The Sea, the Sea

by Iris Murdoch

  ‘Too bad. You were both spying on me. At least that’s how it started—’

  ‘It wasn’t like that,’ said James, ‘but of course if one starts lying one deserves what one gets.’

  ‘And when you met here you pretended not to have met each other—that’s a scene I shall remember!’

  ‘We didn’t tell you because we knew you’d be determined to misunderstand,’ said Lizzie, ‘and you are determined to misunderstand. ’

  ‘So I suppose you both think it’s all my fault for being, as you put it, insanely jealous!’

  ‘The fault is mine,’ said James.

  ‘No, no, it’s my fault,’ said Lizzie. ‘I forced it on him, I knew he hated it—’

  ‘Perhaps I know James better than you do after all,’ I said to Lizzie. ‘He is a man on whom no one ever forced anything he hated.’

  ‘It isn’t his fault—’

  ‘This argument does not interest me,’ I said. ‘You can continue it elsewhere and I am sure you will both enjoy it very much.’

  ‘I told you he’d be like that,’ said Lizzie to James, ‘I told you he wouldn’t understand—’

  ‘Well,’ said James, ‘there it is. It’s not a very attractive confession, but I hope you can see, or will see when you calm down—’

  ‘What do you mean, calm down?’

  ‘That it’s not, from your point of view, a matter of world-shaking importance. Naturally it irritates you. But you will see on reflection that it does not damage your relation with Lizzie, nor, I hope, your relation with me. It’s obvious how and why it happened, OK, it shouldn’t have happened, and I’m sorry—’

  ‘Do you imagine that I believe you?’

  ‘Yes,’ said James. He looked at me frowning but his face expressed an almost absurd sort of distress at a loss of dignity, at a loss, for once, of the initiative.

  ‘Well, I don’t. Why should I? How can I? It’s mean, it’s horrible. You admit you only told me because Toby saw you secretly meeting Lizzie in a bar. Am I supposed to be pleased that you’ve been meeting for years—’

  ‘Very very infrequently.’

  ‘And talking about me?’

  ‘You don’t see what it was like,’ said Lizzie, with tears in her eyes. ‘It wasn’t an all-the-time sort of thing at all, and it wasn’t like you think a relationship, it was just that we did happen to have met accidentally at that party—’

  ‘The moral is, never give parties.’

  ‘And we couldn’t undo that, and I did ask James sometimes how you were and where you were, because I loved you, and it was my only connection with you, all the time you were with Jeanne and—and that time when you were in Japan and in Australia and—I was thinking about you—and there wasn’t anyone but James I could—’

  ‘There wasn’t anyone but James, a very adequate substitute I daresay. Can’t you see how wickedly hurtful this is?’

  ‘She’s right,’ said James, ‘it isn’t like what you are thinking at all. However—’

  ‘I can just see you holding hands and talking about me!’

  ‘We never held hands!’ said Lizzie.

  ‘Christ! Do I care whether you held hands or not? Or whatever else you did which you will never confess? You’ve been telephoning and meeting and looking into each other’s eyes—I expect you’ve known each other forever, I daresay you knew Lizzie before I ever met her, you were there first, you were there before me, as you were with—as you were with—with Aunt Estelle and—and with Titus—you’d met Titus before, he said he’d seen you in a dream. I expect you were the person he was living with for those two years, no wonder he wouldn’t say! And you made Lizzie sing that special song of Aunt Estelle’s. I’m sure Lizzie dreams about you every night, you’re everywhere, spoiling everything in my life, you’d spoil Hartley if you could, only you can’t get at her, she’s the only thing that’s absolutely mine!’

  ‘Charles!’

  ‘You’ve been everywhere before me and you’ll be everywhere after me, when I’m dead you and Lizzie will be sitting in a bar discussing me, only then it won’t matter who sees you.’

  ‘Charles, Charles—’

  ‘I’m disappointed in you,’ I said to James. ‘I didn’t ever think you’d do anything mean or treacherous, I didn’t ever believe you’d put yourself into this sort of squalid muddle. It’s a kind of ordinary sly human stupidity which I was foolish enough to imagine you didn’t suffer from. You’ve behaved like ordinary people do who can’t imagine consequences. And one of the consequences is that, I don’t believe you, I can’t believe you. There could be anything between you and Lizzie. Ordinary mediocre people think that if they confess one tenth of the truth they’re in the clear. You’ve made all your words into lies, you’ve devalued your speech and—and in a moment you’ve spoilt the past—and there’s nothing to rely on any more.’

  ‘Perhaps it was a mistake to tell you in this way,’ said James. He seemed to be getting annoyed though he was also very upset. ‘Of course you were bound to hate it whenever it emerged, we never underestimated that. I hope and believe that you will appreciate later that the thing concealed was trivial, though the fact of the concealment was not. I realize that all this has been an affront to your dignity—’

  ‘Dignity? My dignity?’

  ‘Well, an affront. I am heartily sorry for it. But given the mistake, the fault, you can hardly have wished it to continue. This truth-telling is something painful which we do for your sake. Lizzie felt that she could not be as she wished for you with the lie unconfessed. She wanted there to be, especially now, no barrier of untruth between you.’

  ‘Why “especially now”? What’s special about now?’

  ‘Please,’ began Lizzie, ‘please—’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’m not excited, I’m not even angry, this isn’t anger.’ I had not raised my voice at all.

  ‘Then it’s all right,’ she said. ‘It’s all all right?’

  ‘What you say in your devalued words may even be true, as true as such words can make it—’

  ‘Then it’s all right—Charles darling—?’

  ‘It’s just that it’s brought this to an end.’

  ‘Brought what to an end?’ said James.

  ‘I want you both to go now. I want you to take Lizzie back to London.’

  ‘I was proposing to go and leave Lizzie here,’ said James. ‘Now I’ve told you surely I can go and leave her. That was the point of telling you. That was what I waited for.’

  ‘You thought I might blame you and let her off because I needed her so much? I don’t need her all that much, I can tell you!’

  ‘Charles, don’t destroy yourself,’ said James. ‘Why are you always so intent on breaking everything that surrounds and supports you?’

  ‘Go please. Go together.’

  I suddenly seized Lizzie’s hand, and for a moment it clasped mine, then it became dead. I seized James’s hand and I forced their two hands together. The hands struggled in mine like small captive animals trying to escape.

  James wrenched himself away and went into the book room. I could hear him throwing things into his suitcase.

  I said to Lizzie, ‘Go and pack,’ and she reached out towards me, then turned away with a sob.

  I went out onto the causeway and walked on until I reached James’s Bentley. It was big and black and expectant, a little dusty, in the lazy afternoon sunshine. I opened the door. The interior had an opulent quietness like the interior of a grand mansion or a rich silent shrine. The polished wood glowed, the brown leather gave off a fresh rare smell. The gear nestled in a soft crumpled skin. The carpet was thick, spotless. The silence, the intimacy of the car invited a privileged habitation. And in this sacred interior I was about to enclose James and Lizzie and despatch them forever, just as surely as if I were shutting them in a sealed casket and drowning them in the sea.

  As I turned back towards the house I looked automatically at the stone dog kennel, where Gilbert had so carefully installed the baske
t to keep the mail out of the rainwater. I saw there was a letter in the basket. I went and picked it up. It was from Hartley. I put it in my pocket.

  Lizzie came out first, carrying her handbag and crying. She started to say something to me but I held the car door open and ushered her into the passenger seat and closed the door on her with a soft final sound.

  James came out, carrying his case and Lizzie’s, and stopped on the causeway wanting me to come to him, but I would not. I went round and opened the other door and stood by it. James came on and put the cases in the boot. He came round to the door.

  I said, ‘I don’t want to see either of you ever again. You have spoilt each other for me with an effectiveness which I shall soon begin to see as malignant.’

  ‘Do not see it so. Don’t be a fool. What happened was accidental and forgivable. Just stop driving yourself mad with jealousy.’

  ‘I mean what I say. I don’t want to see you again, James, or you again, Lizzie, ever, between now and the end of the world. I shall destroy your letters unread, I shall close the door in your face, I shall cut you in the street. Don’t either of you come near me again. This may seem harsh, but you will soon see that there is a kind of automatic justice about it. You spoke about automatic justice, James, well this is it. You have, between you, made a machine and this is how it works. If you feel upset, I am sure you will soon console each other. I want you to be together. I shall think of you together. You don’t have to wait till I’m dead after all, you can hold hands now. As James is such a good driver you can hold hands all the way to London. Goodbye.’

  ‘Charles—’ said James.

  I walked back to the causeway and began to cross it. I heard the door of the Bentley close quietly and the engine begin to purr. The car was moving away and the sound rose in pitch, then began to fade as it turned the corner. Then there was silence. I entered the empty house with my fingertips upon Hartley’s letter in my pocket.

  I did not open the letter at once. Its presence there in my pocket was an absolute comfort. At any rate, I would feel it so for a time and banish fear. I wanted it to remain, for the moment, a thing, a simple object, a talisman, a magic stone, a sacred ring, a precious relic, something entirely protective and tender and pure. For now I had nothing left in the world but Hartley and her unspoilt separated being. Yes, James had always spoilt things for me. He had spoilt Aunt Estelle. Had I said something to him just now about Aunt Estelle? I could not clearly remember what I had said. My head boiled with feelings. My fingers touched the precious letter. My God, I needed salvation and I needed it now.

  Yet even as I let Hartley’s healing and her peace stream into me in a race of therapeutic particles I was thinking in another part of my mind that in a little while I would be suffering the most frightful regret and remorse at having sent James and Lizzie off together. Why had I been such a perfect fool? It had been an ‘inevitable’ impulse of sheer destructiveness, the self-destructiveness of which James had accused me. I could have dismissed James, kept Lizzie, then dismissed her. Half an hour would have done it. I did not have to press them into each other’s arms like that. But I wanted to make what was terrible so much worse so as to be sure that it was fatal; like Hartley protecting herself by thinking I must hate her. I had sent them off together so as to make sure that I would never relent; and I had insured myself yet further. James would never never forgive such an enforced loss of face. Lizzie and James had, for me, destroyed each other, as in a suicide pact. I even suddenly pictured James with his revolver against Lizzie’s brow, then against his own. What truly demonic arrangement of fate had brought just those two together? Whatever might or might not have happened between them in the past, and I would never know, Lizzie’s hair would be spread out on James’s shoulder long before they got to London. What a trap I was in. But really I had been wise. The only cure here was death. They were both gone out of my life.

  The house was curiously weirdly silent. I realized that for a long time now I had not been alone in it. What a lot of visitors I had had. Gilbert, Lizzie, Perry, James. Titus. His little plastic bag with his treasures, his tie and the cuff links and the love poems of Dante, was still lying in a corner of the bookroom like an abandoned dog. I recalled Bob Arkwright’s words. Titus had refused to be beaten by the cliff. He had tried again and again to get a hold on it and each time the strong quiet waves had simply pulled him off. Then when he was desperate and weary a yet stronger wave had dashed him against the rock. I went into the kitchen and poured out some of Perry’s whisky. A breeze was blowing in from the sea through the open door and I could hear the bead curtain clicking on the upper landing. I drank the whisky. Now everything in the world depended on Hartley’s letter. I sat down at the table. I looked at my watch. It was nearly six o’clock. James and Lizzie would stop for dinner on the way. James was sure to know a good restaurant. They would turn off the motorway. They would sit in the bar and study the menu. They would recover from their shock and feel liberated. No more secrecy now. It doesn’t matter who sees them holding hands. Oh God, if I had only told Titus, don’t swim there, it’s dangerous. If there’s any swell you can’t get out. Never swim in a rough sea, dear boy, this sea’s a killer. But the past refused to come back, as it did in dreams, to be remade. Titus walked in my dreams in the brightness of his youth, which was now made eternal. Or else I dreamed that he was dead and felt joy on waking. I took Hartley’s letter out and pressed it to my brow and prayed to her that she would save me out of the desolation and the wreck.

  I looked at the envelope. I had not received a letter from Hartley, it occurred to me, for over forty years. Yet of course I had recognized the writing at once. It was much the same, a little smaller and less neat. I had kept all her old letters for a long time, then destroyed them all in a mood when it upset me (or perhaps exasperated me) too much to see them, then regretted this. I had of course already invented dozens of possible letters which she might have written to me. Charles, goodbye, I can never see you again. Or Ben has gone, whatever shall I do? Or Darling, I shall come to you, have a car ready tomorrow. I had already checked the number of the local taxi and placed it beside the telephone. I had felt the envelope and decided it was a short letter. Was that a good sign? At any rate it was not an incoherent inconclusive unburdening of the heart. I love you, but I cannot leave him, etc. etc. for pages and pages. Not that anyway. Had Hartley really made up her mind? What would we say, what could we say, when we met, about Titus? This was the overwhelming thing, this would perhaps decide all. How strange, how terrible, of fate to bring him to me and then to drown him. Would I ever mourn for him with Hartley? Whatever would this mourning be like, and whatever would it do to us? So I put off opening the letter. But of all the things I imagined, not one was what she had actually written.

  In fact not a very long time passed. I stopped drinking whisky. I hate the stuff really. I walked all round the house, entering every room. I even climbed up to the attic and looked at the hole in the roof. The place was still very damp up there. Lizzie and Gilbert had put two buckets under the hole. These were both brimming full. I left them there. I searched the house as if I were looking for something, and all the time now I was holding Hartley’s letter in my hand. At last I threw myself down on my bed and began to open the letter as if I were a child and this were some strange treat which I had carried off to enjoy at last in secret. What spurred me to end the play of hopes was the thought that if I were to carry Hartley off effectively I had better book the taxi at once. And at the very last moment I fell into a frenzy because it occurred to me that I might already have delayed too long.

  Then real absolute panic came. My teeth were chattering, my trembling clumsy fingers tore the envelope, tore the letter, spread it out. Then I had to get up and run to the window for a better light.

  Dear Charles,

  We would be very glad if you would come and see us for tea. Four o’clock on Friday would suit and we will expect you then unless you write otherwise. I hope that you c
an come.

  Yours truly,

  Mary Fitch.

  This letter stunned me partly because I could not think or feel how to react to it. Was it good or bad? It asked for a meeting, but with ‘us’. If Hartley simply wanted me to do nothing, her best course was to do nothing herself. But here was a letter. What did it mean, what was its deep meaning? Friday was tomorrow.

  I stared at the letter blushing and trembling and tried to understand it. I was not very bright. It even took me a little time to realize that it was not a real letter from Hartley at all. It was signed ‘Mary Fitch’. She had written it but not composed it. It was a letter written for the eye of her husband, even perhaps under his dictation. But then what did that mean? Had she perhaps cunningly put it into his head to agree to my visit? But how had she done it and what did she want to happen? Had Hartley, in order to see me, perhaps simply to see my face, argued Ben into inviting me? And would she, when I arrived, give me some cue? Or was it perhaps a trap, a dreadful revenge plan with which she had been forced to cooperate? If Ben blamed me for Titus’s death he might now be half mad with his own remorse and resentment against me. Now he would feel how much he loved Titus, and the only relief might be to feel how much he hated me. Just as I had sought relief from Titus’s death in blaming Ben. Well, even if it was a trap, I would walk straight in.

  I kept looking at the letter and turning it over and over and even holding it up to the light in case there was some hidden message. The time of the appointment had been changed. What had originally been written was six o’clock, but this had been altered to four o’clock. This could be made sense of. Under Ben’s dictation, under his eye, she had written six, then hastily just as she was putting it into the envelope she had changed it to four, knowing that at four Ben would be absent. Perhaps away fetching somebody or something for the trap? So perhaps she would be alone after all? And she would throw herself into my arms as she had done on that night, the night when she had run away onto the rocks because she was so afraid of Ben, afraid of returning to him, afraid of staying with me. She had come to me then of her own accord. That was a piece of evidence, in fact the chief one.