The Flight From the Enchanter

by Iris Murdoch

  ‘How did you know where to find her?’ asked Rainborough.

  ‘We went of course to Campden Hill Square,’ said Marcia, ‘and there quite open upon the table was a note which Hunter had left for Rosa to say where Annette was. So we came at once.’

  ‘Won’t you have a drink now?’ said Rainborough.

  ‘Mais oui,’ said Marcia, ‘some champagne perhaps. We have something to celebrate, no?’

  This phrase made Rainborough sigh deeply as he poured out the champagne. He then took a liberal quantity for himself. ‘May I order you a taxi?’ he asked.

  ‘But no,’ said Marcia, ‘I have my own car outside. Let me rather take you home.’

  Rainborough thanked her and they prepared to leave. He helped her on with her coat. Indeed she was beautiful. She had the same pale skin and small head as Annette, but a straighter nose and more luxuriant chestnut hair which fell in a rolling mass on to her neck. Approaching near to this radiant stuff, Rainborough inhaled a perfume which made him pause in astonishment. After the harsh sweetness which emanated from Miss Casement and Miss Perkins the scent of Marcia was of a celestial subtlety. It was not exactly a scent of flowers. It was more like a scent of wood. Sandalwood perhaps, thought Rainborough. He had never smelt sandalwood, but he suddenly felt sure that it must smell like this. It occurred to him suddenly that the whole extraordinary ensemble of powder, perfume and paint which gave so artificial a surface to Miss Casement lay upon Marcia as a natural bloom. She was an exotic flower, like flowers which Rainborough had seen in southern countries, which were hardly like flowers at all, yet were undoubtedly products of nature. Rainborough’s norm was still the wild rose, although he no longer even desired these simple blossoms.

  With an effort he restrained himself from plunging his nose into the shining mass of Marcia’s hair to smell it ecstatically. The coat was now on, and Rainborough walked politely round to the front. Here he observed her eyes, which were of a rather dark flecked blue colour and set wide apart. Upon the wide expanse between them how glorious a privilege, thought Rainborough, it would be to imprint a kiss.

  Marcia was saying something for the second time.

  ‘Oh yes!’ said Rainborough, and told her his address. They walked together down the stairs.

  Outside it was night. At the door, revealed in the bright light of the portico, stood a black Mercedes. Rainborough stumbled towards it submissively and stooped into its soft red interior. He lay back helplessly on the cushions. With undisguised admiration he watched Marcia start the engine. It was dark in the car. Rainborough sat with one leg curled under him watching in the rapidly passing illumination of street lamps and neon signs the beautiful profile of his companion appearing and disappearing. When they reached his door it did not even occur to him to ask her in, so inconceivable did he find it that they should have to part so soon.

  Marcia came into the house. Rainborough put on lights and fires. He pulled the curtains to conceal the wrecked garden, pale with fallen stones and builders’ timber. Then he poured out drinks for Marcia and himself. The sandalwood perfume filled the room. He offered her a cigarette and struck a match. As he held the flame up, lighting the pallor of her face, his hand was shaking violently.

  Marcia took his wrist between two cool white fingers and held his hand steady while she lit the cigarette, looking all the time into his eyes. ‘Mais qu’est-ce que vous avez?’ she said. ‘You are distressed, Mr Rainborough. My little girl will be all right. But you are still upset, I think?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Rainborough. To hell with your little girl, he thought. He realized he was drunk. He had a feeling of ground subsiding far under his feet. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I have various troubles.’

  Marcia drew at the cigarette. Then she suddenly handed it back to Rainborough. He put it to his lips. It was like a healing draught.

  ‘You are worried, yes,’ murmured Marcia. She sat down on the settee and motioned Rainborough to sit beside her. He sank down.

  ‘Perhaps I could help you,’ said Marcia. ‘But first you must tell me everything.’

  To Rainborough’s astonishment that was exactly what he proceeded to do. The whole story of Miss Casement came out. It sounded grotesque; but it gave him an extraordinary relief to tell it as a story. To place Miss Casement in the framework of ‘And then she …’ set a blessed distance between them.

  Marcia listened with a gentle slightly clinical air, nodding her head. ‘Que tu es dróle, mon cher!’ she said at the end. ‘But you do not love this woman at all, I think?’

  ‘No,’ said Rainborough. ‘Yes, I don’t know. She fascinates me.’ He saw Marcia’s hand lying beside him on the cushions. It resembled Annette’s hand. Rainborough’s head reeled. He stood up. ‘I’m in a muddle!’ he said.

  ‘You want to escape, I think?’ said Marcia.

  ‘Yes, exactly,’ said Rainborough, ‘escape, yes, yes! But how?’

  ‘You do not love her,’ said Marcia firmly. ‘This first must be clear, not only to think but to feel. Ask yourself what is the thing about her that is most unpleasant that you remember?’

  Rainborough reflected. For a moment he could think of nothing graver than the fact that she had been so bad tempered when they had missed their dinner at Henley because he had been so long in making his proposal. Then he thought of her behaviour to the little typist.

  ‘Now tell this to me in detail,’ said Marcia.

  Rainborough did so. He felt that he was being guilty of the basest treachery. It was a delicious feeling.

  ‘Now you must go away,’ said Marcia, ‘at once.’

  Rainborough stood before her helpless and incoherent. Fierce hatred for Miss Casement possessed him, while Marcia swam before his eyes, strangely disintegrated into hair and hands and lips. ‘How can I,’ he said, ‘at this hour, and where to?’

  ‘You will go to our villa near Saint Tropez,’ said Marcia. ‘There in the south it is already summer-time. Here is the address. I will send a wire to the servant, and to some friends of ours who live near. You have no business here to keep you?’

  ‘None!’ said Rainborough.

  ‘Why do you wait then?’ said Marcia. ‘Relax, mon cher ami!’

  ‘I haven’t got a ticket or any French money,’ said Rainborough frantically.

  ‘I will give you money,’ said Marcia, ‘and we will book you a ticket by telephone. For what do you keep a telephone?’ In a moment she was talking to the airfield.

  Rainborough walked or staggered once round the room. He felt pain and exultation. Irrevocable things were happening. ‘I can’t go without telling her,’ he said.

  ‘Tell her then!’ said Marcia, ‘or shall I? You leave it to me, yes? What is her telephone number?’

  Rainborough uttered the number.

  ‘And excuse me,’ said Marcia, ‘what is your Christian name? This is necessary too.’

  ‘John,’ said Rainborough, ‘John, John, John!’ He repeated it passionately as if he were casting down his personality at her feet.

  Marcia was speaking again on the telephone. Very far away, already in some other world, Rainborough could hear the voice of Miss Casement.

  ‘John asked me to tell you that he is going away …’ Marcia was saying. Her foreign tones were like green honey.

  Rainborough sat down. He wiped his brow. For a moment the pain in his heart seemed a little like pity. Then a great wind was blowing through him. It blew right through him without any hindrance. He was empty. He left the room to pack his suit-case.

  ‘Your plane leaves in an hour’s time,’ said Marcia’s voice. ‘I will take you to the airfield. Do not forget your passport.’

  A few moments later Rainborough was going out of the front door with Marcia. He slammed the door to behind him. He got into the Mercedes.

  Twenty-Five

  IT was a few days later that a question was asked in parliament by an obscure Conservative M.P. concerning the status of certain European workers who held permits for an indefinite stay in
Great Britain. The M.P. wished to ask the Home Secretary whether he was aware that a number of individuals who had been trained for work in this country under the so-called SELIB scheme were strictly ineligible under the terms of the agreement. This question followed, as it happened, upon a charge, which was being levelled against the government of the day, of irresponsible management of monies donated by American organizations. This country, it was argued by an Opposition group, was forgetting upon which side its bread was buttered. The phrase ‘after all, we Europeans — ’ uttered by a Socialist speaker in the ensuing debate was greeted by cries of ‘Look here!’ and ‘Don’t exaggerate!’ The whole matter received considerable publicity. The obscure M.P., having performed his task, sank again into the tranquillity of the back benches. It was generally agreed that someone must have ‘put him up to it’, but no one could make out who had done it or why, although one or two well-known names were mentioned.

  For a day or two the evening papers put the discussion into the headlines, home office to screen SELIB workers. Deport Illegal Migrants says M.P. On the second of these two days Rosa returned to Campden Hill Square to find that Stefan Lusiewicz had disappeared. He had vanished as completely as if he had never been there. He left no trace in the house. Rosa noticed his departure with a dull satisfaction. Since her visit to Mischa Fox she had scarcely noticed his existence. It was as if, as soon as she had seen Mischa, Stefan had already been blotted out of her life. Other problems now engrossed Rosa. It was as if the years had rolled away and she was once again involved in the old coil: what was Mischa up to, what did Mischa really think, what did Mischa expect of her, what was she to do about Mischa? What had chiefly stunned her on the occasion of her visit to him was his determination to talk about Peter Saward, and even to speak of Peter’s attachment to Rosa.

  Rosa had, she imagined, been prepared for anything when she went to see Mischa. She had been ready to be snubbed and humiliated. She had also been ready for an affectionate welcome, to be followed by some sort of renewal of his suit. Rosa had not made clear to herself whether she wanted this or not. In any case it had not happened. It had seemed rather as if Mischa were pressing the suit of Peter Saward, although nothing had been said which could unambiguously be read in this way. What does he want? Rosa wondered. Does he want to keep Peter and me together in a cage? She was, it occurred to her, singularly without information about the relations of Mischa and Peter. Or was this move designed perhaps rather to divide her from Peter and make her feel disgust and impatience about him: possibly to arouse in her the sense that it was certainly not with Peter that she would ever link her fate, and so to enlighten her about her true feelings?

  But what were her true feelings? The only thing which Rosa did feel as a result of Mischa’s tender concern about him was an extreme irritation with Peter Saward. She knew this to be irrational and unfair — but its inevitability inclined her to think that this was perhaps just what Mischa wanted. She then did her level best to feel the opposite. Later on she told herself that she was attaching an undue importance to the whole thing and that Mischa had not meant anything in particular; but this view she in turn rejected on the general a priori principle that Mischa never failed to mean something in particular. He is cutting my links with other people, she thought suddenly, he is blocking my routes of escape. She now no longer troubled to regret her action in seeking Mischa’s help. It made no difference. Whether she ran towards him or away it was all the same.

  As Rosa revolved these thoughts in her mind she was sitting beside Hunter’s bed. He lay there before her as helpless as in childhood. Hunter was ill with a mysterious illness. He had a high fever and intermittent delirium. He lay at present in a comatose slumber. The doctor had confessed himself puzzled, had declared the boy to be in no immediate danger, and had said that there was nothing to be done but to keep him quiet and see what happened. Rosa had her own theories about the cause of Hunter’s sickness, but as these were too fantastic to reveal to the doctor she kept them to herself.

  When the scandal about SELIB had broken as a result of the question in Parliament, Hunter had been amazed. How very odd that it should have happened now, he kept saying to himself. But his triumph at the discomfiture of Lusiewicz and his subsequent departure was clouded by the thought that the Pole would certainly regard him as responsible for this timely development. Hunter feared for his life; for he very heartily believed the threats which Stefan had uttered on the occasion of the striking of the matches. He began to have vivid nightmares in which he would hear the Pole creeping down from his room above and fumbling at Hunter’s door. These were varied with hardly less unpleasant dreams in which Calvin Blick was to be seen displaying innumerable pictures of Rosa dressed in black stockings. From these nocturnal entertainments Hunter would be awakened by the pain of his burnt forehead, which seemed to be refusing to heal. A feeling as if all the skin of his face were being drawn towards a hole in his brow persisted all day and as much of the night as was spared from the sequence of nightmares. In despair Hunter had cut off his yellow hair as far back as the crown of his head, and now he did not dare to venture out into the streets. He became a sick man.

  He was now wakening slowly from sleep. The room seemed to be full of light and darkness which was scattered about it in intense patches. The light was dazzling, and the darkness was oppressive, as if the room were full of dark objects. One of these objects seemed to be lodged on Hunter’s chest. After a while it occurred to him that the light was so dazzling because it was daylight and not electric light. He began to puzzle about what time it was. The darkness now seemed to be gathering together into one part of the room and had something of the appearance of an enormous black spider which was crouching in the corner. One of its legs touched Hunter’s bed and made him shudder continually. Somewhere in the lighted portion of the room he could see his mother sitting. Her head was thrown back and she was looking away from him out of the window. Her black hair was tumbling down her neck in the way in which he had so often seen it. She was frowning. And now someone else was in the room too and voices were beginning to fly about above his head. They were booming inaudibly like a loudspeaker system that has gone wrong. Now they were loud, now they were soft. Hunter lay quite still and listened.

  Rosa was surprised to see Mrs Wingfield coming into the room. She jumped to her feet.

  ‘It’s a fine thing,’ said Mrs Wingfield, ‘when I have to come and look for you!’ She was wearing her corduroy trousers under a tweed cape, and an old-fashioned pair of hornrimmed spectacles.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ said Rosa, ‘the last two or three days — ’

  ‘Don’t apologize!’ said Mrs Wingfield. ‘Foy ran me across in the car. She’s waiting outside now.’

  ‘Oh, let me ask her in — ’ said Rosa.

  ‘On no account!’ said Mrs Wingfield. ‘If she likes to play the faithful retainer, let her, I say. You wouldn’t believe, incidentally, what a speed fiend that woman is. She almost touched fifty coming across the square. What’s the matter with the boy?’

  ‘We don’t know,’ said Rosa. ‘Oh, my dear, hello!’ This latter exclamation was directed to Marcia, who had just put her head round the door.

  ‘May I come in?’ said Marcia. ‘How is poor Hunter?’

  ‘Much the same, I’m afraid,’ said Rosa. ‘Mrs Wingfield, may I introduce Lady Cockeyne?’

  ‘Ah, you have seen the newspapers!’ said Marcia.

  ‘Indeed I have,’ said Rosa, ‘and may I congratulate you? Marcia’s husband has just been honoured,’ she said to Mrs Wingfield.

  ‘If you call that an honour,’ said Mrs Wingfield,’ your poor mother must be spinning in her grave like a teetotum!’

  ‘Is Hunter asleep?‘ asked Marcia,

  ‘Yes,’ said Rosa,’ he’s very comatose. Nothing rouses him.’

  ‘It is strange, is it not?’ said Marcia. ‘It is as if someone had cast a bad spell on him. Do you believe in love potions and in spells which bring to people illness and
death?’ she asked Mrs Wingfield politely.

  ‘No, of course not! snapped Mrs Wingfield, ‘but I believe in the unconscious mind, and that’s quite enough moonshine. The boy must have been brooding on something. He probably suffers from guilt feelings. Has he committed any crimes lately?’

  ‘No,’ said Rosa, ‘he hasn’t committed any crimes.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean by that,’ said Mrs Wingfield, ‘and am in too much of a hurry to ask. I came over to tell you that I don’t want your brother to have anything further to do with the Artemis.’

  ‘Are you the person who decides?’ asked Rosa.

  ‘Your tone is sarcastic,’ said Mrs Wingfield, ‘but let me wipe that look off your face by telling you that in fact I am the person who decides. I own the Artemis now. The largest shareholder was Mrs Carrington-Morris and I bought her out three days ago. She may have conscientious objections to alcohol, but she had none to taking the suitably large sum of money which I offered. I’ve also bought out all the other shareholders except you. No, don’t look hopeful, I don’t mean to offer you anything for your shares. So now the paper is mine, and I propose to dispense with the boy.’ Mrs Wingfield peered down at Hunter with an expression of interested disgust as if he were a dead mouse which the cat had brought in.

  Hunter turned on the bed. The voices still bloomed and buzzed somewhere above him. Far away someone was uttering his name. A strange perfume floated on the air like the scent of forests where he had been as a child. He heaved his chest up and drank it in through mouth and nostrils. In the lighted portion of the room, rather still and far away as in a picture, he could see a beautiful lady. She looked familiar, and yet she was not anybody that he knew.

  ‘A film star,’ said Hunter aloud; ‘must be a film star.’ Film stars always looked like someone one knew. She was wearing a leopard-skin coat and she bent towards him with such a sweet look of concern. But as she moved, the spider moved nearer too and its many-faceted eye was suddenly close above him. In its glassy surface he could see himself reflected once, twice, a hundred times. He turned away in horror and buried his head in the pillow.