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Authors: Iris Murdoch
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want to – If it’s alla-I don’t know quite what – You go and try, Bradley – ’
‘Where’s your chisel?’
‘Up there. But it’s a small one. I can’t find – ’
‘Well, you two stay here,’ I said. ‘I’ll just go up and see what’s going on. I bet you anything – Arnold, stay here and sit down !’
I stood outside the bedroom door, which had been mildly disfigured by Arnold’s efforts. A lot of paint had flaked off and lay like white pearls upon the fawn carpet. The chisel lay there too. I tried the handle and called, ‘Rachel. It’s Bradley. Rachel!’
Silence.
‘I’ll get a hammer,’ I could hear Arnold, invisible, saying downstairs.
‘Rachel, Rachel, please answer – ’ The real panic had got inside me now. I pressed all my weight on the door. It was solid and well made. ‘Rachel!’
Silence.
I hurled myself at the door, shouting, ‘Rachel!’ Then I stopped, and listened very carefully.
There was a tiny sound from within, a sort of little creeping mouse-like sound. I said, ‘Oh let her be all right, let her be all right.’
More creeping. Then very softly in a scarcely audible whisper. ‘Bradley.’
‘Rachel, Rachel, are you all right?’
Silence. Creeping. Then a little hissing sigh. ‘Yes.’
I shouted to the others, ‘She’s all right! She’s all right!’
I heard them saying something behind me on the stairs. ‘Rachel, let me in, can you? Let me in.’
There was a scuffling sound, then Rachel’s voice, breathy and low down, close against the door, ‘You come in. Not anyone else.’
I heard the key turn in the lock and I pushed quickly into the room catching a glimpse of Arnold who was standing on the stairs with Francis behind him a little lower down. I saw the two faces very clearly, like faces in a crucifixion crowd which represent the painter and his friend. Arnold’s face was distorted into a sort of sneer of anguish. Francis’s was bright with malign curiosity. Suitable expressions for a crucifixion. Inside I nearly fell over Rachel who was sitting on the floor. She was moaning softly now, trying frantically to turn the key again in the lock. I turned it for her and then sat down on the floor beside her.
Since Rachel Baffin is one of the main actors, in a crucial sense perhaps the main actor, in my drama I should like now to pause briefly to describe her. I had known her for over twenty years, almost as long as I had known Arnold, yet at the time that I speak of I did not really, as I later realized, know her well. There was a sort of vagueness. Some women, in fact in my experience many women, have a sort of ‘abstract’ quality about them. Is this a real sex difference? Perhaps this quality is really just unselfishness. (In this respect, you know where you are with men!) In Rachel’s case it was certainly not lack of intelligence. There was a vagueness which womanly affection and the custom of my quasi-family friendship with the Baffins did not dispel, even increased. Of course men play roles, but women play roles too, blanker ones. They have, in the play of life, fewer good lines. This may be to make a mystery of what had simpler causes. Rachel was an intelligent woman married to a famous man: and instinctively such a woman behaves as a function of her husband, she reflects, as it were, all the light on to him. Her ‘blankness’ repelled even curiosity. One does not expect such a woman to have ambition: whereas Arnold and I were both, in quite different ways, tormented, perhaps even defined, by ambition. Rachel was (in a way in which one would never think this of a man) a ‘good specimen’, a ‘good sort’. One relied on her. There she was. She looked (then) just like a big handsome sweet contented woman, the efficient wife of a well-known charmer. She was a large, smooth-faced, slightly freckled, reddish-blonde person, with straightish gingery wiry hair and a pale complexion, a bit tall for a woman and generally on a larger scale
‘Where’s your chisel?’
‘Up there. But it’s a small one. I can’t find – ’
‘Well, you two stay here,’ I said. ‘I’ll just go up and see what’s going on. I bet you anything – Arnold, stay here and sit down !’
I stood outside the bedroom door, which had been mildly disfigured by Arnold’s efforts. A lot of paint had flaked off and lay like white pearls upon the fawn carpet. The chisel lay there too. I tried the handle and called, ‘Rachel. It’s Bradley. Rachel!’
Silence.
‘I’ll get a hammer,’ I could hear Arnold, invisible, saying downstairs.
‘Rachel, Rachel, please answer – ’ The real panic had got inside me now. I pressed all my weight on the door. It was solid and well made. ‘Rachel!’
Silence.
I hurled myself at the door, shouting, ‘Rachel!’ Then I stopped, and listened very carefully.
There was a tiny sound from within, a sort of little creeping mouse-like sound. I said, ‘Oh let her be all right, let her be all right.’
More creeping. Then very softly in a scarcely audible whisper. ‘Bradley.’
‘Rachel, Rachel, are you all right?’
Silence. Creeping. Then a little hissing sigh. ‘Yes.’
I shouted to the others, ‘She’s all right! She’s all right!’
I heard them saying something behind me on the stairs. ‘Rachel, let me in, can you? Let me in.’
There was a scuffling sound, then Rachel’s voice, breathy and low down, close against the door, ‘You come in. Not anyone else.’
I heard the key turn in the lock and I pushed quickly into the room catching a glimpse of Arnold who was standing on the stairs with Francis behind him a little lower down. I saw the two faces very clearly, like faces in a crucifixion crowd which represent the painter and his friend. Arnold’s face was distorted into a sort of sneer of anguish. Francis’s was bright with malign curiosity. Suitable expressions for a crucifixion. Inside I nearly fell over Rachel who was sitting on the floor. She was moaning softly now, trying frantically to turn the key again in the lock. I turned it for her and then sat down on the floor beside her.
Since Rachel Baffin is one of the main actors, in a crucial sense perhaps the main actor, in my drama I should like now to pause briefly to describe her. I had known her for over twenty years, almost as long as I had known Arnold, yet at the time that I speak of I did not really, as I later realized, know her well. There was a sort of vagueness. Some women, in fact in my experience many women, have a sort of ‘abstract’ quality about them. Is this a real sex difference? Perhaps this quality is really just unselfishness. (In this respect, you know where you are with men!) In Rachel’s case it was certainly not lack of intelligence. There was a vagueness which womanly affection and the custom of my quasi-family friendship with the Baffins did not dispel, even increased. Of course men play roles, but women play roles too, blanker ones. They have, in the play of life, fewer good lines. This may be to make a mystery of what had simpler causes. Rachel was an intelligent woman married to a famous man: and instinctively such a woman behaves as a function of her husband, she reflects, as it were, all the light on to him. Her ‘blankness’ repelled even curiosity. One does not expect such a woman to have ambition: whereas Arnold and I were both, in quite different ways, tormented, perhaps even defined, by ambition. Rachel was (in a way in which one would never think this of a man) a ‘good specimen’, a ‘good sort’. One relied on her. There she was. She looked (then) just like a big handsome sweet contented woman, the efficient wife of a well-known charmer. She was a large, smooth-faced, slightly freckled, reddish-blonde person, with straightish gingery wiry hair and a pale complexion, a bit tall for a woman and generally on a larger scale
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