The Black Prince (Penguin Classics) by Iris Murdoch

to live in Illinois, and as far as I was concerned disappeared forever.
    There is nothing quite like the dead dull feel of a failed marriage. Nor is there anything like one’s hatred for an ex-spouse. (How can such a person dare to be happy?) I cannot credit those who speak of ‘friendship’ in such a context. I lived for years with a sense of things irrevocably soiled and spoiled, it could give suddenly such a sad feel to the world sometimes. I could not liberate myself from her mind. This had nothing to do with love. Those who have suffered this sort of bondage will understand. Some people are just ‘diminishes’ and ‘spoilers’ for others. I suppose almost everybody diminishes someone. A saint would be nobody’s spoiler. Most of one’s acquaintances however can be blessedly forgotten when not present. Out of sight out of mind is a charter of human survival. Not so Christian, she was ubiquitous: her consciousness was rapacious, her thoughts could damage, passing like noxious rays through space and time. Her remarks were memorable. Only good old America cured her for me in the end. I put her away with a tedious man in a tedious and very distant town and was able to feel that she had died. What a relief.
    Francis Marloe was another matter. Neither he nor his thoughts had ever been important to me, nor as far as I could see to anyone. He was Christian’s younger brother, treated by her with indulgent contempt. He never married. After lengthy trying he qualified as a doctor, but was soon struck off the register for some irregularity in the prescription of drugs. I learnt later with abhorrence that he had set up in business as a self-styled ‘psychoanalyst’. Later still I heard he had taken to drink. If I had been told that he had committed suicide I should have heard the news without either concern or surprise. I was not pleased to see him again. He had in fact altered almost beyond recognition. He had been a slim tripping blond-haloed faun. Now he looked coarse, fat, red-faced, pathetic, slightly wild, slightly sinister, perhaps a little mad. He had always been very stupid. However at that moment I was not concerned about Mr Francis Marloe, but about the absolutely terrifying news which he had brought me.
    ‘I am surprised that you felt it your business to come here. It was an impertinence. I don’t want to know anything about my ex-wife. I finished with that business long ago.’
    ‘Now don’t be cross,’ said Francis, pursing up his red lips with a fawning kissing sort of movement which I remembered with loathing. ‘Please don’t be cross with me, Brad.’
    ‘And don’t call me “Brad”. I’m catching a train.’
    ‘I won’t keep you for a moment, I’ll just explain, I’ve been thinking – yes, I’ll make it snappy, just please listen to me, please , I beseech you – Look, it’s this, you see you’re the first person Chris will be looking up in London—’
    ‘What?’
    ‘She’ll come straight to you, I bet, I intuit it—’
    ‘Are you completely mad? Don’t you know how — I can’t discuss this – There can be no possible communication, this was utterly finished with years ago.’
    ‘No, Brad, you see – ’
    ‘Don’t call me “Brad”!’
    ‘All right, all right, Bradley, sorry, please don’t be cross, surely you know Chris, she cared awfully for you, she really cared, much more than for old Evans, she’ll come to you, even if it’s only out of curiosity – ’
    ‘I won’t be here,’ I said. This suddenly sounded horribly plausible. Perhaps there is a deep malign streak in all of us. Christian certainly had more than her share of sheer malignancy. She might indeed almost instinctively come to me, out of curiosity, out of malice, as cats are said to jump on to the laps of cat-haters. One does feel a certain curiosity about an ex-spouse, a desire doubtless that they should have suffered remorse and disappointment. One only wants bad news. One wants to gloat. Christian