by Iris Murdoch
Monty, who had wrapped himself in the white fur rug from the big armchair, had just decided to give himself a sleeping pill and go to bed when someone started ringing the bell and banging violently upon the front door knocker in a way suggestive of terror and desperation. Monty leapt up and raced through the hall turning the lights on. He opened the door and Harriet entered, passing him quickly by and going on into the lighted room. She was wearing the cashmere shawl which she had drawn up over her head. He caught a glimpse of her face and guessed instantly what had happened. Had he, during these four awful days, been waiting for it?
He followed her into the study. Without a word she handed him the letter and then sat down quietly. Standing beside the lamp Monty read Blaise’s words.
Harriet my darling,
I have to tell you this and I beg you to accept it with all the wonderful courage and compassion which you have so far shown in this dreadful business. I am going to live with Emily. I have to. I have simply got to choose. (Edgar was right.) I cannot live with you both and since it has all come out I have simply realized that I cannot now any longer ask Emily to take second place. She has suffered enough. I must now give her and Luca the comfort of a real home, a place where I am nearly all the time. Oh my God, if only I could divide myself in two, but I can’t! Hood House already exists and will go on existing. And of course I shall come to see you there. And I shall trust you marvellously to keep it in existence, for David’s sake and because you are some kind of saint. My dearest girl, I pray you to accept this new scene and to make it work. After the first shock, you will see that it is not impossible. The alternative to ‘making it work’ is just violence and chaos which you cannot choose. My mind is made up and I am certain of my course. I must now give myself to Emily, who has suffered so patiently and so long, during a time when you were happy. Oh do not despair of happiness again, my dear, I shall always be there. We shall just have somehow, shall we not, to learn each other anew and love each other anew in this different life. I know that you will attempt this and I bless you for it from the bottom of my heart. I shall be living with Emily in Fulham, in fact we are moving at once. (So there is no point in coming to Putney.) I think anyway it is better that we should not meet for a short while. Let there be an interval during which we both take stock. I feel so terrible and so desolate as I write these awful and irrevocable words to you. Do you remember when you first knew of Emily, you said, ‘I love you. I just want to help you. What else would you expect me to do?" Can you, oh can you please, still say this under this further awful burden which I put upon you? You and only you can still save us all. You must do it and you will do it. I am acting with my eyes open. I see how awful all this is, what an outrage, what a crime. But I am placed between crime and crime and I have to move Try to see it as an act of justice and forgive me. We must both learn, you and I, and we can learn to bear it. For this is anguish to me too, my dear. I cannot write more. Oh forgive me. And hold everything still in its place, my love and my saint.
B.
P.S. I hope you will understand when I say this: naturally in the new set-up Emily wants to have Luca all to herself, especially now that he has a resident father at last! We are planning a new school for him. (Not the one we decided before.) He must be made to fit in and settle down. So please don’t disturb him trying to see him any more. You must appreciate that this is simply a matter of the child’s welfare. Letters will be forwarded from the Putney address.
Oh my dear – I am so sorry
Monty read this effusion slowly and with care and then looked at Harriet. He had seen the effects of strain, even of frenzy, in her face, and saw now the traces of tears. But her look was not that of a totally distraught woman.
‘What do you think of that?’ said Harriet.
Her steady tone made suddenly a kind of intimacy between them; and Monty realized at once how much better he was feeling. Harriet’s troubles were a far more effective cure than catastrophes on television. He answered cautiously, ‘Is he serious?’
‘Of course!’
‘I mean, won’t he come rushing back in a couple of days saying he was in a muddle and please will you have him back? I mean, how can he exist without you?’
‘He’s in love with her again. He won’t come rushing back. He’ll be hanging the curtains at the flat in Fulham.’
Monty stared at Harriet in amazement. Was there no end to the surprises which this remarkable woman could spring upon him? Her stern controlled face seemed scarcely recognizable. She looked like a distant relation of herself. The features were similar but the expression was utterly new.
‘He is mad with relief,’ said Harriet. ‘He has pulled it off. He is free, he is gone. He has done it at last.’
‘But he said he didn’t care for her any more.’
‘He lied. Or else he has simply discovered he does. Perhaps she forced him to choose. Anyway, however it’s happened, he’s chosen.’
Facing this new haggardly beautiful Harriet, Monty, adopting a fresh tone and eschewing further efforts at comfort, said, ‘Well, what are you going to do?’
‘I’m not sure,’ said Harriet.
‘Are you going over to Putney? They may still be there.’
‘I thought of doing so,’ said Harriet. ‘I only found this letter about an hour ago and I thought of going there at once and sort of – running mad. Then I decided it would be quite pointless. And then I began to feel – so cold.’
I can see the coldness, thought Monty. How much it becomes you! ‘You won’t stay cold though. The shock hasn’t come yet.’
‘Yes. I know. But I can already make decisions. I have made decisions.’
‘What have you decided?’
‘That letter,‘ said Harriet, ‘is terrible. Awful. It is the letter of a wicked man.’
‘Possibly,’ said Monty. ‘But the wickedness is not new and he is caught by it. What he says about justice is not totally insane, there’s something in it.’
‘Maybe. But the wickedness is there and it does change people. It has changed me. Monty, do you think you could give me some whisky please?’
Monty fetched a bottle and two glasses and poured some out. Harriet gulped and began to shudder a little, but quieted herself. ‘How do you mean, changed?’ said Monty.
‘I’m not going to keep Hood House going for that man,’ said Harriet. ‘Does he imagine that he can walk out and have everything here all the same, cosily waiting for him when he decides to honour us with a visit? I will not keep Hood House going for him, not even for half an hour. I have already turned off the water heaters. Hood House is finished.’
Oh you wonderful woman! thought Monty. He said, ‘Don’t be hasty, Harriet. Blaise may be crawling back as soon as tomorrow morning.’
‘Well, he’ll find the place empty. Even if he comes tonight he’ll find it empty.’
‘Empty? Where are you going to go tonight?
‘Here.’
‘Here? You mean Locketts?’
‘Yes. Do you mind, Monty? I’ve simply got to get out of Hood House at once. I’ve got to be absolutely somewhere else. It isn’t far to run to, but it’s the only place I can run to immediately.’
‘What about Mockingham?’ said Monty. The idea of this transformed Harriet under his roof filled him with strangely mixed feelings.
‘Oh, dear Edgar – he’s been such a support – he’s over there now helping David pack.’
‘Helping David pack?’
‘Yes. David’s coming too of course. You really don’t mind? I feel I couldn’t go to Mockingham. You’re an old friend, you’ve known us for ages – if I went to Mockingham Edgar would expect too much – I don’t mean —’
‘You’re not afraid I might expect too much?’
‘Of course not. Monty, you’ve got to help me, only you can help me and David now. I feel – I can’t tell you how clearheaded and determined – I’m frightened and wounded and desperately unhappy – but so determined. I feel I can, I must, simply
commandeer your house if necessary.’
‘It’s yours,’ said Monty.
‘Thank you. I knew you’d say that. Edgar and David are following me over. Oh Monty, that awful awful letter – And about Luca – Monty, I’m not going to do without Luca.’
‘Harriet, be sane! How can you —’
‘I don’t know. But I’ll get Luca somehow. I can do that child good – his parents can’t even talk to him – I can talk to him. The child loves me. How can they just decree that —’
‘Because they are his parents!’
‘ "They" – "they" – that dreadful "they" —’
‘Steady, Harriet’
‘Blaise simply doesn’t know what I’m like or he wouldn’t have written as he did.’
‘Perhaps you didn’t know what you were like."
‘No, I’ve never really had a crisis —’
‘But, Harriet, wait a moment. Blaise says you’re such a saint and so on. Mightn’t it be better for everybody, whatever you feel like now – running mad or whatever – whatever you are like now, if you just decided to be a saint, to bear it all, to carry their sins, to keep the Hood House heaters burning and all that? You did manage to behave so awfully well at the beginning of this thing -?’
‘Yes, but it wasn’t saintliness. It was sort of power – I can understand how she hated it – I had to be the one who decided things – and I so much wanted to console Blaise – and I thought he wanted it – and oh Monty, what can have happened, what can have happened —’
Harriet caught at Monty’s hand. The front door bell rang again.
David and Edgar were standing outside under the lamp, with several suitcases on the step beside them. Monty had a crazy impulse to laugh. ‘Come in, come in. Harriet is here and has explained everything.’ He must not, he thought, sound jovial. How awful it all was, in fact.
David pale, stony-faced, moved the cases in. Edgar looked sternly at Monty. Monty said, ‘I’m very sorry I was so rude to you. I didn’t mean it. I was just raving. Please forgive me.’ Edgar broke into the sweet smile which had been hiding expectantly behind the sternness, a change of expression reminding Monty vividly of a big pink fair-haired appallingly diffident, appallingly clever, undergraduate.
Harriet had emerged from the study. About to start crying again, she stared at David and Edgar with a helpless tragic expression. Monty said quickly, ‘Harriet, this is your house now. Could you organize everything please? David and Edgar will help you, and I’m sure you can find sheets and things. Decide which rooms you want. And the kitchen’s all yours. I’m just off.’
‘But where to?’ cried Harriet. ‘Monty, please, you aren’t leaving me?’
‘No, no. I’m just going for a walk.’
Monty bolted out of the door and down the path. It was darker now though the sky was still a slightly glowing blue admitting of few and huge stars. Monty had started quickly down the road when he heard a sound of running feet behind him. He stopped abruptly and David cannoned into him and they stumbled, clutching each other. David held on.
‘You won’t leave us, Monty, will you, you really won’t?’
‘I won’t leave you. What do you suppose I’d do?’
‘I could suppose you’d do anything. You could go to China. Anything.’
‘I won’t go to China,’ said Monty.
Monty cursed, trying to get the stumpy tail of the hammer in underneath the twisted nail. A feeling of exasperated frightened impotence came over him. He felt clumsy and feeble and defeated. He had removed one slat of the fence and was trying to remove a second. The dogs, in whose interests this gateway was being made, watched malignantly and derisively from the other side. Ganymede’s black nose and puffy moustaches had already been thrust through the hole. Monty kicked the slat violently, causing the dogs to retreat. A chorus of angry outraged barks accompanied his reiterated kicks. The lower part of the slat splintered and came away and the smaller dogs began to squeeze through into the orchard.
Monty had made an appointment to visit Bankhurst School on the following Friday. (He had talked to the secretary, not to Binkie in person.) The actual taking of this step, the removal of his plan of salvation from the ideal to the real, had caused him no relief. He could not revive emotions which had once been attached to the idea of having what he had thought of as a real job. Even the idea of an ordeal or trial was devoid of interest. All that was clear was that it had once seemed to him a good thing to get out of his mind and into some ordinary compulsory setting. This was to be part of the purging of Milo, the deflating of Magnus. What was also clear was that if he continued as he was he would not go mad but would become something possibly worse. He was irritated and annoyed by the invasion of his house and he avoided his guests when he could. His sympathies, his feelings, all now seemed to him unutterably frivolous. If he could not set these aside for what had he striven all these years?
Though almost insomniac he had continued last night to dream of Sophie. He was lying in his bed, only it had become a box with wooden sides, and Sophie, lit as if by footlights, was passing silently by dressed in her wedding gown. (Sophie, who had married him with almost cynical casualness in a registry office, had never had a wedding gown, but Monty’s mother kept hers religiously wrapped up in black tissue paper.) Monty thought, Sophie isn’t dead, she has just become dumb. What a trial for such a chatterbox! At that moment Sophie looked at him, and he saw the glitter of her glasses – only it was not her glasses, but awful huge tears which sparkled all round her eyes like scales. Then as she passed him by Monty saw with horror that she was being followed, as if in procession, by the Bishop, his leg restored and wearing purple knee breeches. The Bishop moving slowly past, turned and smiled complicitly at Monty.
While Monty was kicking the fence and remembering his dream Edgar was sitting in the Locketts drawing-room with Harriet. Harriet was watching with fascination while Edgar with his large clean white handkerchief was wiping off her hand one of his own tears which he had just dropped upon it. Harriet felt surprise, dismay, pity. Edgar had just made her a quite formal and detailed marriage proposal, which she had of course refused, explaining that she was married already. However, she was both consoled and touched.
‘I know,’ said Edgar, still holding her hand trapped inside his handkerchief. ‘But I just needed to say all this so as to make it clear, I mean so that you could know, if ever you should need me in the future, that I am absolutely committed to you.’
‘But Edgar, I don’t want you to be! You are absurd! I don’t want you to be unhappy!’
‘Oh I’m not unhappy. You see, I need a woman to love. As I told you, I loved Sophie. I love you. It makes me so glad that you exist. There needn’t be anything more, though of course I can’t help hoping for more. I wish at least you’d come to Mockingham. You needn’t see me there.’
‘My dear Edgar —’
‘You see, like I told you, unrequited love – and I haven’t really known any other kind – if it’s quite sort of hopeless isn’t like unrequited love after all – I mean, like loving God even if He doesn’t exist.’
‘But I do exist.’
‘The love goes and returns. It passes through the object and returns.’
‘So it’s really self-love?’
‘No, no. I will you so much. I will you. Can’t you feel it?’
‘Not really.’
‘And you can help me so easily, like Athena helping Herakles to hold the world up.’
‘That sounds hard.’
‘Not for a goddess. I’m rewarded for loving you. Even if I have nothing, nothing at all.’
‘You have my hand.’
‘Oh God,’ Edgar groaned. Then carefully removing the hand kerchief he kissed Harriet’s knuckles and released her. She felt the moist streak of more tears. All this is mad, she thought, mad.
The state of prostrated reaction and shock which Monty had predicted had come. The sacred rage which had prompted her to turn off the immersion heaters and mad
e her able to say ‘Hood House is finished’ had been totally withdrawn. Her mind seemed again to have altered radically since that strength. She now felt simply mutilated, and missing Blaise was an endless occupation. In bed she felt agonizingly incomplete, and by day a searcher. She reached for him. She had no further will for decisions. She did not want to return to Hood House. She wanted desperately to do something about Blaise but could not think what to do. He had made no communication, no sign. No doubt he was waiting for her to realize fully that he had left her. A sense of the cruelty and injustice of it all was strong in her but vague. What ought she to do? She ought of course to help David. She had suggested taking him to Paris, but could not make out if he wanted to come, and had not the power to decide the matter. What she now desperately needed was Monty, his sympathy and his force. But though Monty was polite and helpful he had become horribly withdrawn and aloof. She also yearned for Luca, but Luca too had sent her no signal. He had been removed from her, imprisoned inside that awful new regime which she could not and did not attempt to imagine.
Monty was dreaming again. It was night and he was in his bed, and a tall woman in a pale robe who was certainly not Sophie was standing beside him looking down at him with glowing vindictive eyes. He was a sacrificial victim being scrutinized by the priestess. He was to be killed slowly, his flesh plucked from him slowly. He tried to move, feeling the horrible familiar impotence which he had experienced when trying to pull the nail out of the fence. He turned in his bed and then found that he was not dreaming at all. The moon was shining into the room and there was a woman there, standing close beside his bed and looking down at him intently. Monty lunged for his lamp and the light came on.
‘Hello,’ said Pinn.
Monty got quickly out of bed, pulled the curtains carefully together, then put on his dressing-gown. He put his hands in his pockets and stared at Pinn who was now sitting on his bed. She was wearing a rather long yellow mackintosh, and her face, restraining a nervous smile, was ablaze with interest and excitement. She said, ‘Do you mind if I smoke? You don’t, I believe? May I use this pretty bowl for an ashtray?’
