Айрис Мердок - The Nice and the Good

I expect you've been wondering what has happened to little Judy, and I feel I ought to write and tell you, since you were so very kind to me, and I mean that. You have changed my life, John, though I don't mean that you've converted me to the Ten Commandments.

You've led me to Mr Right! And don't feel you've done badly, I'm afraid you take the marriage bond more seriously than I do, though I think that comes of your not being married. I was all set to leave Peter anyway when Ewan came into my life that night we drove back from your house and though we've known each other such a little time we know we're made for each other and we're going away together. Just guess where we'll be when you get this! On a boat going to Australia! What luck that my little nest-egg just covers the fare! As Ewan is a Welsh-Australian like me it seems just the thing, and he's going to take me back to his birthplace and his dad owns a motor business and will set us up so wish me joy! Well, that's all and I did like knowing you and I'm sorry we didn't you know! but I mustn't say that as Ewan is so jealous! I'll send you a postcard of the Sydney Bridge.

Yours very truly,

Judy

It took Ducane a moment to realize that 'Ewan' was the versatile Fivey. Well, he hoped that Judy would not have occasion to change her mind about Mr Right. It was just possible that here Fivey had met his match. And now he would have to look for another manservant. He would choose a good deal more providently next time. It was not until a week later that Ducane realized that some of his most expensive cuff links had disappeared with Fivey, together with a signet ring which had belonged to his father. He did not grudge Fivey the cuff links but he was sorry about the ring.

Now he opened Jessica's letter, which read as follows:

I am sorry not to have replied to your various letters, telegrams etc. and not to have answered the 'phone or the doorbell. It was a bit of a change, wasn't it, your being so keen to see me. As you probably know-I have found out about Kate. There's not much to say. I am very shocked indeed that you should have felt it necessary to lie to me. It was a mistaken way to spare my feelings, since it was so much worse finding it all out. I hate deceits and concealments, and I think you really do too, and you're probably relieved now that it's out in the open. I think there's no point in our meeting any more. You've said this yourself often enough and I was a fool not to agree. You see, I thought I loved you very much and the odd thing is I think I was just mistaken. I hope I don't hurt you by saying this. You're probably so damn relieved to get rid of me that you won't be hurt. Of course I feel very sad about it all, but not half as sad as I did two years ago. So don't worry about me. I've cried about it all so much, now I'm just snapping out of it. Better not reply to this, I'm not so cured yet that the sight of your handwriting doesn't make me feel ill. Be happy with Kate. I really wish you well, or I will soon. Please don't write or telephone. Good luck.

Jessica

Dearest John,

I do hope you are really well and suffering no ill effects from your awful experience. It's not easy to know how to write to you, but I felt you would be expecting a word. So many things seem to have happened all at once.

Since I opened that letter which you asked me not to open I have of course been thinking very much about you and me, and in conclusion I am feeling thoroughly dissatisfied with myself. My nature has always been to eat cakes and have them, and one can try to do this once too often. I was so certain that with you and me our so strange, so nebulous, and yet so powerful something could be managed so that we had all fun and no pain. But the mechanisms of love have their own curious energies, and also (forgive me for saying this) I did rather rely on your not having misled me on a certain point. I confess I have found this revelation of another relationship hard to bear. As I said at the time, of course I have no rights where you are concerned. Yet maybe just this was our mistake, to think we could have this something without some degree of possessiveness. And if I had known earlier that you had a close relationship I would not have let myself go quite as far in getting fond of you. Though now it seems to me to have been idiotic to imagine that I could in any way secure someone as attractive as you without being either your wife or your mistress. But this is just what I did imagine. You will think me a fool. Anyway in view of it all I feel a little drawing back is in order, and fortunately this sort of thing happens pretty automatically. You probably feel a good deal of relief, as you must have had misgivings about an 'entanglement' with me which I now realize was mainly my doing.

Be happy with Jessica. It is out of place to say 'feel free', since I never claimed to tie you, and yet there was a tie. But it is gone now. Please of course feel that you can come to Trescombe as before. Octavian sends love and joins me in hoping to see you soon.

Kate

Ducane dropped the sheets one by one Into the flames. Kate's writing was so large that her letters came in huge bundles. He thought, how unbecoming to a woman is that particular tone of resentment, and how difficult it is even for an intelligent woman to disguise it. Then he wondered to himself, why am I being harder on Kate than on Jessica? The answer was not far to seek. Jessica had loved him more. It was self, fat self, that mattered in the end. Ducane idly picked up the piece of paper which remained on the table. It was Radeechy's cryptogram.

He stared at it without thought. Then he began to scrutinize it more closely. Something about the centre part of it was beginning to look curiously familiar. Then suddenly Ducane saw what it was. The central part of the square consisted of the Latin words of the ancient Christian cryptogram.

O

O

A

A

This elegant thing can be read forwards, backwards or vertically, and consists, with the addition of A and 0 (Alpha and Omega) of the letters of the first two words of the Lord's Prayer arranged in the form of a cross.

A A I APATERNOSTER

0

0

Who had invented, to scrawl mysteriously upon what darkened wall, that curious charm to conjure, by its ingenious form and its secret content, what powers surely more sinister and probably more real than the Christian god? And what had Radeechy done to it, to divert its power and make its talismanic value his own? Ducane studied the letters round the edge of the square. A and 0 again twice, only reversed. The other letters then simply read RADEECHY PATER DOMINUS.

Ducane threw the paper down. He felt disappointed, touched, upset. There was something schoolboyish and pathetic in the egoism of Radeechy's appropriation of the Latin formula. It was the sort of thing one might have carved inside one's desk at school. Perhaps all egoism when it is completely exposed has a childish quality. Ducane felt piercingly sorry for Radeechy. The solving of the cryptogram had given him a sense of speech with him, but babbling baffled speech. After all the machinery of evil, the cross reversed, the slaughtered pigeons, the centre of it all seemed so empty and puerile. Yet Radeechy was dead, and were not the powers of evil genuine enough which had led him to two acts of violence? Ducane could not see into that world. He saw only the grotesque and the childish, and whatever was frightening here seemed to be something of limited power, something small. Perhaps there were spirits, perhaps there were evil spirits, but they were little things. The great evil, the dreaded evil, that which made war and slavery and all man's inhumanity to man lay in the cool self-justifying ruthless selfishness of quite ordinary people, such as Biranne, and himself.