by Iris Murdoch
‘When they see the police there they’ll kill you.’
‘They won’t see.’
‘How do you know they won’t see?’
‘Oh stuff it, Stephanie, I’m quite bloody scared enough without your laying it on—’
‘So you do think you’ll be killed!’
‘No, I don’t! The police will be inches away. Look, clear off for Christ’s sake, I’ve got to sleep, I’ve got to rest, with any luck I’ll become unconscious and have a nice dream. I was having one when you arrived.’
‘Why didn’t you come to me?’
‘I thought you’d be asleep.’
‘Let me stay.’
‘If you stay I won’t sleep. Christ, I want to sleep, is that so odd?’
‘I don’t believe that story, it’s all a hoax, why do you believe it when there isn’t any evidence?’
‘Oh do stop-’
‘It’s all a plot and a pretence, it’s all invented by that girl to make you sorry for her, to make you fall in love with her, it’s all magic.’
‘Well, if it’s pretence it’s not magic,’ said Henry, ‘and if it’s that kind of plot then I won’t be killed. You can’t have it all ways.’
Henry had been suddenly awakened from sleep. He had been dreaming that he was at home at Sperriton and Russ and Bella were with him in the garden which had become very large, and in the garden there was a lake and on the lake was a toy yacht with white sails. Conscious of the strong approving presence of his friends, looking at the white sails, Henry had felt a deep joy.
In the moment of waking he had experienced first happiness, then, intensified by the contrast, misery and fear. He dreaded the police trap in which he had felt bound to say he would cooperate. The police seemed to think that since Cato’s second letter about Colette had simply demanded her and not the money, the gang would be waiting for Henry to bring the rest of the ransom as previously arranged. Henry pictured the awful darkness, the hidden ruthless men. He was sure that the gang would realize that the police were watching and would instantly kill him. He felt in his body all the terror of imminent violence, just as vividly as if he could actually see the gun or the knife which was about to maim or kill him. And even if he survived that terrible meeting he would be scarcely better off since he would be blacklisted, marked down as a traitor, a man to be eliminated later. All the innocence and pleasure of life had been taken from him, as if he had actually been suborned by his foes, as if he too had become a criminal. Indeed if it had not been for one thing, Henry Marshalson would now have been simply a single quaking mass of solipsistic dread. The one thing was the thought of Colette.
In fact Henry had agreed to act as a police decoy, not because of Colette, but out of some old primitive sense of duty, or sense, more simply, of the ‘done thing’. He did not see how he could get out of agreeing and it did not seriously occur to him not to agree. The thought of Colette was something extra, an extra pain, an extra grace, and though Henry was not then capable of thinking of it that way, his anguish for Colette helped him a little by diverting his attention from himself. He imagined himself gunned down, hit on the head, made imbecile by brain damage. He also imagined her, and what might now be happening to her; and somehow beyond these imaginings the image of Colette and the thought of her wholeness and her courage entered into him like a spear, like a hard line of pure non-Henry in the midst of the humiliating jelly of his personal terror.
‘I won’t be able to sleep, I’m so frightened.’
‘I’m frightened too, but I propose to sleep.’
‘You said you weren’t frightened.’
‘I didn’t, I am, never mind, just get out, there’s a good creature.’
‘You don’t love me. You’re thinking about that girl.’
‘Oh, shut up, shut up, can’t you see I’m frantic, I don’t want to chat with you, do you want me to scream?’
‘You don’t need me. You’re in trouble and you don’t need me.’
Henry had woken up to find the lamp turned on and Stephanie sitting on the end of his bed. She had heard the car depart, taking Henry and Gerda to Pennwood, and she had come to the just returned, instantly sleeping Henry to ask where he had been. Though Gerda had advised him otherwise, Henry had felt himself bound to tell. Stephanie seemed determined not to believe him and indeed the tale sounded mad, and to Henry’s now hazy mind it was far from clear on what evidence so much terror rested. But the terror was real.
Stephanie was sitting hunched, wearing the neglige with the silver and black lozenge pattern and the feathers. Her bare feet were tucked under her and her head was sunk between her shoulders and her hands were crossed under her chin. Her hair was tousled and her face without make-up was puffy and pale, the harsh lines on either side of her mouth deeply shadowed in the lamp light. She looked old, and, for the first time since Henry had met her, utterly indifferent to her appearance. It looked as if she had been crying. Henry felt, together with his exasperation, the familiar possessive loving pity. Then he turned from her, stretching out his body and groaning, hiding his face in the pillow. He was conscious of himself, as if he could see himself, slim and taut inside his blue cotton pyjamas, strong, intact, young; and this time tomorrow likely to be maimed or dead.
‘I want to ask you something. Why do you love me?’
‘I’ve taken you on,’ said Henry. Sleep was now impossible. ‘I love you because I’ve taken you on.’
‘That’s a funny answer.’
‘You’re a funny girl.’
‘Why have you taken me on?’
‘Because I’m sorry for you. Because of Sandy. Because I was able to make love to you. Because of your turned up nose and the fact that however hard you try not to you dress untidily.’
‘Because of my past.’
‘Because of your past, because of your eyes, because you were grateful. How can one say why one takes somebody on? I’m a funny chap myself.’
‘I’ve got something to tell you, Henry, listen. I told you some lies.’
‘All right. Does it matter?’
‘Henry, darling—I was never a stripper, I was never a prostitute—none of that was true. Do you mind?’
Henry sat up. Stephanie hunched in a ball at the foot of the bed, was like an old bedraggled bird. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Just that. I invented it all. I was never like that. I was respectable, I was a typist, I wasn’t a tart. I just said that.’
‘Oh,’ said Henry. He stared at her. Tears came quietly from her eyes. He had never seen her look so pathetic and so ugly. ‘Why?’
‘I thought it would interest you and make you sorry for me.’
Henry considered this. ‘Fair enough. It did.’
‘And it doesn’t matter?’
Henry considered, looking at her tears. Wrenched from his dread, he concentrated. He felt he had been made a fool of, he felt a deep bewildered anxiety. ‘I don’t think so. It makes me feel a fool and somehow sick, but I don’t suppose that matters. You are a liar and I am a fool, that’s all.’
‘And you forgive me?’
‘The question doesn’t arise. Well, yes, of course. So when you ran away from your family you became a typist not a stripper. O.K. O.K.’
‘But I didn’t run away. I lived with my family until I was twenty. They’re still living in Leicester. I was there at Christmas. My brother’s in computers.’
‘Congratulations,’ said Henry. ‘A secure job. So it looks as if I was wrong to feel sorry for you. O.K.’
‘No, no, you were right. You see—oh do please try and understand. My life became awful, just gradually and not for any reason. You’ve never known that kind of awfulness. I could never manage my life. The only thing I ever learnt was typing and I was no good at that, I kept losing jobs and then, when I had no references it got harder and harder to get other jobs. You don’t know what it’s like, what the despair is like, when you just sink and sink. I tried to be a clerk but I couldn’t do that either, I couldn�
�t do anything. I started to live on national assistance—’
‘I’m beginning to feel sorry for you again.’
‘Of course I wanted to get married, it seemed the only hope, and there were one or two men I met in pubs, but they were horrible and just wanted sex, and nobody was ever kind to me or cared about me as a person, and I never managed to make any women friends and I just went on trying and failing at everything, and I used to sit alone in my room and cry for hours, and no one cared, and then at last just out of loneliness and not having a job I had a nervous breakdown and went into a hospital and they gave me drugs and electric shocks and I lived there for nearly a year and it seemed impossible that I’d ever get out, and I didn’t even want to get out—’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ said Henry.
‘I thought you’d go off me if you thought I was neurotic or mad or anything. A girl in the hospital said, never tell anyone you’ve had a breakdown, if you ever want to find a job or a husband. And then I came out, they made me come out, and I went on living alone—’
‘So you weren’t anybody’s femme fatale after all,’ said Henry, ‘except Sandy’s and mine. Where did you meet Sandy then, if it wasn’t in the strip club?’
‘This is what I’ve got to tell you,’ she said, and her mouth was wet with tears. ‘It wasn’t true. I wasn’t ever Sandy’s mistress. I didn’t know him at all. I was just the charwoman.’
‘What?’
‘I went cleaning houses, it was the only thing I could do. I cleaned the stairs at those flats and then one of the ladies asked me to clean her flat, and she recommended me to Sandy and he left his key for me in an envelope, and I used to come in on Mondays, only he was never there on that day, he used to leave notes for me and the money. I only saw him about twice, on the stairs, and I wasn’t even sure if it was him and he didn’t know who I was, and then I saw in the paper that he’d been killed—’
‘But—wait—wait—you mean you weren’t Sandy’s mistress, it was all a lie?’
‘Yes.’
‘But that’s impossible, really, you must be mad, you knew all about him, you knew all about me, you recognized me as soon as we met—’
‘No, I knew nothing. I looked in his desk, but I could find out nothing—’
‘But you recognized me, you knew he was called Sandy, you—’
‘You told me who you were. You told me his name. I just waited and it all came out, you told me—’
‘But, Stephanie, you said you were Sandy’s mistress, you said it five minutes after we met—’
‘Yes—’
‘My God. So you’d got it all ready, the lie, for whoever came?’
‘For whoever came. But it was—oh I can’t explain—it wasn’t like that, it wasn’t sort of cold-blooded, it sort of happened—’
‘How did it sort of happen, for Christ’s sake?’
‘I had a sort of daydream about Sandy, a sort of fantasy, I had these fantasies about lots of people, any man I saw practically, how he’d love me and marry me and turn out to be rich, and I imagined it all, how it would be with Sandy, and how I’d tell him that I ran away from home and became a stripper and he’d be sorry for me and he’d look after me—’
‘God!’
‘Then you see when he died and nobody came—weeks and weeks went by and nobody came and I kept waiting and waiting—and I used to come in every day and walk around the flat and it was so odd, all empty and nobody there but me—and then I lost my room and it seemed like a sign—and I moved into the flat, like just for emergency—and then I had a sort of daydream that no one would ever come and I could just take over the flat and live there—And then one day it occurred to me that if someone did come at last and if I pretended I’d been Sandy’s mistress, then even if they were cross they’d give me some money and I had a fantasy that they might even give me the flat, and after all I might have been Sandy’s mistress—’
‘Yes, you might, mightn’t you, so that makes it very nearly true. I think you’re a genius, those electric shocks must have done you a world of good. And then I appeared.’
‘And then you appeared and—I pretended—and you told me everything, who you were and everything, and I just had to pretend to know what you told me, and I hoped you’d give me the flat, at least at first I did—’
‘And then you began to see that you could scoop the pool.’
‘Well, then I—then I—loved you—’
‘Another fantasy. At any rate my money was real. So all that touching stuff about how Sandy looked down on you—and about the child and so on—all invented—Christ, you ought to be a novelist. And I swallowed the lot. You must have been amazed at your luck.’
‘But Henry, I do love you, I do, it’s not a fantasy—and I’ve told you the truth and I didn’t have to and it’s been hard, and I’m so terrified that you’ll feel different now, only I couldn’t go on lying. I had to know you wanted me as me, and not just because of Sandy or because of the stripping or something, so I have been brave, haven’t I? Oh please understand and don’t see it as something awful. I had to try, I had to fight, I’ve always been by myself, and no one ever helped me or bothered with me or ever liked me very much, I had to fend for myself, I had to make plans—’
‘What other plans did you make? I’m fascinated—’
‘Oh nothing like that—nothing ever worked for me—only I was getting desperate—you see, I’m getting old, I felt it was my last chance—’
‘How old are you?’ said Henry.
‘I’m—well—I’m a little older than I said—I’m—nearly forty—Oh dear, oh dear—please understand—I just had to look after myself, nobody else would—and then you came and you were so kind, you called me Miss Whitehouse and you were so respectful and so polite and you didn’t treat me like dirt like everyone else did and you noticed me and thought I was attractive—’
‘It sounds as though I was your first bit of luck.’
‘Yes, yes, darling, you were my first bit of luck, the first good thing that had ever happened to me—but oh I haven’t spoilt it all by lying to you, have I? You do forgive me—’ Stephanie slithered onto the floor and edged up towards him on her knees, pushing the rug before her on the wooden floor. She put her hands up to him like a begging dog. Her hot damp fingers tugged at the blue cotton sleeve of his pyjamas.
‘No wonder you laughed so when I proposed. You needed me and you invented me. Yes, you’re a genius.’
‘Henry, please—’
‘So you’re not a femme fatale after all, you’re just the char. You’re just a comic, a comic charwoman.’
‘Yes, yes, a comic, your comic, aren’t I? You do forgive me don’t you, say that you forgive me. You said you were sorry for me, you said you loved me because you were sorry for me, but you still are, aren’t you? I’ve had such a miserable life and I’ve been so lonely, and you can’t leave me just because I’ve told you the truth, I had to tell you the truth because I love you—you can’t leave me now, you said you’d taken me on, that hasn’t changed, has it, just because—’
‘That hasn’t changed,’ said Henry.
‘Oh—thank you, thank God—’ she continued to kneel, giving little shuddering sobs, and holding his hand against her wet lips.
Henry looked down at the disordered hair and the absurd feathered collar and Stephanie’s heaving shoulders. He thought, she admits to forty and is probably more. He said, ‘Hi, Steph. Hello.’
‘You are so good, so kind, the only person who was ever kind— ’
‘Do get up, Steph, these transports are most improper, no, I don’t want you, go and sit in that chair, please. Here, have my hankie.’
Stephanie got up and went to the chair, mopping her face. ‘So it’s all right, it’s really all right?’
‘Yes, it’s got to be. Steph, I can’t chuck you, I won’t, I just feel I don’t know you very well, you don’t know me very well, and there we are, we seem to be each others’ dooms. I expect we’ll be O.K., we’
ll look after each other O.K. Now please go away, no, you can’t sleep here, there isn’t room and I’m as cold as ice. Yes, yes, I forgive you, but please go.’
‘Henry, don’t go to that place tomorrow.’
‘I’ve got to.’
‘If you were killed tomorrow I’d have nothing—’
‘Oh, Steph! All right, I’ll make a will leaving everything to you!’
‘I didn’t mean it that way.’
‘You don’t know what you do mean. You’re my comic girl friend. But look, you must do as I tell you, I mean if I survive as I certainly intend to, you must come to America with me and be an ordinary person and not a rich lady. Please no more fantasies.’
‘I’ll do whatever you—’
‘Now please go, please.’
‘And it’s—’
‘Yes, yes, yes.’
After she had gone Henry got up and drank some water. Then he washed his hands. He turned out the lamp and pulled the window curtains back. The dawn was breaking.
Cato had been jerking the pipe to and fro for a long time now, perhaps an hour, his sense of time had become very vague. He was kneeling on one knee, leaning his shoulder against the wall. His arm ached, his hand felt wet, perhaps it was bleeding. The pipe had unscrewed to a certain point, then stuck. Cato moved the loosened pipe to and fro because it was an occupation, like turning a prayer wheel. It was the only thing he could think of to do for his salvation. His open eyes were filled with blackness, useless as if atrophied. His body lived through his sense of touch and already seemed as if it had always done so.
Prolonged darkness and hunger seemed to have radically altered all his senses. He experienced himself in relation to his surroundings through a sensibility which lived in his feet, his fingers and the flesh of his face of which his blind eyes now seemed an indistinguishable part. When he was still, lying or sitting on his bed, he felt himself to be both narrowed and enlarged, as if his body had become a big tight uncomfortable barrel within which his soul or his will or something lived as a thin flexible line. He felt at the same time solidified and hollow, weak and yet frenzied with useless power. His body was a burden to him, a source of disgust, and yet his sensitive fingers, like long long antennae, had learnt new tricks, a new sense of space. He could move noiselessly, lightly, confidently about his prison, yet at the same time he was a toad and he could smell the horror of his breath.
