Айрис Мердок - The Nice and the Good

'Midsummer madness.'
'What?'
'Nothing. It's a crazy time of year.'
'Beautifully crazy. I hope we didn't wake you coming in.
I'm afraid Octavian made an awful row.'
'No.'
Ducane had come to Trescombe late the previous night, and later still Kate and Octavian had arrived back from Tangier.
Today was Friday and Octavian had already had to set off for London to attend an urgent meeting.
'Poor Octavian, having to rush off like that,' said Kate. 'He hardly saw you at all.'
'Mmmm.'
'John, are you all right? You seem a bit down. Barbie said she thought you were ill or something. Nothing nasty happen when I was away?'
'No, nothing at all.'
'Well, now I'm back I'll look after you and make you all plump and happy.'
'Like Octavian.'
'John, John, you are a grump this morning! You haven't even asked me about Tangier. Well, I shall tell you anyway. Oh what marvellous weather! I love this time of the morning in England when it's really hot. I tell you what I missed in Africa, the dew.
I suppose there is dew in Africa. I must ask the twins. But everything was so dusty. Can you feel it now, the dew sort of jumping off the grass on to your ankles? It's so cooling. Well, of course you can't with your socks on. I can't think how you can bear to wear those heavy woolly socks in this weather. Why don't you wear sandals? Octavian wore sandals all the time in Tangier, they made him look so youthful. Here, let's sit down on this seat.' She sat spreading out the skirt of her red and white striped dress. Ducane, about to sit on the edges of the dress, awkwardly thrust it aside.
The lawn in front of the house sloped to the leafy spiraea hedge, now in scattered points of raspberry-pink blossom. A gap in the hedge led to a small enclosed field of mown hay which fell steeply to a wood, over the top of which the sea was stretched out, filling the horizon with a silvery blue glitter.
There was a strong murmuration of bees. In the deep dappled green of the wood birds called and fell about obscurely in the branches. Ducane sneezed.
'Bless you! I hope you don't mind the hay. It has a wonderfully remindful smell, somehow, hasn't it. Oh John, I am so glad to be back. One is, isn't one? I feel a bit tired though, in a nice way. The sun is tiring, don't you think. Look how brown I am. And Octavian's quite coffee coloured all over. Well, almost all over! When he wore that fez thing during the last week he looked just like that super eunuch in the Entfiilhrung. Oh, John, I've got a funny present for you, one of those charming Moroccan hats, I meant to bring it down, they make them in the villages.'
'How kind of you.'
'I just haven't managed to get around and see everyone yet.
I hope everybody's all right? Nothing's happened here, has it?
I thought somehow people were a bit nervy.'
'Who's a bit nervy?'
'Well, you for instance.'
'It's not that we're nervy, it's that you're relaxed. You've got vine-leaves in your hair. You're full of wine and olives and Mediterranean sunshine and'
'Yes, yes. But after all you've had the sun too.'
'It doesn't shine in my office in Whitehall.'
'John, you're being childish. I believe you need a holiday.
I must speak to Octavian about it. Oh look, isn't that a cuckoo, and there's another one chasing it.'
Two hawk-like birds flitted out of the wood and doubled back to become invisible among the receding green hollows where the sun pierced the thick foliage. Cu-cuckoo, cu-cuckoo.
'Crazy birds,' said Kate. 'Do they think about nothing but sex? Chasing each other all day long and no responsibilities. Do you think they spend the nights together too?'
'Copulation is a daytime activity in birds,' said Ducane. 'At night they are quiet. Unlike human beings.'
'I adore you when you sound so pedantic. Tell me, why are cuckolds called after cuckoos? That's one bit of ornithological information I can't ask the twins for!'
'Something to do with eggs in other people's nests, I suppose.'
'Yes, but then the lover ought to be the cuckoo, not the husband.'
'Maybe it's a past participle. Cuckooed.'
'How clever you are. You have a plausible answer for everything.'
'True or otherwise.'
'Yes, you are nervy, all of you. I must go round and attend to you, each one. See what happens when I go away! Everyone gets unhappy. I can't allow it! Even Mary was quite sharp with the twins this morning, so unlike her. And Paula looks positively hollow-eyed. She didn't seem at all pleased when I handed her that letter from Aden. And Barbie's in one of her antisocial moods and won't consort with anyone who isn't a pony, and Pierce is impossible. Mary told me some extraordinary story about his kidnapping Montrose.'
'He behaved very badly,' said Ducane, 'but it's all over now.'
He kicked the strewn sheets of mown hay at his feet and sneezed again.
'You sound just like a schoolmaster. I'm not going to lecture Pierce. Anyway I expect you and Mary have already done so.
I think Barbie is being horrid to him. And then there's Theo.
I've never seen him looking so morose. When I said hello to him this morning he just looked through me. Why, there he is now going down the path. I bet you he'll pretend not to notice us.
A gap at the far end of the spiraea hedge led into the kitchen garden and from it a path led down beside the line of ragged hawthorns towards the wood. It was the most direct route from the house to the sea. Theo was walking very slowly, almost uncertainly, down the path.
'Theo!' Ducane shouted. His tone was peremptory and angry.
Theo paused and turned slowly round to look at them. He looked at them with the vague face of one who, on his way to the scaffold, hears his name distantly hallooed in the crowd.
'Theo!' Kate cried.
Theo eyed them. Then he lifted his arm a little, moving it awkwardly as if it were paralysed below the elbow. His hand made a floppy gesture which might have been a wave and might have been an invitation to go to the devil. He continued his slow shuffling towards the wood.
'Poor Theo,' said Kate. 'I think he's upset about Mary and Willy, don't you?'
'You mean he feels he's losing Willy? Possibly. I suspect Willy's the only person Theo really communicates with.'
'Heaven knows what they find to say to each other! I'm so glad about Mary and Willy, it's so right. It's not exactly an impetuous match, but then they're not exactly an impetuous pair. I do. think they're both deeply wise people. And Mary's so sweet.'
'She's more than sweet,' said Ducane. 'Willy's lucky.'
'He's very lucky and I shall go up and tell him so before lunch. It was a good idea of mine, wasn't it, matching those two.
It keeps them both here.'
'You think so?' said Ducane. 'It wouldn't surprise me if they both went away.'
'Oh no no no no. Whatever would we do without Mary?
Besides, no one is to leave. You are all my dear – children.'
'Slaves.'
'You are a sour-puss today! Now if only we could find some really nice man for Paula. He'd have to be terribly intellectual of course. We'd have to build another house I suppose. Mary and Willy will be in the cottage. Well, Octavian did think of building another bungalow up by the graveyard, it wouldn't show from the house. Only I do like having us all under one roof. Do you know, I used to be so afraid that you'd fall for Paula. She's so much cleverer than me. I was quite anxious!'
'I adore Paula,' said Ducane. 'I respect and admire her. One couldn't not. But'
'But what?'
'She isn't you.'
'Darling, you are eloquent today. Oh look, there go the twins going down to bathe. Twins! I say! Do find Uncle Theo and cheer him up. He's just gone into the wood.'
Trailing their white bathing towels along the dulled prickly green of the hedge, the twins waved and went on, followed by prancing darting Mingo, who uttered at intervals not his seabark but his rabbit-bark.
'Those are the only two really satisfactory human beings in our household,' said Ducane.
'You are severe with us! Yes, the twins are super. Fab, as Barbie would say. It's sad to think they'll have to grow up and become tiresome creatures like Barb and Pierce.'
'Sexual creatures you mean. Yes, we are tiresome.'
'You are tiresome. Well, now let me tell you all about Tangier.
It was perfectly extraordinary seeing all those women wearing veils. And they wear their veils in so many different ways. Or should one say «the veil» like one says «the kilt»? It wasn't always becoming, I assure you. And there was this extraordinary market place – '
'I've been to Tangier,' said Ducane.
'Oh all right, I won't tell you!'
Kate, who was always delighted to go on holiday, was always delighted to come back. She loved the people who surrounded her and felt a little thrill at the special sense, on her return, of their need for her, a tiny spark as at the resuming of an electrical connexion. She was glad to be missed and prized that first second at which she, as it were, experienced being missed. This time, however, as she had already expressed to John, things seemed just a bit out of gear. Her people seemed preoccupied, almost too preoccupied to rejoice as they ought to at her reappearance and romp gleefully about her.
She decided, I must go round and visit everyone, I must have a tete-a-tete with everyone, even Theo. She felt like a doctor.
The thought restored her to good humour.
Not that she was exactly out of humour. But she had felt ever since the cuckoo woke her from a short sleep soon after four, an uneasiness, a sense of jarring. She later traced this unusual sensation to its origin in the presence of Ducane, indeed in the consciousness of Ducane. If the others were out of sorts she could cure them. She was aware of what she called their nerviness as something separate from herself upon which she could operate externally. But John's depression, his tendency to be 'horrid', affected her intimately. Things between herself and John were for the moment, for the moment only, dislocated and out of tune. Kate reflected rather ruefully that she thought she knew very well what it was that caused this momentary disharmony. She only hoped that John did not know it too.
Kate had certainly had a splendid fortnight in Tangier. What she did not propose to explain was that she had spent a very large part of this fortnight in bed with Octavian. Hot climates affected Octavian like that. Indeed, she had to admit, they affected her like that. After a long and vinous lunch they had positively hurried back to the hotel each day. Octavian could hardly wait. It amused Kate to think that if Ducane knew this he would probably be not only jealous but shocked. We're as bad as those cuckoos, she thought to herself, only of course we're monogamous and good, while they're polygamous and bad! It was true that she was plump and brown and healthy and energetic and relaxed, just as John had said, full of wine and olives and Mediterranean sunshine and – Was it possible that John knew? He must have missed her terribly. And now on her return, at that electrical moment of resuming contact, he might especially resent her belonging to another and somehow sense in her that luxurious belongingness. He can sort of smell it, she thought. Then she wondered, perhaps he can literally smell it? Was this scientifically possible? She must ask – well, no, that was another piece of scientific information for which she could hardly ask the twins.
Kate laughed aloud.
'What is it?' said Ducane.
How peevish he sounded today. 'Nothing, nothing. I was just thinking about those dogs. Never –mind, I don't think their antics are fit for your ears. I haven't the vocabulary anyway, I'd have to draw it!'
Ducane did not seem disposed to pursue the matter of the dogs. He began pounding his nose with his handkerchief, staring straight ahead of him into the wood. The sex-mad cuckoos darted past again with their irregular side-slipping flight. Cucuckoo.
He looks his least attractive at this time of year, Kate was thinking. He murders his poor nose so, it's quite red, and his eyes are always watering. He doesn't look a bit like the Duke of Wellington now. His face is a nice colour, though, that reddish brown, and so glossy and shiny where the bones stick out, I think he's got even thinner. It suits him actually. How oily his hair looks, it darkens it like black rats' tails; I expect it's the heat, perspiration perhaps. Poor fellow, he is sweating. Why does he wear that ridiculous flannel shirt on a day like this? I must give him a nylon one.
We're out of key, she thought. I'm clumsy with him today.
But it'll pass. Just being silent together like this helps. I knew from the start that I'd have to work at this. Men are so obtuse, they don't understand that one has to work at a relationship. If things aren't quite in harmony they get grumpy and desperate at once. I can't possibly kiss him yet. He doesn't desire me, she said to herself, at the moment he doesn't desire me. How does one know? Then she thought, and I don't desire him. But this cloud between us will pass. We must just get quietly used to each other again. I won't fuss him or press him. I'll just leave him to himself a little and attend to something else.
She said aloud, 'John, do you mind if I just glance through my letters to see there's nothing awful? There's always such a pile when one gets back from holiday, it's quite a chore. I've got them all here in the basket and if you don't mind I'll just sort them out. You stay here if you like, or perhaps you'd rather walk down to the sea. You might meet Barbie coming back from her ride.' gate up-ended the Spanish basket and strewed about thirty letters about on the dry pale yellow mats of the hay. She leaned forward and began turning them over and laying them out in rows.
Ducane, suddenly interested, leaned forward too, inspecting the letters. Then with a soft hiss he reached out a long arm and snatched up a brown envelope which lay at the end of one of the rows. Fingering the letter he turned to face Kate, frowning and narrowing his blue eyes against the sun. The frown made his face look even bonier and thinner, a wooden totem anointed with oil.
Kate felt a sudden slight alarm. He looked so stern; and her first thought was, he's jealous of someone. Who can it be? He's recognized someone's writing. Kate, who was on very affectionate terms with a number of men, preferred for humane reasons to keep her friends in ignorance of each other. However, the writing upon the envelope, a rather uncultured hand as far as she could see, seemed unfamiliar.
'What is it?' she said playfully. 'You're stealing my mail!' She reached out for the letter but Ducane withdrew it.
'Whatever is it, John?'
'Will you do me a great favour?' said Ducane.
'Well, tell me what it is.'
'Don't read this letter.'
Kate looked at him with surprise. 'Why?'
'Because it contains something unpleasant which I think you shouldn't see.'
'What sort of thing?'
'It's – it's something concerning me and another person.
Something that belongs entirely to the past. A malicious busybody has written to you about it. But there is absolutely no point in your reading the letter. I will tell you about the whole thing myself later on, now if you wish it.'
Kate had turned sideways and they faced each other knee uh to knee. The hem of the striped dress brushed the hay. She did not know what to think. She was still a bit alarmed by Ducane's sternness, though relieved to find that the misdemeanour in question appeared to be his rather than hers. She thought, perhaps it's to say that he was once a homosexual. He might not understand that I wouldn't mind. She felt very curious about the letter.
'But if it's to do with the past and you're going to tell me anyway, why shouldn't I see the letter? What harm can it do? I 'It's better not to touch pitch. A really malicious letter should be read once only and destroyed, or best of all not read at all.
These things lodge in the mind. One must have no truck with suspicion and hatred. Please let me destroy this letter, Kate, please.'
'I don't understand,' said Kate. 'This letter, whatever it says, can do you no possible harm with me. How little you trust me!
Nothing can harm or diminish my love for you. Surely you know that.'
'It's a sense datum,' said Ducane, 'a sense datum. It's something which you would find it hard to forget. Such things can be poisonous, however much love there is. I am to blame, Kate.
But I would rather explain the thing to you myself in my own way. Surely you can appreciate that.'
'No, I can't appreciate it,' said Kate. She had moved forward so that their knees were touching. 'And I don't know what you mean by a «sense datum». It's much better that I should read the letter. Otherwise I shall be endlessly wondering what was in it. Give it to me.'
'No.' Kate drew away a little and laughed. 'Aren't you rather taxing my feminine curiosity?'
'I'm asking you to rise above your feminine curiosity.'
'Dear me, we are moral today. John, have some common sense! I'm dying to know what it's all about! It can't possibly harm you. I love you, you ass!'
'I'll tell you what it's all about. I just don't want you to see this ugly thing.'
'I'm not as frail as all that!' said Kate. She snatched the letter from him and stood up, retreating behind the wooden seat. pucane looked up at her gloomily, and then leaned forward to hide his face in his hands. He remained immobile in this attitude of resigned or desperate repose.
Kate was now very upset. She hesitated, fingering the letter, but her curiosity was too strong. She opened it.
There were two enclosures. The first read as follows:
Dear Madam,
in view of your emotional feelings about Mr John Ducane I feel sure it would be of interest to you to see the enclosed.
Yours faithfully,
A Well Wisher
The second enclosure was an envelope addressed to Ducane, with a letter inside it. Kate pulled out the letter.
My dearest, my dearest, my John, this is just my usual daily missive to tell you what you know, that I love you to distraction. You were so infinitely sweet to me yesterday after I had been so awful, and you know how unutterably grateful I am that you stayed. I lay there on the bed afterwards for an hour and cried – with gratitude. Are we not somehow compelled by love? I shall not let one day pass without giving you the assurance of mine. Surely there is a future for us together. I am yours yours yours Jessica Kate looked at the date on the letter. She felt sick, stricken, as if some heavy black thing had been rammed into her stomach. She clutched the back of the seat, turned as if to sit down, and then moved a little away and sat down on the grass, covering her face.
'Well?' said Ducane after a while.
Kate found a rather shaky voice. 'I think I see now what you mean by a sense of datum.'
'I'm sorry,' said Ducane. He sounded quite calm now, only rather weary. 'There's not much I can say. You were sure it couldn't damage things and I can only hope you were right.'
'But you said it belonged to the past '
'So it does. I'm not having a love affair with this girl, though the letter makes it sound as if I am. I ceased being her T-NATG-L 273 lover two years ago, and was unwise enough to go on seeing her.'
Kate said in a forced voice, 'But of course you can see whortr you like, do what you like. You know I don't tie you in any way. How could I? I'm just a bit surprised that you sort of misled me '
'Lied to you. Yes.' Ducane got up. He said, 'I think I'd better go now. You'll just have to digest it, Kate, if you can. I've acted wrongly and I have in a way deceived you. I mean, I implied I had no entanglements and this certainly looks like one. I'm sorry.'
'You're not going back to London?'
'No, I don't think so.'
'Oh John, what's happening?'
'Nothing, I daresay.'
'Won't you – at least – explain?'
'I'm sick of explaining, Kate. I'm sick of myself.' He went quickly away through the gap in the spiraea hedge.
On her knees Kate slowly gathered up the scattered letters and put them back in the Spanish basket. Tears dropped off her sun-warmed cheeks on to the dry hay. The bird in the wood cried out, hesitant and hollow, cu-cuckoo, cu-cuckoo.
'There's going to be a Happening,' Pierce announced to anyone who was listening.
Saturday lunch was over. Ducane and Mary and Theo still sat at the table smoking cigarettes. Kate and Octavian had retired to the sofa and were talking in low voices. Paula and the twins had gone out on to the lawn where the twins were now playing Badgerstown. Barbara was sitting on the window seat reading Country Life. Pierce was standing in a poised ballet dancer's attitude near the kitchen door.
'What sort of happening, dear?' asked Mary.
'Something violent, something awful.'
Barbara continued to be absorbed in her article.
'You've already done something violent, something awful.' said Ducane. 'I think you should be content with your career of crime.'
'Violent to yourself, or to someone else?' Theo asked, interested.
'Wait and see.'
'Oh you are boring,' said Barbara. She threw the magazine down and went quickly out on to the front lawn. A moment or two later she was laughing loudly with the twins.
Pierce sat down on the window seat and started looking hard into the copy of Country Life. He was flushed and looked as if he might burst into tears. The three at the table began to talk promptly about something else. After a minute Mary got up and said something inaudible to Pierce who shook his head.
She went on into the kitchen. Ducane stubbed out his cigarette and followed her. He was unutterably oppressed by the confederate presence of Kate and Octavian.
'Can I help you at all, Mary? You're not going to wash up, are you?'
'No. Casie will do it. She's just gone to the kitchen garden to see if there are any artichokes for tonight. They're so early this year. I'm taking some raspberries up to Willy.'
'May I come?'
'Yes, of course.'
She doesn't want me, he thought. Well, I'll just go as far as the cottage. Where can I put myself now?
The dark shut-in velvety smell of the raspberries hung over the kitchen table. Mary put a white cloth over the basket, and they went out of the back door and began to walk up the pebble path beside the herbaceous border. It was very hot. Big orange furry bees were clambering laboriously into the antirrhinums. A little flock of goldfinches which had been searching for seeds along the foot of the brick wall took refuge among the broad pale leaves of the catalpa tree.
'Look at those thistles! It's easy to see the gardener's on holiday. I really must do some weeding. Casie hates it.'
'I'll do some weeding.'
'Don't be silly, John. You're on holiday down here. Kate would faint if she saw you weeding. Aren't you awfully hot in that shirt?'
'No, well, I rather like to be in a bath of perspiration.'
'I wish you'd talk to Pierce.'
'You mean –?'
'Tell him to grit his teeth a little about Barb. He will go on annoying her and annoying all of us. I know it's awful, but he must just face it. I keep trying to persuade him to go and stay with the Pember-Smiths. They even have a yachtl'
'If you can't persuade him how can I?'
'I've got no authority. You have. You could speak to him sternly. Ever since you hit him he's devoted to you! I told you he would be.'
'Well, I'll have a try.'
'Bless you. And I do wish you'd have a serious talk with Paula too. She's awfully upset about something, and she won't tell me what, though I've positively asked her. She'd tell you.
She's terribly fond of you and you've got authority with her too, well you have with all of us. Just corner her and ask her firmly what it's all about.'
'I'm very fond of her,' said Ducane. 'I suppose I – '
'Good. And don't take no for an answer. You're marvellous, John. I rely on you absolutely. I don't know what we'd do without you.'
'Oh Christ,' said Ducane.
The effect of Jessica's letter had been to draw Kate and Octavian together in a new way, a way new at least to Ducane.
He had never felt sexual jealousy of Octavian before. He felt it now. He had no doubt that his faithlessness had been revealed and discussed. Of course Octavian said nothing. He went about the house smiling inscrutably and looking more than ever like a fat golden Buddha. Kate had avoided seeing Ducane alone. He had the impression that she was completely bewildered about her own feelings. Possibly she would have welcomed an effort, a desperate effort, on Ducane's part to explain, to excuse himself, to wrap up in a web of talk and emotion that so disastrous sense datum. But Ducane, who could not bring himself to return to London, could not bring himself to talk to Kate either. He also felt that he ought not to talk to her, though he was not too sure why. He was aware that his refusal to explain now, and his inability to explain at the time, probably made the thing look graver and weightier than it was.
Yet was it not grave and weighty enough? He had made it seem a small matter by deliberately chilling his own feelings and dimming his own thoughts while permitting Jessica to continue in the fantasy world of her wishes. It was easy to see now that it had been wrong. In receiving the force of Jessica's sense of possession Kate was scarcely receiving a wrong picture.
Jessica's condition was a fact. And if Kate retained the impression that he and Jessica were still lovers, or practically lovers, this was not a completely false impression.
When McGrath had rung Ducane up at the office, Ducane had of course told him to go to the devil. Their conversation had lasted about forty seconds. Ducane had meanwhile been trying desperately to get in touch with Jessica. He had telephoned her ten times, and sent several notes and a telegram asking her to ring him. He had called three times at the flat and got no answer. This from Jessica who, as he knew with a special new pain now, had been used to sit at home continually in the hope that he would write or ring. The feelings with which he turned away from her door strangely resembled a renewal of being in love. He had had, after the third telephone call, no doubt that she had been the first recipient of McGrath's malice; and it had occurred to him to wonder whether she might not have killed herself. An image of Jessica in her shift, pale and elongated, stretched out upon the bed, one stiffening arm trailing to the ground, accompanied him from the locked door and reappeared in his dreams. However, he did not on reflection really think this likely. There had always been a grain of petulance in Jessica's love. A saving egoism would make her detest him now. It was a very sad thought.
His thoughts of Jessica, though violent, were all as it were in monochrome. His imagination had to fight to picture her clearly. It was as if she had become a disembodied ailment which attacked his whole substance. Very different were Ducane's thoughts about Judy McGrath. He remembered the scene in his bedroom with hallucinatory vividness, and seemed to remember it all the time, as if it floated constantly rather high up in his field of vision like the dazzling lozenge which conveys the presence of the Trinity to the senses of some bewildered saint. With a large part of himself he wished that he had made love to Judy. It would have been an honest action, something within him judged; although something else in him knew that this bizarre opinion must be wrong. When one falls into falsehood all one's judgements are dislocated. It was only given this, and given that, and given the other, all of them things which ought not to be the case, that it could seem plausible to judge that making love to Judy would have been an honest action; There is a logic of evil, and Ducane felt himself enmeshed in it. But the beautiful stretched-out body of Judy, its apricot colour, its glossy texture, its weight, continued to haunt him with a tormenting precision and a dreadfully locaz lined painfulness.
And this is the moment, Ducane thought to himself, in this sort of degrading muddle, in this demented state of mind, when I am called upon to be another man's judge. He had been thinking constantly about Biranne too, or rather a ghostly Biranne travelled with him, transparent and crowding him close. The wraith did not accuse him, but hovered before him, a little to the right, a little to the left, becoming at times a sort of alter ego. Ducane did not see how he could let Biranne off; The idea of ruining him, of wrecking his career, of involving him in disgrace and despair, was so dreadful that Ducane kept, with an almost physical movement, putting it away from him.
But there was no alternative and Ducane knew that, in a little while though not yet, he must make himself into that cold judicial machine which was the only relevant and important thing. Radeechy's confession could not be suppressed. It was the completely clear and satisfactory solution to the mystery which Ducane had been briefed to solve. In any case, and quite apart from the inquiry, a murder ought not to be concealed, and it was one's plain duty not to conceal it. Since these conside rations were conclusive, Ducane could be more coolly aware of the danger to himself which would be involved in any concealment. Ducane did not care for guilty secrets, and he did not want to share one with Biranne, a man whom he neither liked nor trusted. And there was also the hovering presence of McGrath, who might know more than Biranne imagined. Ducane knew that if it emerged later that he had suppressed that very important document he would be ruined himself.
'Are you all right, John?'
They had walked up the lane in silence. The variety of witlow herb which is known as 'codlins and cream' filled the narrow closed-in lane with its sickly smell. A wren with up lifted tail moved in the brown darkness of the hedge, accompanying them up the hill.
'I'm fine,' said Ducane in a slightly wild voice. 'It's just that I have bad dreams.'
'Do you mean dreams at night, or thoughts?'
'Both.' Ducane had dreamed last night that he had killed sonle woman, whose identity he could not discover, and was attempting to hide the body under a heap of dead pigeons when he was detected by a terrifying intruder. The intruder was Biranne.
'Tell me about them,' said Mary.
Why do I always have to be helping people, thought Ducane, and getting no help myself? I wish someone could help me. I wish Mary could. He said, 'It's all someone else's secret.'
'Sit down here a minute.' They had reached the wood. Mary sat down on the fallen tree trunk and Ducane sat beside her. He began hacking away with his foot at some parchment-coloured fungus which was growing in wavy layers underneath the curve of the tree. The delicate brown undersides of the fungus, finely pleated as a girl's dress lay fragmented upon the dry beach leaves. Along the bank beside them a pair of bullfinches foraged ponderously in the small jungle of cow parsley and angelica.
'Have you quarrelled with Kate?' asked Mary. She did not look at him. She had put the basket on the ground and regarded it, rocking it slightly with a brown sandalled foot.
She is observant, he thought. Well, it must be fairly obvious.
'Yes. But that's not really – not all.'
'Kate will soon come round, you know she will, she'll mend things. She always does. She loves you very much. What's the other thing, the rest?'
'I have to make a decision about somebody.'
'A girl?'
Her question slightly surprised him. 'No, a man. It's a rather important decision which, affects this person's whole life, and I feel particularly rotten about having to make it as I'm feeling at the moment so – jumbled and immoral.'
'Jumbled and immoral.' Mary repeated this curious phrase as if she knew exactly what it meant. 'But you know how to make the decision, I mean you know the machinery of the decision?'
'Yes. I know how to make the decision.'
'Then shouldn't you just think about the decision and not about yourself? Let the machinery work and keep it clear of the jumble?'
'You are perfectly right,' he said. He felt extraordinarily calmed by Mary's presence. Ina curious way he was pleased that she had not disputed his self-accusation but had simply given him the correct reply. She assured him somehow of the existence of a permanent moral background. He thought, she is under the same orders as myself. He found that he had picked up the hem of Mary's dress and was moving it between his fingers. She was wearing a mauve dress of crepe-like wrinkled stuff with a full skirt. As he felt the material he thought suddenly of Kate's red striped dress and of Judy's dress with the blue and green flowers. Girls and their dresses.
He said quickly, letting go of the hem, 'Mary, I hope you won't mind my saying how very glad I am about you and Willy., 'Nothing's – fixed, you know.'
'Yes, I know. But I'm so glad. Give my love to Willy. I won't delay you now and I think I won't come any further.'
'All right. You will talk to Paula, won't you, and to Pierce?'
'Yes. I'll do it straightaway. Whichever of them I meet first!'
They stood up. Mary turned her lean sallow head towards him, brushing back her hair. Her eyes were vague in the hot dappled half light. They stood a moment awkwardly, and then with gestures of salutation parted in silence.