Айрис Мердок: A Severed Head

It was nearly lunch-time on the following day and I was getting very worried about Antonia. She had not returned home on the previous evening or all night. Fairly late in the evening I had telephoned her mother and one or two friends, but could pick up no trace of her. I rang Rosemary's flat, but there was no reply. I sat up with a bottle of whisky expecting her to come, and had fallen into a deep sleep lying on the sofa. I woke stiff and desolate in the early hours of the morning. At seven I rang Rosemary again, and Rembers on the off-chance, but could get no answer. At nine o'clock I telephoned the hairdresser and was told that Mrs Lynch-Gibbon had had no appointment with them recently. I concluded that Antonia must have changed her hairdresser; or else she had been lying. I could not bring myself to ring Palmer.

At about ten o'clock the bell rang, but it was only the removal men with the rest of the furniture from Lowndes Square. They carried it in, and managed to knock a chip off the Carlton House writing table while bringing it through the door. After they had gone I stood sadly beside the thing, licking my finger and dabbing it on the scar to darken the wood. Then I got some polish and rubbed it all over, but without persuading it to settle down. It retained a derelict temporary air as if it thought it was already at Sotheby's. The room had never recovered.

I did some telephoning, including calls to local police stations to inquire about accidents, and still to no avail. Just after eleven the telephone rang, but that was Mytten ringing up about the hock. I was, to an extreme and irrational degree, upset and worried. It was not like Antonia to disappear without warning, and I could not help imagining her lying unconscious in a hospital bed or floating face down in the Thames. The quality of the anxiety brought back to me my frantic distresses as a child about any prolonged absence of my mother; and as then, I tried to comfort myself by saying: in an hour, in two hours, she will have returned, everything will be explained, everything will be as usual. But meanwhile the minutes ticked silently past without bringing any news.

Of course it was true, and this was the proof of it, that my marriage was still in many ways very much alive. It may sound abject, but I came home from Honor wanting to be comforted by Antonia. I had made her Martini as usual, expecting her soon after six o'clock. There is no substitute for the comfort supplied by the utterly taken-for-granted relationship; and after all, in spite of all that had happened, Antonia and no one else was my wife. It did not occur to me to reflect that there was anything illogical in this; and indeed there was nothing illogical'.

When I left Honor I was in extreme pain, a pain produced by our last exchanges. However, as I sat waiting for Antonia and before I began to be anxious, I had been invaded rather by a profound exhilaration. Considering the extreme difficulties and dangers of the enterprise the interview had not gone too badly. I was impressed by the fact that Honor had been willing to talk at all. I was pretty certain that she had even now not told Palmer of my condition. I recalled with delight her trembling hand. She had told me that she intended to give me no hope. But she had, effectively, given me hope; and she was no fool. Of course I knew soberly that it was a small, a very small hope. But when one is in love a little light shines a long way. What I most needed was a sense of reprieve. I could not believe that Honor and Palmer were really going away, far away or for long; and I was certain that I should see her again. Of the claims of my wife and of her brother I made, by a double method of thought, nothing; either I would lose Honor, in which case all would be as before, or else, per impossible, I would gain her, and this would create a new heaven and a new earth and the utter sweeping away of all former things. I would be a new person; and if she were relentlessly to draw me I would come to her even if I had to wade through blood. To this soliloquy my worries about Antonia broke in; and it was not until nearly noon on the following day, when sheer exhaustion brought about a pause, that my thoughts returned fully to Honor, and I thought of her words about the severed head. I had been glad on the previous day to reflect that I had not sent her my original letter in which my behaviour had been, in such dreary terms, explained. I did not love her as a substitute for Palmer, whom I loved because he had seduced my wife: I was certain of that; and I had as little sympathy for her own method of explanation. I did not love her because incest inspired irrational horror; although, as I thought, I knew that the scene in Cambridge was something still active and scarcely touchable in my imagination, something unassimilated and dangerous. I closed my eyes and saw again what I had seen then.

There was a flurry at the door and Antonia came running into the room. I leapt up, both relieved and oddly frightened to see her. I ran to her and shook her shoulders. She laughed as I did so, and then took off her hat and coat and threw them on a chair. She looked elated, almost drunk. I stared at her in amazement.

I said, 'Damn you, I've been nearly off my head. Where were you?'

'Darling,' said Antonia. 'We're going to have a drink now, a nice big one. Just be patient. I'll tell you everything. I'm sorry I couldn't let you know. But you'll see. Sit down and I'll get the glasses.'

I sat down on the sofa. Now that she had come back I felt only weariness and irritation. I decided I had better go off to bed. Last night's comatose sleep had done me no good.

Antonia sat beside me, put the drinks on the table, and then turned my head gently with one hand so that I faced her. Then she poured most of her drink out of her glass into mine. There was something vaguely reminiscent about the gesture. She returned to looking at me with her bright moist tawny eyes. Her hair shone like pale copper, and I could not think how I had seen her as growing old. Her reddened mouth worked with inarticulate tenderness.

'All right, all right,' I said, 'I'm glad to see you!' I took her hand.

'Darling,' said Antonia, 'I don't know how to say this, because I don't know how much you know.'

'Know about what?'

'About me and Alexander.'

'You and Alexander?' I said. 'Are you sure you've got the name right?'

'Oh, darling,' said Antonia, 'I'm afraid it's serious. But surely you knew? You must have known for ages.'

'Known what?'

'Well, that I and Alexander – well, to put it quite bluntly that Alexander has been my lover.'

'Oh, Christ,' I said. I got up. Antonia tried to retain my hand, but I pulled it away.

'You mean you didn't know at all?' said Antonia. 'Surely you must have guessed. I was sure you knew. Alexander wasn't so certain.'

'What a fool you must both think me.' I said. 'No, I didn't know. Of course I realized you were very fond of each other. But I didn't know this. Do you imagine I would have tolerated it? How little you know me.'

'Well, you tolerated Anderson so well,' said Antonia. 'That was one thing that made me feel you must have known, you must have understood, about Alexander. Besides it was so obvious.'

'You are stupid,' I said. 'Palmer was different.'

'I don't see why,' said Antonia. 'And what do you mean by saying you wouldn't have tolerated it? I loved you both, you loved both of us, Alexander loved –'

'You make me feel ill,' I said.

'You knew I had to have both of you,' said Antonia.

'Well, from now on you're only having one of us.'

'Don't say that, darling,' said Antonia with urgency. She got up and tried again to take my hand. I put it in my pocket. 'It's true that we both love you and we can't do without you and we won't do without you. You were so splendid about Anderson. Don't spoil things now.'