by Iris Murdoch
He reached the garage and climbed the rickety wooden steps to a green door and, fearfully, knocked. There was a sound inside, then silence. He knocked again. Then he called out, ‘Tim, it’s me, the Count, just me.’ Tim opened the door.
The shock of the sudden meeting made them both for a moment breathless. Tim blushed violently. The Count, who never blushed, grew paler. The pale blue eyes stared at the azure eyes. The Count felt pity, a sudden rush of affection.
‘Come in,’ said Tim.
It was a remarkable piece of luck, of chance anyway, that the Count should have found Tim at the studio. Tim and Daisy were not living there. Tim had simply run over to fetch a woollen jersey as the weather had grown colder.
The Count entered, quickly observing the scene and noting that there seemed to be no one else present. The long room, lit by skylights, felt cold and damp. The space contained a senseless chaos of pictures, frames, paints, pieces of wood, old newspapers, bulging plastic bags, open suitcases and scattered clothes. A mattress on the floor was piled with higgledy-piggledy blankets. There was a smell of petrol and oil and turpentine and paint and neglected clothes. A little rain had begun to fall, it pattered on the skylights. Down below motor cars roared softly.
‘Oh Tim -’ said the Count.
‘I’m sorry there’s such a mess,’ said Tim. ‘I’m not living here, you see. In fact I’m just moving out. Would you like a drink? There may be some beer.’
‘No thanks.’
Tim stood staring at the floor with his hands in the pockets of his unbuttoned mackintosh. He was unshaven. His gingery hair was unkempt, his ruddy lips drooped.
‘Did you want anything special?’ he said to the Count.
The Count had momentarily forgotten about the letter. He was overwhelmed by Tim’s presence, by the reality of the whole business, its awful detail. Time had passed. Tim had been elsewhere, Tim had lived through time.
‘Oh Tim - I’m so sorry - how can it have happened - what a nightmare -’
‘I suppose you know all about it.’
‘Yes.’
‘You know more than I know then. Do you mind if I have a beer?’
‘I looked for you at Shepherd’s Bush and at the Prince of Denmark. ’
‘We’ve left those places.’
‘ “We” -’
‘Daisy Barrett and me. My mistress, you know. Since you know so much.’
‘You’re - still together then?’
‘Yes.’
The Count only now began to feel relief, noticed that he was able to, even permitted to. Had he expected that Tim would cry, take me to Gertrude? He had tried not to expect anything. He turned away from Tim and began to examine drawings of some rocks which were scattered on the floor, then a painting of a black cat with white paws. He said suddenly, ‘I’ve seen that cat.’
‘Yes, it’s the moggie at the Prince of Denmark.’
The Count looked at the painting for a moment with pleasure, and his wrinkled brow relaxed as it had done in the pub when the cat jumped on his knee. Then he remembered the letter and rigidified himself. He stood at attention. All his fears returned together with his sympathy. ‘Oh - I’ve got a letter for you from Gertrude. Here it is. She wanted me to put it into your hands.’ He gave Tim the letter.
Tim uttered a little ‘Ach!’ and took it. He retreated, kicking a pile of clothes violently out of the way. He looked at the Count with an unhappy hostile face, his mouth crumpled with exasperation.
‘You could read it now,’ said the Count. ‘It’s quite short.’
‘So you’ve seen it?’
‘Well - yes -’ said the Count remorsefully, more rigid than ever.
Tim hardened his mouth, now almost sneering, and tore the envelope violently, crumpling the letter. He read it quickly and held it out towards the Count. ‘Thanks.’
‘But it’s yours,’ said the Count. He reached forward, stepping into a pile of shirts. The letter fell to the ground between them and he picked it up.
‘I don’t want it,’ said Tim. ‘Do you imagine I want to put it in my wallet? It appears to be public property in any case. Sorry, this is stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid. Do you mind if I have a beer?’ He went to the dresser and found a tin of beer. He dragged it open explosively and began to gulp it from the tin, his back turned to his visitor.
The Count looked at the hostile hunched-up back. Tim seemed to have grown smaller. The Count put the letter in his pocket. ‘Tim, won’t you come back to Gertrude?’
Tim turned, still drinking. He said in a moment, ‘You read the letter. I’m not asked to.’
Rain was now falling steadily and running in a flickering stream down the glass of the skylights. Somewhere inside the room there was a sound of dripping.
‘I’m sure she would take you back.’
‘ “Take me back”. How I detest those words!’
‘Well, what words can I use -’
‘It’s not on. It’s impossible.’
‘Why? Do you really love this other woman more?’
Tim gave a sort of sneering laugh and tossed the empty beer tin into the sink. ‘Count, you’re a clever man and you’ve read a lot of books, but you don’t seem to understand the world at all.’
‘But why?’
‘It’s not like that. One doesn’t just look and choose and see where one might go, one’s sunk in one’s life up the neck, or I am. You can’t swim about in a swamp or a quicksand. It’s when things happen to me that I know what I evidently wanted, not before! I can see when there’s no way back. It’s a muddle I don’t even understand it myself. But some things are clear, I’ve had it, I’m over. Gertrude should never have married me. I’ve made such a bloody mess of it all. I had this other involvement and I never told her. I just tried to imagine it didn’t exist or it didn’t matter and I could just step out of it and forget it. Well, I did step out of it, but when - Oh hell, I can’t explain. Then somehow it all took me over again - No wonder Gertrude booted me out.’
‘She didn’t.’
‘She did.’
‘I think she feels you ran away. And that looked bad. You didn’t talk, you just disappeared. Why did you? You didn’t have to go. Gertrude would have changed her mind.’
‘You say these beautiful simple things and they’re just bloody horrible! Don’t torture me with what might have happened and didn’t.’
‘I mean, she may still change her mind, I’m sure you should try. Anyway, you’ll answer the letter?’
‘No, what’s the point? How can I? What is there to say? It’s all happened and I can’t unhappen it now. I’ve gone back where I belong. It’s like magnetism or the force of gravity. I was never at home in your sort of world, well not yours, theirs, hers. I was in the wrong place. I can’t write letters anyway and she doesn’t trust me any more, and she doesn’t love me any more or she wouldn’t write me a sort of public business letter like that. I expect she hates me, why shouldn’t she, she must be as sore as hell. I can imagine how the rich relations are crowing. She only loved me by mistake, because of the sun and the rocks and the water. She was under a spell, and it’s broken now. She made a mistake, that’s all.’
‘Tim, please write to her, explain anything you can, say you’re sorry. I’m sure it wasn’t all like she thought.’
‘She said I’d made a plot to marry her and keep Daisy on the proceeds! At least I think she said that. That wasn’t true. And I did leave Daisy -’
‘Well, there you are. You have things to say -’
‘It’s no good, it’s not just accidents or things one could remove or explain. It’s my whole life, it’s me, that’s the trouble. Like I said, I live in a swamp. She comes from a different world where everything’s just so and people know where they begin and end and what’s the case and what isn’t and what’s right and what’s wrong and all that. It’s not my world. I made a mistake too.’
‘But you loved Gertrude, you love her.’
‘You’re trying to make up som
e noble speech to recite at Ebury Street! No. Anyway she won’t be interested. You’re trying to invent a sort of case for me - because - because you’re you - and don’t think I don’t - appreciate it, Count. But it can’t connect with her any more, it can’t touch her. She’s finished with me and I’ve finished with her. Oh leave me alone! Don’t meddle with me, I don’t want your kindness and your sympathy and your attempts to understand! Just clear off, let it go, let it pass, forget it, don’t think about me any more, I don’t want to be understood, just let me go to the devil in my own way.’
The Count was silent, stiff, his hands at his sides, his face now calm, unwrinkled, hard. He said after a moment, ‘I think you ought to leave that woman. I don’t mean this as anything against her, I don’t know her. I just think you ought to be alone and to organize your life and your work and not just drift along. You might become an alcoholic -’
‘Who put that idea into your head?’
‘It is possible to leave people.’
‘I know, I’m doing it. Christ, it’s cold in here. Are you sure you won’t have a drink?’
‘You ought to be alone for a while and then you’ll be able to -’
‘No! No way, Count. Don’t make that calculation. And will you, for Jesus bloody sake, leave my private life alone, it’s all I’ve got. As you say, you don’t know anything about Daisy, or about how we live. I’ve known Daisy ever since we were students, practically children, she’s my family. I know what all this is in aid of. It’s that vile evil woman Anne Cavidge. I hate her, why doesn’t she go back to her convent. She doesn’t understand anything, and she goes round judging people as if she were God. She behaved like a bloody policewoman. And she’s been turning Gertrude against me, I know she has -’
The Count could not deny this. He had heard Anne speaking her mind to Gertrude. He said, ‘Tim, I’m so sorry about it all.’
‘So am I, but there’s nothing to be done, the party’s over. Gertrude can arrange the divorce any way she likes, I’ll do anything, sign anything. I took some money out of her account. I’ll pay it back later, I can’t now, I’m living on it, we’re living on it. Oh Jesus!’
‘I could lend you some money,’ said the Count.
‘Count, dear -’ said Tim. He came forward and put his hands on the Count’s arms for a moment, gripping his arms and looking up into the face of the tall thin man who stood rigid as if at attention before him. Then he moved towards the door. ‘You must go.’
‘All right. But think it over.’
‘Good-bye, Count. Thanks for coming. Sorry it’s raining so hard. You’ve been kind, very especially kind. And you’ve never said a word of - well, you wouldn’t. Entirely in character if I may say so. Good-bye. I hope that Gertrude - may find a better husband -’
‘Oh Tim - Tim -’
Tim opened the door. The Count went carefully down the rickety wooden steps, now slippery with the rain. He had no hat. The water turned his straight colourless hair into dark dripping rats’ tails. He thrust Gertrude’s crumpled letter, which he had been holding in his hand, into his pocket. He walked hurriedly away along the road. Then he began to smile. He put his head back and smiled up into the rain.
‘Well, who wrote that anonymous letter if you didn’t?’ said Tim to Daisy.
‘How the hell do I know? And what the hell does it matter now?’
‘I wish I’d taken it. I could have done. Then I’d have seen if it was your typewriter.’
‘Don’t you believe me?’
‘Oh - hell -’
‘Are you setting up a police state here? You’d bloody better not. You’re as bad as that Anne Cavidge female, you’re two of a kind, you’d better set up together as private eyes, Reede and Cavidge, Dirty Work.’
‘I loathe that woman.’
‘I rather liked her.’
‘You’re just saying that to annoy me.’
‘You’re easily annoyed.’
‘We’ve done nothing but quarrel since we came here.’
‘We’ve done nothing but quarrel since we first met, and that’s a good many years ago now. Whatever that proves, maybe just that we’re dead stupid.’
‘Daisy, you did write that letter, didn’t you, that letter to the Count, saying that Gertrude and I were having an affair?’
‘NO I DIDN’T! Why the hell should I? I don’t care who you have affairs with, you can walk out of this door any time and have an affair with anyone and marry them too, especially if they’re rich -’
‘Oh stop -’
‘You stop! Do I seem to you like somebody who writes anonymous letters? I ask you! Anonymous! I’m not afraid of those buggers. If I’d wanted to give them a piece of my mind I’d have written a plain honest letter and signed it. Christ Jesus, do you know me so little after so long?’
‘Well, somebody wrote it, and -’
‘God, if you could only see your mean fussy little face! Shall I find you a mirror? You look like a nasty ferrety little police clerk. What the bloody hell does it matter who wrote the shitty letter? Are you writing your autobiography or something?’
‘You were in a very vindictive state -’
‘“A very vindictive state”! What words you dredge up! I wasn’t vindictive, I was angry, fed up to the bloody teeth. If I’d wanted to put the boot in I wouldn’t have done it in a mean secretive roundabout way -’
‘Oh all right, maybe you didn’t write the letter, but you must have told all those lies to foul Anne Cavidge.’
‘What lies?’
‘Oh about us having planned that I should marry a rich woman and so on and about our having been together after I got married and -’
‘I didn’t! Bloody Jimmy Roland started all that up according to you!’
‘She said Jimmy Roland started it, God knows why -’
(What Tim did not know was that Jimmy Roland had never forgiven Tim for, as Jimmy saw it, jilting his sister Nancy. The news of Tim’s fine marriage had come as an unpleasing reminder. Jimmy also disliked Daisy for mocking Piglet. The drunken ‘disclosure’ to Ed Roper had been a piece of impromptu random spite.)
‘Who’s this “she” you keep talking about?’
‘Of course Jimmy might have heard us drivelling away in the Prince of Denmark any time. But Gertrude would never have believed it if you hadn’t said it was true.’
‘Said what was true?’
‘Oh fuck, all that that I said! Gertrude said you told Anne Cavidge it was all true!’
‘God knows what I said to that bitch. I may have said “oh yes!” to some insulting rot. Can’t she recognize sarcasm? I just wanted to get her out of the door. I thought it was a bit much being persecuted by your wife’s best friend. You know why she came of course?’
‘Why?’
‘Because she’s in love with Gertrude.’
‘Oh don’t be stupid!’ The idea was new to Tim. He thrust it away. It simply added to the ghastly jumble. ‘You think everybody’s queer.’
‘You think nobody is.’
‘You agreed to everything she said because you wanted to smash up my marriage.’
‘I didn’t want to smash up your bloody marriage! I wanted to be left alone at last! I wasn’t interested in your marriage. Do you think I’d have raised a finger to get you away from your precious fatty? Anyway you don’t seem to have needed any assistance. You seem to have smashed it all up pretty effectively yourself!’
‘You must have made her think we’d been together after -’
‘Oh hell’s bloody bells, do stop raking it over! Leave all that muck behind you. You’re here, you came running back to me with your tail between your legs. We’ve even moved house because you’re so frightened of that unspeakable mob. Isn’t that enough? Do I have to listen to your endless reminiscences as well?’
‘They’re not reminiscences. I’d like to know the truth.’
‘Truth! That’s a funny word coming from you! You don’t know what it means. You’re all soft in the middle, Tim Reede, yo
ur soul’s full of nasty squelchy pulp.’
‘Why are you so unkind to me when you know I’m so unhappy -’
‘Go back to darling Gertie, then.’
‘You know I shall never do that.’
‘Well I don’t care what you do. Go and hang yourself.’
‘If you weren’t drunk half the time we wouldn’t quarrel. Oh I’m so tired of it!’
‘Who drove me to drink? You haven’t any occupation except the bottle. Let me tell you something. I didn’t miss you when you were away. I drank less, I worked more, I got on quite well with my novel. I haven’t written a word since you so graciously came back.’
‘Well, we’ve been moving house.’
‘To suit you!’
‘You said you liked it here.’
‘It’s a bit sleeker than my place, but we’ll come down to earth with a bump when Mrs Reede’s cash runs out. I haven’t seen you earning much money lately.’
‘You know I can’t -’
‘Because you’re so mopy and sulky and whiny, yes!’
‘Oh, I will earn money - You’re destroying me, you’re eating me, you destroy my substance, I feel I’m being gradually consumed when I’m with you. Just don’t needle me the whole time.’
‘You’re doing the needling. I’d prefer to ignore you. If it wasn’t for you I’d have a trade and a life of my own.’
‘You keep saying that.’
‘It’s true.’
‘Let’s go to the pub.’
‘It’s always “let’s go to the pub”, and then you accuse me of drinking! You’ve demoralized me with your idle feckless ways and now you hate the sight of what you’ve done! And I hate the sight of you, you’re a creepy-crawly. All right, go back to law and order and marriage and money!’
