A Fairly Honourable Defeat (58 page)

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Authors: Iris Murdoch

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Morgan sat down. She was dry-eyed. Anger, contempt, remorse kept her rigid. They shall not overcome me, she thought. I will not be an object of disapproval and ultimately of pity to the married pair. How idiotic of her to have encouraged Rupert so. Of course she was fond of Rupert and of course it had been
interesting
and she had spent enough years admiring the huge seamless edifice of her sister’s marriage. But she should have seen from the start that Rupert was a muddler. He must have left letters lying about in the office. How else could Axel have known? Rupert’s soft, she thought. Someone tougher and braver would not have let me be hurt like this. Rupert would be on his knees to Hilda at the first word of reproach. He will scarcely have confessed his love before he will start denying it. He will drop me. He will abandon me absolutely in his heart.
How was I so taken in, she wondered. What was it in Rupert that seemed so remarkable? Was it just his horribly perfect marriage? Some moral glory had seemed to shine round about him. I believe I was simply impressed by his own self-satisfaction, she thought. Some people are like that. They are so profoundly pleased with themselves that they mesmerize others into admiring them. Perhaps in Rupert’s case it had something to do with his particular sort of theories. Of course she hadn’t read any of Rupert’s stuff, but it did somehow come out in his conversation, even in his manner. Rupert imagined that he knew all about goodness. He imagined that it was permitted to him to love and do as he liked. But what was he in reality? A hedonistic civil servant, an easy-going member of the establishment, with a marvellous wife and a lucky disposition. Well, his luck had abandoned him this time.
How little he deserved Hilda, she thought. How often he had seemed to be, about his wife, the least little bit patronizing: Hilda was not an intellectual but of course she was a wonderful woman. Couldn’t he see that Hilda was a much cleverer and better person than he was? Hilda was no muddler. Being the sweetest person in the world did not prevent
her
from being steely truthful and clear in the head.
She
needed no steamy visions of moral altitude to make her and keep her a decent human being. Who was always talking about helping people? Rupert. Who was always really helping people? Hilda. Only one failed to notice Hilda’s virtue because she was unaware of it herself. And she treated her good works as jokes.
Morgan sat there stiff, with her eyes half closed, leaning forward, and her face became hard and strange to her like a mask and she felt the deep obscure bases of her life shuddering and stirring. I have not known who I am, she thought. But I will know. She sat thus quietly for a long time. She wished that she had not torn up Hilda’s letter for she was collected enough now to meditate upon it. It had caused such a shock and such pain that her instinct had been to destroy what had hurt her so. She could not conceive of reading it a second time. Yet already that was possible. She reached for the wastepaper basket and began to pick out the pieces of the letter.
She found she had something in her hand in Tallis’s writing and she dropped it quickly. It was part of the letter which she had torn up unread. Tallis’s letter and Hilda’s letter now seemed inextricably jumbled up together in the basket. She began to pick up pieces and look at them and let them flutter down again:
really remember our life together?
was Tallis,
even our innocent childhood
was Hilda,
and by a family bond I mean
was Tallis,
warned by your casual treatment of
was Hilda,
to buy you an engagement ring
was Tallis,
Rupert misled you? Our happiness
was Hilda,
lot of tommy-rot, my darling
was Tallis,
only this particular treachery
was Hilda,
position to command not beg
was Tallis,
vulgar deceptions and lies
was Hilda,
unharmed and bright
was Tallis,
blackened and destroyed
was Hilda,
always always
was Tallis,
never never
was Hilda.
Men, thought Morgan, all the trouble in my life has come from men. The only time I was ever really happy was when Hilda and I were together, long ago when we were young. And not just long ago, but ever since in a way Hilda has been the guardian of my happiness. I never came to claim it, but I knew it was there, and that was my only deep and enduring comfort. All through that awful time in America I rested upon the thought of Hilda, and when I came back it was to Hilda that I came home. How childish of me to have tried to deceive her. As if it could even have been
possible.
The flirtation with Rupert was a piece of idle folly. But the deception of her sister was a crime for which she deserved to suffer, to suffer with meaningful and purging pain, with Hilda as judge and executioner and healer.
As Morgan surveyed her life and the deep interlocking of her past and her present she felt in all her being which still ached from the shock of Hilda’s letter a kind of bitter confidence and a sense of being at last in the truth. Compared with her bond with Hilda, these matters of men, of lovers and husbands, seemed utterly flimsy. And, it came to her, compared with Hilda’s bond with her, even Hilda’s marriage could be seen as an interlude. Something might be blackened and destroyed, but it was not the tie that untied Hilda and Morgan. That tie could not ever be broken. Of course she had acted wrongly. But it was to Hilda that she would come for judgement.
Morgan lifted her head and a ray from the far past, from the dark forgotten beginnings of her existence, shone through her eyes and made them glow like amber. Hilda must know of this, Hilda must know that there was no horror, no shock and no crime which could in any way undo that ultimate belongingness.
The sun had ceased to shine and the room had become dusky and brown. Morgan rose and turned on a lamp. She went to her writing table.
To Rupert she wrote at considerable length. Her letter began thus.
My dear Rupert,
I have received an emotional letter from Hilda which leads me to assume that you have by now told her everything about your initiative with me. As I can scarcely believe that your feelings can sustain the shock of Hilda’s discovery of them, I am also assuming that our curious interlude is now over. I cannot help feeling slightly resentful that you should have so signally mismanaged the drama which you yourself occasioned and that you should have exposed me to Hilda’s anger. You were, I am afraid, over-confident. Your choice of method might have suited the saint which I fear you are not. For ordinary mortals, more conventional reactions are doubtless safer. I am of course to blame for having followed your ‘high style’ rather than my own more mundane instincts. These things, your tactics and my ill-considered response, are regrettable but possibly not very important. Remorse and hurt pride are stings which are cured by time. And it seems to me now that your emotions were stormy but not profound. What is important to
me
, and for this I find it harder to forgive either you or myself, is the damage done to my relationship to Hilda: a relationship older and, I venture to say deeper, than the relation of either of us to you. What you may decide now to think or do about your marriage is of course your affair. But I would like to say this. I will not be a sacrifice to the restoration and celebration of your married bliss. In brief, you shall not separate me from Hilda. I do not propose to save you from embarrassment by shunning the house, though I may henceforth shun you. And the explanation of our little drama which really matters is the explanation which Hilda will receive from
me
…
 
To Hilda Morgan only wrote:
Darling, hang on.
We will not be divided.
M.
 
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
 
‘AXEL, STOP THE CAR will you, anywhere.’
Axel did not reply, but he turned the car down a side street and stopped it and switched off the engine. Then he took out a cigarette, lighted it and sat looking straight ahead of him. They had just left Priory Grove after the immersion of Julius in the swimming pool.
‘There’s something I want to tell you,’ said Simon.
Axel said nothing.
‘A lot of things have happened which you don’t know of—’ Simon found it hard to talk. His throat was still hurting. He was blushing with emotion and something like a sob impeded his tongue.
Axel still said nothing, looking away down the road and smoking his cigarette.
‘Listen,’ said Simon. ‘I must tell you everything. I should have from the start. But I was afraid to, afraid of you, afraid you’d be angry or not understand or something or that you wouldn’t believe me or that you’d suddenly see me in some ghastly new way. But now it’s getting so awful and Julius—I feel he’s taking me over—I mean just sort of controlling me—and what you said on the way to Rupert’s was so terrible. I almost feel I’ve nothing to lose any more. I mean, you couldn’t think worse of me. And I’m sure you suspect all sorts of things which aren’t true. And if I tell you the whole truth perhaps you’ll see that it’s the whole truth and believe me.’
He paused. Axel still sat motionless, one hand on the steering wheel, the other holding his cigarette, staring ahead.
‘It all started,’ said Simon, ‘on the day when Julius first came to dinner. Just as he was going he whispered to me that I should come round to see him on the following Friday evening. That was the evening when you were going to
Fidelio.
He said, come round, but don’t tell Axel. I thought this was pretty odd but I imagined Julius wanted me to help him about giving you a present or something on your birthday, so I went round—I’m sorry, all this is going to sound pretty mad but every word of it’s true—I went round and Julius wasn’t there but Morgan was there with no clothes on.’
‘With no clothes on?’ said Axel. He threw the cigarette away. He was still expressionless.
‘Yes. Something had happened between her and Julius, I don’t know what, and he had destroyed all her clothes—all right I know it sounds mad—and then locked her out of the bedroom and gone off, and there she was by herself with no clothes on when I arrived. Then Morgan persuaded me to give her my clothes so that she could go and fetch some of her own from Priory Grove, so I gave her my clothes and I was there with no clothes on when Julius came back.’
Simon paused. Axel said nothing.
‘Julius just laughed at me. He said he’d forgotten he asked me to come and he’d just asked me for the hell of it to see if I would come. Then Morgan came back and gave me my clothes again and they persuaded me not to tell you anything about it. They both thought it rather funny. Then about—’
‘Wait a minute,’ said Axel. ‘One or two questions. Why did they want you not to tell me and why did you agree?’
‘Morgan didn’t want it known that she’d been with Julius and that this peculiar thing had happened. And they said that you would find it all very absurd and think that I’d been ridiculous and undignified and that you’d hate me being involved with them in something like that. And I thought they were right. Well, then—’
‘Wait. Is that the whole of the story so far?’
‘Yes.’
‘You didn’t have any sort of love passage with either Morgan or Julius?’
Axel had now turned in the seat to face Simon. Simon looked back at him. ‘No.’
‘Go on.’
‘Do you believe me, Axel?’
‘Go on.’
‘Then the next thing was that Julius appeared one morning at the museum. He said he wanted me to come and watch something, he called it a puppet show. You remember, well perhaps you don’t, there’s a false façade in Room 14 with an Adam doorway and a piece of wall and there’s a space behind it where someone could hide. I’m sorry this all sounds crazy, but this was exactly what happened. Julius made me go in behind the façade with him and we sat there and he seemed to know exactly what was going to happen and a few minutes later Rupert and Morgan arrived in the room at some sort of love rendezvous.’
‘Rupert and Morgan?’
‘Yes. I was stunned. I’ve no idea how Julius knew they’d be there, but they had a few minutes’ rather intense conversation and then they went away and Julius and I went back to the office and—’
‘You say a love rendezvous. What was going on exactly?’
‘I don’t know. I was pretty upset and confused. It sounded as if they’d been making declarations of love to each other. They were both rather agitated too.’
‘So it wasn’t something which had been going on for a long time?’
‘No. In fact Julius then explained, only I couldn’t really quite believe him, he went off into some rigmarole about how he’d fixed up the whole thing himself and somehow made Morgan think that Rupert was in love with her and made Rupert think that Morgan was in love with him. And he seemed to imagine that this would make them really fall in love with each other.’
‘Did he say why he was playing this trick on them?’
‘Something about punishing them for their vanity.’
‘I see. Go on.’
‘He said it was a sort of midsummer enchantment and that he would unravel it all later on quite painlessly and no one would be really hurt.’

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