The Flight From the Enchanter

by Iris Murdoch

  Rainborough was well aware that if he were to sign his name under Miss Casement’s report and send it to Sir Edward he would be ushering in an era of wars and revolutions of whose savagery he quailed even to think; and who knew how he himself would fare in such a struggle? He could think of a number of individuals whose position was attacked by the report who would certainly not hesitate to take reprisals. In short, Rainborough felt that in sponsoring the report he would be both offending against a certain subtle gentleman’s agreement which existed in SELIB concerning mutual abstention from criticism and laying himself open to counter-attacks to which he knew he was more than a little vulnerable. He made to himself a display of dubiety; but he knew in his heart that he was determined to kill Miss Casement’s report, and he decided that he had better start breaking this news to her as soon as possible. He had already stored up a number of phrases about ‘youthful enthusiasm’, ‘sleeping dogs’, and so on. The only thing about which he was unsure, and this caused him a certain uneasiness, was how Miss Casement would react to the prospect of her report being filed away sine die. He wondered if she knew how good it was. He had an uneasy suspicion that she did.

  Such thoughts had been intruding upon the peace of Rainborough’s week-end. By now, however, they had almost completely faded away, leaving behind only a sort of resentment which mingling itself somehow with memories of Miss Casement’s perfume and her red-rimmed cigarette ends faded at last into a tiny cloud of desire. As Rainborough stood now in his garden, with the spring sun perceptibly warm upon his neck, other sorrowful matters were in the forefront of his mind. Rainborough occupied a large house just off Eaton Square which had been the home of his parents, and which had attached to it a garden, large by London standards, surrounded by a tall grey stone wall. Along this wall, opposite to the French windows of Rainborough’s drawing-room, a dreamy wistaria had been growing for several scores of years, extending its gnarled and golden-brown trunk in a series of grotesque and romantic curves and lifting its dusty blue blossoms above the herbaceous border. This wistaria was connected in Rainborough’s mind not only with his childhood but with what he regarded as all his deepest thoughts: those phantoms through whose nebulous forms, as through the bodies of ghosts, he had seen, sitting for hours on end at the drawing-room window, the knotted branches and the feathery leaves, until the outer world had disappeared altogether, mingled with thought and transformed into an inner substance.

  Behind the wall upon which the wistaria grew were the premises of a hospital; and some six months ago Rainborough had turned cold with horror on receiving a polite and regretful notification from the local council to the effect that, in order to complete a plan for building a much-needed X-ray department, it would be necessary to confiscate a plot of land some five feet wide and sixty-five feet long which lay at the bottom of his garden. The council pointed out that this territorial requirement had been kept to a minimum, and that the removal of this very narrow strip would not noticeably diminish the size of his garden. They themselves would of course bear the cost of pulling down the existing stone wall, which they noted to be in any case in a bad state of repair, and erecting in its place, along the line agreed upon, a new brick wall of the best type. He would of course receive compensation for his land at the rate fixed in the statutes for such case of compulsory confiscation.

  When Rainborough received this news he was made so miserable by it that he was not sure that he could survive. The confiscation seemed to him to be an act of sheet gratuitous cruelty and injustice such as he had never suffered before. At first he was completely stunned. Then, for about a week, he ran about complaining in every quarter in which help could possibly lie. He wrote to his M.P., he even wrote to The Times, who failed to print his letter. But he met with no success, and not even with any encouragement. After that he fell into a lethargic melancholy about the whole matter and forbade his friends ever to refer to it.

  The time fixed for the destruction of the wall was now about two weeks away. As it drew nearer, the hospital authorities had attempted to establish human relations with the victims of the confiscation, who inhabited some half a dozen houses on either side of Rainborough, by inviting them to look over the hospital, examine the blueprint of the X-ray department, and inspect the present inadequate accommodation. Rainborough had refused to go. He had no intention of trying to be charitable about the matter; and when a well-meaning lady next door exclaimed to him that really, when you saw how much they needed the space, poor things, you couldn’t be resentful any more, he replied with positive rudeness. He felt very bitter indeed.

  Rainborough knew very well that this ought not to be so, ought in fact to be far otherwise. He quietly deplored his attitude, but left it to take its place in that ensemble of realities, a clear-sighted vision of which had lately come to serve him in the lieu of virtue. Self-knowledge, after all, was his ideal; and could not knowledge, by its own pure light, transform the meanest of its discoveries? Rainborough did not feel that he was called upon, at his time of life, to put any more work into the development of his character than was required to provide a fairly minute commentary on how that development was in fact progressing. Actually to interfere with it did not enter his head. In moral matters, as in intellectual matters, Rainborough took the view that to be mature was to realize that most human effort inevitably ends in mediocrity and that all our admirations lead us at the last to the dreary knowledge that, such as we are, we ourselves represent the élite. The dreariness of this knowledge is only diminished by the fact that it is, after all, knowledge.

  The warmth of the garden was joining with the silence to make an image of summer. For the first time that year Rainborough could feel the sun on his neck, stirring memories of other summers; and through his reflections he began at last to see the flowers. Hyancinths, narcissi, primulas, and daffodils stood before him, rigid with life and crested with stamens, tight in circles, or expanding into stars. He looked down into their black and golden hearts; and as he looked the flowerbed seemed to become very large and close and detailed. He began to see the little hairs upon the stems of the flowers and the yellow grains of pollen, and where a small snail, still almost transparent with extreme youth, was slowly putting out its horns upon a leaf. Near to his foot an army of ants had made a two-way track across the path. He watched the ants. Each one knows what it is doing, he thought. He looked at the snail. Can it see me? he wondered. Then he felt, how little I know, and how little it is possible to know; and with this thought he experienced a moment of joy.

  Rainborough became suddenly aware that there was someone else in the garden. He lifted his head quickly and saw Annette Cockeyne standing just outside the drawing-room windows. He recognized her at once. He looked down again at the ants. But now they seemed very tiny and very remote. He sighed, and turned towards Annette, only a faint glimmering of interest mingling with his annoyance at being disturbed. She looked to him much the same child as he had met six years ago, only now, he saw at a second look, she was also a woman. It was absurd.

  ‘Miss Cockeyne!’ said Rainborough, and contrived to express surprise, pleasure, and obeisance in the way he said her name.

  ‘Oh, good,’ said Annette vaguely, Rainborough was not sure in reference to what. She held out her hand. ‘We’ve met before,’ she said.

  ‘As if I could forget you!’ said Rainborough, casting his mind back to the tantrum Annette had been in when he had last seen her. ‘This is an unexpected pleasure!’ What does the little devil want, he wondered. Then he decided, still half irritated, to make the best of the matter and at least to derive some entertainment from Annette’s visit. He felt, in proportion to his annoyance, irresponsible. ‘Come in and have a drink.’ Annette stepped back into the drawing-room.

  While Rainborough poured out some sherry, she stood awkwardly, her feet crossed, looking round the room with an air both of being curious and of noticing nothing.

  ‘Do sit down, Annette,’ said Rainborough. ‘You don’t mind if I c
all you Annette? I feel I’ve known you since you were a child.’

  ‘Indeed, please!’ said Annette. She dropped her coat on the floor and drank some sherry quickly. She seemed neither embarrassed nor at ease.

  Rainborough sat down opposite to her and studied her. He noticed at once the feathery summery air of her clothing. She wore a light cotton blouse and a linen skirt and a scarlet silk scarf about her neck which she now undid and twisted in her hands. Her extreme slimness seemed to emphasize the scantiness of her clothes. The blouse hung upon her breasts like a cloud. Rainborough was suddenly and irresistibly reminded of the snail — and he smiled.

  ‘How is Rosa?’ he asked Annette.

  ‘Cross with me!’ said Annette, making a face.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said Annette. ‘I think it’s because I left school; I’m not sure.’

  ‘You left school?’ said Rainborough.

  ‘Yes,’ said Annette. ‘I was at Ringenhall College, you know, but I decided I would prefer to educate myself.’

  ‘And what will you study?’ asked Rainborough.

  ‘Well, I don’t know,’ said Annette. ‘At the moment, I’m just going round visiting.’

  ‘I see,’ said Rainborough; ‘to find out who can help you with your education.’

  Annette looked at him suspiciously. ‘I’ve had so little time since I came to England,’ she explained. ‘I wanted to call on you before.’

  ‘Did Rosa discourage you?’ asked Rainborough; ‘from visiting, I mean?’

  ‘A bit,’ said Annette.

  ‘Rosa must be a difficult person to live with,’ said Rainborough. He would have liked to draw Annette on to criticize Rosa.

  But Annette replied, ‘No, I love her.’

  So you imagine, thought Rainborough to himself, but it isn’t true. Then it occurred to him that he had really been thoroughly bored all the afternoon, and now was bored no longer. He refilled Annette’s glass and his own.

  ‘You’re a friend of Mr Fox, aren’t you?’ asked Annette.

  So that’s it! thought Rainborough. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘are you?’

  ‘I met him once,’ said Annette. ‘He’s an odd man, isn’t he?’

  Although it happened to him so many times, Rainborough could never resign himself to the idea that people should visit him simply in order to find out all that he knew about Mischa Fox. He ground his teeth together.

  ‘What’s odd about him?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Annette. ‘He’s so — er — ’

  ‘I don’t find him odd,’ said Rainborough, after waiting in vain for the epithet. ‘There’s only one thing that’s exceptional about Mischa, apart from his eyes, and that’s his patience. He always has a hundred schemes on hand, and he’s the only man I know who will wait literally for years for even a trivial plan to mature.’ Rainborough looked at Annette with hostility.

  ‘Is it true that he cries over things he reads in the newspapers?’ asked Annette.

  ‘I should think it most improbable!’ said Rainborough. Annette’s eyes were very wide, and as he looked into them and saw how little effect his abruptness was having upon her mood, he felt with a shiver the reality of the image which was at that moment obsessing her.

  ‘How old is he?’ asked Annette.

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ said Rainborough, ‘and neither has anyone else.’ He felt an irritation he could hardly conceal at the prospect of discussing Mischa Fox any further with Annette. He changed the subject abruptly.

  ‘What are you going to do for your living?’ he asked, deliberately making the question sound brutal.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Annette. ‘I’m not much good at anything.’ She smiled in a helpless feminine way about which Rainborough could not decide whether it was natural or the effect of art. Women pick up these conventions at such an early age, he thought, they’re almost bred in them.

  ‘You work in an office, don’t you?’ said Annette. Without intending it, she made the question sound slightly contemptuous.

  ‘I work in an office, and I do other work as well.’

  ‘What other work?’

  ‘Thinking,’ said Rainborough.

  ‘I think it must be difficult to think,’ said Annette seriously. ‘Whenever I try to think I just day-dream.’

  Rainborough shifted his chair. The atmosphere seemed oppressive. How can anyone who has travelled so much be so appallingly juvenile, he wondered. Annette was sitting opposite to him, and her extremely small right hand, which had just released the sherry glass, lay limply upon the table, while her left hand fidgeted with the scarf. Rainborough looked at her hand and at her very bony wrist. The sleeves of her blouse were rolled up to the elbow. He picked up the sherry decanter and filled her glass again, standing over her. Then he resumed his seat. Neither of them had spoken for a minute. Then Annette said something which Rainborough didn’t hear.

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ he said.

  ‘I said what a beautiful black-and-white moth,’ said Annette. She pointed to a large moth which was perched half-way up the wall behind Rainborough’s head. He cast a glance back at it, and thought that he saw the dust of its wings and the furry texture of its head. He even imagined that he caught its eye.

  ‘It’s a wood leopard,’ he said. ‘You don’t often see them around so early in the year.’

  ‘I’d like an evening-dress like that,’ said Annette.

  Rainborough was frowning and breathing slightly faster, like a man with a deep problem. He seemed almost unaware of Annette’s presence. His problem was this. He had realized within the last half minute that the curious and uneasy sensation which was oppressing him was a very powerful desire to reach out and take Annette’s hand. The problem was, if he were to do this, what would be the result and would he like it? Rainborough wished that there was some way of becoming intimate with a woman which did not involve these agonizing moments of irrevocable decision. It was like hunting fish with an underwater gun, a sport which he had once been foolish enough to try. At one moment there is the fish — graceful, mysterious, desirable and free — and the next moment there is nothing but struggling and blood and confusion. If only, he thought, it were possible to combine the joys of contemplation and of possession.

  As he completed this thought he reached out and took hold of Annette’s hand, covering it with his and pinning her wrist with his fingers as if he were trying to feel her pulse. As this involved his leaning considerably forward, he awkwardly pulled his chair after him with the other hand, but without relaxing his hold. He did not look at her, but studied her hand and arm closely as if they had been detached from her body.

  Annette, who had had her tiny hand imprisoned more times than Rainborough realized, made no movement, but fixed her eyes with intensity upon his forehead.

  Rainborough, with the patient gentle air of the man who raises his head to say ‘Here endeth the first lesson’, lifted his gaze. He felt so far an extraordinary and most satisfactory calm. He smiled at Annette. Then he began to study her face.

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t recall your Christian name,’ said Annette.

  The coolness with which she said this shocked Rainborough for a moment. ‘John,’ he said.

  ‘John,’ said Annette.

  Rainborough thought that there was a very faint gleam of amusement in her eye. This shocked him too. He might be amused, but she ought to be trembling. Was it amusement or was it just the gratification of a sense of power? The little demon! he thought to himself, and for a moment the image of Miss Casement was superimposed upon that of Annette.

  At that moment Annette, dropping her scarf upon the floor, reached her left hand across and picked up her glass of sherry. Pensively she drank what remained in the glass, while her right hand lay inert in Rainborough’s grip. This was too much for him. Rainborough took the glass from her and threw it across the room, where it rolled without breaking into a corner. Then he slid his hand gently inside her blouse. He wa
s pleased to feel the quickness of her heartbeats and the involuntary gesture with which she now put her hand defensively upon his arm. Her other hand began to flutter feebly. Rainborough hastened to kiss her rather awkwardly upon the cheek.

  ‘John, please!’ said Annette.

  ‘Don’t imagine that you can convince me,’ said Rainborough, ‘if you speak in that tone of voice!’

  He sank from his chair and with a sweeping movement took her with him on to the floor. He began to unbutton her blouse. As he suspected, she was wearing nothing underneath. He then began to force one of her arms back so as to take the garment off. Annette, neither helping nor hindering him, lay doll-like, except that her gaze was extremely intent and bright. As he met it now, Rainborough could have sworn that it was indeed amusement, and not the delight of power, that lit the point of fire in her eyes.

  ‘Do you often do this?’ asked Annette.

  ‘About once in ten years,’ said Rainborough. This was true, and he would have paused to meditate on this sad confession if he had not been otherwise engaged. Also, he was nettled by her glance and by the detachment of her tone.

  ‘Annette,’ he said, ‘you’re a grown woman now. Don’t pretend that you’re not making this scene just as much as I am. Give me, at least, that pleasure.’ It was a long time since Rainborough had addressed such a serious speech to a woman.