On Chesil Beach

by Ian Mcewan

  Florence continued to watch Edward’s progress along the beach, certain that he could not see her yet. She could drop down the steep bank and double back along the shore of the Fleet, but even though she feared him, she thought it would be too cruel to run away. Briefly, she saw the outline of his shoulders against a silver streak of water, a current that plumed far out to sea behind him. Now she could hear the sound of his footfalls on the pebbles, which meant that he would hear hers. He would have known to come in this direction because it was what they had decided, their after-dinner plan, a stroll on the famous shingle spit with a bottle of wine. They were going to collect stones along the way and compare their sizes to see if storms really had brought order to the beach.

  The memory of that lost pleasure did not make her feel particularly sorrowful now, for it was immediately displaced by an idea, an interrupted thought from earlier in the evening. To love, and set each other free. It was an argument she could make, a daring proposal, she thought, but to anyone else, to Edward, it could sound laughable and idiotic, perhaps even insulting. She never could quite get the full measure of her own ignorance, because in some matters she thought she was rather wise. She needed more time. But he would be with her in seconds and the terrible conversation must begin. It was another of her failings that she had no idea what attitude to take with him, no feelings beyond her dread of what he might say, and of what she would be expected to say in return. She did not know if she should be asking for forgiveness, or expecting an apology. She was not in love, or out of love—she felt nothing. She just wanted to be here alone in the dusk against the bulk of her giant tree.

  There appeared to be some kind of parcel in his hand. He stopped a good room’s length away, and that in itself seemed to her unfriendly, and she felt antagonistic in return. Why had he come chasing after her so soon?

  Indeed, there was exasperation in his voice. “There you are.”

  She could not bring herself to respond to such an inane remark.

  “Did you really need to come this far?”

  “Yes.”

  “It must be two miles back to the hotel.”

  She surprised herself with the hardness in her voice. “I don’t care how far it is. I needed to get out.”

  He let this go. When he shifted his weight, the stones tinkled under his feet. She saw now that it was his jacket that he carried. It was warm and moist on the beach, warmer than it had been during the day. It bothered her that he thought he had to bring a jacket with him. At least he had not put on his tie! God, how irritable she suddenly felt, when minutes ago she was so ashamed of herself. She was usually so keen to have his good opinion, and now she did not care.

  He was preparing to tell her what he had come to say, and he moved a step closer. “Look, this is ridiculous. It was unfair of you to run out like that.”

  “Was it?”

  “In fact, it was bloody unpleasant.”

  “Oh really? Well, it was bloody unpleasant, what you did.”

  “Meaning what?”

  She had her eyes shut as she said it. “You know exactly what I mean.” She would torture herself with the memory of her part in this exchange, but now she added, “It was absolutely revolting.”

  She imagined she heard him grunt, as though punched in the chest. If only the silence that followed had been a few seconds longer, her guilt might have had time to rise up against her, and she might have added something less unkind.

  But Edward came out swinging. “You don’t have the faintest idea how to be with a man. If you did, it would never have happened. You’ve never let me near you. You don’t know a thing about any of it, do you? You carry on as if it’s eighteen sixty-two. You don’t even know how to kiss.”

  She heard herself say smoothly, “I know failure when I see it.” But it was not what she meant, this cruelty was not her at all. This was merely the second violin answering the first, a rhetorical parry provoked by the suddenness, the precision of his attack, the sneer she heard in all his repeated “you’s.” How much accusation was she supposed to bear in one small speech?

  If she had hurt him, he gave no sign, though she could barely see his face. Perhaps it was the darkness that had emboldened her. When he spoke again, he did not even raise his voice.

  “I am not going to be humiliated by you.”

  “And I’m not going to be bullied by you.”

  “I’m not bullying you.”

  “Yes you are. You always are.”

  “This is ridiculous. What are you talking about?”

  She was not sure, but she knew it was the route she was taking. “You’re always pushing me, pushing me, wanting something out of me. We can never just be. We can never just be happy. There’s this constant pressure. There’s always something more that you want out of me. This endless wheedling.”

  “Wheedling? I don’t understand. I hope you’re not talking about money.”

  She was not. It was far from her thoughts. How preposterous to mention money. How dare he. So she said, “Well, all right, now you mention it. It’s clearly on your mind.”

  It was his sarcasm that had goaded her. Or his flippancy. What she was referring to was more fundamental than money, but she did not know how to say it. It was his tongue pushing deeper into her mouth, his hand going further under her skirt or blouse, his hand tugging hers toward his groin, a certain way he had of looking away from her and going silent. It was the brooding expectation of her giving more, and because she didn’t, she was a disappointment for slowing everything down. Whatever new frontier she crossed, there was always another waiting for her. Every concession she made increased the demand, and then the disappointment. Even in their happiest moments, there was always the accusing shadow, the barely hidden gloom of his unfulfillment, looming like an alp, a form of perpetual sorrow which had been accepted by them both as her responsibility. She wanted to be in love and be herself. But to be herself, she had to say no all the time. And then she was no longer herself. She had been cast on the side of sickliness, as an opponent of normal life. It irritated her, the way he pursued her so quickly along the beach, when he should have given her time to herself. And what they had here, on the shores of the English Channel, was only a minor theme in the larger pattern. She could already see ahead. They would have this argument, they would make up, or half make up, she would be coaxed back to the room, and then the expectations would be laid on her again. And she would fail again. She could not breathe. Her marriage was eight hours old and each hour was a weight on her, all the heavier because she did not know how to describe these thoughts to him. So money would have to do as the subject—in fact, it did perfectly well, because now he was roused.

  He said, “I’ve never cared about money, yours or anyone’s.”

  She knew this was true, but she said nothing. He had shifted position, so now she saw his outline clearly against the dying glow on the water behind him.

  “So keep your money, your father’s money, spend it on yourself. Get a new violin. Don’t waste it on anything I might use.”

  His voice was tight. She had offended him deeply, even more than she intended, but for now she did not care, and it helped that she could not see his face. They had never talked about money before. Her father’s wedding present was two thousand pounds. She and Edward had talked only vaguely of buying a house with it one day.

  He said, “You think I wheedled that job out of you? It was your idea. And I don’t want it. Do you understand? I don’t want to work for your father. You can tell him I’ve changed my mind.”

  “Tell him yourself. He’ll be really pleased. He’s gone to a lot of trouble for you.”

  “Right then. I will.”

  He turned and walked away from her, toward the shoreline, and after a few steps came back, kicking at the shingle with unashamed violence, sending up a spray of small stones, some of which landed near her feet. His anger stirred her own and she suddenly thought she understood their problem: they were too polite, too constrai
ned, too timorous, they went around each other on tiptoes, murmuring, whispering, deferring, agreeing. They barely knew each other, and never could because of the blanket of companionable near-silence that smothered their differences and blinded them as much as it bound them. They had been frightened of ever disagreeing, and now his anger was setting her free. She wanted to hurt him, punish him in order to make herself distinct from him. It was such an unfamiliar impulse in her, toward the thrill of destruction, that she had no resistance against it. Her heart beat hard and she wanted to tell him that she hated him, and she was about to say these harsh and wonderful words that she had never uttered before in her life when he spoke first. He was back to his starting point, and calling on all his dignity to reprimand her.

  “Why did you run off? It was wrong of you, and hurtful.”

  Wrong. Hurtful. How pathetic!

  She said, “I’ve already told you. I had to get out. I couldn’t bear it, being with you in there.”

  “You were wanting to humiliate me.”

  “Oh, all right then. If that’s what you want. I was trying to humiliate you. It’s no less than you deserve when you can’t even control yourself.”

  “You’re a bitch talking like that.”

  The word was a starburst in the night sky. Now she could say what she liked.

  “If that’s what you think, then get away from me. Just clear off, will you. Edward, please go away. Don’t you understand? I came out here to be alone.”

  She knew he realized he had gone too far with his word, and now he was trapped with it. As she turned her back on him, she was conscious of playacting, of being tactical in a way she had always despised in her more demonstrative girlfriends. She was tiring of the conversation. Even the best outcome would only return her to more of the same silent maneuverings. Often when she was unhappy, she wondered what it was she would most like to be doing. In this instance, she knew immediately. She saw herself on the London-bound platform of Oxford railway station, nine o’clock in the morning, violin case in her hand, a sheaf of music and a bundle of sharpened pencils in the old canvas school satchel on her shoulder, heading toward a rehearsal with the quartet, toward an encounter with beauty and difficulty, with problems that could actually be resolved by friends working together. Whereas here, with Edward, there was no resolution she could imagine, unless she made her proposal, and now she doubted if she had the courage. How un-free she was, her life entangled with this strange person from a hamlet in the Chiltern Hills who knew the names of wildflowers and crops and all the medieval kings and popes. And how extraordinary it now seemed to her, that she had chosen this situation, this entanglement, for herself.

  Her back was still turned. She sensed he had drawn closer, she imagined him right behind her, his hands hanging loosely at his sides, softly clenching and unclenching as he considered the possibility of touching her shoulder. From the solid darkness of the hills, carrying right across the Fleet, came the song of a single bird, convoluted and fluting. By the prettiness of the song and the time of day she would have guessed it to be a nightingale. But did nightingales live by the sea? Did they sing in July? Edward knew, but she was in no mood to ask.

  He said in a matter-of-fact way, “I loved you, but you make it so hard.”

  They were silent as the implications of his tense settled around them. Then she said at last, wonderingly, “You loved me?”

  He did not correct himself. Perhaps he himself was not so bad a tactician. He said simply, “We could be so free with each other, we could be in paradise. Instead we’re in this mess.”

  The plain truth of this disarmed her, as did the reversion to a more hopeful tense. But the word “mess” brought back to her the vile scene in the bedroom, the tepid substance on her skin drying to a crust that cracked. She was certain she would never let such a thing happen to her again.

  She answered neutrally, “Yes.”

  “Meaning what exactly?”

  “It’s a mess.”

  There was a silence, a kind of stalemate of indeterminate length, during which they listened to the waves and, intermittently, the bird, which had moved farther off and whose fainter call was of even greater clarity. Finally, as she expected, he put a hand on her shoulder. The touch was kindly, spreading a warmth along her spine and into the small of her back. She did not know what to think. She disliked herself for the way she was calculating the moment when she should turn around, and she saw herself as he might, as awkward and brittle like her mother, hard to know, making difficulties when they could be at ease in paradise. So she should make things simple. It was her duty, her marital duty.

  As she turned, she stepped clear of his touch because she did not want to be kissed, not straightaway. She needed a clear mind to tell him her plan. But they were still close enough for her to make out some part of his features in the poor light. Perhaps at that moment the moon behind her was partly unmasked. She thought he was looking at her in the way he often did—it was a look of wonder—whenever he was about to tell her that she was beautiful. She never really believed him, and it bothered her when he said it because he might want something she could only fail to give. Thrown by this thought, she could not come to her point.

  She found herself asking, “Is it a nightingale?”

  “It’s a blackbird.”

  “At night?” She could not conceal her disappointment.

  “It must be a prime site. The poor fellow’s having to work hard.” Then he added, “Like me.”

  Immediately she laughed. It was as if she had partly forgotten him, his true nature, and now he was clearly before her, the man she loved, her old friend, who said unpredictable, endearing things. But it was uncomfortable laughter, for she was feeling a little mad. She had never known her own feelings, her moods, to dip and swerve so. And now she was about to make a suggestion that from one point of view was entirely sensible, and from another, quite probably—she could not be sure—entirely outrageous. She felt as though she were trying to reinvent existence itself. She was bound to get it wrong.

  Prompted by her laughter, he moved closer to her again and tried to take her hand, and again she moved away. It was crucial to be able to think straight. She started her speech as she had rehearsed it in her thoughts, with the all-important declaration.

  “You know I love you. Very, very much. And I know you love me. I’ve never doubted it. I love being with you, and I want to spend my life with you, and you say you feel the same way. It should all be quite simple. But it isn’t—we’re in a mess, like you said. Even with all this love. I also know that it’s completely my fault, and we both know why. It must be pretty obvious to you by now that…”

  She faltered; he went to speak, but she raised her hand.

  “That I’m pretty hopeless, absolutely hopeless at sex. Not only am I no good at it, I don’t seem to need it like other people, like you do. It just isn’t something that’s part of me. I don’t like it, I don’t like the thought of it. I have no idea why that is, but I think it isn’t going to change. Not immediately. At least, I can’t imagine it changing. And if I don’t say this now, we’ll always be struggling with it, and it’s going to cause you a lot of unhappiness, and me too.”

  This time when she paused he remained silent. He was six feet away, now no more than a silhouette, and quite still. She felt fearful, and made herself go on.

  “Perhaps I should be psychoanalyzed. Perhaps what I really need to do is kill my mother and marry my father.”

  The brave little joke she had thought of earlier, to soften her message or make herself sound less unworldly, brought no response from Edward. He remained an unreadable, two-dimensional shape against the sea, utterly still. With an uncertain, fluttering movement, her hand rose to her forehead to brush back an imaginary trailing hair. In her nervousness she began to speak faster, though her words were crisply enunciated. Like a skater on thinning ice, she accelerated to save herself from drowning. She tore through her sentences, as though speed alone would gen
erate sense, as though she could propel him too past contradictions, swing him so fast along the curve of her intention that there could be no objection he could grasp at. Because she did not slur her words, she sounded unfortunately brisk, when in fact she was close to despair.

  “I’ve thought about this carefully, and it’s not as stupid as it sounds. I mean, on first hearing. We love each other—that’s a given. Neither of us doubts it. We already know how happy we make each other. We’re free now to make our own choices, our own lives. Really, no one can tell us how to live. Free agents! And people live in all kinds of ways now, they can live by their own rules and standards without having to ask anyone else for permission. Mummy knows two homosexuals, they live in a flat together, like man and wife. Two men. In Oxford, in Beaumont Street. They’re very quiet about it. They both teach at Christ Church. No one bothers them. And we can make our own rules too. It’s because I know you love me that I can actually say this. What I mean, it’s this—Edward, I love you, and we don’t have to be like everyone, I mean, no one, no one at all…no one would know what we did or didn’t do. We could be together, live together, and if you wanted, really wanted, that’s to say, whenever it happened, and of course it would happen, I would understand, more than that, I’d want it, I would because I want you to be happy and free. I’d never be jealous, as long as I knew that you loved me. I would love you and play music, that’s all I want to do in life. Honestly. I just want to be with you, look after you, be happy with you, and work with the quartet, and one day play something, something beautiful for you, like the Mozart, at the Wigmore Hall.”

  She stopped abruptly. She had not meant to talk about her musical ambitions, and she believed it was a mistake.

  He made a noise between his teeth, more of a hiss than a sigh, and when he spoke he made a yelping sound. His indignation was so violent it sounded like triumph. “My God! Florence. Have I got this right? You want me to go with other women! Is that it?”

  She said quietly, “Not if you didn’t want to.”