The Sacred and Profane Love Machine

by Iris Murdoch

  ‘He does that too.’

  ‘I love the cats. And your dogs. And all animals, even the fierce bad ones. I found a bat in your garage. He was hanging upside down and I thought he was a bit of rag. Then I saw his face, such a funny little old face with teeth. A bat would bite you. You couldn’t tame a bat.’

  ‘After all, you love your father and your mother,’ said Harriet.

  ‘Can you talk to God?’

  ‘Yes. Anyone can. It’s called praying.’

  ‘What do you say to him?’

  ‘You ask him to help you to be good and to love people.’

  ‘What people?’

  ‘All people.’ ‘You mean all people, like all animals?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Luca reflected for a while on the enormity of this requirement. Then he said, ‘I love you. I saw you that night in the garden, and I knew you were magic like in dreams.’

  Harriet drew him up against her, hugging him tight at last, and felt his arms fumbling then clinging about her neck.

  Blaise, having just left Emily, was walking along the road in a daze. Something that very closely resembled happiness was making his whole head glow. He could not keep a lunatic smile off his face. The sheer continued kindness to him of both the women made him radiant with humility and innocence and relief. He felt he ought to be going everywhere on his knees. Thank you, oh thank you! he kept saying in his heart, to them, to the universe. And every moment which passed, every minute of continued acceptance and calm, made the thing that much more certain. Of course there was much to fear, Blaise told himself, though he could not now see exactly what there was to fear. The situation must continue for some time to be dangerously volatile. One of the women might break down. Yet even if she did, what could come of it? They were as caught as ever, they were all caught, and would have to make the best of it and had so blessedly early discovered that they could. They were caught now, why not look at it this way, in a cage of charitable forbearance and enforced truth. Why should either of them prefer a fruitless war which could only do them damage?

  The black black spot was David, and from that place Blaise averted his attention. There was nothing he could yet do to mend that damage, whatever it should turn out to be. Harriet would help, could perhaps heal. Blaise felt so humble, so, he picked up Emily’s word, hollow, so as it were transparent: he could not help feeling that David would have to forgive him in the end. His restored innocence seemed almost to blot out his fault. He felt, at moments, like Christian at the foot of the cross. Naturally what would strike David would be his father’s he, his crime, not his emergence into the truth. What would strike David would be the existence, and the continued tolerated existence, of Emily and Luca. But would not David have to forgive? David had looked at Luca’s toad. Surely David would forgive. Blaise knew, and shied from the knowledge, that his relations with his son would be, already were, radically changed. But surely surely David would give him back his pardoned being.

  That belonged to the future, other aspects of which remained obscure. This was no moment for making plans, although huge questions remained undecided Would Harriet and Emily really attempt to ‘make friends’? Could Harriet carry this off too? In his heart Blaise did not believe it. He did not really want the two women to be together and to contaminate each other, and he did not believe that, after this first little exploratory honeymoon, they would want it either. Two quite separate places, like in the past only innocently, that was surely better. Would Harriet soon stop wanting everybody to know? Ought everybody to know? Blaise noticed the return of the idea of simple obligation into his life. However he felt no urge to immolate himself upon this altar. Honest reflection still gave the preference to keeping it all discreet and vague. There would be no point in a scandal which, in its dimensions, would be simply misleading. Blaise felt that he had courageously sorted out his life and should have the reward of continued privacy. His guilt after all really did now belong to the past.

  Walking along, anxious and glorified, he was aware of something very unpleasant a moment before he realized that he had seen Pinn walking on the other side of the road. She crossed now towards him, smiling.

  ‘Congratulations!’

  ‘Er – thanks,’ said Blaise.

  ‘All well on both fronts, I trust?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Emily is being marvellous, isn’t she?’

  ‘Marvellous.’

  ‘I’m so much looking forward to meeting Harriet.’

  ‘Er – yes —’

  ‘It’s like discovering a lot of charming new relations.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You must give a party.’

  ‘Mmmm.’

  ‘You are a lucky man, you know.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘It’s the perfect ending,, everybody happy.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I expect you’ll be over here rather more now, won’t you?’

  ‘I expect so.’

  ‘You won’t want me in the house.’

  ‘Please don’t feel —’

  ‘Oh but I do. I’m going to move out In fact I’m thinking of buying a place of my own. I wondered if you could possibly lend me some money?’

  Blaise looked into the bland smiling freckled face. What was he being threatened with? He said, ‘I haven’t got any spare money, as you know.’

  ‘Quite a small loan would help. Anyway, think it over. I’ll let you know when I have some more definite plans. Bye-bye for now.’

  There is nothing she can do to me, is there? thought Blaise. No. Now, there is nothing. But he felt very uneasy all the same.

  ‘Who was that fat man who went away just as I came?’ said Emily.

  She and Harriet were sitting on canvas chairs on the terrace drinking tea. Emily was wearing slacks and a jersey, but had put on a clean shirt under the jersey and tied a red and black scarf round her neck. Harriet was wearing one of her Liberty lawn dresses covered with tiny flowers. The sun was still quite high in the sky and the garden hummed with light and warmth. The electric pink rose was glowing upon the box hedge. Emily kept looking round, staring at the garden, staring back at the house, staring at Harriet. So far, Harriet thought, the visit had gone quite well. The first moments had been the worst.

  ‘He’s a professor, Edgar Demarnay, a friend of Monty Small, a friend of mine.’

  ‘Did he know who I was? Did he want not to meet me?’

  ‘He just had to go.’ In fact the answer to both questions was yes. Edgar, who had appeared after lunch, had been almost tearful with indignation on Harriet’s behalf. Harriet had been ostentatiously calm, but she had been glad of his sympathy. Was Blaise, for all his reiterated gratitude, not taking her acquiescence a little too much for granted?

  ‘You have men friends?’ said Emily.

  ‘Well, yes, I have a lot of friends, some of them are men.’

  ‘I have no friends,’ said Emily. ‘All my grown-up life I’ve only had Blaise. I grew up into Blaise.’

  ‘So did I!’

  ‘Yes, but if you’re married, you’re much more free. couldn’t go anywhere. Blaise was so jealous. If you aren’t married there’s no bond, everyone’s a menace.’

  ‘But Blaise knew you wouldn’t abandon him.’

  ‘How nicely you put it. He knew I was stuck, yes. Anyway there was so little money. He wouldn’t even cough up to let me have my teeth done.’

  ‘About your teeth —’

  ‘No,’ said Emily, ‘there are limits. I did not come here to talk about my teeth.’

  ‘You did have a job though, you’ve been a teacher, you must have made friends there.’

  ‘No one wants to know an unmarried ma, one just has no identity. The staff pretended I didn’t exist, and the girls made my life hell, one in particular, a perfect little bitch.’

  ‘I am so sorry —’

  ‘I couldn’t even tell Blaise about it. If I started to complain he just got cross. I suppose he reckoned he’d got e
nough troubles.’

  ‘You’ve had such a bad time —’

  ‘Blaise never believed in my job. He didn’t believe I could do a job. He was right.’

  ‘He never believed in my painting either.’

  ‘Men despise us. They think we’re just personal. Blaise was so bloody unsympathetic. He has no sort of physical sympathy either. When one feels like hell at the end of the month he just doesn’t want to know. You find that?’

  ‘Well —’

  ‘Blaise is so revoltingly pleased that we’ve forgiven him. I suppose we have forgiven him, have we? All the same I’d like to knock that self-satisfied grin off his silly face.’

  ‘You have been very kind to him and to me,’ said Harriet.

  ‘Oh don’t talk stupid.’

  ‘I mean it. Of course you’re – as you are —’

  ‘A fallen woman!’

  ‘No, no, I mean it’s you who’ve had the bad time and the – irregular situation – but I do want you to feel now that you can – lift up your head and —’

  ‘My head’s all right, thanks. When am I going to meet your son? He looks like a film star.’

  ‘You will, I hope -’ Harriet recalled David’s implacable unhappy face. It was no use suggesting that meeting now or explaining to David how much it would relieve her mind if he would be at least briefly polite to Emily. Harriet’s attempt, which so much amazed her male spectators, to ‘welcome’ Emily was not entirely dictated by that spirit of goodness of which she had spoken to Luca. Harriet needed to do everything that she could to make Emily real. To only half believe in Emily would have been agony. That would have been to try to live partly in a happy past which no longer existed. Harriet’s own realism, her sort of strong spiritual domestic economy, demanded a complete acceptance of the new scene and a detailed vision of it. Harriet needed to swallow Emily whole, know the worst and be certain that she could survive it. To have had David on the reception committee would certainly have helped here. Also, David was something which she wanted to show to Emily.

  Emily, seeming to read her thought, said, ‘You have a lovely home.’

  ‘It is pretty, isn’t it.’

  ‘And such a lovely garden. I bet you and Blaise never have rows.’

  ‘Well, no—’

  ‘Why should you, living in a place like this. If I lived here and had a clever normal son who looked like an angel, I’d never stop laughing.’

  ‘You have a wonderful little son.’

  ‘I’ve never had a proper home. First my lousy step-father. Then lousy Blaise. Christ.’

  ‘I’m so sorry —’

  ‘What a lot of dogs you’ve got What are they supposed to be for? One of them growled at me when I came in.’

  The usual dog group was in panting attendance on the lawn. Several black tails wagged feebly as Harriet gave them her attention.

  They don’t bite. Luca’s very sweet with them. He’s so fond of animals.’

  ‘Fancy his saying it was a school holiday, the little monkey. Kids should be beaten for lying. Blaise never bothered.’

  ‘But Luca is so —’

  ‘Not having a proper father has done him in.’

  ‘You do agree about the new school?’

  ‘Oh, yes, yes. But it’s too late. Luca’s done for. He’ll never be normal, never learn, never be an ordinary person. He’ll be a sort of moron by the time he’s twelve. He’s had to carry such a burden, knowing Blaise wasn’t a proper husband, having Daddy always disappearing, hearing the endless screaming rows when dear Daddy did turn up. He’s had to use all his energy understanding that rotten scene. Sometimes I feel he hates his father, hates me, hates everybody. He’s had a bloody awful childhood. Like I had. Those things get passed on and on.’

  ‘He seems to me an immensely perceptive intelligent child, I can’t think why you —’

  ‘He probably plays up to you. He’s good at pretending. The damage is done by the time you’re six. You ought to know, your husband’s a psychiatrist. So Blaise wants to give up the trick-cyclery and be a doctor, does he?’

  ‘Yes.’ Harriet had decided and Blaise had agreed, that she should tell Emily this, which Blaise admitted he had never done. Blaise said he would be glad for Emily to know. Besides, now Emily would have to know everything. ‘He never told you because – it raised those financial questions and —’

  ‘It’s a lovely idea, but how do Luca and I eat?’

  ‘You mustn’t have less money,’ said Harriet, ‘you must have more. And Luca must go to that school. We can manage it all if we’re careful. You see, David will soon be at college, Blaise can get a grant, we could sell the house —’

  ‘You’d sell this house to send Luca to a good school? You’ve got to be joking. You’re just too good to be true, Mrs Placid. We used to call you Mrs Placid, and it isn’t a bad name for you either. What’s the snag? Where’s the string, Mrs P?’

  ‘I’d do it to help Blaise too. Anyway we may not have to.We can borrow money from Monty, from Edgar -’

  ‘Who’s this "we"?’

  ‘I mean all of us – you, me, Blaise.’

  ‘Count me out. I’m not sure what I think about this doctor biz.’

  ‘I feel we should try to pull together —’

  ‘I’m tired of pulling. And we aren’t in the same boat.’

  ‘Blaise needs an intellectual challenge, he needs something really hard to do. He’s lost faith in his psychological theories. It’s all become too vague and easy for him. He needs —’

  ‘Oh I’m so fed up with bloody Blaise! His needs, his theories, his challenges. Hasn’t he had enough out of us, wrecking our lives, do we have to send him through medical school as well? What about my needs for a change? I’ve got a mind too.’

  ‘My life isn’t wrecked,’ said Harriet, ‘and neither is yours. We’ll all manage somehow and we’ll make everything better —’

  ‘How will we? By magic? Well, maybe you could. You’re so soft and kind, you’re a magic lady.’

  ‘That’s just what Luca told me!’ said Harriet with a smile.

  Emily’s cold bright blue eyes surveyed her hostess. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘Blaise told me you were old and ugly and fat. Don’t take on. He only said it to cheer me up. I expect he told you I was a common little south London tart.’

  ‘He only spoke of you with the greatest delicacy and respect.’

  ‘Well so I should bloody hope! Now you’re angry. Don’t be angry with me, be angry with him.’

  ‘I’m not angry.’

  ‘Yes you are. You really should get to know old Blaise one day. He has some pretty weird tastes. So have I, if it comes to that. He must have put in a good deal of play-acting with you in the old days.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Never mind, never mind. Luca said you were magic, did he. He never says a bloody word to me.’ Suddenly the fierce blue eyes were blurred with tears. ‘Oh damn! Damn!’

  Harriet had seen her guest off. The tears were soon dried. Harriet had not wept. It had just been suddenly clear that the encounter was over and both of them wanted to escape. Harriet felt exhausted. She urgently wanted Blaise, to see his big rocky reassuring face, with the sweet diffident air which it always wore now, to smell his jacket, to be held and safe. She felt a sort of constant physical anxiety now about Blaise, like the anxiety she had felt about David when he was a baby. She would like to have had Blaise always within sight, within touch. But consent to bis absence seemed now more than ever to be a duty. Today he had gone to the library so as to let her face Emily alone. He had even put off Dr Ainsley and Mrs Lister to do so. He would be giving Emily more of bis time in the future: Harriet had insisted on this. She had questioned Blaise carefully (and he had hated it) about the amount of time he had been used to spending at Putney. It appeared that Emily’s ration had been the occasional lunch-time and sometimes the earlier part of Blaise’s evening with Magnus Bowles, who also lived south of the river. Harriet had declared that
this was not enough. He must surely go sometimes for the whole day at weekends so as to see more of Luca. Blaise had been as vague as possible, but he had agreed. So, just when she needed him so much, he would be absent more. This had to be.

  Harriet had never been in the habit of scrutinizing her states of mind. She had never needed to. She had always lived in a world of instinct and certainty. Her silly early loves, before Blaise came, had never required decisions of her, had never even puzzled her really. She had endured them like attacks of the ’flu, with as little probing of their nature. A world of sturdy convention plus a firm sense of duty, together with her fantastic luck, had kept her moving along without any real consciousness of her ‘mind’ at all. She saw the world, not her mind. Now, however, her emotions and her ideas preoccupied her, startled her even. She was aware that her whole mental being had altered since her first meeting with Emily, and was, with frightening speed, altering still. And for the first time in her life she had the unnerving sense that she could not predict either her actions or her feelings. What did remain clear and steady, and this comforted Harriet in these days perhaps more than anything, was her simple sense of duty to her husband. She had got to support Blaise and help him to live truthfully henceforth and to do what he ought to do. It was morally unthinkable that he should abandon a long-established mistress with a small son. Harriet’s marriage vows had indeed prepared her to travail for her husband, and she had always been ready to. Was she to repine that the ordeal, when it came, was such an odd one? If Blaise had become blind would she not have read to him, condemned to a wheelchair, would she not have pushed it?

  Of course she was consoled and supported too, simply by what she thought of as Blaise’s relief. This was so plain and palpable as to be almost a kind of thing between them. As she had told Monty, it was wonderful to be able to give what was so much desired, to someone who was so much loved. She could help Blaise, ‘save’ him almost. She could help Emily too, though this now seemed less easy than it had seemed at the start. Harriet had been impressed by the fact that she could meet her husband’s mistress without any approach to jealous fury. The comparative calm, the muddled decency, of that first meeting, the well-intentioned dignity which she, Harriet, had both displayed and imposed had given her an exalted feeling which she at once mistook for something rather like love. It was as if she ‘loved’ Emily. That much grace had been given her. Already, however, this impression was changing. Emily was becoming less of a formal trial and an abstract challenge and more of a very particular young woman with a characteristic vocabulary and a characteristic voice. When Emily had said ‘a common little south London tart’ the phrase (which Harriet would never have dreamt of formulating for herself) had rung some sort of automatic bell in her mind. Of course Harriet did not own or endorse the reaction, but the reaction was there. What would her father have thought, what would Adrian think?