Iris Murdoch - An Unofficial rose

What this conjunction would, exactly, consist in was less clear to him nor did he give it thought. He did not avert his attention from the problem of sexual desire, the problem simply did not exist for him. His image of Miranda rose like a column of flame from the pure re-created form of his new life, and he and she existed in a golden haze of love and worship and diffused desire. And in so far as he precisely pictured himself at all as keeping company with the new Miranda, he saw them wandering eternally hand in hand in some flower-scattered field of bliss.

He absented himself from breakfast that morning, partly because he felt that if he ate anything he would be sick, and partly because he wanted to see Miranda in a more spiritual atmosphere than that induced by questions about eggs and cornflakes. He wandered instead upon the lawn, waiting for her to come out, as she always did after breakfast, to see if her hedgehogs had eaten up their bread and milk in the night. When she did appear he approached her, spoke to her, followed her. She was, as usual, detached and impish, full of the rather malicious gaiety which had confounded Penn from the first; and in the midst of the acute sensations occasioned by her presence Penn was forced to suspect that she was still the unregenerate old Miranda.

Penn shook himself at this point and reproached himself. He had learnt, he told himself, an important lesson. The lover readily imagines that he and his mistress are one. He feels he has love enough for both and that his loving will can swathe the two of them together like twin nuts in a shell. But what one loves is, after all, another human being, a person with other interests, other pains, in whose world one is oneself an object among others. While Penn glided after her in tune with the music of the spheres, Miranda was more concerned about the hedgehogs and about whether Hatfield had perhaps come to steal their milk, a question upon which she condescended to ask Penn's opinion. That she so consulted him disconcerted him at first but later delighted him. He must learn, he realized, to live in the real world with Miranda.

The real world however was a thorny place. Penn at this stage pictured himself somewhat as a disciple of Courtly Love. He imagined himself Miranda's slave, devoted to her service, running errands for her or, preferably, rescuing her from terrible dangers. And he envisaged this too, though less clearly, as a process which would transform Miranda, which would, in short, make her love him. His desert, he felt, was infinite and must in time be evident and then compelling. Service would call forth love and the new Miranda would arise, an apotheosis of the sweetness and power which he so powerfully divined as hidden within the puckish gamine who, alas, sometimes enjoyed teasing and tormenting him.

But the process did not work out quite like that. At least, as Penn told himself, the early stages did not. Miranda very quickly guessed what was the matter with him. It would have been difficult not to. And when she had guessed, the tormenting and the teasing got worse. And the more she teased him the more owlish and donkey-like he felt himself becoming. He could not toss back witty remarks, he could not fence with her, he could only, with patient stupid smiles, endure the continual piercing of her wit. The injustice of the situation tortured Penn. There was within him so much that was marvellous. If he could, even for a short while, have made Miranda quiet, he could have unfolded a seriousness and an eloquence that must have impressed her. He could have talked deeply to her. But at the superficial level at which she continually disported herself he was tongue-tied.

He was made very miserable by this situation, yet one inestimable blessing kept him from despair, and that was the almost continual company of his beloved. The blessed German measles quarantine turned up just at the right moment, and he could now see her every day and indeed most of the day if he dared to brave her annoyance by pursuing her. He did not cease to hope that he would make her love him; and he noted with a recurrent joy that if ever, wounded by some particularly malicious or irritable sally, he wandered away from her by himself, she would after a little time come to find him. She came, it seemed, merely to torment him more, but she came: and he could sometimes persuade himself that he loved the torment.

During all this time Penn had not of course said anything about love to Miranda. It was not only that he was not able to find, in the sparkling play of her conversation, any place for his more solemn words: he was also restrained by certain scruples. She was, after all, very young. It was easy to forget this most of the time, so ready and so sophisticated was her mastery of him. He never for a second questioned that she was far cleverer than he was. But she was younger.

And even apart from this, a sort of shame possessed him at the thought of uttering words about love. The hidden eloquence which he felt himself so marvellously to possess was not exactly about that. He felt able to tell Miranda the wonders of the universe and the secrets of the seas but not exactly to say in words that he was in love with her; Miranda was often out of temper; and at these times Penn suffered most. It was as if, almost absent-mindedly, she were taking it out of him because of pains and troubles of her own of which she would tell him nothing. Penn told himself that he must make allowances. He knew that Miranda was devoted to her father; and he conjectured that it must have been torture to her to see Randall gradually withdrawing from Grayhallock. All the same, it was difficult sometimes to be patient with her, and he wondered if perhaps his whole approach was wrong. It was the first time that he had thought explicitly about strategy, and he felt, at the first touch of the idea, ashamed, as if he were profaning something innocent. Miranda gave him no peace, however, and began at this time literally to pinch him. She would come suddenly up behind him, seize the skin of his Ann or some other part of him between her little pincer-like fingers, and squeeze as hard as she could. Penn became covered with bruises. At first he was pleased and excited by this treatment. But Miranda put so much malice into the pinches and was so unpleasant if he touched her in response even so far as to push her off; that this new policy soon reduced him to a state of black almost revengeful agitation. He began to see her as a demon; and deep within him there was some darkness that gave answer.

He had not so far thought very much about touching her; at least he had not thought about it with any kind of precision. He had been content to touch her hand and her shoulder in a way which was natural, but had an added sweetness and excitement: and the thrill of her presence had affected his whole being like a warm breeze which soothed rather than disturbed. Now however it began to be different. It was as if Miranda's savage pinches were designed to awaken in him something far more primitive, and he felt, sometimes with wretcheddness and sometimes with a sort of dark zest, more depraved. The thoughts of strategy found here their context. Penn found himself wondering if it wouldn't be a good plan, if it would not perhaps further his cause, if he were to give Miranda a hard slap one of these days. Perhaps this indeed was what her treatment of him was designed to produce, perhaps she wanted him to be brutal? Before this conjecture Penn paused, first with amazement and then with a sort of pride. He was in deep waters. But he was shocked to find, now that it was suddenly released, how much sheer animosity he had in him against his young mistress. With this release, terrible, black, new, came sexual desire. Penn had imagined earlier that he was suffering. But those had been pure flames. Now he lay tossing sleepless in bed and imagined her body. Guilt now blackened his vision and complicated his pain. His desires grew hideously precise; and in the dark stream of his new yearning it was as if he were back at the beginning again and the real Miranda had disappeared. Only that had been heaven whereas this was hell. The first Miranda had been a heavenly vision. The last Miranda was a doll of flesh.