By Iris Murdoch

Marian sat back on the stone verge of the pool. She was conscious now of the fragrant bushy darkness about her and of the bulk of the house nearby, outlined against the sky which the hidden moon had lightened to a bluish black. There was a light in one window, she could not identify which. The stone was still warm from the day's sun. The torch faltered, skimmed the water and went out.

Marian said, "Mr Nolan, would you mind if I asked you a few questions?"

He was standing now, as if about to go away. She could see his head and shoulders dimly above her. "What questions?"- "What is the matter with this place?"

He paused before answering. Then he switched the torch on for a moment and shone it quickly round about them. The dark green broom bushes and a haze of harebells and white daisies and ragged vetch were suddenly vivid and then gone. He said, "Nothing is the matter with this place. You are just not used to such a lonely place."

"Don't put me off," said Marian. She had known, as soon as she stepped off the grave! path, that the moment of revelation had come. "Sit down, Mr Nolan. You've got to tell me, at any rate to tell me something. What was it that happened seven years ago?"

He fell on one knee near to her, disappearing against the darker background of the garden. "Nothing hap­pened, nothing special. Why?"

"Come," said Marian. "I know a lot of things already. About Mr Crean-Smith falling over the cliff and so on. You must tell me more. There is something very odd about this place, and it's not just the loneliness, Tin sure. Please talk to me. You must see how difficult it is for me here, and how awful it is in a way. Talk to me, or I shall have to ask someone else." The speech came from her without forethought, and she felt as she spoke that Nolan was caught by it. He sat down. Their knees were close together upon the warm rough stone.

"I can't tell you anything."- "There is something to tell, then? But I must know if I'm to stay on here and not become quite deranged —"

"Like the rest of us —" he said softy.- "Please tell. Otherwise I shall ask Mrs Crean-Smith."

"Oh, don't do that — "

He was alarmed. She had struck the right note again. "Come on, Denis." His name came naturally now.

"Look — well — wait a minute." He flashed the torch all round them once more, slowly and carefully. The light in the house had gone out. "I will tell you some­thing. It is true that you must know it if you are to stay here. And I would rather tell you myself than have you learn it from another."

He paused. There was a little liquid sound of a fish breaking the surface. "You ask what is the matter with this piece. I will tell you. What is the matter with it is that it is a prison."

"A prison?" said Marian, astonished, and tense now at the nearness of the revelation. Her heart beat painful­ly. "A prison? Who is the prisoner?"- "Mrs Crean-Smith."

She felt she had half known it. Yet how could she have done? Even now she did not understand it. "And who are the gaolers?"- "Mr Scottow. Miss Evercreech, Jamesie. You. Me."

"No, no!" she said. "Not me! But I don't know what you're talking about. Do you mean that Mrs Crean-Smith is — shut up here, incarcerated?"- "Yes."- "But this is mad. What about Mr Crean-Smith, why doesn't he —"

"Rescue her? It is at his will that she is shut up.^”

It was like this. Hannah Crean-Smith is a rich woman, was a rich girl, rich in her own right, of the landowning families of this part. This house, for instance, and all this land for miles belongs to her. And she married very young, married her first cousin, Peter Crean-Smith. He was, God forgive me if I wrong him, a brute of a young man, though a charming one, a drinker and a runner after women and violent to his wife and other things more. It was not a good marriage. She was unhap­py, and so it went on.

THE MOON'S A BALLOON