The Sea, the Sea

by Iris Murdoch

  Ever since those terrible days I have feared the possibility of an overwhelmingly powerful pain-source in my life, and I have nursed myself so as not to suffer too much. Possibly this is the deep reason why I have not married. What a queer gamble our existence is. We decide to do A instead of B and then the two roads diverge utterly and may lead in the end to heaven and to hell. Only later one sees how much and how awfully the fates differ. Yet what were the reasons for the choice? They may have been forgotten. Did one know what one was choosing? Certainly not. There are such chasms of might-have-beens in any human life. When I was confirmed I was determined to be good forever, and I still feel a ghostly illusion that I could have been. The image of Hartley changed in my mind from fiery pain to sadness, but never became blank. And in a way I did keep on searching for her, only it was a different and quite involuntary kind of search, a sort of dream-search. It was as if in my persisting memory of her I seemed to ‘body her forth’, the ways she moved, the ways she walked, as if a physical scheme of her being kept me always company. And so, and especially as the pain faded, I kept ‘seeing’ her, seeing shadow forms of her imposed upon quite different women; her shoulders, her hair, her walk, her puzzled fey expression. I still sometimes see these shadows. I saw one lately upon an old woman in the village, a transient look of her head placed like a mask upon somebody entirely different. Once or twice in London, long ago, I even followed these ghosts, not because I thought they were she, but simply to torment myself, to punish myself for still remembering.

  A little while ago the thought came to me that she was dead. That strange pallor, those dilated pupils: perhaps these were presages of disease, of some quiet killer biding its time? Perhaps really she had died long ago when I was still young? In a way I would be glad to know that she was dead. What would my love for her do then? Would it peacefully die too, or be transformed into something selfless and innocent? Would jealousy, the jealousy which has burned even in these pages, leave me at last, and the smell of fire and brimstone fade away?

  Even now I shake and tremble as I write. Memory is too weak a name for this terrible evocation. Oh Hartley, Hartley, how timeless, how absolute love is. My love for you is unaware that I am old and you perhaps are dead.

  I ate three oranges at eleven o’clock this morning. Oranges should be eaten in solitude and as a treat when one is feeling hungry. They are too messy and overwhelming to form part of an ordinary meal. I should say here that I am not a breakfast eater though I respect those who are. I breakfast on delicious Indian tea. Coffee and China tea are intolerable at breakfast time, and, for me, coffee unless it is very good and made by somebody else is pretty intolerable at any time. It seems to me an inconvenient and much overrated drink, but this I will admit to be a matter of personal taste. (Whereas other views which I hold on the subject of food approximate to absolute truths.) I do not normally eat at breakfast time since even half a slice of buttered toast can induce an inconvenient degree of hunger, and eating too much breakfast is a thoroughly bad start to the day. I am however not at all averse to elevenses which can come in great variety. There are, as indicated above, moments for oranges. There are also moments for chilled port and plum cake.

  The orange feast did not dim my appetite for lunch, which consisted of fish cakes with hot Indian pickle and a salad of grated carrot, radishes, watercress and bean shoots. (I went through a period of grated carrot with everything, but recovered.) Then cherry cake with ice cream. I had mixed feelings about ice cream until I realized that it must always be eaten with a cake or tart, never with fruit alone. By itself it is of course pointless, even if stuffed with nuts or other rubbish. And by ‘ice cream’ I mean the creamy vanilla sort. ‘Flavoured’ ice cream is as repugnant to the purist as ‘flavoured’ yoghurt. Nor have I ever been able to see the raison d’être of the so-called ‘water ice’, which transforms itself offensively on the tongue from a searing lump of hard frozen material into a mouthful of equally tasteless water. I am grieved that my lack of a refrigerator involves me in a marginal waste of food. My refrigeratorless mother never wasted a crumb. Everything not consumed lived to fight another day. How we loved her bread puddings!

  I have reread what I wrote about Hartley and feel moved simply by the fact that I was able to write it. It is but a shadowy tribute; if I can bear to write more on the subject I may try to improve it. How strange memory is. Since I wrote, so many more pictures of her, stored up in the dense darkness of my mind, have become available. Her long legs bicycling, her bare dusty feet in sandals. Her lithe movement from crouching to standing, balanced upon the parallel bar in the gym display. The feel of her strong hands through my shirt, holding on to my shoulders. We did not caress each other in an immodest way. Our burning youth was docile to the chivalry of a pure passion. We were prepared to wait. Alas and alas. Never so pure and gentle, never so intense did it come to me after, that absolute and holy yearning of one human body and soul for another. But reading my story I feel again the terrible mystery of it. When did she start to turn away? Did she deceive me? Oh why did it happen?

  I have spent the afternoon tidying the house. I carried two dustbins to the end of the causeway—I note with displeasure that the dustmen last time let some rubbish fall down onto the rocks below. I have had to climb down and collect it. I cleaned the kitchen and washed the huge black slates of the floor. They are worthy of a cathedral. A man came to deliver calor gas cylinders, rather to my surprise. (I had mentioned the matter in the Fishermen’s Stores.) I must remember to enquire if they can supply a calor gas fridge. The remainder of the ice cream has melted. My larder is still damp. I have lit a fire in the little red room and left the downstairs doors open. I moved quite a lot of wood into the downstairs inner room where I hope it will get dry. I am getting used to the smell of wood smoke which now pervades the house.

  It has stopped raining and the sun is shining, but over most of the sea the sky is a thick leaden grey. The sunny golden rocks stand out against that dark background. What a paradise, I shall never tire of this sea and this sky. If I could only carry a chair and table over the rocks to the tower I could sit and write there with the view of Raven Bay. I must go out and study my rock pools while this intense light lasts. I think I am becoming more observant—I lately noticed a colony of delightful very small crabs, like little transparent yellow grapes, and some ferocious-looking tiny fish with whiskers which resemble miniature coelacanths.

  I feel calmer now already about Hartley, as if the thought of her has been somehow mercifully absorbed into the sane open air of my home. This is indeed a test of my new environment. (‘You’ll go mad with loneliness and boredom’, they said!) All my instincts were right.

  I would like to tell all these things to someone, perhaps to Lizzie. I left in store with that first love so much of my innocence and gentleness which I later destroyed and denied, and which is yet now perhaps at last available again. Can a woman’s ghost, after so many years, open the doors of the heart?

  History

  ONE

  I DID NOT LOOK at the crabs after all. I became obsessed with the idea of carrying a chair and table out to the tower, and I set off across the rocks with the little folding table which I had moved from the middle room to the drawing room. This object soon began to seem absurdly heavy, and I found to my annoyance that the smooth steep faces of the rocks were too difficult to climb while I was holding the table in one hand. Eventually I let the thing fall into a crevasse. I must try to pioneer some easier way to get to the tower.

  I climbed onward and sat on a wet rock overlooking Raven Bay. The sun was still shining and the seaward sky was still grey. The smooth foamless sea was rising and falling against the rocks with a gentle inviting rhythm. The longer shadows made the big spherical stones of the bay stand out, half dark, half gleaming. The long quite pretty façade of the Raven Hotel showed very clear and detailed in the odd brilliant light.

  I was just getting over my annoyance about the table when I noticed a man walking
along the road in the direction of Shruff End, having just turned the corner from the bay side. He was dressed in a smart suit and a trilby hat, and looked in that vivid landscape like an incongruous figure in a surrealist picture. I surveyed his oddity. Walkers on that road were even rarer than cars. Then he began to look familiar. Then I recognized him. Gilbert Opian.

  My first instinct was to hide, and in fact I moved into the moist salt-smelling interior of the tower, under the bright round of sky, feeling a small unpleasant shock. However I could not seriously regard Gilbert as a menacing figure and it then occurred to me that of course he was bringing Lizzie; so I hurried out again and began to scramble over the rocks in the direction of the road. By the time I reached the tarmac Gilbert had seen me and turned back. We met each other, he smiling.

  Gilbert was wearing a light-weight black suit with a striped shirt and flowery tie. When he saw me he took off his hat. It was three or four years since I had seen Gilbert and he had aged a lot. The mysterious awful changes which alter the human face from youth to age may gently dally and delay, then act decisively all at once. Gilbert in young middle age looked rosy and boyish. Now he was all wrinkled and humorous and dry, with that faint air of quizzical cynicism which clever elderly people often instinctively put on, and which may be quite new to them, a final defence. When I last saw him he still wore a fresh unselfconscious air of childish conceit. Now his face was full of wary watchful anxiety masquerading as worldly detachment, as if he were cautiously trying out his new wrinkles as a mask. Though podgier, he still contrived to look handsome, and his white curly hair still had a jaunty look, had not learnt to seem old.

  I was wearing jeans and a white shirt which had escaped from them. Seeing Gilbert’s tie, his tie-pin, his (or was I mistaken?) discreet make-up, I felt a quick contemptuous pity for him, together with a sense of how fit I was, how hard. I could see Gilbert taking these things in, the pity, the fitness. His moist light-blue faintly pinkish eyes flickered anxiously between their dry layers of wrinkles.

  ‘Darling, you look marvellous, so brown, so young—my God, your complexion’—Gilbert always speaks in a rich fruity ringing voice as if addressing the back of the stalls.

  ‘Have you brought Lizzie?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘A letter, message?’

  ‘Not exactly—’

  ‘What, then?’

  ‘Is that funny-looking house yours?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind a drink, guv’nor.’

  ‘Why have you come?’

  ‘Darling, it’s about Lizzie—’

  ‘Of course, but get on with it.’

  ‘It’s about Lizzie and me. Please, Charles, take it seriously and don’t look like that or I shall cry! Something has really happened between us, I don’t mean like that sort of thing, but like real love like, God, in this awful world one doesn’t often have such divine luck, sex is the trouble of course, if people would only search for each other as souls—’

  ‘Souls?’

  ‘Like just see people and love them quietly and tenderly and seek for happiness together, well I suppose that’s sex too but it’s sort of cosmic sex and not just to do with organs—’

  ‘Organs?’

  ‘Lizzie and I are really connected, we’re close, we’re like brother and sister, we’ve stopped wandering, we’re home. Till Lizzie came I was just waiting for the next drink, gin then milk, then gin then milk, you know how it used to go, I thought it would go on till I dropped. Now everything’s different, even the past is different, we’ve talked all our lives over together, every damn thing, we’ve talked it all out, we’ve sort of repossessed the past together and redeemed it—’

  ‘How perfectly loathsome.’

  ‘I mean we did it reverently, especially about you—’

  ‘You discussed me?’

  ‘Yes, how could we not, Charles, you’re not invisible—oh, please don’t be cross, you know how I’ve always felt about you, you know how we both feel about you—’

  ‘You want me to join the family.’

  ‘Exactly! Please don’t be sort of dry and sarcastic and make a joke of it, please try to understand. You see, I believe in miracles, now, dear Charles, miracles of love. Love is a miracle, real love is. It’s far above the sort of boundaries and limits we were always tripping over. Why define, why worry, why not just be simple and free and loving with other people? We aren’t young any more—’

  ‘Have you given up boys, no more dangerous adventures?’

  Gilbert, who had been gazing at the open neck of my shirt all the time he was speaking, raised his eyes to mine. His eyes rolled and swung in an odd characteristic manner, perhaps the effect of drink, and he had a way of wrinkling his nose and pulling down the corners of his mouth which he had copied from Wilfred Dunning. He went through a sort of painful humorous grimace. How selfconscious these old actors’ faces are. ‘Listen, king of shadows, Lizzie has made me happy. I’m new, I’m changed like they say in religion. Of course I’m not a totally reformed character and I wouldn’t mind a drink absolutely now. But listen, Lizzie won’t give me up, you can’t break this bond between us. If you think it’s trivial or funny you haven’t understood. All you can do is make both of us very unhappy by being violent and cruel. Oh yes, we’re frightened of you, yes, like we always were. Or you can make us very happy and make yourself happy just by being gentle and kind and by loving us and letting us love you. Why ever not? And if you make us miserable you’ll feel wretched yourself in the end. Why not opt for happiness all round? Christ, darling, can’t you see, it’s a choice between good and evil!’

  Gilbert’s tirade, which was rather longer and more mawkish and repetitive than what I have set down here, was of course absurd. But what really annoyed me was the idea of Gilbert and Lizzie analysing each other and discussing in God knows what beastly detail their relations with me. I should add here that as far as the theatre went, which in his case was most of the way, I had made Gilbert. He owed me everything. And now this puppet was talking back and positively threatening me with moral sanctions! However, I laughed. ‘Gilbert, come back to reality. I am amused by your touching description of your relations with Lizzie, but really it won’t do. You claim to be changed, but you didn’t answer my question about boys. I am totally sceptical about your ménage and I don’t see why I should respect it. Why come and bother me with all this drivel about brotherhood and cosmic sex? This matter concerns me and Lizzie. It is nothing to do with you, and I’m shocked that she even told you about it. Even if you are fond of each other, sisters don’t have to get their brothers’ permission for everything. I summoned her, not you. She and I will decide what to do, and you’re not part of it. If you hang around here you’ll simply get burnt.’

  As I spoke I was becoming conscious of that old familiar possessive feeling, the desire to grab and hold, which had been somehow blessedly absent from my recent thoughts about Lizzie. Perhaps that was a miracle, or maybe just lack of imagination, the ‘abstract idea’ she had accused me of. This reflection increased my annoyance with Gilbert. He was making me coarsen and define an impulse which had been splendidly generous and vague. This bickering was mean and undignified, but now I could not stop.

  ‘Charles, can’t we go into your funny house and have a drink?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, do you mind if I sit down?’ Gilbert hitched his trousers and sat down carefully on a rock. He laid his hat on the grass and surveyed his well-polished mud-fringed shoes. ‘Charles dear, let’s be calm about this, shall we? Do you remember sometimes when it was all rather fraught and you were furious with us, you used suddenly to stop and say, “All right, this is the English, not the Turkish, court”?’

  ‘Gilbert, just keep out of my way, will you? If Lizzie wants to come she’ll come, if not not. You don’t understand what this thing is all about, between Lizzie and me, how can you? I don’t want it messed around with your dreams of miracles and perfect love. I don’t bel
ieve in your set-up, I strongly suspect you’re deceiving yourself and deceiving Lizzie too. I’m beginning to feel it may even be my duty to bust up your rotten arrangement. So don’t provoke me. And take your bloody hand off my sleeve.’

  ‘Darling, don’t give way to anger, you frighten me so, you always did—’

  ‘I don’t think I frighten you enough.’

  ‘You always had such a bloody bad temper and it didn’t help any of us ever. I know you thought it did, but that was an illusion. There is a worse way and there is a better way here. God, didn’t you read Lizzie’s letter?’

  ‘Did she show it to you?’

  ‘No, but I know what she said.’

  ‘Did she show you my letter?’

  ‘Er—no—’

  ‘All this makes me sick!’

  ‘Charles, you can’t take Lizzie away from me, don’t be so conventional, what does ordinary sex matter here, you’d respect a marriage, well perhaps you wouldn’t, but you must believe Lizzie and at least respect her, it’s a sacred bond and she won’t leave me, she’s said so a thousand times—’