The Sea, the Sea

by Iris Murdoch

  ‘A woman can lie a thousand times.’

  ‘Lizzie’s right, you despise women.’

  ‘Did she say that?’

  ‘Yes. And she thinks you’re not serious. You can’t take Lizzie away, but you can spoil things, you can make her mad with misery and regret, you can make her fall in love with you again in a rotten hopeless way, you can make both of us perfectly wretched—’

  ‘Gilbert, stop. I’m not going to play your game or enter your muddle. You can muddle away and dream away by yourself. Why isn’t Lizzie here to tell me what she thinks and wants? She’s afraid to see me because she loves me.’

  ‘Charles darling, you know I care for you very much, you could simply murder my peace of mind—’

  ‘Oh damn your peace of mind—’

  At that moment Lizzie appeared. She materialized as a dark blur in the corner of my eye, in the evening sunshine, and I knew it was she before I turned to look at her. And as soon as I saw her that old wicked possessive urge jumped inside me for joy and I knew that the battle was over. But of course I showed no feeling apart from a little air of annoyance.

  Gilbert picked up his hat and crushed it onto his face. He said to Lizzie, ‘You said you wouldn’t, you said you didn’t want to, oh why did I let you come—’

  I took in Lizzie, but looked beyond her at the sea, which was so calm and blue and quiet after the stupid yapping of my argument with Gilbert. I turned and walked along the road, and then leapt onto the rocks and began to make my way as fast as I could in the direction of the tower. At once I could hear the soft scrabbling pattering sound of Lizzie following me. She did well, considering I knew the rocks and she did not, and reached the grassy patch beside the tower very soon after I did, panting and with the strap of one sandal broken. As I turned round I saw Gilbert beginning to slip and slither on the rocks in his polished London shoes. He disappeared into a crevasse. There was a distant sound of lamenting and cursing.

  I went on through the stone doorway into the interior of the tower. Lizzie followed and suddenly we were alone together in that strange greenish light, with the white round eye of the sky up above us, and cool grasses about our ankles. The moist atmosphere inside the tower had produced a quite different vegetation, longer lusher grass and dandelions and some white nettles which were just coming into flower.

  Lizzie was wearing a very thin white cotton dress, straight like a shift, and she was holding her handbag close up against her breasts and shuddering a little. She looked slightly slimmer. Her abundant fuzzy cinnamon-brown hair was loose and tangled, and as the breeze blew it I could see the whiteness of her scalp. She was blushing extremely, but she stood very upright and stared at me, and her terracotta-pink mouth was firm and she looked brave, like a noble girl facing execution. She too looked older, older at any rate than the radiant teasing boyish creature I most remembered. But there was a contained canny shrewdness in her face which gave it form and still made it handsome: the strong brow and the sweeping line to the delicate almost retroussé nose. Her bright light-brown eyes were red-rimmed with recent tears. As I gazed at her I felt triumphant and delighted; but I looked grim.

  Lizzie dropped her eyes, reached out one hand to the wall, balanced to shake her broken sandal off, and put her bare foot down into the grass. She said, ‘Did you know that there was a table there among the rocks?’

  ‘Yes, I put it there.’

  ‘I thought the sea might have brought it in.’

  I was silent, gazing at her.

  In a moment, in a whisper, she said, ‘Oh, I’m sorry—I’m sorry, I’m sorry—’

  I said, ‘So you discussed me with Gilbert?’

  ‘I didn’t tell him anything that mattered’—she was looking down at her bare foot, and gently touched a white nettle with her toes.

  ‘Liar.’

  ‘I didn’t, I—’

  ‘You lied to him, then?’

  ‘Oh don’t—don’t—’

  ‘Why didn’t you want to see me?’

  ‘I was afraid—’

  ‘Afraid of love?’

  ‘Yes.’

  We were both standing very stiff, the wind coming in through the open door tugging at her skirt, and at my errant shirt.

  I recalled her chaste dry clinging kisses and I desired them now. I wanted to seize her in my arms and shout with delighted triumphant laughter. But I did not, and when she made a slight movement towards me I forbade it with a quick gesture. ‘You must go now—back to London with Gilbert.’

  ‘Oh, please—’

  ‘Please what? Dear Lizzie, I don’t want to be unkind, but I want things to be clear, I always did. I don’t know what we can do or be for each other now, but we can only find out if we both take the risk of being wholehearted. I want all your attention. I can’t share you with someone else, I’m amazed that you ask it! If you want to see me you must get rid of Gilbert, and get rid of him properly. If you want to stay with Gilbert then you won’t see me, and I mean that, we won’t meet again. That seems fair enough. Let me know soon, will you? And now please go, your friend is waiting.’

  Lizzie, once more hugging her bag and her breasts, started talking very quickly. ‘I must have time—I can’t just leave Gilbert like that, I can’t, I can’t hurt him so—I want you to understand—people don’t understand and they’ve been beastly to us—but you must understand then you’ll see—’

  ‘Lizzie, don’t be stupid, you were never stupid before—I don’t want to “understand” your situation, it’s your business. But you must either get out of it and come to me or stay in it and not come to me.’

  ‘Oh—Charles—darling—darling—’ She suddenly turned, the stiffness left her body and it was that of a dancer. She threw her handbag onto the grass and in a moment she would have been in my arms, only I stepped back and again forbade it. ‘No, I don’t want your hugs and kisses. You must go away and think.’

  A few drops of rain fell and long dark stains appeared on her dress. She touched her blazing checks, and then with a continuation of her motion swooped and picked up her bag.

  ‘Go now, Lizzie child, I don’t want us to have a messy conversation or an argument. Goodbye.’

  She gave a little wailing cry, then turned and fled out of the doorway.

  I waited a moment or two and when I came out she had almost reached the road. A yellow Volkswagen was now parked on the grass, pointing towards Raven Bay. I saw Gilbert jump out and open the passenger door. Lizzie plunged into the car. Both doors slammed and the car leapt away round the corner. A couple of minutes later it reappeared on the road to the hotel—I watched until it had passed the hotel and vanished where the road turned inland. Then I went back into the tower and picked up Lizzie’s broken sandal. She must have had a sore foot by the time she reached the road.

  It is now two hours later and I am sitting in the little red room. I have just written out my account of Lizzie’s visit as a story and it has somehow excited and pleased me to put it down in this way. If one had time to write the whole of one’s life thus bit by bit as a novel how rewarding this would be. The pleasant parts would be doubly pleasant, the funny parts funnier, and sin and grief would be softened by a light of philosophic consolation.

  I am moved by having seen Lizzie and am wondering whether I have been clever or foolish. Of course if I had taken poor Lizzie in my arms it would all have been over in a second. At the moment when she hurled her handbag away she was ready to give in, to make every concession, to utter every promise. And how much I wanted to seize her. This ghost embrace remains with me as a joy mislaid. (I must admit that, after having seen her, my ideas are a good deal less ‘abstract’!) Yet perhaps it was wise, and I feel satisfied with my firmness. If I had taken Lizzie then, accepted her acceptance, there would still have remained the problem of Gilbert, and I would have had the task of getting rid of him. Much better to let Lizzie do this, and do it promptly under pressure of the fear of losing me. I want that situation cleared up and cleared away, and me
anwhile I prefer not to think about it. I cannot attach much importance to Lizzie’s other ‘objection’, expressed in her letter, her fear that I might break her heart! That risk will not deter her. And I think on reflection that this was just an excuse, an arguing point put in to gain time. She must have seen at once that she had to cashier Gilbert, and given his slimy tenacity this might have seemed a difficulty. Have I really been such a Don Juan? Compared with others, certainly not.

  As for my stern policy with Lizzie, I really have nothing to lose. If she delays too long I shall go and fetch her. If she still tries to say no I shall not take it for an answer. My threats of ‘never again’ are empty of course, but she will not think so. If she really decides in the end not to come then that will prove she is not worthy of me. In spite of it all I can let Lizzie go. If she won’t, she won’t.

  I think I shall now walk round the bay to the Raven Hotel and ask them about delivering some wine. If I like the menu I may even have dinner there. I am beginning to be hungry. I suddenly feel pleased as if all will be well.

  Shortly after this something very disconcerting happened, and then . . . But first . . .

  I walked to the Raven Hotel and asked for a delivery of wine and bought a bottle of some Spanish red stuff to take home. I looked at the rather unsatisfactory dinner menu, but was feeling so hungry that I attempted to enter the restaurant, only a waiter prevented me because I was not wearing a tie. I was tempted to tell them who I was, but did not; let them discover later. I caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror: I had tucked in my shirt tails, but I did look rather a tramp in stained jeans with jagged uncombed hair and an old cardigan on inside out. I set off again for home.

  The walk to the hotel had been pleasant, but now it was colder and darker, and by the time I was nearing Shruff End the sun had set, though there was still a lot of light in the sky, now a radiant occluded azure and clear of clouds. The evening star was huge and brilliant over the sea, near to a pale lustreless moon, and faint dots of other stars were appearing. Some rather large bats were flitting around over the rocks. I could hear the sea booming into Minn’s cauldron as I passed by. I approached the house by the causeway, carrying the bottle in one hand.

  The house of course was dark within but stood out rather starkly in the brilliant twilight, its awkward tall thin shape appearing against the high horizon of the sea. When I was about half way across the causeway I thought I saw a movement at one of the downstairs windows. I stopped and stood perfectly still, staring at the house. It was difficult to look at it because of the vividness of the sky behind it, and my eyes kept jumping and refusing to focus. For a moment or two I could see nothing clearly, but I was now sure that I had seen that movement, something moving inside, in the book room. I moved very slowly forward, blinking and staring. Then I saw, momentarily but plainly, a dark figure standing inside the house, at the window, looking out. The figure dissolved into darkness and my eyes seemed blinded. I dropped the bottle and it slid down the steep side of the rock and quietly shattered below. I walked quickly back across the causeway to the road.

  There was someone or something inside the house. What was I to do? I could now hear the soft grating sound of the waves, like a gentle scratching of fingers upon a soft surface. And I felt upon the empty darkening road a shuddering sense of my utter solitude, my vulnerability, among these silent rocks, beside this self-absorbed and alien sea. I thought of walking back to the Raven Hotel and staying the night. But this seemed absurd; and would they give me a room, with my wild appearance and no luggage? I then thought I might walk on to the village, to the Black Lion—but—and then? I had no friends in the village. A further more dreadful realization came to me. I would be afraid to walk anywhere now in this gathering dark along this awful empty road. There was nowhere else to go but into the house.

  I began to walk slowly back across the causeway. I had left the back door open, but the front door was locked, so I would have to walk round to the kitchen. Then how quickly could I find matches, light a lamp? Supposing there was an intruder inside, he would hear me stumbling round to the back and would be waiting for me. How stupid it would be to be accidentally killed by a frightened burglar! I hesitated, but went on because by now my fear of the outside was as great as my fear of the inside, and most of all I feared my own fear and wanted desperately to end it or at least change it. Perhaps I had, in this funny light, imagined the whole thing, and would soon be laughing at myself and eating my supper.

  I recalled where there was an electric torch on a shelf inside the kitchen door, and I pictured where the lamp was, and the matches near it. I got a last glimpse of the sky, full of subdued light, and then I began noisily fumbling with the handle of the door. I blundered in, leaving the door open, found the torch, then the lamp and the matches. I lit the lamp and turned it up. Silence. I called out ‘Hello there’. The foolish frightened cry echoed in the hollow house. Silence.

  I walked to the door, holding up the lamp, and looked into the hall. Nothing. I walked quickly to the front room where I had seen the ‘figure’. It was empty. I searched the other downstairs rooms. Nothing. I tried the front door. Still locked. Then I began more slowly to mount the stairs. I had always somehow felt that if there was anything sinister in the house it was located on that long upper landing. As I was mounting the last few steps I heard a sudden and prolonged clicking sound. The bead curtain had been moved.

  I stopped. Then went mechanically on, my mouth open, my eyes staring. As I stood at the end of the landing I lifted up the lamp again, and stared into the uncertain space before me, where the light of the lamp and the last outside twilight filtering through the open door of my bedroom made a dense foggy amalgam. I could make out the darkly shaded alcove, the outline of the archway, the dotted mass of the bead curtain. Then suddenly, I saw, beside the wall at the far end, between the curtain and the door of the inner room, the dark motionless figure of a woman. My first and clear thought was that I was seeing a ghost, the ghost of the house, at last! I gave a choked grunt of fear and wanted to run back down the stairs but could not move. I did not drop the lamp.

  The figure moved, turned more fully towards me. It was a real woman, not a ghost. Then in a flash it looked familiar. Then I could see the face in the lamplight. It was Rosina Vamburgh.

  ‘Good evening, Charles.’

  I was still trembling and quickly digesting my fear. I felt intense relief mixed with rising anger. I wanted to curse aloud but I remained silent, controlling my breathing.

  ‘Why, Charles, you’re all of a tremble, what’s the matter?’ Rosina speaks, off the stage, if such a woman can ever be said to be off the stage, with an odd slight, I suppose Welsh, accent which is all her own.

  The house felt terribly cold, and for a second I felt I hated it and it hated me.

  ‘What are you doing here, why are you in my house?’

  ‘Just paying a visit, Charles.’

  ‘Let me see you off then.’

  I went away down the stairs and on into the kitchen where I lit another lamp. I went into the little red room and lit the wood fire. Hunger, temporarily suspended by fear, returned. I came back into the kitchen and turned on the calor gas stove to warm the room a little, and set out a glass, a plate, bread, butter and cheese and a bottle of wine. Rosina had followed me and was standing near the stove.

  ‘Won’t you give me a drink, Charles?’

  ‘No. Go away. I don’t like people who break into my house at night and play at ghosts. Just go, will you. I don’t want to see you!’

  ‘Don’t you want to know why I’ve come, Charles?’ Her repetition of my name was hypnotic and menacing.

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re surprised, you’re curious.’

  ‘I haven’t seen or heard of you for two years, three years, and even then I think I only met you at a party. Now you suddenly turn up in this perfectly hateful manner. Or is it supposed to be funny? Am I expected to be glad to see you? You aren’t part of my life. Just clear
off, will you.’

  ‘I am part of your life, you know. Yes, you are frightened, Charles. It’s interesting, it’s a revelation, it’s so easy to frighten people, to bewilder them and persecute them and terrify them out of their wits and make their lives a misery. No wonder dictators flourish.’

  I sat down, but I could not eat or drink in her presence. Rosina found herself a glass, poured out some wine, and sat down opposite to me at the table. I was still cold with anger and upset about my fear but now that I was a little less hungry I did feel a grain of curiosity about Rosina’s strange manifestation of herself. Anyway, how could I get rid of her if she refused to go? It was wiser to placate her and persuade her to go of her own accord. I began to look at her. She was certainly, in her odd way, an extremely handsome woman.

  ‘Dear Charles. You are recovering. I can see it. That’s right, have a hearty supper, bon appétit.’

  Rosina was wearing a sort of black tweedy cloak, with slits through which she had thrust her bare forearms. Her hands were covered with rings, her wrists with bracelets, which were glinting as she lightly tapped her fingers together. Her dark wiry hair, looking almost black in the lamplight, was pinned up in some sort of Grecian crown. She had either grown it longer or helped it out with false tresses. Her face was heavily made up, patterned with pinks and reds and blues and even greens, looking in the subdued localized light like an Indian mask. She looked handsomely grotesque. Her mouth, enlarged by lipstick, was huge and moist. Her squinting eyes sparkled at me with malign intensity. She was playing a part: putting on the controlled dramatic display of emotion which seems to the actor so moving, to the spectator often so unconvincing.

  ‘You look a right clown,’ I said.

  ‘That’s good, dear, that’s like old times.’

  ‘Do you want anything to eat?’

  ‘No, I had high tea at my hotel.’

  ‘Your hotel?’

  ‘Yes. I’m staying at the Raven Hotel.’