The Sea, the Sea by Iris Murdoch
‘Charles!’
Lizzie saw me coming and ran to me. I could see Gilbert smirking at the door of the pub. What was my role in this play? I felt myself being relaxed and smiling like a man in a dream who cannot remember his lines but knows he can manage impromptu.
‘Why, Lizzie, hello there, and Gilbert too, how nice!’
‘Charles, you’re looking all thin and pale.’
‘I am gratified to hear it, I’ve been ill.’
‘Ought you to be still in bed?’
‘No, I’m fine. What a nice surprise to see you two here.’
‘Hello, dear Charles,’ said Gilbert coming forward. His handsome self-conscious much-wrinkled face wore a dog-like look of nervous guilty imminent delight. If patted he would jump, bark.
‘Charles looks quite ill.’
‘Not still infectious I hope?’
‘No, no.’
‘We’ve been sitting outside,’ said Lizzie. ‘It’s quite warm in the sun.’
‘How nice.’
‘What’ll I get you, Charles?’ said Gilbert. ‘No, no, you sit down, you’re the invalid, I’ll get it. What about some of that cider, or is it too sweet for you?’
‘Yes, fine, thanks. Well, Lizzie, what a treat to see you and how delightful you’re looking.’
Some women, and as I said before Lizzie was one, vary in appearance amazingly on the scale from really ugly to really beautiful. Lizzie was up the beautiful end today, looking young and bright, like a plump principal boy, her hair blown into little screwy curls by the wind. She was wearing a long blue and green striped shirt over black trousers. Her face expressed something of the same Gilbertian dog-like uncertainty, with in her case an added air of apologetic impish confidence.
We sat down on the wooden bench outside the pub and looked at each other, I vaguely beaming and she intent and shining-eyed. I felt as never before exposed to the citizenry, but there were very few of them about.
I said, ‘It was kind of you to ring me. Are you just passing through? Forgive me if I don’t ask you to stay, I’m not feeling up to visitors at present.’
‘No, no, we’ve got to get back to the motorway, Gilbert’s going to see somebody in Edinburgh. There’s this play coming on at the Festival—’
‘Don’t tell me.’
‘Oh Charles, darling, darling, you do forgive me, don’t you?’
‘Whatever for, Lizzie?’
‘Well, you do, don’t you?’
‘Yes, if it’s necessary, but I’m quite in the dark. What a little mystery-monger you are! Ah here’s dear Gilbert with the drink.’
Lizzie and Gilbert had come simply to be let off. They sat staring at me and smiling, like two children wanting to be given a certificate of forgiveness which they could rush off with, capering and flourishing it in the air. They wanted me to love them and to remove a blot on their happiness. How carefully they must have discussed the matter before coming to me almost formally like this. They were like children to me now and I suddenly felt old, and perhaps I had significantly aged in the time since I came to the sea.
I had lost Lizzie but when, how? Perhaps I should have grasped her at the start. Or perhaps she really did like Gilbert or life with Gilbert better. Or perhaps in some deep way when I sent her off with James I had frightened her too much. Lizzie was opting for ease and happiness and no more frights, I could not blame her. And I knew that James had made a barrier between us. Although with James there really had been ‘nothing there’, that ‘nothing’ was more than enough. That had always been the way with James. He could spoil anything for me by touching it with his little finger. Perhaps my childish idea was indelible, the idea that James must always be preferred. Of course James had intended no ill. But the lie itself was indeed a fatal flaw. I had probably not lost James but I had lost Lizzie, I had effectively ‘strayed’ her, as I had wanted to earlier on. And, I found myself almost laboriously remembering, I had wanted to stray Lizzie because of Hartley. And I had come running out of the house this morning finding it intolerable to stay there for a second longer, because of Hartley. My illness had marked the span of waiting time and it was now over. Lizzie’s telephone call had been an unwitting signal, a summons to action. For me and for Hartley the hour had come.
And meanwhile I sat there beaming at Lizzie; and smile as we might—and perhaps she smiled innocently, hopefully, not realizing what had happened and imagining that she could still hold me and not hold me, have me and not have me, and all manner of thing would be well—the bond was broken. I recalled what James had said about it being my destiny to live alone and be everybody’s uncle. I said, ‘So you’re glad to see your Uncle Charles?’
They laughed and I laughed and we all laughed and Lizzie squeezed my hand. I had given them the licence to be happy and I could see how pleased and grateful they were. Everyone seemed to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed except me.
The cider was too sweet and rather strong and it was beginning to have its effect. My air of joviality was becoming easier, when the thought of Titus came to me almost solemnly as if someone had brought in a severed head upon a dish. James had been saying something about Titus which I could not remember. Causality kills. The wheel is just. I remembered Lizzie’s scream on that day. Perhaps somehow after all I had lost Lizzie because of Titus, because she blamed me, because it was all too much. How tightly it was woven, the web of causes. Lizzie was screaming with pleasure now. Well, she had to survive, we all had to survive. Titus was a stranger who had not sojourned with us long.
We talked for a while, chatting easily as old friends do. Gilbert had a good part in a TV series which seemed likely to run forever. They were going to have the house redecorated. Lizzie had gone back to her part-time hospital job. I was to come to dinner. They said nothing about Hartley and the discreet omission seemed to set the seal upon my separation from them, although it was hard to imagine what they could have said.
I asked the time, took my wrist-watch from my pocket and set it right by Lizzie’s. They said they had to go and I walked them to the car. Lizzie wanted a little hugging scene but I hustled her in with a pat. I think Gilbert wanted to kiss me. I waved them off as if they were the end of something. Then I began to walk along the street in the direction of the church and the road that led up to the bungalows. I had nearly reached the corner when someone behind me touched my shoulder, and I turned, shocked. It was a woman who at first looked quite strange. Then I recognized the shop lady. She had run after me to tell me that she had fresh apricots in stock at last.
As I began to climb the hill I felt very tired and heavy. Perhaps I should have rested for another day after my illness. Perhaps I should not have drunk all that cider. Perhaps Lizzie and Gilbert had drained my strength away into their vitality, their ability to change the world and to survive. They had taken away a piece of me which they would now use for their own purposes. Perhaps I ought to feel glad that other people could thus feed upon my substance.
I felt unprepared and undressed but the hand of inevitability was upon me. This was the meeting from which I would not be put off, begging and pleading for another chance. I felt my heaviness as that of an irresistible crushing weight. Yet I had no clear idea of what I was going to do. There was no blunt instrument and no taxi. But I had come to where I had never been before, the blessed point of sufficient desperation.
I toiled up looking at the gardens and the flowers and the garden gates. I noticed how different each house was from the other. One had an oval of stained glass in the front door, another had a porch with geraniums, another had dormer windows in the attic. I reached the Nibletts blue gate with its irritatingly complicated little latch.
The curtains were partly drawn in the front bedrooms in an unusual way. I rang the ding-dong bell. The sound was different. How soon did I realize that the house was empty? Certainly before I confirmed the fact by peering in through the curtains into the larger bedroom and seeing that all the furniture was gone.
I went back to
‘Oh excuse me, were you wanting Mr and Mrs Fitch?’
‘Yes,’ I said to a woman in an apron who was leaning over the fence from the front garden next door.
‘Oh, they’ve gone, emigrated to Australia,’ she told me proudly.
‘I knew they were going, I hoped I’d catch them.’
‘They sold the house. They took their doggie with them. He’ll have to go in quarantine of course.’
‘When did they leave?’
She mentioned a date. The date was, I realized at once, very soon after I had seen them. So they had lied about the date of their departure.
‘I’ve had a postcard,’ said the proud woman. ‘It came this morning. Would you like to see it?’ She had brought it out with her to show me.
I saw, on one side, the Sydney Opera House. Upon the other in Hartley’s hand: Just arrived, I think Sydney is the most beautiful city I have ever seen, we are so happy. Ben and Hartley had both signed.
‘What a lovely card.’ I gave it back to her.
‘Yes, isn’t it, but England’s good enough for me. Are you a relative?’
‘A cousin.’
‘I thought you looked a bit like Mrs Fitch.’
‘Too bad I missed them.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t know their address, but there it is, when people are gone they’re gone, isn’t it.’
‘Well, thank you so much.’
‘I expect they’ll write to you.’
‘I expect so. Well, good day.’
She returned to her house and I moved back to the path. The roses were already looking neglected, covered with dead flowers. I noticed an unusual stone lying half covered by the earth and I picked it up. It was the mottled pink stone with the white chequering which I had given to Hartley, and brought back in a plastic bag on that awful day. I put it in my pocket.
I walked round the side of the house into the back garden, and stood on the concrete terrace outside the picture window and peered in. The curtains had been left here too, and pulled across a little, but I could see between them into the empty room. The door was open into the hall and I could see the inside of the front door and a faded place on the wallpaper where the picture of the mediaeval knight had hung. I began to feel a frenzied desire to get into the house. Perhaps Hartley had left me a message, left at least some significant trace of her presence.
The back door was locked and the sitting room windows were securely closed, but a kitchen window moved a little. I fetched a wooden box from the otherwise empty garden shed and stood on it, as Titus had stood in order to look through the hole in the fence. ‘You stood on a box, didn’t you.’ ‘Yes, I stood on a box.’ I eased the window out and got my finger into the crack. Then the window came open, not having been properly latched on the inside, and I was able to swing my leg over. A moment later, panting with emotion, I was standing in the kitchen. A terrible quietness crept in the house.
The kitchen was empty, not entirely clean, and a tap dripping. Little rolls of fluff moved around on the floor in the draught from the window. I opened the larder, where there was already a trace of mould on the shelves. I walked about the sitting room and went into the two bedrooms. There was nothing, not a handkerchief, not a pin, no memento of my love. I went into the bathroom and looked at the stain on the bath. Then at last I saw something of interest. Beyond the edge of the linoleum, where it ended against the wall, there was the tiniest line of white. I stooped and pulled. A letter had been hidden, thrust in under the linoleum. I drew it carefully out and looked at it. It was my last letter to Hartley and it was unopened. I inspected it for a moment or two, wondering if it could have been opened and then stuck itself up again as letters sometimes do. But no. It had never been opened at all.
I was about to pocket it but decided not to. I tore it across into four pieces, stuffed it well down into the lavatory pan and pulled the chain. I went back and secured the kitchen window, then let myself out of the front door. The woman next door watched disapprovingly and even opened her front window and stared after me down the hill.
When I had reached the bottom and turned to the right into the village street, I suddenly saw a familiar figure approaching me. I was aware that it was someone I knew and was not pleased to see, just before I recognized it as Freddie Arkwright. Escape was impossible. He had already seen me and was bearing down.
‘Mr Arrowby!’
‘Why, it’s Freddie!’
‘Oh Mr Arrowby, I’m so glad to see you, I’ve kept missing you! I knew you were here. I was down at Whitsun and I hoped I’d see you, what luck to meet you now!’
‘Well, Freddie, it’s been a long time. How are you, what are you up to?’
‘Didn’t Bob tell you? I’m an actor!’
‘An actor? Good for you!’
‘I always wanted to be. That’s why I went after that job with you, but it was like a sort of romance, I didn’t think it would ever come real. And I loved working for you, it was great, all about London, all over the place, we did whizz about, didn’t we? Then when you went away, I thought “Why not?” and then when I got my Equity card, and I wasn’t so young either, somehow it always helped me that I’d worked for you, you always brought me luck, Mr Arrowby. You were so kind to me in those days, you encouraged me so much. “Decide what you want and go for it, Fred, it’s just a matter of will power!” I remember you saying that to me more than once.’
I did not recall saying this nor did it sound like anything which anyone would say more than once, assuming he had ever had the misfortune to say it at all, but I was glad that Freddie had such rosy memories. We walked down as far as the footpath which led to the coast road. ‘My, those were good times, Mr Arrowby, Savoy, Connaught, Ritz, Carlton, you name it, we were there! The old Carlton’s gone of course, but London’s still the best city in the world, and I’ve seen a few now. Paris, Rome, Madrid, I been there on jobs. I was in a film in Dublin a while ago, did we drink!’
‘What’s your stage name?’
‘Oh, I kept my name, Freddie Arkwright, it seemed to be me. Can’t say I’ve ever had any great parts, but I’ve loved every moment. All along of you, you were so kind to me, you encouraged me so much, and then everyone was saying, “Oh, you’re a friend of Charles Arrowby, aren’t you”, well, I wasn’t going to say no and it helped a packet. My, it’s good to see you, Mr Arrowby, and you don’t look a day older. Fancy your coming to live here, I came from here, you know, I was born at Amorne Farm, my uncle and auntie still live there. You’re retired now, aren’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘I can’t imagine ever retiring from the theatre. “No people like show people”, you can say that again! But you still come to London, maybe we could get together? I’d love you to meet my friend I live with, Melbourne Pavitt, ever heard of him? No? Well, you will. He’s a stage designer.’
‘I expect we’ll meet again around here—’
‘Sorry, I’ve been talking my head off, why not let’s go to the Black Lion and have drinks on the house?’
‘No, I must hurry back, here’s my turning. It’s been very nice to see you, Freddie, and I’m glad you’re doing so well.’
‘I’ll get my agent to send you some cuttings.’
‘Do that, and the best of luck.’
‘God bless you, Mr Arrowby, and thanks a million.’
I went away down the footpath, waving cordially. I might stride as a demon in the dreams of some, but in the mind of Freddie Arkwright I evidently figured, quite undeservedly, as a beneficent deity.
When I reached the house it was not yet two o’clock. I tried a little cold jellied consommé straight out of the tin, but soon gave that up. I took two aspirins and went upstairs and lay down on my bed and fully expected, as one sometimes does in acute unhappiness and shock, to become quickly unconscious, but instead I drifted away into some sort of hell.
If
I could not really think about Hartley, or not yet. The shock had been too great, or I may have been already surreptitiously guarding myself against too much suffering. And it was too as if, with a blandness which belonged to her youth, almost with a gesture, she had stood aside. She was constantly present to me, as if she hummed in my consciousness, but I did not concentrate upon her. I had sometimes felt, in my final struggle with her, that I wanted to rest; and now, quite suddenly, she had made me idle. But into the gap created by the finality of her disappearance came Titus, returning to me for his portion of my guilt and my grief.
The horrors of remorse abound in unfulfilled conditionals. I could not abate the proliferation of sturdy visions of happiness which knew not of their own futility. I would take Titus to London, he would go to acting school, he would come bounding in to see me with his friends, I would take him for long wonderful holidays, I would love him and look after him. Why had I not seen at once that this, the possession of Titus, my anxious fumbling responsible fatherhood of him, was somehow the point, the pure gift, that which the gods had really sent me, along with so much irrelevant packaging? That was what I should have grasped, that and not the chimera. I recalled Rosina’s prophetic words about Titus: he too will prove a dream child, he will fade away and vanish. Why had I not seized him and made a reality between us, given him my whole attention and taken him away from the ruthless unchilding sea? Of course Gilbert and the others would have laughed their cynical laughs, but they would have been wrong. The sacred relation of paternity can come into being, even as strangely as that, and holy moral bonds would have made me Titus’s protector, his mentor, his servant, with no demands made for myself. Perhaps this was an ideal picture. I might have been tyrannical, I might have been jealous, but I can recognize an absolute when I see one and I would have kept faith with Titus. But amid these thoughts as they rambled on there was always the picture, with its bright sea-light, of Titus lying dead, limp, dripping, with his half-open eyes and the hare-scar upon his lip.