A Fairly Honourable Defeat (39 page)

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Authors: Iris Murdoch

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‘I wasn’t going to ask you!’ said Morgan, exasperated.
For once she was in no mood to talk to Julius, who had appeared at her flat unannounced half an hour ago. Morgan wanted to be alone just now to think about a letter which she had received that morning. Julius’s humorous malicious probing, which she remembered that she used quite to enjoy, was now causing pain and annoyance. Masochism has strict rules. Acceptable pain is on the inside of love. Of course Morgan was not disenchanted. But for the moment the circuit seemed to be switched off.
‘Have to find a job, won’t you,’ said Julius. ‘It won’t be easy. Oughtn’t you to be looking out for something?’
‘I am looking,’ she said. ‘I get the
Times Educational Supplement—
’
‘Your old job at London university folded up, didn’t it?’
‘Yes. But I’ll find something else.’
‘I suppose you’ll have to be prepared to teach in a school. You could teach French or German, couldn’t you, or Latin?’
‘I don’t want to teach in a school!’ said Morgan. ‘I’ll get a university job somewhere.’
She was sitting on the writing table. Beside her was a letter half concealed by the green malachite paper-weight. She had put it down hastily with its envelope on top of it as soon as she heard feet on the stairs. Julius had been prowling the room, examining books and papers. He had even opened her desk.
‘I hope you’re not being too optimistic. The trouble with your subject is that it isn’t one.’
‘I think we’ve had this argument before.’
‘It’s not an argument. You have nothing to say. You just get cross.’
‘I don’t get cross. You just haven’t got that sort of mind.’
‘A talent for languages—Aren’t you going to offer me a drink? It’s after eleven.’
Morgan left the table with reluctance. She left the door ajar, darted into the kitchen and came back in a minute or two with a bottle of whisky and a soda siphon and glasses. Julius was still standing in the same place. ‘My fridge isn’t working. I’m afraid there’s no ice.’
‘That’s all right. I find I don’t want ice in England. Such is the power of environment. I’m even beginning to prefer Scotch. No, no soda. Thank you. As I was saying, a talent for languages is a handy though not terribly elevated piece of mental equipment. And I personally am extremely grateful for being quadrilingual by circumstance. Knowledge of languages is something simple but of course useful and for what it’s worth, it is genuine empirical knowledge. But the attempt to find general structures or deep patterns or abstract systems beyond the rickety jumbled façade of a natural language is exactly like the attempt of the metaphysical philosopher to rest the muddle of the ordinary world upon some rational and purified original: idle, misguided, vain.’
‘You don’t deny causality in language—’ said Morgan. She was determined not to get cross this time. She wished heartily that he would go.
Julius sat down in one of the armchairs, banished a cushion and made himself comfortable. ‘Causality, yes. If you mean something like Grimm’s law or Verner’s law. But these are the merest observations of surface regularities and are ultimately extremely boring. Language is a reasonably useful jumble with an in-built capacity to manoeuvre itself. These manoeuvrings can be watched, I don’t deny. But they are merely what they are. There is nothing behind them. To imagine that there is, is the familiar childishness of the metaphysician here rather gracelessly masquerading as a science.’
‘You seem singularly uninterested in the facts,’ said Morgan. ‘Linguistics is not an
a priori
system, it is a natural extension of philology. It derives from empirical studies of just those “manoeuvrings” you spoke of so lightly. Why should language be a mountain of accidents? Nothing else in the world is. Any theory tries to explain, or at least to display, multiplicity by conjecturing deep pattern. Of course linguistic theories are hypotheses, but they are hypotheses in the scientific sense.’
‘I doubt if your fellow theorists would agree,’ said Julius. ‘I suspect they fancy that they are philosophers or mathematicians or something, and that because human thought is largely verbal they have plumbed its mysteries if they have invented what they imagine to be an ur-language. In fact if one opens their extremely dull book one finds that they usually cannot even write the natural language of their choice.’
‘No one denies that glossematics is in its infancy—’
‘ “Glossematics”! Of course there has to be a pseudo-scientific name. Phonetics I suppose is about something. Semantics is beginning to lose contact with reality. Glossematics is where we really take off! Oh the bemused vanity of human beings! In all their tens of thousands of years of miserable toil the only genuine discovery they have made is mathematics, a discovery incidentally which will very soon finish them off altogether. And whatever they grub about they pretend if they possibly can to find mathematics at the bottom of the hole. The poor Greeks were typical. And you—really make me laugh—with the intellectual equipment of a sixth-form mistress or a literary critic, giving yourself airs because you imagine that you are manipulating an algebra of language!’
‘At any rate you must admit that comparative philology—’
‘Now you’re getting cross. Yes, yes, languages are useful. And I suppose genitives and subjunctives and such are even interesting to some people. The trouble with you, Morgan, is that you don’t know who you are. The metaphysical search is always a sign of neurosis. Look at Rupert, for instance.’
‘Rupert—’ Morgan’s hand touched the paper-weight and the surface of the envelope.
‘At a superficial glance Rupert looks like a monument to patriotic toil and virtuous family life. But look closer and you will see a tormented man, a seeking man, a misfit. That book of his—well, you know I don’t think highly of that enterprise—but its existence is a symptom of some deep grief, and that is what is really attractive about Rupert. If he were as comfortable and as satisfied as he sometimes seems he would be intolerable.’
‘You think he’s—restless?’ said Morgan. She was quiet and attentive now, studying Julius’s vague beaming countenance. He was still sipping his whisky, as if licking it out of the glass with a delicate tongue, and glancing round the room as he talked with an air of enjoyment.
‘He ought to have married an intellectual. That’s part of the trouble. Not that he doesn’t do his best. He’s a loyal soul.’
‘I think Hilda and he are—very well suited,’ said Morgan.
‘Phrases as conventional as that can hardly state facts! Oh, they both do their best. I was amused though that Rupert didn’t think fit to tell Hilda that he’d lent you four hundred pounds! It shows he has his little prevarications.’
‘That’s true,’ said Morgan. ‘And Hilda never told Rupert that she was subsidizing Peter.’
‘Well, these little weaknesses are endearing. But I feel a bit sorry for Rupert. There’s a lost soul there crying for something stronger and more spiritual than dear old Hilda’s solid common sense.’
‘A happy marriage is often based on somebody’s common sense.’
‘Oh yes. Arrangements like that can last forever, and it’s probably just as well if they do. Good heavens, I’m not suggesting Rupert’s marriage is rocky! It would have to be a strong inducement that would make
him
break out. No one will ever hear that wild sad voice with which he wails silently within.’ Julius got up and put his empty glass on the bookshelf, pushing the books back.
‘Hilda is a marvellous wife,’ said Morgan. She felt a little confused and fuzzy. Words seemed to be meaning something different.
‘Hilda is a darling and she’s a very wifey wife. Cosiness is much. Perhaps cosiness is all. It’s only outsiders like you and me who affect to despise it. And perhaps that’s just because we can’t have it.’
‘Outsiders, yes. I am an outsider,’ said Morgan.
‘You’re an unfettered nomad. Rupert admires you enormously, by the way. He was singing your praises the other night when I saw him at the club.’
‘Really?’
‘He sees you as a sort of eagle. Or perhaps it was a hawk. Some sort of ornithological simile anyway. I couldn’t entirely follow it, but it was certainly meant to be flattering.’
‘Did he say—’
‘Dear me, look at the time, I must be going. I believe we’re friends now, aren’t we?’
‘Yes, please!’
‘I don’t usually go in for friendships with women, but I dare say I can stretch a point. We must meet now and then and have a gossip. Do you think I’ll get a taxi in the Fulham Road?’
‘Yes, just start walking towards South Ken station.’
‘Well, that’s all right.
Auf wiedersehen.
And I hope that nice university job turns up.’
After Julius had gone Morgan’s fingers instinctively sought Rupert’s letter. She began to pull it out from underneath the envelope. But she already knew its contents by heart. The incredible, the impossible had happened. ‘No one will ever hear that wild sad voice …’ I have heard it, she thought. I have heard it and now nothing will ever be the same again.
CHAPTER THREE
 
‘PUT THE TWO CHAIRS THERE,’ said Julius.
Simon moved the chairs.
‘Now unlock the door.’
‘It isn’t locked,’ said Simon.
‘Good. Well, now we go inside.’
‘I don’t understand!’ said Simon miserably.
‘Come, come. I promised you a puppet show. You will be immensely diverted. Inside, little one, I’ll follow you. Then we shall sit upon the floor and talk. Quickly now, while no one is about.’
Simon pushed the door. It was a big handsome door designed by Robert Adam soon after his return from Italy in 1785. It had once been in a baronet’s mansion in Northamptonshire. It was now in Room 14 of the Prince Regent Museum.
The door was flanked by delicate
scagliola
pilasters, the panelling on either side of which was blood red, covered with elaborate symmetrical spidery patterns of shells and flowrets and creamy ovals containing dramas of nymphs and satyrs. A large medallion above the door showed Venus playfully depriving a chubby Cupid of his bow. This section of wall, with the door in the middle, was squared off with larger pilasters of a rich Pompeian green round the corners of which there were, on either side, two further painted panels portraying the revels of some disgustingly precocious baby fauns. The whole piece thus jutting out into the room, though sliced off and rather arbitrarily put together, provided a distinguished example of the neo-classical style. It also provided an excellent hiding place.
Behind Robert Adam’s door, between the panelling and the museum wall, there was a space of some four feet, open at the top and enclosed on the three other sides by the spoils of the baronet’s house. Inside this box, once the door was closed, it was dusky but not dark because of the light coming in from above. Simon was completely mystified. He had done what Julius asked him to do because Julius had insisted. Julius’s will had simply taken him captive.
‘There’s a packing case for us to sit on, what luck,’ said Julius in a low voice. ‘You sit at that end. I’ll sit here and, yes, there’s a splendid spy hole. I thought there might be. Now we won’t have to rely just on our ears. I can see the door perfectly. I don’t imagine many people come to study neo-classical interiors at ten-thirty in the morning, do they, Simon?’
‘No,’ said Simon. He found himself whispering. Julius had drawn him down on to the packing case beside him. ‘But what on
earth—
?’
‘The two chairs which you so kindly rearranged are just a few feet away from us. They should prove irresistible, don’t you think? Our puppets are sure to sit on them.’
‘Julius, I don’t
understand
—’ This is some sort of grotesque nightmare, thought Simon. It’s something ridiculous and horrible. Here I am inside this false façade in a room in the museum sitting on a packing case beside Julius. I ought to say no to it all. But what
is
it all?
‘You soon will, my pretty. Two people whom you know will shortly appear on our little stage. And you will witness a love scene which may surprise you.’
‘Julius, I don’t want to, let me go—’
Julius’s hand was round his shoulder, firmly pressing him down. ‘Sssh, you can’t go now, it would spoil it, I won’t let you. I am procuring you a rare amusement, sweet boy. You ought to be grateful.’
‘But what
is
it?’
‘Just a midsummer enchantment. Be quiet now and wait. Quiet, quiet.’
In the silence that followed Simon listened to his own quick breathing and to the deep drumming of his heart. He was closely pressed up against Julius in the half dark. He realized that Julius, one arm still weightily round his shoulder, had captured his hand and was now very lightly scratching the palm of it. Simon’s head was swimming.
There was a sound outside. Someone had entered the room. There was a slight resonant sound of footsteps, the steps of a woman. Then a sigh. Simon twitched slightly, releasing his hand which Julius gently relinquished. After a short while there were more footsteps, heavier, a man this time. Someone spoke very close by. Simon gasped and clapped his hand over his mouth. It was Rupert’s voice.

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