The Sacred and Profane Love Machine

by Iris Murdoch

  ‘I know, I know, I haven’t forgotten for a second.’

  ‘Bereavement is my occupation and it absorbs me completely. You want me to touch you, to look at you with sympathy. I cannot.’

  ‘I know – not yet – no woman can come near you in that way – but —’

  ‘Bereavement is also the cause, or any way the occasion, of real changes in my life. I shall sell this house. I shall cease writing. I have already done so. My life as a fake artist is over and I am not capable of being any other sort of artist. I have to live alone inside myself without Sophie and without Milo. As Edgar may have told you, I intend to become a schoolmaster. I have an appointment at a school which I hope will employ me. I am going to strip my life in ways which have long been in preparation —’

  ‘Monty, stop. You accuse me of living in a dream world, but it seems to me you’re doing just that! You tell me I can’t change, and then you show off about how you can! If you could only see how self-satisfied you looked just now! Are you really going to mortify yourself in this ridiculous manner? You are your own prisoner too, after all.’

  ‘These are not impulsive emotional expedients, my dear Harriet. All this is the outcome of deep long things. I’ve never really talked to you about myself and I won’t now, except to say this. I have seemed to some people to be successful —’

  ‘And you’ve enjoyed it!’

  ‘In a way of course. But I have a long deep unhappiness about my life, about my marriage, about my work, which now comes to a crisis. I have to resolve this crisis properly or else become a sort of bad person which in a sense I’ve always been but which I’ve never absolutely become. I haven’t become it because of Sophie and the fact that I loved her and because of certain illusions about myself as a writer and certain other (doubtless) illusions about what some people would call religion and I would call I know not what. Things seemed provisional for me which seem now, in the light of her death, absolute. I have my own troubles and my own moment of trial and you have no place in the picture. I have to meet what I have to meet and do what I have to do and you are simply an irrelevance, a, forgive me, profitless distraction. I have absolutely nothing to give you.’

  ‘No,’ murmured Harriet, ‘no. You accuse me of being in the dark. Perhaps I am more than I think I am. But you are in the dark too. You can’t know all those things about your life. You too have to struggle on and see how it turns out. Just don’t in the dark – go too far away from me. I am certain I can help you. To help you would be my salvation, and I can see now that to help me would be yours. I am your immediate task. The schoolmaster idea is romanticism. This is where you should be. Oh dearest Monty, I hardly dare to say all this to you because I know it makes you mechanically avert your face. But don’t avert it, please. Look at me, Monty, look at me.’

  Monty got up abruptly and cast a frowning glance at Harriet. He said, ‘I’m sorry. I have been as accurate as I can. I shall be leaving this house very soon. You can stay on if you wish to. I have said all I have to say and I don’t want any more conversations of this sort. They are a form of self-indulgence to which I am not addicted even if you are.’ He moved quickly away and went into the house, closing the French windows sharply behind him.

  Tears rose automatically and at once into Harriet’s eyes, and she drew Lucky towards her again and began to caress his big long soft muzzle, stroking his black lips and touching the fangs beneath. It is unjust, it is so unjust, was her thought. I have never been recognized as myself. Blaise always thought of me as part of him, and I was part of him. This is the first time in my life that I have faced another human being as an independent person. How can he reject me! He must not, he will not. I need and must have his help. He will relent.

  She rose, having dropped Lucky, and began to walk slowly down the garden, her copious tears comforting her a little. Lucky, Babu, Panda, Ajax and Buffy followed her slowly, at her pace. She turned into the orchard and along the winding clipped path, Hood House now visible between the trees. The light wind had stripped the whiteness off the ladies’ lace and the seed heads were already forming. The smell of cut grass came to her vivid with memory, carrying ghostly pictures of the Welsh cottage and her sad defeated parents. She mopped her eyes, feeling the relief of a more general sadness. A turning in the path brought the fence and the row of foxgloves into view, and the dogs’ gate into the next garden, now enlarged so as to allow the passage of Ajax, his organs no longer endangered. There was a small scrabbling on the other side of the fence and Lawrence and Seagull came through. Another animal followed, a dark head and then, on all fours, a complete boy. It was Luca.

  Harriet exclaimed and immediately fell on her knees, holding out her arms. The boy, with a laugh and a gasp, ran to her, falling down before her and into her embrace. With eyes closed they held each other tight. The dogs frisked about them.

  ‘I’ve come to call for Pinn,’ said Kiki St Loy.

  ‘I’ll tell her you’re here,’ said Emily McHugh, and shut the door in her face.

  She went back into the sitting-room where, as she noiselessly appeared in the doorway, she saw Pinn passing Blaise a letter. ‘Your little playmate’s here,’ she said to Pinn. ‘You might have told us she was coming.’

  ‘Sorry, I forgot. Won’t you let her in?’ said Pinn, stroking down her frizz of bright hair in front of a gilt mirror with cupids on top and candlesticks in front, one of Emily’s more ambitious buys.

  ‘Let her in of course,’ said Blaise, a little flurried about the letter.

  Emily returned in silence to the door and opened it. Kiki who, dressed in delicately faded jeans and a long blue silk shirt, was sitting on the stairs, put on a martyred air for a second and then smiled. Her smile expressed the sheer golden self-satisfied joy of healthy youth.

  ‘They say you’re to come in,’ said Emily with undisguised sourness. Kiki followed her to the sitting-room.

  ‘Hello, Kiki,’ said Blaise, and his face, Emily thought, could not help reflecting Kiki’s pleasure in herself.

  ‘Hello, Blaise. Hello, P. Your chariot awaits.’

  ‘We’ll be off then,’ said Pinn. ‘Come on, little one. Ta ta, love-birds.’ They departed with a wave, and Emily could hear them laughing wildly upon the stairs. Blaise had disappeared to the lavatory, obviously to read his letter.

  Emily stood alone in her sitting-room. It was a pretty room, the prettiest she had ever created, in fact the only room she had, like that, created. She had chosen the russet carpet, the purple and blue blotchy curtains, the maroon armchairs of corded velvet (they could not afford a ‘suite’), the long-haired tousled multi-coloured woollen Finnish rug, like a big animal, the long low glass coffee table, the gilt mirror. It had given her such joy. It had seemed so alive.

  ‘What was in that letter?’ said Emily to Blaise, staring at the curtains, as he returned to the room.

  ‘What letter?’

  ‘The letter Pinn gave you.’

  ‘Oh that. She is ridiculously secretive.’

  ‘What was in it?’

  ‘Well don’t look like that. Nothing much, nothing awful.’

  ‘Well let me see it’

  ‘I put it down the lavatory.’

  ‘I don’t believe you. Turn out your pockets.’

  Blaise turned out all his pockets on to the coffee table. No letter.

  ‘Why did you put it down the lavatory? People don’t usually do that with letters. It isn’t even very easy.’

  ‘I can’t stand Pinn any more. I’m sorry, I know she’s your friend. But she and her letters just seem – muck. I wanted to clean it off myself.’

  ‘She isn’t my friend, and you don’t even think she is. I’ve felt like that about Pinn for some time. I don’t trust her an inch. It’s you who’s always encouraged her. You had secrets with her over at Putney.’

  ‘I never did!’

  ‘Well, you have now. You must be encouraging her or she wouldn’t pass you clandestine letters. What was in the letter?’

/>   ‘Nothing except – well, only one thing really, and we thought that already. Luca is over with Harriet’

  ‘I don’t need to be told that,’ said Emily. ‘When he disappeared I assumed that was where he had gone.’

  ‘Well it’s better to know. And it was kind of Pinn to tell us.’

  ‘Why did she need to put it in a secret letter?’

  ‘She thought you’d be upset and that I’d better sort of break the news to you.’

  Emily thought for a moment, still staring at the curtains. Blaise had sat down in one of the maroon armchairs, his outstretched feet almost invisible in the shaggy tangles of the Finnish rug. He looked up at her watchfully. ‘I don’t think I believe you,’ said Emily. ‘I don’t think I do. Maybe Pinn said that in the letter, but she said other things as well, things that are worrying you. I can see, I can feel, that you’re worried.’

  ‘Of course I’m worried, about Luca, about you –’

  ‘No, you’re worried about something else. You’re flushed, you’re excited. Why does Pinn keep bringing Kiki St Loy here and trailing her about in front of you? She’s trying to arrange a meeting between you and Kiki. That’s it. She once said Kiki wanted her to find her a man. And you’re so bloody pleased to see the girl every time, what you want is written all over your face.’

  Blaise got up and took Emily by the shoulders, forcing her to look up at him, holding her tight and shaking her slightly. ‘Listen. Listen, you little fool. You deserve a hundred lashes. Are you going to ruin things now by mindless stupid jealousy? I’m here, I love you, you are my wife.’

  ‘I’m not, actually.’

  ‘You will be. We’ve talked the whole thing through to completion. Surely you know where you stand.’ ‘In a quicksand, on a volcano.’ ‘No! We’re safe, we’re home, Emily, the danger’s over. We live here now.’

  ‘You swear you aren’t in love with Kiki St Loy?’

  ‘You lunatic! Yes, of course I swear it! I’m in love with you, kid. Don’t you see that you’re being crazy? Look into my eyes. I love you.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Emily, looking up at him. ‘All right. All right, darling. Yes, yes. You’re hurting me.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘All right, forgive me, sweet, let me off, but naturally I’m frightened, how can I not be, I’m frightened of everything and everybody, even of Kiki, even of Pinn. I wish things could get settled down and clear at last, and you were having your patients again and all. I didn’t want you to go and see her, but now I want you to. I want to be certain that when you see her all this won’t suddenly crumble into dust and seem like a dream.’

  ‘You know it won’t.’

  ‘O.K. But go and see her, will you, Blaise darling? Don’t just send Pinn to spy, oh I know you do. See her – and tell her about this – about the fridge and the curtains – make her believe it – make her know it’s real, that she’s really lost you, that you’ve absolutely gone. Will you do that?’

  ‘Yes. You’re quite right. I must go. I just wanted this place to exist first.’

  ‘Because you needed support, I wasn’t enough, you had to have the flat as well?’

  ‘No, no, I just wanted you to feel how safe we were before I went away from you anywhere, especially before I went away from you there.’

  ‘You won’t stay long away, will you? If you did I’d come and fetch you. And I’d scream.’

  ‘No, I mean just an hour or so. You could be near by. You could wait in the car.’

  ‘I don’t think I’d like that. I’ll wait here, in our place, with our things. Oh darling, you won’t suddenly go back to Mrs Placid, will you? You won’t feel sorry for her, you won’t be moved by her tears? I’m not being vindictive about her, I don’t want her to be miserable, though I see she’s got to be. I simply want her to understand and lay off. It’s better for her if she understands soon, isn’t it? And of course I don’t mind your seeing her occasionally. You needn’t feel that it’s such a tragedy anyway. She’ll settle down, she’ll have to, she’s got this wonderful cabbagey calm. She’ll put up with it, and don’t let her tell you she can’t. I don’t want you to feel when you see her that it’s a great crisis and you’re killing her or anything, you’re not. You must simply be absolutely truthful with her and not leave her with any false hopes. Do you promise to be absolutely truthful?’

  ‘Yes, I’ll tell her the lot.’

  ‘Well, no need to tell her the lot, but tell her enough. There. All right. I’m sorry I was awful. I’m so full of terrors. But yes, yes, all right. Now I must go quickly and shop, it’s early closing. After that we’ll go to bed, yes?’

  When Emily had left the flat and he had heard her sandals clack away down the stairs Blaise returned to the lavatory and pulled Pinn’s letter out from its hiding place under the linoleum. He had only had time to glance at it quickly. Now he perused it with care. It ran as follows:

  Dearest Blaise,

  Herewith your humble spy’s report from over yonder. Your wife is showing more character than might have been expected. She has abandoned Hood House and moved in, complete with David, on Monty Small. Not only that. She has fallen in love with Monty! Yours truly, entering the house with soft footfall, overheard a conversation between the two parties who were sitting just outside the window. Your spouse was in fact offering herself to the gratified Mr Small! So she’s not Mrs Mope any longer. I expect you are relieved though. It must be nice to know that you are not missed and that she has found Another. So you needn’t dread seeing her and being beseeched. I wouldn’t be surprised if the devious Mr Small hadn’t seen all this coming a long way off and encouraged you to drop Harriet so that he could catch her! He’s a deep one! It is all working out rather neatly, isn’t it. Luca is there too, by the way, and shows every sign of staying. Harriet, who behaves as if she already owns Locketts, has set up a nice bedroom for him. She had also bought him a dog. (All this I know from legit, conversation with Monty, he and I are quite cronies now.) So it looks as if you and Emily may have to say good-bye to that boy. As for young David, he too has distractions from his woe. He has fallen madly in love with Kiki St Loy! She however, as you will have noticed, has eyes only for you! A pity you are not ‘free’ just now, Kiki is longing to chuck her vaginal status! You might have been the lucky one. (Let me know if you want to be. Em. needn’t worry. She’s got you on a chain now, whatever you do.) That’s all for now. I’ll continue to report. Thanks for the cheque. Not a word to Emily about that of course, and you can be sure I won’t say anything. You are sweet to me and I adore you.

  Thine for ever, your constant nymph,

  P.

  P.S. Of course if you decide you want Harriet after all you’d better act quickly!!!

  Blaise read the letter and the flush which Emily had noticed came again to his face and he closed his eyes and laid his head against the lavatory door. I am rotten, he thought, rotten, rotten, rotten. Oh what will happen? What am I going to do?

  ‘I want to see Harriet alone,’ said Blaise.

  ‘Monty, you are not to go,’ said Harriet. ‘If you go I shall go too. I mean it I will talk to Blaise, but only with you here. Is that clear, Blaise?’

  Blaise stared at her with amazement.

  ‘Oh all right,’ said Monty. ‘I’ll stay. I think you ought to talk to Blaise alone, but if you won’t you won’t Whisky, gin, anyone?’

  They were in the Moorish drawing-room. Monty and Harriet were sitting at the table as if in committee. Blaise sat in one of the wickerwork chairs, a rather low one which had been made even lower by being wrecked by Edgar. Feeling at a disadvantage he got up and moved first to the purple sofa and then to a rather botanical-looking chair against the wall. Monty shifted the table slightly with his foot so that it was still between himself and Blaise.

  ‘I’ll have some whisky,’ said Blaise.

  ‘Good. Here. Harriet?’

  ‘Thanks. The usual.’

  It was evening, an overcast day inclining to rain. A lamp in the
corner, sitting inside what looked like a wrought-iron holy water stoup, lit up one of the mosaic panels.

  The usual, thought Blaise. He stared at Harriet, thinking how different she looked and how beautiful. He said to himself, hang on, hang on. Keep calm. He gently stroked his eye where the bruise had faded to the faintest of green shadows. Some sort of utter chaos was now not far away and must not be tripped into. He was well aware that he had arrived with no policy, very upset and confused and with nothing clear to say. Pinn’s letter had distressed him to an extent which was terrifying. Of course he had relied on seeing Harriet alone.

  ‘Well?’ said Monty to Blaise.

  ‘I might say that to you,’ said Blaise.

  ‘As I seem to be chairman,’ Monty went on, ‘perhaps I may open the meeting. You asked to see us.’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘You asked to see Harriet and have presumably something to tell her.’

  There was a silence. Harriet, breathing rapidly, but in control of herself, was staring at her husband. Blaise kept glancing at her, but without meeting her eyes. He looked at Monty.

  ‘Oh come on, come on,’ said Monty. ‘Say something, anything, set the ball rolling. After all there’s plenty to talk about.’

  ‘I don’t like your tone,’ said Blaise.

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to sound flippant. But you must talk. Or would you rather be cross-questioned?’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t. Not by you.’

  ‘Harriet, have you any questions to put to Blaise?’

  ‘No,’ said Harriet. Blaise regarded her again. She was thinner and her face looked harder, finer, older, as if she were her successful professional elder sister. A doctor, perhaps, or even a lawyer, or else a great actress playing Portia. She had done her hair with care, dividing and twisting it in a new way, and she was wearing a simple dark blue dress which he had never seen before.

  ‘I don’t come to say anything new,’ said Blaise, surprising himself by the humility and diffidence of his utterance. ‘It’s still all as I said in my letter. I mean, I have to stay with Emily, but I’ll come here too. I tried to be in two places at once before and I’ll still try. I know my position is an awful one and the result of wrong-doing, but it is my position, and I can’t alter it radically without being guilty of a lot more wrong-doing. You must – both – see that. I’ve got to compromise. I can’t make things right again however hard I try. This being so, the most sensible thing seems to be – to be honest with you Harriet – as I have been – and to throw myself on your mercy. Things can’t be as they were. But they needn’t be terrible either. I’ll be – you see – here some of the time, there some of the time. It’s just that I can’t any more ask Emily to accept a second best – it wasn’t even a second best, it was a tenth best. Now that it’s all come out and we’ve all told the truth, which is a good thing, it’s just got to be a bit more equal. Of course I’ll be here a good deal, it won’t really be much different from what we thought before and you were so good about. It’s just to begin with while Emily’s settling into the new place I’ll have to be away a bit more. Emily put up with a lot for years and now I’m asking you to put up with a lot too – and to forgive me for David’s sake and – because – because —’