The Sea, the Sea

by Iris Murdoch

  We were sitting in the rather large and handsome dining room of Peregrine’s flat. A white tablecloth, much stained with wine, covered the table and looked as if it had been there for some time. Perry had moved his divan bed into this room, and had even installed an electric kettle and an electric cooking ring (on which I had cooked the curry) so as to be able to leave the rest of the flat to Pamela. The ring stood on a square of newspaper which was covered with food droppings. The charwoman had left after being insulted by Pam. The room was very dusty and smelt of burnt saucepans and dirty linen. However, as Perry said, the door could be closed and locked.

  Peregrine Arbelow has, as I think I said earlier, just about the largest face that I have ever seen on a human being; though when he was young, in his ‘playboy’ days, this did not prevent him from looking handsome. He has a large round face, now rather fat and flabby, framed (with the help of science) by short thick chestnut brown curls. (It was he who advised me about the rescue operation on my own hair.) His large eyes have retained a look of innocence or perhaps simply puzzlement. He is a big stout man, always dressed, even in hot weather, in tweedy suits with waist-coats. He has a watch and chain. He speaks with a light touch of the accent of his native Ulster, which of course disappears absolutely on the stage, unlike Gilbert Opian’s lisp. He is an excellent comic, though not as good as Wilfred, but then nobody is.

  I thought it was time to get off the dangerous topic of women. ‘Been to Ireland lately?’ This always set Perry off and was a guaranteed subject-changer.

  ‘Ireland! There’s another bitch. Christ, the Irish are stupid! As Pushkin said about the Poles, their history is and ought to be a disaster. At least the Poles suffer tragically, the Jews suffer intelligently, even wittily, the Irish suffer stupidly, like a bawling cow in a bog. I can’t think how the English tolerate that island, there ought to have been a final solution years ago, well they did try. Cromwell, where are you now when we really need you? Belfast has been kicked to pieces. Nobody cares. The pain of it, Charles, the pain of it, the bloody suffering, the degradation, the bloody tit for tat. Why can’t they let the thing stop somewhere, like Christ did? Could a hundred saints save that island, could a thousand? And I can’t just forget it, it’s like the shirt of what’s his name, it’s on me, it’s crawling on my flesh. The only thing I get out of it is sometimes, in some moods. I can actually feel pleased that other people are worse off than me, that their beloved husband or son or wife has been shot down before their eyes, or that they’ve got to sit in a wheelchair for the rest of their life. That’s how vile I am! I live Ireland, I breathe Ireland, and Christ how I loathe it, I wish I were a bloody Scot, that’s how bloody awful it is being Irish! I think I hate Ireland more than I hate the theatre, and that’s saying something!’

  At that moment the door opened and Pamela put her head round it. Then, swinging on the door, she half stepped half fell into the room and gazed at us glassily. She was wearing a coat and had evidently just come in. She was still handsome, with a lot of tumbling wavy grey hair, now rather bedraggled. Her smudged scarlet mouth turned down at the corners in an aggressive unhappy sneer. She stared at me, screwing up her eyes, ignoring Perry. I said, ‘Hello, Pam.’

  She turned round laboriously, still holding on to the door, and started to go out, then turned about, with her face wrinkled up in a pout and her lips working, and having assembled enough saliva in her mouth, spat onto the floor, leaned forward to inspect the spit, and reeled away leaving the door open.

  Peregrine leapt to his feet, rushed to kick the door violently shut, then picked up his glass and hurled it into the fireplace. It failed to break. He ran round the table literally foaming at the mouth, lifted it high with a cry of ‘Aaaagh!’, a sound like a spitting cat only with the volume of a lion. I rose and took the glass out of his hand and put it on the table. He then walked slowly towards the door, looked at the place where Pamela had spat, tore a piece off one of the filthy newspapers and carefully laid it over the spittle. Then he returned to his seat. ‘Drink up, Charles, dear chap. You aren’t drinking. You’re sober. Drink up.’

  ‘You were saying about the theatre.’

  ‘You were so right not to publish your plays, they were nothing, nothing, froth, but at least they didn’t pretend to be anything else. Now you’re offended, vanity, vanity. Yes, I hate the theatre.’ Perry meant the London West End theatre. ‘Lies, lies, almost all art is lies. Hell itself it turns to favour and to prettiness. Muck. Real suffering is—is—Christ, I’m drunk—it’s so—different. Oh Charles, if you could see my native city—And that spitting bitch—How can human beings live like that, how can they do it to each other? If we could only keep our mouths shut. Drama, tragedy, belong to the stage, not to life, that’s the trouble. It’s the soul that’s missing. All art disfigures life, misrepresents it, theatre most of all because it seems so like, you see real walking and talking people. God! How is it when you turn on the radio you can always tell if it’s an actor talking? It’s the vulgarity, the vulgarity, the theatre is the temple of vulgarity. It’s a living proof that we don’t want to talk about serious things and probably can’t. Everything, everything, the saddest, the most sacred, even the funniest, is turned into a vulgar trick. You’re quite right, Charles, I remember your saying about old Shakespeare that he was the—he was the—only one. Him and some Greek chap no one can understand anyway. The rest is a foul stinking sea of complacent vulgarity. Wilfred felt that. Sometimes I remember he looked so sad, after he’d had them laughing themselves sick. Oh Charles, if only there was a God, but there isn’t, there isn’t, at all—’ Perry’s big round brown eyes were filling with tears. He fumbled for a handkerchief, then used the tablecloth. After a moment he added, ‘I wish I’d stayed at Queen’s and become a doctor. As it is I crawl on everyday towards the tomb. When I wake in the morning I think first of death, do you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No. You still have the joie de vivre of a young man. In your case it is nothing to do with goodness. You are ungood. It is just a natural endowment, a gift of nature, like your figure and your girlish complexion. But remember and beware—there are those who live in hell.’

  I said, ‘Do you ever hit Pamela? Did you ever hit Rosina?’ I must have been drunker than Perry thought.

  This question seemed to cheer him up a little. ‘Funny you should ask that, Charles, I was thinking about it just today and wondering why I never do, I never did. No. Never raised my hand to anybody. It’s the inanimate world that gets it. Glasses, plates, anything I can kick and smash. I think—you know—that’s something to do with Ireland, something I do for Ireland, in a funny way. Doesn’t help the bitch of course. But—you know—as soon as—anybody hits anybody, instead of screaming or—or spitting or—there’s a barrier passed—perhaps it’s the last barrier of civilization—and after that—it’s machine guns and shooting people’s knee caps off. God, why did I agree to play in that bloody TV series, it’s muck. They hit me of course, Pam and Rosina, no inhibitions there—’

  ‘A scratched face?’

  ‘Scratch be damned, they punch. Well, I deserve it. I’m a skunk—a—skunk. Yes. Yes. Drink up.’

  As Perry was again applying the tablecloth to his eyes the door opened and a tall thin boy with a crew cut and a black leather jacket clumped in, ignored us, went across to the cupboard, opened it, took out a bottle, and walked out again closing the door.

  ‘Who on earth was that boy?’

  ‘Ah that’s no boy, Charles dear, that’s my stepdaughter Angela, she’s sixteen.’

  ‘God. Last time I saw her she was a little thing with golden ringlets.’

  ‘She is no longer a little thing with golden ringlets. Do you know that she shaved her head last month? It’s just beginning to grow again. Her father has given her a motor bike. And when I say a motor bike I don’t mean a put-put-put on which you sit as on a chair, I mean a long thick brutal thing which you bestride like a charger and which makes a noise like AAAARRGRR. I remember
when you were being sentimental about wanting a son I told you what hell it would be. I think a daughter is worse. Thank God I haven’t got any children of my own. Children—innocence—God! You should hear the language Angie uses, and she’s made herself so ugly, so grotesque—Pamela doesn’t care, she’s—well, you saw Pamela just now, didn’t you—she did come in, didn’t she or did I dream it? Angie, yes. She wears climbing boots and leather everything. And she drinks. They all do. Christ, Charles, you’re lucky. No family. The family, the seat of love. And to think that I not only persuaded myself I loved those two women, I really did love them—that is, if I’m capable of love. Am I? I don’t know. And I loved—oh—earlier—other women—other people—lost now, lost, gone forever—but it would have been no good—skunks and rotters and cads can’t be happy, so there’s some justice in the world after all.’

  I had reached the stage where it was very difficult to leave, very difficult to do anything except go on and on drinking whisky; and I was beginning to be stupidly affected by Peregrine’s tears. ‘Perry, who was your first love?’

  ‘Don’t call me “Perry”, fuck you. Well, I’ll tell you—it’s not what you’d—it was my Uncle Peregrine—yes. Uncle Peregrine. God rest his dear soul, he was a good good man. And if there’s ever a Judgment Day all my fucking family will be kneeling down behind Uncle Peregrine and hoping that he’ll say the good word and save them from the fire. And I’ll be lying on the ground waiting for him to raise me up, and he will raise me up. He was a sweet man. I don’t know why I’m calling him good, what did I know about it, I was a child. He used to hold my hand and hold me on his knee. He loved me, the bugger. My parents never fondled me, they never hugged me and kissed me, I think honestly they didn’t like me much, they liked my bloody sister, not me. But Uncle Peregrine liked me. He used to hug me and kiss me. And do you know, I’ve never had better kisses from women, though it was only—it wasn’t like you think—it was so innocent and sweet—and he only did it when we were alone. That taught me something, I understood. And we talked about everything, as if we were the same age, and I longed for his company, as if he nourished me. Then one day—my parents must have seen, or maybe they decided there was something funny about Uncle Peregrine, and they just banished him. I never saw him again. Never.’

  ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘I don’t know. I heard much later on that he’d committed suicide. When I became an actor I took his name, partly out of piety, partly to spite my family. I was christened William. Well, that was my first love. What was yours?’

  ‘I forget. Thank you for telling me about your uncle. I liked hearing about him.’

  ‘I’m sorry I told you already. You’ll start making psychology. And psychology is bunk.’

  ‘I know psychology is bunk! I must go, Peregrine.’

  ‘Don’t go. I’ll tell you Freud’s favourite joke, if I can remember it. The king meets his double and says, “Did your mother work in the palace?” and the double says “No, but my father did.” Ha ha ha, that’s a good joke!’

  ‘I must go.’

  ‘Charles, you haven’t understood the joke. Listen, the king meets this chap who looks just like him and the king says—’

  ‘I have understood the joke.’

  ‘Charles, for Christ’s sake don’t go, there’s another bottle. “No, but my father did”!’

  ‘I really must go—’

  ‘That’s right, sod off just when consciousness is becoming bearable, and the light of understanding has dawned. I have got a great deal more to say to you. Oh all right, sod off then! I think I’ll come down to see you at your place by the sea, I’ll come at Whitsun if the weather’s decent, and we’ll get drunk again—’

  ‘Goodbye, Peregrine. I’m sorry about Ireland.’

  ‘You’re drunk after all. Fuck off.’ As I went out of the door I heard him murmuring, ‘So clean, so bloody clean’, as his head slowly drooped towards the wine-stained tablecloth.

  When I had finished writing the above, which brought my novel-diary up to date, I packed my suitcase and left my muddled awful little London flat, where I had not had the heart to so much as move a chair or unpack a cup. I had had my lunch (I finished up the macaroni cheese) and imagined that a blank uneventful interval now divided me from my evening train home (I was wrong). I decided to spend some of the time at a picture gallery. I am not very knowledgeable about pictures, but they give me a certain calm pleasure, and I like the atmosphere of galleries, whereas I detest the atmosphere of concert halls. I must confess too that I derive a lot of sheer erotic satisfaction from pictures of women. The painters obviously did after all, so why not me?

  After some indecision I decided to go to the Wallace Collection, where I had not been for some time. My father, who knew even less about pictures than I do, had taken me there once as a boy to see Frans Hals’s ‘Laughing Cavalier’ on one of our rare visits to London, and I associated the place with him. I think my father liked the gallery because it was so quiet and there was so much furniture as well as pictures, so it seemed like a palatial private house. He was particularly pleased by the many clocks (he liked clocks) which all, not quite at the same time and with varied chimes, struck the hour while we were there. The place, when I arrived, was almost empty, and I started wandering about in a sort of daze, looking at the pictures and thinking about Hartley. I was feeling a bit unreal as a result of the serious hangover which I had been fighting all the morning. The trouble with good wine is that it is very alcoholic but you cannot publicly pour water into it. In spite of aspirins with my lunch I still had a headache. A sort of brown fuzz and some very volatile darting black spots intermittently marred my field of vision. I felt unsteady and somewhat oddly related to the ground, as if I had suddenly become extremely tall.

  Then it began to seem that so many of my women were there; only not Hartley. She was a vast absence, a pale partly disembodied being, her face hanging always just above my field of vision like an elusive moon. I had always run to women as to a refuge. What indeed are women but refuges? And sometimes it had seemed that to be held close in a woman’s arms was the only and perfect defence against any horror. Yes, they had, so many of them, been perfect to me, and yet . . . after a while . . . one leaves a refuge. Hartley was different, she travelled with me, I had never seen her as a place of safety. She had come inside the circle of myself and was within me, a pure substance of my being, like nerves, like blood. But the others, as I walked about, gliding and blinking and uncertainly related to the ground, they were there: Lizzie by Terborch, Jeanne by Nicolaes Maes, Rita by Domenichino, Rosina by Rubens, a perfectly delightful study by Greuze of Clement as she was when I first met her . . . Darling beautiful Clement, how she hated growing old. There was even a picture of my mother by Reynolds, a bit flattering but a likeness. Yes, I looked for Hartley. Some could have rendered her, Campin perhaps, Memling or Van Eyck. But she was not there. And then the clocks all began to strike four.

  Some workmen were doing something or other downstairs, hammering a lot, flashing lights swarmed and receded, blending with my headache. I found myself searching my mind for something that it was important to remember, to do with that night when I had lain out on the rocks and seen the ultimate cavern of the stars when the universe seemed to be turning inside out, and at the time this had reminded me of something, only I could not make out what; only now, as I seemed to see again that vast slowly changing infinitely deep dome of luminously golden stars, stars behind stars behind stars, did I recall what it was that I had been put in mind of. It was the changing lights in the Odeon cinema where I used to go with Hartley as a child!

  I was in the big central gallery where my father had taken me to see the ‘Laughing Cavalier,’ and the light seemed a little hazy and chunky and sort of granulated and brownish, even though the sun was shining outside, or perhaps it was just my hangover. The gallery was empty. Then I noticed something that seemed odd, a sort of resonant coincidence. I was gazing in a dazed way at Titi
an’s picture of Perseus and Andromeda, and I had been admiring the graceful naked figure of the girl, whose almost dancing pose as she struggles with her chains makes her seem as airborne as her rescuer, when I seemed to notice suddenly, though I had seen it many times before, the terrible fanged open mouth of the sea dragon, upon which Perseus was flying down head first. The sea dragon did not quite resemble my sea monster, but the mouth was very like, and the memory of that hallucination, or whatever it was, was suddenly more disquieting than it had ever been since the first shock of its appearance. I turned quickly away and found myself face to face with, directly opposite, Rembrandt’s picture of Titus. So Titus was here too. Titus and the sea monster and the stars and holding Hartley’s hand in the cinema over forty years ago.

  I began to walk away down the long room and as I did so the hammering of the workmen down below seemed to be becoming more rhythmic, clearer, faster, more insistent, like the sound of those wooden clappers, which the Japanese call hyoshigi, and which are used to create suspense or announce doom in the Japanese theatre, and which I often used to use myself in my own plays. I began to walk away down the gallery and as I went my hangover seemed to be turning into a sort of fainting fit. When I reached the door at the end I stopped and turned round. A man had come into the room by the other door at the far end and was standing looking at me through the curiously brownish murky air. I reached out and put one hand on the wall. Of course I recognized him at once. He was my cousin James.

  ‘Feeling better?’

  ‘Yes, that stuff has worked a miracle, some old Tibetan hangover remedy no doubt.’

  It was five o’clock and I was sitting in James’s flat in Pimlico. James’s flat resembles some chaotic oriental emporium, and I used to despise it accordingly until I realized that a great many of those tall-hatted Buddhas and curvaceous Shivas which I had taken to be made of brass were in fact made of gold. I recalled Toby Ellesmere once telling me that my cousin was a very rich man. (I have often wondered why I never managed to become rich.) He must have inherited plenty from his parents. Probably Ellesmere invested it for him. A lot of the stuff in the flat now does appear to me to be valuable, although as a collector or connoisseur I do not rate cousin James very high. He seems to have no conception of how to sort or arrange his possessions, they are dumped and piled rather than arranged, and elegant objets d’art are juxtaposed with the merest oddments of the bazaar. Sentimentality, unworldliness, despair?