Iris Murdoch - The Black Prince

«Oh, cut it out!»

«All right, all right. Sorry, Brad. Forgive me. Please forgive me. I expect I just want to suffer. I'm a masochist. I must like pain or I wouldn't go on living, I'd have taken my bottle of sleeping pills years ago, I've thought of it often enough. Oh Christ, now you'll think I'm bad for Priscilla and boot me out-«Stop making that horrible noise, I can't bear it.»

«Forgive me, Brad. I'm just a-«Try to be a man, try to-«I can't-Oh God-it's just the bloody pain-I'm not like other people, my life just doesn't work, it never has-and now you'll throw me out, and, oh God, if you only knew-«I'm going to bed,» I said. «Have you got your sleeping bag here?»

«Yes, it's-«

«Well, get into it and shut up.»

«I want to have a pee.»

«Good night!»

WL here's Arnold?»

«Gone to the library. So he says. And Julian's gone to a pop festival.»

«I sent Arnold that review. Did he say anything?»

«I never see him reading his letters. He said nothing. Oh Bradley, thank God you've come!»

I hugged Rachel in the hall, behind the stained glass of the front door, beside the hall stand, next to the coloured print of Mrs. Sid– dons which I could see through the red haze of her hair. Still imprinted on my eyes was the vision of her broad pale face as she opened the door, crumpled into an ecstasy of relief. It is a privilege to be received in this way. There are human beings who have never been so welcomed. Something of Rachel's age, of her being wean. no longer young, was visible too and touching.

«Look, come upstairs.»

«Rachel, I want to talk-«You can talk upstairs, I'm not going to eat you.»

She led me by the hand, and in a moment we were in the bedroom where I had seen Rachel lying like a dead woman with the sheet over her face. As we came in Rachel pulled the curtains and then dragged the green silk counterpane off the bed. «Now, Bradley, sit down beside me.»

We sat down rather awkwardly side by side and stared at each other. I felt the roughness of the blankets under my limp hand. The welcoming image had faded and I was rigid with confusion and anxiety.

«I just want to touch you,» she said. And she did touch me with her finger tips, lightly touching my face and neck and hair, as if I were a holy image.

«Rachel, we must know what we're doing, I don't want to behau badly.»

«Guilt would interfere with your work.» She lightly closed my eyes with her finger tips.

I jerked away from her. «Rachel, you aren't just doing this to spite Arnold?»

«No. I think I started thinking about it, somehow out of self-defence, and then that awful time, you know, in this room, you were here, you were inside the barrier as it were, and I've known you so long, it's as if you had a special role, like a knight with a charge laid upon him, my knight, so necessary and precious, and I've always seen you a little as a wise man, a sort of hermit or ascetic-«And it always gives ladies particular pleasure to seduce ascetics.»

«Perhaps. Am I seducing you? Anyway I've got to perform an act of will. Otherwise I shall die of humiliation or something. I feel it's a holy time.»

«This could be a pretty unholy idea.»

«It's your idea too, Bradley. Look where you are!»

«We are both conventional middle-aged people.»

«I'm not conventional.»

«Well, I am, I'm pre-permissive. And you are my best friend's wife. And one doesn't with one's best friend's wife-«

«What?»

«Start anything.»

«But it's started, it's here, the only question is what we do with it. Bradley, I'm afraid I do rather enjoy arguing with you.»

«You know where arguments like this end,»

«Between the sheets.»

«God, we might as well be eighteen.»

«They don't argue now.»

«Look, is all this because Arnold is having an affair with Christian? Is he having an affair with Christian?»

«I don't know and it no longer matters.»

«You still love Arnold, don't you?»

«Oh yes, yes, yes, but that doesn't matter either. He's just played the tyrant for too long. I must have new love, I must have love outside the Arnold-cage-«I suppose women of your age-'

«Oh don't start that, Bradley.»

«I just mean, naturally one might want a change, but let's not do anything-«

«Bradley, with all your philosophy, surely you know that it doesn't really matter what we do.»

I reflected. «Yes.»

«Well, you must stop being. Oh my dear, don't you see that this is somehow the point? I must see you unafraid. This is what being my knight is. That will really let me out. And it will do something great for you too. Why can't you write? Because you're all timid and repressed and tied up. I mean in a spiritual way.»

This was close to what I had thought myself. «Then are we to love each other in a spiritual way?»

«Oh Bradley, look, enough of this argument, let's undress.»

All this time we had been sitting sideways facing each other, not touching, except when the tips of her fingers lightly tapped my face, then the lapels of my jacket, my shoulders and arms as if she were putting a spell upon me.

Rachel turned away, and in a single quick contorted movement peeled off her blouse and brassiere. Naked to the waist she now regarded me. This was a very different matter.

She was blushing and her face had become suddenly more tentative. She had very full round breasts with huge brown mandalas. The unclothed body wears a very different head from the clothed body. The blush extended down her neck and faded into the deep V of mottled sunburn which stained the flesh between her breasts. Her body had an air of unexhibited chasteness. I knew that this was a most unwonted gesture. And indeed it was a long time since I had seen a woman's breasts. I looked but did not move.

«Rachel,» I said, «I am very touched and moved, but I really think this is most unwise.»

«Oh stop it.» She suddenly clasped my neck and rolled me back on the bed. There was a pushing and a scrambling and in a moment she was entirely naked beside me. Her body was hot. She was panting and her lips were against my cheek. She said, «Oh God.»

«Bradley, undress.»

«Rachel,» I said, «I am, as I say, moved. I am very grateful. But I cannot make love to you. I don't mean I don't want to, I cannot. The machinery will not work.»

«Do you always-have-difficulties?»

» 'Always' has no force here. I haven't been with a woman for many years. This privilege is unwonted and unexpected. And I cannot rise to it.»

«Undress. I just want to hold you.»

I felt appallingly cool, still seeing myself. I took off my shoes and socks, my trousers, pants and tie. Some sort of self-protective instinct made me retain my shirt, but I let Rachel with hot trembling fingers undo the buttons. As I lay in her arms quite still and physically chilled, and her hands moved timidly about me, I saw above the haze of her hair through a gap in the curtains the leaves of a tree moving about in the breeze, and I felt that I was in hell.

«You're icy cold, Bradley. You look as if you're going to cry. Don't worry, my darling, it doesn't matter.»

«It does matter.»

«It'll be better next time.»

There won't be a next time, I thought. And then I felt so overpoweringly sorry for Rachel that I really put my arms around her and drew her up against me. She gave an excited little sigh.

Then. «Rachel! Hey, where are you?» Arnold's voice below.

Like spirits of the damned pricked by the devil's fork we bounded up. I began scrabbling for my clothes which had got into a tangle on the floor. They appeared to be plaited into each other. Rachel had pulled on her blouse and skirt with no underclothes. She leaned on me as my hands still plucked vainly at inside-out trousers and her breath tickled my ear. «I'll take him down the garden.» Then she was gone, closing the door behind her. I heard voices below.