Iris Murdoch - The Sea, the Sea

The immediate question however was a technical one. How to get her away? A long wait was now out of the question, since I must use my new power over Ben while it was still fresh. What I was beginning to envisage this time was not a kidnap but a bombardment. First of all I would write Hartley a letter. Then I would call with Titus. Why would Ben let us in? Because he would be guilty and frightened. He would want to see what we were up to. How was he to know that there was no proof? How was he to know there had been no witness ? On this I paused. Well, why should there not have been a witness? I could tell him there had been a witness! I could even ask somebody (Gilbert? Perry?) to say that he had seen what happened. After all, anyone might have done, and very nearly did! That would scare him completely. Why should I not blackmail Ben into letting Hartley go? If I could only make him say: go then. How near was he in any case to saying this? Did his long silence after the kidnap perhaps mean that he was in two minds about wanting her back? If he could only consent, the chains would fall and my angel would step out free. Or if she could see him revealed as a murderer, that might bring her the blessing of a total revulsion: horror, disgust, fear, in a more effectively violent form. If only there was some genuine clue. What on earth had I written on that piece of paper which I had so cleverly hidden from myself?

Yes, it was vital to act soon, before Ben should have time to recover. He must be in a state of considerable shock; although unfortunately he would by now know, from the silence of his radio and television sets, that he had failed to kill famous Charles Arrowby. However, and this was now plain, I could not proceed farther than my letter to Hartley while Lizzie and James were in the house. It would be unfair to Lizzie to expect her to witness or even assist the rescue of her rival. And James: well, James made moral judgments and confused me. So I would have to get rid of those two. Gilbert and Peregrine might be useful for a little while longer. And of course Titus…

At this point I began to reflect and to wonder if I had not, in relation to Hartley, seriously misconceived Titus’s role. Would Titus fit into the paradise à deux which I had lately been envisaging? No. That need not matter of course. People often had to separate conjugal and filial relationships. I would have a quite separate connection with Titus; and indeed he had already indicated that that was what he wanted. But still I had assumed that Hartley would want Titus in the picture somehow. Was this a wrong assumption? And at about that moment the young man himself came through the door.

I had not had a peaceful serious talk with Titus for some time, and I blamed myself. Quite apart from my concern with Hartley, I was absolutely committed to the boy, he was literally a ‘godsend’. It remained to be seen how far I could, with him, make sense of the role of ‘father’. I had by now been made aware that Gilbert, and even Peregrine, saw my relation with Titus in quite another light!

During my reflections the rain had stopped and between lumpy dark grey leaden clouds the sun was managing to shine upon an extremely wet world. The lawn was waterlogged, the rocks contrived to look like sponges. Upstairs I could hear Gilbert and Lizzie shouting to each other, the former up in the attics inspecting the roof, the latter in the bathroom mopping up the flood. When Titus appeared I decided to go outside to avoid interruption and ensure privacy. I was a bit stronger and the giddiness had not returned. But as he helped me slowly over the rocks I felt like an old person; and when we reached Minn’s bridge I could hardly bring myself to cross it. How had I survived that deep pit, those smooth walls, that ferocious water?

The rocks were beginning to steam in the sun. It was as if there were hot springs everywhere. We sat down on towels which sensible Titus had brought from the kitchen, on a rock overlooking Raven Bay, not far from where I had sat with James. The sea, although it looked calm because it was so exceedingly glossy and smooth after the rain, was in a quietly dangerously violent mood, coming in in large sleek humpbacked waves which showed no trace of foam until they met the rocks in a creamy swirl. The sun continued to shine although a grey sheet of rain now obscured the horizon. A rainbow joined the land and the sea. Raven Bay was a bottle green colour which I had never seen it wear before. I wondered for a moment where Rosina was.

We had made our climb in silence and a kind of silence held us still. I kept looking at him and he kept gazing at the bay. His handsome face had an expression of discontent, the sulky shapeless look of youth was upon his mouth. The hare lip scar was deepening, seeming to pulsate, opening and closing a little with some perhaps unconscious lifelong habitual movement. His hair was extremely tangled and untidy.

‘Titus.’

‘Yes.’

‘Can you call me “Charles”? Could you get used to it? I feel it would help us both.’

‘OK, Charles.’

‘Titus-I-You are very important to me and I need you-’

Titus worked at his scar, then put a finger on it to stop its little quivering. It only then occurred to me that Titus might have been reflecting on those ambiguities in our relationship which struck Gilbert so much, might indeed have been put in mind of them by some crude jest of Gilbert’s. I had not thought of this fairly obvious idea before partly because I had been distracted from Titus, partly because I had somehow spread over him a canopy of innocence which derived from the suffering Hartley.

‘Don’t misunderstand me,’ I added.

Titus’s moist discontented mouth twitched in a smile or sneer.

I went on, ‘I want to tell you something.’ I had suddenly decided that I must tell Titus about Ben’s attempt to kill me.

‘If it’s about Mary-’

‘Yes-’ I had not talked to Titus since the awful scene at Nibletts when the ‘delegation’ brought the erring wife back to the hateful husband.

‘All that makes me sick. I’m sorry, forgive me. But I just don’t want to be involved. I left home so as not to be bothered with muddles like that, I hate muddles, and I’ve had them all my life with those two, muddle, muddle, muddle. They’re not bad people really, they’ve just got no sense of how to live a human life.’

‘ She’s not a bad person, I agree-’

‘I can’t tell you how sick I felt when we went over to their place in the car, I wish to God I hadn’t come and seen it all, now I’ll never forget it. I felt so humiliated. Mary was being treated like a bit of property or a child. You mustn’t interfere in other people’s lives, especially married people. That’s in a way why marriage is so awful, I can’t think how anyone dares to do it. You’ve got to leave them alone. They’ve got their own way of hating each other and hurting each other, they enjoy it.’

‘If it’s so awful one ought to interfere. You mustn’t be so cynical and pessimistic.’

‘I’m not cynical and pessimistic, that’s the point, I don’t care, you think I think about it, I don’t, I don’t want to see, I don’t want to know, I don’t care a fuck about their bloody misery!’

‘Well, I do, and I’m going to get your mother out of it, I’m going to get her right out. ’

‘You tried, and she just squealed to go home. I’d have let her walk. Sorry, I don’t mean that. You made a mistake, that’s all, now forget it. Honestly, I can’t understand why you should want her, I mean I can’t see it, is it sentimental or Salvation Army or something-you can’t want someone like that, I don’t see it, I don’t get the point. There’s that woman Lizzie Scherer who seems to like you a lot, and Rosina Vamburgh-’