The Unicorn by Iris Murdoch
“Thank heavens you’ve come,’ said Marian, leading him to the fire. T simply haven’t known what to do. I was longing for you to come. Today has been a nightmare.’
Today. There had been, while he slept, a whole eventful day.
‘What’s happened? Oh, Marian, why did you let Alice take me away?’
‘I know. I’ve thought of that too. I was stupid, I should have interfered. I’ve done everything wrong. Have some whiskey? No, I won’t. I was drinking the stuff for hours. I’m quite lightheaded, I’ve eaten nothing.’
‘What’s happened, Marian?’ Now in complete possession of his wits, Effingham felt the full apocalyptic terror. A world was about to end, and he knew not how.
‘I don’t altogether know what’s happened. Something has happened or is happening -‘
Denis played a scale on the piano and then a few odd notes and phrases like the song of a bird. It rang weirdly in the dim flickering room, like a distant nightingale. Over Marian’s shoulder Effingham saw Jamesie’s pale self-absorbed face. His face was grubby like that of a child, perhaps from weeping. He seemed far gone in drink.
‘But what have you been doing all day, what has Hannah done -‘
‘I’ll tell you what I know. After you went Hannah started to cry, and she cried in a hysterical way for nearly an hour. I don’t know whether you’ve ever seen anyone in real hysterics, wailing and gasping for breath. Well, it was terrible. I stayed with her of course and kept trying to calm her and kept saying the same things to her over and over again. We were left alone together during this time. Then she did become quieter - that was about midday - and I’m not sure that it wasn’t worse then. She just cried quietly with occasional little moans and whimpers. I’d been fairly sensible all the time she had hysterics, but this was just too much for me and I started to cry too. So we sat together and cried for another hour. It sounds idiotic, but I was so tired and something about her frightened me so much. During this time various people came in and looked at us, but no one tried to talk to us. Then Hannah became quite silent and I stopped crying and I tried to talk to her, but she wouldn’t reply to anything I said.’
‘Had she said anything earlier on?’
‘No, nothing at all. Well, then Violet Evercreech arrived with some coffee and things to eat, but Hannah paid no attention. Violet wanted me to go away and leave her with Hannah, but Hannah wouldn’t. She held on to me and motioned Violet to go. She still didn’t say anything, it was as if she’d been struck dumb, it was very frightening. Violet went away very upset. I drank some coffee and tried to make Hannah take some, but she just shook her head and wouldn’t even look at me. During this time Gerald came in once or twice but didn’t try to speak to Hannah. Denis came and did try, but she paid no attention to him. Then she settled into a chair near the window and sat looking out for another hour. Then quite suddenly and quite calmly she said to me that she was going to rest and she thought I should rest too. That was about half past three. I was stupid then. I ought to have lain down on the sofa in her room. But I was so dead tired I was practically unconscious. I saw her to bed, and then I went to my room and slept there and didn’t wake up till nearly nine. I was mad, I should have told someone to wake me. Anyway, I rushed to Hannah’s room and found that the door of the ante-room was locked. I got terrified and began knocking on the door, but almost at once Denis appeared and said that Hannah had woken up about six. He’d been lying on her sofa in the place where I ought to have been. She asked for some tea and that was brought. She seemed perfectly calm, he said, but awfully pale and weird. Then she sat for a while quite quietly, frowning a little as if she were thinking. Then she asked for Gerald to be sent to her. Gerald came and told Denis to go. And a little later when Denis tried the outer door he found that it was locked. Oh, I forgot to say that when she woke up she asked if you had come back.’
‘Oh God! And then?’
‘Well, and then I don’t know. They’ve been in there ever since.’
‘We must go to her at once,’ said Effingham. ‘Gerald’s probably trying to brain-wash her about Peter.’
‘Effingham, don’t you think - she just mustn’t be in the house when Peter comes back?’
‘And why not, pray?’ said a voice behind them. Violet Evercreech was standing in the darkened doorway.
“Violet, what shall we do?’ said Marian, starting up.
‘I don’t see that you and Mr Cooper are called upon to do anything,’ said Violet. She moved forward and picked up one of the lamps. ‘I’ve come for a lamp, I see you have two in here.’ The lamplight made her face ghostly-bright. ‘Peter Crean-Smith is coming home to his wife. It is about time he established some order in his own house.’
‘He might kill her.’ The fierce words made a silence round about them. Denis, who had been softly playing a scale, paused in the middle.
‘Really, Marian, you are too imaginative.’ Violet spoke wearily, contemptuously. ‘Hannah’s admirers have been perfectly happy up to now to assume that she knew perfectly well what she was doing. She and her husband will continue to know perfectly well what they are doing. They have a concern with each other which is nobody else’s business at all.’
‘No, no, no, we must protect her - ‘
‘Rubbish,’ said Violet, at the door. ‘She is grown-up, which you seem to forget. She is also, which you seem to forget, a murderous adulterous woman. You had best pay her the compliment of leaving her to her husband and to her own private and personal destiny. Good night.’
‘Violet hates her,’ said Effingham.
‘No, Violet loves her. But it comes to the same thing. We might go up now. Gerald must still be with her. I asked one of the maids to tell me when he came out.’
‘But what shall we say?’
‘We’ll tell her we’re taking her away at once, and we’ll stand no nonsense this time. You’ve got the car outside, haven’t you? This time we will drive her to the airport.’
Effingham felt an immediate sharp pain of fear. He was not ready for this. He said, ‘Wait, wait. Need we be quite so hasty? We’ve still got another day or two. We mustn’t do anything mad. We must at least consider the possibility that she might want to stay for Peter. After all, why not? We all knew it was possible, didn’t we, that Peter would come back some time. She knew it was possible. We can’t assume just because she weeps that she doesn’t want to see it through. Perhaps we shouldn’t interfere, at least not in such a hurry, not tonight when we’re all exhausted and distracted. Let’s wait till tomorrow and have a long talk with her then.’
‘Someone’s had a long talk with her already. That’s just what I’m afraid of. Denis, tell Mr Cooper what you think.’
Denis played an arpeggio. He turned towards Effingham. The room was very dark now and the fire had ceased to flicker. ‘She must not be here when he comes.’
‘Why not?’ said Effingham. He was annoyed at the appeal to Denis.
‘She must not be here.’
‘It’s true,’ said Marian. ‘You say we all knew perfectly well that he might come. But we didn’t. Really we thought he wouldn’t come ever. It’s so .clear now, I can’t think why I didn’t see it before. The whole thing made sense only if one assumed he wasn’t coming.’
Effingham thought, she is right. We never really faced it. We never really believed in Peter. But he said, ‘We must at least reflect upon it now. Why should they not be somehow - reconciled?’
‘You don’t know Peter Crean-Smith.’ Denis spoke again. He played another phrase, a wild faint piece of song.
‘Effingham! Are you really resigned to losing her to a man who is certainly a brute and possibly a lunatic? Are you resigned to never seeing her again ever? To just leaving her behind in some sort of awful bondage we shall never know anything about? Come. Let us do something, and do it quickly.’
Effingham still hesitated. ‘Suppose Gerald - objects, resists? As of course he will. He won’t want to lose his reward at the last moment.’
&
Effingham was not prepared for this sudden dissolution of the situation into violence. He did not want to be pressed into a gang with Denis. He felt that something confused and ill-considered was going to happen. Yet he was impressed all the same and frightened by her urgency and somehow quite directly tempted by the idea of the waiting car. And he was indeed not resigned to having the story end so suddenly, to simply not knowing what happened. He pictured himself slinking away or being put out of doors by Peter. He rose to his feet.
‘Oh, you poor fools.’ Jamesie spoke softly into his whiskey.
Effingham turned to stare at the boy, where he sat in the corner beneath the single lamp examining his glass like a crystal-gazer. Whatever images of disaster were visible therein he could be no more appalled by the future than Effingham was at that moment. He became aware that Marian had moved past him toward the door and he followed her without more thought.
At the foot of the stairs Marian paused. She took hold of his hand carefully and firmly as if it were a large piece of china and began to draw him after her up the stairs. They moved slowly as if impeded by the air like people in a dream. The lamp was still alight at the top of the stairs and as he passed it Effingham could hear its quiet dangerous purr. They turned into the long corridor and he sensed a shape behind him which was Denis noiselessly following. They moved along the curtainy corridor past the lamplit shrines toward the door of Hannah’s ante-room. It was only then, as they glided like murderers to their scene of action, and Effingham began to wonder about exactly what was going to happen, that he really took it in that Hannah had been cloistered for nearly five hours with Gerald Scottow. And he recalled Max’s words: ‘She’ll need help, and if you aren’t there she may take it from someone else.’
When they were about five yards from the door Effingham stopped abruptly beside one of the lamps and pulled Marian back towards him. ‘Listen, listen.’ He spoke in a trembling whisper. ‘What do we do if the door is locked and he won’t open it?’ He felt confused and frightened.
‘It will be locked and he won’t open it.’ She spoke in a whisper too.
‘Well, what do we do?’
‘First we call and shout, then we bang and kick, and then if need be we break the door in.’
The silence of the house hung its foul night about him in thick ragged folds. Effingham felt that he would be unable to raise his voice, let alone to do violence to the door, let alone -He was about to start again when someone said softly, ‘Look! Look!’
Effingham turned to look. He shaded his eyes against the bright glow of the nearby lamp and took a step backward. He saw that the door of the ante-room stood open.
There was a golden recess which at the first moment seemed empty. Then within the shining frame a great apparition assembled before his astonished eyes. Gerald was standing in the doorway, his arms spread wide, dressed in a long pale garment. The next moment, as the scene came into focus, it became plain that Gerald was carrying Hannah in his arms with her yellow silken gown hanging down in front of him. He moved slowly forward out of the doorway.
Effingham cowered back against the wall. As Gerald passed him by, moving in the direction of his own room, as the silk sleeve brushed lightly in passing, as the lamplight for a moment illumined her, Effingham saw Hannah’s head resting quietly against Gerald’s shoulder, her eyes wide open.
Chapter Twenty-three
‘I must stop crying. Just tell me to, will you, Effingham.’
‘Stop crying, Marian.’
She was lying on the sofa in the drawing-room and he was sitting on the ground beside her holding her hand. It was four hours later; four hours since they had heard the key turn in the door of Gerald Scottow’s room. It would soon begin to be light.
They had perceived nothing further since the sound of the locking door. Jamesie had taken the decanter of whiskey and was sitting out on the stairs. He seemed to have fallen asleep against the banisters. Denis Nolan was sitting on the floor on the upper landing, hugging his knees and keeping Gerald’s door in view. Most of the lamps had gone out and blackness had gradually crept over the house. The drawing-room lamp had failed an hour ago and the fire was out. Effingham had lit the two candles in the silver candlesticks on the mantelpiece.
What had happened? A consciousness of what had happened and of what was happening sat upon the house like a stifling cowl. Effingham felt paralysed. He could not, as he saw Gerald recede along the lighted corridor, have lifted a finger or uttered a sound. He could not remember whether he had not fallen on his knees. He was paralysed, like a creature bitten by an insect or a snake, and lying there living, breathing, and waiting to be eaten.
‘Effingham, she is destroyed.’ Marian had been saying things like this in paroxysms of weeping for an hour.
His own task, his own moment, laid up for him since the beginning like a precious jewel, how neatly and how absolutely he had lost it. ‘Stop it. We know nothing. Oughtn’t you to eat something? Ill go and find some bread. I know where the kitchen is.’
‘No, not for me. When it gets light the maids can bring us something. If there are any maids. Oh God, I wish it were light. I can’t bear this darkness. This night seems to have been going on for twenty hours. The house smells horrible at night. And there’s no air. Are the windows open? Effingham, don’t go away!’
‘I’m not going away. I’m getting myself some more whiskey. Marian, for Christ’s sake stop crying. Or for my sake.’
He sat down again beside her and stroked her flushed face with his hand and she became quiet. It was odd, sitting so close to her in the dark quiet room. He stroked her face. Then he stroked her breasts. She captured his hand and stilled it upon her heart, holding it there. They gazed at each other. Effingham thought, I don’t desire her, yet I feel as intimate with her as if we had been lovers. He leaned forward and kissed her upon the brow. Then he kissed her upon the lips.
She participated in the kiss and then lay there looking at him with a gentle defeated look. He thought, she feels as I do: and in a moment he was feeling infinitely sorry for himself. She squeezed his hand and sighed and closed her eyes. He contemplated her. He was comforted by her silent steady acceptance of his kiss. He found himself murmuring, ‘I do love you, Marian, I wasn’t just drunk!’
‘I love you too, Effingham,’ she said without opening her eyes. ‘But we are talking in our sleep.’
He did not know what she meant, but he was content with the answer. He knelt down and laid his head on the sofa against her arm and instantly fell asleep.
He was awakened by a murmur of voices. He had the feeling as he woke that the voices had been going on for some time. He lifted his head. One of the candles had gone out and the room was very dark indeed and cold. Two people were sitting and talking softly at the far end of the room near the door. It took him a dazed moment to realize that it was Alice and Denis. He got up stiffly and went towards them. They became silent, lifting their faces, shadowy and light brown in the indistinct candlelight.
‘I’m sorry to come chasing you and bothering you, Effingham,’ said Alice rather stiffly. Her loud precise voice rang absurdly in the dark airless room. ‘But Father wanted to know what was going on.’
‘I want to know what’s going on 1 I can tell you all I know -‘
‘It’s all right, Denis has told me everything. I thought I wouldn’t wake you, you were sleeping so peacefully. I’d better go back to Father now.’
She rose and Denis rose too, and they confronted Effingham as a pair, drawn together by confidences in the dark. They seemed to accuse him and he almost quailed before them. Alice, solid, handsome, her wide face surly with a sort of conviction, had already lapped strength from the new situation.
‘Don’t go away, Alice.’ Marian’s voice spoke from behind him.
‘Why not?’
‘Don’t go yet. I feel there’s safety in numbers. Wait till we know what’s happened. I?