The Sea, the Sea

by Iris Murdoch

  C.

  I had considered writing directly to Ben, but it seemed better to prepare Hartley first. The difficulty was, once more, how to get it to her. I did not want to risk spoiling my entrance by delivering it myself. I did not like to ask Titus to go, and Gilbert, whom I sounded, said he was afraid. And I did not want James or Lizzie, or Peregrine for that matter, to know anything about it. I thought of sending it by post in a typed envelope, but of course he opened all her letters. Perhaps it did not matter too much if he opened this one. The game was nearing its end.

  It was the following day and I had written my letter in the morning, but was still undecided about what to do with it. It remained now to get rid of James and Lizzie. I could simply ask James to go. Lizzie might have to be told some lie.

  James was, rather surprisingly, still in bed. He had slept, on and off, for many hours. Whereas I, who had had the real ordeal, was now feeling better. I went up to see him.

  ‘James, you slug. Are you all right? Touch of the old malaria?’

  James was lying back in my bed, propped up in a cunningly arranged nest of pillows, his arms stretched out straight over the blankets. He had not been reading. He looked alert, as if he had been thinking. Yet his body looked floppy with relaxation. He had some growth of beard which changed his face, making him look Spanish, an ecclesiastic, perhaps an ascetic warrior. Then he smiled cheerfully, and I remembered how much that inane smile used to irritate me, how it had seemed to betoken a facile superiority. There was quietness in the room and the sound of the sea was dulled.

  ‘I’m all right. Must have caught a chill. I’ll get up soon. How are you feeling?’

  ‘Fine. Can I get you anything?’

  ‘No, thanks, I don’t want to eat. Lizzie brought me some tea.’

  I frowned.

  ‘Where’s Titus?’ said James.

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘Keep an eye on him.’

  ‘He can look after himself.’

  There was silence for a moment. ‘Sit down,’ said James, ‘don’t look as if you’re going.’

  I sat down. James’s relaxation seemed to have affected me. I stretched out my legs and felt as if I might sleep myself, even though I was sitting in an upright chair. I felt my shoulders and arms become soft and heavy. Of course I was very exhausted.

  ‘You’re not still wanting Titus to go back to Ben, are you?’ I said.

  ‘Did I say that?’

  ‘You implied it.’

  ‘He does in a way belong with them.’

  ‘With them?’ Soon, very soon, there would be no more ‘them’.

  James, following this, said, ‘Are you still dreaming of that rescue?’

  ‘Yes.’

  There was another silence as if we were both going to sleep. Then James went on, ‘After all, he is in a real and deep sense their child. My impression was that that relationship was not beyond salvage.’

  I was irritated by his ‘impression’. What could it be based on? The horrible answer occurred to me: conversations with Titus. I had come up to see James in order to hasten his departure, and I had decided not to say anything to him about Ben’s crime. This revelation would be too interesting. But now I felt tempted to shake his complacency. While I reflected on this I said, ‘I am going to adopt Titus.’

  ‘Adopt him, legally, can you?’

  ‘Yes.’ In fact I did not know. ‘I am going to make his career. And I shall leave him my money.’

  ‘It’s not so easy.’

  ‘What isn’t?’

  ‘To establish relationships, you can’t just elect people, it can’t be done by thinking and willing.’

  I was tempted to reply, I daresay you don’t find it easy! Then I recalled Titus’s voice saying ‘Where does your cousin live?’ And I remembered what Toby Ellesmere had told me about the sherpa whom James was fond of who died on the mountain, and I felt a momentary nervous urge to ask him about this ‘attachment’. But it would have been a dangerous impertinence. I was never unaware that James retained the power to hurt me very much. How odd it was that even now my fear was an ingredient of our converse! Cousinage, dangereux voisinage. I felt annoyance with him all the same, he was making me feel awkward and incompetent, and I wanted to stir up his sleepy calm. I could not decide whether or not to tell him about Ben. If I told him would that delay his departure? Yet I very much wanted to tell him. It is indeed awe-inspiring to think that every tiny action has its consequences, and can mark a parting of ways which lead to vastly separate destinations.

  James said, pursuing the topic, ‘Most real relationships are involuntary.’

  ‘As in a family, what you were saying about Titus?’

  ‘Yes. Or sometimes they just seem destined. A Buddhist would say you had met in a previous life.’

  ‘Would you say you were a superstitious man? And don’t say it depends what you mean by superstition.’

  ‘In that case I can’t answer you.’

  ‘Do you believe in reincarnation? Do you think that if one hasn’t done well one will be reborn as a—as a—hamster—or a—woodlouse?’

  ‘These are images. The truth lies beyond.’

  ‘It seems to me a creepy doctrine.’

  ‘Other people’s religions often seem creepy. Think how creepy Christianity must seem to an outsider.’

  ‘It seems so to me,’ I said, though I had never thought this before. ‘Do Buddhists believe in life after death?’

  ‘It depends—’

  ‘Oh all right!’

  ‘Some Tibetans,’ said James, ‘believe—’ He corrected himself. He now always spoke of that country in the past tense as a vanished civilization. ‘Believed that the souls of the dead, while waiting to be reborn, wander in a sort of limbo, not unlike the Homeric Hades. They called it bardo. It can be rather unpleasant. You meet all kinds of demons there.’

  ‘So it’s a place of punishment?’

  ‘Yes, but a just automatic sort of punishment. The learned ones regard these figures as subjective visions, which depend on the sort of life the dead man has led.’

  ‘ “For in that sleep of death what dreams may come” . . .’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But what about God, or the gods? Can’t a soul go to them?’

  ‘The gods? The gods themselves are dreams. They too are merely subjective visions.’

  ‘Well, at least one might hope for some happy illusions hereafter! ’

  ‘Just possibly,’ said James, with a judicious air, as if he were discussing the likelihood of catching a train. ‘But very few people . . . are without . . . attendant demons . . .’

  ‘And does everybody go to bardo?’

  ‘I don’t know. They say that you have a chance at the moment of death.’

  ‘A chance?’

  ‘To become free. At the moment of death you are given a total vision of all reality which comes to you in a flash. To most of us this would be—well—just a violent flash, like an atom bomb, something terrifying and dazzling and incomprehensible. But if you can comprehend and grasp it then you are free.’

  ‘So it’s useful to know you’re going. You mean free to—?’

  ‘Just free—Nirvana—out of the Wheel.’

  ‘The wheel of reincarnation?’

  ‘The Wheel, yes, of attachments, cravings, desires, what chains us to an unreal world.’

  ‘Attachments? You mean—even love?’

  ‘What we call love.’

  ‘And do we then exist somewhere else?’

  ‘These are images,’ said James. ‘Some say Nirvana is and can only be here and now. Images to explain images, pictures to explain pictures.’

  ‘The truth lies beyond!’

  We were silent then for a little time. James’s eyelids dropped but I could still see the glint of his eyes. I asked jocosely, ‘Are you meditating?’

  ‘No. If I were really meditating I would be invisible. We notice each other because we are centres of restless mental activity. A
meditating sage is not seen.’

  ‘Yes, distinctly creepy!’ I could not make out whether James was serious. I presumed he was not. The conversation was making me feel thoroughly uncomfortable. I said, ‘When do you plan to leave? Tomorrow, I imagine? Apart from anything else I want my bed back!’

  James said, ‘Yes, I’m sorry, you can have the bed tonight. I’ll push off tomorrow. I’ve got a lot of things to do in London. I have to prepare for a journey.’

  So my guess had been right! James had not really left the Army, he was going secretly back to Tibet! I wanted to indicate tactfully to him that I knew. ‘Oh, a journey, of course! I think I can imagine—however, I ask no questions—!’

  James was silent, now looking at me out of his dark unshaven face and his dark eyes. I glanced quickly at him and looked away. I decided to tell him about Ben. ‘You know—James—about my falling into that hole—’

  ‘Minn’s cauldron. Yes.’

  ‘I didn’t fall accidentally, I was pushed.’

  James considered. ‘Who pushed you?’

  ‘Ben.’

  ‘You saw him?’

  ‘No, but somebody pushed me and it must have been him.’

  James looked at me thoughtfully. Then he said, not at once, ‘Are you certain? Are you sure (a) that you were pushed and (b) that it was Ben?’

  I was not going to be (a)d and (b)d by James. Nothing seemed to touch him, not even attempted murder. ‘I just thought I’d tell you. OK, forget it. So you’re going tomorrow, that’s fine.’

  At that moment I heard a sound which I shall never forget. I sometimes hear it still in daylight hallucinations. It tore into my consciousness with its own immediate evidence of some frightful event, and the room was filled with fear as with fog. It was Lizzie’s voice. She shrieked somewhere out in front of the house. Then she shrieked again.

  James and I stared at each other. James said, ‘Oh no—’ I rushed out, got entangled in the bead curtain and began to tumble down the stairs. I ran panting across the hall and then at the front doorway nearly fell as if a dense cloud of weariness and despair had met me and all but made me faint. I could hear James running down the stairs behind me.

  Something extraordinary seemed to be happening on the road. The first person I saw was Peregrine, who was standing beside Gilbert’s car and looking along the road in the direction of the tower. Then I saw Lizzie, leaning on Gilbert’s arm, walking slowly back towards the house. Up near the tower there was a car and a group of people standing looking down at something on the ground. I thought, there’s been a road accident.

  Peregrine turned and I shouted at him, ‘What’s happened?’

  Instead of replying he came forward and tried to grasp my arm and detain me, but I shook him off.

  James was now at my heels. He was wearing my silk dressing gown, the one that Hartley had worn. He too said to Perry, ‘What’s happened?’

  I paused. Peregrine said, to James, not to me, ‘It’s Titus.’

  James went up to the yellow Volkswagen and leaned against it. He mumbled something like, ‘I should have held on—’ Then he sat down on the ground.

  Peregrine was saying something to me but I ran on towards the corner, passing Lizzie who was now sitting on a rock, with Gilbert kneeling beside her.

  I reached the group of people. They were strangers, and they were looking down at Titus who was lying on the grass verge. But he had not been hit by a car. He was drowned.

  I cannot bear to describe what happened next in detail. Titus was already dead, there can be no doubt of that, although I did not want to believe it at once. He looked so whole, so beautiful, lying there limp and naked and dripping, his hair dark with water, someone had drawn it away from his face, and his eyes were almost closed. He was lying on his side showing the tender fold of his stomach and the bedraggled wet hair of his front. His mouth was slightly open showing his teeth and I remember noticing the hare lip. Then I saw a dark mark on the side of his forehead, as if he had been struck.

  I ran back towards the house shouting for James. James was still sitting on the ground beside the car. He got up slowly. ‘James, James, come, come!’ James had revived me. Surely he could revive Titus.

  James looked dazed and ghostly. Peregrine had to assist him to walk.

  ‘Oh quick, quick, help him!’

  By the time James reached the corner one of the strangers, they were tourists, was already attempting to do something. He had turned Titus over onto his front and was rather ineffectively pressing his shoulders.

  Peregrine said, as if speaking for James, ‘Kiss of life is better.’

  James knelt down, he seemed unable to speak, and motioned that Titus should be turned over again. There was a moment of confusion, several people talking at once, then the sound of a police siren. It turned out later that a car on the way to the Raven Hotel had taken the news on and the hotel had rung the police.

  A brisk efficient policeman took charge, told us to stand back, began himself to attempt mouth to mouth respiration. An ambulance arrived.

  James went away and sat down on the grass. A policeman began to ask Peregrine and me if we knew who Titus was. Peregrine answered his questions.

  It appeared that the tourists, going to bathe from the rocks in Raven Bay, had seen Titus’s body being carried by the tide round the corner from the tower, and they had swum out and pulled it ashore.

  There was nothing anyone could do. Men put Titus on a stretcher and slid him into the ambulance. Several cars had stopped. The police car went away, to go to Nibletts to inform the parents. The verdict of the inquest was death by misadventure. Titus died from drowning after a blow on the head. It was assumed that a wave had dashed him against a rock. What exactly had happened was never clarified.

  However by then it had become dazzlingly clear to me that Titus had been murdered. We had to do with a homicidal madman. The hand that had failed to strike me down had succeeded in striking him. But I spoke of this, for the time, to no one.

  Titus’s body was conveyed to a hospital in a town many miles away, and was there received into the merciful anonymity of cremation.

  History

  SIX

  IT WAS A SHORT TIME LATER. Time had passed for me in a haze of misery and bitter remorse and the resolutions of hatred.

  Gilbert had to go back to London to act in a television play. Lizzie stayed, and I got used to her unhappy face, reddened with crying. Peregrine stayed, but boorishly, almost angrily; dressed in tweed trousers, shirt and braces, he walked inland every day into the country near Amorne Farm, and arrived back hot and irritable. He was obviously wretched but seemed unable to drag himself away. Once or twice he drove Lizzie to the village for shopping. James stayed but was very withdrawn. He was gentle and considerate to me, but had little to say. We remained together, though we could not talk to each other, out of some sense of mutual protection. Of course they did not want to leave me alone. Perhaps each intended to be the last to go. It was as if we were all waiting for something.

  Lizzie did the cooking. We lived on pasta and cheese. It was impossible to return to the ordinary feasts and festivals of human life, the meals to which people look forward and which they enjoy. We all, except James, drank a lot.

  On the day which I shall now describe I woke up in the early morning and realized I had had a terrible terrible nightmare. I had dreamt that Titus was drowned. I experienced the relief of the awaking dreamer. And then remembered . . .

  I got up and went to the window. It was about six o’clock and the sun had been up for some time. Cool summer weather had come back with a misty sky and a calm sea. The water was a very pale luminous grey-blue, almost white, the same colour as the sky, shifting with a quick small dancing movement, and scattered by the misted sun with little explosions of metallic pale-gold light. It had the look of a happy sea and I felt I was seeing it through Titus’s eyes.

  I had returned to my own bedroom. The other three, though I disliked their proximity to each other,
slept downstairs. I had decided that today I would tell them all to go. I felt strong enough now to do this, and although in a way I dreaded to be alone, my plans demanded solitude. I dressed quickly and went downstairs to the kitchen. Peregrine was there shaving. He ignored me and I went through onto the lawn. James was just climbing down from the rocks. A moment later I could hear Lizzie talking to Peregrine. We were all early risers on that day.

  James sat down on the natural seat beside the trough where I put the stones I collected, or rather used to collect. Someone, perhaps Titus, had picked up the scattered stones from the lawn after the destruction of James’s ‘mandala’ on the night of the party. My stone ‘border’ was comparatively undisturbed. I went and sat down too. The rocks were already warm.

  James had shaved; his face, reddened and browned by the sun, was very smooth above the dark stippling of his beard. He seemed somehow clearer and more visible than usual, or perhaps it was just that the light was better. His murky brown eyes were displaying their ochre-coloured streaks, his thin clever lips were finely textured, ruddy, his dark hair more vital and glossy, hiding his bald spot. The mysterious mask-resemblance to Aunt Estelle was more present than usual, though he was not smiling.

  ‘James, I want you to go, I want you all to go. Tomorrow. OK?’

  James frowned. ‘Only if you come too. Come and stay with me in London.’

  ‘No, I must stay here.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’ve got things to do.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oh this and that, things about the house, maybe I’ll sell it after all. I want to be by myself now. I’m all right.’

  James picked up a stone from the trough, a golden-brown one with two light blue lines running round it. ‘I like your collection of stones. Can I have this one?’

  ‘Yes, of course. So that’s settled, is it? I’ll tell the others.’

  ‘What are you going to do about Ben and Hartley?’

  ‘Nothing. That’s over.’