A Fairly Honourable Defeat (57 page)

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Authors: Iris Murdoch

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‘But nothing is altered, Hilda, nothing! There must be a mistake somewhere, you’ve made a mistake. I am
not
in love with Morgan, I am
not
having a love affair with Morgan—’
‘Oh do stop, Rupert. I don’t want to discuss it all. Maybe you shouldn’t have ever married me. You and Morgan are obviously ideally suited to each other. In a way I’m sorry for you, having to step over me. I won’t roll about and scream, I assure you. In fact I’ll do whatever you want, except that I think I must just go away for a little while to rest and be by myself. I suppose I shall have to learn to be in myself alone. Later on if you want me to stay in this house and keep things going I’ll do that. Only I don’t want to see Morgan any more. You must see her somewhere else and not talk to me about it. I dare say it could all settle down into some sort of—Except that, oh Rupert—how could I bear it—when we’ve been so happy—’ She began to sob, working her hands into her eyes.
‘Hilda, Hilda my darling!’ He knelt beside her now and smelt the soft familiar cosmetic smell of her body and saw the white satiny shoulder straps pressing into the plump flesh of the shoulder. The humble friendly familiarity of these things came to him with a sense of terrible doom. ‘Hilda, we will be happy again, we will—You’ll understand how it was—I’ll explain—’
‘Please go away, Rupert. I’m suffering from shock. I don’t see how I’m going to be able to live with myself any more. My whole being is connected with you, we’ve grown together. But now I see you so differently. I don’t know whether I could stay with you in a sort of pretence. And anyway Julius seems to think that everybody knows—’
‘
Julius?
Does he know?’
‘Yes. He’s been wonderfully wise and sympathetic. Oh Rupert, that everyone should see you in that horrible light—you, whom they all admired so and looked up to—and they’ll be so pleased to find out—that you’re just like they are after all—’
Rupert clutched his head in his hands. ‘Julius? How on earth could Julius have known?’
‘Oh apparently everyone does.’
‘But it’s
impossible.
Besides—’
‘Oh I’m sure you and Morgan were very careful and discreet,’ said Hilda, ‘but people are so curious and it’s not easy to conceal these things. I seem to have been the last one to find out.’ She began to brush her hair.
‘But this is just a nightmare,’ said Rupert. ‘I don’t understand. Morgan and I—it was just beginning—we only met a few times—it’s only a short while—no one could have known—’
‘A lot can happen in a short while,’ said Hilda, ‘and there can be a lot of talk. If it was, as you say, “just beginning”, you certainly got off to a flying start. Could you leave me now, please, Rupert. I’m weary weary weary of the whole thing. I think I’ll probably go away somewhere tomorrow.’
‘But you must
believe
me!’ cried Rupert. ‘It’s all become exaggerated and twisted somehow. Morgan will tell you how it was. Morgan will be horrified when she hears—’
‘She’s already heard,’ said Hilda. ‘I wrote her a long letter this afternoon and delivered it by hand. I’ve asked her not to communicate with me any more. Now go away, will you please, Rupert,
go away
, and don’t come in here tonight. You can spend the night wherever you like. And don’t worry about me. I’m not going to commit suicide or anything. I just want to be by myself. You’d better go and look after Julius. I suppose he’s still in the house.’
A door banged loudly downstairs.
‘Nothing’s—hurt really—’ said Rupert. He could hardly speak now for the utter heaviness of his whole being. ‘Nothing’s hurt, Hilda—you’ll understand—and we’ll be together always—’
‘Go away, please.’
Rupert went out of the door. He heard it being locked behind him. He went down the stairs and into the drawing room.
Julius rose politely. He was wearing Rupert’s dark blue silk dressing gown and holding a glass of whisky.
‘I hope you will forgive me for having helped myself to a drink, Rupert.’
‘Why are you—still here—’ said Rupert. The sun had stopped shining and the garden was darkening, full of dark brown sombre light. A small wind touched the roses. Julius had turned on a lamp but the room was dim.
Julius was standing, leaning forward a little, his face blurred, large and pale, smiling, his hair dry and fluffy after its immersion. ‘I quite appreciate, it’s not a very good evening. But I could hardly go away in your dressing gown, and I hesitated to choose one of your suits without consulting you. I’m afraid my own clothes are still rather damp.’
‘Did you tell Hilda I was having a love affair with Morgan?’ said Rupert.
‘No,’ said Julius. ‘I know there’s a rumour to this effect. I told Hilda not to pay too much attention to it.’
Rupert stared at Julius’s blurred face and at his big shadow on the wall. He said, ‘Something insane has happened.’
‘I know how you feel,’ said Julius. ‘Here, let me give you some whisky. Did you meet Peter, by the way?’
‘No. Was he here?’ Rupert automatically accepted the glass of whisky.
‘Yes, he was here. He left a few minutes ago. That was him banging the door.’
‘What do you mean, you know how I feel?’ said Rupert. ‘The rumour is entirely false.’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Julius.
‘Then what on earth are you talking about, and why have you been discussing the whole thing with Hilda?’
‘My dear Rupert, Hilda was anxious to discuss it with me. I did my best to reassure her. I told her that these things soon blow over and it’s better to pretend not to notice—’
‘You’ve been encouraging her to think things about me—’
‘Now don’t be ridiculous, Rupert. And please don’t get so hot under the collar. Your wife needed comfort, even perhaps advice. I told her, and I do in fact believe, that very little has happened and there is no grave cause for alarm.’
‘But
nothing
has happened.’
‘Of course, Rupert, if you say so.’
‘Don’t you believe me?’
‘Of course.’
‘It’s just a muddle, a nightmarish muddle, and I simply can’t think how this rumour—’
‘Well, you know how malicious and sharp-eyed people are. And how they love to discover faults in those they envy and admire. ’
‘But I am to blame,’ said Rupert. ‘Something has happened. Of course the rumour isn’t based on nothing. I am terribly to blame.’ He sat down.
‘It’s probably wiser to admit that to yourself,’ said Julius. ‘Why should you not be a little to blame after all? You are upset because your image of yourself is shaken and because Hilda’s image of you is shaken. A trifle chipped or cracked perhaps. You have expected too much of yourself, Rupert. No marriage is as perfect as you have imagined yours to be and no man as upright as you have posed to yourself as being. It was perhaps a pity that you chose your sister-in-law to go to bed with—’
‘But I
didn’t
—’
‘Well, never mind the details, Rupert. You have just admitted that something happened. From Hilda’s point of view the details don’t even matter all that much. She sees you utterly involved with Morgan and an idol falls to the ground. So much perhaps the better. Doubtless things can never be quite as before, but your marriage can continue and be no worse than the next man’s. A little realism, a touch of shall we call it ironical pessimism will oil the wheels. Human life is a jumbled ramshackle business at best and you really must stop aspiring to be perfect, Rupert, especially after this latest piece of evidence! As for Morgan, the poor girl is a natural man-chaser and a hopeless muddler and self-deceiver. She sees herself as a sort of intellectual eagle, whereas she is blind with sentiment and feeble with self-indulgence. But she’s a very sweet person all the same and of course you were right to be kind to her. She’s very attractive and she needs you. In the circumstances a love affair was practically inevitable and you mustn’t blame yourself too much—’
‘But there wasn’t a—You’re deliberately confusing things—I couldn’t live like that. I couldn’t
live
like that.’
‘Like what? Without a false picture of yourself?’
‘No. In cynicism.’
‘Why use that nasty word? Let us say a sensible acceptance of the second-rate.’
‘I won’t accept the second-rate.’
‘If you stay in the same house as yourself you may have to. Come, there will be a few smiles at your expense, but why worry? The smilers merely demonstrate their own tawdriness. But human life
is
tawdry, my dear Rupert. There are no perfect marriages. There is no glittering summit. All right, Hilda will stop admiring you. But when have you really merited her admiration? Haven’t you deceived yourself, just as Morgan has deceived herself? All right, Hilda won’t love you quite as she did before. She may feel sorry for you, she may even despise you a little. And you won’t forget what you’ve learnt either, how to pretend, how to lead a double life. It’s natural to you, Rupert, you all do it. There will be those late nights at the office, and Hilda will sort of know and sort of not know, and it won’t matter anything like as much as it seems to do at the moment.’
‘Stop,’ said Rupert. ‘There’s something I can’t live without—’
‘A mirage, my dear fellow. Better the real world, however shabby, than the condition of high-minded illusion. By the way, have you been into your study in the last half hour?’
‘No.’
‘Well, I think you had better come up and see.’
‘See what?’
‘I will come with you. Come.’
Julius left the drawing room and led the way up the twilit stairs. At the door of Rupert’s study he said, ‘Prepare yourself for a shock.’ He opened the door and switched the light on.
Rupert followed him in, blinking. The room seemed to be paler, different. He stared about.
It seemed to have been snowing in the room. The floor, the chairs, the desk were covered in drifts of white. Rupert looked more closely. It was torn paper. Paper torn up into very small pieces. He picked up one of the pieces. He saw his own writing upon it.
‘Yes,’ said Julius, ‘I’m afraid it’s your book.’
Rupert picked up a few more pieces. He let them fall. He looked at the table where the stack of yellow notebooks had been.
‘I’m afraid it’s all gone,’ said Julius. ‘It was Peter. I came upstairs wondering if you’d stopped talking to Hilda and I heard this curious tearing noise in your study. He’d done about half of it when I came in.’
‘You didn’t—stop him—?’
‘How could I? I could hardly use force. I reasoned with him a little. Then in the end I helped him.’
‘
Helped
him—to destroy my book?’
‘Yes. Perhaps it was silly of me. But I could see that he was determined to finish the job, so I thought I might as well tear up one or two notebooks too. Besides, to be perfectly frank, Rupert, I don’t think it was a very good book. I don’t just mean it wasn’t true, it wasn’t even particularly clever, at least not anything like clever enough for its pretensions. You haven’t got that kind of mind. It wouldn’t have done your reputation any good.’
Rupert turned back towards the door, leaned against the doorway, switched the light out. ‘Could you go now.’
‘Not in your dressing gown, please, my dear Rupert.’
‘Take any suit—there in my dressing room—and then go. I don’t want to talk to you again tonight.’
Rupert went down the stairs. A few minutes later he heard the front door shut quietly. He turned the lamp off and stood in the dark drawing room. His body ached with misery and with tormented love for his wife. Tomorrow he would talk to Hilda. He would persuade her not to go away. But of something he knew that he would never persuade her and never persuade himself ever again. There was something which had vanished away out of the world forever.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
 
MORGAN LAID DOWN HILDA’S LONG LETTER. She had read it through carefully once. Then she tore it into small pieces.
What a long distance lies between an act and its consequences. How
could
her dreamy converse with Rupert have occasioned, have
caused
, this terrible violence? It was like the humming of a song causing an aeroplane crash. Had she deserved this awful rejoinder from Hilda and the horror of seeing Hilda’s pain? It’s all a mistake, she thought, I’ll have to explain. But now that this had happened
could
it be explained? Rupert’s love was a fact and her acceptance of it a fact. She had even started to imagine that she was in love with Rupert. And now it had all been made to look so dreadful.
How did it happen? she wondered. Hilda did not say how she knew. Axel must have told her. Morgan imagined it all. Axel’s hints, Hilda’s quick suspicion, her certainty, her taxing of Rupert, Rupert’s breakdown. That was pitiful to imagine. Rupert was, after all, so weak. How had she ever imagined him as a hero? Rupert would break down, would confess everything, would tell Hilda all the details of his love for Morgan, swear to get over it, weep probably, promise never to see Morgan again. No wonder Hilda thought it had all been so terribly serious. And this has happened because I was kind to him, she thought. It was his idea that we should meet and talk, his confidence that made it all seem permissible. And now Hilda writes to me as if I were trying to steal her husband from her.

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