Айрис Мердок - A Severed Head

In so far as it was possible to do so I thought about Honor the whole time. She filled my consciousness to the brim. She became the atmosphere which I lived and breathed. I endlessly went over our various encounters in my mind and marvelled at how necessarily and how vastly she now, after so little acquaintance, existed for me. But what I chiefly clung to was one thing: she had not told Palmer about the scene in the cellar. At least she had not then told him; and with that, as my thoughts ran frantically again through the same circuit, I measured with despair the gap between then and now. Then I had been free and thought that she was. Now I was caught, and somehow more profoundly and irrevocably caught than before, while she – I did not know what to think. At times I attached importance to the idea that Palmer had, through his relation to Antonia, been trying to free himself from a burdensome obsession. At other times I felt equally certain that the strange pair, after Palmer's abortive experience, had become even more united. In any case there was nothing I could do. I did not seriously envisage leaving Antonia. I had her, and definitively so, on my hands. Nor did I even know, though this was somehow the least of my concerns, exactly what picture of me was present in Honor's mind. In spite of evidence to t he contrary, and coming back again to the fact of her silence to Palmer, I was confident that I existed for Honor. Yet, and I concluded it for the hundredth time, I was powerless. And yet, starting out again for the hundred and first time, I could not stop thinking about Honor and with every reason for despair, somewhere, through some minute cranny, there filtered a ray of hope to make in the dark labyrinth of my bewildered thoughts a little dim twilight.

Of course my mind returned continually with fascination to the fact of incest. I even visited the public library and read up everything I could on the subject. The psychological literature was scanty and unsatisfactory, and I soon turned my attention to mythology where, with a curious gratification which was almost consoling, I noted the frequency of brother and sister marriages, particularly among royalty and gods. Who after all was fit for a royal brother except his royal sister? The progeny of such unions, I also noted, was various, often monstrous. When not so engaged my imagination, in an incompetent and frustrated manner, followed the liaison of Palmer and his sister back into their childhood. I reflected too, though not to much purpose, on the insane mother. What lurid illumination I thus engendered served merely to display with a vividness which prostrated me the figure of Honor, aloof, frightening, sacred, and in a way which I now more clearly understood, taboo.

It was still raining. It had been raining for days. I arrived at Hereford Square, shook the water off my overcoat and hung it up, and tramped into the drawing-room. A bright fire was burning and the lamps were all on. The curtains were not yet drawn and I could see outside the light from the window the dripping form of the magnolia tree. Antonia, who had been reading by the fire, jumped up to welcome me. She had a Martini all ready mixed, and a bowl of cocktail biscuits on the little table. She kissed me and asked me what sort of day I had had. I told her and began to sip my drink. I sat down heavily on the sofa. I was now, all the time, unutterably tired as if simply keeping alive was a terrible effort. Absentmindedly I picked up my latest volume of The Golden Bough.

'Must you read over your drink?' said Antonia sharply. 'I've been alone all day, except for Rosemary coming in this morning, which was hardly a treat.'

'Sorry,' I said. I put the book aside.

'And why are you reading mythology all the time now? You never used to. You haven't even looked at that book I got you on the war in the Pacific.'

'Sorry, darling,' I said. 'I'll read it next.' I closed my eyes. 'And don't go to sleep either,' said Antonia. 'I want to ask you to do something for me.'

'Anything you like,' I said rather sleepily. 'What?' 'Will you go and see Anderson for me?' That woke me up. 'Why?' I said. 'To achieve what? And why don't you go yourself?'

'I don't want to,' said Antonia. 'God knows what exactly I feel about Anderson. Sometimes I think I hate him. But I'm quite clear that the whole thing is utterly over.'

'Then why should I see him?' I said. But my heart burnt with desire.

'Simply to finish it off,' said Antonia. 'And there are practical things. There are a lot of my belongings at Pelham Crescent, which you might bring away, or arrange for a van to take, I suppose, as you wouldn't be able to get them all into the car.'

I said, 'Do you want me to find out whether Palmer still loves you?'

Antonia looked at me wearily, as if from far away, through infinite grey curtains of gloom and resignation. She said, 'He can't love me, or else he wouldn't have given up just because you put your fist in his eye.'

This seemed true; and I was reminded again of Antonia's innocence. Her connexion with Palmer and Honor, since she did not share in the knowledge that was crucial, seemed flimsy and abstract compared with mine. How connected I was I felt through my bones and my blood as I contemplated the possibility of seeing them again. I had known, of course, that it would come to this, I had known that I would see them again. It was perhaps just this certainty, secretly at work in my imagination, which had shed the little glimmer of hope. But, resting, I had averted my attention.

'You're sure you want me to do this, not you?' 'Yes,' she said, and sighed heavily. 'It's an unfinished business. I shall be relieved when it's done and you and I can settle down to living a normal life again.'

She sounded so dejected that I got up and leaning over her kissed her on the brow. I remained, leaning a little on her shoulder, my cheek touching her crown of golden hair. It was fading into grey. One day, without having noticed the transition, I would see that it was gold no longer.

Once it had been settled that I should go on an embassy to Pelham Crescent I wanted to put it off as long as possible. When it came to it I was scared stiff. It was not just that I was positively frightened at the idea of perhaps seeing Honor again, and that when I pictured being in the same room with her my whole body became cold and rigid. It was also that this embassy represented in all probability my last chance. My last chance of what I was not very clear about, but certainly fear, curiosity, expectation, even hope clung about the prospect of the visit. Though if I believed in a miracle I could not at all conceive what that miracle might be. So it was that I played a little for time. I could, in the darkness and uncertainty into which we had been plunged by the mute withdrawal of the other two, just about do with, live with, the image of Honor: an image which might however become for me at any moment altogether a Medusa. For deprived utterly of hope I did not see how I could manage; and feared like death that utter deprivation.

But Antonia was impatient, and I could get from her a grace of only three days. Resolved at last, she wanted to make a quick end. Our discussion had taken place on a Monday. It was agreed that I should write to Palmer simply suggesting that I should come to see him at six o'clock on the following Thursday. This gave him time to reply; and in fact I received a postcard, brief but bland, by return to say that the time was suitable. By nine o'clock on the Wednesday evening I was already in a state of almost unbearable agitation and could settle to nothing. Not even a recently discovered book of Japanese legends, wherein brothers and sisters regularly lay together and procreated dragons, could retain my attention; and I would at last in desperation have gone to the cinema, only I feared that at the sight of anything sad or touching I might break into audible groans. Antonia was equally restless and had been in a mood of nervous irritation throughout the afternoon. We both wandered morosely about the house passing and re-passing each other, profoundly connected yet unable to touch, in a silent mutually hostile way.