Iris Murdoch - An Unofficial rose

'I've been to Canterbury, he said conversationally. 'I know. You said you were going.

'Did I? Ah well. How's the ankle feeling now? Any better?

'Dreadful, Felix.

Her rare use of his name always unnerved him a little. He glanced at her, met the stare, and looked away again. Her face certainly had something of Ann: the pale colouring, the delicacy of nose and mouth, the impression of a slightly strained nobility. Only Ann's worried look was absent, that look which summed rip for Felix so much of her concern for others. Miranda's face, with its frequent expression of triumphant mockery, and now in repose a certain stony aggressiveness, suggested rather the insolence of her father; and as Felix for a second sensed what was almost like the proximity of Randall's soul, he nearly started back from her.

Feeling guilty at this thought he said jovially, 'Better rescue those dolls, you know, before you squash them completely. He reached across her thigh and tried to pull the dolls out of their uncomfortable situation.

'Don't! said Miranda. She pushed his hand away, and began to lift the dolls out herself. She shook each one crossly as she did so as if to punish it.

How clumsy I am with children, thought Felix ruefully. I expect I simply annoy her, and am doing myself no good at all. He touched the doll in his pocket. He felt a little shy about giving it to her. She sat now looking at the dolls with an expression of apathy. Felix said, 'I'm going to Grayhallock tonight. Can I fetch you anything? Any more of the — er — little princes?

'No, thank you. She added fiercely, still looking at the dolls, 'I wish beastly Grayhallock didn't exist. .

'Come, come! said Felix, surprised and a little shocked by this outburst. 'Why have you got it in for poor old Grayhallock?

'Nothing ever happens there, said Miranda.

Felix thought this was an odd judgement, considering recent events. 'I should have thought where you were things would always be happening. In that, you take after your father, he continued to himself. God help the young men who love you. And those you love.

She just shook her head and posed the dolls upon the rug, spreading out their skirts.

'Whatever possessed you anyway to jump out of that tree? said Felix. He felt a sudden irritation with the hostile young person, an embryonic desire to spank her. He had not liked her remark about her home.

Miranda looked at him, and he saw in her face some strange reassembling of inner elements, like the moving of stage scenery behind a gauze curtain. She looked alert, wary, older.

She said after a moment, 'I felt, just then, entirely indifferent to life. Does that surprise you?

Felix was irritated still further by the complacent formality of her tone. 'Not particularly, he said. 'Very young people often think they feel something of the sort. Though I doubt if you were really indifferent. All the same, he thought, she did risk her life.

'Was it very naughty of me? she said, with an affected childishness which seemed to invite reproof.

'Yes, I think it was, said Felix. 'You might have seriously damaged yourself or someone else, and you scared your mother out of her wits.

'Yes, I was very bad, said Miranda with satisfaction. 'Don't you think my mother is an awfully sweet person.

Felix restrained a desire to slap her. 'Yes, charming, he said. Then, in case she should make some further insufferable remark, he said, 'Why all this indifference to life, anyway? In lots of ways you're a very lucky little girl. Annoyance is making me stupid, he thought. No daughter of Randall's could be a very lucky little girl.

Miranda stared at him, her big hazel eyes glistening and the new liveliness working in her face. Then she looked away and said, 'Sometimes I see no point in going on. We're all going to be blown up soon anyway. I'd rather die young in my own way than die slowly of radiation sickness.

Although she still spoke with a certain complacency, her words shook Felix. He was indeed being stupid with her. He only hoped she was not noticing it. 'I think, he said, 'that one should take life as o job. Just like the Army. Go where it sends one and take whatever comes next.

'But you don't do that, said Miranda, her gaze returning to him mischievously. 'You can choose your job, choose whether you go to India or stay in England.

How smart and well-informed the brat is. 'Well, I'm lucky this time, said Felix. 'It's not usually like that.

'I want to be lucky — or nothing.

'You're very young, he said, beginning to weary a little of the discussion. 'Other people are what matter about life, and that's the best reason why one just can't contract out of it. We are members olle of another, as the service says. But perhaps a child can't be expected to understand.

'Am I a child? said Miranda. Hugging the dolls now she held his gaze. Her eyes were stonily provocative.

Felix hesitated. 'Damn it, of course you are, Miranda! They both laughed.

'Which reminds me, said Felix a little awkwardly, 'I've got a present for you.

He took the doll out of his pocket and set it on Miranda's knee.

It was unexpected. Dropping the others she looked at it for a moment, her mouth slightly open. Then she looked back at Felix and there was in her eyes a dark violence which he could not decipher. He turned back to the doll and reached' out a slow hand to pick it up. She drew it towards her as if to hug it, and then let it fall in her lap. She gave a little whimper and covered her face and then laid her brow against the back of the settee. A series of little cries followed, her shoulders jerking. Then she straightened up, wiped her eyes in which there had been but few tears, and said dryly, 'Thank you, Felix. Felix watched the curious almost contrived, little storm with amazement.

He would never never understand her. He looked surreptitiously at his watch.

ANN walked slowly up the hill along the grass path between the gallicas. Behind her the thick white tower of smoke from the bonfire rose straight up into the air. It was a still day, not raining, but overcast and heavy, under a yellow sky. Ann had been lighting the bonfire, taking from the stables one of the buckets of tom paper kept for this purpose. Nothing was wasted at Grayhallock. And Nancy Bowshott was well trained in the segregation of the contents of waste-paper baskets. Now as Ann mounted she looked on either side of her under the red prickly arching stems to see if she could catch sight of Hatfield. Bowshott had reported seeing him earlier that morning, in the field just below the nursery, devouring a young rabbit.

There was, of course, no word from Randall. A friend of Clare Swann's had reported seeing him in Rome lunching in an expensive open-air restaurant with Lindsay, and Clare had passed this on, with scandalized exclamations, to Ann. The absurd intelligence had hurt her terribly of course, if Randall was in Rome with Lindsay, obviously he would be lunching with her at expensive open-air restaurants. But the vague words had stirred her imagination, and she saw the trailing canopy of vines, the cloudless radiant sky, and beneath in a dappled shade the lovers leaning together.

Ann's mind was out of her control. She had never had this sensation before and it afflicted her with a sort of sea-sickness. She was racing somewhere so fast that she could no longer focus her eyes. Her images of those she loved, her image of herself, seemed lurid, inflated and blurred. Everything was getting monstrously larger and hazier at the same time. She wished that she could rest; but the machine only whirled the faster, dazzling her and inducing a continual nausea.

Ann was by now dreadfully in love with Felix. From the moment when, after his own declaration, she had realized with a shocked surprise that she was ready to fall in love, the descent of her mind into love had taken place with the power of an avalanche. There was nothing between her and a total love of Felix, no barrier, no resting place. Once she had seen the possibility, the whole thing had been there, and with such an authority and completeness that she could now convince herself that she had loved Felix for years. Certainly the thing had been long preparing; and for all the madness of the present moment, she knew that it existed not as something crazy or trivial, but as a deep belonging of her whole personality. She fully laid claim to, she fully inhabited, her love of Felix.