A Fairly Honourable Defeat (43 page)

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Authors: Iris Murdoch

BOOK: A Fairly Honourable Defeat
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Morgan rose to her feet. She rolled down her sleeves and put on her jacket. ‘Tallis, I think you’re
disgusting
!’
‘I only said I was convenient,’ said Tallis.
‘I’m going. I’ll write to you about the divorce. Good-bye.’
‘Wait a minute.’ Tallis came round the table and stood in front of the door. ‘I’ve been bloody patient about this business of your clearing off and living with someone else for two years, and everyone nagging me to get tough with you, and now you come back and all you can do is talk a lot of slimy half-witted nonsense about your states of mind. Damn your states of mind. If you want me to cooperate with you either in continuing our marriage or in ending it you’ve got to talk to me properly. I’m fed up with your waltzing in and out with statements of policy and you feel this and you feel that. You can bloody well talk to me. You’re my wife, and I want to know what you’ve been doing and what you’re doing now. I want to know what
happened
in America, and if you imagine you’ve fallen in love with someone else I want to know who it is.’
‘It’s a bit late to start playing the jealous husband,’ said Morgan. ‘And you’re not much good at acting anyhow.’
‘I’m not acting.’
‘Yes, you are. You put up with it all, didn’t you?’
‘I had to. I knew you’d come back.’
‘Don’t, Tallis. When you pretend to be tough you’re just pathetic and I can’t bear it. Now get out of the way, please. Whatever’s that you’re wearing underneath your shirt? Good heavens, it’s my amber necklace. I wondered where it was. You are sentimental, aren’t you.’
‘You don’t mean you forgot you put it round my neck?’
‘Of course I forgot. And it’s not the only male neck it’s been round lately! I’ve got other things to think about besides you. As indeed you yourself were anxious to suggest!’
‘So there
is
someone else!’
‘No. Get out of my way.’
‘Who is it?
Who is it?
’ Tallis took hold of the white blouse at the neck.
‘Let go, you’re tearing it.
Let go!
Or do you really want a fight?’
‘I want you to stay here and talk to me properly.’
‘Well, just see if you can keep me here!’
Morgan crooked her left foot round the back of Tallis’s ankle and pressed her right hand against his throat. They staggered together, knocking over a row of half-empty milk bottles. Tallis twisted the white nylon collar till it tore and captured her hand and began to bend it round behind her back. Morgan tried to bring her knee up but Tallis had drawn her too closely against him. Their faces touched, bone moving on bone. Morgan’s free hand clawed the back of his shirt, her feet began to slip, and she came down heavily on the floor, pulling Tallis over on top of her. The string of the necklace broke and the amber beads pattered loudly to the ground all about them. Morgan twisted away from him and sprang to her feet. The kitchen door banged. The front door banged.
Tallis got up slowly. His neck was bruised, his knee was throbbing. The kitchen floor was covered with broken glass and sticking yellowish milky mess. He picked up a half of one of the bottles and threw it into the sink where it broke into further pieces. Bending down he began to pick up the amber beads here and there and stuff them into the pockets of his trousers.
‘Oh er excuse me—’ A round-faced young man with spectacles carrying a black bag and a nylon mackintosh was standing in the doorway.
‘What do
you
want?’ said Tallis. He went on searching for the beads.
‘I’m sorry—I thought I’d better wait until—I wanted to see you—’
‘What about?’ Tallis threw another piece of milk bottle into the sink.
‘I’m the new doctor.’
‘Oh.’ Tallis straightened up. ‘Sorry. You’ve been with my father? ’
‘Yes.’
‘Sorry,’ said Tallis. ‘Won’t you sit down? He’s been rather in pain.’
‘We had a talk—’
‘Can you operate for that sort of arthritis? We haven’t heard anything since the X-rays.’
The doctor, who had not sat down, closed the kitchen door. He drew his shoe along the linoleum in an attempt to scrape off the sour milk. He looked at Tallis with a rather odd expression on his face. ‘I’m afraid the news is not very good.’
‘You mean you can’t operate?’
‘I mean it’s not arthritis. At least there is a mild arthritic condition. But—’
‘It’s cancer,’ said Tallis.
‘Yes.’
‘I see,’ said Tallis. He picked up the two tea cups and put them in the sink with the broken glass. ‘What’s the outlook?’
‘There’s very little we can do, I’m afraid. Some deep ray treatment may ease the discomfort of course. But the condition being already general—’
‘What’s the outlook?’
‘Your father might live for a year.’
‘I see,’ said Tallis.
‘Of course I haven’t told him. He still thinks it’s arthritis. We naturally think it proper in such cases for the relatives to decide—’
‘Yes, yes. You’ll let me know about the treatment. I don’t want—if it just prolongs life for a short while—if he’s suffering—but you said it might ease him—’
‘It is thought to be advisable—’
‘Could you go, please,’ said Tallis.
‘If you’d like to see the specialist you’d be welcome at the hospital, any time tomorrow morning, just telephone—’
‘Yes, yes, I’ll come. And now please go, forgive me. Thank you.’
The door closed.
The kitchen where usually there were so many scratchings and scufflings and patterings of claws was completely silent. Even the murmur of the traffic seemed to have been made still. Tallis stared at jagged glass and crumpled newspaper and milk which had already dried into thick yellowish pats and errant gleaming globes of wine-dark Baltic amber. He stared down into a world that had been utterly changed.
CHAPTER SIX
 
HILDA WAS CAUTIOUSLY STROKING PETER’S HAIR. Peter, politely affecting not to notice, had his noble faraway Napoleonic look on. They were in Hilda’s boudoir, sitting side by side upon the small sofa.
‘So I can tell your father that you’ll definitely go back to college in October?’
‘Yes. Haven’t you told him already?’
‘Well, sort of. But I wanted to be sure. I thought you might change your mind.’
‘I won’t. I’ve given my word to Morgan.’
Hilda sighed. She had perceived her son’s love for her sister. She was not alarmed, but it made her feel sad somehow. It made her feel old.
‘Your father will be so relieved.’
‘I don’t care what
he
thinks!’
‘Peter, do try to be a little more kind to him. You do hurt him so. He is your father.’
‘Precisely!’
‘Oh Peter, don’t be so
boring
!’
‘If only he’d just relax and stop
acting
father! It’s like a rotten evening in the theatre.’
‘You might stop acting too!’
‘All right, mother, all right!’
Hilda thought, I must ask Morgan to tell Peter to be kind to Rupert. He’ll attend to
her.
She sighed again. But that would have to wait, since Morgan had just rung up to cancel a luncheon date and announce her temporary departure from London.
‘Morgan told me I ought to be nicer to him,’ said Peter, ‘so I suppose I’ll have to try!’ He detached himself gently from the light pressure of his mother’s arm and shifted a little way along the sofa.
‘So she already—Will you come to that dinner party, Peter?’
‘You mean to celebrate pa’s great book? I shouldn’t think so. Is that ghastly masterpiece actually finished?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is he going to read it aloud at the dinner?’
‘Don’t be silly.’
Rupert is sad that the book is finished, thought Hilda. He had travelled with it such a long way. And now that he’s stopped working on it he probably feels all kinds of doubts and anxieties about its worth. Rupert had been in a strange mood just lately, nervy, preoccupied, worried.
‘By the way, Peter, do you happen to know Morgan’s address? She’s away, isn’t she?’ Morgan had rung off so quickly, Hilda had not been able to ask for an address.
‘She’s visiting here and there and seeing somebody about a job, I think. She sent me a note, but no address. Look, I must go in a moment, mother darling.’ He stood up beside her and put his hand lightly under her chin. Hilda captured the hand and quickly squeezed it and kissed his fingers, closing her eyes for a moment. Looking up at her tall son she felt an agony of anxious protective frustrated love. She yearned over his future, so full of terrible unknowns. She groaned with the weight of a love which she could scarcely begin to express. She had already released his hand.
‘You are all right, aren’t you, Peter?’
‘Yes, mother, I’m fine.’
He looked well, calmer, plumper. That was Morgan’s doing.
‘Come again soon.’ She felt so sad at his going, sad at his inevitable separateness from her, sad that he had been so much taken over by Morgan, sad at her own inadequacy to the immense needs of his youth. ‘I do wish you’d come back and live here.’
‘I must have my own place. It’s more than ever important.’
‘How’s Tallis?’
‘I think Tallis is going mad.’
‘You aren’t serious?’ said Hilda.
‘No, I suppose not, but he’s been very odd lately. Well, maybe no odder than usual. I must push along, mama.’
‘You’ll come again soon?’
‘Yes, yes.’
‘When?’
‘Oh next week probably. I’ll ring up. Cheerio and thanks for the mun!’
After Peter was gone Hilda uncurled herself from the sofa and patted the cushions back into shape. She teased out her hair which was still a little damp from a recent plunge in the pool. Then she went to her desk where she had laid out all her arrears of correspondence. The Kensington and Chelsea Preservation Society. The West London Noise Abatement League. The Discharged Prisoners Help Society. Oxfam. Labour Party. Townswomen’s Guild. The Bardwell Clinic for Unmarried Mothers. The Chelsea Pensioners’ Christmas Tobacco Fund. Friends of the Old Vic, the National Gallery, the Wigmore Hall, the Fulham and Putney Juvenile Delinquents. British Societies for Peace in various parts of the world.
Hilda found that she could not focus her eyes upon the letters. She felt vague and gloomy, she did not quite know why. She was a little worried about Rupert. Was it just his book or was he perhaps developing the ’flu? She had been very disappointed not to see Morgan and a little hurt at the brusque way in which Morgan had cancelled the appointment. The bond with her sister had never been more important. Hilda had expected much from Morgan’s return, almost a renewal of life. She was well aware that she had felt gratified that the defeated Morgan should come back to her to be cared for, but she knew too that the gratification was an expression of love. There was some fruition of the past in this cherishing of her sister, some reassuring line of force from childhood which reached away onward into the future. Hilda needed to be leaned upon and confided in and Morgan could not have been more dependent and more frank. Thus far, in the chemistry of the world, all was well. Hilda had been sorry when her sister moved out of the house, but she had understood. Now she was troubled by this sudden breath of aloofness. Possibly Morgan regretted having talked so much.
She tried to be sensible about Morgan as she tried to be sensible about Peter, but it is not easy to cajole a naturally possessive temperament. Did Peter know what it was like for her when he walked out of the room vaguely saying he might turn up next week, vaguely saying he would telephone? Peter was uncaged and free, and although Hilda knew that her son loved her to an extent which was probably exceptional, and talked to her with an openness which was certainly unusual, she was after all only his mother. This meant that she was a unique and precious being to him, but it also meant that it was her special privilege to put up humbly and uncomplainingly with any degree of casualness and neglect. Peter knew that it was a metaphysical impossibility that her love for him should diminish by one iota whatever he might or might not do, and this precisely enabled him to dismiss her altogether from his mind.
Hilda brooded for a time upon these paradoxes, but she was not addicted to feeling sorry for herself and she soon began to try to concentrate upon the letters. She was just reaching for her pen when there was a sound upon the stairs. Hilda turned. It was much too early for Rupert. She thought it might be Morgan. Someone tapped softly upon the door.
‘Come in,’ cried Hilda.
Someone opened the door rather deferentially and peered in. It was Julius King.
‘Oh!’ said Hilda. ‘Good heavens, you gave me a shock. Come in, Julius.’

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