Authors: Iris Murdoch
Adelaide knew that she was becoming more irritable and nervy. She knew that she ought not to have broken the Wedgwood cup and she even regretted having broken it. She had resolved not to speak to Will when he was painting the railings in case he misbehaved and Danby saw, but half way through the morning she had felt a sudden need for Will, although she had expressed the need simply by being unpleasant to him. Then there had been the horrible spectacle of that Mrs. Greensleave both patronising Will and flirting with him, while Will simpered and answered back like a pert servant and let her paddle her hands in his hair. At that contact Adelaide had felt an automatic jealous shock, and more consciously a disgust at the failure in Will of something upon which she especially relied, his dignity: or perhaps simply his self-confidence, his peculiar pride, that which more than anything else made him the same person as the boy she had known. Will was now both a nuisance and a menace, but he was her last connection with a real Adelaide who had once existed, a pretty girl with two clever sixth-former cousins who lent her books and flattered her, while she wondered happily in her private heart which one of them she was destined to marry.
Adelaide sat up and put her legs over the edge of the bed. There was a hole in her stocking at the knee through which a mound of pink flesh bulged out. She leaned forward and undid her hair and let it fall down heavily on either side of her face. She had that heavy graceless fat feeling which she identified as the feeling of growing old, the feeling of no return. She had made some sort of life-mistake which meant that everything would grow worse and never better. Was there no action which she could perform which, like the magic ritual in the fairy tale, would reverse it all and suddenly reveal her hidden identity? But she had no hidden identity. She got up slowly and pushed her hair, or most of it, inside the back of her overall. She opened the door of her bedroom.
The door of Danby’s room opposite stood open and she could see the jumble of the unmade bed with the sheets trailing on the floor. Let him make it himself, she thought, and then changed her mind and went into the room. She began to haul the bed together. The big black box with all the little drawers in it which housed the most important part of the stamp collection was standing on Danby’s dressing table. Bruno had been too upset that morning to ask to see it. Adelaide dragged on the extremely faded Welsh counterpane. The room, the bed, smelt of Danby, an intimate sweetish smell of tobacco and sweat and male. Adelaide stared at the black box. Danby usually put the stamps into some sort of order before he put the collection away at night, and Adelaide who had sometimes looked through the sheets in search of ‘pretty ones’, knew roughly how the drawers were arranged. She moved over and opened a drawer half way down and fanned out the sheaf of transparent cellophane sheets. There was the set of Cape Triangular stamps. Selecting one at random she drew it quickly out and slipped it into the pocket of her overall.
‘Goodbye, Will. Mind you ring me up! And don’t get any more of that paint in your hair.’
Lisa and Diana began to walk away down the street in the direction of Cremorne Road. Diana had hoped that Danby might walk along with them, but no doubt he had decided that there was no point in it since Lisa was there.
Diana had been shocked and sickened by the dreary little room and its awful occupant. What she had seen seemed more like flesh, living flesh as one rarely sees it,
in extremis
, than like a person. She had expected something quite other: a silvery haired old gentleman, with an evident and affecting resemblance to Miles, whom she would coax along and charm into paying her compliments. She had expected something a little peppery and difficult, also frail, but eminently conversible. She had felt moved by the idea of the embassy once Lisa had suggested it, and she had seen herself in the rather touching role of reconciler and flower-bearer, undoing by her graciousness the harm which her husband had done. But on arrival she had realised at once that this was a case for the expert, for the professional. Familiar words like ‘old gentleman’ could not come near touching that reality. Lisa was good in these extreme places, she had a knack. Diana felt here, as she had felt on her few visits to Lisa’s East End haunts, upset, embarrassed, and alarmed. She was glad for the old man’s sake that Lisa was there.
Diana went straight out into the street to escape from the awful impression of that pathetic length of flesh, and while she was flirting more or less mechanically with the handsome dark-haired painter lad, her thoughts had already reverted to Danby. In these days Danby quietly filled her mind in a way that she was determined not to find alarming. Her nerves were calmed by the dear man’s own insouciance and ease, an ease which she did not see as frivolity but rather as a kind of sincerity. With someone like Danby one knew exactly where one was. He did not pretend to the disrupting violence of absolutes. His cheerful way of asking for an affair had exhilarated her. It was easy to refuse, while at the same time one was in no way cheated of a compliment. Nor was she at all afraid that a baffled Danby would ‘turn nasty’. Of course he would try, perhaps for a long time, to persuade her. But she did not on reflection really think that the argument would end in bed. There must be nothing dreadful, nothing frightening, here. The argument would have to take place, and she rather looked forward to it. But in the very length of the argument would lie the makings of the lasting sentimental friendship which Diana felt she now so very much wanted and needed to have with Danby. After all, as he was pre-eminently a happy-making man she had only to convince him about where her happiness lay. And with this thought Diana had come, over the last few days, to realise that for all the excellence of her marriage she was not by any means entirely happy.
She had mentioned both Danby’s visits to Miles but had kept silent about the dancing. That episode had indeed become so dreamlike, so strangely formally romantic, in her memory that she scarcely felt guilty of any falsehood in suppressing it. That would not happen again; she could find all that she needed in a set of arrangements which would involve no falsehood. In fact even by the truth Miles was likely to be more than a little misled at present, since he could not conceive of anybody enjoying Danby’s company. He had commiserated with his wife upon his brother-in-law’s visitations. ‘That oaf!’ Diana smiled, and her smile had tenderness for both men. She did not want to deceive Miles. She would give him, in time, enough intimations of the real state of affairs. ‘I like him, really.’ ‘He’s rather sweet.’ ‘Guess who I’m lunching with? Danby!’ Miles would get used to it, and if he could never wholly believe in Diana’s predilection, in spite of her most careful factual statements, then, so much perhaps the better. So she would stretch the situation, a little from Danby’s side, a little from Miles’s side, until she could achieve what now her whole nature craved for, another harmless love. She would love Danby, and no one would be any the worse. As she resolved upon this she felt her heart swell again with the imperative need to love, and she sighed deeply.
‘What is it, Di?’
It had come on to rain a little and the two women, their scarves pulled well forward over their heads, were walking briskly along Edith Grove.
‘That poor old man–’
‘Poor Bruno, yes.’
‘In that sort of state they become so–repulsive and horrifying. It must be terrible to be human and conscious and utterly repulsive. I hope he doesn’t know what he looks like.’
‘We all interpret and idealise our faces. I expect Bruno has some idea of his appearance which is quite unlike what we saw.’
‘I hope so. I can’t think how Danby can manage it. Treating like a person–what isn’t a person any more.’
‘Bruno’s not so far gone. He talked sense after you’d left.’
‘You’re so good, I wish I had your knack.’
‘I’m more used to it.’
‘What did he say?’
‘He said to tell Miles he didn’t mean what he said at the end.’
‘You know, I think he thought you were Miles’s wife!’
‘I don’t know who he thought I was.’
‘He seemed to think you were somebody, he certainly took to you.’
‘I do wish we’d known him earlier.’
‘Well, that was Miles’s fault. God, I hope I’ll never get like that, I’d rather be dead. Don’t you think there’s a lot to be said for euthanasia?’
‘I’m not sure. It’s so hard to know what’s going on inside a very old person.’
‘No wonder Miles was stumped.’
‘Miles will have to try again.’
‘Well, you tell Miles that. You’re good at being firm with him. Wasn’t he cross this morning?’
‘Guilty conscience!’
‘Danby was thoroughly fed up with him.’
‘Yes.’
The two women turned into the Fulham Road, their heads bowed to the light rain.
‘Lisa.’
‘Yes.’
‘There’s nothing special going on between me and Danby, you know.’
‘I didn’t think there was.’
‘He’s a thoughtless impetuous chap but he’s really very sweet. You mustn’t be hard on him.’
‘I don’t know anything about him.’
‘You’re like Miles, you’re so uncompromising. I think it makes you just a little too severe sometimes.’
‘Sorry!’
‘Danby’s a very affectionate person and I think he’s a bit lonely. I suspect he hasn’t really talked to a woman for ages. He imagines he’s a bit keen on me, but I can manage him. It’s just the first shock! I know he plays the clown a bit but he’s not a fool. There’s no drama.’
‘I didn’t think there was, Di.’
‘That’s all right then. You worry so, Lisa, and I know you don’t suffer fools gladly. You and Miles are so alike. I can’t think why you’re both so fond of
me!’
Lisa laughed and thrust her arm through her sister’s and gave it a quick squeeze. A little later as they were taking the short cut through Brompton cemetery Lisa said, ‘Seeing Bruno like that reminded me of Dad.’
‘Oh God. Lisa, I’ve thought about it sometimes, but I never liked to ask you. Were you actually with him when he died?’
‘Yes.’
‘One hates to think of these things. I’m such a coward, I was very relieved it happened when I was away. Was it rather awful?’
‘Yes.’
‘Like what?’
‘I think one almost absolutely forgets the
quality
of scenes like that.’
‘Was he–frightened?’
‘Yes.’
‘That must have been terrible for you.’
‘It’s like no other fear. It’s so
deep.
It almost becomes something impersonal. Philosophers say we own our deaths. I don’t think so. Death contradicts ownership and self. If only one knew that all along.’
‘I suppose one is just an animal then.’
‘One is with an animal then. It isn’t quite the same thing.’
‘He was so good earlier on in the illness.’
‘He didn’t believe it earlier on, any more than we believe it now.’
‘We did try to deceive him.’
‘We were trying to deceive ourselves. It was terrible to see him realising–the truth.’
‘Oh God. What did you do?’
‘Held his hand, said I loved him–’
‘I suppose that is the only thing one would want to know.’
‘What was awful was that he didn’t want to know. We’re so used to the idea that love consoles. But here one felt that even love was–nothing.’
‘That can’t be true.’
‘I know what you mean. It can’t be true. Perhaps one just suddenly saw the dimensions of what love would have to be–like a huge vault suddenly opening out overhead–’
‘Was it–hard for him to go?’
‘Yes. Like a physical struggle. Well, it was a physical struggle, trying to do something.’
‘I suppose death is a kind of act. But I expect he was really unconscious at the end.’
‘I don’t know. Who knows what it is like at the end?’
‘What a gloomy conversation. Why, Lisa, you’re crying! Oh stop crying, darling, stop crying, for heaven’s sake!’
D
ANBY WAS STANDING
in the long grass in Brompton cemetery. It was Wednesday afternoon.
He had gone through the day, indeed the last few days, at the works in a kind of dream. There had been the usual round of small crises which he normally rather enjoyed. The big Columbian press used for printing small issues of posters had broken down and one of the apprentices had tried to mend it with terrible results. The bingo people had changed their mind about the format when the cards were already printing. The safety hand of the guillotine had gone wrong so that they were breaking the law now every time they used it. The lorry delivering the lead had backed into a stack of paper and ruined it. A reproduction of a modern picture in a local magazine had been printed upside down. The expensive new type had arrived for one of the composing machines and the bill was exactly twice the estimate. One of the girls in the packing department had fallen off the ladder into the storeroom and broken her ankle. The elderly eccentric for whom they printed woodcuts had rung up five times about the Japanese paper. The art school from which Danby had been trying to buy an old Albion had sent a representative to discuss the sale. Danby had left early, handing everything over to Gaskin with a preoccupied indifference which amazed the latter, who thought that Danby would at least be cock-a-hoop at the prospect of getting the Albion, a very beautiful early model which he had long coveted.
Danby had been tempted to have an encouraging quick one at the Tournament or the Lord Ranelagh which had just opened their doors, but it was better to remain sober and for once he had no difficulty in doing so. Drunk or sober was much the same now. It had been raining and now a faint evening sunlight was making everything glitter. On the other side of the tall iron railings the rush hour traffic was travelling steadily, hypnotically, along the Old Brompton Road. Inside the railings the uncut grass made the cemetery look like a field, or more like a ruined city with its formal yet grassy streets and squares: Ostia, Pompeii, Mycenae. Big house-like tombs, the dwellings of the dead, lined the wide central walk which showed in a cold sunny glimpse the curve of distant pillars. In quieter side avenues humbler graves were straggled about with grass, with here and there a cleared place, a chained space, a clipped mound, a body’s length of granite chips, a few recent flowers wilting beside a name. Above the line of mist-green budding lime trees there rose far off the three black towers of Lots Road power station.
Ye are come unto Mount Zion and the city of the living God.