Authors: Iris Murdoch

A Fairly Honourable Defeat (30 page)

BOOK: A Fairly Honourable Defeat

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‘It does mean something,’ she said.

‘It’s not just part of that—vision—or whatever it was you had just now? It is a real thing in the ordinary world?’

‘Yes, Peter, it is a real thing in the ordinary world. Perhaps we’re both a little—suffering from shock. But it is real, my dear, and it’s good. It’s part of the good that I saw—only this isn’t just an apparition.’

‘Then kiss me again.’

She kissed him slowly, more gently. ‘Dear, dear child.’

‘You see me as a child?’

‘Inevitably in a way. I’ve known you as a child. And yet also of course you’re not. You are so big, so tall. You are a stranger to me. And a man.’

‘I’ve never been in love, Morgan. Oh I’ve had girls, that’s different. But I’ve never really been in love.’

‘You will be.’

‘I think I am now.’ He took her by the shoulder, frowning, not letting her draw away.

‘No, no. This is something else. It—’

‘Why not? I’ve always loved you. I could never tell you before. I didn’t in that sense know before. But now I’ve grown up, and my love for you has grown up too.’

‘That’s how it seems to you, but—’

‘I want you terribly. Would you let me make love to you? Morgan, please, here, now, in this magic place. It’s obviously
meant.
And you said this was part of the other thing, its real part. We must make love, please, please. It would be a crime not to.’

Morgan felt her head spinning again. She desired Peter, she wanted intensely to let him make love to her, here, now, in this magic place. But she felt with equal intensity, though entirely without clarity, the imposition of a veto. ‘No.’

‘Why not? We aren’t conventional people. No one would ever know. And it needn’t ever happen again if you don’t want. But it
must
happen now, it
must.
’

Morgan held her head in her hands. She thought, is that awful giddiness going to begin again? If only she could speak to him clearly, it was so important, what she wanted at that moment to try to say. ‘Wait, wait—’

‘Peter, listen,’ she said at last. ‘I love you. That’s the essential thing, the thing that’s revealed. I won’t stop loving you. But if we make love it will all be different, there’ll be a story, a drama—’

‘Well, why not? I’m mad about you, Morgan.’

‘You mustn’t be.’

‘Whyever not? You’re not so much older than me, and even if you were—You’re my mother’s sister, but that’s what’s so marvellous. You’re like my mother and yet you’re quite different. That makes you perfect.’

‘Oh Peter, Peter—’

‘I know about all that old stuff. But what matters is whether there’s real deep love, love that comes from the whole person. I love you in this whole way. Morgan, darling, let’s make love, I know you want to, I
know.
’

‘Peter, please, let’s
think.
’ She stared at him, her two hands clutching her head, moving her head a little to and fro as if it were an alien object. ‘Yes, I do want you. You’re beautiful and young and dear. But there’s something much more important at stake here. There’s something to
win.
’ If only she could find the eloquence, if only she could
see,
and that would bring the eloquence.

‘I
am
in love. And you’re the special one, the real one. With the others it was just casual and rotten. Now I feel—’

‘Stop it, Peter. Listen. You’re thinking of yourself. Think about me. You may not feel any gap between us, but I feel it. I feel responsible—oh all right, but I was going to say it isn’t that. It’s something very much deeper that I need and that you, and possibly only you, can give me.’

‘What is it, Morgan? If I can give it I’ll give it.’

‘Innocent love.’

Peter was silent, frowning at her against the sun. ‘Does that mean not going to bed?’

Morgan burst into sudden peals of laughter. Peter continued to frown.

‘Oh Peter, you make me so happy. Don’t you see that? Don’t you see that
that’s
the essential thing? Love-making seems so vital to you because you haven’t done much of it. I’ve probably done too much. No, I know it is important, but just now I feel so selfish, so intelligently selfish. I couldn’t see clearly before but now I see. Peter, I’ve been so terribly unhappy and so terribly muddled. Well, you know. I feel that if I could only have someone to love innocently, someone to look after a little, someone for whom I was a bit responsible in a natural sort of way, it would do me so much good. You said just now that I was “perfect”. Well, for me, you’re perfect too, you just fit you see, you fit the role, you’re exactly what I need. When I came home I thought Hilda, family, to be looked after, but it wasn’t enough. I just felt excluded, however kind you all were, I felt I was on the outside of your real concerns. But now
you
can let me in. We’ll love each other, innocently, with a
happy
love. Oh Peter, I’ve never in my life had a happy love. Let me have it here. Please understand.
Please.
’

She reached out and tried to grasp him, but Peter’s hand was unresponsive. He was still frowning. ‘You haven’t answered my question, Morgan. Does this plan of yours mean not going to bed?’

‘Yes.’

Peter’s frown gradually cleared. He began to look rueful. He said, ‘Oh dear.’

Morgan began to laugh again, and found that she was suddenly shedding tears, happy tears. ‘Oh darling Peter, don’t be angry. You’ll find wonderful girls. But I’ll always be special. And you’ll always be special for me.’

‘You mean that “always”?’ he said. ‘You said you’d go on loving me. You will, won’t you? I feel now I couldn’t bear it if you ever stopped.’

‘Of course I’ll go on loving you, sweet dear child. No, no, don’t be angry. This must be a
good
place, an invulnerable place. Something not threatened by time and change. Don’t you see how important this could be for both of us?’

‘I think you could help me—a lot.’

‘I think you could help me too. You have helped me.’

‘Morgan, you’re crying.’

‘It’s odd, I feel suddenly released. It’s so moving. I’ve felt shut in for such a long time—shut in by nightmares and shut in by sort of—excitement. But this isn’t nightmares or excitement, it’s real, it’s something
free.
’

‘Free. I suppose if it’s free it must be good.’

‘Of course, that’s just what I mean. Let us be good to each other, Peter. Human beings are so mechanical, certain relations, certain situations, inevitably make one behave rottenly. This one can do the opposite. We can be a blessing to each other. We’re
framed
to do each other good. You do see now?’

‘Yes,’ he said, still a little dubiously.

‘Then you agree? It’s a compact?’

‘I hope it’s not in the compact that I can’t even kiss you.’

Morgan seized him round the neck.

A few minutes later they were walking back hand in hand along the green grassy track towards the car.

Morgan’s tears of joy were dry upon her cheek. She thought,
this
is happiness,
this.
I’d forgotten what it felt like. Happiness is free innocent love. It’s so different from everything else that I’ve been up to almost all of my life. The rest remains, tangled, awful, the decisions to be made, the pain to be caused and suffered, the unpredictable edicts of the gods, the machine. But this is outside the machine. This is felicity, blessing, luck, sheer wonderful utterly undeserved luck. It can come to me after all. Oh
good!

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

‘I DON’T THINK you can
quite
wear that with that, dear,’ said Simon to Morgan.

Morgan had called in unexpectedly. She rang up from Barons Court station and then came round. She had been at a cocktail party near by, she said, but got bored and wanted to see Simon. It was half past six and Axel was not yet home. Simon was delighted.

Morgan was sitting beside him on the yellow sofa in the diminutive drawing room. She was rapidly consuming a glass of gin. She was flushed and perhaps faintly tipsy. She seemed to be rather elated.

She fingered the necklace of dark amber beads. She was wearing a silk dress of a dark blue and scarlet zigzag pattern. A small tasselled blue velvet cap sat, a little awry, on the back of her head, making her steel-rimmed spectacles and her clever face seem to belong to some handsome learned Jewish boy.

‘The beads? I thought they’d go all right with the dress.’

‘With a strongly patterned dress like that you shouldn’t really wear any jewellery, darling. It just confuses the effect.’

‘Dearest Simon, you were always on at me about my clothes in the old days, remember? And you were always quite right of course. I haven’t really got the faintest idea how to dress.’

‘Let me plan your wardrobe!’

‘I’d love that! You are so clever at making things pretty. Look at the way you’ve arranged those artificial flowers on the mantelpiece. ’

‘They aren’t artificial, they’re dried.’

‘Well, look at them anyway. And those yellow roses in the black vase with eucalyptus and iris leaves or whatever they are. Who would have thought of that?’

‘Montbretia, actually. I got them from Rupert’s garden. It’s a fallacy that roses have to be by themselves.’

‘Darling Simon, you always make me want to laugh so. I am so glad to see you. How happy you make me feel!’ Thrusting out the hand containing the glass and spilling a little upon the carpet she leaned forward and kissed his cheek. Simon hastened to kiss her back. More gin got spilt.

‘I hear you took Peter to Cambridge yesterday.’

‘Yes. He saw his supervisor. He’s going to be good.’

‘You mean he’ll go back in October?’

‘Yes, of course he will. I don’t think he was ever serious about not going back.’

‘I think he was. I think you’re a miracle worker.’

‘No, no. Just a little sense and a little affection. I’m afraid Peter was very naughty to you the other day, wasn’t he.’

‘Oh, I’ve forgotten all about that.’

‘I doubt if you have, Simon. I wouldn’t if I were you. Shall I make Peter apologize to you? I can make him do anything I want these days.’

‘Oh heavens no, Morgan, let it drift. I’ll make my own peace with Peter. And I’m not such a sensitive plant as you imagine. I’ve had plenty of experience of being sneered at!’

‘Poor Simon.’

‘I’m all right. I’m fine.’

‘How does married bliss really suit you, Simon? Do you never yearn for the mad old hunting days? The strange adventures you used to tell me about?’

‘No. I’m happy now.’ It was true. The old days had their charm, but only in memory. Simon felt, as he so often felt when he thought suddenly and intensely about Axel, a sort of lifting supporting tide of love. He smiled at Morgan.

‘Do you think you’re really monogamous, Simon?’

‘With Axel, yes.’

‘Ah well. Time will show. Come, I don’t mean anything by that. Give me some more gin, my dear.’

‘You’re looking so marvellous, darling, as if something divine had happened to you.’

‘I feel better,’ she said. ‘Of course there’s still so much—But I feel better. I can cope. Perhaps something divine has happened to me.’

‘What?’

‘I’ve made a discovery.’

‘Tell me! Or is it a secret?’

‘It is possible to love people.’

‘Oh. I knew that already, actually.’

‘No, but I mean really, securely, in innocence. Falling in love is something different, it’s a form of madness. I think I just didn’t realize that at this moment in time I was really capable of noticing other people at all or that I could come to care for people in a new way, in an unselfish unfrantic sort of way. I feel I’ve won a victory and I’m rather pleased with myself. There are good surprises after all.’

‘I’m not sure that I understand you,’ said Simon, ‘but it sounds splendid. I only hope that you love
me.
And I don’t even mind if you’re selfish or frantic!’

‘Of course I love you, darling. It was to tell you that that I left that stupid party.’

‘Oh Morgan—how marvellous—how terribly sweet of you. I must kiss you for that.’ Simon put his glass down on the carpet. He took Morgan’s glass carefully out of her hand and put it beside his own. Then he took her in his arms and kissed her, first laughingly. Then they both looked at each other and kissed again, gravely.

‘Dear Simon, I’ve always been terribly fond of you, you know that.’

‘And I of you. I so much wanted you to come home. Let’s love each other and look after each other a bit.’

‘How strange that you should say just that. Yes, let’s. The world is so full of violence. It’s good to find a love that’s gentle.’

BOOK: A Fairly Honourable Defeat

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