by Iris Murdoch
When she reached the crest of the dip she saw the headlights of Crimond’s car again, much nearer. The road descended a little, then began the long very gradual ascent. Jean kept her gaze fixed upon the pale glowing eyes ahead of her, the eyes which seemed so quickly to be becoming larger and brighter. The Rover sped on beautifully, effortlessly, bird-like. Jean flickered her glance to look at the speedometer, but for some reason could not see it. The pale increasing eyes seemed to have blinded her to all other things in the world. In the world. Will it be quick? she thought. The faster the quicker. Oddly enough, in all the long terrifying, thrilling and somehow unreal discussions which they had had about the Roman Road, Jean had never tried to imagine any of the detail. There had been so much metaphor, so much myth, so much sheer sexual excitement, like a prolonged orgasm, in that extraordinary period, so brief, so crammed and crowded with their united being, after she had realised that Crimond really meant it, that they would actually come to it. That time now seemed in memory like a sunlit battlefield, a joust, with pennants flying and naked deadly lances, not yet stained with blood. From that engagement Jean had been able to escape into endless oscillating speculation about what Crimond really intended. Her imagination had rested intermittently upon perfunctory pictures: the two cars would become one car, there would be nothing on the road except a compact box of metal. But inside the box? She would be there, with Crimond, inside the box, joined together in an eternal blackness. There would be blood, a mingling of blood, a mingling of flesh, but they would have vanished, united forever in a clap of thunder. She began to gasp and moan, not yet to scream, though she could already hear the scream she was about to utter.
Is he on the left side of the road or the right side, she wondered. It was still hard to tell. He had told her to stay on the left and leave the rest to him. In your will is my tranquillity. Only now she was alone. But she must not think that. Faster, faster, nearer, nearer. Jean’s eyes flickered again, this time toward the near side of the road. There was a long low stone wall, a dry stone wall the pattern of whose golden-yellow stones was hypnotically, very swiftly, unravelling in the headlights of the Rover. A wall. The other side of the road seemed to be invisible, as if covered by a black patch. Then there were those wheelchairs. Crimond had only just mentioned the wheelchairs, but Jean’s mind had already set up a picture, as if she had been brooding upon it for years, of herself and Crimond slowly moving about in a large room, passing each other like mindless insects as they laboriously propelled their chairs by turning the wheels with their hands. Old age, was it an image of old age? We don’t want to grow old, we don’t want to be cripples either, I mustn’t muff it. Crimond’s car, now perhaps a mile away, or less, was certainly upon the right side of the road, his right, her left, they were joined by a straight line, it would be nose to nose. Her foot was pressing the accelerator into the floor of the car, there was a roaring in her ears, the sound of the engine of which she had been unaware, the wheel seemed fixed in her hands, locked into position. She had never driven so fast in her life, yet she felt in perfect control of the car. If I were to cross his path at the last moment, she thought, he would hit the side of the car, there would be an accident. The stone wall was still with her. The pale brilliant eyes ahead which had for a time seemed to grow larger without moving, were now perceptibly coming nearer, rushing nearer, nearer, fast, very fast. Jean began to pray, Crimond, oh Crimond, Crimond. How could she kill her lover? If she could only die and he became a god. He had said, keep on the left and leave the rest to me. The bright eyes were near, hypnotic, glaring dazzling, filling her vision, directly ahead of her, rushing, charging towards her. She thought, he’s not going to swerve, it isn’t a test, it’s the real thing, it’s the end. Jean began to scream, she screamed into the roaring of the engine. She could see now, not just the eyes, but the car, illumined now by her own headlights, a black car, with a figure in it, coming, coming. The box, the box, the box. Oh my love.
The stone wall suddenly ceased and Jean’s gaze, still fixed ahead upon what was about to happen, took in a five-barred gate. She turned the wheel. She missed the gate, but the car crashed through a thick hedge and turned over on its side upon grass. The lights went out. There was a distant screech, then silence, an amazing silence. Darkness and silence.
Jean breathed for a while. She could breathe. She thought about her body and moved parts of it about a little. The car was lying on its left side. Her seat belt was still holding her suspended. She could not, in the black dark, make out what space she was in. She fumbled for the clasp of the seat belt. It seemed to snap and she jolted against the side of the passenger seat which had been propelled forward. Drawing up her knees she rested, holding the steering wheel with one hand. Her head was hurting, and her right foot was hurting, perhaps, even as she hurtled through the hedge, she had been pressing down the accelerator. Her whole body felt battered. She concentrated on breathing.
A light appeared, a wandering light. The door of the car above her, beyond the wheel, began to rattle. Someone was trying to open it. It opened. It’s like a box after all, she thought, and someone has opened the lid. The light of the torch shone into the car revealing her knees, the displaced seat, the shattered windscreen, a kind of snow everywhere which she realised was broken glass. Looking at her knees she noticed her stockings, dark brown stockings which she had selected, had chosen to wear, when she rose at midnight. Earlier, Crimond had told her to sleep and she had actually slept, though that had seemed impossible. She remembered now that she had forgotten to ask Crimond whether he had slept. She made a guttural sound to discover if she could still speak, then said in a strange voice, ‘I’m all right – I think.’
‘Get yourself out,’ another voice said.
Can I? she wondered. Her body felt so weak, so beaten, and somehow entangled into the interior of the car limply like a dead snake. Bracing one foot against the dashboard and pulling at the steering wheel she began to arch herself upward. She crawled upward, now holding the wheel with one hand and placing the other on the side of the open door. But her arms were strengthless and she was unable to pull herself up. Her head, her head which felt so hurt and strange, she must aim it at the opening and not think about the pain in her foot. Getting past the steering wheel would be the difficulty. At one moment she felt she was kneeling, then, finding a foothold somewhere, perhaps in the passenger seat, she managed to extend her left leg and moved upward displacing the driver’s seat which suddenly gave way and fell back. Her head and then her arms emerged through the battered hole of the open door, which the torch light was now revealing to her. Her arms took her weight for a second while her left foot found another quick perch, probably on the steering wheel, and she achieved a sitting position on the edge of the opening and very slowly, using her hands to lift them, pulled first one leg and then the other out of the car.
Crimond, not helping her, was standing a little distance away shining the torch upon her. He said, ‘Can you walk?’
Jean half fell to the ground, steadied herself against the car, her hand questing over the twisted red metal so brightly revealed by the light. She thought, I must walk. She took one or two paces. Her right foot was hurting but it was serviceable. The pain in her head, absent while she was scrambling out, had returned. She said, ‘Yes.’
‘Walk then.’ The beam of the torch turned away towards the road and Crimond’s figure receded.
Jean, who had been absorbed in nursing herself back to life, cried out, ‘Oh wait, wait for me, please help me!’ She hobbled after him. She could now see, in the ray of the torch, the brown thorny leafless hedge, the gap torn in the hedge, the tarmac beyond, and, as she took another step or two, the lights of Crimond’s car revealing the five-barred gate and the end of the stone wall. He had turned his car to come back.
Crimond had leapt through the gap and was standing on the road. He said, ‘I am going now. You may do as you please. I shall not see you again.’
Jean screamed. She cried, ‘No, n
o – Crimond, don’t leave me – take me with you, forgive me – I couldn’t kill you, I love you, I’d die for you, but I couldn’t kill you – oh take me home, take me home, you can’t go away without me –’
‘I mean what I say. You are nothing to me now. Go away, go to hell, it’s finished.’
‘You didn’t mean us to die, you can’t have done. I know you didn’t, it was just a test, I did what I thought you wanted!’
Crimond began to walk towards his car, visible now in its headlights.
Jean got to the hedge but could not manage to get through it. She limped to the gate, but was unable to open it.
Crimond was opening the door of his car.
‘Wait for me, oh my darling, wait, wait, don’t leave me!’
‘You have left me. I have no more use for you. Don’t come crawling after me and force me to kick you. It’s finished, it’s over. Can’t you understand that I mean what I say?’
‘Crimond, I love you, you love me, we said our love was forever!’
‘It would have been forever. Now it cannot be. Am I not suffering too? You have taken from me the only thing which I desired and which only you could have given me. This failure ends our pact.’
‘I’ll come with you, I’ll come to you tomorrow, there’s nothing in the world for me, only you!’
‘Don’t come near me again, now or tomorrow or in any future time. You are nothing to me now, nothing. Go away, take your freedom, take your chance. We have already said goodbye, don’t you remember? It is finished, you have-chosen your way of finishing it. We could have killed each other but you have just succeeded in killing our love. That’s what has died. Now go away from me, go anywhere you please, only don’t come near me ever again. We are strangers forever, I never want to see you again.’
Crimond got into the car and switched on the engine.
Crying ‘No! No!’ Jean struggled with the gate.
The car shot off back up the hill, then braked and began to turn. Jean, wailing, was fumbling with a ring and a chain.
The car returned down the hill gathering speed and disappeared into the dip. She saw its rear lights again on the hill crest, then nothing. The darkness and the silence resumed, and the moon and the stars reappeared.
Jean had opened the gate and stood upon the road. She stood a while; opening her mouth wide, throwing back her head, screaming and crying, tearing at her clothes and her hair and uttering sounds like a wild animal. Then she began to walk. She must get to London, a car would pick her up, Crimond would come back. She became aware of bodily pain and intense cold. Walking was difficult, was more difficult. She wept now, drooping her head, ready at every moment to fall on her knees. She stopped, still sobbing, to stand and look about her. The countryside was dark. No, it was not entirely dark, there was a light, the window of a house, a little way from the road. There was a path. She began to limp along the path. Only when she was quite close to it did she realise that the house was Boyars.
Rose Curtland was asleep. She was dreaming that she and Sinclair were at the Vatican playing three-handed bridge with the Pope. The Pope was uneasy because a fourth person who was expected had failed to come. At last a bell began to ring and they all ran toward the door, only there was a very heavy tapestry covering it which they had to get past. They struggled, almost suffocating, with the tapestry, and then crawled underneath it. They found themselves in a long completely white hall, at the far end of which, in a white robe and wearing a white wig like a judge, Jenkin Riderhood was sitting on a throne. As she and Sinclair walked slowly and solemnly towards him Rose felt very frightened.
The ringing went on. Rose woke up and realised that the telephone was ringing. She remembered the dream and her fear and felt a new fear now because of the telephone. She switched on her lamp. It was nearly six o’clock. She got out of bed and ran to the telephone in the hallway, picking it up in the dark.
‘Hello.’
‘Miss Rose – it’s Annushka – Mrs Cambus is here.’
‘What?’
‘I’m very sorry to disturb you. Mrs Cambus is here and she wants to speak to you.’
‘What’s happened?’
After a moment Rose could hear Jean speaking, or rather she could hear Jean sobbing and trying to speak.
‘Jean, my darling, dear, dear Jean, what is it – oh don’t grieve so – what is it, my dear heart – what’s happened?’
Jean said at last, ‘I want you to go – to see if Crimond – is all right –’
‘Of course I will. But you – are you all right? Dear, dear Jean, don’t cry so, I can’t bear it.’
Jean said, trying to control her voice. ‘I’m all right. I’m here – Annushka has been so kind – and the doctor –’
‘The doctor?’
‘I’m perfectly all right – but I’m afraid – that Crimond may have killed himself –’
‘You’ve left him,’ said Rose.
‘He’s left me. But he could kill himself. He could shoot himself. Could you go round –’
‘Yes, of course I will, at once. I’m sure he hasn’t killed himself, he’s not the sort – but I’ll go, and then I’ll telephone you. But, Jean, you’re hurt, the doctor –?’
‘I’ve hurt my foot, it’s nothing.’
‘You stay there, don’t move, Annushka will look after you, and when I’ve seen Crimond I’ll drive down straightaway. You just stay there and rest, I’ll be with you as soon as I can.’
‘Yes – if you don’t mind – I think I’ll stay here – for the moment –’
‘Could I talk to –’
Annushka was already on the line. Annushka spoke slowly and calmly, as she always did. Mrs Cambus had had a car accident. Yes, quite nearby, she had been driving to Boyars. She wasn’t hurt except for a badly sprained ankle, and some concussion. She saw the landing light, which Annushka always kept on when she was alone, and she walked all the way with her bad ankle. Yes, Dr Tallcott had been there, he came at once. Yes, he said concussion and she was just to rest, he strapped up her ankle and gave her some pills. He said he’d come back. She was on the sofa in the drawing room because she couldn’t get up the stairs. They didn’t ring Rose at once because –
‘Just keep her there,’ said Rose, ‘don’t whatever you do let her go away, I’ll be ringing up again and I’ll drive down very soon.’
Frantically, turning on all the lights, she dressed, fumbling with her clothes, unable to find her handbag and the car keys, forgetting her overcoat. At last she had found everything, even gloves, and had put on her heaviest coat and a woollen cap and scarf. Leaving the lights on she ran downstairs into the very cold empty lamp-lit street. It was six o’clock. There was no sign of dawn.
In the car she let her fear loose. Terrible things were happening and would happen. She could not yet let herself feel glad that Jean had left Crimond. All this, whatever it was, might be part of one huge catastrophe. Suppose she arrived and found Crimond lying in a pool of blood with his head blown off? She had lied to Jean, of course she thought that Crimond was a person who might commit suicide – in fact, if they had really parted, it was very possible. He had finished the book, he had finished with Jean too. Except that perhaps he hadn’t, perhaps they would be back together again tomorrow. Oh, let him not be dead, Rose prayed. Almost, she was wanting that Jean should be back with him tomorrow, everything else was so terribly dangerous. Jean would go mad, Duncan would go mad, people would die, it would all end in dreadful chaos, the end of all order, the end of the world.
The streets were almost empty of traffic, the street lights lit up empty lonely pavements. As she crossed the Thames she could see lights reflected in the quivering water. The tide was in. Whatever happened she must not get lost. Everything in the dark looked so different, so awful. She could not remember the way and kept looking for landmarks. She began to wail with vexation and fear.
At last she was there, and had run the car up onto the pavement outside Crimond’s house. The door was open
and there was a light in the hall. Getting out of the car Rose felt her legs weak with fear. The sudden coldness seared her face. She put on her scarf, which she had taken off in the car. She took off her gloves and put her ungloved hand upon the iron railing beside the steps. The railing was frosty and deadly cold and her hand stuck to the metal. She stumbled up into the hall.
The rooms here were dark, she went into each one turning on the light, no one was there. She ran to the stairs leading down to the basement. The stairs were lit and there was another lighted open door down below. She ran down, leaning on the banisters, and hurried into the big basement room.
Crimond was standing at the other end of the room. A centre light was on and a lamp upon the desk at the far end. He was standing so still that Rose, her hand upon the door, had the sudden illusion that actually he was dead, but standing up. He had evidently not noticed her, though she must have made some noise descending the stairs. Then he moved his head slightly, looking towards her with evident surprise, his hand rising to his throat. Rose thought, he thinks I’m Jean. She pulled off her cap and her scarf and undid her coat.
‘Rose!’
His utterance of her name gave her an unpleasant shock. She came down the room. She felt an intense desire to sit down. A chair beside the desk was draped with a woollen shawl. She took off the shawl and dropped it on the floor and sat down. Crimond moved away, facing her across the desk.
