"Murdoch, Iris - An Unofficial Rose" - читать интересную книгу автора (Murdoch Iris)

THE big brightly lit stone-flagged kitchen was silent except for the click of dominoes and the perpetual purring of the Aga cooker. The shutters were closed and barred. The long rows of blue dishes on the dresser gleamed like so many approving Dutch cherubs. Hugh calculated that tomorrow he could decently tell Ann that he was leaving on Tuesday.
It was the evening of Saturday after supper. At the long deal table, its legs half clawed away by generations of cats, its surface blanched by years of scrubbing to the colour of light sand, Douglas Swann and Penn were playing dominoes. Miranda had gone to bed. Ann was sewing. Hugh was smoking his pipe and watching the others. Every now and then Ann looked up and smiled, at anyone who caught her eye, a pale encouraging smile.
Hugh reflected that it was a peaceful scene, a scene even of positive innocence: an innocence to which Penn youthfully, Swann professionally, and Ann with some more subtle resonance of the spirit, attributed each their note. Ann was certainly being bravely cheerful in a way which both exasperated Hugh and half compelled his admiration. He himself contributed nothing, he was the spectator. But then he was always the spectator, he reflected with a sad satisfaction which was a sign of returning vitality. He puffed his pipe and contemplated the happy little family group. Randall, it was true, was still brooding upstairs like an unexploded bomb. But even the thought of Randall seemed now less alarming. By a kind of inertia things were slowly subsiding back to normal; and from that point, he obscurely felt, his own new life would begin. The danger point was passed by now. Randall had been practically incommunicado for ten days, and if one were disposed to find things odd one might find this rather odd. But why be so disposed?
Ann, who was after all the person most affected, seemed to take it calmly enough; so calmly that Hugh, who had not discussed the matter with her, suspected that perhaps after all she had some subterranean mode of communication with her husband. Perhaps, contrary to appearances, she was seeing 'something of him. Perhaps she visited him when everyone else was in bed. In any case it was clear that there was nothing he could do about it. He had visited Randall once or twice since their conversation about 'the formal world', but had found his son remote and dreamy and more than usually evasive. Randall was drinking steadily. On the other hand he seemed peaceful, even cheerful, and had an air as of one positively meditating. The Absurd siege could not last forever. The situation was too ridiculous for even Randall to sustain. He must soon return to some version of his normal condition wherein, unable to be in Ann's presence without irritation, he nevertheless followed her everywhere and could scarcely while he was in the house at all, let her out of his sight. From this irritated and obsessive state his present isolation seemed like a disciplined abstention from which some notable purging of the humours might be hoped to follow. It could even be that Hugh's departure would hasten the Armistice.
So he reasoned. But, with a pleasantly complacent sense that he was justified in cherishing himself, he was clear that whatever the outcome of that argument he would stay no longer at Grayhallock. The big indifferent house, upon which the unhappiness of him and his had made so little impression, and where the phantoms of his sadness were without a resting place, seemed a device of punishment which was not designed for him. He had not made and deserved this cage and he could and would step out of it. He would exert himself later to help those that remained behind. Meanwhile, he had had enough of Ann's worthiness, RandallТs sulks. Swann's piety, Miranda's pranks, Penn's accent, and the gawky rows of dripping rose bushes. He thought of his cosy London flat and the glowing Tintoretto, and it seemed a shrine of refuge.
He wanted too to pass another stage in the distance that separated him from Fanny. He felt pain, he missed her; but part of missing her was knowing, with a cunning of the soul which he could but partly sanction, by what devices he could, miss her less. He was able, he found already, to console himself; and he offered up to her, a melancholy wreath of homage, his consciousness of the inevitability of such consolation. The dead are the victims of the living, and he would live. Already he felt, from her death, obscurely more alive. She fed him. So it was, with misgivings yet relentlessly, that he wished to distance himself from her more accusing image, from the cat-hugging Fanny of the patience-cards and the swallows, the last really humanly present Fanny that he had known. At the clinic she had been frightened with a fear which he could not contemplate; and then she had put on, or had imposed upon her, the impersonality of the officially dying. With that, Hugh also wanted to escape from Ann, and from the way in which Ann's gentle, transparent, more reflective personality kept Fanny disconcertingly alive. Ann's consciousness of the matter seemed to leave no place for consolation, for that symbolic, second slaying of the dead. But then Ann was unhappy and correspondingly unfair.
Laughter and the clatter of the dominoes being piled together on the table marked the end of another game. Ann was telling Penn that it was time for bed, and Penn was arguing that it was too early, and Douglas Swann was pleading for another round, and now Ann was smiling and giving way. Yes, it was an innocent little world. It was an innocent little world, except that Steve was dead and Randall was drunk upstairs and Emma Sands was at this moment existing somewhere in London.
After the violence of death, its unavoidable shock and horror, as his disturbed spirit began to compose into a fresh pattern, as the thoughts which came to him in the early morning began to take on form and structure again, he found that Emma Sands occupied a new and significant place. It was as if she had crept up on him, and he had turned to find her, large as life, sitting there. He was haunted by the image, the snapshot vision, which he had received in the cemetery, of Emma and the girl, black rainswept figures, clinging grotesquely together. He had reached indifference, he had passed into forgetfulness: he thought. But now Emma grew in his mind; and the previous occasions of seeing her, so oddly spaced out through the past years, the bus occasion, the escalator occasion, the National Gallery occasion, fed retrospectively by the cemetery occasion, glowed and burgeoned in his memory.
He knew, of course, his own absurdity, knew even something of the mechanics of this tiny obsession, and how it had jerked into more evident life when Mildred had suggested the trip to India. Why could he not go to India? Because -- yet why because? -- of Emma. Emma still, magnetically, existed; and he had time too to reflect on how instinctively he classed her with the dark free things, with that other shapely world of the imagination into which he had failed, and he found himself using Randall's metaphor, to 'climb' at that crucial period of decision twenty-five years ago. But of course these ideas were without worth, cobwebs and mere childish hauntings which he needed only the time for drawing a deep breath to blow. away altogether. He already knew, and he anticipated with pleasure the little struggle he would have with himself, that he would eventually decide to go to India with Mildred. That is what he would do. Ah, he would be free, he would show them all how much an old man could alter. In Vishnuland what avatar.
'Now, Penny, you really must be off!' said Ann. She put aside the blue-and-white check dress of feather-weight cotton which she was sewing for Miranda, pushed her loose loops of faded hair back behind her ears, and made a mock-stern face at Penn. He got up laughing and protesting..
'Well, well, my friends, I must go too,' said Douglas Swann. 'Penn shall set me an example! Weakness of will, that's our trouble, eh Penn? Up and away!' He rose too.
Swann was a good-looking man with a sallow face of great smoothness which seemed not to know of the razor. Into the smooth mask, the colour of honeysuckle, a pair of narrow dark eyes and a thin dry clearly outlined mouth had been let, as it were by an after-thought, so little were they, by any puckering or wrinkling of the surface, worked into their surroundings. His very dark hair, lacquered with hair oil, was combed in a neat crust over his brow. He had, with his rather smart black suit and crisp dog-collar, a professional air of slightly self-conscious benevolence, a sort, as it were, of clinically compassionate stoop. Yet, and this too Hugh had had occasion to remark, although the context for thinking him an ass was almost completely there, the judgement could not quite be made: the elusive but indubitable light of intelligence flickering in that mild visage forbade any too casual dismissal of its owner.
Penn, tossing his dry mouse-locks, his small perky face animated with argument and affection, was still disputing with Ann, one foot on the coke bucket, one hand in the pocket of his dark grey English purchased flannels, pushing back his blue school blazer to reveal, hanging from his belt by two metal chains, a leather sheath containing a dagger.
'That's a dangerous weapon!' said Douglas Swann, pointing to the dagger.
Penn blushed and removed his foot from the coke and pulled his blazer down.
Ann said, 'Good heavens, that German dagger! Did you find it in Steve's room?'
'Yes,' said Penn, distressed. 'Is that alright?'
'Why, yes, of course,' said Ann. 'But how clever of you to find it.
Felix Meecham gave it to Steve. Felix got it during the war sometime. And Miranda was very keen on it and kept asking Steve to give it to her, but he never would. Then when -- we couldn't find it, though Miranda looked endlessly.'
'Oh, I'll give it to Miranda!' said Penn. 'Well, of course, it's hers anyway. I'm so sorry --' He was still blushing and trying to detach the dagger from his belt.
'No, no, certainly not!' said Ann. 'You keep it! Miranda's forgotten all about it by now. It's more a boy's thing anyhow. Now off you go, Penny, this very instant!'
The door closed behind him, and Douglas Swann sat down again, having evidently changed his mind about going.
'I thought it was a horrible thing, that dagger,' said Ann. 'It's beautifully made of course, but it's got a swastika on the hilt. Felix said it belonged to a German officer. They used to wear daggers, some of them, to show off with. The whole idea is so repulsive. One never stops loathing Hitler, and the sight of that black object with the swastika on it -- it's enough to make one feel quite sick!'
'The young are not touched by this,' said Douglas Swann. He was sorting the dominoes into neat piles.
'No, I suppose not,' said Ann. 'It's a rather disconcerting aspect of their innocence. I never know whether one should teach them to hate Hitler or not.'
'Of course one should,' said Hugh.
'I'm not so sure,' said Swann. 'There's enough hatred in the world already. Only love has clear vision. Hatred has cloudy vision. When we hate we know not what we do.'
'Are you suggesting that we should love Hitler?' said Hugh. He felt irritated with Swann and wished he would go.
'Not exactly,' said Swann. 'That would be, from the point of view of our generation, an impossible task, except perhaps for a saint. But there can be, even for Hitler, a sort of intelligent compassion. Involuntary hatred is a great misfortune, but cultivated hatred is a positive evil. The young have escaped the terrible compulsion to hate which has been our lot. They should be left uncorrupted and judged lucky.'
'I can't agree,' said Hugh. 'It's a matter of practical politics. You speak as if we were in fact all saints. As the world runs, evil soon makes tools out of those who don't hate it. Hatred is our best protection.'
' Would you like some coffee, Douglas, before you go?' said Ann. Douglas Swann rose again, accepting his dismissal. 'No thank you, Ann, I must run. Talk about weakness of will! Oh, I forgot to say, Clare wants to know if you're going in for the flower-arrangement competition this year. She said she hoped so much you would, as without you the women get no idea of the standard.'
Ann laughed. 'Perhaps, if I feel strong enough. Give my love to Clare. And thank her for the quince jelly.'
Douglas Swann lingered, his Ann on the back of Ann's chair, his smooth golden face bland and tender above the stiff dog-collar. The Aga cooker purred. The blue cherubs smiled. Hugh looked at his watch.
The kitchen door burst open and swung back to strike the wall with a noise like a pistol shot and Randall entered. Douglas Swann jumped away from Ann with as much alacrity as if he'd been caught kissing her. Ann half rose and then sat back again.
Randall, seeing Swann there, paused abruptly on the threshold and glared at him. Then he held the door open. Swann murmured that he must be off and shot past Randall through the doorway. The door banged behind him. It was not a dignified exit.
Randall was unshaven and in shirt sleeves. His shirt ballooned out over his trousers in the front, giving him a false paunch which made him look more than usually like an actor. His face was flushed. He advanced to the table and stared at Ann.
Hugh said, 'Sit down, Randall, and stop looking like Banquo's ghost.' At such a moment he feared his son.
Randall said to Ann, 'Must we have that bloody priest infesting the house all the time?'
Ann sat well back in her chair, stretching her hands out on the Anns as if to calm herself with deliberation. She gave him back his stare. 'He's not a bloody priest, and he doesn't infest the house. He came over to see Penny.'
'He came over to see you,' said Randall, 'as you bloody well know.
Not that I care a fuck.'
'Sit down, Randall,' said Hugh, 'and don't shout!'
'I'm not shouting,' said Randall, 'and I'm NOT DRUNK, in case it should occur to anyone to suggest it I'
'You are drunk,' said Ann, Hugh knew that Ann was capable of anger, but he was surprised by the readiness with which she produced it now. If Randall had prepared himself, by his own version of prayer and fasting, for this scene, so doubtless had she.
"Why did you give all Steve's things to Penn?' said Randall. He lowered his voice, but Hugh could see now that he was shivering with rage. His lips trembled and in a slower rhythm his hands opened and closed.
'I didn't give all Steve's things to Penn. I told him he could look through the cupboard to see if there was anything there that might amuse him.' Ann was dead white and with her colourless hair swept back her face was naked and strong. She clutched the Anns of the chair and kept her voice low.
'We mustn't call you a liar, must we?' said Randall. 'Miranda saw Penn taking armfuls of stuff out of Steve's room this afternoon.' He leaned forwards, his pendant shirt brushing the dominoes, his eyes bulging, his large hands spread out on the table.
'Well, why not?' said Ann. 'Why shouldn't someone enjoy those things? Steve wouldn't have minded.'
'It didn't occur to you that Miranda might mind, that I might mind?'
'If you'd been about I might have asked you,' said Ann. 'You weren't About.' She was quiet, but quivering taut.