The Flight From The Enchanter Part 1

THE FLIGHT FROM.

THE ENCHANTER.

Iris Murdoch.

To Elias Canetti.

One.

IT was about three o'clock on a Friday afternoon when Annette decided to leave school. An Italian lesson was in progress. In an affected high-pitched voice the Italian tutor was reading aloud from the twelfth canto of the Inferno. She had just reached the pa.s.sage about the Minotaur. Annette disliked the Inferno. It seemed to her a cruel and unpleasant book. She particularly disliked the pa.s.sage about the Minotaur. Why should the poor Minotaur be suffering in h.e.l.l? It was not the Minotaur's fault that it had been born a monster. It was G.o.d's fault. The Minotaur bounded to and fro in pain and frustration, Dante was saying, like a bull that has received the death blow. Part.i.te, bestia! said the mincing voice of the Italian tutor. She was an Englishwoman who had done a course on Italian civilization in Florence when she was young. Virgil was speaking contemptuously to the Minotaur. Annette decided to go. I am learning nothing here, she thought. From now on I shall educate myself. I shall enter the School of Life. She packed her books up neatly and rose. She crossed the room, bowing gravely to the Italian tutor, who had interrupted her reading and was looking at Annette with disapproval. Annette left the room, closing the door quietly behind her. When she found herself outside in the heavily carpeted corridor, she began to laugh. It was all so absurdly simple, she could not imagine why she had not thought of it long ago. She crossed the corridor with a skip and a jump, making a tasteful vase of flowers rock upon its pedestal, and went down the steps to the cloakroom three at a time.

The Ringenhall Ladies' College was an expensive finis.h.i.+ng-school in Kensington which taught to young women of the debutante cla.s.s such arts as were considered necessary for the catching of a husband in one, or at the most two, seasons. The far-sighted mammas of the social group from which Ringenhall recruited its pupils were not by any means as rich as they used to be, and they wanted quick results. Ringenhall was geared to the production of those results with the stringency of a military operation. Annette had been a pupil at Ringenhall for about six months. Her father, who was a diplomat, wanted her to 'come out' in London, and had taken the view that a short period at an establishment of this kind would produce in his 'cosmopolitan ragam.u.f.fin', as he called Annette, sufficient of the surface of a young English lady for him to be able to pa.s.s her off as such during the social season which he felt to be a necessary part of her upbringing, if not exactly its crown. Andrew c.o.c.keyne, who had not lived in England himself since he was twenty-three, and indeed thoroughly disliked the place, which he found, though he would not have admitted it, both tedious and oppressive, had nevertheless taken care to send his son to his own public school. Annette's education, which was less important, and in the course of which she had learnt four languages and little else, had been picked up un pen partout; but it was essential in her father's view that it should reach its climax in no other place than London. Annette's mother, who was Swiss, had spread out her hands and a.s.sented to this arrangement, and if she had felt any scepticism about it she had kept it to herself.

Annette was nearly nineteen. Concerning Ringenhall she herself had not experienced a single moment of doubt. She had loathed it from the very first day. For her fellow-pupils she felt a mixture of pity and contempt, and for her teachers, who were called 'tutors', contempt unmixed. For the headmistress, a Miss Walpole, she felt a pure and disinterested hatred. 'Disinterested', because Miss Walpole had never behaved unpleasantly to Annette or indeed paid any attention to her whatsoever. Annette had never hated anyone in this way before and took pride in the emotion, which she felt to be a sign of maturity. Against the Ringenhall curriculum she had fought with unremitting obstinacy, determined not to let a single one of the ideas which it purveyed find even a temporary lodgement in her mind. When it was possible, she read a book or wrote letters in cla.s.s. When this was not possible, she pursued some lively daydream, or else fell into a self-induced coma of stupidity. To do this she would let her jaw fall open and concentrate her attention upon some object in the near vicinity until her eyes glazed and there was not a thought in her head. After some time, however, she discontinued this practice, not because the tutors began to think that she was not right in the head - this merely amused her - but because she discovered that she was able by this means to make herself fall asleep, and this frightened her very much indeed.

Annette put her coat on and was ready to go. But now when she reached the door that led into the street she paused suddenly. She turned round and looked along the corridor. Everything seemed the same; the expensive flora, the watery reproductions of famous paintings, the much admired curve of the white staircase. Annette stared at it all. It looked to her the same, and yet different. It was as if she had walked through the looking-gla.s.s. She realized that she was free. As Annette pondered, almost with awe, upon the ease with which she had done it, she felt that Ringenhall had taught her its most important lesson. She began to walk back, peering through doorways and touching objects with her fingers. She half expected to find new rooms hidden behind familiar doors. She wandered into the library.

She entered quietly and found that as usual the room was empty. She stood there in the silence until it began to look to her like a library in a sacked city. No one owned these books now. No one would come here again; only after a while the wall would crumble down and the rain would come blowing in. It occurred to Annette that she might as well take away one or two books as souvenirs. Volumes were not arranged in any particular order, nor were they stamped or catalogued. She examined several shelves. The books were chaotic, but in mint condition, since reading was not a popular activity at Ringenhall. At length she selected a leather-bound copy of the Collected Poems of Browning, and left the room with the book under her arm. She was by now feeling so happy that she would have shouted for joy if it had not been for the delicious spell which she felt herself to be under and which still enjoined silence. She looked about her complacently. Ringenhall was at her mercy.

There were two things which Annette had wanted very much to do ever since she had arrived. One of these was to carve her name on a wooden bust by Grinling Gibbons which stood in the common-room. There was something solemn and florid about this work which made Annette itch for a blade. The wood was soft and inviting. However, she rejected this idea, not because the name of Grinling Gibbons carded, when it came to it, any magic for her but because she had mislaid her pocket-knife. The other thing which she had always wanted to do was to swing on the chandelier in the dining-room. She turned rapidly in the direction of that room and bounded in. Tables and chairs stood by, silent with disapproval. Annette looked up at the chandelier and her heart beat violently. The thing seemed enormously high up and far away. It hung from a stout chain; Annette had noticed this carefully when she had studied it in the past. She had also remarked a strong metal bar, right in the centre of it, on which she had always planned to put her hands. All about and above this bar were suspended tiny drops of crystal, each one glowing with a drop of pure light tinier still, as if a beautiful wave had been arrested in the act of breaking while the sun was s.h.i.+ning upon it. Annette had felt sure that if she could swing upon the chandelier the music which was hidden in the crystals would break out into a great peal of bells. But now it seemed to be very hard to get at.

In her imagination Annette had always reached her objective by a flying leap from the High Table; but she could see now that this was not a very practical idea. Grimly she began to pull one of the tables into the centre of the room. On top of the table she placed one of the chairs. Then she began to climb up. By the time she was on the table she was already beginning to feel rather far away from the ground. Annette was afraid of heights. However, she mounted resolutely on to the chair. Here, by standing on tiptoe, she could get her hands over the metal bar. She paused breathlessly. Then with a quick movement she kicked the chair away and hung stiffly in mid-air. The chandelier felt firm, her grip was strong, there was no terrible rending sound as the chain parted company with the ceiling. After all, thought Annette, I don't weigh much.

She kept her feet neatly together and her toes pointed. Then with an oscillation from the hips she began to swing very gently to and fro. The chandelier began to ring, not with a deafening peal but with a very high and sweet tinkling sound; the sort of sound, after all, which you would expect a wave of the sea to make if it had been immobilized and turned into gla.s.s: a tiny internal rippling, a mixture of sound and light. Annette was completely enchanted by this noise and by the quiet rhythm of her own movements. She fell into a sort of trance, and as she swung dreamily to and fro she had a vision of remaining there for the rest of the afternoon until the boarders of Ringenhall, streaming in for their dinner, would make their way round on either side of her swinging feet and sit down, paying her no more attention than if she had been a piece of furniture.

At that moment the door opened and Miss Walpole came in. Annette, who was at the end of one of her swings, let go abruptly of the chandelier and, missing the table, fell to the floor with a crash at Miss Walople's feet. Miss Walpole looked down at her with a slight frown. This lady was never sure which she disliked most, adolescent girls or small children; the latter made more noise, it was true, but they were often in the long run easier to handle.

'Get up, Miss c.o.c.keyne,' she said to Annette in her usual weary tone of voice. She always sighed when she spoke, as if wearied by her interlocutor; and as she never cared particularly about anything, so nothing much ever surprised her. This calm indifference had won her the reputation of being a good headmistress.

Annette got up, rubbing herself. It had been a painful fall. Then she turned and put the table straight, and picked up the chair, which was lying on its side. After that, she retrieved her coat and bag and the copy of Browning and faced Miss Walpole.

'What were you doing, Miss c.o.c.keyne?' asked Miss Walpole, sighing.

'Swinging from the chandelier,' said Annette. She was not afraid of her headmistress, whose claims to moral or intellectual excellence she had seen through some time ago.

'Why?' asked Miss Walpole.

Annette had no ready answer to this, and thought she might as well skip a point or two in the conversation by saying immediately, 'I'm sorry.' Then she said, 'I've decided to leave Ringenhall.'

'May I again ask why?' asked Miss Walpole.

She was an extremely tall woman, which was also perhaps one of the secrets of her success, and although Annette, too, was tall, she had to throw her head back if she wanted to look into Miss Walpole's eyes. Annette took a step or two away and receded until the line which joined her eyes to Miss Walpole's made a nearer approach to the horizontal. She wanted to look dignified. But as she moved away, Miss Walpole imperceptibly approached, gliding forward as if propelled from behind, so that Annette had once more to crane her neck.

'I have learnt all that I can learn here,' said Annette. 'From now on I shall educate myself. I shall go out into the School of Life.'

'As to your having learnt all that you can learn here,' said Miss Walpole, 'that is clearly untrue. Your style of entertaining is distinctly Continental, and as I had occasion to remark the other day, you still go upstairs on all fours like a dog.'

'I mean,' said Annette, 'that I've learnt all the things which I consider important.'

'What makes you imagine,' said Miss Walpole, 'that anything of importantace can be taught in a school?' She sighed again. 'You realize, I suppose,' she went on, 'that your parents have paid in advance for tuition and meals up to the end of next term, and there can be no question of refunding that money?'

'It doesn't matter,' said Annette.

'You are fortunate to be able to say so,' said Miss Walpole. 'As for the inst.i.tution which you call the School of life, I doubt, if I may venture a personal opinion, whether you are yet qualified to benefit from its curriculum. What, by the way, is that?' She pointed to the Browning, which Annette was now slipping into her bag.

'That is a book which I wished to give to the library as a parting present,' said Annette. She handed it to Miss Walpole, who took it with suspicion.

'It is a handsome copy,' said Miss Walpole. 'We are grateful to you.'

'I should like a plate to be put in it,' said Annette, 'to say it is the gift of Annette c.o.c.keyne. And now, good-bye, Miss Walpole. '

'Good-bye, Miss c.o.c.keyne,' said Miss Walpole. 'Remember that the secret of all learning is patience and that curiosity is not the same thing as a thirst for knowledge. Also remember that I am always here.'

Annette, who had no intention of imprinting this disagreeable idea on her mind, said, 'Thank you,' and backed away rapidly towards the door. In a moment she was hurrying down the corridor and jumping into the street.

As soon as Annette found herself outside, she began to run. This was not because she wanted to get away from Ringenhall Ladies' College but because whenever she was feeling pleased and excited she would run: like Nike, she was normally to be seen in rapid motion, putting her foot to the ground in a swirl of drapery. Annette wore underneath her dress two or three coloured petticoats; so that as she ran, and as the April wind now did its best to sweep her from the ground, her long legs appeared in a kaleidoscope of whirling colours. Twice she dropped her books and had to go back for them. Three times she pa.s.sed something which pleased her and had to run backwards until it was out of sight. Annette never minded turning round in the street and looking back. Her father had told her that this was childish and Miss Walpole told her that it was undignified. But her brother Nicholas, whom she admired more than anyone in the world, had said: 'People who never look round are always missing things.' There was nothing Annette and Nicholas feared so much as the possibility of missing something. Her father had laughed, and mentioned Orpheus and Lot's wife. 'I should have looked round if I'd been them,' said Annette. 'The most interesting things are always happening behind one.'

'The trouble with you,' her father had said, 'is that you want to be everywhere at once. One day you'll just explode into little pieces.'

It was beginning to rain. Annette shot round the corner from Queen's Gate at a considerable pace backwards, looking at a black man. Then she turned and pelted along Kensington High Street. She wanted to get home quickly and change and be ready to break the news to Rosa. 'I'm the boss now,' said Annette out loud as she ran past Barker's. Two ladies who were pa.s.sing stared at her in amazement. Her eyes and her mouth were wide open and her petticoats were spinning like a Catherine-wheel. Trying to kick up her heels behind her like a horse, she nearly fell flat on her nose.

Two.

A DOOR downstairs slammed violently. 'My sister is a brute!' said Hunter Keepe.

Calvin Blick was not interested in Hunter's sister, who was by then of a certain age. Besides, she was a plump woman; Calvin liked women, if at all, to be long-legged, pale, and slim, with very small feet. He had seated himself on the edge of Hunter's desk and was swinging his legs.

Hunter hated this familiarity. 'Need you sit on my desk?' he asked.

'There's nowhere else to sit,' said Calvin sulkily. This was true; there was no other chair in the room except the chair occupied by Hunter.

'There's the floor!' said Hunter.

This was true too. Calvin removed himself to the floor, where he reclined in the position of an Etruscan lying on his tomb. Calvin was a tall man, with pale eyes whose colour no one could ever remember.

'Need you lie down like that?' said Hunter. He found this posture equally irritating.

'Nothing pleases you, Mr Keepe,' said Calvin, 'Where am I to put myself?'

'You can sit there, with your back against the wall,' said Hunter.

Calvin put himself in the spot indicated by Hunter. 'This place is a pigsty,' he said. 'Look at the dust on my trousers already!'

'I can't afford a woman,' said Hunter, 'and Rosa won't clean up in here. Anyway, she's so busy at the factory now.'

'At the what?' said Calvin.

'At the factory,' said Hunter. 'Didn't you know? It all comes of being named after Rosa Luxemburg. She never had a chance.' He spoke with bitterness.

'Oh, I don't know,' said Calvin. 'What about me? I got on all right.'

'It's a rotten little factory anyway,' said Hunter. 'It makes sort of rollers and sprayers for painting with. It's not even exciting.'

'Well, it's useful,' said Calvin. 'We're all producers nowadays, as Saint-Simon says. But why does your sister do it?'

'She wants to be in touch with the People,' said Hunter gloomily, 'and to make her life colourless.'

'As for that,' said Calvin, 'most of us can manage it without taking so much trouble.' He wanted to bring the conversation back to the point from which Hunter had been leading it away. 'Tell me, do you edit the review from here?'

'Yes,' said Hunter. 'This is the office.'

'No wonder you've got a circulation of three.'

'We're doing all right.'

'You're nearly bankrupt,' said Calvin, 'and I just don't understand why you're turning down my proposal. You won't get an offer from anyone else for your dead-beat rag.'

Calvin was puzzled. Hunter had remained throughout the interview, not exactly adamant but apparently uninterested. He kept turning his head away like a sulky horse. The curious thing was that Blick was sure that his adversary was not a strong man. He had not expected this sort of resistance, and he was still at a loss to estimate its nature.

'I don't want to sell what you call my dead-beat rag to you or anyone else, so there,' said Hunter. He tossed back his rather long yellow hair.

Hunter was twenty-seven and was what some people would have called a 'pretty boy'. He had a very smooth face and a deprecating self-pitying smile. With his prettiness he had the untidy look not so much of an undergraduate as of a small boy. He took after his blond father, who had been a painter. Rosa took after her dark-haired mother, who had been a Fabian.

'It isn't even,' said Calvin, 'as if it was yours, the Artemis. Technically it belongs to your sister, doesn't it?'

'Oh, technically,' said Hunter, 'it belongs to a lot of old women who campaigned for Women's Rights back in nineteen ten. They were the original shareholders, and a lot of them are still around, tough as old boots. When our mother died, her shares came to Rosa. No man is allowed to hold shares in it, you know. That's in the const.i.tution. But Rosa's only one shareholder among others.'

'So, strictly speaking,' said Calvin, 'it's the shareholders who should decide what happens to the review.'

'They don't matter,' said Hunter. 'They've forgotten about it long ago. The shares have been worthless for years. I call a shareholders' meeting at the prescribed intervals, and I bring a report and a financial statement, but no one turns up. The whole character of the Artemis has changed so completely in the last twenty years or so those battle-axes just wouldn't recognize it as the old suffragette paper. It's I who decide what happens now. I am the Artemis.'

'What about your sister?' asked Calvin.

'Rosa doesn't care a d.a.m.n,' said Hunter rather bitterly.

'So as far as the shareholders are concerned,' said Calvin, 'they'd probably be glad enough to be bought out. After all, they'd suddenly get some cash in return for those perfectly valueless shares.'

'Possibly,' said Hunter.

'So it's only you who's holding up the deal,' said Calvin; 'and what puzzles me is why? You don't even enjoy editing the thing. You don't make a penny out of it - and I can see from the appearance of this office that it's all a pain in the neck to you.'

'Don't talk about "the deal",' said Hunter. 'There's no deal. I'm not going to sell the Artemis, and that's that. Now be so good as to go away.'

Calvin rose and stared gloomily at Hunter. He had no intention of giving up, and he was certainly not ready to leave before he had thoroughly understood what was in Hunter's mind. He was prepared to stay there for the rest of the day if necessary. He started walking up and down the room, kicking aside the cardboard boxes, piles of newspaper and old numbers of the Artemis with which the floor was strewn.

'Don't do that,' said Hunter. 'You raise a dust.'

'Like to see a photograph of my mother?' asked Calvin. This was an old routine.

'I'm not interested,' said Hunter.

Calvin drew a sheaf of photographs out of his breast pocket. He showed Hunter the first one. It represented a well-proportioned girl dressed in a pair of black stockings and high-heeled shoes.

'Not bad,' said Hunter.

'And this is one of her after she dyed her hair,' said Calvin. The next photograph showed a blonde climbing out of a bath.

'That's enough,' said Hunter. 'Where do you get those things, anyway?' Rumour said that Calvin Blick took all his photographs himself.

'Oh, just out of the family alb.u.m,' said Calvin. He gathered the photos together like a pack of cards with a quick gesture of his pale, freckled hands. Calvin always wore several rings, not always the same ones. Hunter had noticed this and despised it. His own hands were dirty and his finger-nails cut roughly to a point. The two men looked with distaste at each other's hands.

'You understand,' said Calvin, 'that quite apart from any monies your sister might receive for her shares, you would be offered a certain sum, a sum in the fixing of which, I may say, we would be open to any reasonable proposal, as compensation for surrendering your editorial duties. Now, you're an educated man, Mr Keepe, you're not a socially unprotected man like me -'

'You're not socially unprotected now,' said Hunter spitefully. He was glad to find that he was able to put up this show of spirit. He concentrated his attention on Calvin's elastic-topped trousers, another item which he found thoroughly worthy of contempt. All the same, he had reason to fear the man, and he wished that he would go.

'I wonder if you realize that you are audibly grinding your teeth?' said Calvin. 'I knew a man who ground his teeth so hard for years and years that he ground them right down to the gums. It's a neurotic symptom, of course. Freud says somewhere - '

'Look here, Blick,' said Hunter, 'your boss already owns three newspapers and heaven knows how many periodicals and every kind of organized beastliness in print. What does he want the wretched Artemis for? Why can't he leave it alone?'

'He just wants it,' said Calvin. 'That's all. He just wants it.'

'Well, if he wants it, let him come and ask for it himself,' said Hunter, and his voice was trembling. 'Let him come in person to discuss it, and not send his servants.'

Calvin stared at him. 'Ah!' he said. 'Aha!' He had begun to understand.

At the moment the door of Hunter's office burst open and Annette entered like a small tornado. She seemed to fly in one bound from the door to perch on Hunter's desk, and her skirt and petticoats fell in great multi-coloured folds all over his papers as she drew her feet up after her like someone taking refuge on a rock.

'Oh, Hunter,' cried Annette, 'do listen! I've left beastly Ringenhall!'

'Annette!' cried Hunter. 'How many times must I tell you not to enter this office without knocking? I'm in conference now, you must go away!'

Annette noticed Calvin, and fell off the desk. But it was too late. Calvin had jumped up and said, 'Don't go away yet, we haven't been introduced.' He was studying Annette with considerable interest.

Hunter looked furious. 'This is Annette c.o.c.keyne,' he mumbled. 'Meet Calvin Blick.'