by Iris Murdoch
Something about the slight hesitation conveyed, in the odd way that speech so quickly can, an impression of intelligence. I had also noticed his clear almost reflective articulation, although he spoke with the flattened Liverpool-style voice which was now the tribal accent of the young, and which I had found my novice actors so reluctant to abandon.
I said, ‘No, not—at all—’ And then, ‘So you are a student? You are at Leeds University?’
He frowned again, scratching his scar and narrowing his eyes and lips. ‘No, I’m not at any university. I just bought this. You can buy them in shops, you don’t have to be what it says.’ He continued in an explanatory tone, ‘They have American ones too, Florida and—California and—Anyone can buy them.’
‘I see.’ The whirl of my thoughts then brought up the obvious, the uncomfortable, question. ‘You’ve been with them?’
‘Them?’
‘Your father and mother.’
He reddened, his face and neck flushing quickly. ‘You mean Mr and Mrs Fitch?’
‘Yes.’ I was terrified, the awkwardness, the vulnerability, terrified of hurting him as if he were a little helpless bird.
‘They are not my father and mother.’
‘Yes, I know, they adopted you—’
‘I have been looking for my parents. But I was unlucky—there are no records. There should be records, I have a right to know. But there are none. Then I rather hoped that—’
‘That I was your father?’
He said, with a look of sternness and formality, ‘That I could clear the matter up somehow. But I never really imagined—’
‘Have you been with them, over there, at the bungalow, where they live?’
He gave me his cold wet-stone stare, withdrawn and stiff. ‘No. I only came here to see you. I’m going now.’
I kept my head against a wave of panic. The boy could vanish, be lost, never seen again. ‘Aren’t you going to see them, to tell them you’re here? They are very worried about you, they’ll be glad to see you.’
‘No. I’m sorry I bothered you.’
‘How did you know where I lived?’
‘I saw it in a magazine I take—a music magazine.’ He added, ‘You’re famous, people know.’
‘Tell me about yourself. What are you doing now?’
‘Nothing. I’m on the dole. Unemployed. Like everyone else.’
‘But did you finish your training—electricity, was it?’
‘No. The college was closed down. I couldn’t get into another. Well, I didn’t try. I took the dole. Like everyone else.’
‘How did you get here?’
‘Hitch-hike. I’m sorry. I’ve bothered you, taken up your time. I’m going now.’
‘Oh, I hope not. I’ll go with you to the road, it’s easier this way. But first, would you mind fetching my field glasses? They’re over there on that rock.’
Titus seemed pleased to be asked this. In a second he had slithered down the steep incline which I had so laboriously ascended, and was leaping goat-like from rock to rock in the direction of the bridge. I wanted a short interval in which to think. Oh, he was slippery, slippery, touchy, proud. I must hold him, I must be tactful, careful, gentle, firm, I must understand how. Everything, everything, I felt, now depended on Titus, he was the centre of the world, he was the key. I was filled with painful and joyful emotions and the absolute need to conceal them. I could so easily, here, alarm, offend, disgust.
He was back but too soon, coming up the steep rock in a precarious scrabbling run, handing me the glasses with the first smile I had seen on that reserved suspicious still half-childish face. ‘Here. Did you know there’s quite a good table lying over there in the rocks?’
I had forgotten the table. ‘Oh yes, thanks. Maybe you could help me with it later. Look, don’t go away, I’d like to talk to you. Won’t you stay to lunch? You must be hungry. Aren’t you hungry?’
It was at once evident that he was hungry. I felt a rush of concern and pity, of all those dangerously joyously strong emotions which were biding their luxurious secret moment.
He hesitated. ‘Thank you. Well, OK, I’ll stay for a quick bite. I have to be—somewhere else—’
I did not believe too much in that somewhere else.
By this time, by the easy route, we had almost reached the road. We climbed up the last bit and stood a moment looking out over Raven Bay where the calmer shallower sea was the colour of turquoise.
‘Lovely country, isn’t it. Do you know this part of the world?’
‘No.’ He said, suddenly stretching out his hands, ‘Oh, the sea, the sea—it’s so wonderful.’
‘I know. I feel that too. I grew up in the middle of England. So did you, I think?’
‘Yes.’ He turned to me. ‘Look—’
‘Yes?’
‘Why did you—I mean—did you come here for my mother?’
There was so much to discover, so much to explain, and it must be done so carefully and in the right order. I said, ‘I’m glad you call her your mother. She is, you know, even if you are adopted. There’s a kind of reality, a kind of truth. They are your real parents, it would be unjust to deny it.’
‘Yes, I understand about that. But there are—other things—’
‘Won’t you tell me—?’ This was a mistake, too much, too soon.
He frowned, repeating his question. ‘You came here for my mother, after her, or what?’ The tone was austere, accusing.
I faced him, resisting an urge to take him by the shoulders—
‘No, believe me, I didn’t come, as you put it, after her. My coming here was pure chance. It was the oddest coincidence. I didn’t know she was here. I didn’t know where she was. I lost touch with your mother completely a very long time ago. I was absolutely—stunned, amazed—to meet her again—it was the purest accident.’
‘A funny sort of accident—’
‘Don’t you believe me?’
‘Yes. I think so. Yes. All right. Anyway, it’s none of my business. ’
‘I’ve told you the truth.’
‘OK, OK. It doesn’t matter. They don’t matter.’
‘They—?’
‘Ben and Mary. They don’t matter. You very kindly offered me food. Perhaps I could just have some cheese or a sandwich. Then I must push off.’
Ben and Mary was a shock too. We began to walk slowly back towards the house. Titus picked up two plastic bags which were lying on a roadside rock.
‘Your wordly goods?’
‘Not quite all.’
As we turned onto the causeway Gilbert came out of the front door, and stopped in amazement. It occurred to me that I had never mentioned Titus’s existence to either Lizzie or Gilbert. Gilbert knew what Lizzie had told him about the ‘old flame’, but I had checked his eager attempts to pursue the matter. Titus had not appeared to be part of the story; and what a ghost he had seemed in Hartley’s own mentions of him. Whereas now . . .
As we neared I said to Gilbert in my ringing tones, ‘Oh, hello, this is young Titus Fitch, the son of Mr and Mrs Fitch, you know, my friends in the village. And this is Mr Opian who helps me in the house.’ The tone and the description were designed to establish Gilbert, for the present at any rate, as being beyond some unspecified barrier. Gilbert’s eyes had already taken on a dazed and gauzy look. I did not want any trouble of that sort; and, to tell the truth, I was already feeling rather possessive about Titus.
‘Come along,’ I said. As I hustled Titus through the door I gave Gilbert a kick on the ankle by way of ambiguous warning. ‘Gilbert, could you set lunch for me and Titus in the red room? Titus, a drink?’
He drank beer and I drank white wine while Gilbert, who had now donned his apron, quickly and discreetly laid out and then served luncheon for two on the bamboo table. I think Gilbert would have been glad to serve me thus every day, only he feared to annoy me by suggesting it. His studied and meticulous ‘butler’ would have graced any drawing room comedy. At one point, catching my eye over Titus’s hea
d, he winked. I gazed coldly back. We had ham cooked in brown sugar to a recipe of Gilbert’s, with a salad of Italian tinned tomatoes and herbs. (These excellent tomatoes are best eaten cold. They may be warmed, but never boiled as this destroys the distinctive flavour.) Then cherries with Gilbert’s little lemon sponge cakes. Then double Gloucester cheese with very hard biscuits which Gilbert had rebaked in the oven. Our butler, instructed by telepathy, soon made himself scarce. We drank white wine with the meal. Titus ate ravenously.
I made a little polite conversation by way of introduction, and while Gilbert was still in evidence. ‘I expect you’re very leftwing, like most of the young.’
‘Oh no.’
‘Interested in politics?’
‘Party politics? No.’
‘But some kind of politics?’
He admitted to being interested in the preservation of whales. We discussed that. ‘And I’m against pollution, I think the problem of nuclear waste is terrible.’ We discussed that too.
At the next pause I said, ‘So you didn’t come here to see them?’
‘No, I came to see you.’
‘To ask me that question?’
‘Yes. Thanks for answering it. Needless to say I won’t bother you again.’
‘Oh, don’t say that. But—so—you aren’t going to call on them, to let them know you’re here?’
‘No.’
‘Oughtn’t you to? Of course I quite understand you mightn’t want to. Now I had a very happy relation with my parents, but—’
‘I had a very unhappy one with mine.’
Drink had loosened his tongue. I had been doing a lot of urgent thinking. A plan, the plan, was emerging. ‘With both of them?’
‘Yes. Well, it wasn’t her fault so much. He took against me. She went along with him. I suppose she had to.’
‘She was frightened.’
‘Well, it was a bad scene. He stopped her from talking to me. And she always felt she had to tell him lies, little lies just so as to make life easier. I hated that.’
‘You mustn’t blame her.’ That was important.
‘I suppose he wasn’t a bad chap. But he couldn’t succeed at anything and that was depressing and maybe made him a bit spiteful, and he took it out on us. She couldn’t do a thing. Well, I do exaggerate. There were good times or goodish times, only the bad ones were so—crucial.’ Again the hesitation. Perhaps the tone of someone else’s voice? Whose?
‘I understand.’
‘You never knew when it was going to start again. You had to be careful what you said.’
The bruising and breaking of that child’s pride must have been something appalling, unspeakable. I recalled Hartley’s picture of the white-faced silent boy. Poor Hartley! She was the helpless witness of it all. ‘Your mother must have suffered very much, for you and with you.’
He gave me one of his quick suspicious frowning stares, but did not pursue the point. On closer inspection he seemed less handsome, or perhaps just more dirty and untidy. He had the pale complexion of a redhead, but his long unkempt hair was greasy and in need of a wash. His face was thin and a little wolfish, the cheeks almost sunken. The eyes had a bright cold blue-grey glint (they were a little spotted and mottled like one of my stones) but always narrowed. Perhaps he was short-sighted. He had a small pretty mouth, the lips scarcely disfigured, and a firm straight little nose, such as a girl might have envied. He was decently shaved, his beard showing in bright points of reddish gold, but the unusually dark stubble growing inaccessibly in the scar looked like a tiny lopsided moustache. He was obviously self-conscious about the scar and kept touching it. His hands were very dirty and the nails bitten.
‘And then there was this business about me.’ I did not speak portentously, but I wanted to keep him on the subject.
‘Oh well, yes, it came up now and then. But I don’t want you to get the idea—’
‘I expect you know that I loved your mother very much when we were young. I haven’t seen her since then, till we suddenly met here—’
‘She must have changed a bit!’
‘I still love her. But we never had a love affair.’
‘That’s nothing to me. Sorry, that’s not the phrase I want, I must be getting drunk. I mean, don’t tell me things like that, I’m not—I’m not interested. I believe you that you’re not my father, that’s finished. All the same, I can’t quite understand about your being here. Do you see them, or what?’
‘Oh, occasionally.’
‘If you don’t mind, I’d rather you didn’t tell them—’
‘About you? No, all right. As I say, I’m still very attached to your mother, very concerned about her. I’d like to help her. I don’t think she’s had much of a life.’
‘Well, a life is a life.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘One never knows. I daresay most lives are rotten. It’s only when one’s young one expects otherwise. She’s a bit of an imaginer, a fantasist, I suppose most women are. I must go now. Thanks for the grub.’
‘Oh I’m not going to let you go yet!’ I said, laughing. ‘I want to hear much more about you. You said your college closed down. But what would you like to do if you could choose?’
‘I used to think I’d like to work somehow with animals, I like animals.’
‘You don’t want to go back to electricity?’
‘Oh, that was just to get away from home, I got a grant and cleared out. No, I think if I could choose now I’d like to be an actor.’
Here was a stroke of luck. I could have shouted with joy. ‘An actor? Why then I can help you.’
He said, quickly flushing and with an aggressive precision, ‘I did not come here for that. I did not come for your help or to cadge or anything. I just came to ask. It wasn’t easy. You’re a celebrity. I thought about it for a long time. I hoped I’d solve it the other way, by finding the adoption people, but that didn’t work out. I don’t want your help or to push my way into your life. I wouldn’t want that even if you were my dad.’
He got up with an air of departure and I rose too. I wanted to throw my arms around him. ‘All right. But don’t go yet. Wouldn’t you like to have a swim?’
‘A swim? Oh—yes.’
‘Well, repose for a while, we can swim later, then have some tea—’
‘I’d like to swim now.’
We walked out onto the grass, ignoring Gilbert who rose respectfully as we passed through the kitchen, and then climbed the rocks towards the sea and came out on top of the little cliff. The tide had come in further and the water was now little more than ten feet below us. It was calmer than it had been in the morning and the semi-transparent water was a rich bottle-green in the bright sunlight.
‘Do you swim here? It looks marvellous. And one can dive. I hate not diving in.’
It was not a moment for dreary warnings. I was not going to admit to Titus any difficulties, any fear of the sea. ‘Yes, this is the best place.’
Titus was in a frenzy to get into the water. ‘I haven’t any swimming things.’
‘Oh, that doesn’t matter, no one can see us, I never wear anything. ’
Titus had already torn off the Leeds University tee shirt, revealing a lot of curly, red-golden hair. He was hopping, dragging off his trousers. Wanting suddenly to laugh with pleasure I began to undress with equal haste, but was still unbuttoning my shirt when the splash of his perfect dive blotted the glittering rock at my feet. In a moment I followed him, gasped at the coldness of the water, and seconds later began to feel warm and wildly elated.
My man Opian had come out bearing towels. He seemed to retire discreetly, but then I could see him peeping over a nearby rock, watching Titus perform. The boy, showing off of course, swam like a dolphin, graceful, playful, a white swift flashing curving form, giving glimpses of sudden hands and heels, active shoulders, pale buttocks, and a wet exuberant laughing face framed in clinging seaweed hair. His sea-darkened hair certainly changed his appearance, became dark a
nd straight, adhering to his neck and shoulders, plastering his face, making him look like a girl. Aware of the effect, he charmingly tossed his head and drew the heavy sopping locks back out of his eyes and off his brow. He had the effortless crawl which I have never mastered, and in his marine joy kept diving vertically under, vanishing and reappearing somewhere else with a triumphant yell. Equal mad delight possessed me, and the sea was joyful and the taste of the salt water was the taste of hope and joy. I kept laughing, gurgling water, spouting, whirling. Meeting my sea-dervish companion I shouted, ‘Now aren’t you glad you came to me?’
‘Yes, yes, yes!’
Of course he had no difficulty climbing up the little steep cliff. After all, had I not first seen him like a fly upon that tower? I had a slight difficulty myself and a bad moment, but concealed it from him. It was rather too early to start losing face and seeming old. I wanted him to accept me as a comrade. After that, in the shade of a rock, he slept. After that we had a substantial tea. And after that he agreed to stay the night, just the night and leave early the next day. I had meanwhile confiscated and hidden his two plastic bags in case he should suddenly take it into his head to slip away. I looked into the bags, there was precious little in them: shaving things, underwear, a decent striped shirt, a tie, shoes, a much creased and folded cotton jacket. Some expensive cuff links in a velvet box. The love poems of Dante, in Italian and English, in a de luxe edition with risqué engravings. The last two items made me think a bit.
Of course Gilbert, now fully aware of our visitor’s identity, was in a scarcely controllable state of excitement and curiosity. ‘What are you going to do with him?’ ‘Wait and see.’ ‘I know what I’d like to do!’ ‘For God’s sake just keep out of our way.’ ‘All right, I know my place!’
At my suggestion Titus had rinsed his hair in fresh water. Dried and combed it became fluffy, a thick mass of spiralling red-brown tendrils, and much improved his appearance. In the evening he put on the cleanish shirt, but not the cuff links. Gilbert surreptitiously washed the Leeds University tee shirt.
We dined, Titus and I, by candlelight. He said suddenly, ‘It’s so romantic!’ We both laughed wildly.
