The Sea, the Sea

by Iris Murdoch

  The theatre is certainly a place for learning about the brevity of human glory: oh all those wonderful glittering absolutely vanished pantomimes! Now I shall abjure magic and become a hermit: put myself in a situation where I can honestly say that I have nothing else to do but to learn to be good. The end of life is rightly thought of as a period of meditation. Will I be sorry that I did not begin it sooner?

  It is necessary to write, that much is clear, and to write in a way quite unlike any way which I have employed before. What I wrote before was written in water and deliberately so. This is for permanence, something which cannot help hoping to endure. Yes, already I personify the object, the little book, the libellus, this creature to which I am giving life and which seems at once to have a will of its own. It wants to live, it wants to survive.

  I have considered writing a journal, not of happenings for there will be none, but as a record of mingled thoughts and daily observations: ‘my philosophy’, my pensées against a background of simple descriptions of the weather and other natural phenomena. This now seems to me again to be a good idea. The sea. I could fill a volume simply with my word-pictures of it. I would certainly like to write some sustained account of my surroundings, its flora and fauna. This could be of some interest, if I persevered, even though I am no White of Selborne. From my sea-facing window at this moment I can see three different kinds of gulls, swallows, a cormorant, innumerable butterflies drifting about over the flowers which grow miraculously upon my yellow rocks . . .

  I must make no attempt at ‘fine writing’ however, that would be to spoil my enterprise. Besides, I should merely make a fool of myself.

  Oh blessed northern sea, a real sea with clean merciful tides, not like the stinking soupy Mediterranean!

  They say there are seals here, but I have seen none yet.

  Of course there is no need to separate ‘memoir’ from ‘diary’ or ‘philosophical journal’. I can tell you, reader, about my past life and about my ‘world-view’ also, as I ramble along. Why not? It can all come out naturally as I reflect. Thus unanxiously (for am I not now leaving anxiety behind?) I shall discover my ‘literary form’. In any case, why decide now? Later, if I please, I can regard these ramblings as rough notes for a more coherent account. Who knows indeed how interesting I shall find my past life when I begin to tell it? Perhaps I shall bring the story gradually up to date and as it were float my present upon my past?

  To repent of egoism: is autobiography the best method? Well, being no philosopher I can only reflect about the world through reflecting about my own adventures in it. And I feel that it is time to think about myself at last. It may seem odd that one who has been described in the popular press as a ‘tyrant’, a ‘tartar’, and (if I recall) a ‘power-crazed monster’ should feel that he has not hitherto done so! But this is the case. I have in fact very little sense of identity.

  It is indeed only lately that I have felt this need to write something that is both personal and reflective. In the days when I wrote in water I imagined that the only book I would ever publish would be a cookery book!

  I might now introduce myself—to myself, first and foremost, it occurs to me. What an odd discipline autobiography turns out to be. To others, if these words are printed in the not too distant future, there will be in a superficial sense ‘no need of an introduction’, as they say at meetings. How long does mortal fame endure? My kind of fame not very long, but long enough. Yes, yes, I am Charles Arrowby and, as I write this, I am, shall we say, over sixty years of age. I am wifeless, childless, brotherless, sisterless, I am my well-known self, made glittering and brittle by fame. I determined long ago that I would retire from the theatre when I had passed sixty. (‘You will never retire’, Wilfred told me. ‘You will be unable to.’ He was wrong.) In fact I am tired of the theatre, I have had enough. This is what no one who knew me well, not Sidney nor Peregrine nor Fritzie, not Wilfred nor Clement when they were alive, could either foresee or imagine. And it is not just a matter of sagely departing ‘on the crest of the wave’. (How many actors and directors pathetically overstay their welcome.) I am tired of it all. There has been a moral change.

  ‘All right, go’, they said, ‘but don’t imagine that you can come back.’ I don’t want to come back, thank you! ‘If you stop working and live alone you will go quietly mad.’ (This was Sidney’s contribution.) On the contrary, I feel completely sane and free and happy for the first time in my life!

  It is not that I ever came to ‘disapprove’ of the theatre, as my mother, for instance, never ceased to do. I just knew that if I stayed in it any longer I would begin to wilt spiritually, would lose something which had travelled with me patiently so far, but might go away if I did not attend to it at last: something not belonging to the preoccupations of my work, but preciously separate from it. I remember James saying something about people who end their lives in caves. Well, this, here, is my cave. And I have reached it bearing the precious thing that has come with me, as if it were a talisman which I can now unwrap. How grand and pompous this sounds! And yet I confess I scarcely know what I mean. Let us break off these rather ponderous reflections for a while.

  The above observations have been written on a sequence of different days, wonderful empty solitary days, such as I remember yearning for, and never quite believing that I wanted so much that I would finally obtain them.

  I went swimming again but still cannot discover quite the right place. This morning I simply dived into deep water off the rocks nearest to the house, where they descend almost sheer, yet with folds and ledges enough to make a precarious stairway. My ‘cliff’ I call it, though it is barely twenty feet high at low tide. Of course the water is very cold, but after a few seconds it seems to coat the body in a kind of warm silvery skin, as if one had acquired the scales of a merman. The challenged blood rejoices with a new strength. Yes, this is my natural element. How strange to think that I never saw the sea until I was fourteen.

  I am a skilful fearless swimmer and I am not afraid of rough water. Today the sea was gentle compared with antipodean oceans where I have sported like a dolphin. My problem was almost a technical one. Even though the swell was fairly mild I had a ridiculous amount of difficulty getting back onto the rocks again. The ‘cliff’ was a little too steep, the ledges a little too narrow. The gentle waves teased me, lifting me up towards the rock face, then plucking me away. My fingers, questing for a crevice, were again and again pulled off. Becoming tired, I swam around trying other places where the sea was running restlessly in and out, but the difficulty was greater since there was deep water below me and even if the rocks were less sheer they were smoother or slippery with weed and I could not hold on. At last I managed to climb up my cliff, clinging with fingers and toes, then kneeling sideways upon a ledge. When I reached the top and lay panting in the sun I found that my hands and knees were bleeding.

  Since my arrival I have had the pleasure of swimming naked. This rocky coast attracts, thank God, no trippers with their ‘kiddies’. There is not a vestige of beastly sand anywhere. I have heard it called an ugly coast. Long may it be deemed so. The rocks, which stretch away in both directions, are not in fact picturesque. They are sandy yellow in colour, covered with crystalline flecks, and are folded into large ungainly incoherent heaps. Below the tide line they are festooned with growths of glistening blistery dark brown seaweed which has a rather unpleasant smell. Up above however, and at close quarters, they afford the clamberer a surprising number of secret joys. There are many V-shaped ravines containing small pools or screes of extremely varied and pretty stones. There are also flowers which contrive somehow to root themselves in crannies: pink thrift and mauve mallow, a sort of white spreading sea campion, a blue-green plant with cabbage-like leaves, and a tiny saxifrage thing with leaves and flowers so small as almost to defeat the naked eye. I must find my magnifying glass and inspect it properly.

  A feature of the coastline is that here and there the water has worn the rocks into holes, which I
would not dignify with the name of caves, but which, from the swimmer’s-eye-view, present a striking and slightly sinister appearance. At one point, near to my house, the sea has actually composed an arched bridge of rock under which it roars into a deep open steep-sided enclosure beyond. It affords me a curious pleasure to stand upon this bridge and watch the violent forces which the churning waves, advancing or retreating, generate within the confined space of the rocky hole.

  Another day has passed since I wrote the above. The weather continues almost perfect. I have received no letters since my arrival, and this does seem rather odd. My ex-secretary, Miss Kaufman, kindly detains the diminishing flow of business mail in London. Well, whom do I want to hear from after all, except Lizzie, and she is probably away on tour?

  I have continued to explore the rocks in the direction of my tower. Yes, I am now the owner not only of a house and a lot of rocks, but of a ruined ‘martello’ tower! It is alas only a shell. I would like to restore it and build a spiral staircase and a lofty study room, only contrary to what is commonly believed about me I am not rich. My sea-house took most of my savings. However I have a good pension, thanks to darling Clement’s business sense long ago. I must save up. Near to the tower I found a pleasing piece of archaeology, which is also evidence that I am not the only person to have discovered it difficult to get out of this sea. In a little secret inlet below the tower, and invisible except from directly above, some steps have been cut in the side of the rock, descending into the water, and surmounted with an iron banister. Unfortunately the lower part of the banister is broken away, and the rock face being smooth, the slippery steps are useless, except at high tide, if there is any strong swell. The waves simply pluck one off. It is remarkable how quietly firmly powerful my sportive sea can be! But the idea is clearly excellent. I must have the banister extended; and it occurs to me that a few iron stanchions, let into the face of my ‘cliff’, would provide quite enough hand and foot holds for the climb, in any state of the tide. I must enquire in the village about workmen.

  I swam from the ‘tower steps’ at high tide and then lay naked on the grass beside the tower, feeling exceedingly relaxed and happy. The tower, I regret to say, does attract the occasional tourist; but I am loath to put up a notice saying Private. This little lawn is the only piece of grass which I own, except for a small patch directly behind the house. This grass, tormented no doubt by the sea wind, is extremely short, its blades spread out in little circular mats of an almost cactus-like toughness. Pink and white valerian grows round the base of the tower, and a kind of purple flowering thyme mingles with the grass and perches here and there among the rocks on the landward side. I examined this, and also the tiny saxifrage, through my magnifying glass. I wanted to be a botanist when I was ten. My father loved plants, though ignorantly, and we looked at many things together. I wonder what I would have done with my life if I had not been theatre-mad?

  Walking back I looked into my various pools. What a remarkable amount of beautiful and curious life they contain. I must buy some books about these matters if I am to become, even to my own modest satisfaction, the Gilbert White of this area. I also picked up a number of pretty stones and carried them to my other lawn. They are smooth, elliptical, lovely to handle. One, a mottled pink, elaborately crossed with white lines, lies before me as I write. My father would have loved this place—I still think of him and miss him.

  It is after lunch and I shall now describe the house. For lunch, I may say, I ate and greatly enjoyed the following: anchovy paste on hot buttered toast, then baked beans and kidney beans with chopped celery, tomatoes, lemon juice and olive oil. (Really good olive oil is essential, the kind with a taste, I have brought a supply from London.) Green peppers would have been a happy addition only the village shop (about two miles pleasant walk) could not provide them. (No one delivers to far-off Shruff End, so I fetch everything, including milk, from the village.) Then bananas and cream with white sugar. (Bananas should be cut, never mashed, and the cream should be thin.) Then hard water-biscuits with New Zealand butter and Wensleydale cheese. Of course I never touch foreign cheeses. Our cheeses are the best in the world. With this feast I drank most of a bottle of Muscadet out of my modest ‘cellar’. I ate and drank slowly as one should (cook fast, eat slowly) and without distractions such as (thank heavens) conversation or reading. Indeed eating is so pleasant one should even try to suppress thought. Of course reading and thinking are important but, my God, food is important too. How fortunate we are to be food-consuming animals. Every meal should be a treat and one ought to bless every day which brings with it a good digestion and the precious gift of hunger.

  I wonder if I shall ever write my Charles Arrowby Four Minute Cookbook? The ‘four minutes’ of course refer to the active time of preparation, and do not include unsupervised cooking time. I have looked at several so-called ‘short order’ cookery books, but these works tend to deceive, their ‘fifteen minutes’ really in practice means thirty, and they contain instructions such as ‘make a light batter’. The sturdy honest persons to whom my book would be addressed would not necessarily be able to make a light batter or even to know what it was. But they would be hedonists. In food and drink, as in many (not all) other matters, simple joys are best, as any intelligent self-lover knows. Sidney Ashe once offered to initiate me into the pleasures of vintage wine. I refused with scorn. Sidney hates ordinary wine and is unhappy unless he is drinking some expensive stuff with a date on it. Why wantonly destroy one’s palate for cheap wine? (And by that I do not of course mean the brew that tastes of bananas.) One of the secrets of a happy life is continuous small treats, and if some of these can be inexpensive and quickly procured so much the better. Life in the theatre often precluded serious meals and I have not always in the past been able to eat slowly, but I have certainly learnt how to cook quickly. Of course my methods (especially a liberal use of the tin opener) may scandalize fools, and the various people (mainly the girls: Jeanne, Doris, Rosemary, Lizzie) who urged me to publish my recipes did so with an air of amused condescension. Your name will sell the book, they tactlessly insisted. ‘Charles’s meals are just picnics’, Rita Gibbons once remarked. Yes, good, even great, picnics. And let me say here that of course my guests always sit squarely at tables, never balance plates on their knees, and always have proper table napkins, never paper ones.

  Food is a profound subject and one, incidentally, about which no writer lies. I wonder whence I derived my felicitous gastronomic intelligence? A thrifty childhood gave me a horror of wasted food. I thoroughly enjoyed the modest fare we had at home. My mother was a ‘good plain cook’, but she lacked the inspired simplicity which is for me the essence of good eating. I think my illumination came, like that of Saint Augustine, from a disgust with excesses. When I was a young director I was idiotic and conventional enough to think that I had to entertain people at well-known restaurants. It gradually became clear to me that guzzling large quantities of expensive, pretentious, often mediocre food in public places was not only immoral, unhealthy and unaesthetic, but also unpleasurable. Later my guests were offered simple joys chez moi. What is more delicious than fresh hot buttered toast, with or without the addition of bloater paste? Or plain boiled onions with a little cold corned beef if desired? And well-made porridge with brown sugar and cream is a dish fit for a king. Even then some people, so sadly corrupt was their taste, took my intelligent hedonism for an affected eccentricity, a mere gimmick. (Wind in the Willows food a journalist called it.) And some were actually offended.

  However, it may be that what really made me see through the false mythology of haute cuisine was not so much restaurants as dinner parties. I have long, and usually vainly, tried to persuade my friends not to cook grandly. The waste of time alone is an absurdity; though I suppose it is true that some unfortunate women have nothing to do but cook. There is also the illusion that very elaborate cooking is more ‘creative’ than simple cooking. Of course (let me make it clear) I am not a barbarian. French
country food, such as one can still occasionally find in that blessed land, is very good; but its goodness belongs to a tradition and an instinct which cannot be aped. The pretentious English hostess not only mistakes elaboration and ritual for virtue; she is also very often exercising her deluded art for the benefit of those who, though they would certainly not admit it, do not really enjoy food at all. Most of my friends in the theatre were usually so sozzled when they came to eat a serious meal that they had no appetite and in any case scarcely knew what was set before them. Why spend nearly all day preparing food for people who eat it (or rather toy with it and leave it) in this condition? A serious eater is a moderate drinker. Food is also spoilt at dinner parties by enforced conversation. One’s best hope is to get into one of those ‘holes’ where one’s two neighbours are eagerly engaged elsewhere, so that one can concentrate upon one’s plate. No, I am no friend to these ‘formal’ scenes which often have more to do with vanity and prestige and a mistaken sense of social ‘propriety’ than with the true instincts of hospitality. Haute cuisine even inhibits hospitality, since those who cannot or will not practise it hesitate to invite its devotees for fear of seeming rude or a failure. Food is best eaten among friends who are unmoved by such ‘social considerations’, or of course best of all alone. I hate the falsity of ‘grand’ dinner parties where, amid much kissing, there is the appearance of intimacy where there is really none.