Iris Murdoch - The Black Prince

They were shooting pigeons. What an image of our condition, the loud report, the poor flopping bundle upon the ground, trying helplessly, desperately, vainly to rise again. Through tears I saw the stricken birds tumbling over and over down the sloping roofs of warehouses. I saw and heard their sudden weight, their pitiful surrender to gravity. How hardening to the heart it must be to do this thing: to change an innocent soaring being into a bundle of struggling rags and pain. I was looking at a ship's funnel and it was yellow and black against a sky of tingling lucid green. Life is horrible, horrible, horrible, said the philosopher. When I realized that I had missed the train I rang the number of my London flat and got no reply.

«All things work together for good for those who love God,» said Saint Paul. Possibly: but what is it to love God? I have never seen this happening. There is, my dear friend and mentor, some hard– won calm when we see the world very detailed and very close: as close and as vivid as the newly painted funnels of ships on a sunny evening. But the dark and the ugly is not washed away, this too is seen, and the horror of the world is part of the world. There is no triumph of good, and if there were it would not be a triumph of good. There is no drying of tears or obliteration of the sufferings of the innocent and of those who have undergone crippling injustice in their lives. I tell you, my dear, what you know better and more deeply than I can ever know it. Even as I write these words, which should be lucid and filled with glowing colour, I feel the very darkness of my own personality invading my pen. Only perhaps in the ink of this darkness can this writing properly be written? It is not really possible to write like an angel, though some of our near-gods by heaven-inspired trickery sometimes seem to do it.

Later on the empty lighted street was like a theatre set. The black wall at the end of it was a ship's hull. The stone of the quay and the steel of the hull touched each other and I sat upon the stone and leaned my head against the hollow steel. I was in a shop lying under the counter with a woman, and all the shelves were cages containing dead animals which I had forgotten to feed. Ships are compartmental and hollow, ships are like women. The steel vibrated and sang, sang of the predatory women, Christian, Marigold, my mother: the destroyers. I saw the masts and sails of great clippers against a dark sky. Later I sat in Temple Meads station and howled inside myself, suffering the torments of the wicked under those pitiless vaults. Why had no one answered the telephone? A train after midnight took me away. Somehow I had managed to break the blue-and-white china urn. I left the fragments in the compartment when I got out at Paddington.

I was at Christian's house where they had taken Priscilla. Later I was with Rachel in a garden. This was no dream. And somebody was flying a kite.

I found a note from Rachel waiting, and Rachel herself came early, very early, soon after I had arrived, to tell me what had happened: how Priscilla had become upset, how Christian had telephoned, how Arnold had come, how Francis had come. When I failed to appear Priscilla had become as fretful as a little child awaiting its tardy mother, tears, fears. Late in the evening Christian had carried Priscilla off in a taxi. Arnold and Christian had laughed a great deal. Rachel thought I would be angry with her. I was not. «Of course you could do nothing if they decided otherwise.»

«It's not a plot, Bradley, don't look like that.»

«He's furious with us.»

«He thinks you're holding Priscilla as a hostage!»

«I am holding Priscilla as a hostage!»

«Whatever happened to you? Priscilla was terribly upset.»

«I missed the train. I'm very sorry.»

«Why did you miss the train?»

«Why didn't you telephone?»

«How guilty he looks! Look, Priscilla, how guilty he looks!»

«Poor Priscilla thought you'd been run over or something.»

«You see, Priscilla, we told you he'd turn up like an old bad penny.»

«Be quiet everybody, Priscilla's trying to say something.»

«Bradley, don't be cross.»

«Silence for Priscilla!»

«Did you get my things?»

«Sit down, Brad, you look awful.»

«I'm sorry I missed the train.»

«It's going to be all right.»

«I did telephone.»

«Did you get my things?»

«Dear Priscilla, don't throw yourself around so.»

«I'm afraid I didn't get your things.»

«Oh I knew it would go wrong, I knew it would, I knew it would, I told you so!»

«What happened, Bradley?»

«Roger was there. We had a chat.»

«A chat!».

«You're on his side now.»

«Men always stick together, dear.»

«I'm not on his side. Did you want me to fight him?»

«You talked to him about me.»

«Of course I did!»

«They agreed that women were hell.»

«Well, women are hell!»

«Is he unhappy?»

«Yes.»

«Was the house all dirty and awful?»

«Yes.»

«But what about my things?»

«He said he'd send them on.»

«But didn't you bring anything, not anything?»

«He said he'd pack them up.»

«Did you ask him specially about the jewels and the mink?»

«He'll send everything on.»

«But did you ask him specially?»

«It's all right, it's going to be all right.»

«Yes, I did!»

«He won't sent them, I know he won't-«Priscilla, will you please get dressed?»

«He won't send my things ever, he won't, he won't, I know he won't, I've lost them forever and ever!»

«I'll wait for you downstairs. Then we can both go home.»

«Those jewels are all I've got.»

«Oh but Priscilla's going to stay here with me.»

«Did you look for them, did you see them?»

«Priscilla, get up, get dressed.»

«Aren't you, darling, going to stay here with me?»

«Bradley, you mustn't talk to her like that.»

«Brad, be reasonable. She needs medical attention, she needs psychiatric help, I'm going to engage a nurse-«She doesn't need a nurse, for Christ's sake.»

«You know you're not a looker-after, Bradley.»

«Priscilla-«After all, look what happened yesterday.»

«I think I must go,» said Rachel who had so far said nothing, still smiling vaguely as at secret thoughts.

«Oh please don't go.»

«Is it too early for a drink?»

«You are not going to take over my sister. I will not have her pitied and patronized.»

«No one's pitying her!»

«I pity her,» said Francis.

«You can just shut up, you're leaving here in three minutes, the real doctor is coming and I don't want you arsing around-«Come on, Priscilla.»

«Steady on, Bradley, maybe Chris is right.»

«And don't call her Chris.»

«You can't have it both ways, Brad, disown me and-«Priscilla is perfectly well, she just needs to pull herself together.»

«Bradley doesn't believe in mental illness.»

«Well, neither do I as it happens, but-«You are all persuading her she's ill, while what she needs-«Bradley, she needs rest and quiet.»

«Is this rest and quiet?»

«Brad, she's a sick woman.»

«Priscilla, get up.»

«Brad, do stop shouting.»

«I think I really must go.»

«You do want to stay here with me, don't you, darling, you said so, you want to stay with Christian?»

«He won't send my things, I know he won't, I'll never see them again, never.»

«It's going to be all right.»

In the end Rachel and Arnold and Francis and I left the house together. At least, I just turned and walked out, and the others followed somehow.

Out in the street some blackness boiled in my eyes. Sun, filtered through hazy cloud, dazzled me. People loomed in front of me in bulky shadowy shapes and passed me by like ghosts, like trees walking. I could hear the others hurrying after. I had heard them clattering down the stairs, but I did not look round. I felt sick.