That Hideous Strength

V

“What friends those two are!” said Ivy Maggs. She was referring to Pinch the cat and Mr. Bultitude the bear. The latter was sitting up with his back against the warm wall by the kitchen fire. His cheeks were so fat and his eyes so small that he looked as if he were smiling. The cat after walking to and fro with erected tail and rubbing herself against his belly had finally curled up and gone to sleep between his legs. The jackdaw, still on the Director’s shoulder, had long since put its head beneath its wing.

Mrs. Dimble, who sat farther back in the kitchen, darning as if for dear life, pursed her lips a little as Ivy Maggs spoke. She could not go to bed. She wished they would all keep quiet. Her anxiety had reached that pitch at which almost every event, however small, threatens to become an irritation. But then, if anyone had been watching her expression, they would have seen the little grimace rapidly smoothed out again. Her will had many years of practice behind it.

“When we use the word Friends of those two creatures “said MacPhee, “I doubt we are being merely anthropomorphic. It is difficult to avoid the illusion that they have personalities in the human sense. But there’s no evidence for it.”

“What’s she go making up to him for, then?” asked Ivy.

“Well,” said MacPhee, “maybe there’d be a desire for warmth-she’s away in out of the draught there. And there’d be a sense of security from being near something familiar. And likely enough some obscure transferred sexual impulses.”

“Really, Mr. MacPhee,” said Ivy with great indignation “it’s a shame for you to say those things about two dumb animals. I’m sure I never did see Pinch-or Mr. Bultitude either, the poor thing”

“I said transferred,” interrupted MacPhee drily. “And anyway, they like the mutual friction of their fur as a means of rectifying irritations set up by parasites. Now, you’ll observe”

“If you mean they have fleas,” said Ivy, “you know as well as anyone that they have no such thing.” She had reason on her side, for it was MacPhee himself who put on overalls once a month and solemnly lathered Mr. Bultitude from rump to snout in the wash-house and poured buckets of tepid water over him, and finally dried him-a day’s work in which he allowed no one to assist him.

“What do you think, sir?” said Ivy, looking at the Director.

“Me?” said Ransom. “I think MacPhee is introducing into animal life a distinction that doesn’t exist there, and then trying to determine on which side of that distinction the feelings of Pinch and Bultitude fall. You’ve got to become human before the physical cravings are distinguishable from affections-just as you have to become spiritual before affections are distinguishable from charity. What is going on in the cat and the bear isn’t one or other of these two things: it is a single undifferentiated thing in which you can find the germ of what we call friendship and of what we call physical need. But it isn’t either at that level. It is one of Barfield’s ‘ancient unities.’”

“I never denied they liked being together,” said MacPhee.

“Well, that’s what I said,” shouted Mrs. Maggs.

“The question is worth raising, Mr. Director,” said MacPhee, “because I submit that it points to an essential falsity in the whole system of this place.”

Grace Ironwood who had been sitting with her eyes half closed suddenly opened them wide and fixed them on the Ulsterman, and Mrs. Dimble leaned her head towards Camilla and said in a whisper, “I do wish Mr. MacPhee could be persuaded to go to bed. It’s perfectly unbearable at a time like this.”

“How do you mean, MacPhee?” asked the Director.

“I mean that there is a half hearted attempt to adopt an attitude towards irrational creatures which cannot be consistently maintained. And I’ll do the justice to say that you’ve never tried. The bear is kept in the house and given apples and golden syrup till it’s near bursting . . .”

“Well, I like that!” said Mrs. Maggs. “Who is it that’s always giving him apples? That’s what I’d like to know.”

“The bear, as I was observing,” said MacPhee, “is kept in the house and pampered. The pigs are kept in a stye and killed for bacon. I would be interested to know the philosophical rationale of the distinction.”

Ivy Maggs looked in bewilderment from the smiling face of the Director to the unsmiling face of MacPhee.

“I think it’s just silly,” she said. “Who ever heard of trying to make bacon out of a bear?”

MacPhee made a little stamp of impatience and said something which was drowned first by Ransom’s laughter and then by a great clap of wind which shook the window as if it would blow it in.

“What a dreadful night for them!” said Mrs. Dimble.

“I love it,” said Camilla. “I’d love to be out in it. Out on a high hill. Oh, I do wish you’d let me go with them, sir.”

“You like it!” said Ivy. “Oh, I don’t! Listen to it round the corner of the house. It’d make me feel kind of creepy if I were alone. Or even if you was upstairs, sir. I always think it’s on nights like this that they-you know-come to you.”

“They don’t take any notice of weather one way or the other, Ivy,” said Ransom.

“Do you know,” said Ivy in a low voice, “that’s a thing I don’t quite understand. They’re so eerie, these ones that come to visit you. I wouldn’t go near that part of the house if I thought there was anything there, not if you paid me a hundred pounds. But I don’t feel like that about God. But He ought to be worse, if you see what I mean.”

“He was, once,” said the Director. “You are quite right about the Powers. Angels in general are not good company for men in general-even when they are good angels and good men. It’s all in St. Paul. But as for Maleldil himself, all that has changed: it was changed by what happened at Bethlehem.”

“It’s getting ever so near Christmas now,” said Ivy addressing the company in general.

“We shall have Mr. Maggs with us before then,” said Ransom.

“In a day or two, sir,” said Ivy.

“Was that only the wind?” said Grace Ironwood.

“It sounded to me like a horse,” said Mrs. Dimble.

“Here,” said MacPhee jumping up. “Get out of the way, Mr. Bultitude, till I get my gum boots. It’ll be those two horses of Broad’s again, tramping all over my celery trenches. If only you’d let me go to the police in the first instance. Why the man can’t keep them shut up . . .”-he was bundling himself into his mackintosh as he spoke the rest of the speech was inaudible.

“My crutch, please, Camilla,” said Ransom. “Come back, MacPhee. We will go to the door together, you and I. Ladies, stay where you are.”

There was a look on his face which some of those present had not seen before. The four women sat as if they had been turned to stone, with their eyes wide and staring. A moment later Ransom and MacPhee stood alone in the scullery. The back door was so shaking on its hinges with the wind that they did not know whether someone were knocking at it or not.

“Now,” said Ransom, “open it. And stand back behind it yourself.”

For a second MacPhee worked with the bolts. Then, whether he meant to disobey or not (a point which must remain doubtful) the storm flung the door against the wall and he was momentarily pinned behind it. Ransom, standing motionless, leaning forward on his crutch, saw in the light from the scullery, outlined against the blackness, a huge horse, all in a lather of sweat and foam, its yellow teeth laid bare, its nostrils wide and red, its ears flattened against its skull, and its eyes flaming. It had been ridden so close up to the door that its front hoofs rested on the doorstep. It had neither saddle, stirrup nor bridle; but at that very moment a man leapt off its back. He seemed both very tall and very fat, almost a giant. His reddish-grey hair and beard were blown all about his face so that it was hardly visible; and it was only after he had taken a step forward that Ransom noticed his clothes-the ragged, ill-fitting khaki coat, baggy trousers, and boots that had lost the toes.