The Sea, the Sea

by Iris Murdoch

  When I had written the letter and satisfied myself that it would serve, I put it in an envelope upon which I typed her name and address. I am a poor typist and I wrote the letter in longhand. I then sat and brooded and allowed myself to be almost hopeful, almost happy. Later on, as recorded above, I swam. The sea was cool about my warm limbs, coating them with its cool scales. The water undulated calmly, smooth and shining upon the surface, like the rind of a fruit. Even without my ‘curtain-rope’, which the playful sea has again untied, I managed to climb out easily. As I write this now it is the next day, and the letter to Hartley in its fat envelope still lies upon my sea-facing table in the drawing room. I have been writing this diary during the morning. Soon I shall have lunch: the remains of the corned beef with plain boiled onions. (Plain boiled onions are another dish fit for a king.) I finished the red cabbage last night with scrambled eggs and drank a lot of the Raven Hotel Spanish white wine. (A mistake.) I must shop soon, I crave for fruit, for buttered toast, for milk in my tea. The shop lady said there might be cherries this week.

  Why am I delaying, waiting? Why am I almost pretending that life is ordinary, that it is as it once was? I am still floating in a sense of achievement, of a well-merited interim. I sought and found my crucial evidence. I have decided what to do and how to do it. I have spoken to her eloquently, definitively, although my words have not yet reached her. It is as if they are still winging their way through the air, going to her breast. Am I afraid, is that the real reason why I am waiting? To give her the letter in safety may prove hard, and the results of a bungled failure unthinkable, but it is not this obstacle I fear. The sooner I give her the letter the sooner I shall know her response. What will it be? If she says ‘no’ or if she does not reply I shall of course assume that she is simply inhibited by fear. But what shall I do then and how long can I wait before I move again and what on earth shall I do as I wait? That interim will not be a calm one. Better then to prolong this one. I feel, since I heard that conversation, so much more, and dreadfully, involved with both of them. I have family membership; with this come hatred, jealousy, the familiar demons. And then again, suppose she simply uses me for her freedom, and then leaves me after? Is that conceivable? Could I lose her a second time, could she vanish? I should run mad. I felt bound, after reading the letter, to add that postscript, it seemed honourable to do so. But is it wise? Perhaps I had better delete it. Better that she should assume that in running to me she commits herself.

  I must try to see and feel these speculations as premature and pointless. But I understand very well why I sit here and look at the letter and do not want, just yet, to deliver it.

  I will now describe what happened next, much of which was entirely unexpected. I delayed in fact, after writing the above, no longer than the evening of that day. The dilatory calm which I described was quite suddenly succeeded by a frenzy of desperate impatient anxiety to know my fate at once. I then set out to put my delivery plan into operation. I put on a light mackintosh and a shabby sun hat, put the letter in my pocket, without deleting the postscript, and slung round my neck a pair of field glasses which James had given me for bird-watching when we were schoolboys. I cannot recall that I ever used them to watch birds. It was a tacit custom of our childhood that James gave me presents, often quite expensive ones, whereas I gave him none. I suppose my parents accepted this as an inescapable aspect of the patronage of the poor by the rich; and it only much later occurred to me that of course the presents were really from Uncle Abel and Aunt Estelle. These glasses were not very powerful, and not to be compared with Ben’s wife-watching pair, but I thought they would serve.

  I went by the inland route which I had taken before, through the marsh and round by Amorne Farm and into the village from the other side. My objective was the wood which lay beyond the field which bordered Nibletts’ garden. I saw from the ordnance survey map that a little road leading off to the right at the entrance to the village (just before the church) circled away up the hill and through the upper part of the wood which lay above the bungalows. Thus I could make the whole circuit without at any time coming within viewing range, I climbed the hill, becoming rather hot and tired, and soon found an inviting woodland path which led seawards at a point a little, as I guessed, beyond the end of the Nibletts’ road. In a few minutes I could see the open light of the field, and then was able to peer out through the tree trunks at the now moderately distant bungalow, which I kept under close observation through the glasses.

  I waited for quite a long time, feeling cooler, then rather cold, although the sun was still shining. My arms and my eyes were beginning to ache. At last the gentleman came out. My temperature shot up and my heart beat a good deal faster. I was glad to note that he was carrying a garden fork. I could see his long evening shadow moving down the lawn. It gave me a certain pleasure to have Ben, all unsuspecting, in my sights, as he had had me. I have never handled a real gun, but I have handled many a stage gun, and I know what it feels like. Near to the bottom of the garden he started paying attention to one of the fussy flowerbeds, poking about rather aimlessly at first. Then suddenly he started hitting something with the fork. Not digging but hitting. What was he hitting? A slug, a wild flower? What was he thinking about, while with such terrible concentration he destroyed that innocent little thing? I was fascinated but there was no time to lose. I began to move up the hill under cover of the wood, observing him at intervals as I went, until I reached a point opposite the top of the road where a distance of some two hundred yards of open grass separated me from the end of the tarmac, and where Ben was about to disappear from view, divided from me by the bungalow. I reckoned that there would be two or three seconds, after I emerged into the open, during which it would be possible for him to see me. I took a last look at him. He had his back to me, now crouching beside the flowerbed. I walked with long careful fast strides across the first bit of grass, then sprinted to the road and straight through the gate up the path to the front door.

  Here I did not ring the bell. That sickly high-pitched ding-dong might well have carried upon the evening air. I tapped upon the door with my knuckles, using an old code which Hartley and I had used as children, when we used to knock softly upon the doors of each other’s houses. After a short moment she opened the door. The shocked response to my tap had been, as I hoped, automatic. We stared at each other, gaping, both terrified. I saw her staring amazed frightened eyes. I thrust the letter towards her, awkwardly. I could not find her hand and it almost fell between us. Then she had it, clutched against her skirt, and I turned and ran, instinctively taking the way down the hill, down the road into the village. I had not in fact planned my retreat, as my thinking had ended with the delivery of the letter, and as I was passing the Black Lion I reflected that it might have been better to have gone back the way I came. However, as I strode along the village street and turned onto the footpath, well in the possible purview of Ben’s glasses, I felt reckless and strong, so that even my recent caution seemed cowardly. Was Ben still bending over his flowerbed, or was he inside the house tearing my letter out of Hartley’s hands? I almost felt I did not care, I almost felt it would be better if he were, at this very moment, reading my words and shaking with jealous rage. His reign of terror was nearing its end.

  It was certainly not dark as I came towards the house, but the day had that luminous, gauzy blandness which in the midsummer season celebrates the approach of a twilight which, for a few final days, will never entirely darken. The evening star was just visible, and would now for a long further period of daylight blaze in splendour alone. The sea was as flat as I had ever seen it, quite still and held up brimming as if it were in a bowl, the tide being in. The water was the colour of very light blue enamel. Two sea birds (gannets?) flying low in the middle distance produced a hazy distorted reflection as upon a convex metal surface. As I walked along the road, past the handsome milestone which read Nerodene one mile, a faint air of warmth was wafted from the yellow rocks which had been bas
king in the sun all day.

  The house by contrast felt cold and seemed to be up to some of its tricks. After the brilliant colour-bestowing light outside, the air within seemed grey and a little thick. There were faint sounds, perhaps just the bead curtain clicking in the draught from the opened door. I stood in the hall for a few moments listening. I wondered if the accursed Rosina had come back and was hiding somewhere about to scare me. I felt impelled to make a search, upstairs, downstairs, in the funny middle rooms. No one of course. As I went through the house I opened all the doors and windows wide and let the warm sea-fresh air from the encircling rocks circulate within. I threw off my disguising hat and mackintosh and pulled my shirt out of my trousers. I took a large glass of sweet sherry and bitters out onto the grass and stood there for some time, rising on my toes and falling back on my heels, and watching the bats, and wondering whether Hartley was all right and what she had done with that long letter after she had read it. Burnt it, shoved it down the lavatory, rolled it up in a pair of stockings?

  I came inside and filled the large and now empty glass with white wine, and opened a tin of olives and a tin of Korean smoked clams and a packet of dry biscuits. There was no fresh food as of course I had once more omitted to shop. The house was still acting up, but I felt by now that I was getting to know its oddities and I was more friendly towards it. It was not exactly a sinister or menacing effect, but as if the house were a sensitized plate which intermittently registered things which had happened in the past—or, it now occurred to me for the first time, were going to happen in the future. A premonition? I began to feel cold, and put on the white Irish jersey. It was now more gloomy inside, though it seemed to be getting even brighter outside, and I had to peer carefully as I washed and drained the olives and put them in a bowl and poured olive oil over them. And then someone began knocking very violently upon the front door.

  Whoever it was had evidently not noticed the bell, whose brass handle had been painted black. There was also an old tarnished knocker in the form of a dolphin; and now the dolphin’s heavy head was being cracked down onto the door with a force which seemed to shake the whole house. Fear immediately grasped me and jerked me to my feet. Rosina? No. Ben. The outraged husband. He had seen the letter. Oh God, what a fool I had been. I ran out, intending to bolt the door against him, but sheer terror confused me into a desire to confront the worst, and I opened it instead. Hartley flew into the house like a terrified bird. She was alone.

  In the first seconds she seemed to be as amazed and confused as I was. Perhaps she was blinded by the sudden dark of the interior. She stood there clutching her face with her hands as if she were about to scream. I, with a crazed clumsiness, left the door wide open, then hurrying to shut it bumped into her. I felt the warmth of her thigh as I blundered past. I got the door shut, then realized that I was saying ‘oh—oh—oh—’ and that she too was uttering some incoherent sound. I put out a grasping searching hand and touched her shoulder. She made a gesture as if she were about to speak, but by then I had grabbed her, clumsily again but effectively enough, in my arms and gathered her into that bear hug that I had for so long been dreaming of. I lifted her off her feet and heard her gasp as almost the whole length of her body was crushed against me. Then, as I slowly let her down in the fuzzy grey-dark of the hall, with the curtain upstairs meditatively clicking, we stood perfectly quiet and silent, I with both my arms wrapped around her, she with her two hands gripping my shirt.

  Relaxing at last as she sighed and fluttered her hand against my ribs, I said, ‘Is he outside?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Does he know you’re here?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you destroy the letter?’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Did you destroy the letter?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He didn’t see it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good. Come in here and sit down.’ I pulled her into the kitchen and pushed her down into a chair beside the table. Then I went back and locked the front door. I tried to light a lamp in the kitchen but my hands were trembling too much and the wick flared up and went out. I lit a candle and pulled the curtains. Then I drew up a chair and sat close beside her and cradled her more gently in my arms, her knees touching my knees.

  ‘Oh my darling, you’ve come, oh my precious darling.’

  ‘Charles—’

  ‘Don’t say anything yet. I just want to know that you’re here. I’m so happy.’

  ‘Listen, I—’

  ‘Please, darling, oh please don’t talk—and please don’t push me away like that.’

  ‘No, but I must talk—there’s so little time—’

  ‘There’s plenty of time, all the time. You did read the letter, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, of course—’

  ‘And that’s why you’re here?’

  ‘Yes—’

  ‘Then that’s all that matters. You’re staying here. You’ve come, haven’t you?’

  ‘Yes, but only to explain—’

  ‘Hartley, don’t. What is there to explain? Everything is explained already. I love you. You’re here. You love me, you need me. Don’t resist. Let’s go away to London, tomorrow morning, tonight. Never mind about clothes. I’ll buy you clothes. You’re my wife now.’

  I held her at arm’s length, gripping her shoulder with one hand, while with the other I moved the candle so that it illuminated her face. The eyes were thickly encased in wrinkles, the eyelids were brown and pitted as if stained, the cheeks were flabby and soft, not rounded, and faintly pink, perhaps with hastily-applied powder. Her short grey undulating hair was dry and brittle-looking, no doubt from years and years of absent-minded visits to inept hairdressers. Now she was past caring about it, and a forgotten slide hung down from the end of one twisted tress. The face was dry, dry, save where her tongue now moistened her unpainted lips, and where her blue eyes, those strangely timeless pools, were moist and now suddenly full of unshed tears. She moved her shoulder, pulling weakly away, and I released her. It was the first time since our reunion that I had really studied her face, and I felt with a deep triumphant joy how really unchanged that dear face was, and how little it mattered to my love that she was old.

  Now too I saw in her face, though it looked both anxious and sad, something of the animation of youth. I recognized, and realized how much I had forgotten, the shape of her mouth, so much prettier without the lipstick. I kissed her gently, briefly, on the familiar mouth, as we used to kiss; and there was an intelligence in her quiet negative reception of the kiss which was itself a communication.

  She said, ‘I’ve changed so much, I’m a different person, you were so kind in your letter, but it can’t be like that—you care about old times, but that’s not me—’

  ‘It is you. I recognized you in the kiss.’ It was true. The kiss had transfigured her, like a kiss in a fairy tale. I remembered the feel, the texture, the movement of her mouth; and all that awkwardness was gone, that sense which I had had in the church of the impossibility of holding her. Our bodies were suddenly in tension in the same space, moved by the same forces. When I felt this I wanted to shout with joy, but I kept a quiet tone, wanting to coax her into speech, not wanting to affright her. ‘Hartley, it’s a miracle, I gave up the theatre, I came here to solitude, and I found you—I came here for you, I realize it now—’

  ‘But you didn’t know I was here—’

  ‘No, yet I’d been searching for you, I’ve always been searching for you.’

  She said, ‘It can’t be like that,’ and lifted up her hand as if to conceal her face. Then she put her hand on the table where I covered it firmly with mine. ‘Charles, listen, I must talk to you, there’s so little time.’ With the back of her other hand she touched her eyes, and caused the unshed tears to fall. Then she said, ‘Oh Charles, my dear, my dear,’ and bowed her head and thrust it towards me with a doglike movement. I stroked the dry brittle hair, I gently undid the hanging slide and put it in
the pocket of my trousers.

  ‘You’ll stay with me forever now, Hartley.’

  She raised her head and mopped her eyes again, this time with the sleeve of the green cotton coat which she was wearing over the yellow dress which I had seen before.

  ‘Hartley, take off your coat, I want to see you, I want to touch you, take it off.’

  ‘No, it’s cold here.’

  I pulled at the coat and she took it off. There was an intense charm in these movements, as if they were the merest innocent spiritual symbol of undressing a woman, something that angels might play at without quite understanding. I touched her breasts where they pressed warmly, firmly against the yellow stuff of the round-necked dress. I was delighted by the absence of any attempt to attract. This was a novelty in my life. The face powder was a careless habit, the dress was sloppy, nothing. The new unpainted lips were, I felt, alone a tribute to me. A woman who has long stopped working on her appearance cannot suddenly become smart and sleek. I was delighted that Hartley, as she was, attracted me. I felt proud, possessive, relieved, as if some life-long terror had been removed. And I thought: I’ll buy her such lovely clothes—not flashy-smart, but just right for her. I’ll look after her.

  ‘Charles, I must just talk to you quickly, I just came to talk, after your letter, before he comes back—’

  ‘Where is he?’ I had forgotten his existence.

  ‘He’s at his woodwork.’

  ‘Woodwork?’

  ‘Yes, his woodwork class. It’s a boat-building class really, only they do woodwork, I don’t think he’ll ever build a boat. It’s shelves this week. It’s the only evening he’s out so I had to come now. They go on till quite late, I think they drink beer afterwards. ’