise, scrabbling his feet on the torn carpet, cracking the sides of the chair with his braced arms, but failed to get up. He murmured, ‘Don’t come near — ’
For a moment it looked as if Hattie were going to hurl herself upon him, leaping on to his lap like a kitten. Then she fell on her knees beside the chair, grasping one of his hands and covering it with tears and kisses. ‘Forgive me, don’t leave me, you are my dear grandfather, I love you, I have nobody but you, look after me, love me, don’t leave me alone.’
‘Stop it, Hattie,’ said John Robert.
At that moment, and suddenly, there was a loud noise in the house. Hattie sat back on her heels. The loud noise was repeated, a violent echoing banging sound. Somebody was knocking, was hammering, on the front door. They looked at each other. John Robert said, ‘It must be the police.’ That was his immediate thought.
‘Don’t go,’ said Hattie, on her feet now. ‘No one knows we’re here.’
A prolonged ring on the bell was followed by more and louder banging, a fist applied to the panels.
John Robert got himself on to one knee, and then to his feet. He mumbled, ‘I must go, I must.’ He blundered stiffly out into the hall followed by Hattie, and after fiddling with the door in the semi-darkness, opened it. The bright cold light from the street came dazzling in.
Tom McCaffrey was standing outside. He stared at them with dazed exhausted wild eyes. His hair was bedraggled, his shirt was unbuttoned and he was barefoot. He said in a low clear voice, ‘I’ve come for Hattie.’
John Robert did not hesitate for a second. He turned, and pushed and bundled Hattie somehow past him, between his great bulk and the wall, and out into the street. Tom later remembered seeing John Robert’s hands clutching the material of her dress as she stumbled out through the door.
Hattie cried, ‘No!’
Tom received her as she fell against him, touched by her, by her warm neck, her cool hair. A moment later he had taken her damp hand firmly in his. He said, ‘Come on!’ and pulled.
The door of number sixteen Hare Lane slammed shut.
Tom began to run, pulling Hattie after him. At first she resisted, then ran with him, holding his hand.
Who, drawing back his curtain in the early morning saw, in that clear sunny light, through empty streets, Tom McCaffrey running away with Hattie Meynell? I did.
After a while, somewhere in Travancore Avenue, they stopped running and walked on panting. Tom let go of Hattie’s hand. She was crying quietly, clearing her eyes with her knuckles from time to time. Tom kept glancing shyly at her.
‘Hattie, don’t cry, darling, what’s the matter? It’s only me.’
She shook her head and did not reply. Her face was red, her eyes bloodshot, her mouth wet. Her tears were abating, but she gave panting sobbing breaths, like little cries. She drew her tangled hair down about her face like a veil.
They passed Greg and Ju’s house. The curtains were drawn. All was silent, no one was about in Ennistone. Tom’s feet were aching, his knees were hurting. He had kicked off his shoes and removed his socks somewhere in the course of the night’s adventure, which now seemed long ago.
When the lights had gone out Tom had decided in a second to execute his plan nevertheless. His body, trained by his careful looking, remembered what to do. His right foot touched the projecting knife lightly, then rested weight on it for a moment as Tom flew upward, his hands climbing the vertical bars of the upper stairway, his left knee fumbling in the dark for a place to rest. The knife gave way and fell with a clatter on to the concrete floor below. Tom’s knee blundered against the bars, finding the space it was making for too narrow. For a moment, his arms taking most of the strain, Tom hung with his knee jammed against the bars, painfully supported by the inch or two of tread which projected on the near side, his right leg now hanging in mid-air. The weight on his arms increased as his hands began to slide slowly down the wet slippery bars. Then somehow his right knee had risen up, finding a similar auxiliary lodgement on a higher tread, leaving him hanging, crouched spider-like against the side of the structure. Instinctively Tom jerked his left knee free and, dabbing sideways, lodged his left foot securely between the bars on a lower step. The strain on his arms decreased and he rested for a moment, his body sloping sideways. Then he cautiously removed his left hand to a lower bar, nearer to his left foot, and pulled hard, working himself into a more upright position, his right hand now able to grasp the banister at the top of the vertical bars, while his right foot also found a place upon the treads. After another rest he was able to throw one leg over the banister and slide himself over so as to collapse on to the stairs. Here for some time he sat, massaging his painful knees, wondering if they were damaged. It was probably at this point that he took his shoes and socks off and mislaid them in the dark. He was sorry to have lost the knife.
After that a period of time passed during which Tom climbed up and down flights of stairs in the dark, swallowing the steamy atmosphere and scorching his feet and failing to find any continuous way up. Stairs which he ascended ended in locked doors or else unaccountably started to go down again. He called out at intervals but was appalled to hear his puny cries echoing so vainly. He went up, then down, then up until he had lost all sense of which way was up and which down. He sat down at last while all around him the hot darkness quietly seethed and boiled. Sitting still, he concentrated on breathing and on overcoming his fear of suffocation. He breathed the dark and it filled him to the brim. Later still, waking up from what had surely not been sleep, he tried calling out again, and uttered one extremely loud cry which resonated in the huge enclosed space and set the whole network of invisible metal tingling and ringing with a tiny very high noise. After this the lights went on and an angry man opened the door at the top and came running down the stairways.
The man was less angry when he discovered who the intruder was. Tom was forgiven, quite unjustly, as no doubt he will be forgiven by God if God exists. He told the now gently chiding and amused employee that he had lost his shoes and his socks and his mackintosh and his jacket and his knife somewhere down below. He tried to describe his feat of levitation but found himself unable to picture what had
happened. His rescuer, telling him to ‘bugger off home!’, left him in the corridor of the Ennistone Rooms. Tom began to walk toward the swing doors at the end; but before he reached them he saw, through the open door of one of the empty rooms, a divine sight, a bed with plump pillows and white sheets. He entered, drew back the sheets and climbed in. The most refreshing slumber he had ever had came to him instantly, and wisdom and clear vision dripped quietly upon him as he slept. He awoke knowing exactly what to do, and set off at once for Hare Lane.
Tom pushed open the back gate of the Belmont garden and Hattie went through. He followed her. She said, ‘I haven’t got the keys.’
Tom said, ‘Don’t worry. I can get in.’
The garden was airily green, a little misty, a little hazy, and innumerable birds were making a great network of sweet noise. They walked along the path under the trees, covered with moss and old leaves and little shapely bits of wooden debris which hurt Tom’s feet, then they walked across the grass. Tom told Hattie to wait at the front door while he ran round the back, into the coal shed and through the window into the back passage by the route taken by George. He ran to let Hattie in. She had profited by the interval to smooth her hair down and comb it with her fingers. She looked calmer.
She came in, passed Tom and began to go up the stairs. Now, for the first time since his visionary slumber, Tom began to be uncertain of his role: not that he had actually thought out any role, he had acted instinctively at each moment as he felt he must. But now the dream-like unfolding of destined action seemed to have come to an end, the magic was switched off, and he was returned to the clumsy perilous muddle of ordinary life.
Hattie went into her bedroom and threw herself on the bed, lying on her back. Her feet fumbled, one rubbing against the other as she tried to push her shoes off. Tom took the shoes from her feet and put them under the bed. Then he stood looking down at her.
Hattie lay upon her spread hair, and her desolated face had become calm and quietly weary. As Tom stared down humbly, apologetically, questioningly, she smiled at him and reached out her hand. He took it, then sat down on the edge of the bed. He could see now that her body, to which her dress clung closely, was soaked with sweat. He kissed her hand. It tasted salt.
‘Hattie, may I lie down beside you?’
‘Yes. But just that.’
He lay down on his side, stretching himself out, measuring her body with his body, not trying to draw her to him, but touching her shoulder with one hand. He felt her very slight shrinking resistance.
‘Hattie.’
‘Yes, Tom.’
‘Will you marry me?’
She was silent.
‘Hattie — ’
It took Tom a moment longer to discover that she had fallen fast asleep. He lay still, protecting her while she slept, filled with the most pure intense happiness which went coursing through his body in a dazzling quiet stream.
Later on, while Hattie was still sleeping, he went downstairs. A neat parcel had been placed inside the front door which he had left open. Inside the parcel he found his shoes and socks and mackintosh and jacket and the knife which Emma had given him.
George McCaffrey pushed open the swing doors at the entrance to the Ennistone Rooms. The porter in his glass box was reading the Ennistone Gazette, and did not notice George’s arrival. If he had seen George, he might have been amazed by the beatific expression on his face. How could one describe that expression? George was not ‘wreathed in smiles’, but his face looked plumped out with deep satisfaction, or perhaps with inner peace. This could have been the face of a man who had inherited a million, or of one who had, after long asceticism, achieved enlightenment. This was the look which had so much alarmed Tom McCaffrey on the occasion of the ‘court martial’ and on the evening at Diane’s Hat when George had so quietly, almost absently, thrust him out of the door.
George walked along the corridor with a sort of affected step, as if he were being watched (which he was not), picking up his feet carefully from the carpet, like a dainty high-stepping horse. He walked slowly, as if reflectively. He was breathing deeply, however. His eye, roving like that of a carefree man, had elicited from the notice board the information that Professor John Robert Rozanov was ‘in’.
On the door of John Robert’s room hung a card provided by the management saying Do not disturb. George smiled at the card. Then he stood at the door and, still smiling, listened. He heard within the sound, which he expected, of the quiet snoring of the sleeping sage. It was the afternoon time when it was John Robert’s habit to be asleep. It was the afternoon of Monday. George had visited the Rooms at the same time on the previous day, only then John Robert had been ‘out’. (He had been still at Hare Lane sorting papers and writing letters.) George now pressed the door. It opened, letting the roaring sound of the water out into the corridor. George entered quickly and closed the door behind him. The scene was much as he had observed it on his former visit. The frosted-glass windows cast a clear pearly light. The sun was shining outside. John Robert was lying on the bed. but on this occasion clothed in a great blue sail-like Ennistone Rooms nightshirt which amply covered his domed bulk. He was lying on his back, one arm across his chest, the other depending from the bed. The table was covered with books and notebooks, the notebooks now being neatly stacked up.
George was still smiling. The smile intensified the beatific glow of his expression so that he now looked like a man inspired at some great moment of his life, as when, perhaps, in a battle he seizes a flag and rushes forward against the enemy with a loud joyous cry, possessed by a divine frenzy or the sacred impulse of supreme duty. Yet at the same time he was quiet and deliberate in his movements; as well he might be since he was executing a routine which he had rehearsed many times in his imagination. Indeed as he moved now in the room he might still have been within the secret unresisting chamber of his mind. He moved as if treading on air. The double doors of the bathroom behind which the waters roared were ajar, and a pillar of steam hung behind them, rapidly dissipating itself in the cooler air. George, after casting a glance at the quiet figure on the bed, slowly opened the two doors wide. From the big brass taps the waters plunged into the white abyss of the sunken bath, hiding it in their cloud. George stepped into the bathroom and peered to see whether the outlet pipe was closed. It was open. maintaining a foot or so of water at the bottom of the bath. He leaned over and turned the brass handle to close the outlet. Already, as he retreated, the steam had covered him with moisture. Turning to gaze at John Robert, he began to take off his jacket. His smile had now become a grin which might have been an expression of extreme pain. He rolled up his shirt-sleeves.
The philosopher was snoring more quietly now with a faint bubbling sound. This time he had left his teeth in, and his mouth and chin had not collapsed, but his sleeping face looked to George huge and senseless, a pile of flabby layers of soft folded skin, pitted and porous, old, like the remains of something which had failed to be cooked, or a collapsed heap of blanched dead plants deprived of light. The eyes had vanished into hooded wrinkled holes. It was not like a face but a chaotic mess of flesh spread out where a face might have been. The skin was coarse and patchily discoloured, dirtied by a grey growth of beard. George moved his gaze to where the open neck of the starchily clean shirt revealed a rising slice of pink hairless chest. The genitals were covered, the knobbly knees visible, red and smooth and curiously touching as if they had not aged and were still the knees of a boy. Beneath them the legs were a livid white, with prominent blue veins, and sparsely covered with extremely long black hairs. The philosopher’s feet were covered by a towel. George returned to the bathroom. The bath was now full and discharging itself evenly into the overflow pipe.
George pressed his hand hard to his breast, regulating his breathing. He unbuttoned the neck of his shirt. One of the bathroom doors had half closed. He propped it wide open with a chair. He looked at the problem he had set himself and through the solution of which he had so often ru
n in his mind. The bed, one of the original beds of the Rooms, was of tubular steel, designed to move easily on casters over the sleek carpet, and standing against the pale oak headboard which was fixed to the wall. George put his hand on the foot of the bed and pulled slightly. The bed moved silently as if of its own accord. George caught his breath in a sort of swallowed sigh or sob. Now that he was at last so close to it he felt a need to pause. He began looking about the room, moving his eyes in an odd mechanical way as if seeing were a new and special activity. He looked at the carving on the oak panel of a faun among spear-shaped leaves. He looked at one of the orange-and-white plates imported from Sweden which had been placed on a chair near the door. He looked at the books on the table and saw that some of them were dusty. John Robert must have told the maids not to touch his work. George looked at the window catches, also steel originals, eloquent of their date. He felt an impulse to go and touch them, or to draw his finger across the nearest book. He looked at John Robert again and his heart was seared as if with a radiantly hot iron. From here the face made sense for a moment, the lips protruding as George had so often seen them do when his teacher was listening to an argument. There was something so alert and wakeful about this gesture of the lips that George had to peer closely, for John Robert had ceased to snore, to be sure that the eyes were not awake and glaring.
George began to push the foot of the bed round. He did this simply by leaning his thigh against it, and again the bed silently and obligingly moved. The head of the bed was now swinging in the direction of the bathroom. George was overcome by a kind of faintness which was also a fever of haste. His breath came in a little audible stream of ‘oh, oh, oh.’ He no longer seemed to care whether John Robert woke up or not. The mechanics of the operation, the absolute necessity of the task, absorbed him completely. His legs felt weak, his knees dissolving as with sexual desire. He propelled the bed head first through the double doors of the bathroom.
