Айрис Мердок - The Nice and the Good

'Do you think it's ever safe to say one's happy?' said Kate.

'I think it would be ungrateful in someone who, like you, is always happy, not to admit it sometimes!' said John Ducane.

'Ungrateful? To them? They have no morals and don't deserve gratitude. Yes, it's true that I'm always happy. But there are degrees of it. I feel such an intense happiness at this moment, I feel I might faint!'

They were floating in the little green coracle upon the perfectly calm sea in which they had lately been swimming. The coracle, which had no oars, was propelled by the hands of its crew. It was a suitable craft only for very still weather, as it was easily swamped and overturned.

Nearby upon the beach the twins, who had swum earlier in the day, were engaged in their perennial task of examining the stones. Uncle Theo, who disliked the stones and found them menacing, had once said that the twins behaved like people condemned by a god to some endless incomprehensible search.

Uncle Theo himself, newly risen after his tea, was sitting on the beach beside Pierce's clothes. Mary forbade anyone to enter the house in a wet bathing costume and the children always undressed on the beach. Pierce, who had been swimming for some time, was lying limply on the shelving pebbles, half in and half out of the water, like a stranded sea beast. Mingo, who had been swimming with Pierce, was shaking himself and spraying rainbow water drops over Pierce's trousers and the left arm of Uncle Theo's jacket. Montrose, sitting on the jagged toothlike remains of the wooden breakwater, had fluffed himself up into his spherical bird form, and was regarding Mingo's antics with yellow-eyed malignancy. Paula and Octavian, fully dressed now, were walking slowly along the beach discussing uay.

'Yes, one must think how lucky one is,' said Kate. 'Think if one had been born an Indian peasant – ' But in fact she could not think about Indian peasants nor think how lucky she was, she could only feel it in the slightly caressing tightening feeling of the sun drying the salt water upon her plump legs and shoulders.

'You know, I think they're all the tiniest bit afraid of you,' said Kate, reverting to something she had been saying earlier.

'Willy is, Mary is, Octavian certainly is. Which is what makes it so wonderful, as I'm not!'

'I can't believe anyone's afraid of me,' said Ducane, but he was obviously pleased all the same.

'Your company makes me so happy. And it's partly this sense of being absolutely free with you when nobody else is! I am possessive, you know!'

'Just as well for both of us that I'm not!' said Ducane.

'Darling! Forgive me! But of course you forgive me. You're terribly happy too, I can feel it. Oh God, how heavenly the sun is. The twins keep saying that they want it to rain, but I want everything to go on for ever exactly as it is.' Kate was in that state of elation when speech becomes a mere natural burbling, like bird song or the chatter of a stream.

The boat, which Ducane had been propelling with lazy pressures of his trailing hand upon the pleasantly resistant water, was almost motionless now. Kate and Ducane were very close together in the little boat, but not quite touching each other. He lay in the blunt stern, a little sprawled, knees crooked up and both arms over the side. She was in the almost equally blunt bows, sitting sideways with her legs half tucked under her.

Between Ducane's bare foot and her knee there was about half an inch of space of which they were both pleasantly conscious, as if through this narrow strait something were deliciously and impetuously rushing, Kate was inspecting Ducane with tender curiosity. Of course she had seen him thus stripped before, last summer in fact, only he had not then been for her the highly significant object which he had now become. How lovely it is, thought Kate, to be able to fall in love with one's old friends. It's one of the pleasures of being middle-aged. Not that I'm really exactly in love, but it's just like being in love with all the pain taken away. It's an apotheosis of friendship, it's something one thought possible when one was young and then forgot about. There's all the excitement of love in a condition of absolute safety. How touchingly thin he is, and so white, and the hair on his chest is turning grey. What is it that's attractive about men's bodies? It's much more mysterious, more spiritual, than the attractiveness of women. Why is it heavenly, the way the bones stick out so at his wrists? Oh dear, I don't want him to think I'm looking at him critically. He must see he's being adored. Why now he's looking at me in just the same way. She snuggled her legs a little closer under her, feeling the pleasant tight pressure of her damp bathing dress holding her breasts in close against her body. At that moment her curious exploring gaze met Ducane's and they began to laugh with mutual understanding. Ducane withdrew one hand from the sea and leaned forward and very deliberately touched Kate's knee. She felt the lingering firmness of his hand in the midst of the cool water which was now trickling over her warm leg which had become quite dry in the sun.

The boat gave a sudden heave forward. Ducane removed his hand abruptly from Kate's leg. There was a soft splashing ahead. Pierce, who had swum up unnoticed, had taken hold of the length of rope which hung from the bows and was beginning to tow the boat along.

Ducane was irritated and upset by the intrusion. He hoped the boy had noticed nothing. His thoughtless enjoyment of the present moment, the sun, the drifting, and Kate's sweet Irish voice was spoilt now. His mood was broken and the bright day gave place to a wall of blackness whose name was Jessica.

His relationship with Jessica was turning into a massacre and he could not see what could be done about it. There was as much emotion generated between them now as if they had been lovers. He had been defeated by a girl's screams. And he knew that he had given her that shot of morphia as much to spare himself as to spare her. When he thought about the matter in general he was as certain as ever that he must leave her, must finish the job. But when he thought in detail about the process he not only shuddered, he became less sure. Could it be right to inflict so much pain? If only it were over, done, without the awful doing of it. He thought, I can't do it simply by letter. Anyway, she would just come round at once, she would come to the office.

Had he the right to be happy with Kate for a second, to take what Kate was so generously offering to him, at a time when he was causing this dreadful suffering to another person?

What would Kate, with her fantasy of being nearer to him than anybody, think if she knew of this mess? What, if it came to that would Jessica think if she knew of what would seem to her his frivolous adventuring with Kate? Where, in all this, was Ducane, the upright man? Of course it was easy to see now that he ought never to have entangled himself with Jessica at all.

Until even quite lately, however, he had at least been able to think of what he knew to be his sin in a fairly clear way. The pain involved in it for him, and he dared to think for her too, was at least fairly clean pain. They just had to separate and that, agonizing as it was, was all there was to it. Now he was not so sure. As he lay limply on Jessica's bed with his head upon her shoulder after he had stopped her screaming by promising to see her again, Ducane had felt a new kind of despair. In the clairvoyance of this despair he had seen how much his folly had already damaged both of them.

When Ducane had first begun to think of his relationship with Kate as important, and when he had decided to break with Jessica without yet considering what this would be like, he had seen it as one important aspect of his new world that he would now be able to attend properly to the needs of other people. After all he was not in love with Kate. He adored Kate and could be made happy by her, but he was not really in love with her. It was a civilized achievement of middle age.