Iris Murdoch - The Sea, the Sea

‘Lizzie!’

Lizzie levered herself up onto the sharp rocky crest, got one brown leg, already grazed and bleeding slightly, over the top, then, impeded by the full skirt of her blue dress, swung the other leg over, lost her balance and slid down the long smooth surface into the pool.

‘Oh, Lizzie!’

I pulled her out and hugged her, laughing with that agonized laughter which is so close to a mixture of wild exasperation and tears.

Now Lizzie, laughing too, was squeezing out the wet hem of her dress.

‘You’ve cut yourself.’

‘It’s nothing.’

‘You’ve lost a shoe.’

‘It’s in the pool. Can I have that one, or are you collecting my shoes? Oh Charles-you don’t mind my coming?’

‘You know Gilbert’s here?’

‘Yes, he wrote to me, he couldn’t help boasting that he was staying with you.’

‘Did he ask you to come?’

‘No, no, I think he wanted to have you to himself. But I suddenly so much wanted to come and I thought, why not?’

‘You thought “why not”, did you, little Lizzie. Did you drive?’

‘No, I came by train, then taxi.’

‘Just as well. There soon won’t be any more parking space left out there. Come on inside and get dry. Don’t slip again, these rocks are tricky.’

I led her back towards the house, onto the lawn.

‘What are those stones?’

‘Oh just a sort of design someone’s making. You’re thinner.’

‘I’ve been slimming. Oh Charles-dear-are you all right?’

‘Why shouldn’t I be?’

‘Well, I don’t know-’

We went into the kitchen. ‘Here’s a towel.’ I was not going to enquire what vulgar impertinent travesty of the facts had been offered by Gilbert in his letter. The thought of how the story would be told would have tormented me if I had not had greater troubles.

Lizzie was wearing a peacock blue summer dress made out of some light bubbly material with a low V-neck and a wide skirt. She was indeed thinner. Her curling hair, wind-tangled, blown into long gingery corkscrews, strayed about on the brilliant blue collar. Her pale brown eyes, moist and shining with the wind, with tenderness, with relief, gazed up at me. She looked absurdly young, radioactive with vitality and unpredictable gaiety, while at the same time she looked at me so attentively, so humbly, like a dog reading his master’s tiniest movements. I could not help seeing how different this alert healthy being was from the heavy confused creature whom I had allowed to be carried away from my house veiled and silent. Yet love seeks its own ends and discerns, even invents, its own charms. If necessary I would have to explain this to Lizzie.

Lizzie, sitting on a chair, had thrown off her sandals and crossed one bare leg over the other, hitching up the wide trailing blue skirt, half darkened with sea water, and was drying one foot.

James came in and stopped amazed.

I said to him, ‘Another visitor. This is a theatre friend, Lizzie Scherer. This is a cousin of mine, James Arrowby.’

They said hello.

The front door bell jangled.

I ran out, already seeing Hartley on the step, wind-tormented, distraught, falling into my arms.

A man with a cap stood there. ‘Laundry.’

‘Laundry?’

‘Laundry. You wanted the laundry to call. I’m it.’

‘Oh God, yes, nothing at the moment, thank you, call again could you, next week or-’

I ran back to the kitchen. Peregrine had arrived. He of course knew Lizzie, though not well. They were still exchanging greetings when Gilbert came in with Titus.

‘Darling!’

‘Gilbert!’

‘Is this your suitcase? We found it outside.’

The front door bell rang again. Would it be Hartley now? Oh let it be.

‘Telephone?’

‘You wanted a telephone. I’ve come to install it.’

By the time I had settled where the telephone was to be the company in the kitchen were all singing Cherry Ripe.

And they went on singing. And we got drunk. And Gilbert had made a great salad and set out bread and cheese and cherries. And Titus was looking so happy, sitting in the midst with Lizzie perched on the table near him and feeding him cherries. And I thought of that stuffy room on the other side of the village where Hartley was hiding her face and saying again and again and again, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.’ I took some more wine. There was plenty of it, purchased by Gilbert at my expense. Then when it was getting dark, and they had moved on from Abide with me to The day Thou gavest, Lord, is ended, we all went out onto the lawn. James’s stone-design had already been disordered by people tripping over it. I wanted to get Lizzie to myself and explain things to her. I led her a little way across the rocks and we sat down, hidden from the house. At once she gave me one of her chaste drying clinging kisses.

‘Lizzie-’

‘Darling, sweetheart, you’re drunk!’

‘Lizzie, you’re my friend, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, forever and ever.’

‘Why did you come to me, what do you want?’

‘I want to be with you always.’

‘Lizzie, it can never be, you know that, it can never be.’

‘You did ask me-you asked me something-have you forgotten? ’

‘I forget so many things. I forgot the windscreen got broken.’

‘The-?’

‘Oh never mind. Listen. Listen, Lizzie. Listen-’

‘I’m listening!’

‘Lizzie, it cannot be. I am committed to this very unhappy person. She is going to come back to me. Did Gilbert tell you?’

‘Gilbert wrote something. You tell me.’

‘I can’t remember what you know.’

‘Rosina said you were going to marry a bearded lady, and you said that you’d met this woman from the past and that what you’d said to me was a mistake -’

‘Lizzie, I do feel love for you, but not like that. I’m bound to her, bound, it’s-it’s absolute.’

‘But she’s married.’

‘She’s going to leave her husband and come to me. He’s a vile man and she hates him.’

‘And she loves you?’

‘Yes-’

‘And is she really so ugly?’

‘She’s-Lizzie, she’s beautiful. I wonder if you know what it’s like when you have to guard somebody, to guard them in your heart against all damage and all darkness, and to sort of renew them as if you were God-’

‘Even if it’s all-not true-like in a dream?’

‘There’s a way in which it must be true, it can’t be a dream, pure love makes it true.’

‘I know-you pity her-’

‘It’s not pity-it’s something much greater, much purer. Oh Lizzie-my heart could break with it-’ I dropped my head onto my knees.

‘Oh my dear-’ Lizzie touched my hair, stroking it very gently, very tenderly, as one might touch a child or a small quiet pet.

‘Lizzie darling, are you crying? Don’t cry. I do love you. Let us two love each other whatever happens.’

‘You want everything, don’t you, Charles.’

‘Yes, but not like that. Let’s love in a free open way, like you said in your letter, free and separate and not holding on like crazy-’

‘It was a stupid letter. I think holding on like crazy is the only thing I understand-’

‘But with her, with Hartley-it’s like something eternal that’s always existed, something far greater than either of us. She will come to me, she has got to. She has always been with me and she is coming home to herself. I feel in such an odd way that my retiring, my coming here, was all a sort of giving up the world just for her. I gave her the meaning of my life long ago, I gave it to her and she still has it. Even if she doesn’t know she has it, she has it.’

‘Just like even if she’s ugly she’s beautiful and even if she doesn’t love you she loves you-’