The Unicorn by Iris Murdoch
‘It’s not that,’ said Marian seriously. ‘He somehow really believes she ought to stay there. I think he’s rather religious or something.’
‘You’re not religious, are you? I’m not either. I certainly don’t think anything like that about Hannah.’
‘So you see,’ said Marian, pursuing her own train of thought, ‘there’s really no one over there I could count on, for the rescue I mean. I’ve thought of Jamesie, but he’s rather young and silly. And I haven’t managed to get to know Scottow - yet.’
‘Leave Scottow out. But you speak as if you were really planning something! Be realistic. What on earth could you do?’
‘That’s what you’ll help me to decide.’ She turned her fierce brown eyes upon him. ‘You’re the only person who can help, so you’ve got to help.’ She sat there, near to his knees, stroking Tadg and glaring with purposes.
‘You’re mad,’ said Effingham. ‘I’ve already told you there’s nothing to be done. But perhaps you’d better get rid of it all by talking to me. Then I can send you back with more sense in your head. Go on.’ He was dying to hear what she was going to say.
‘My first thought,’ said Marian, ‘was simply to talk to Hannah and persuade her to make arrangements to leave. I couldn’t at first believe that any rational person - and of course she’s rational - would tolerate the situation at all - or having tolerated it, wouldn’t take the chance to clear out if some well-disposed body were ready to help them. I thought perhaps she just hadn’t gone because she was afraid of - someone in the house - or because she just couldn’t manage to make the arrangements by herself. She’s dreadfully unpractical.’
‘I hope to God you didn’t say anything to her?’
‘No, I didn’t. I somehow became sure that she wouldn’t let me persuade her. She’d answer with some nonsensical kind of talk. And there was no point in just upsetting her. So then I started to think about kidnapping her.’
‘Kidnapping her?’
‘Yes. I thought if I could get someone to help me we might well, just hustle her into a car and drive her away.’
‘You perfect romantic fool!’ said Effingham. This was no longer agreeable. The vision conjured up by these words frightened him very much indeed. He pictured Scottow on the road behind them. There was violence, violence asleep in that situation. He did not want to be the one to waken it. That is perfectly unthinkable, as surely you realized when you’d thought about it?’
‘I thought about it, Effingham. I think I’ll call you Effingham, as Mr Lejour does. And yes, I decided it was no good. It was too unfair to her, and anyway it could easily go wrong. Then I had a third idea.’
‘Well, I hope it was better than the other two!’ He booted some turf into the fire. The rain was pelting down outside.
‘My third idea is this,’ said Marian. ‘It’s the idea of a modified rescue. You see, it depends on what you think about her frame of mind. As I see it, her frame of mind is pretty mixed up. She began - forgive me for talking about her in this way. You’ve known her far longer than I have. But I’m a new broom, and I can’t help behaving like one - and I do care about her very very much. She began, this is how I see it anyway, by simply being afraid of that beastly man, just paralysed with fear. Then she became rather apathetic and miserable. Then she began to find her situation sort of interesting, spiritually interesting. People have got to survive and they’ll always invent some way of surviving, of seeing their situation as tolerable. At the time when Hannah might have survived by just hating them all, or might have survived by just bursting out and kicking it all to bits, she decided to become religious instead.’
‘You don’t think much of this solution?’
‘I’ve nothing against religion in general, though I can’t do it myself. But if it’s to be any good it’s got to be freely taken to, out in the open as it were. Hannah took to religion, or the spiritual life or whatever the hell it is, like someone taking to a drug. She had to.’
‘I suppose that is a way of taking to religion, because one has to. But I see what you mean. Go on.’
‘Well, and all the time she was being more and more hypnotized by the situation itself and by all those people surrounding her and murmuring into her ear in different tones, but all murmuring it: you’re imprisoned. And now she’s simply spellbound. She’s psychologically paralysed. She’s lost her sense of freedom.’
‘And what would you propose to do about it?’
‘Give her a shock. Pull her out of it just far enough to make her realize that she is free and that she’s got to make her own decisions. This will, I’m afraid, also involve a little kidnapping.’
‘Marian,’ said Effingham, ‘go on.’ He spoke sarcastically, but his heart was suddenly in a flurry. To hear someone speaking in this calm analytic tone about the situation, speaking as if there were alternative actions which could be rationally considered, was a refreshing sacrilege.
‘What I suggest is this,’ said Marian. ‘And I shall need someone to help me, and I hope it will be you. We decoy her into a car. That shouldn’t be impossible. You often drive up to the house. We offer her a little lift up the drive, say. Then we turn round and drive like hell as far as Blackport to the fishing hotel.’
‘And then -?’ It was quiet and dark in the room now.
‘I don’t know what happens then. That will depend on her. Perhaps we have some lunch and take her back to Gaze. At least it will convince her that she won’t die if she goes outside the walls. You know sometimes I think she half believes that. Anyway, it will be a shock. And if she shows the slightest hesitation, the slightest desire not to go back, we drive her to the airport.’
‘Good God,’ said Effingham. He looked at her with admiration and horror. He apprehended her as beautiful, invigorating, dangerous, destructive. He must listen to her no more; and as he immediately reflected that this conversation must never be revealed to Max, he measured how far for a moment she had tempted him. But it was all an absurdity, a wicked irresponsible absurdity.
Alice came bustling in, pushing a well-laden tea trolley. ‘Well, did you have a good lesson? Why, you’re almost in the dark. Carrie will bring the lamps directly.’
‘Fine, thanks,’ said Effingham getting up.
The golden lamplight entered the room and as it shone on both their faces he held Marian Taylor’s gaze for a moment and slowly shook his head.
Part Three
Chapter Fifteen
Dearest Marian,
Thanks awfully for your letters. I owe you one, I know, I’ve been awfully bogged down. You remember I said I’d write that leaflet for the Campaign, well that’s come home to roost, and there’s the Fifth Form play which I’m alleged to have agreed to produce (I can’t recall that, can you? I must have been drunk!) and they’ve just decided to change the G.C.E. syllabus, as I expect you’ve seen in the paper, and I’ve got some sort of beastly virus that I can’t get rid of - and well, that’s enough to start with by way of excuses! Gosh, I envy you, old girl, with nothing to do but read the Princesse de Clèves with Mrs Thing until you both fall asleep! (I did laugh at your description.) Seriously though the country must be magnificent I hope you’re doing plenty of walking. Tell me about the birds as there doesn’t seem to be much else going on. And don’t think I’m getting at you with the above remarks! A little lying fallow does no one any harm. I wish I could lie fallow even for a couple of hours. Whatever the reverse of fallow is, that’s me!
However there is one bright spot on the horizon, which is that I’m going to fly to Madrid at half term. I know it’s immoral to pass one’s pennies on to old Franco, but I’ve decided I don’t want to be blown up without having seen Las Meninas and Las Lanzas. So several of us have arranged to go in a party on the cheap. That girl Freda Darsey, the one you were at school with, is coming too. Shell be handy as she knows Spanish. She doesn’t seem a bad stick, though too bulbous for the taste of yours truly. I’ll send you a postcard.
I must stop now, I’
G.
Marian pushed Geoffrey’s letter into a drawer. It filled her with gloom and irritation and a frightened little homesickness. Since she had learnt from Denis Nolan the true nature of what was happening at Gaze she had not been able to write frankly to Geoffrey. She had screwed out, for the sake of appearances, two limp missives about the scenery. It would have been impossible to tell him what was really going on; he would have found it all quite insane and would have given her very crude counsel. But it was all quite insane, and was she not giving herself very crude counsel?
She looked in the mirror. She was wearing a new terracotta-coloured shot silk evening dress which Hannah had insisted on giving her, after ordering it, with several others, secretly on approval especially for Marian. Marian had felt uneasy at accepting the present, but the idea and the charming way the dress fitted her and suited her had delighted Hannah so much that the girl had not in the end had the heart to say no; and of course it was a wonderful dress, and one which, quite apart from its price, she would never have had the discrimination and the nerve to buy herself. Since the ruby and pearl necklace didn’t look quite right with it, she was wearing, as a finishing touch, a collar of irregular amber beads which Hannah had selected, after minute research, from her own store, and which she patently intended Marian to keep, though she had tactfully not said so yet.
Geoffrey had always quite rightly told Marian that she did not know how to dress. She favoured a formless exoticism, he favoured a muddy simplicity: in fact neither of them had any taste at all. But now already Marian was aware, since she had been at Gaze, she had by some process of osmosis acquired certain elements of good taste from Hannah. These elements existed in Hannah in a state of unconsciousness, but they were infectious; and although Hannah was now careless of her appearance and surroundings she had long ago, in respect of both, been beautifully trained. So it was that Marian had quietly put upon the retired list quite a number of the garments and accessories with which she had arrived, including the sensible but she now saw quite horribly ill-cut blue dress in which Geoffrey had expressed such great confidence.
Marian had lately found that she was living to an alarming degree upon two different levels of mind. Upon one level she entered brightly into the tiny dramas and gaieties which made up life at Gaze, and which seemed so totally to occupy Hannah’s consciousness. Marian had never seen anyone live so entirely in the present; and she too lived in the present, looking forward to her meals and to the ritual of the evening whiskey, making little ceremonies out of views of sunsets or walks to the fish ponds, and enjoying literature as those alone enjoy it who have little else to enjoy. There had been a lot of reading aloud. There had been a lot of looking at reproductions of paintings. There had been a little phase of rhyming games and drawing games. There had been a phase of trying on hats, of which Hannah had a great store from some years ago. There had been talk of fancy dress, there had been talk of charades, there had been talk of a musical evening. Tonight, in fact, was the musical evening, which was why Marian was thus arrayed. After dinner, which was shortly to take place downstairs with all present, a rare enough treat, there was to be music in the drawing-room.
So things went on in this curiously childish Marie-Antoinetteish manner; and so, with half of her mind, Marian took part in them, joining gaily with the tirelessly cheerful and prankish Jamesie in being the life and soul of the party. But the rest of her mind was concerned furtively with other things. Since her talk, now some days ago, with Effingham Cooper about the possibility of a rescue she had felt so upset and agitated that she could not sleep properly and sometimes found it difficult to behave normally with Hannah, with whom she would find herself suddenly breathless and blushing. She had spoken to Effingham with vehemence and decision as if she had thought all these plans out beforehand, but in fact they had only become really clear to her while she was actually talking to him. His very presence, his big, intelligent, rational,
familiar sort of face, the splendid ease of their pupil-teacher relation, all this made what had seemed nightmarishly difficult and obscure suddenly, for her, crystallize; and she had seen with an appalling clarity what ought to be done.
She had not since then wavered much. She had thought about the problem continually and she felt fairly sure that the shock tactic, the attempt to shatter the spell by a piece of planned violence, could do no harm and might do much good. Even supposing, at Blackport, Hannah asked piteously to be taken back to Gaze: well, they would take her back. No one could blame her for what had happened; and the insidious idea would have been planted in her head that she could leave the place with impunity. She could leave the place.
The horrible aspect of the thing was of course the strong possibility, which Effingham had brought to her attention when they talked again on the following day, that should Hannah return to Gaze the perpetrators of the coup would be forever banished from her. Effingham had refused, on this ground and on many other grounds, to have anything to do with the idea; but Marian thought it possible that, if she decided to go on, she might yet talk him round. He had already confided to her that a friend of his had once told him that a clever woman could convince him of anything. She would probably go on though, she now felt with a kind of fatalism, with or without Effingham. As she had pointed out to him in the argument, he or she or anyone else might at any moment by an obscure fiat be expelled from Gaze. It was not as if one at all liked or even understood the status quo; and for all they knew the sands might be running out.
Effingham had not liked this metaphor. He enquired what she meant, what sands were running out, had she any real reason to think that time was short or that the situation was becoming dangerous or urgent? What positive harm, surely none, could come to Hannah from the continuance of things as they were? No, Marian had no real reason. Yet she did feel in her bones a kind of urgency, a sense of being now in a position of power or trust which she must exploit while she could. She felt above all, as a sort of categorical imperative, the desire to set Hannah free, to smash up all her eerie magical surroundings, to let the fresh air in at last; even if the result should be some dreadful suffering.
So she had half decided to go on with or without Effingham. But without Effingham was impossible unless she found someone else. She herself could not drive a car, and she had to have somebody who could. Who? This brought her up against the continually puzzling question of her relations with the other inhabitants of Gaze. She had kept a constant but unprofitable watch upon Gerald Scottow. She noted his comings and goings, his frequent absences on estate business, his gay returns. She enjoyed his slightly bullying charm and the nervous badinage into which he spurred her. His physical appearance affected her with tremors. She had never before wanted so much to touch a man with whom she could not converse. For, alas, she could not converse with him, and her plan, if it had ever been a plan, of helping Hannah by subduing Scottow had certainly so far misfired. She did not despair of coming, somehow, to know Scottow, of coming to know him much, much better: but he was, for immediate purposes, irrelevant. Violet Evercreech was unthinkable. Denis Nolan would never approve. That left Jamesie.
Marian had by now seen a lot of Jamesie, laughed a lot with Jamesie, been driven by him here and there, without coming to know him really any better than she had on the occasion of their first drive to Blackport. There had been no repetition on Jamesie’s part of that little approach to a greater intimacy. It was as if Jamesie had been warned off or had decided, after the warmth of a first enthusiasm, that he preferred a simple, cheerful relationship with Marian. Simple and cheerful he certa
Jamesie could drive a car, and had indeed complete control of the Land Rover and the old Morris which made up the mechanical establishment at Gaze. This would be handy, as it occurred to Marian that at the moment of flight all other means of transport had better be disabled. But could Jamesie be trusted, and even if he could be trusted was he not too vulnerable to reprisals? Marian on reflection decided that she was prepared to risk Jamesie if he was prepared to risk himself. She felt, with the brutality, already growing upon her, of a desperate general, that Jamesie would probably be better off anyway if he were fired out of Gaze. The place did him no good. The matter of his trustworthiness she could not yet decide. He seemed, in the midst of it all, oddly uncommitted, a jocose observer. His flippancy might indicate that he could be won. She wondered.