by Iris Murdoch
He decided to go downstairs. Then he felt like physical invasion, like sudden profitless sexual longing, the awful temptation coming to him again. He had a tape recording of Sophie’s voice, only one, which he had taken without her knowing it a very little while before she died. He knew that he would have to destroy the tape but he could not yet bring himself to do so. He padded out of the bedroom and down the stairs and through the arched hallway that traversed the house. Sick with black painful excitement he entered the dark little drawing-room, switched on a lamp, pulled the tape recorder out of a cupboard. Sophie’s voice was such a summary of her history, such a rich personification of herself. Her Anglophile father had had business interests in Manchester, and Sophie had spent a year at a girls’ boarding school in the north of England. She had ‘come out’ in England, she had done her stage training in London, she had been a starlet in Hollywood. Her voice carried it all: the not very strong French-Swiss accent, a touch of the north, a touch of ‘deb’, a faint touch of American, more than a faint touch of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. And with it all that bright peevish energy which stayed with her to the end: utterly Sophie, little rich girl, waif, actress, flirt, demon, goddess, dying. Monty sat down, switched on the machine, and covered his face. ‘Take it, take it, it’s so heavy on my feet. The book, take it. Ach. Could I have the drops now, I have got the shakes today. Let me have the glass, will you – no, not that, the glass, the looking glass —’
There was a loud sudden sound near by, the sound of something crashing to the floor. Monty leapt up and switched off the tape. He stood stiff, listening. Then there was another softer sound. The noises came from Sophie’s little ‘study’, the room where she had kept all her special things, the room where she had so largely been occupied in dying. Monty had not entered it since. Mad fear crept on his neck and in his hair. Then he strode quickly out and across the hall and flung open the door.
A shaded lamp was on. On the other side of the room, just beside Sophie’s desk which had been opened and obviously rifled, a man was standing. He was a big stout man, holding a letter in his hand and staring open-mouthed at Monty.
‘Hello, Edgar,’ said Monty, "What are you doing burgling my house?’
After a second of shock he had recognized Edgar Demarnay. They had not met for several years. An Edgar grown fatter and grosser and older, but Edgar still, with his big pink boy’s face and his fat lips and his copious short fluffy hair now pale grey instead of pale gold.
Edgar stood there in appalled silence. Then he motioned with his hand towards the hall.
‘It was a tape recording,’ said Monty. Then he turned and left the room and returned to the drawing-room. He switched on various lights revealing peacock blue tiling alternating with dark panels covered in mosaic saffron and grey lentil plant designs. Mr Lockett had been in Moorish mood when the drawing-room was conceived.
Edgar Demarnay had been Sophie’s great admirer, possibly her lover (Monty carefully never established this) just before her meeting with Monty. Edgar was in fact the old college friend who had introduced them to each other. Edgar had remained, or so he claimed, hopelessly in love with Sophie. Monty had later succeeded in forgetting about Edgar. There were by then other far more dangerous people to worry about.
Edgar, who had followed, now sat down heavily on the purple silk and wool sofa which occupied the curtained recess. He stared fixedly across the room, not looking at Monty.
‘Oh come on, Edgar, say something.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Edgar, ‘I’m sorry. It was hearing her voice like that – it was such an awful shock. I still can’t believe she’s dead. Can you?’
‘Yes,’ said Monty, leaning against the elongated cast-iron chimney-piece. ‘I can. She is dead. She has been cremated. She is ashes. The ashes have been scattered. There is nothing left of her at all.’
‘How can you,’ murmured Edgar, ‘how can you—’
What are you doing here?‘ asked Monty. ‘Since when have you taken up burglary?’
‘When did she die?’
‘Ages ago. Weeks ago.’
‘Oh – I thought it was just – much more lately – a day or two ago – I’ve just got back from America you see – I only heard the news this evening – yesterday that is – I simply had to come here at once. What did she die of?’
‘Cancer.’
‘Was it a long business?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh Christ. No one told me.’
‘Why should they?’ said Monty. ‘It wasn’t any special business of yours. And you still haven’t told me what you were doing thieving in my wife’s room. Looking for souvenirs?’
‘Well, as a matter of fact,’ said Edgar, ‘I was looking for my letters.’
‘Your letters?’
‘I didn’t intend, you see, to break in. I just drove here as soon as I heard the news. I was at a dinner party, I left at once. I didn’t intend to do anything but stand in the road all night. There didn’t seem to be anything else to do. I did stand there for ages.’
‘How interesting. What time did you arrive here?’
‘Oh about midnight. I didn’t mean to trouble you at all, of course. I imagined you’d be prostrated.’
‘As you can see, I’m not.’
‘Then I started thinking about my letters. I suppose you know that ever since she – got married – I’ve been writing to Sophie every week.’
Monty had not known this.
‘I kept in touch with her, you see. I wanted her always to know what I was doing, where I was, just in case she ever needed me.’
‘How touching. In case she ever decided to leave me, I suppose.’
‘She always knew my telephone number,’ said Edgar. ‘Even if I was away for two days at a conference I saw to it that she always knew where she could ring me. It made me happier to think that she could always find me, it made me feel in touch. And then tonight – they said she was dead – and I ran. I just intended to stand all night and mourn. I didn’t even know you see I ran straight out – if the funeral was over or anything. I thought they said she’d just died. And then as I stood out there I started thinking of all those letters, hundreds of them. I expect she showed you some of them, did she?’
‘No.’
‘I wouldn’t have minded if she had,’ said Edgar. ‘Of course I didn’t mean it to be a secret or anything, there was nothing for there to be a secret about. It was all very simple. I just loved her. I couldn’t stop. I haven’t stopped. Oh God.’
‘Get on with it. I’m tired.’
‘Could I have some whisky?’
Monty took a decanter out of the stained glass corner cupboard and poured out half a tumbler of neat whisky.
‘Thanks. I’ve got a drink problem. Won’t you?’
‘No.’ Monty could not conceive of ever touching alcohol again.
‘I thought of course you’d see the letters and I didn’t mind, but I didn’t want anyone else to see them. They were good letters, the best I could write. Then I suddenly thought – of course I did visit this house once, just after you’d moved in.’
Monty had not known this either.
‘I called when you were in New York that time, and Sophie gave me tea in – that room over there – so I knew where she kept her letters and things – and I suddenly thought I’d try to get in and if there was a packet of letters there I’d – take them away. It was a stupid idea – yet I just thought, in the night there, that it would – console me and I felt the letters were there, so near, and I could just – and then the garden door being open—’
‘Did you get them?’ Monty had not looked into Sophie’s desk, since. He had been afraid of what he would find. Sophie had burnt a lot of papers when she first became ill.
‘No.’
‘I’m afraid I interrupted you. Do go and look properly now.’
‘You don’t mind-?’
‘Of course not. Go and look for your bloody letters. Then clear out. I’m going back
to bed.’
‘You always were a funny chap, Monty,’ said Edgar.
‘Go out by the garden as you came. Good night’
Monty made for the door. Edgar jumped up.
‘Monty, please, are you mad? You can’t just go away and leave me!’
‘Why not, pray? I think I’ve been rather kind to you.’
‘Of course you have, but – please don’t go, please talk to me. I’ve got to talk about Sophie – you may be – but I’m not —’
‘Don’t you want your letters?’
‘Yes, but now – you – if you find them —’
‘I doubt if Sophie kept them. Not all those thousands.’
‘Well, she might have kept some – the ones she liked best I’d sort of like to know – which ones she kept—’
‘Oh, you make me sick,’ said Monty. But he made no further attempt to go. He sat down. It was the first time since her death that he had been in the presence of someone who had known her and loved her. Sophie’s mother, who had plenty of troubles of her own, had not attended the funeral. He felt an inclination to talk to Edgar, though at the same time he knew that it was a mistake, after the awful absoluteness of that ending, to bandy words with this mucky revenant.
‘Did she answer your letters?’ said Monty.
‘Didn’t you know? Hardly ever. And then just a little scrawl. You didn’t answer my letters either, if it came to that. Did you keep them?’
‘Me? Keep your letters to me? Of course not! I can’t remember getting any. I receive hundreds of letters a week. My secretary takes them away in a sack.’ He had dismissed his secretary too. The letters now piled up in tea chests in the hall. Harriet said she wanted to deal with them for him.
‘You must remember,’ said Edgar. ‘I wrote you all about California – quite long letters – about the animals and so on – I knew that would interest you. About the sea otters. Don’t you remember about the sea otters?’
Monty did now remember. ‘Yes. But how tedious you are. You always were.’
‘You’re just the same too. This is like all our old conversations somehow. Could I have some more Scotch? I can’t converse without it these days.’
‘What was the party you rushed out of?’
‘The Latin Mass Society Dinner.’
‘Congratulations on your new appointment, by the way. I saw it in The Times.’
‘Yes,’ said Edgar, helping himself to the whisky. ‘I never thought I’d end up as head of a House. An Oxford college to play with. I just couldn’t resist it. I expect I’ll hate it though, it’ll wreck my work. Oh God, I wrote Sophie such a long letter about all that.’
‘I imagined you’d settled down for ever in California.’
‘So did I. It’s a terribly wicked hedonistic place. But I felt somehow – free there – you know, like they say Englishmen get in America – uninhibited – let their hair down. I told Sophie all about that too in the letters. Of course I don’t mean I had women or anything.’
‘Of course not.’
‘I’m such a puritan. I’m the most frustrated man in the northern hemisphere. I’ve got semen running out of my ears. Oh God, I’m talking quite ordinarily, aren’t I, as if – and she’s dead – thank God for drink. Getting through time has always been my problem. I’m always more or less sozzled now, only nobody notices – at least I hope they don’t – I never get quite sober – if I did I’d be screaming – I’m always just topping up, you know – I live on a plateau of permanent quiet inebriation. A single drink and I’m back up there again, right up. I can work all right too. God, I’m such a wet, such a failure. I talked to Sophie about all that in the letters.’
‘What a bore you must have been,’ said Monty. ‘I can’t think why you regard yourself as a failure. You were always full of erroneous ideas about yourself, as I remember. You’re a successful world-famous scholar, fellow of the Royal Academy, head of an Oxford college —’
‘I was a pupil of Beazley once. When I think of that I want to crawl under the carpet. I’m no good. I’m not like you —’
‘Like me? I’m just a failed novelist’
‘An artist – that’s best of all,’ said Edgar, dribbling a little at the mouth and gazing into his drink. ‘Yes, that’s best of all. I wish to Christ I was a writer. Anyway, you know what I mean.’
Oddly enough, Monty did know.
‘You’re just better than me,’ said Edgar. ‘Always were. You got Sophie. You deserved to get Sophie. Oh Christ. She’s dead. Oh Christ. You’ve got a sort of hardness in you, a centre. I’m soft all the way through, I can’t cope with life manfully, never could. Maybe I’m retarded, yes, that’s it, retarded. When I see any sort of nobility or strength in somebody else I just resent it like hell. At least I don’t resent it in you, but that’s because I admired you so much at college. Te Consule, you know, as we used to say. You remember – "the prince whose oracle is at Delphi ...". All our old private mythology – you were somehow at the centre of it all. Everyone has someone they admire at school or at college, and go on admiring for ever after. You’re just my admiree.’
‘This is drivel,’ said Monty. ‘And since you admit to being retarded, I can only agree. If there is anything which you admire in me, it is probably what I least value in myself.’
‘I don’t mean your frightfulness – remember what we used to call your frightfulness – at least not exactly that. You’ve got a centre, you can think, you can invent. Are you writing another Milo Fane?’
‘No.’
‘You know I’ve never really been loved by a woman.’
‘Tiens.’
‘Somehow I’ve always wanted the ones that didn’t want me. I’m the absolute queen bee of unrequited love. And then with Sophie – it was so especially awful – Oh God – what can you be thinking of me—’
‘I’m thinking,’ said Monty, ‘of how we all used to call you "Rosie" in college.’
Edgar had indeed not changed much. The drink problem, if it was one, had not marked him yet. The plump smooth full-lipped uniformly pink youthful face had been so mysteriously and discreetly touched by middle age, it was not clear how one knew it was not still the face of an undergraduate.
‘Yes, "Rosie", yes. I think you invented that. I rather liked it. You were bloody kind to me in those days. I’ve kept all your letters, even from then. And all Sophie’s letters of course. There weren’t many. I’ll show them to you one day. Would you like that?’
‘No.’
‘Do you mind if I have some more Scotch. In a weird way this is like old times. How we used to talk about women before we really knew any! Do you remember saying to me laissons les jolies femmes aux homines sans imagination?’
‘No.’
‘We used to talk all night. Women, philosophy. "Nothing in reason supports the assertion that it is good absolutely to relieve suffering." How we broke our heads on that one, do you remember?’
‘I think you’d better go now.’
‘Hitting something soft back hard, like in badminton, that’s what our friendship has always been like. I used that image once in a letter to you. I kept all your letters – Did you – No, of course, you said you didn’t —’
‘Oh, go away,’ said Monty. ‘There isn’t any friendship. I know, now that you remind me of it, that you were once all set for some sort of big emotional intellectual friendship between us, full of challenges and responses and rows and reconciliations and exchanges of clever letters, but it never existed except in your mind. After we left college the only real connection between us was Sophie, and now she’s dead.’
‘You sound so cold, – as if you’d accepted her death.’
‘Of course I’ve accepted her death. I accept facts.’
‘That’s your – frightfulness – again. You always hated vulgarity and sentiment. Oh God. Coming home to England you know – I kept thinking and thinking how I’d see her -I didn’t even think of her saying anything to me. I felt I’d be like a dog, just sitting
and looking at her. I was faint with joy at the idea of seeing her. Did she talk about me ever?’
‘Occasionally.’
‘What did she say?’
‘She made jokes.’
‘Well – I’m glad of that – if I was good for a laugh – that was all right. Coming home I felt—’
‘Have you still got that big house? I forget its name.’ But as he spoke Monty remembered the name.
‘Mockingham. Yes. It’s been a bit of a problem since my mother died. And you know my sister lives in Canada now. It’s only twenty miles from Oxford, so I suppose I’ll partly live there. Do you remember coming to Mockingham?’
‘Yes.’ Monty especially remembered the first occasion. It was his first visit to a large English country house, where all was ‘accustomed, ceremonious’. He had been impressed, but had carefully concealed this fact from Edgar.
‘You remember the coolness with my mother about your not coming to church?’
‘Are you still devout?’
‘Well, I go. I tag along. I don’t know what I believe. But it helps me not to go to the dogs. Not so fast, anyway. I say, Monty, that tape you were playing. Do you think you could -?’
‘No.’
‘Will you sometime?’
‘No. Could you go now! I’m going back to bed.’
‘I’m sorry – don’t be angry with me, Monty.’
‘I’m not angry. Just clear off, will you.’
‘I’ll come to see you tomorrow.’
‘It is tomorrow. And you won’t’ Monty rose and pulled back the curtains and opened the shutters. Bright sunshine flooded the dark elaborate little room, drawing blue flashes out of the de Morgan tiling.
‘Can I come this evening?’
‘No.’
‘When, then?’
‘Look, Edgar,’ said Monty, ‘I’m glad we’ve talked, but that’s that. We have nothing more to say, unless you count drooling on about Sophie as saying something. I don’t want to see you and I can’t imagine that you really want to see me. Maybe I’ll look you up one day in Oxford. Except that I’m never there. Anyway, good-bye.’
