by Iris Murdoch
I saw: a stout elderly woman in a shapeless brown tent-like dress, holding a shopping bag and working her way, very slowly as if in a dream, along the street, past the Black Lion in the direction of the shop. This figure, which I had so vaguely, idly, noticed before was now utterly changed in my eyes. The whole world was its background. And between me and it there hovered, perhaps for the last time, the vision of a slim long-legged girl with gleaming thighs. I ran.
I reached her, running up from behind, when she had just passed the pub, and as I came level with her I touched one of the wide brown sleeves of her dress. She stopped, I stopped. I could say nothing.
The familiar face turned to me, the pale round fey face with the secret-violet eyes, and with a sort of almost reflective movement of relief I thought: I can make sense of it, yes, it is the same person, and I can see it as the same person, after all.
Hartley’s face, which now seemed absolutely white, expressed such an appalling terror that I would have felt terrified myself had I not been engaged in some urgent almost mechanical search for ‘similarities’, for ways to blend the present with the far past. Yes, that was Hartley’s face, though it was haggard and curiously soft and dry. A sheaf of very fine sensitive wrinkles at the corner of the eye led upwards to the brow and down towards the chin, framing the face like a wreath. There were magisterial horizontal lines upon the forehead and long darkish hairs above the mouth. She was wearing a moist red lipstick and face powder which had caked here and there. Her hair was grey and neat and conventionally waved. But the shape of her face and head and the look of her eyes conveyed something untouched straight from the past into the present.
She started to murmur something. ‘Oh—it’s—’ It was of course at once clear that she knew who I was. She mumbled ‘Oh—’, staring at me in a kind of blank terrified supplication.
I managed at last to say ‘Come—come—’ and pulled again at her sleeve and began to move back towards the church. I did not attempt to walk with her. She followed me a few feet behind and I kept looking back at her and stumbling. God knows who witnessed this encounter. Perhaps a dozen people, perhaps no one. I could not see anything except Hartley’s terrified eyes.
I went into the church and held the big heavy door open for her. The place was still empty. The big windows of plain glass gave a bright cool light. I sat down in a nearby pew and she sat down close to me in the next row in front, so that she had to turn round to see me. In the damp musty atmosphere I could smell her face powder and feel the warmth of her body. She had dropped her bag and gripped the back of the pew with her two hands. The hands were red and wrinkled and in a moment she hid them again. She murmured ‘I’m sorry—’ and closed her eyes. I laid my brow on the polished wooden surface where her hands had been and said, ‘Oh, Hartley—Hartley—Hartley—’
It occurred to me later that I never for a second doubted that her emotion was as strong as my own; although this could well have been otherwise. When I lifted my head she was dabbing her face with a handkerchief and breathing open-mouthed in a shuddering way, not looking at me.
‘Hartley, I—oh, Hartley—oh, my dear—where do you live, do you live in the village?’ I do not know why I asked this question first, perhaps just because it was easy to answer. Speech of any sort seemed the problem, as if we spoke different languages and must teach each other to talk.
‘Yes.’
‘You’re not on holiday, you live here?’
‘Yes.’
‘So do I. I’m retired now. Where do you live?’
‘Up on the hill.’
‘In one of those bungalows?’
‘Yes.’ She added, ‘There’s a lovely view.’ She too was babbling. Her handkerchief had smudged some lipstick onto her cheek.
‘You got married, didn’t you—are you still—I mean is your husband still—have you got a—husband—now—?’
‘Yes, yes, oh yes. My husband is alive—he’s with me, yes—we live—we live here.’
I was silent while a whole world of possibilities gradually folded themselves up, like some trick of stagecraft, quietly collapsing, folding, merging, becoming very small and vanishing. So that—was that—at any rate. And I would have to think, to invent, in a new way, to exist in this situation which was now, I realized, whatever was the case with Hartley, the continuing and only situation for me, the final state of affairs, the world centre.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
She shook her head slightly, jerked it with emotion, at this last awkward tribute. A short litany, a vast brief Amen.
I went on, ‘I’m not married, I never married.’
She moved her head again, staring down at the reddened handkerchief. And we were silent for a moment together, as if surveying breathlessly a huge event which had just taken place. Then as in a crisis people will hurry on to talk at random, I said quickly, ‘Did you see me before at all, did you see me in the street, perhaps you didn’t recognize me?’
‘Oh yes. I saw you nearly three weeks ago. I recognized you. You haven’t changed.’
I could not bring myself to say ‘You haven’t changed’, though later I cursed myself for not saying it. How much do women mind when they lose their looks, how much do they know? But I was instantly caught up and appalled by another thought. ‘But then why didn’t you speak to me?’
‘I wasn’t sure if you would want to know me. I thought perhaps you felt it would be better if we didn’t recognize each other—’
‘You mean you thought I’d recognized you and—and cut you—just ignored you? How could you think that?’
‘I didn’t know—I didn’t know how you felt after all those years—whether you blamed me or had forgotten me. You are so grand and famous—you mightn’t like me or want to know me—’
‘Oh, Hartley, how can you, if you only knew—I’ve spent the years looking for you, I’ve never stopped loving you—’ I touched the shoulder of the brown dress, taking the collar of it for a second between my fingers.
‘Don’t, don’t,’ she murmured, moving slightly away.
‘Did you know that I saw you last night?’
‘Yes.’
‘I only recognized you then. I’ve been in a frenzy ever since. I wouldn’t have pretended not to know you, what a terrible thing! How could you think I’d blame you or forget you! You are my love, you are still that, you are still what you were for me—’
She gave an odd little grimace like a smile and shook her head, still not looking at me.
I could not say more, I had to blunder on into the terrible things. ‘You’re still with the same—husband—the one you married—then? ’
‘Yes, the same one.’
‘I never knew his name, I—I don’t know your married name.’
‘I’m Mrs Fitch. His name is Fitch, Benjamin Fitch.’
I bowed over this as over a stomach blow. There was now a name attached to this horror of her being married, this horror that I would have to live with somehow. An awful wave of self-pity overcame me and I wrinkled up my face with pain. ‘Hartley—what does he do, I mean, what does he, does he work at?’
‘He’s disabled a bit, he went about in a car as a representative, did various jobs, like a salesman, he’s retired now. We came here, we were in the Midlands, we came here, to the bungalow to live—’
‘Oh isn’t it strange, Hartley, we both came here to meet each other again, and we didn’t know. It seems like fate, doesn’t it?’ But oh the pain of it.
Hartley said nothing. She looked at her watch.
‘And—children—have you?’
‘We have a son. He’s eighteen. He’s away just now.’
She spoke more calmly and with a sort of deliberation, as if getting some necessary task over.
‘What’s his name?’
She said after a moment. ‘Titus.’ She repeated, ‘Titus—is his name.’ Then she said, looking at her watch again, ‘I must go, I must go to the shop, I shall be late.’
‘Hartley, please
, stay here please, I must go on talking to you, tell me—oh—tell me, what did your husband do, sell, before he retired?’ I must just keep on asking questions.
‘Fire extinguishers. He was in fire extinguishers.’ She added, ‘He was always so tired in the evenings.’
This sudden vista of her evenings, years and years of her evenings, led me on blunderingly to ask, ‘And are you happily married, Hartley, have you had a good life?’
‘Oh yes, yes, I’ve been very happy, a very happy marriage, yes.’
It was impossible to tell if she was sincere. Probably she was. A good life. What an odd phrase I had used. And had both our lives passed, and had they somehow been completed, since we last met? Hartley’s voice, retaining the thin droning slightly monotonous, to me so immensely attractive, sound which it had always had, with the touch of the local accent, made me realize how much my own voice had changed.
I was suddenly breathless and put both of my hands onto the back of the pew. My little finger touched her dress and she moved slightly again. Something black seemed to threaten me from a little way above my head. She had been happy all these years, yes, why not, and yet I could not believe it, could not bear it. She had existed all these years and our lives were gone. I breathed quickly through my mouth and the darkness went away. I thought, I must be ingenious, and the word ‘ingenious’ seemed like a help to me. I must be ingenious and see to it that I do not suffer too much. I must look for some happiness, simply for some comfort, here, ingeniously.
I said, not knowing quite what I meant to say nor why, ‘That woman in the car last night, she’s a well-known actress, Rosina Vamburgh, she was just visiting me—’
‘We hardly ever go to the theatre—’
‘She was just visiting me on business—’
‘I saw you on telly.’
‘Did you, what was it—?’
‘I forget. I must go now,’ she repeated and got up and retrieved her shopping bag.
I felt panic. ‘Hartley, don’t go, you look—oh so tired—’ This was not the best thing to say, but it expressed a sort of anguish of protectiveness and tenderness and pity and a kind of humility which I felt about her then as I saw her standing there before me in the guise of an old woman. She did look tired, tiredness was somehow the expression of her face, not sadness or suffering so much as a vast weariness as of one who has worked too hard for years and years.
‘I’m very well, apart from endless tummy trouble. You look well, Charles, and so young. I must go.’ She shuffled past me in the direction of the door.
I leapt up and followed her. ‘But what shall we do?’
Hartley looked at me as if she was not sure what this question meant.
I repeated, ‘What shall we do? I mean—oh, Hartley, Hartley, when shall I see you, can we meet after you’ve done your shopping, can we meet in the pub, or would you come down to my house—’ Vistas of madness opened beyond these words.
Hartley opened the church door, pulling at it laboriously, and over her shoulder I could see Dummy’s grave and the criss-cross iron gate and the village street with people in it and the far horizon line of the sea. I said wildly, ‘Of course I’ll call on you, I’d so much like to meet your husband, you must both come down to my funny house and have a drink, you know I live—’
‘Yes, I know, thank you, but not just now, my husband is not too well—’
‘But I’ll see you, I must—what’s your address, which bungalow? ’
‘It’s called Nibletts, it’s the last one, but don’t—I’ll let you know—’
‘Please, Hartley, see me after you’ve done your shopping, let me help you—’
‘No, no, I’m late. Don’t come, you stay here. I’ll see you later, I mean on another day, please don’t do anything, I’ll let you know. I must run now, I’ll let you know. Please stay here. Goodbye.’
I had wanted to touch her, but somehow only with my fingertips as if she were a ghost which might dissolve, I had wanted to hold her dress between my fingers. Now I felt a more precise need to take her head and draw it quietly against me and hear her heart beating. Old desires were suddenly present. I saw her blue, blue eyes and the curious mad look of her round face which was so unchanged. And her lips which had been so white and so cold.
I started to say, ‘I’m not on the telephone—’
She went quickly out of the church and closed the door carefully. Obeying her I stayed. I went back to the same place and sat down and once more put my hands where her hands had been.
What was I going to do, how was I going to manage myself for the rest of my life now that I had found Hartley again? Was I going to go round to ‘Nibletts’ once a week and have tea with Mr and Mrs Benjamin Fitch? Or entertain them to beans and sausages and claret at Shruff End? Take them up to London for a show? Take an interest in Titus’s future? Look after them all? Leave Titus my money? My mind leapt wildly about, huge vistas opened, immense areas of the future were suddenly live and quick with possibilities, all of them terrible. Ingenious, I thought, I must be ingenious. I looked at my watch. It was ten twenty. So much awful thought in so little time. I sat for a while until I reckoned that Hartley would have done her shopping and gone back up the hill, and then emerged from the church and sat on Dummy’s grave, leaning against the gravestone which bore the image of the ‘foul anchor’. From there I could see, over some trees, the roofs of the bungalows, including the last one, the residence of Mr and Mrs Fitch. A disabled travelling salesman. What was the matter with him? A cripple? I knew that I would have to go and take a look at Mr Benjamin Fitch, very soon.
Why had Hartley been so reluctant, why had she not said ‘Yes, come and see us’ or ‘We’d love to come and see you’? Sanity demanded such gestures, whatever she felt. Politeness demanded them and by politeness one might, for the present at any rate, be saved. Or was the crippled husband really ill, suffering, peevish and bedridden perhaps? But oh what did Hartley feel, what made her seem so strained and anxious? Her reluctance to invite me to her house was perhaps understandable, indeed very understandable. ‘You are so grand and famous.’ She was perhaps a little bit ashamed of her house and her husband. That need not mean she did not love him. But did she love him? I had to know. Was she really happy? I had to know. And that old horrible sweetish thought now kept coming to me: she must regret it so much, that wrong choice. She must have spent her life regretting that she had not married me. ‘I saw you on telly.’ What was that like? What mean gnawing pains of remorse did she feel when she saw me as a ‘celebrity’? How could she know that I was still just me and that I still missed her? And must she not think of me as surrounded by attractive women, as probably possessing a permanent mistress? She had seen Rosina, she might have seen Lizzie. Perhaps, it suddenly occurred to me, and this was so painful and so sweetish too, she is reluctant to see me precisely because of her regrets: remorse, jealousy, the waywardness of fruitless daydream. She does not want to know any more about what might have been. Oh God, those years, our whole life, that we might have spent together. She does not want . . . to start to love me . . . all over again . . .
I already had enough instinct for dangerous thoughts to thrust this one aside. I was indeed, as I leaned back against the sun-warmed lichen-spotted surface of Dummy’s laconic monument, sketching a kind of programme for survival. Roughly, the programme was like this. There was no doubt that I must now somehow contrive to devote the rest of my life to Hartley. (I quickly banished the idea that Mr Fitch was seriously ill and would shortly die.) This could only be done if I accepted their marriage and could successfully attempt to construct a friendship with her, and presumably with him. Hartley and I were not just revisiting each other as tourists, that was out of the question. At the least, the husband must tolerate me. Perhaps I could be allowable as a figure of fun? I did not quite care for this, but so quick is imagination that I already heard Hartley saying to her spouse, ‘Why there’s dear old Charles again, he can’t keep away!’—while she felt—somethin
g a little different. Perhaps the husband might even be flattered that a ‘show business personality’ admired his wife. However these were unsavoury or at any rate premature speculations.
What I must now concentrate upon was the possibility of love in the form of a pure deep affectionate mutual respect, a steady constant binding awareness. Of course it would be, it would have to be, love between us, but love purged of possessive madness, purged of self, disciplined by time and the irrevocability of our fates. We must find out how at last to be absolutes to each other, never to lose each other, without putting any foot wrong or spilling one drop of some brimming vessel of truth and history which was held up austerely between us. I will respect her, I will respect her, I kept saying to myself. I felt a tenderness for her that was deep and pure, a miracle of love preserved. How clear it flowed, that fountain from the far past. Yes, we must quietly collect our past, collect it up with tacit understanding, without any intensity or drama, blaming and exonerating ourselves with a difference. And how wonderfully possible it seemed, this silent process of redemption, as I rethought our passionate, yet gentle and divinely inept little conversation in the church. Was that what it was like, meeting the great love of one’s life again after all those years? And had we not been for each other the shy direct innocent creatures we had once been? The nature of our converse had never been spoilt, and in that blundering conversation its note could unmistakably be heard again. Perhaps I would indeed, through her and through our old childish love, now irremediably chaste, be enabled to become what I had hoped to become when I came away to the sea, pure in heart.