The Green Knight Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Copyright Page

  Chapter 1 - IDEAL CHILDREN

  Chapter 2 - JUSTICE

  Chapter 3 - MERCY

  Chapter 4 - EROS

  Chapter 5 - THEY REACH THE SEA

  PRAISE FOR IRIS MURDOCH AND THE GREEN KNIGHT

  “A vast moral and intellectual tour de force . . . One puts down The Green Knight with a feeling of having feasted at a table of great ideas.”

  —Los Angeles Times Book Review

  “There is a sense in which, having entered the world of an Iris Murdoch novel, the main thing is just being there, living in that atmosphere, breathing that air.”

  —The Washington Post Book World

  “In The Green Knight, Ms. Murdoch offers a keen satire on the way we create fantasies and diversions to protect ourselves from moral complexities and spiritual vacuity.”

  —New York Times Book Review

  “The Green Knight is late, great Iris Murdoch.”

  —The Boston Globe

  “The Green Knight can be read as a fairy tale, as a soap opera, as a love story, but as in all great works of fiction there is an elusive element beyond the human—a glimpse of the ineffable working of grace and redemption.”

  —Minneapolis Star-Tribune

  “At 75, Murdoch is declining in neither output nor quality. The Green Knight is among her very best. It’s a sweeping narrative about ancient moral themes—eros, revenge, envy—that’s leavened with droll wit and alert characterizations. It sucks you in and holds you rapt.”

  —Boston Phoenix Literary Supplement

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  THE GREEN KNIGHT

  Iris Murdoch was born in Dublin in 1919 and grew up in London. She trained as a philosopher at both Oxford and Cambridge, and was for many years a fellow of St. Anne’s College, Oxford, where she taught philosophy. She wrote several works of philosophy, among which are Sartre: Romantic Rationalist, The Sovereignty of Good, and Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals. She was also the author of twenty-six novels, including The Sea, The Sea, which won the Booker Prize in 1978; The Book and the Brotherhood; The Message to the Planet; and The Green Knight. She died on February 8, 1999.

  For Ed Victor

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  First published in Great Britain by Chatto & Windus Ltd 1993

  First published in the United States of America by Viking Penguin,

  a division of Penguin Books USA Inc., 1994

  Published in Penguin Books 1995

  20 19

  Copyright © Iris Murdoch, 1993 All rights reserved

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons. living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The author and publisher would like to thank the following for permission to quote from copyrighted material: For an excerpt from History of the Peloponnesion War by Thucydides, vol. IV, translated by Charles Forster Smith: The Loeb Classical Library, and Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1986; from A History of Europe by H. A. L. Fisher, first published 1936: Edward Arnold Publishers; from “Happy Days and Lonely Nights,” music by Fred Fisher and words by Billy Rose, © 1928 Fred Fisher Music Co. Inc./Advanced Music Corp., U.S.A., reproduced by permission of E.M.I. Music Publishing Ltd./Lawrence Wright Co. Ltd., London, WC2H OEA.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-50164-1

  1. Attempted murder—England—London—Fiction. 2. Brother—England –

  London—Fiction. 3. London (England)—Fiction. I. Title.

  PR6063.U7G7 1994

  S23’ 914—dc20 93-30618

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  1

  IDEAL CHILDREN

  ‘Once upon a time there were three little girls – ’

  ‘Oh look what he’s doing now!’

  ‘And their names were – ’

  ‘Come here, come here.’

  ‘And they lived at the bottom of a well.’

  The first speaker was Joan Blacket, the second was Louise Anderson, the one so urgently summoned was a dog, the little girls mentioned were Louise’s children, the place was Kensington Gardens, the month was October.

  The dog, whose name was Anax, a distinguished and unusual collie with blue eyes, and long silver-grey fur blotched with black and white, came bounding back to the two women. They were of youthful middle age and had been at boarding school together, though not for long since Joan (a bad girl) had been expelled two terms after Louise (a good girl) had arrived. However, that time had sufficed to establish a lifelong friendship. Joan’s lawlessness had cheered the docile younger child, new to imprisonment, with visions of a larger freedom; while Louise, to Joan’s disorder, had brought near a soothing possibility of order, at least of the permanence of affection. Neither, in later life, had profited much from the other’s example. And now they were both widows with almost-grown-up children.

  ‘This dog business will end in tears,’ said Joan.

  Louise, who also thought that it would end in tears, said, ‘Oh no, he’s quite settled down with us, he’s forgotten his old master.’

  ‘Dogs don’t forget. He’ll run away.’

  The ‘old master’ referred to, Anax’s former owner, whose name was Bellamy James, a friend of Louise’s deceased husband, was by no means ‘old’, but had decided in the middle of life’s journey to abandon the world and become some sort of religious person. This new existence, not yet fully entered upon, involved the surrender of temporal pleasures such as alcohol and dog-owning. So Bellamy had handed Anax over to the Anderson family.

  ‘Besides,’ said Joan, ‘Bellamy is a fool.’

  Louise who also, in her mild way, thought Bellamy a fool, said, which she also believed, ‘He’s a very kind generous man.’

  ‘In a moment you’re going to say he’s a “good man”! He’s had a messy life. I think he’s become a bit batty, he has a death-wish. Is he really living in poverty in East London? Will he sell that seaside cottage you all go to, where the seals are?’

  ‘Yes. The seals have gone.’

  ‘Poisoned I suppose. That must be a blow to you and the girls.’

  ‘I think I’ll put Anax on the long lead, I usually do. Come, come, good dog. Sit. Sit!’

  Anax sat while Louise clipped on the lead. He looked up at her with what his ex-master used to call his ‘sly judgmental eyes’.

  ‘And how is young Harlequin?’ This was Joan’s nickname for, not all that young though eternally youthful, Clement Graffe, als
o a friend of Louise’s husband.

  ‘He’s all right, but he’s terribly anxious about his brother.’

  ‘That still goes on? No news of him I suppose.’

  ‘No, none.’

  ‘By the way, is Clement paying for this trip to Italy? I imagine Bellamy can’t. He can give up the world but he won’t miss a free jaunt! Where are they now, do you think?’

  ‘Somewhere in the Apennines.’

  ‘I wish I was. Paris has been so stuffy this summer. Now I come to London, and everybody’s away.’

  Joan, whose mother was half French, had lived now for some time in Paris. Her mother, whom she rarely saw, was living with a rich Frenchman in Antibes. Her father had died long ago in a railway accident. Her husband, who had left her after six years of marriage, had later gone to Canada and disappeared. Joan’s life in Paris was mysterious to her London friends. She worked in a ‘fashion house’, but in what capacity was not clear. She complained of poverty while also implying that she was ‘getting on perfectly well’. Louise, visiting her, was kept at a distance, not invited to her flat, meeting only in restaurants. Joan, once rated ‘a beauty’, was still, though a little haggard, very handsome and much stared at by men. She wore skilful aggressive make-up, dressed eccentrically but smartly, and liked to be taken, in some rather old-fashioned sense, as an actress. She was tall and had a long stride and fine legs. Her copiously flowing hair, dyed for many years, was a darkish ‘Titian’ red. Her pretty nose was faintly retroussé, and her blue eyes, outlined in black between heavy lashes, glittered and sparkled.

  Harvey Blacket, aged eighteen and now in the Apennines, was Joan’s son and only child. His father had defected when he was five, his birth having precipitated the disastrous marriage; and Harvey had lived since then in a tempestuous mutually possessive relationship with his mother. Money had come from somewhere. The father, while still in England, paid something, Joan worked as a secretary. She had, it was said, ‘men friends’, the cause, in due course, of quarrels with her son. When Harvey was fifteen Joan fled to Paris, leaving the boy, still at school, with a tiny one-room flat off North End Road, and a tiny allowance, under the wing of various self-appointed ‘foster parents’ of whom Louise was one and ‘Harlequin’ another. Harvey, evidently judged to be grown up, proved in fact quite able to look after himself, and at eighteen won a scholarship to study modern languages at University College, London. He had elected to spend a year off before taking up his place and had promptly acquired a bursary to spend four months studying in Italy. He had spoken French as a child with his mother and grandmother, and had learnt German and Italian at school. The Italian ‘jaunt’ was a preliminary treat before his settling down in Florence.

  It was generally agreed that while Joan had led, and it was presumed still led, a rather rackety life, une vie de bâton de chaise as she herself expressed it, Louise by contrast led a life which, even after its great catastrophe, was quiet and calm, a sensible rational life, a decent satisfactory cheerful life, as presaged by her kindly gentle parents and her orderly high-minded school. The catastrophe was the sudden death by cancer, at a surprisingly early age, of her husband Edward Anderson. Out of a serene childhood Louise, after a year at a London college, had moved smoothly into that wonderful marriage. She had seemed to advance, as one guided, under a happy star. Edward, known as ‘Teddy’, Anderson, several years her senior, was an able and much respected accountant. Prudent insurance had left his family fairly well provided for. After the catastrophe sensible rational Louise struggled with a word processor and took a part-time job. Her orderly life continued. Her children were angels. Friends surrounded her: childhood friends such as Joan and Connie and Cora, and also her husband’s loyal friends from Cambridge days, Clement and Lucas Graffe, and Bellamy whom, even as students, they had called ‘the chaplain’. Louise’s calm bland broad face bore no wrinkles, no evidence of grief or mental strife such as marked, not unattractively, the more striking countenance of Joan Blacket. But Louise’s heart had been broken and had not mended.

  ‘Does it never stop raining in England?’

  ‘It’s not raining now.’

  ‘Is there nobody in town?’

  ‘Yes, a few millions.’

  ‘Why do you always say what is obvious?’

  ‘I say what is true.’

  ‘Why can’t you tell me something funny and stirring, such as whose marriage has broken up, who’s in bed with whom, who’s bankrupt or disgraced or dead?’

  Louise smiled. They were walking over wet grass upon which a pert chill breeze was moving, like hands covering and uncovering in some swift mysterious game, the huge brown leaves of the plane trees heavy with rain. The Serpentine, in fugitive light, was grey and silver through the trees. The pinnacle of the Albert Memorial, which on a sunny day looked like Orvieto Cathedral (or so Joan said once), was streaked and formless like a melting icicle. The sky was black over central London but the rain had ceased for the moment. Joan, who had just put down her big umbrella, was wearing a smart green suit trimmed with narrow bands of grey fur, a black fedora, and high black boots. Louise, who quite liked a little rain on her hair, was wearing a voluminous shapeless black mackintosh with the hood trailing down her back. Her thick brown hair, straight and stiff like horsehair the girls said at school, swept back from her large brow and collected itself in an orderly way upon her neck. Her complexion was pale, freckled in summer, her attentive eyes a mild golden brown, the colour of plane tree leaves in autumn. Her expression was patient, calm, faintly quizzical, benign; someone said, always faintly smiling.

  ‘Are you all right in Harvey’s flat?’

  ‘No. That folding bed is damp if you fold it up, and if you keep it unfolded all day there’s no room to move. It’s very uncomfortable anyway, and the place smells. But seriously, who is in town? I must be fed and looked after. We know who isn’t in town, Harvey, Bellamy, Clement, Lucas. What about Tessa Millen?’

  ‘I don’t know. I suppose she’s here.’

  ‘Of course that girl is Adolf Hitler in knickers, but I like the type. Why don’t you like her? You like almost everybody, why not her?’

  Why not indeed? Joan liked Tessa, Louise did not. Sometimes she thought she knew why Joan liked Tessa, and she did not like that either.

  ‘I’m afraid Connie is out of town too, the whole family is in America, Jeremy has a case there.’ Constance Parfitt, later Constance Adwarden, who had also been at the famous high-minded school, had renewed acquaintance with Joan later in France in what they referred to as their ‘unbridled youth’. Jeremy was a lawyer, Connie wrote children’s stories.

  ‘Pity, we need her boys. Don’t we need her boys? Will they be back in time for the masked ball? Jeremy was always a bit sweet on you.’

  ‘No masked ball, only a little party, the children are making masks. You’ll stay?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. I need to be amused. I suppose Clement and Bellamy will come back when they’ve deposited Harvey in Florence. Are Clive and Emil still together?’

  ‘Yes – but they’re in Germany at present.’

  ‘AIDS frightens the young off sex these days, off all sex, such a pity, they don’t have fun like I had at their age, they daren’t try themselves out, they daren’t experiment. We’ll have a generation of monastics. That would suit Bellamy I imagine. You know, I think Harvey’s still a virgin, I don’t think he’s had any sex life at all. Has he told you?’

  ‘He tells me nothing,’ said Louise. She was always careful what she said to Joan about Harvey. Louise had known Harvey, as her oldest friend’s child, all his life. She had watched over him, she had kept her distance; perhaps she had become, out of loyalty to Joan, too distant. When Harvey’s father vanished, Harvey needed a father. At first Teddy was this person. When Teddy died, Bellamy and Lucas and Clement became his fathers. When Joan went to Paris she sold her London flat, bought Harvey his tiny flatlet out of the proceeds, and also set up a bank account into which she paid a small sum, promising mor
e sums, which did occasionally materialise. Lucas and Clement paid for Harvey to attend the austere boarding school which they themselves had attended, and quietly kept him in pocket money and in credit. It was impossible for Louise not, at that time, to make some signal to the boy. Louise, who had three daughters, had wanted a son. She loved Harvey. But she was not his mother. Perhaps she had been too scrupulous, she hoped the boy understood. Louise had often done for him what mothers do, mended his clothes, cooked for him, given him presents, given him advice. He was often in her house, her daughters were like sisters to him. For a time she had shopped for him and cleaned his flat, but silently judged this to be ‘too much’. He could begin to think her intrusive. Of course it was not strictly that Harvey ‘told her nothing’. At one time, just after his mother’s departure, he had told her too much, for instance about the terrible unhappiness of his early childhood. Louise had not invited these confidences. Later, older, he said less. Louise did not know anything about Harvey’s sex life, he had shown no inclination to tell her, and of course she had not approached the subject; although, more recently, it had been much in her mind.

  ‘I wonder if he’s talked to Harlequin,’ said Joan, ‘I must find out. So you don’t know when Lucas is coming back?’

  ‘No. We don’t even know where he is.’

  ‘He must have felt it awfully undignified to be in court, even though he was completely innocent. Did you go to see the show?’

  ‘Go to the court? Of course not!’

  ‘I’d have been dying of curiosity, I’d have wanted to know exactly what happened. I wish you’d told me sooner!’

  ‘We kept well clear. Lucas would have hated us coming to watch like tourists!’