The Wine-Dark Sea

by Robert Aickman

  Clarissa has eyes so deep as to make one wonder about the whole idea of depth, and what it means. She has a voice almost as lovely as her face. She has a slow and languorous walk: beautiful too, but related, I fear, to an incident during her early teens, when she broke both legs in the hunting field. Sometimes it leads to trouble when Clarissa is driving a car. Not often. Clarissa prefers to wear trousers, though she looks perfectly normal in even a short skirt, indeed divinely beautiful, as always.

  I fear that too much of my life with Clarissa has been given to quarrelling. No one is to blame, of course.

  There was a certain stress even at the proposal scene, which took place on a Saturday afternoon in Jack’s house, when the others were out shooting duck. Pollaporra and its legend have always discouraged me from field sports, and all the struggling about had discouraged Clarissa, who sat before the fire, looking gnomic.

  But she said yes at once, and nodded, and smiled.

  Devoted still, whether wisely or foolishly, to honesty, I told her what Mason had told me, and what I had myself seen on two occasions, and that I was a haunted man.

  Clarissa looked very hostile. ‘I don’t believe in things like that,’ she said sharply.

  ‘I thought I ought to tell you.’

  ‘Why? Did you want to upset me?’

  ‘Of course not. I love you. I don’t want you to accept me on false pretences.’

  ‘It’s got nothing to do with my accepting you. I just don’t want to know about such things. They don’t exist.’

  ‘But they do, Clarissa. They are part of me.’

  From one point of view, obviously I should not have persisted. I had long recognised that many people would have said that I was obsessed. But the whole business seemed to me the explanation of my being. Clarissa must not take me to be merely a banker, a youngish widower, a friend of her first husband’s, a faint simulacrum of the admiral.

  Clarissa actually picked up a book of sweepstake tickets and threw it at me as I sat on the rug at her feet.

  ‘There,’ she said.

  It was a quite thick and heavy book, but I was not exactly injured by it, though it had come unexpectedly, and had grazed my eye.

  Clarissa then leaned forward and gave me a slow and searching kiss. It was the first time we had kissed so seriously.

  ‘There,’ she said again.

  She then picked the sweepstake tickets off the floor and threw them in the fire. They were less than fully burnt ten minutes later, when Clarissa and I were more intimately involved, and looking at our watches to decide when the others were likely to return.

  *

  The honeymoon, at Clarissa’s petition, was in North Africa, now riddled with politics, which I did not care for. For centuries, there has been very little in North Africa for an outsider to see, and the conformity demanded by an alien society seemed not the best background for learning to know another person. Perhaps we should have tried Egypt, but Clarissa specifically demanded something more rugged. With Shulie there had been no honeymoon.

  Before marrying me, Clarissa had been dividing her life between her flat and Jack’s country house. Her spacious flat, very near my childhood home, was in its own way as beautiful as she was, and emitted a like glow. It would have been absurd for me not to move into it. The settlement from Jack had contributed significantly to all around me, but by now I was able to keep up, or nearly so. Money is like sex. The more that everyone around is talking of little else, the less it really accounts for, let alone assists.

  Not that sex has ever been other than a problem with Clarissa. I have good reason to believe that others have found the same, though Jack never gave me one word of warning. In any case, his Suzanne is another of the same kind, if I am any judge; though less beautiful, and, I should say, less kind also. Men chase the same women again and again; or rather the same illusion; or rather the same lost part of themselves.

  Within myself, I had of course returned to the hope of children. Some will say that I was a fool not to have had that matter out with Clarissa before marrying her, and no doubt a number of related matters also. They speak without knowing Clarissa. No advance terms can be set. None at all. I doubt whether it is possible with any woman whom one finds really desirable. Nor can the proposal scene be converted into a businesslike discussion of future policy and prospects. That is not the atmosphere, and few would marry if it were.

  With Shulie, the whole thing had been love. With Clarissa, it was power; and she was so accustomed to the power being hers that she could no longer bother to exercise it, except indirectly. This was and is true even though Clarissa is exceedingly good-hearted in many other ways. I had myself experienced something of the kind in reverse with poor Celia, though obviously in a much lesser degree.

  Clarissa has long been impervious to argument or importunity or persuasion of any kind. She is perfectly equipped with counterpoise and equipoise. She makes discussion seem absurd. Almost always it is. Before long, I was asking myself whether Clarissa’s strange and radiant beauty was compatible with desire, either on her part or on mine.

  There was also the small matter of Clarissa’s black maid, Aline, who has played her little part in the immediate situation. On my visits to the flat before our marriage, I had become very much aware of Aline, miniature and slender, always in tight sweater and pale trousers. Clarissa had told me that Aline could do everything in the place that required to be done; but in my hearing Aline spoke little for herself. I was told that often she drove Clarissa’s beautiful foreign car, a present from Jack less than a year before the divorce. I was also told, as a matter of interest, that Jack had never met Aline. I therefore never spoke of her to him. I was telling him much less now, in any case. I certainly did not tell him what I had not previously told myself: that when I was away for the firm, which continued to be frequently, Aline took my place in Clarissa’s vast and swanlike double bed. I discovered this in a thoroughly low way, which I do not propose to relate. Clarissa simply remarked to me that, as I knew, she could never sleep well if alone in the room. I abstained from rejoining that what Clarissa really wanted was a nanny; one of those special nannies who, like dolls, are always there to be dominated by their charges. It would have been one possible rejoinder.

  Nannies were on my mind. It had been just then that the Trustees wrote to me about Cuddy. They told me that Cuddy had ‘intimated a wish’ to leave her employment at Pollaporra. She wanted to join her younger sister, who, I was aware, had a business on the main road, weaving and plaiting for the tourists, not far from Dingwall. I could well believe that the business had become more prosperous than when I had heard about it as a child. It was a business of the sort that at the moment did. The Trustees went on to imply that it was my task, and not theirs, to find a successor to Cuddy. They reminded me that I was under an obligation to maintain a property in which I had merely a life interest.

  It was a very hot day. Clarissa always brought the sun. She had been reading the letter over my shoulder. I was aware of her special nimbus encircling my head and torso when she did this. Moreover, she was wearing nothing but her nightdress.

  ‘Let’s go and have a look,’ she said.

  ‘Are you sure you want to?’ I asked, remembering her response to my story.

  ‘Of course I’m sure. I’ll transform the place, now I’ve got it to myself.’

  ‘That’ll be the day,’ I said, smiling up at her.

  ‘You won’t know it when I’ve finished with it. Then we can sell it.’

  ‘We can’t,’ I said. ‘Remember it’s not mine to sell.’

  ‘You must get advice. Jack might be able to help.’

  ‘You don’t know what Pollaporra’s like. Everything is bound to be totally run down.’

  ‘With your Cuddy in charge all these years, and with nothing else to do with herself? At least, you say not.’

  I had seen on my previous visit that this argument might be sound, as far as it went.

  ‘You can’t possibl
y take on all the work.’

  ‘We’ll have Aline with us. I had intended that.’

  By now, I had seen for myself also that Aline was indeed most competent and industrious. It would have been impossible to argue further: Clarissa was my wife and had a right both to accompany me and to take someone with her to help with the chores. If I were to predecease her, she would have a life interest in the property. Moreover, Clarissa alone could manage very well for us when she applied herself. I had learned that too. There were no sensible, practical objections whatever.

  ‘Aline will be a help with the driving as well,’ added Clarissa.

  There again, I had seen for myself how excellent a driver little Aline could be. She belongs to just the sort of quiet person who in practice drives most effectively on the roads of today.

  ‘So write at once and say we’re arriving,’ said Clarissa.

  ‘I’m not sure there’s anyone to write to,’ I replied. ‘That’s the point.’

  I had, of course, a set of keys. For whatever reason, I did not incline to giving Mason advance notice of my second coming, and in such altered circumstances.

  ‘I’m not sure how Aline will get on with the Highlanders,’ I remarked. There are, of course, all those stories in Scotland about the intrusion of huge black men, and sometimes, I fancy, of black females. They figure in folklore everywhere.

  ‘She’ll wind each of them three times round each of her fingers,’ replied Clarissa. ‘But you told me there were no Highlanders at Pollaporra.’

  Clarissa, when triumphing, looks like Juno, or Diana, or even Minerva.

  Aline entered to the tinkling of a little bell. It is a pretty little bell, which I bought for Clarissa in Sfax; her earlier little bell having dropped its clapper. When Aline entered in her quiet way, Clarissa kissed her, as she does every morning upon first sighting Aline.

  ‘We’re all three going into the wilderness together,’ said Clarissa. ‘Probably on Friday.’

  Friday was the day after tomorrow. I really could not leave the business for possibly a week at such short notice. There was some tension because of that, but it could not be helped.

  *

  When we did reach Pollaporra, the weather was hotter than ever, though there had been several thunderstorms in London. Aline was in her element. Clarissa had stocked up the large car with food in immense quantity. When we passed through an outlying area of Glasgow, she distributed two pounds of sweets to children playing in the roads of a council estate. The sweets were melting in their papers as she threw them. The tiny fingers locked together.

  When we reached the small kirkyard, Clarissa, who was driving us along the rough road from Arrafergus, categorically refused to stop.

  ‘We’re here to drive the bogies out,’ she said, ‘not to let them in.’

  Clarissa also refused to leave the car at the bottom of the final slope, as Perry Jesperson had done. My friend Jesperson was now a Labour M.P. like his father, and already a Joint Parliamentary Secretary, and much else, vaguely lucrative and responsible. Clarissa took the car up the very steep incline as if it had been a lift at the seaside.

  She stood looking at and beyond the low grey house. ‘Is that the sea?’ she asked, pointing.

  ‘It’s the sea loch,’ I replied. ‘A long inlet, like a fjord.’

  ‘It’s a lovely place,’ said Clarissa.

  I was surprised, but, I suppose, pleased.

  ‘I thought we might cut the house up into lodges for the shooting and fishing,’ said Clarissa. ‘But now I don’t want to.’

  ‘The Trustees would never have agreed,’ I pointed out. ‘They have no power to agree.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. I want to come here often. Let’s take a photograph.’

  So, before we started to unpack the car, Clarissa took one of Aline and me; and, at her suggestion, I took one of Aline and her. Aline did not rise to the shoulders of either of us.

  Within the house, the slight clamminess of my previous visit had been replaced by a curiously tense airlessness. I had used my key to admit us, but I had not been certain as to whether or not Cuddy was already gone, and Clarissa and I went from room to room shouting for her, Clarissa more loudly than I. Aline remained among the waders and antlers of the entrance hall, far from home, and thinking her own thoughts. There was no reply anywhere. I went to the door of what I knew to be Cuddy’s own room, and quietly tapped. When there was no reply there either, I gently tried the handle. I thought the door might be locked, but it was not. Inside was a small unoccupied bedroom. The fittings were very spare. There were a number of small framed statements on the walls, such as I bow before Thee, and Naught but Surrender, and Who knows All without a mark of interrogation. Clarissa was still calling from room to room. I did not care to call back but went after her on half-tiptoe.

  I thought we could conclude we were alone. Cuddy must have departed some time ago.

  Dust was settling everywhere, even in that remote spot. The sunlight made it look like encroaching fur. Clarissa seemed undeterred and undaunted.

  ‘It’s a lost world and I’m queen,’ she said.

  It is true that old grey waders, and wicker fish baskets with many of the withies broken, and expensive guns for stalking lined up in racks, are unequalled for suggesting loss, past, present, and to come. Even the pictures were all of death and yesterday – stags exaggeratedly virile before the crack shot; feathers abnormally bright before the battue; men and ancestors in bonnets before, behind, and around the ornamentally piled carcases, with the lion of Scotland flag stuck in the summit. When we reached the hall, I noticed that Aline was shuddering in the sunlight. I myself had never been in the house before without Cuddy. In practice, she had been responsible for everything that happened there. Now I was responsible – and for as long as I remained alive.

  ‘We’ll paint everything white and we’ll put in a swimming pool,’ cried Clarissa joyously. ‘Aline can have the room in the tower.’

  ‘I didn’t know there was a tower,’ I said.

  ‘Almost a tower,’ said Clarissa.

  ‘Is there anything in the room?’ I asked.

  ‘Only those things on heads. They’re all over the walls and floor.’

  At that, Aline actually gave a little cry. Perhaps she was thinking of things on walls and floors in Africa.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Clarissa, going over to her. ‘We’ll throw them all away. I promise. I never ask you to do anything I don’t do myself, or wouldn’t do.’

  But, whatever might be wrong, Aline was uncomforted. ‘Look!’ she cried, and pointed out through one of the hall windows, all of them obstructed by stuffed birds in glass domes, huge and dusty.

  ‘What have you seen this time?’ asked Clarissa, as if speaking to a loved though exhausting child.

  At that moment, it came to me that Clarissa regularly treated Aline as my mother had treated me.

  Aline’s hand fell slowly to her side, and her head began to droop.

  ‘It’s only the car,’ said Clarissa. ‘Our car. You’ve been driving it yourself.’

  I had stepped swiftly but quietly behind the two of them. I admit that I too could see nothing but the car, and, of course, the whole of Scotland.

  I seldom spoke directly to Aline, but now was the moment.

  ‘What was it?’ I asked, as sympathetically as I could manage. ‘What did you see?’

  But Aline had begun to weep, as by now I had observed that she often did. She wept without noise or any special movement. The tears just flowed like thawing snow; as they do in nature, though less often on ‘Change.

  ‘It was nothing,’ said Clarissa. ‘Aline often sees nothing, don’t you, Aline?’ She produced her own handkerchief, and began to dry Aline’s face, and to hug her tightly.

  The handkerchief was from an enormous casket of objects given us as a wedding present by Clarissa’s grandmother (on the mother’s side), who was an invalid, living in Dominica. Clarissa’s grandfather had been shot dead years
before by thieves he had interrupted.

  ‘Now,’ said Clarissa after a few moments of tender reassurance. ‘Smile, please. That’s better. We’re going to be happy here, one and all. Remember. Happy.’

  I suppose I was reasonably eager, but I found it difficult to see how she was going to manage it. It was not, as I must in justice to her make clear, that normally I was unhappy with Clarissa. She was too beautiful and original for that to be the word at any time. The immediate trouble was just Pollaporra itself: the most burdensome and most futile of houses, so futile as to be sinister, even apart from its associations, where I was concerned. I could not imagine any effective brightening; not even by means of maquillage and disguise: a pool, a discothèque, a sauna, a black-jack suite. To me Pollaporra was a millstone I could never throw away. I could not believe that modern tenants would ever stop there for long, or in the end show us a profit. For all the keep nets and carcase sleighs in every room, I doubted whether the accessible sport was good enough to be marketed at all in contemporary terms. Nor had I started out with Clarissa in order that we should settle down in the place ourselves. When I can get away from work, I want somewhere recuperative. About Pollaporra, I asked the question all married couples ask when detached from duties and tasks: what should we do all day? There was nothing.

  ‘I have never felt so free and blithe,’ said Clarissa later that evening, exaggerating characteristically but charmingly. She was playing the major part in preparing a quite elaborate dinner for us out of tins and packets. In the flat, Aline had normally eaten in her own pretty sitting room, but here she would be eating with us. Clarissa would be tying a lace napkin round her neck, and heaping her plate with first choices, and handing her date after date on a spike. Employees are supposed to be happier when treated in that way, though few people think it is true, and few employees.