A Fairly Honourable Defeat (23 page)

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Authors: Iris Murdoch

BOOK: A Fairly Honourable Defeat
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‘Please don’t use that horrible word. You must be very hurt really. I’m sorry.’
‘You are beginning to annoy me. It seems to me that you have asked your question and you can be in little doubt about the answer.’
‘You started it all—over there in America—you were mad keen to get me.’
‘I find your language rather lacking in taste. As I recall, you were not particularly difficult to get. I’m sorry to be so unpleasant. You are forcing me to be rude and I assure you I am not enjoying it. Now will you please go? I have to change.’
‘Well, change then. I’ve seen you in your underclothes. Oh Julius, don’t you see that you
can’t
get rid of me? You’ll have to do something about me. At least now we’re talking to each other and it relieves the pain even to hear you curse me.’
‘I haven’t cursed you. The strong emotions are all yours.’
‘We could talk about all kinds of things like we used to. You could tell me about DNA—’
‘You don’t want to know about DNA. Like so many academic women you want to use superficial intellectual chat as an instrument of seduction.’
‘Let me seduce you then. Let’s make a new start. I’m going to leave Rupert and Hilda’s. I’ve found a little flat in Fulham—’
‘You will not have me as a visitor.’
‘Julius, see it as a
problem.
Couldn’t it even interest you? You are the most important thing that has ever happened to me—’
‘So you observed before. But what about your husband? Was it not important that you once undertook some solemn obligations towards him?’
‘You didn’t care much about those solemn obligations when you wanted me in bed!’
‘True but irrelevant. I don’t care about them now. But as I no longer want you in bed I commend them to your consideration.’
‘I find that rather funny.’
‘I am not trying to amuse you. As you know, I detest the spectacle of self-deception of any kind. You are pretending to an exclusive passion when there is no such thing in question. You can easily get over me. You can easily interest yourself in your husband. I suggest you attempt both these things.’
‘Why are you on his side?’
‘I am not on his side. I am tired of hearing you tell lies and I think you could be profitably occupied elsewhere.’
‘I can’t stand the idea that you two met. What did you think of him?’
‘I formed no impression. I only saw him for a minute. He was at a disadvantage.’
‘Then you did form an impression. You thought he was—what was it you once said of someone on the staff at Dibbins?—“a negligible wisp”.’
‘That appears to be what you think.’
‘No. Tallis is somebody. At least he’s something. I’m not sure that he’s quite a person.’
‘Well, these unpersons are no concern of mine.’
‘He was hopeless in bed. Everything happened all at once.’
‘I have no desire to discuss your husband’s sexual performance. ’
‘Julius, I am really through with Tallis. You may have been wondering—’
‘I haven’t.’
‘Well, it
is
at an end.’
‘If you are relying on me to help you with your divorce I’m afraid you must look elsewhere.’
‘I hadn’t even thought of that. I am relying on you for much more important things.’
‘Well, don’t. I appreciate that you want some sort of drama, and you desire me to enact a part. You feel guilty and mixed up and you want to go through some sort of ritual of purification or even punishment. But I cannot assist you, my dear Mrs Browne. I am no actor. I always told you the truth. I told you my feelings were probably temporary and should not be called by serious names.’
‘Every moment you go on talking to me gives me more hope.’
‘You drive me to tell you that I now realize that you are fundamentally stupid. And I cannot care for what is stupid. Will you go now?’
‘Julius, do you remember this dress?’
Morgan was wearing a sleeveless white dress with a little-girl collar and navy blue spots, rather unfashionably long.
‘Yes. You were wearing it on the first occasion that we met.’
‘Ah, you remember!’
‘An involuntary matter.’
‘You said it was a sexy dress.’
‘The fashion has changed.’
‘And this handbag and these shoes—’
‘You remind me fruitlessly of things which are old and stale and dead.’
‘And do you remember
this?
’ Morgan picked up the copy of
The Times
from the sofa and laid it on the table. She shook the outer pages of the paper free and began to fold them. She produced a pair of scissors from her handbag. ‘You taught me to make those extraordinary chains of paper just by folding and cutting.’
‘And you seem to have forgotten what I taught you. You are not reducing me to tears by your reminiscences.’
‘Yes, I was folding it wrong. That’s better. Do you remember what happened on that other evening? We were sitting in your office after walking round the campus. I’d written you a letter only you’d said nothing about it. It was terribly hot. And you started very quietly folding the newspaper, not saying anything. Then when you started to cut it you kept looking at me and I realized suddenly that this was a sort of love scene—’
‘I don’t want
The Times
cut up. I have not read it yet.’
‘You do remember. You can’t deny the past. And we’re still talking. You must forgive me if I believe in magic. Most women do. And it’s need need need that makes people turn to it. You said you adored the dress. Don’t you like it any more?’
‘Please go away.’
‘All right then, I’ll take it off.’
Morgan stepped quickly away from the table. She unzipped the dress down the back and let it fall and stepped out of it, revealing a very pretty black lace petticoat. Julius, who had half turned to the window, playing with the curtain, turned to look. He studied her.
‘You
are
still interested,’ said Morgan in a soft voice. ‘You must forgive this rather shameless device. But I do love you, you see, I do.’
‘A youngish and moderately good-looking woman half undressed attracts the attention,’ said Julius. ‘Now put your dress on and
get out.
’
‘No.’ Holding her dress, Morgan darted to the door. She ran into Julius’s bedroom and kicked off her high-heeled shoes. She took off her glasses. She began to pull the rest of her clothes off. She dragged back the pale green bedspread and undid the bed. More leisurely, she took her stockings off last, now watched by Julius from the doorway. She seated herself in the nest of crisp pale green sheets, her long legs tucked sideways under her, and waited. Her eyes grew big and dazed.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Julius. ‘I appreciate your device, which has a certain elementary picturesqueness. But I am fundamentally bored. Now if you will excuse me I will follow your advice and change. I am already late.’
He opened a white door in the wall to reveal a long wardrobe, and took out his evening clothes which he laid upon a chair. He found white evening shirt and tie in a drawer. Without haste he began to change. He put his day clothes with clean shirts and socks into a small suitcase. He pulled on the black evening trousers and began to adjust the tie at the mirror. Morgan watched. At one point she groaned.
‘And now, Mrs B., as I am going away for the weekend without returning here, and as I do not want to leave a naked woman in possession of my flat I must request you to dress and go. I think I have been very patient with an extremely rude and thoughtless intrusion. ’
‘I’ll write you a letter of apology!’
‘Come along.’ Julius picked up Morgan’s bundle of clothes and threw them onto the bed. He fetched her handbag and shoes and the pair of scissors from the sitting room. ‘I shall retire to the bathroom and not embarrass you by watching you dress. We leave in three minutes.’
‘You look wonderful in evening clothes,’ said Morgan. ‘I love your mouth and I should like to kiss it, but I’d be content to kiss your feet if that was all you would allow.’
‘Will you please start to get dressed?’
‘No,’ said Morgan. ‘I like it here. And I don’t believe that you’re going away for the weekend. No one goes away for the weekend directly after a dinner party. I shall wait here until you come back. And if you don’t come back till Monday I shall wait till Monday.’
‘Are you trying to provoke me to violence,’ said Julius, ‘in the hope that if I touch you I shall find your charms irresistible? I might even be tempted to disillusion you.’
‘Yes, yes, touch me, Julius, seize me, be rough to me. Hold me and subdue me. Come, let us start it all again at the beginning. Let us cut up the paper again. Remember how I was holding the scissors and you put your hand on top of mine in order to guide it. And we had been laughing. And then we stopped laughing—’
While she was speaking, Julius had picked up the scissors.
Morgan’s voice trailed away into silence.
He stood holding the scissors and staring down at her intently. She became rigid, putting her hand to her breast, to her throat. She remained quite still as he now moved towards the bed.
Julius picked up the white nylon dress with the navy blue spots and the little-girl collar. He sat down on a chair, drawing the dress across his knee. He began very carefully to fold it. Morgan released a sighing breath. She watched him fascinated. When at last the scissors bit into the material she shuddered slightly. But she watched in silence until the entire dress had been cut through, first one way and then the other. Julius shook the thick pad of folded nylon and what had been the dress fluttered out in a long chain of white spotted links, each link evenly cut in a zig-zag pattern. He gave the chain a light tug and it parted and he let it fall in a heap on the floor. He rose to his feet and kicked it aside.
‘You love me,’ said Morgan.
Julius picked up the black lacy petticoat and began to cut it straight across into narrow black strips, pulling the material tight and letting the flashing scissors rip through it. After that he cut the black brassière and matching pants into ribbons. The suspender belt was rather harder to cut, and Julius contented himself with dividing it into four pieces. The stockings he folded two ways and cut briskly through, tossing the fragments away with the point of the scissors.
‘Oh my God,’ said Morgan. ‘You are wonderful.’
Julius stooped and gathered together the ribbony silky pieces of white dress and black underclothes and threw them into a heap in the hall. He put the scissors back into Morgan’s bag and threw the bag onto the bed.
‘Who but you,’ said Morgan, ‘would think of cutting a girl’s clothes into ribbons.’
Julius opened the wardrobe and took out a light raincoat and threw it over his arm. He picked up the small suitcase.
‘That was even better than cutting the paper,’ she said.
Julius went out of the bedroom into the sitting room. Morgan pulled herself out of the bed and followed him through, excited, swaggering, happily naked.
‘After that you can’t possibly go, Julius. Don’t you see you’ve given in, you really have?’
Julius was putting the scattered pages of
The Times
together again. He folded the paper and thrust it into his suitcase.
‘Dear, dear Julius—’
He passed her by and went to the bedroom. He closed the door and turned the key in the lock. He thrust the key into his pocket and went to the front door.
‘Julius—’
He opened the front door and went out, closing it quietly behind him. His footsteps receded down the stairs.
His departure was so sudden, the transition from presence to absence so fast, that Morgan was quite stunned. She stood in the middle of the room in a state of shock, one arm outstretched, surrounded by a sudden silence behind which, outside the double-glazed windows, murmured the interminable traffic of Brook Street. She said ‘Oh!’ Then she ran to the window just in time to see Julius getting into a taxi. She said, ‘Good God!’
When Morgan had told Julius that she had wept for him in hotel rooms and thought about him ceaselessly ever since their parting she had told the truth. She had not begun to ‘get over’ him, except perhaps in the rudimentary but not unimportant sense of having survived a certain number of days without seeing him. What she did not tell him was that she had despaired. Morgan had seen something in those later days with Julius which had seemed like a deep truth. It had been like a mystical vision into the heart of reality, as if one were to be promised the secret of the universe and then, with all the sense of significance and finality fully preserved, to be shown a few mouldering chicken bones lying in a dark corner covered with dust and filth.
Morgan had loved Julius with her whole nature and in the first shock of that love she had found it impossible not to believe that Julius loved her. Such is the natural illusion of a lover. She had heard Julius’s faintly accented, faintly stammering voice saying over and over again, ‘I am not in love with you. I have nothing to offer you except completely superficial emotions. Such emotions do not endure. These will not.’ But the sound throbbed in her ears like the ceaseless cooing of a dove which said, ‘I love you, I love you, I love you.’ What she had, through some strange agency, perceived at the very end was that Julius did not in fact love her. She had perceived an immense coldness from which she had recoiled shuddering and it was to save herself from the icy contact that she had at last fled from the house, packing feverishly, throwing her things together and weeping with haste, on one afternoon when Julius was absent at a conference. How she had been able to sense that deep cold she did not later know, and could not recall any definite change in Julius’s behaviour. Surely he had been as ardent as before. Yet it had seemed to her that she had been driven away, even discarded.

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