by Iris Murdoch
By now we had passed through the village, past the church where I had talked so shyly with Hartley so long ago, and turned up the hill towards the bungalows. Peregrine, driving savagely, was red in the face, and remained so completely absorbed in his own thoughts that he took no further active part in the proceedings and seemed scarcely to know what was going on.
When I had imagined Hartley going home I had not imagined opening the car door and ushering her out and unlatching the gate and walking up the path, at any moment of which proceedings I could have cried out ‘No! No more!’ and seized her hand and dragged her away. I did not do so. I did not touch her. She slipped off the scarf and the blue coat and slithered quickly out of the car. I opened the gate for her and followed her up the path. James followed me, then Titus looking frightened, Gilbert also looking frightened, then Peregrine in some kind of private rage.
Hartley rang the bell. Its sweet chime had scarcely sounded when there was a volley of fierce barks, followed by the sound of human cursing. A door banged and the barking was less audible. Then Ben opened the door. I think he would have liked to let her in and shut it again, only in accordance with orders issued by James I went in quickly on her heels and the others came after me.
I had, equally, not imagined the scene inside the house, or in so far as I had imagined it I had pictured either an instant fracas or else a solemn council, with Hartley somehow featuring in both. As it was, no sooner was Hartley inside the door than she vanished. In a second she had slipped away like a mouse and gone into the bedroom and shut the door. (The main bedroom that is, not the little room where I had talked to Ben.)
The dog, which seemed to be a rather large animal, went on barking as an accompaniment to what was going on in the hall. Ben had retreated to the sitting room door, Gilbert was leaning against the now closed front door, Peregrine was angrily inspecting the picture of the knight in armour, James was looking at Ben with an air of interest, and Ben and Titus were staring at each other.
Ben spoke first, ‘Well, Titus, then.’
‘Hello.’
‘You coming home with mummy, you going to stay here now?’
Titus was silent, trembling and biting his lip.
‘Going to stay here now, eh? Eh?’
Titus shook his head. He said in a strangled whisper, ‘No—I think I’ll stay—away.’
I said, ‘Titus is not my son, but I propose to adopt him.’ My voice quavered with nervousness and the words sounded unconvincing, almost frivolous. Ben ignored them. Still staring at Titus he made a violent throwing-away movement. Titus winced.
Ben was the shortest man present, but physically the most formidable. His bull neck and big shoulders seemed to be bursting the old khaki shirt which was now too small for them. His black belt was pulled in tight under a slight pot-belly, but he looked in good condition. He glowed with sunburn, his short mousy hair stood up like fur, he had recently shaved. His hands hung by his sides and he kept waggling his fingers and rising slightly on his toes as if about to perform some physical feat. The hall was stuffy as I remembered it, but the smell was different, nastier. I noticed several bowls full of dead roses. The dog had now fallen silent.
I said, ‘Did you read my letter?’
Ben paid no attention to me. He was now looking at James and James was looking at him. James was frowning thoughtfully. Then he said, ‘Staff-Sergeant Fitch.’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘Royal Engineers.’
‘That’s right.’
‘You were the chap in that show in the Ardennes.’
‘That’s right.’
‘You did well,’ said James.
Ben’s face hardened, perhaps to inhibit some show of emotion, even some fleeting gleam of gratification. ‘You his cousin?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you still serving?’
‘Yes. Just retired actually.’
‘Wish I’d stayed in.’
There was a moment’s silence as if they were both thinking about the past and likely to break out into reminiscence. Then James said hastily, ‘I’m sorry about this business now. I—er, it wasn’t her fault at all, she’s completely innocent, and nothing happened, I give you my word of honour.’
Ben said expressionlessly, ‘OK.’ He made a movement of his head and shoulders indicative of dismissal.
James turned to me, rather blandly, like a chairman tacitly asking a distinguished speaker if he has anything further to say. I did not respond to his look, but turned to go. Gilbert opened the door, Peregrine marched out, then Gilbert, then Titus, then me, then James. The door closed softly behind us.
Before I reached the car I realized that I was still carrying the plastic bag containing Hartley’s make-up and the stone which I had given her. I automatically turned back. James tried to catch hold of me, but I dodged him and walked steadily back up the path. It was an almost superstitiously stringent necessity to leave that bag with Hartley, not to take it away, not to take it back to Shruff End to be a sort of unlucky token and collect the filth of demons. It only occurred to me afterwards that I could have left it on the doorstep. I rang the ding-dong bell and waited. The savage barking started up again. Ben shouted, ‘Shut up, you devil!’
After a moment or two he opened the door. The expressionless mask was gone. He grimaced with hatred. I felt there was a kind of levity about what I was doing, and yet it had to be done. I was also aware of interrupting the next scene. The bedroom door was open.
I held out the bag. ‘These are hers. Sorry I forgot to leave them.’
Ben seized the bag and hurled it away behind him into the hall where it bumped and clattered. He thrust his grimacing snarling head out at me and I stepped back. ‘Keep away or I’ll kill you. And tell that vile brat to keep away too. I’ll kill you!’
The door slammed with a violence which set the bell vibrating. The dog was now almost screaming. I came back down the path and crossed to the car, where Ben’s words would not have been audible.
Gilbert and Titus were sitting in the back. The seat was covered with opaque white stones like huge pearls. ‘What’s this stuff?’ I said.
‘The windscreen broke, remember?’ said James. ‘Now let’s go home. Peregrine?’
The car started, roared up the hill, turned, roared down the hill, going very fast. The air blew fiercely in through the open front window. No one spoke.
When we were getting near to the junction with the coast road Titus said, ‘Would you mind stopping? I’d like to walk from here.’
Peregrine stopped with an abruptness which sent us all flying forward. Titus began to get out.
‘Titus, you’re not going back there?’ I cried to him and grabbed at his shirt.
‘No!’ He slipped out, and said as he turned away, ‘I’m going to be sick, if you want to know.’ He started walking in the direction of the harbour. Peregrine set off again, driving violently.
Gilbert said to James, ‘What was that thing in the Ardennes that you were saying about?’
James was looking alert and rather pleased. The meeting with Ben seemed to have put him in a good mood. He said, ‘It was an odd business. That chap Fitch was a prisoner of war in a camp in the Ardennes, he must have been captured in 1944. There weren’t any officers in the camp, I suppose he was the senior NCO, anyway he was the leading figure. In May 1945 when the Germans were going to evacuate the camp before our lot arrived he staged a private war of his own. He managed to impose himself on everybody. He had a group of toughs among the prisoners, well everybody joined in, it was well organized, quite a classic piece of planning, and they sabotaged the transport, I think they even nobbled a train. They got hold of arms and started shooting up the Germans. It was rather a savage business, possibly some personal vendetta was involved. Anyway when our troops arrived the surviving Germans were the prisoners and young Fitch had got the entire camp under his control and was standing at the gate to welcome us in. It was a neat exercise of personal bravery and initiativ
e. There was a bit of fuss about “unnecessary brutality”, but that soon blew over. He got a Military Medal.’
‘Were you there?’ said Gilbert.
‘No, I was somewhere else, but it was my outfit that relieved the camp and someone told me about it. I remember seeing a picture of the chap, he hasn’t changed. And I recalled his name, and it all somehow remained in my memory, it appealed to my imagination. He was a brave man. How odd coming across him like that!’
‘A rather unattractive sort of courage,’ I said.
‘There was a rather unattractive sort of war on,’ said James.
‘The man’s a killer.’
‘Some people are better at killing than others, it needn’t mean a vicious character. He behaved like an able soldier.’
We had reached the house. Peregrine scraped the car on a rock and it stopped with a jolt. We all got out. I looked at my watch. It was ten o’clock. The day lay ahead.
I went into the house, passed automatically through the kitchen and out onto the lawn. James, who had followed on my heels, was standing at the kitchen door looking at me. I said to him, ‘Thank you for your help. Now you’ve finished your job here I expect you’ll want to be off.’
He said, ‘Well, if you don’t mind, I think I’ll stay till tomorrow. ’
‘Please yourself.’
I went away across the rocks in the direction of the tower, passing over Minn’s bridge. I found a place down on the edge of the water where I could see into Raven Bay. A hot wind was blowing in from the sea and there was a slightly menacing swell, but the atmosphere was less thundery. Perhaps the storms had passed by.
My hand was hurting where it had been struck by Rosina’s stone. A bruise was appearing. I found that I had been sweating profusely. The hot wind was drying my shirt and denim jacket, both of which had been sticking to my back. I pulled the jacket off and loosened the shirt. There was a haze over the bay, the water was pale blue, fringed by a pretty lace of breaking waves. The big round boulders looked hot, as if the stored-up heat which they were exuding were shimmering visibly. They had a solemn, almost religious look. The dark yellow seaweed stains upon them looked like hieroglyphs. Beyond the other arm of the bay the sea was spotted with purple. I sat with my feet almost within reach of the strongly rising and falling water which was spattering the yellow rocks with a quick-drying foam. I felt that I had made a fool of myself in the recent scene and felt sad to think that in relation to anything so awful I should look ridiculous.
I heard a soft footfall and saw a shadow and James came and sat down beside me. I paid no attention to him and we sat for a while in silence.
James started fingering around in the rocks, finding small stones and tossing them into the water. He said at last, ‘Don’t worry too much, I think she’ll be all right, I’m sure she will.’
‘Why?’
‘My general assessment of the situation.’
‘I see.’
‘And also that odd episode.’
‘You think Staff-Sergeant Fitch’s respect for General Arrowby will be such—?’
‘Not exactly. But it’s as if something passed between us.’
‘Military telepathy.’
‘Sort of. I think—it’s hard to put—some vein of honour is touched—’
‘Oh rubbish,’ I said. ‘It’s funny, James, but whenever you start talking soldiery you seem to me to become utterly stupid. Military vanity, I suppose.’
We were silent for a bit longer. I found a few stones myself and dropped them in, after examining each one to see if it was worth keeping. I imagined Ben would soon throw away that pretty stone in the plastic bag. Perhaps he would throw it at the dog. I felt sorry for that dog.
James said, ‘I hope you don’t feel that I’ve influenced you in any way against your better judgment?’
‘No.’ I was not going to argue that point. Of course he had influenced me. But what was my judgment, let alone my better judgment?
‘What are you going to do about Titus?’
‘What?’
‘What are you going to do about Titus?’
‘I don’t know. He’ll probably clear off.’
‘He won’t if you hold on to him, but you’ll have to hold. He says he wants to be an actor.’
‘He told me that, oddly enough.’
‘Can you get him into an acting school?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Titus will be an occupation for you.’
‘Thanks for thinking about my occupations.’
‘I suppose you’ll leave this house now?’
‘Why the hell should I?’
‘Well, wouldn’t it be better—?’
‘This is my home. I like it here.’
‘Uh—huh—’
We threw a few more stones.
‘Can I go on talking, Charles?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ve been thinking—Are you sure you don’t mind?’
‘Oh go on, what does it matter.’
‘Time can divorce us from the reality of people, it can separate us from people and turn them into ghosts. Or rather it is we who turn them into ghosts or demons. Some kinds of fruitless preoccupations with the past can create such simulacra, and they can exercise power, like those heroes at Troy fighting for a phantom Helen.’
‘You think I’m fighting for a phantom Helen?’
‘Yes.’
‘She is real to me. More real than you are. How can you insult an unhappy suffering person by calling her a ghost?’
‘I’m not calling her a ghost. She is real, as human creatures are, but what reality she has is elsewhere. She does not coincide with your dream figure. You were not able to transform her. You must admit you tried and failed.’
I said nothing to this. I had certainly tried and failed to do something. But what, and what did this failure prove?
‘So having tried, can you not now set your mind at rest? Don’t torment yourself any more with this business. All right, you had to try, but now it’s over and I’m sure you’ve done her no lasting harm. Think of other things now. There’s a crime in the Army called deliberately making oneself unfit for duty. Don’t do that. Think about Titus.’
‘Why keep dragging Titus in?’
‘Sorry. But seriously, look at it this way. Your love for this girl, when she was a girl, was put by shock into a state of suspended animation. Now the shock of meeting her again has led you to re-enact all your old feelings for her. It’s a mental charade, a necessary one perhaps, it has its own necessity, but not like what you think. Of course you can’t get over it at once. But in a few weeks or a few months you’ll have run through it all, looked at it all again and felt it all again and got rid of it. It’s not an eternal thing, nothing human is eternal. For us, eternity is an illusion. It’s like in a fairy tale. When the clock strikes twelve it will all crumble to pieces and vanish. And you’ll find you are free of her, free of her forever, and you can let the poor ghost go. What will remain will be ordinary obligations and ordinary interests. And you’ll feel relief, you’ll feel free. At present you’re just obsessed, hypnotized.’
While James was speaking he was leaning down over the water and skimming some of the flatter stones so that they leapt upon the surface; only there was too much of a swell for them to jump very far. Watching the skimming stones I was filled with anguish because I remembered playing just that game with Hartley on an old pond near our house. She did it better than I did.
I replied, ‘What you say sounds clever but it’s empty. Love makes nonsense of that sort of mean psychology. You seem unable to imagine that love can endure. But just that endurance belongs to its miraculous nature. Perhaps you’ve never loved anybody all that much.’
As I said this I recalled something that Toby Ellesmere had said to me in some context where I was wondering whether James was homosexual. Toby had told me that James had had a great affection for some soldier servant in India, a Nepalese sherpa, who had died somehow on a mountain. Of c
ourse one never knows about other people’s loves, and I would certainly never know about James’s. To cover my crude remark I went on, ‘You seem to think the past is unreal, a pit full of ghosts. But to me the past is in some ways the most real thing of all, and loyalty to it the most important thing of all. It isn’t just a case of sentimentality about an old flame. It’s a principle of life, it’s a project.’
‘You mean you still believe in your idea after trying it, after having to admit that she wanted to go home and that she had better go home?’
‘Yes. That’s why I’ve got to stay here. I’ve got to wait. I’ve got to be at my post. She’ll know that I’ll wait, that I’ll be here. She has got her uncertainties too. She had to go back now because it was all happening too quickly. But after this she’ll think, and she’ll find the chain has been broken after all. She’ll come to me here, sooner or later, I know she will. She came before. She will come again.’
‘And if she doesn’t come?’
‘I’ll stay forever, it’s my duty, it’s my post, I’ll stay till the end. Or rather—I’ll wait—and then—I’ll simply start the whole thing over again from the beginning.’
‘You mean the rescue plan?’
‘Yes. And do stop throwing those stones.’
‘Sorry,’ said James. ‘We used to do that, remember, on that pond near Shaxton when you came over with Uncle Adam and Aunt Marian.’
‘I’ve got to wait. She’ll come to me here. She’s part of me, it’s not a caprice or a dream. When you’ve known someone from childhood, when you can’t remember when they weren’t there, that’s not an illusion. She’s woven into me. Don’t you understand how one can be absolutely connected with somebody like that?’
