by Iris Murdoch
Edgar, bright-eyed, collected, came and sat beside him on the floor. ‘There. Cry then. But try and be calm. You will be calm soon. It is so good that you told me. So good.’
Monty gradually fell silent, subsiding to sit on the floor leaning against the chair, rubbing his face with the back of bis hand.
‘Come with me to Mockingham,‘ said Edgar. ‘Come and stay for a long time and think what you’re going to do next. Please, Monty. I may not be up to much. But I am an old friend. And I did know Sophie and I did love her. And now that you’ve told me this I feel we’re somehow tied together, you and I, absolutely tied together.’
‘The bond of a terrible secret,‘ said Monty in his usual voice. ‘Ah well.’
‘You are recovering. But don’t behave as if nothing has happened and the world isn’t different. Tonight I mean. A lot has happened and the world is different.’
‘Is it?’
‘Let me lead you. As if you were blind or lame. I can do it.’
‘I am blind and lame,’ said Monty.
‘That’s the most sensible thing you’ve said for a long time. Come with me to Mockingham. It’s so beautiful there. And we could argue like we used to.’
‘You don’t then regard me with horror.’
‘Don’t be silly!’
‘Of course this must be a great thrill for you, my breaking down like this. You must feel it as an achievement.’
‘"The Prince whose oracle is at Delphi neither tells nor conceals, he gives a sign."’
‘Oh him. I’m not sure —’
‘You’re not saying it’s an accident, Monty?’
‘Tonight? That it might have happened with anyone? No. It had to be you. As you modestly say you aren’t up to much but -’
‘I loved Sophie and -’
‘No. No. Not just that or boyhood days either. You are you.’
‘Oh-!‘ murmured Edgar.
‘So you see. Yes.’
‘Will you come to Mockingham?’
‘Yes,‘ said Monty. ‘And we’ll smoke cigars, at least you will, on the terrace, and argue about the Line and the Cave and you will cure me – of my sickness.’
‘Monty, are you serious? It matters so much.’
‘Oh yes, I expect so. Yes. I’m so tired, Edgar. Please go. I’ve been asking you to go for an hour.’
‘Well thank God I didn’t.’
‘You can go now. There’s nothing more to learn. I am poured out and empty. Good night.’
‘And you will come?’
‘Yes. Yes. Yes.’
Harriet stood alone in her dusky lamp-lit bedroom, petrified with terror. Monty’s attack on her, his rejection of her, had been so vicious, so sudden. She had long wept with shock, and with sad disappointment of hopes and utter loneliness and lack of any resource. After their long conversation in the garden she had felt upset, but so connected with Monty that she had been unable not to imagine that all would be well between them. He would cherish her, he would love her! The rudeness and the bitterness were just his way, which after all she now knew so well. He was a bereaved man, she could not come near him yet. But gradually he would let her approach. She was sure that this would be. And then when he had so wonderfully protected her from Blaise, protected her from herself, from her own stupid slavish tenderness, staying with her as she had asked him to do in the presence of her husband, Harriet felt certain that he had done so out of some sort of love or caring for her. He had, after all, not wanted her to collapse, to return to Blaise on any terms. He had kept her, surely, for himself.
But now in a moment she saw it all as illusion. She could not interpret in any favourable sense, not even as a manifestation of jealousy of Edgar, those harsh words uttered so cruelly in Edgar’s presence. Monty had rejected her. She had humbly and passionately offered him her love, virtually herself, and he had thrust her aside with repulsion. What contempt he must feel for the desperate humble need which had clung to him and become love.
After a long time her weeping ceased and she sat on her bed, twisting her wet handkerchief about and staring ahead of her blankly. What will become of me? Harriet wondered. Where shall I be this time next year, even this time next month? She got up, frightened at her thoughts, and went out into the passage. There was a murmur of talk from the study below. She looked at the closed bedroom doors. She stole along the carpeted floor to Luca’s room and very quietly depressed the handle and sidled in. A little light from the hall, falling in a triangle on the carpet, showed the bed, the sleeping child. Yet was he sleeping? Something about the attitude suggested to Harriet that he was shamming sleep and would suddenly start up and call her to him. He lay so oddly. Supposing on the contrary he were lying dead. A dead child in a bed. To comfort herself she stretched out a hand to touch him, to feel his warmth and his breathing. She touched something strange and dark upon the bed, something that felt odd and moved slightly. Then she realized that it was Lucky, who was lying snuggled into the crook of Luca’s knees and giving him that weird unfamiliar shape. As Harriet’s hand touched the dog’s thick coat Lucky growled very sofdy. Harriet withdrew her hand hastily and retreated from the room.
She stood still a moment on the landing and then went to David’s room. She opened the door cautiously and slipped in, half closing it behind her. On this side of the house the moon was shining and there was a dim fine light in the room. David was lying very straight, as if tense and also, though differently, as if about to rise. This rising really would resemble the rising of a corpse. Harriet stood for some time looking at the long tense form of her son. The stiffness and straightness then made her think: soldier’s grandson, soldier’s nephew. Did she want David to go into the army? The idea had never entered her head. Then with a horrible shock she realized that the boy was awake, that his eyes were open, gazing towards the window. She could see the faint light reflected on his eyeballs, which glittered as if his open eyes were full of tears. He could not possibly be unaware of her presence. Yet he made no move, not imagining that she could see that his eyes were open. Appalled, Harriet murmured very sofdy, scarcely audibly, ‘David’. The tense body did not move, but the eyes flickered and seemed to flash as if two tears had overflowed from them and caught up the faint light of the moon. Harriet withdrew.
Back in her bedroom her own tears flowed once more. Then she suddenly stopped weeping to listen. There was an odd new sound below her. It was the voice of a woman. How very strange, in Monty’s study, a woman, talking to Monty. Harriet listened carefully and then with cold incredulous horror recognized that unique inimitable sound. It was Sophie’s voice. Harriet ran to the door, ran back again. What had Monty done? Had he conjured up a ghost, had he that power? She was half willing to believe it. Or was Sophie really not dead but hidden somewhere in the house? Was that why Monty was so strange? Utter terror took hold of Harriet and she wailed with it. She ran out of her bedroom on to the landing and listened more intently. Now she heard Edgar’s voice, Monty’s voice, nothing more. Had she imagined that awful sound? Was she going mad at last?
She stood in the darkness holding her head. Then suddenly from below there was a strange wailing cry. And as Harriet stood there motionless with fear, it was as if a wind blew through the house, as if an airy shape passed through, passed by, and Harriet felt cold, cold. Something very cold and frightful seemed to have passed through the house and touched her in its passing.
Harriet hastened to turn on all the landing lights. She returned to her bedroom and turned on more light there. She thought, I must get out of the house, I must get away from Monty, I must get away from this awful haunted place. And in that moment she saw Monty, no longer as a refuge, but as a haunted, doomed person, filthy with his own ghosts. She took her handbag, put on her coat. Then she paused and tried to think, and with this effort came the certainty of what she must do. She sped quickly, silently, down the stairs, hearing again the voices of the two men in the study, and went to the front door and noiselessly out into the road. She breathed
the soft warm night air with relief, looked at the reassuring street lamps making nests of green and red in the motionless trees. She walked along the road until she saw, not far away, Edgar’s Bentley parked under a lamp, and she went to it. The solid familiar ordinary form of the car calmed her and she leaned against it and watched for a while the play of the bats as they swept round and round between the lights in their soft checked ellipses. The road was silent and empty.
At last the sound of a closing door and Edgar’s footsteps. Hidden behind the car Harriet, peering, saw his face for a second before he saw her. Edgar was smiling, he looked pleased, dazed with happiness.
‘Edgar.’
‘Oh, Harriet! You startled me. What are you doing here? I thought you were in bed.’
‘Can I talk to you a moment? May I get into the car?’
She climbed in and Edgar got in beside her. How big, how deeply comforting, he seemed, in that capacious dark leather gloom.
‘Edgar —’
‘Yes. You’re all of a tremble. I hope we didn’t —’
‘I’ve decided. You have been so kind to me, so gentle you have cared and been so kind. I think I will come to you, to Mockingham. You can look after me. Somebody’s got to. I just feel that I’ve reached the end of things – the end of the light – and there’s nothing but darkness ahead – and I’m so very grateful to you – I think I could love you – I think I do love you. So let us go – when you will – now if you like only we must take Luca and David too – to Mockingham where I’ll be safe at last.’
There was silence in the car. Harriet could hear Edgar’s heavy breathing and could now smell the plentiful whisky upon his breath as he turned towards her.
‘Harriet – I’m so touched —’
‘It’s all right,’ said Harriet. ‘I really – do – care for you -’ She reached out in the dark confined space and stroked Edgar’s shoulder, stroked it as she might have stroked one of her dogs, feeling its warmth and the roughness of the cloth. And in that moment something which had been a little artificial and forced sprang suddenly to life and her heart was stirred within her and inclined to Edgar.
‘I’m so – you’re so kind – Oh I am so grateful -’ said Edgar, ‘but I’m afraid it isn’t – possible just now any more —’
Harriet withdrew her hand. ‘I see. You’ve changed your mind. I’m sorry.’
‘No, not that, Harriet, not that. I haven’t changed my mind at all. It’s Monty. I can’t explain. I’m taking Monty to Mockingham. It’s very important. I think there must be – for a while anyway – just the two of us. He suddenly needs me, you see, and I’ve got to – so I can’t have you there too – just absolutely now. Please forgive me and don’t think I’ve changed in any way at all – I’m still, you know – it’s just that now I must deal with Monty – but soon, well you know how terribly much I want you to come – soon, a little later —’
‘I don’t think I’d want to be there with Monty,’ said Harriet, ‘anyway.’
‘No, of course it would be awkward – I mean – I quite understand – I am so sorry – and I’m so pleased and grateful that you thought you might – I’m so sorry – but we could meet here or in London – and you know how much I’d always want to help you —’
‘Of course,’ said Harriet. ‘That’s very kind of you. Well, I mustn’t keep you now, must I, it’s late.’
‘I hope you do see that it’s not – I’m so sorry – I do wish I could explain —’
‘There’s no need to explain,’ said Harriet.
‘And we will meet soon again, won’t we? I do so want you to rely on me’
‘Oh certainly. We must meet for lunch-’
‘In London, here, anywhere – you know I’d – only just now-’
‘Yes, yes, I understand. Good night, Edgar. Drive carefully.’
‘My dear, please -’
Harriet was out of the car before Edgar could offer his clumsy kiss. She walked quickly away and the Bentley slowly, reluctantly, moved off in the other direction.
Unable to take himself to bed Monty stood at his study window eating bread and butter and cheese and waiting for the dawn. He did not think, I have done well. He did not think, what imbecility ever possessed me to pour it all out to Edgar. He felt, as he had said to his friend, emptied. He could not make out if the emptiness were good or bad. Perhaps it was good. It certainly produced a certain calmness. There was a hint of peace around, just as sometimes, early in the year, there is a hint of spring around. But possibly this was mere mood, illusion, even drink. I wonder if I shall really go to Mockingham, Monty wondered, and be shown up to one of those huge fantastically cold bedrooms with those four-poster beds that used to impress me so? And come down and have dinner with Edgar and drink port afterwards and talk about philosophy and college business. Was there such a world, could he see it, could he smell it? Was it the ancient unfamiliar smell of innocence? Perhaps all Sophie’s love affairs had been imaginary, perhaps Sophie had been chaste after all.
After a while he let himself out into the garden and began to walk across the lawn. The sky was already pale with dawn, a very pale yet obscure blue, offering no light and yet somehow allowing things to body themselves forth as if they themselves were emitting a sort of spotty pallor. He could see the dense shapes of the fir trees, a prowling darkness which was a dog. A bird uttered a half phrase and fell silent again. He turned into the orchard and after a moment of strolling stopped suddenly and stared. He could see now through the trees the outline of Hood House and a light which had just come on in Blaise’s study.
Monty’s immediate feeling was fear, a kind of terror of the uncanny, born of the dawn light and of the deep abiding horrors in his own soul. Who could be there now in empty abandoned Hood House, turning the lights on and walking from room to room in frightful meditation? Blaise? Monty felt a fear of Blaise which was partly a fear for Blaise. It was not exactly that he imagined that Blaise might hate him, might wish to injure him, might wish to kill him. But the horror of Blaise’s world touched him closely, and suddenly the more closely after what had just happened in his own. Blaise was a sort of pitiable walking danger, like something radioactive. Blaise had come there, searching, hoping, Blaise wishing it all undone, wishing himself dead? After a moment’s hesitation Monty went forward and reached the hole in the fence and climbed through it and paused again. A downstairs light was on too, the hall light shining through the kitchen. The curtains were drawn in Blaise’s study and the lighted square revealed the flowery pattern of the curtains, pasted on to the grey emergent shape of the house.
There was an aggressive scuffle and some barking. ‘Who’s a good boy, then?’ He thought, I must see Blaise, I ought to. I must stop him from thinking of me as Mephistopheles, I must stop him imagining I somehow lured him on to disaster on purpose. Surely he cannot really think this. I should not have talked to him like that with Harriet, it was wrong. How strange that he should turn up now when I sort of require him. I must make my peace with him and not allow him to have the horrors alone in that house in the dawn. I must see him because I too need these things. Accompanied by desultory barks he moved across the lawn and along the side of the house. The front door stood ajar. Monty glided into the lighted hall and up the stairs. He knocked softly on Blaise’s study door and entered.
‘Oh!’ said Harriet, dropping a number of cards on the floor.
‘It’s you!’ said Monty. ‘I thought it was Blaise. Oh, Harriet, what is it?’
Harriet said nothing for a moment. She was wearing her long white coat, and her face against the upturned collar looked grey, livid, as mottled as the dawn light. Her hands flew to her throat, pulling at the buttons of her dress as if she might faint. She looked at Monty grimacing with anxiety and shock, with fear, perhaps with aversion. She recalls my words, he thought, they are planted in her soul. That too should have been done quite otherwise.
‘Nothing,’ said Harriet in a dead voice. ‘What do you want?’
‘I thought it was Blaise.’
‘Sorry. It isn’t.’
She returned to her occupation. She was rifling Blaise’s filing cabinet, of which several drawers were open and the contents lying scattered about the floor.
‘What are you looking for, Harriet? Can I help you?’
The very bright direct light in the room made the scene seem unreal and horrible, the search a violation, a kind of violence, like a visit from the secret police. Harriet took up another handful of cards, glanced at them and tossed them on to the floor with a clatter.
‘What are you looking for?’
‘Magnus’s address.’
‘Magnus Bowles? His address?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why – ever –?’
‘I’m going to see him,’ said Harriet. ‘He knows all about it, he knows all about Blaise and me, he knew from the start, Blaise told him everything, he probably told him all sorts of things he never told me, and I feel so certain that Magnus is a wise person, a sort of kind good holy man. I’ve felt this thing about him for a long time. Blaise belittled him but then Blaise belittles everybody. Blaise can’t see any kind of greatness. I’ve got to talk to Magnus, I’ve got to, I feel certain he could help me. Blaise said I was the only woman who really existed for Magnus. He must need me. And if he needs me I need him. And he’s – the last one -’ Her voice broke and she turned back to the cabinet and wrenched out another drawer.
‘Oh dear!’ said Monty.
‘Of course Blaise took away a lot of stuff, but he didn’t take the old files with the addresses. All the old papers are here, stuff from years ago, and there’s a file for everybody, for everybody, except Magnus. I suppose you don’t know Magnus’s address, do you?’
‘Harriet,’ said Monty. ‘You don’t know then – about Magnus.’
