The Sea, the Sea

by Iris Murdoch

  When I decided to write about myself of course the question arose: am I then to write about Hartley? Of course, I thought, I must write about Hartley, since that is the most important thing in my life. And yet how can I, what style can I adopt or master worthy of such a sacred tale, and would not the attempt to relive those events upset me to some intolerable degree? Or would it be simply a sacrilege? Or suppose I were to get the wrong tone, making the marvellous merely grotesque? It might be better to tell my life without mentioning Hartley, even though this omission would amount to a gross lie. Can one, in such a self-portrait, omit something which affected one’s whole being and which one has thought of every day of one’s life? ‘Every day’ exaggerates, but not much. I do not need to ‘recall’ Hartley, she is here. She is my end and my beginning, she is alpha and omega.

  I thought it better to draw a veil over this question, which was starting to worry me too much. I decided simply to write and to see if I could somehow approach, or find that I had approached, the vast subject of Hartley. And, just as I found myself unexpectedly and spontaneously writing ‘My paternal grandfather was a market gardener in Lincolnshire’, so now I find that, wandering in my cavern, I have in fact come near to the great light-source and am ready to speak about my first love. But what can I say? I feel just as suddenly tongue-tied. My first love, and also my only love. All the best, even Clement, have been shadows by comparison. The necessity of this seems, in my own case, so great that I find it hard to imagine that it is not so with everyone. On n’aime qu’une fois, la première.

  Her name was Mary Hartley Smith. How quickly, readily I write it down. Yet my heart beats fast too. Oh my God. Mary Hartley Smith.

  That is the heading of the story then. But really I cannot tell the story. I will write some notes for the story and perhaps never tell it. Or indeed it may be untellable, since there are hardly any ‘events’ in it, only feelings, the feelings of a child, of a youth, of a young man, nebulous and holy and stronger than anything in the whole of life. I can scarcely remember a time when I did not know Hartley. I went to a school for boys only, but the girls’ school was nearby next door and we saw the girls all the time. As there were a lot of Marys around in those days she was always known as ‘Hartley’ and that was somehow very much her name. We paired off early on, but merrily, childishly, and without any deep shaking emotions, as far as I can remember, in those earliest days. When we were about twelve the emotions began. They puzzled us, amazed us. They shook us as terriers shake rats. To say we were ‘in love’, that vague weakened phrase, cannot express it. We loved each other, we lived in each other, through each other, by each other. We were each other. Why was it such pure unadulterated pain?

  It is odd that I now write down (and will not change) the word ‘pain’, for of course what it was was pure joy. Perhaps the point is that whatever it was it was extreme and pure. (I am told that a blindfolded man cannot distinguish severe burning from severe freezing.) Or perhaps at that age emotions tend to be felt as pains because they are not lightened by reflection. Everything becomes dread and fear, and the more wonderful and the more joyful, the more dread and the more fear. But let me repeat that this was not reflection, not thought. I did not harbour intelligent doubts about whether Hartley would go on loving me, naturally I knew that she was mine forever. But as we closed our eyes upon tears of joy there was cosmic dread.

  Of course, and instinctively, we kept it all a secret. Our schoolfellows had got used to our playful friendship. Now we lay low, we were casual, we had secret meeting places. All this, as I say, was instinctive, never discussed or decided. We had to hide the precious thing in case it was hurt, derided, damaged or offended in some way. My parents vaguely knew Hartley of course, but she hardly ever came to the house, because of their almost morbid dislike of visitors, and also because I never suggested it. They did not suspect my special interest in her because they regarded me then as much too young to have special interests. Her parents, equally vaguely aware of me, were equally uninterested, except that I think they rather disliked me. She had an elder brother who despised us both. Our world was sealed and secret. Parents would be duly informed later on when we got married; for of course we were going to marry when we were eighteen. (We were the same age.) There were many caresses, but we did not make love. Remember, this was long ago.

  I must try to describe Hartley. Oh, my darling, how clearly I can see you now. Surely this is perception, not imagination. The light in the cavern is daylight, not fire. Perhaps it is the only true light in my life, the light that reveals the truth. No wonder I feared to lose the light and to be left in the darkness forever. All a child’s blind fear was there, the fear that my mother so early inspired in me: the kiss withheld, the candle taken. Hartley, my Hartley. Yes, I see her clearly, jumping over a rope, higher and higher it was raised, Hartley still flew over, the watchers sighing each time with sympathetic relief; and I hugging my heart in secret pride. She was the champion jumper of the school, of many schools, the champion runner, Hartley always first, and I cheering with the rest and laughing with secret joy. Hartley, in a breathless stillness, crouched upon a parallel bar, her bare thighs gleaming. The games master spoke of the Olympics.

  Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire, and lighten with celestial fire . . . We went up for confirmation together, to receive the divine blessing upon our love. I remember Hartley singing in church, her bright innocent lovely face raised up to the light, to God, towards the joy which belonged to her and which she must have. We talked a lot about religion (we talked a lot about everything), and we felt that we were dedicated people who would be protected by love. We experienced our innocence and we did not think it would be difficult to be good. I can remember Hartley’s marvellous laugh, but not that we teased each other much or were always making jokes. Ours was a solemn holy happiness, and we shunned the coarser talk of our schoolfellows. I think we had little curiosity about sex. We were one, and only that mattered. We lived in paradise. We fled on bicycles to lie in buttercup fields, beside railway bridges, near canals, in waste land awaiting housing estates. Ours was already a suburban countryside, but it was as lovely and significant to us as the Garden of Eden. She was not an intellectual or bookish girl, she had the wisdom of the innocents and we conversed as angels. She was at home in time and space.

  I can see her smiling at me now. She was beautiful but with a secret beauty. She was not one of the ‘pretty girls’ of the school. Sometimes her face looked heavy, almost dour, and when she cried she looked like the pig-baby in Alice. She was very pale, and people sometimes thought she looked ill, although she was so strong and so healthy. Her face was rather round and white and her eyes gazed out with such a fey puzzled look, like a young savage. She had dark blue eyes which seemed to be violet when you were not looking at them. Her pupils were often dilated so that her eyes became almost black. She had very fine straight fair hair in a long bob. Her lips were pale and always cold; and when, with my eyes closing, I touched them so childishly with mine, a cold force pierced me like a spear, such as a pilgrim might feel when he knelt and touched some holy life-renewing stone. Her body was passive to my embraces, but her spirit glowed to me with a cold fire. Her beautiful shoulders, her long legs, were pale too and seemed cold. I never saw her entirely undressed. She was slim, very slim, leggy and clean, and so strong. She never hugged me, but sometimes, rigidly, she held my arms, leaving great bruises. Her secret violet eyes did not close when I moved to kiss her. They stared with that strange puzzlement which was at the same time passion. Those quiet, silent, almost stiff embraces were the most passionate that I ever knew. And we were chaste, and respected each other absolutely and worshipped each other chastely. And that was passion and that was love of a purity which can never come again and which I am sure rarely exists in the world at all. Those memories are more radiant to me than any work of art, more vivid and precious than Shakespeare or Piero della Francesca. There is a deep foundation of my being which knows not of time and change
and is still and ever with Hartley, in that good place where we once were.

  Having written this much what can I say now? I could go on and on simply describing Hartley. But it is becoming too painful. I lost her, the jewel of the world. And it remains a mystery to me to this day how that came about: a mystery concerning a young girl’s soul and her life-vision. I feared so many things, that she would die, or I would die, that we would be somehow cursed for being too happy; but I did not, at any rate in a conscious way, fear and envisage that which actually happened. Or were all my fears really of that, only that was too terrible to bring to consciousness? Extreme love must bring terror with it, and great terror, like some kinds of prayer which lean upon the omniscience of the Almighty, has a vast unlimited all-embracing compass. So perhaps I did fear that too. I must have cried in my incoherent heart: and that, let not that happen either, even though that seemed inconceivable.

  Let me try and put it down simply, and it is of course very simple. Hartley decided, when the time came, that she did not want to marry me. It was impossible to find out exactly why. I was too smashed by misery to think clearly, to question intelligently. She was confused, evasive, perhaps out of some desire to spare me pain, perhaps simply because of her own misery, perhaps because of some indecision which I stupidly failed to discern. She said certain terribly memorable things. But were these the ‘reasons’? Everything she said she seemed to efface afterwards in a fit of crying. We had said long ago that we would marry when we were eighteen, when we were grown up. How passionately, amid those mysterious, evasive, effacing tears, I cried out to her that I would wait, I would never hurry her. Was it a young girl’s fear? I would respect it, she should do as she would so long as she left us our precious future, with which we had lived for so long. Our marriage was a fixed and certain mark, and I only feared that I might die before I reached it. I went to London to the drama school with this fixed mark before me. We had still not told our parents. Perhaps this was my mistake? I was afraid of my mother’s disapproval, of her opposition. She might say we were too young. I did not want, yet, to mar our happiness with parental rows, though we had so often said that we would outface any row. But if our parents had known and had agreed, or if we had done battle for our love, the very publicity of the plan would have made it more binding, more real. It would certainly have changed the atmosphere of our little paradise. Did I fear just this change, and did I lose her because I was a coward? Oh, what mistake did I make? What happened when I went to London, what went on in her mind? She had agreed, she had understood. Of course there was a separation, but I wrote every day. I came for weekends, she seemed unchanged. Then one day she told me . . .

  We had bicycled down to the canal, a way we often went. Our bicycles lay embraced together, as they always did, in the long grass beside the towing path. We walked on, looking at familiar things, dear things which we had made our own. It was autumn time. There were a lot of butterflies. Butterflies still remind me of those terrible minutes. She started to cry. ‘I can’t go on, I can’t go on, I can’t marry you.’ ‘We wouldn’t make each other happy.’ ‘You wouldn’t stay with me, you’d go away, you wouldn’t be faithful.’ ‘Yes, I love you but I can’t trust, I can’t see.’ We were both demented with grief, and we cried out to each other in our grief. In despair, in death-fear, I raved, ‘At least we’ll be friends, forever, we can’t leave each other, we can’t lose each other, it’s impossible, I should die.’ She shook her head, weeping, ‘You know we can’t be friends now.’ I can see her eyes glaring, her mouth, wet with her tears, jerking. I never understood how she was able to be so strong. Did she mean what she said or did the words conceal other words which she dared not say? Why had she changed her mind? I asked her and asked her, why did she think I would not be faithful, why did she think we would not be happy, why could she no longer trust the future? ‘I can’t go on with it, I just can’t.’ Had someone lied about me? Surely she could not be jealous about my life in London where I did nothing but think about her! (Clement of course was hidden in the future.) Had she met someone else? No, no, no, she said, and then she just repeated her terrible incomprehensible words. Yes, she was very strong. And she escaped.

  I had to go back to London. After a day or two I could not believe in the possibility of anything so dreadful. I wrote to her commandingly, understandingly, confidently. I cancelled everything and ran back. I saw her again, and there was the same scene, and again. Then suddenly she was gone. I called at her house. Her parents, her brother, looked at me with hostility. She had gone to stay with friends, they did not know the address. I called again the next week. Then I got a letter from her mother saying that Hartley did not want to see me and asking me not to pester them. I searched, I asked, I watched. How in the twentieth century can people just vanish, why is there not a register one can consult, a department one can write to? I spent my holidays on detective work. None of our school friends knew where she was. I put a notice in the local paper. I visited every place she had mentioned, everyone who had known her well. I wrote dozens of letters. Much later of course it was clear to me that she could only have escaped by running, by vanishing.

  Some time during this period her parents left the district, then I got a curt letter from her mother, giving no address, and saying that Hartley was married. I did not believe her. The parents were liars, a sinister influence, they hated me because Hartley loved me. I went on searching, I went on waiting. I felt that there must be some particular special cause for her flight, and that time would remove the cause and make things as they were. I conducted myself in such a wild crazy manner that quite a lot of people came to know about my love, and I became quite famous as a mad lover. By then I wanted to advertise my plight, since someone might then bring me news. And someone did. Mr McDowell wrote to me and said that it was true, Hartley was married. I believed him. He gave no details (perhaps he feared I might commit some act of violence) and I asked for none. He said in his letter, ‘You must simply accept that she does not want you, that she loves someone else. With this no man can argue.’

  Of course I ‘recovered’ in a sense. I worked. I met Clement Makin and let her kidnap me. I told her the whole story, I think the first time I met her. I never told my parents, and I believe they never knew. They were such simple unsuspicious people and they never met anybody. Clement nursed me, she nursed my jealousy, it was a great ‘topic’ between us for a while. She rather enjoyed it all, she felt she was curing me and I let her think so, but she was mistaken. The wound was too deep and now it was infected by the raging bitterness of jealousy. That awful leprosy came into my life when I read Mr McDowell’s letter, and has never left it since. ‘She does not want you, she loves someone else.’ When I was searching for her I was bemused by hope. I constantly forgave her in my heart, and this constantly renewed act of forgiveness brought me comfort. I felt that she must somehow know how I suffered, and that the antennae of my thought must touch her. But I always thought of her as alone. After I really understood that she was married I did not hate her, but the demon of jealousy befouled the past and left my mind no place to rest. Jealousy is perhaps the most involuntary of all strong emotions. It steals consciousness, it lies deeper than thought. It is always there, like a blackness in the eye, it discolours the world.

  Hartley made a permanent metaphysical crisis of my life by refusing me for moral reasons. Did this lead me to make immorality my mask? Such pompous speculations are of course a kind of nonsense and I surprise myself by writing them down. What were Hartley’s ‘reasons’? I shall never know. It is possible that some demonic sense of a surrender of innocence entered into my affair with Clement, as if I were saying to Hartley: You did not trust me. Well, I will show you, now and forever after, how right you were! Perhaps all my love affairs have been vicious attempts to show Hartley that she was right after all. But she was only right because she left me. You die at heart from a withdrawal of love. My mother’s threats of such a withdrawal made me utterly vulnerable to Hartley
’s crime. Hartley destroyed my innocence, she and the demon of jealousy. She made me faithless. But with her I would have been faithful, with her my whole life would have been different, less rootless, less empty. Do I then think my life has been empty, my life? A ridiculous judgment! Could Hartley really have thought the youth that I then was ‘a worldly man’? If so she was more like my mother than I ever suspected. She made me a worldly man by rejecting me, that failure ruined me morally. Did she think I would be ‘lost’ in the theatre? She never said that. It was her rejection that made me lose my way. Would I have been faithful? How could I not have been, if she had lived with me, sewed for me, cooked for me. We would have become one, and the holiness of marriage would have been our safety and our home forever. She was a part, an evidence, of some pure uncracked un-fissured confidence in the good which was never there for me again.

  Much later on it was a little as if the past had recovered. The past can recover. I saw again, far away like a dulled yet glowing painting of Adam and Eve upon an old fresco, two innocent beings bathed in a clear light. She became my Beatrice. As I went on, all the goodness of my life seemed to reside there with her. Goodness—or was it just a very special blend of innocence and chaste passion? I have been able to write about her as she then was, and I am deeply glad to find that I can do it. There is that faint smell of fire and brimstone when something of the past comes tearing to the surface vivid and complete. Of course the whole of my life has been a tissue of memories of Hartley. But earlier on I think I could not have written these things down; or admitted that, in her despite and in mine, that ancient love is somehow still alive. Of course I never saw her again. In the years to come I thanked God that the demon of jealousy itself had warned me not to find out any details, the suffering would have been too great, and I never even knew her married name. I stopped searching; I did not want to know where she was dragging out her obscure existence. I did not want my circling thought to have names and places to feed upon. But it pleased me to think of her life as dull. And then when I became well known and my name was often in the papers, it pleased me to imagine that she felt terrible secret pangs of remorse and regret, and that a bitter worm gnawed her as painfully as it has gnawed me. She threw away her happiness when she threw away mine. I would have made her a queen in this world.