The Unicorn by Iris Murdoch
‘Surely we know what’s happened,’ said Alice slowly. ‘Surely it’s all over. There’s nothing for us to do here any more.’ She drew them all together with her, all together as outsiders.
Marian gave a little exclamation and Effingham drew in his breath. But neither of them answered. Denis moved quietly away and began to pull back the heavy curtains from the windows. It was getting light outside. The new grey pale light came into the room, making the candle desolate, making the figures into different ghosts.
‘Marian, Marian!’ A loud urgent cry rang out from somewhere in the depths of the house.
They stood for a moment open-mouthed with fright, staring at each other. It was as if all their previous conversation had been a silence, and here was a sound at last.
‘Marian!’
Marian ran to the door. It was the voice of Gerald Scottow.
The faint appalling daylight, entering through the window at the top of the stairs, made the hall and staircase dimly present. Jamesie, who had just risen, was standing on the fifth step looking up. Denis was standing in the hall. Gerald was at the head of the stairs, his great bulk outlined against the window. ‘Here I am,’ she said, her foot upon the first stair. Jamesie moved away from between them, half stumbling, half slithering down, and joined the others who were standing close together in the hall. ‘Marian, will you please go and pack Hannah’s things.’ There was a silence. Then Marian said, thickly and heavily, ‘Why?’ ‘Because I am going to take her away.’ There was silence again. The scene seemed to shift and shimmer in the dim greyish bluish light. The little crowd below huddled together, aware of their insubstantial faces raised to the stairhead. Then Marian said slowly, ‘No, I don’t think I will.’ Everyone stood still with held breath as if thinking about this response. Then a voice said, ‘Well, I will then.’
Violet Evercreech, who had joined the group in the twilight without anyone’s noticing, swept suddenly forward to the foot of the stairs. Effingham felt himself pushed aside with a positive and brutal violence. Violet paused beside Marian and seized her arm. She hissed into her face. ‘I told you. Whore and murderess!’ Then she ran up the stairs. ‘Thank you, Violet,’ said Gerald Scottow in a calm voice. Violet passed him and vanished down the corridor towards Hannah’s room. And as she went she suddenly cried out aloud, ‘End! End! End!’ The strange cry receded. It was an invocation ; and the watchers at the foot of the stairs shuddered with an instant sense of the proximity of the power invoked. Gerald was about to go. But Violet’s loud cry had awakened an echo. ‘Wait a minute!’
Denis Nolan had run lightly past Marian and half-way up the stairs. The daylight was increased and Gerald’s face was now faintly visible as he turned back to look down at the poised defiant figure below him. ‘Well, Denis?’
‘Wait a minute. You say you will take her away. But you will not take her away. Not against her will, and it must be against her will. You must let us see her. We will see her. We will all talk to her. And then see how she will go away.’
‘Denis,’ said Gerald, as one talking to a child, ‘you are really very naive. I am not taking Hannah away against her will. Hannah, as usual, knows exactly what she is doing. Hannah and I understand each other very well and we have always understood each other very well. And now may I suggest you all go away and get some sleep and stop prolonging a pointless vigil.’ He turned again to depart.
‘No!’ Denis was not shouting, but his voice rang. He mounted another two stairs. ‘We will see her first, and we will see her without you. We will see her now.’
‘My dear Denis, you will not see her,’ said Gerald quietly. ‘Go away, all of you. Go away and go to bed. Don’t you see, it is all over.’ The words quivered in the air, mingling with the pale composing daylight.
‘No, no, no!’ Denis was shouting now. ‘We will go to her. Come on, then, come on!’ He turned to the little group behind him.
There was a paralysed stillness. All that Effingham could say afterwards, when in some black penitential hour he told the story to Max, was that they might have all swept forward, they might have all rushed up past Gerald towards where Hannah was: but they did not. It just did not happen. Effingham felt an immediate rigid coldness in his limbs. He could not afterwards swear but that Alice had not laid a restraining hand upon his arm. However that might be, he could not, he felt, in any case have moved an inch. He was already, and well before that moment, defeated. Everyone stayed still and silent.
Denis waited a few seconds. Then he turned and ran up the stairs.
Effingham saw, with a horrible detached precision, how Denis bent low and tried to take a wrestler’s hold of Gerald to hurl him over his shoulder. But Gerald used his advantage of weight and his higher position. He simply butted his opponent away with brute force; and in a moment Denis was tumbling and crashing back down the stairs. He came to rest in a heap at the bottom and lay still. Gerald faded from the stair-head and disappeared.
After another stunned moment there was a low piercing wail. Alice ran forward. She fell noisily to her knees beside him, patting him and pawing him, trying to turn him towards her, to raise him, to undo his shirt. ‘Denis, Denis, Denis -‘
‘Yes, yes, don’t be after taking on so, Alice, there, let me go, I’m all right.’ He pushed her roughly off and leaned back against the lowest stair, rubbing his head. ‘I’m all right, I’m fine.’
He began to scramble to his feet. But Alice remained kneeling. She looked up at him as he stood now, a little withdrawn from her, dusting his coat with an almost embarrassed air. The firm daylight showed her resolute broad face, her solid presence, as she knelt with her hands spread wide upon her thighs. She said in a loud voice, ‘I am going to tell them the truth.’
Denis stopped. He looked at her quietly, urgently, imploringly. ‘No, no, no - ‘ He went down on one knee, stretching out a hand towards her.
She took his hand, and they remained there in an awkward yet formal pose. ‘Yes.’ She turned her head to Effingham. ‘Listen. You know, everyone knows, the story about how Denis sprang upon me at the salmon pool. Everyone knows the story. But a little detail is wrong. Denis never sprang upon me. I sprang upon him.’
There was silence. Denis slowly rose again. Then in a gentle courteous way he helped Alice to her feet. She rose heavily, leaning on his arm which she held on to, and they stood together, suddenly, strangely, connected.
‘Yes,’ said Alice going on in a softer voice. Her eyes were fixed on Denis’s face while he looked down at her hand. ‘I let that convenient he cover up my situation.’ She grasped the material of Denis’s sleeve and twisted it in her fingers. ‘Oh, I was in love with you all right, Effie. But I wanted Denis. And I tried to take hold of him, up there at the salmon pool, like some old marquise might have had her stable man. Only he turned me off. And then I let that lie get about, to cover up the fact that he left Riders immediately.’
In the violent pause after her words Denis, still looking down moved his lips soundlessly, like one expected to speak who can find nothing to say. He gave her a quick look and then hung his head again. ‘Ah, Alice, now there was no need - ‘
‘Yes, there was need, Denis. I’ve suffered such pain for this, as I’ve deserved to do. I could not now live with that lie any longer. We must all live - out in the open now.’ She stroked his arm with long gentle strokes. ‘You know it wasn’t just like the marquise, don’t you?’
‘Yes, Alice.’ He took her hand, detaching it from his sleeve as if it were some intrusive but pleasant animal. He held it for a moment. Then he faded from them and vanished under the stairs in the direction of the kitchen quarters.
Effingham stared at Alice. Her words, the scene, the two joined figures, had stricken him with amazement and pain. ‘Is that true?’
‘Yes,’ she said loudly and angrily, glaring back. ‘I didn’t really invent the lie. It just happened and I didn’t contradict it.’
‘Oh God!’ said Effingham. He was stunned and wounded. He could hardly c
‘What’s more, I want him still,’ said Alice in a low fierce voice. ‘I would follow him to his bed if I thought I had the slightest chance!’
She turned away and went quickly through the glass doors of the hall. He saw her for a moment outlined against the light blue morning sky and then she was gone.
‘Go with her, Effingham.’
Effingham had forgotten Marian. He turned upon her now. Why was this intrusive child telling him his duty? Alice was his old, dear friend, his Alice, his own. Without a word he moved quickly to the doors and passed out into the day.
Chapter Twenty-four
When Effingham came out of the house he looked at once at the Austin Seven, which was parked next to the Humber. The cars looked crudely ordinary, vividly modern, over-bright, sitting there neatly side by side upon the gravel. He blinked at them. It seemed strange that they should be still there. They did not belong to the world, to the time, from which he had just emerged. He looked for Alice, but she was not in the car. He looked quickly about him and saw the garden gate shutting which led out to the rocky path down to the sea. She must have gone that way. He followed.
He opened the gate with difficulty. A strong warm wind from the sea was trying to keep it closed. He saw the sea before him now, a metallic silvery pale blue expanse, glittering, empty and sterile in the morning light. The sun was not long up, and the short sallow grass was overrun with huge shadows of rocks. The rocks themselves, scattered senseless lumps, were yellowed with lichen and diamonded with quartz. Then in the scene below him, like a figure in a painting, he saw Alice running.
He called out, but the strong wind took his voice inland. He began hastily to descend the path. Jumping and stumbling he zigzagged downward between the boulders which seemed slowly to grow larger and then to jerk past his head. There was a roaring in his ears which could not yet be the sea. His limbs swung and jolted about as he ran, like those of a broken puppet. He felt weak and giddy, and when he paused for a moment the blue space before him seethed and boiled with particles of light.
He could not see Alice now. By the time he reached the more level ground he could no longer run and had no breath to call out. He walked along panting and holding his side, while the light from the sea seemed to be running through his head like a wide piece of silk pulled through a small hole. He was vaguely aware of the night that had passed, a great dark object, a black obelisk, looming behind him; and somewhere behind that, seemingly lost in the same endless dark, was the bog. He seemed to have lived in continuous darkness now for days, and the light found him blanched and eyeless like a hapless grub.
He was not able yet to begin to think about Hannah. He had a sense of her having died. And Marian was a frail elf, a little ghost that ran away squeaking and gibbering when the daylight came. What emerged from the wreck of everything, with an authority which drew him panting onward, was the reality of Alice. When Alice had spoken her words of truth in the house he had felt, as it seemed to him now, suddenly and unexpectedly unwound, unbound, as by a spell repeated backwards. He had dabbled in necromancy, had held communion with the dark powers; and he almost felt, with a premonitory thrill of fear at what this idea would later do to him, that he himself had somehow brought about the whole wreckage of the long night: conjuring too rashly with the unknown he had pulled the house down upon them all. But Alice was his health, his crucifix, his redeemer.
He had assumed in her an eternity of unselfish devotion, letting her stand near to him, never quite looked at but vaguely seen, a stone idol, a great mother, while he played at love. He had accepted her sufferings with but casual attention. But now, when things had happened which were too appalling to think about, when his romantic love was a corpse and his cleverness a ghost, he knew where it was that he wanted to lay his head. He needed her to shield him from thoughts of Hannah, from Max’s anger, from the consequences of his acts. ‘Alice! Alice!’
The sun dazzled him and he paused again. He was now at the bottom of the hill where the rocks and the weedy pools stretched away toward the base of the black cliff which as he turned to look, seemed to come gliding up out of the earth. The cliff glided on and on up and came to rest, blackening half the sky. Now the rocks were humps of gleaming saffron seaweed, and the sea pools were dark brown between. He saw Alice not far off, detached from him as in some other space, moving slowly across the line of the sea.
‘Alice!’ She did not heed him. Perhaps she had not heard. She went on steadily from rock to rock, sure-footed and without haste, towards the sea. Effingham stumbled after her. His feet splayed and slithered upon the golden weed which heaved and popped and breathed under him like a sea animal. When he had caught up on her a little she stopped abruptly upon the brink of a brown pool and turned to face him. The acknowledgement of his presence forced him to stop too and they regarded each other.
She looked at him, not with any expression of intensity, but moodily, morosely, almost crossly. There were tears or sea spray upon her face. The breaking waves were near now and he could see behind her the hypnotic movement of their nearing lines. ‘Alice -‘ He said it with an imploring confidence. He wanted to clasp her, to reward her, to make certain of her protection. She was turning away from him again; and as he was slipping upon the next rock and saving himself with outstretched arms, she put her hands in her pockets, took another step, and hurled herself full length into the pool.
The shock of her sudden movement made Effingham stumble to his knees. By the time he had got himself up and reached the edge, all was strangely quiet again, the surface rippling a little and Alice lying immersed in the pool, her head resting against a gently sloping rock at the far end. The scene, wrapped about by the loudly roaring waves, had a weird stillness, as if Alice had lain there already a long time, a fish-like sea goddess, brooding since antiquity in some watery hole.
She lay there so still, reposing in the brown weedy pool, her head and shoulders raised against the rock, her hair darkened by the water and quietly dripping, that Effingham thought for a moment that she might have struck the rock and become unconscious. But her eyes were open. He stared at them, remembering Hannah’s eyes. He looked down, paralysed and fascinated, as at something suddenly metamorphosed. He could not speak to her now, she had made herself too much other. Yet he noted how grotesquely her hands were still in her pockets, the soaked collar of her tweed coat turned up about her neck, her clothed body disappearing between the reddish stems of flowery seaweed. Shells glittered like small jewels on the floor of the pool, and he remembered the woman of shells that he had seen laid out upon Alice’s bed.
The strong sun cast his shadow upon the pool. He must find his way to Alice. The sides of the pool were too steep and high for him to be able to reach down and touch her. He stood on one leg and took off one shoe. The action seemed grotesque. A seagull passed his head with a shriek and flashed out to sea. He pulled off his sock, removed the other shoe and sock, and then took off his watch and put it in one of the shoes. He took off his jacket and began to loosen his tie. He paused. Something in the ritual of the actions touched him and he felt a sensation which he identified almost at once as sexual desire. Well, was he not going to bed? Without undressing further he began to slither down the side of the pool.
The water was warm and thick with weed. Effingham sank into the brown gluey liquid, on his side now, his head descending close to Alice’s. He felt his clothes resist and then drink. Now he was soaked and heavy. His face was close to hers now, their brows almost touching, as he edged his shoulder to the sloping rock. He seemed to intercept Alice’s vague gaze. She showed no intensity, looking at him quietly with a sort of casual dignity, her hands still in her pockets. He did not try to raise her yet. He leaned towards her and kissed her on the lips. She was calmly ready for the kiss.
Part Five
Chapter Twenty-five
‘How much farther is it to the salmon pool?’
‘Another mile maybe. Shall we go on?’
‘Yes, please, Denis. Anything to stay out of the house.’