A Fairly Honourable Defeat (60 page)
Read A Fairly Honourable Defeat Online
Authors: Iris Murdoch
‘Has he had any deep ray treatment yet?’
‘No. I was afraid he’d guess when that started. But they’re going to tell him it’s heat treatment for the arthritis. He’s always reviling the doctors, but he believes everything they say all the same.’
‘I sympathize with you,’ said Julius, ‘about there never being the right moment to tell him. I’m sorry.’
They were silent for a while. Tallis found half a packet of peppermints underneath the letters.
‘Have a peppermint?’
‘No thank you.’
Tallis started to eat one.
‘Have you seen Morgan lately?’ said Julius.
Tallis swallowed the peppermint. ‘No I’ve written to her. Had no answer.’
‘What’s the good of writing, you fool?’ said Julius. ‘You must go round and see her.’
‘I know,’ said Tallis. ‘I will. I just feel so bloody tired and discouraged at the moment. I know I’ll bungle everything if I go and see her. There’s a sort of pattern to it. She’s got a picture of what she wants me to be and I’m just not it and it simply exasperates her. I can’t bear that exasperation. I’m bloody miserable enough at the moment without a ghastly interview with Morgan to look back on. I suppose it’s cowardly to write letters. But if one writes letters one can go on hoping.’
‘Your particular kind of tenacity amazes me,’ said Julius. ‘I could understand your going round and making a scene and I could understand your switching off altogether and looking for someone else. This dull holding on and hoping I find incomprehensible. ’
‘It’s a form of cowardice.’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps it’s a virtue. I suppose there are such things. You know the latest round at Priory Grove?’
‘No.’
‘Simon pushed me into the swimming pool.’
‘Did he?’ said Tallis. ‘Why?’
‘Well, it’s a long story. Have you got a bit of time? Perhaps I can help you with the envelopes?’
‘No, I can manage.’
‘I was in evening dress. Everything was ruined, of course.’
‘I haven’t seen Simon for ages. Is he all right?’
‘He’s fine. Others not so fine, I’m afraid.’
‘Why did he push you in?’
‘Oh, I was tormenting him. I was very impressed by his spirit, I must say. I didn’t expect it. However he isn’t important really. Shall I tell you all about it?’
‘Yes, if you want to.’
‘You know that Hilda’s left Rupert?’
‘
No!
’ said Tallis. He jerked up, scattering envelopes. ‘Why ever—’
No!
’ said Tallis. He jerked up, scattering envelopes. ‘Why ever—’
‘Well, that’s the story. It’s not without interest. Hilda has fled from Priory Grove and gone to the cottage in Pembrokeshire. Only she hasn’t told Rupert that. She told him that she’s gone to Paris. She doesn’t want him to follow her, you see.’
‘Surely she hasn’t really left him, she can’t have—’
‘Time will show. Meanwhile—’
‘But
why
?’
why
?’
‘Because Hilda thinks that Rupert is having a love affair with Morgan.’
Tallis stared at Julius’s bland judicious face. Julius had the air of one explaining something to a pupil. ‘You said something about Morgan and Rupert when you were here last—only I didn’t believe you. I thought—naturally Rupert would want to help Morgan—it could be nothing important—I thought—’
‘And in a way you thought right,’ said Julius.
‘It’s impossible that they should be having a love affair.’
‘Here you are doubtless quite right. They are not having a love affair, I imagine.’
‘Then why—’
‘However they are certainly rather involved with each other, and from Hilda’s point of view—’
‘But what has happened? And why should Hilda—?’
‘Wait, wait, one thing at a time. I must admit it is rather complicated. Your picture of Rupert and Morgan is entirely just. And if they had been left to themselves there would have been no involvement, beyond the little bit of sentimentality which you so properly conjectured. Only they were not left to themselves. Someone intervened.’
‘Who?’
‘Me.’
‘Why?’ said Tallis.
‘You are jumping ahead. Don’t you want to know exactly what happened? Anyway you know why. As I say, it is rather complicated and it’s not easy to know exactly where to start.’
‘Go on, go on.’
‘You see, it all hinges upon letters.’
‘Letters ?’
‘Yes. Human beings should be awfully careful about letters. They are such powerful tools. Yet people will write them, in moments of emotion too, and other people will fail to destroy them.’
‘What letters? Whose letters?’
‘Don’t hurry me. It all started—well, I don’t know when it
started
—in a sense I suppose in South Carolina—but then where does anything start? It started in a more immediate sense when I was prowling round one evening by myself at Priory Grove. You know how they always leave the door open. Well, no one seemed to be in so I started exploring. I’m afraid I rather enjoy poking round people’s houses. You’d be surprised what one can find. Considering how nasty the human race is, it’s amazing how carelessly trusting it can be too. Anyway, I went into Hilda’s study, what she calls her boudoir. There were a few letters lying about and I read them. I always read any letters I find. Nothing of interest, all about her various charities and so on. I was rather idly wondering whether Hilda had any secret life. Most people have after all. And I began to search the desk. That sort of eighteenth century desk has always got a secret drawer, only it isn’t secret because they all have them and it’s usually not too difficult to find. I fiddled round and found the secret drawer in Hilda’s desk and sure enough it was full of love letters. Only they were from Rupert. Hilda’s secret life was her husband. Do you mind if I drink some water? No, don’t get up, I’ll just wash this cup under the tap.’
started
—in a sense I suppose in South Carolina—but then where does anything start? It started in a more immediate sense when I was prowling round one evening by myself at Priory Grove. You know how they always leave the door open. Well, no one seemed to be in so I started exploring. I’m afraid I rather enjoy poking round people’s houses. You’d be surprised what one can find. Considering how nasty the human race is, it’s amazing how carelessly trusting it can be too. Anyway, I went into Hilda’s study, what she calls her boudoir. There were a few letters lying about and I read them. I always read any letters I find. Nothing of interest, all about her various charities and so on. I was rather idly wondering whether Hilda had any secret life. Most people have after all. And I began to search the desk. That sort of eighteenth century desk has always got a secret drawer, only it isn’t secret because they all have them and it’s usually not too difficult to find. I fiddled round and found the secret drawer in Hilda’s desk and sure enough it was full of love letters. Only they were from Rupert. Hilda’s secret life was her husband. Do you mind if I drink some water? No, don’t get up, I’ll just wash this cup under the tap.’
Julius resumed. ‘I put the letters back and smiled over Hilda’s virtue and then I strolled downstairs and there was Rupert, who had in fact been out in the garden, and we had a drink and started to talk about his book. And that I must confess rather annoyed me. I don’t suppose Rupert’s ever bored you with his ideas, I think he would probably feel that theorizing was quite out of place with you. But he always makes a dead set at me. Anyway the book was mentioned and then Rupert started to hold forth about goodness, and this sort of talk sickens me, as I expect it does you. And I couldn’t help wondering how old Rupert would stand up to a real test and what all this high-minded muck would really amount to in practice. You see what I mean?’
‘Yes,’ said Tallis. He was leaning tensely forward, the table pressing into his chest. The room was getting darker.
‘About the same time, or a little later, I began to get really bored with Morgan. Well, bored is the wrong word perhaps. I began to feel a sort of disgust. I imagined she’d have the sense to leave me alone, but of course she hadn’t. I kept stepping on her everywhere I went. Morgan has a remarkable capacity for making false images of people and then persecuting the people with the images. Well, you know that. Anyway she’d cast me in some sort of role as a liberating force and then she started talking some nauseating drivel about freedom. I expect she talked it to you too.’
‘Yes,’ said Tallis.
‘About freedom and love and about loving without bonds or conventions like a noble savage, I forget how it ran. In a way it was a broken down version of Rupert’s stuff. And she seemed to want my imprimatur on this tosh, or rather she seemed to assume that she’d got it. Then I’m afraid I did rather lead her on.’
‘How, lead her on?’
‘I just wanted to make her make nonsense of her ideas, at least that was all I wanted at first. I wanted to see how far she’d go, without even noticing it, into frivolity and cynicism. I was amazed to see how readily she responded. I was talking about the frailty of human attachments and she was pretending to disagree and egging me on at the same time and I said that anyone’s faith in anyone could be broken in no time by the simplest of devices. She said No! all big eyes and lip-licking sophisticated superiority and bet me it couldn’t be done. So then we selected a victim.’
‘A victim? Who?’
‘Simon.’
‘Simon?’
‘Axel and Simon, that is. Morgan bet me ten guineas that I couldn’t detach Simon from Axel in three weeks.’
‘My God,’ said Tallis.
‘Yes. I was pretty disgusted. On reflection very disgusted. And then one day when I was thinking about Morgan, and then thinking about Rupert, and how in a way they were quite a pair, I suddenly decided that I might as well set them at each other.’
‘I see,’ said Tallis. ‘Go on.’
‘Morgan wanted a demonstration of the frailty of human attachments. I decided that she should provide the demonstration. I also wanted to get her off my back and it was a way of doing it. You understand?’
‘Yes.’
‘As for the method, as I said it all depended on letters, and when it came to it, it was surprisingly easy, as almost all attempts to beguile human beings turn out to be easy. There’s hardly any deception, if you choose it carefully enough, with which people will not co-operate. Egoism moves them, fear moves them, and off they go. Now I had kept all the love letters which Morgan wrote to me in South Carolina, when our thing was just getting going—’
‘You’d kept them?’
‘Yes. You mightn’t expect it, but I am rather sentimental. Anyway I had those letters with me. And there in Hilda’s desk was an excellent set of Rupert’s love letters to her. I went in quietly one afternoon and purloined them. I now had a splendid pack of cards and had only to play them with care. I went through the letters and crossed out any local references. Almost all the letters began “Darling” or “Angel” or something equally ambiguous. In fact the style of love letters in a certain class of society is remarkably similar. This is particularly true of women’s letters, even of intellectual women’s letters. I’ve had hundreds of them. That sort of ecstatic self-indulgent running on has an almost impersonal quality. And of course vanity blinds the reader. So it was not likely that the recipients would realize that the letters were not really intended for them at all. I set the whole machine going by sending off simultaneously a carefully selected love letter of Rupert’s to Morgan and a love letter of Morgan’s to Rupert. In each letter I appointed a meeting-place. It was quite easy to produce a scrawl, like a hastily written postscript, which looked sufficiently like the writing up above it. People don’t examine writing carefully, especially if they know the writer and are reading something which titillates their vanity and their curiosity. They both came, of course, to the rendezvous. I had arranged to be a witness of this, and I took little Simon Foster with me. I won’t bother you with the details of my eavesdropping, which were ingenious. As for Simon, as I said he’s not important. I did torment him a little, I confess, but he was a side dish. I didn’t ever really intend to take him away from Axel. Well, Rupert and Morgan arrived, both bursting with curiosity and interest and excitement at having so unexpectedly inspired passionate love in the other one, and both resolved to carry the whole thing through with discretion, compassion, wisdom, the lot, this to be compatible of course with extracting the utmost fun from a fascinating situation. You follow me?’
‘Yes,’ said Tallis.
‘Of course,’ said Julius, ‘the plan might have fallen to bits at the start if those two had been a little more down to earth, but it was of the essence of the business that they were away up in the air. No one said anything as crude as “Look here, I didn’t quite understand this letter of yours,” or “I am very dismayed to learn that you are in love with me.” They set off straightaway with delicate references to the situation and considering each other’s feelings and how each should be most chivalrous to the other and so forth and so on. I was sorry that I couldn’t overhear more than the beginning of the conversation, but it was obvious that they were well away. And one could be quite sure that a few days of this sentimental pussyfooting around would produce such a web of emotional confusion that they would soon no longer be in a position to verify anything. In the days that followed I sent off some more of the letters, choosing ones that looked as if they’d be suitable. It was really rather fun choosing the letters. Then after a while I stopped because I judged that by now they would both be quite capable of writing their own love letters. You see, since each thought that the other was bound, while they themselves were free, they could become thoroughly absorbed in the drama while feeling superior and even innocent. Mix up pity and vanity and novelty in an emotional person and you at once produce something very much like being in love.’
‘What about Hilda?’ said Tallis.
‘I’m coming to Hilda. I did not neglect Hilda. I know it sounds heartless, but my curiosity was aroused and I wanted to see how far everyone would go. You know, any woman can be flattered into doing anything. You just can’t lay it on too thick. Just flatter them outrageously, it simply doesn’t matter how outrageously, and they will lose their minds, like some birds and animals when they’re tickled in a certain kind of way. However I was, I confess, a trifle disappointed in Hilda. I don’t always care for easy successes and I expected Hilda’s case to present interesting difficulties. But a few hints soon made her suspicious. And by this time there really was something to be suspicious about. I brought the thing to a climax by a real master stroke. I had already discovered earlier on, during one of my little prowls, that Rupert’s desk contained a secret drawer, rather like Hilda’s. Rupert’s secret drawer was empty, rather dusty and obviously not in use. Hiding things in secret drawers is a female occupation. I took one of Morgan’s ecstatic missives, one written soon after she and I had first been to bed and full of more than suggestive references, and tucked it into the secret drawer in Rupert’s desk. Then I half suggested to Hilda that she might relieve her mind by searching her husband’s desk. Of course she indignantly denied that she would do any such thing, and of course she went straightaway and did it. And found Morgan’s letter.’
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