The Sea, the Sea

by Iris Murdoch

  But I did sleep and I dreamed that Hartley was a ballet dancer and was circling a huge stage sur les points dressed in a black tutu and a head-dress of sparkling diamonds and black feathers. Now and then she would leap, and I would say to myself, but she stays in the air, it’s uncanny, it’s like levitation, she just stays there. And as I watched I said to myself in a complacent way, isn’t it wonderful that we’re both so young and we have all our lives before us. How can old people be happy? We’re young and we know that we’re young, whereas most young people just take it for granted. Then the stage was a forest and a prince also dressed in black came and carried Hartley away, and her head hung back over his shoulder as if her neck was broken. I stayed there still thinking, how wonderful that I’m young; I had a bad dream and thought that I was old. And I’m sure, I’m sure, that on the other side of those trees there is a lake, or perhaps it is the sea. I woke up in the sunshine, and whereas in my other wakings I had understood at once where I was, this time I was very startled, and could still see Hartley’s dead face, her head hanging limply in that terrible way; and I felt a foreboding and a horror which I had not felt in the dream. I pushed myself up on my elbow and only gradually worked out why I was here, lying on the rock, in the bright sunlight in front of a blue muttering sea. I got up slowly, and then felt a pang of sadness as I remembered being so pleased about being young in my dream. I looked at my watch. It was six thirty. It was only then that I thought: if there is no letter this morning I shall go to the bungalow. That is settled.

  I felt very hungry. I wondered if Rosina had spent the night in the house. I climbed over the rocks as far as the road and walked back towards Shruff End. I looked into the rocky recess where she had left her car. It was gone. I went on and across the causeway. Of course there were no letters yet. When I got inside I made a thorough search of the house. There were a lot of spent matches lying about, but my bed showed no signs of having been slept in. I was glad about that. She must have gone away late last night. She had opened a bottle of wine and a tin of olives and had eaten some bread. She left no note, but had left her mark by strewing the smashed remains of a rather pretty teacup in the middle of the kitchen table. It could have been worse. I breakfasted, since I was so hungry, on tea and toast and the remainder of the olives. Then I just waited, and waited, and while I did so I tried to remember what I had felt when I looked at the stars, but already it was fading. Then I started making sorties to the dog kennel. About half past nine there were some letters, but none from Hartley. About ten I was walking around the village. At half past ten I was outside Nibletts.

  I resisted the temptation to peer anxiously at the house as I walked up the path. I wanted to seem to blunder in, and the best way to do that was actually to blunder in. Down in the village I had felt sick with an anxious yearning sense of Hartley’s proximity. Now the magnetism of her nearness produced a desperate audacity; I felt out of control, heavy, dangerous. I rang the sweet-sounding bell and its hollow angelic chime made a terrible vibration inside the house.

  There was then a slight sound of scuffling, but no voices were audible. I realized that my head must be fuzzily visible through the frosted glass. Did they have many visitors?

  Ben opened the door. He had by now become ‘Ben’ in my thoughts, so ardently had I been attempting to inhabit Hartley’s mind. He was wearing a white cotton tee shirt which made him appear rather stout, and he looked unshaven. The parts of his face which were not grubbily bristled were greasy, and there were shiny lumps on his brow. As he tossed his head back with an animal gesture I saw the black interior of his wide nostrils.

  I said, ‘Good morning,’ and smiled.

  He said, ‘What is it?’ with an expression of surprise, genuine or assumed, which let him off smiling.

  ‘Oh I was out for my morning constitutional and I thought I’d call. I felt it would be so nice to glimpse you and Hartley again, now we are neighbours. And I wanted to bring you something. May I come in for a moment?’ I had planned this beforehand. I put my foot onto the step.

  Ben glanced behind him; then he opened the door wider with one hand, while with the other he opened the door of one of the front rooms. Then he stood back with his arms extended so that he and the two doors made a screen or barrier to shepherd me harmlessly into the front room.

  This was obviously the spare bedroom. It was rather small, containing a divan, a chair, a chest of drawers. Sunlight illumined bright red flowers upon the unlined curtains. The room smelt of furnishing fabric and furniture polish and dust and of not being used. The divan bed beneath a blue and white gingham cover had clearly not been made up. There was a framed colour photograph of a tabby cat. Ben came inside and shut the door and just for a second I felt afraid of him.

  There was little space. He did not ask me to sit down, so we stood facing each other beside the divan. I had decided that to begin with I would keep on gaily chattering, and I had settled on an order of discourse which I hoped that I would now remember. There was much to be discovered, and perhaps a very short time to discover it in.

  ‘How is Mary? I hope she is well?’ I remembered to call her Mary. ‘I hoped to catch a glimpse. I’ve got a little note here for you both.’

  ‘She isn’t here,’ said Ben.

  I felt sure this was a lie. ‘Well, here it is, my little note.’ I handed over a sealed envelope addressed to Mr and Mrs Fitch.

  Ben took the envelope, gazed at it frowning, then gave me a blank stare. He said, ‘Thank you,’ and opened the door.

  I said, ‘Won’t you read it please? It’s just an invitation.’ I smiled again.

  Ben gave a sort of sigh of irritation and tore open the envelope. As he did so I saw over his shoulder through the open door that the door of the kitchen, which had been closed when I entered, was now ajar. The heavy smell of roses, dustier, more appallingly sad inside the house than outside, came through from the hall. I could see the ‘altar’ with the brown questing knight above it. Ben looked up, and closed the bedroom door again.

  I said, waving my arm in an explanatory way towards the invitation, and trying with gestures of a simulated bonhomie to fill and dominate the little room and simulate a flow of mutual conversation, ‘As you see, it’s just a formal invitation, and, look, I’ve written on the back that I do so hope you and Mary will drop in. I’ve got one or two friends down from London,’ this was untrue of course, but I thought it might sound less significantly alarming than a proposed à trois, ‘and I wondered if you and your wife would be so good as to toddle over to Shruff End and have a drink on Friday, it’s quite informal, no need to dress or anything, and you needn’t stay long.’ As this did not sound quite polite and as Ben was still frowning at the card, deciphering my kind message on the back, I added, ‘Or of course if you would prefer it you could come over just the two of you on Thursday or Saturday or any time really, I’m not tied up. I do hope you will. Your house is so charming, so well done, I’m sure you could advise me about mine—I so wanted to ask you about various things—the village and—the locality and—’

  ‘I don’t think we can come,’ said Ben. He added, ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Ah well, if you can’t manage anything just now, I expect you’re busy and it’s not convenient, we could fix something a little later, perhaps, I could drop in next week, I often pass this way. I used to be such a busy person and now I have all the time in the world, do you find that now you’ve retired? Of course it’s marvellous and one’s so lucky, especially living in a place like this. Yes, I do like your house. Is that your pussy cat, isn’t he charming? ’ I gestured towards the colour photograph of the cat which was hanging over the bed.

  Ben turned towards the photo and for a second his brow and his mouth relaxed and his eyes lightened and widened. ‘Yes. That’s Tamburlaine. We called him Tambi. He’s dead now.’

  ‘What a splendid name. It’s so important what you call a cat. Tabbies are top cats, don’t you think? I’ve always been such a rolling stone I’ve never
been able to keep an animal, such a pity. Have you got a cat now?’

  Ben threw the invitation card and the crumpled envelope onto the bed. The brusque movement put an end to my chatter. He stood for a moment opening his mouth and showing his uneven teeth in some kind of indecision. He ruffled up his short thick mousy hair. He said, ‘Listen.’ There was a pause, he gulped breathlessly and my own breath was suspended. We stood together bulkily in the little room, I leaning a little over him. ‘Listen, it’s not on, sorry, we don’t want to know you. Sorry to put it like that but you won’t seem to take a hint. I mean, there’s no point, is there. All right, you knew Mary a long time ago, but a long time ago is a long time ago. She doesn’t want to know you now, and I don’t want to start, see. You don’t have to see people now because you saw them once or went to school with them or what. Things change and people have their own worlds and their own places. We aren’t your sort, well, that’s obvious, isn’t it. We don’t want to come to your parties and meet your friends and drink your drinks, it’s not on. And we don’t want you barging in here at all hours of the day either, sorry if this sounds rude, but it’s better to get it understood once and for all. I don’t know how you live with your friends in your world, but we don’t live like that, we’re quiet folk and we keep ourselves to ourselves. See? So as far as this stuff about “old school friends” or whatever goes, forget it. Of course we’ll pass the time of day with you if we see you in the village, but we don’t want to be on visiting terms, that’s not our kind of thing. So—thank you for your invitation—but, well, there we are.’ Here he fumbled loudly with the door handle, presumably to warn Hartley to be out of the way.

  As he spoke, and as I listened to him, I had been looking down at the narrow scantily covered divan. That was certainly not Ben’s bed; so they slept together. I listened to his rigmarole almost without any surprise, almost as if it were a cassette which I myself had invented. I felt at the same time angry, confused, and tormented by the certainty that Hartley was in the house, silent, hiding from me. Why?

  One thing I had firmly decided beforehand was that however Ben reacted I was not going to lose my temper or display any emotion. It was certainly at this moment not easy to retain my mask of urbanity. Ben, after his speech, was standing stiffly, wrought up by his own words, frowning as if puzzled and staring at the photo of the cat. He had not raised his voice, indeed he had spoken in rather low though emphatic tones, and he had not yet opened the door. Doubtless he wanted, when he did so, to be sure of making a quick job of getting me out of the house.

  I felt my accursed tendency to blush betraying me. My face and neck had changed colour, my cheeks were blazing. I said as coolly and airily as I could, ‘Well, all right, but I hope you’ll think it over. After all we are neighbours. And if you think I’m some sort of jet set grandee or something you’re quite wrong. I’m a very simple person, as I hope you’ll discover. I’ll write to you again later on. I wonder if I could see Mary just for a moment before I go?’

  ‘She isn’t here.’

  ‘I expect she’s out shopping. Maybe she’ll be back soon? I’d love to see her.’

  ‘She isn’t here!’ Ben picked up the envelope and the invitation card from the bed and hurled them onto the floor. Then he threw the door wide open with a crash.

  He was standing between me and the door, and there was an awkward moment. He backed a little and I made a concessive flourishing gesture with my hand, instinctively designed to dissipate the sudden aura of violence. I got past him into the hall and began to fumble with the front door. Ben, who had immediately followed me, began to open the door and our hands touched. I then had to sidestep again to get out of the house. I was not able to look back towards the kitchen, and was in any case blind with emotion. I saw with terrible clarity the glaring scarlet and orange of some extremely large roses growing beside the path. The door banged. I fumbled hastily with the complicated fastening of the gate and managed to get out onto the pavement. I walked fast down the hill. I did not run. I began to walk more slowly, more slowly, and by the time I reached the village I was strolling. Acute feelings of anger, fear and a sort of boiling shame gradually subsided. Had I scuttled out like a frightened dog? I decided that the answer to that question did not matter. I touched my burning cheeks and cooled them with the back of my hand.

  And as the violent feelings became calmer another emotion, darker, deeper, came slowly up from below. Or rather there were two emotions closely, blackly, coiled together. I felt a piercing pain connected with the vision of that mean flimsily covered divan and with the inference that . . . Hartley . . . slept . . . with that brutal ageing schoolboy. I knew that I felt this particular pain now not just because of the divan, but because, until I had made sure of what I had made sure of, I had been attempting to block out altogether certain reactions to the situation, certain pictures, certain terrible sensations. The other emotion which now, closely embraced with this one, rose dark and gleaming to the surface was: a kind of frightful glee. Ben was just as I had—feared—and hoped. He was a hateful tyrant. He was a thoroughly nasty man. And so . . . And so . . .

  History

  THREE

  ‘EVERY PERSISTING MARRIAGE is based on fear,’ said Peregrine Arbelow.

  But let me explain. I am writing these pages, as I have written the previous ones (since page 100 in fact), in London, in my peculiar miserable derelict new flat. It has even occurred to me that if I wanted to live as a hermit retired from the world this would be a far better habitat! (Someone said something like this to me lately, Rosina?) So much has been happening, I thought I would write it as a continuous narrative without too many reversions to the present tense. So I am writing my life, after all, as a novel! Why not? It was a matter of finding a form, and somehow history, my history, has found the form for me. There will be plenty of time to reflect and remember as I go along, to digress and philosophize, to inhabit the far past or depict the scarcely formulated present; so my novel can still be a sort of memoir and a sort of diary. The past and the present are after all so close, so almost one, as if time were an artificial teasing out of a material which longs to join, to interpenetrate, and to become heavy and very small like some of those heavenly bodies scientists tell us of.

  I arrived here two days ago and have spent most of the time writing. On the second evening, as I shall shortly recount, I visited Peregrine. Today I shall continue to write; it is oddly enough easier to write here, amid all this cramped chaos, than in the open spaces at Shruff End. I have been able to concentrate; and my God there is plenty to concentrate on. This evening I shall take the train back home. (Home? Home.) I have telephoned to the local taxi to meet me at the station. I am sitting at a rickety table up against a window, from which I can see the unutterably feathery tops of a very bland green plane tree and beyond its lilting leaves a jumble of walls and windows and chimneys, and backs of houses built out of the crusty dung-brown Victorian brick out of which this part of London seems to be constructed. I sold my big airy apartment in Barnes, so near the river, so near the railway, in a fever of haste when I was buying Shruff End. And this little flat was, almost in my intention, a sort of penitential chapel. I have not even yet had time to arrange the furniture. Beside me as I write is an armchair with a television set on top of it. (Thank God for the impossibility of television at Shruff End.) Beyond, a bookcase stands facing the wall, presenting to me its greyish back, draped with cobwebs and pitted with woodworm. Pictures, lamps, books, ornaments and rolled-up rugs cover the floor, together with a sinister scattering of pieces of broken glass and china. I hustled the removal men and they were not at their best. Crates of kitchen ware, not unpacked, fill the tiny kitchen. Even though I sold many things and put some in store (including several trunks full of theatre souvenirs) there is far too much stuff here. The two bedrooms are small, but have an attractive view down a mews where many plants and trees are growing outside the little houses. The kitchen, if you can get in, is satisfactory, with a good gas s
tove and a refrigerator. Yesterday I lunched on tinned macaroni cheese jazzed up with oil, garlic, basil, and more cheese, and a lovely dish of cold boiled courgettes. (Courgettes should never be fried, in my opinion.) I must remember to buy more courgettes and some green peppers to take back with me. And talking of food, I have just this moment remembered that last night (when I was with Perry) was the night when I was supposed to be dining with Lizzie and Gilbert, and I forgot to cancel it. They will have spent the whole day cooking for me.

  What brought me to London was the following. Fundamentally I suppose what brought me away was a sense of a very important interval in the problem of Hartley: an interval for reflection, planning and a certain necessary purging of intent. What more immediately brought me was Rosina and her horrible little red car. Rosina turned up again at Shruff End on the evening of the day when I had that informative encounter with Ben which I have just related; and I amazed her and also got rid of her by asking her if she would drive me to London, leaving early on the following morning. I wanted to come away, as I have said, to think. And I wanted, as I will explain, to find some old photos of Hartley which had been left in London. And the journey was incidentally a good way of brushing Rosina off me, at any rate for the moment. It was not just that this donation of my company and willingness to accept her services as a chauffeur (she drives very well) was likely to placate. I was also able over the journey to indicate half laughingly, and as if the idea had of course never been serious, that there was no question of anything between me and Lizzie. Rosina took this news, as I knew she would, coolly and with an air of wise generosity, which would have enraged me had I been telling her the whole truth. As it was I even hinted that she had helped to ‘bring me to my senses.’ Did she really believe that I had abandoned Lizzie and that her terrorist tactics had influenced me? Or did she suspect that there was something quite else afoot? It was hard to say. After all she is an actress.