Iris Murdoch - The Sea, the Sea

‘I happen to love your mother.’

‘Oh-love-you mean-’

‘You may be too young to understand.’

‘I suppose it’s natural for me to be interested in girls in a normal way. When you’re old I daresay it may be different.’

I was stiff and bruised. It had been foolish to come so far. I was feeling tired, weak and exasperated. Titus’s sheer youth, his unspoilt youthful hopeful strength annoyed me to the point of screaming. His long bare brown legs, covered with reddish hairs, emerging from his roughly rolled-up trousers annoyed me. I felt I was losing touch with him, might be sharp with him and then be reduced to making an appeal.

‘I’m sorry it all upsets you so. I partly understand. But I do want your help, well, your support. And I want to tell you something rather important about your father.’

‘About Ben. Not my father. God knows who my father is. I’ll never know. Look, don’t let’s talk about Ben, he bores me. I’m not happy about this thing-’

‘What thing are we onto now?’

‘This thing between you and me. Let’s forget about them. Let’s talk about you and me.’

‘OK. I want to talk about that too. Titus, I’m not trying to kidnap you. ’

‘Yes, I know-’

‘We’re free, we two, in relation to each other. There’s no need to define things.’

‘ “Father” is a definition, I should think!’

‘It’s an idea. Let’s just be friends if you prefer it. Let’s wait and see. You know there’s nothing sort of-sinister-here-you know what I mean-’

‘Oh I know that !’

‘I just want to feel that there’s a bond, a special relationship, a special connection.’

‘I don’t see why,’ said Titus. ‘Sorry, I’m being ungrateful-and I’ve been here and eaten your food and drunk your drink I know -but I’ve been thinking-after all, why should you bother about me? If you’d been my real father, great, though even then-well, anyway what I wanted to say was this. I’ve enjoyed meeting you, I’ve enjoyed being here, in spite of the horrors. Later on I’ll maybe think: that was a good time, yes, good. But I want to earn my own living and lead my own life and I want to do it in the theatre. I’m not a silly stage-struck kid, I don’t imagine I’ll be a star, I don’t even know yet if I’ll be any good at acting, but I want to work with theatre people, I guess that’s my scene. This place is fine for a holiday, but I want to get back to London where the real things happen.’

‘Don’t real things happen here?’

‘Oh-you know what I mean. Where does your cousin live?’

‘In London.’ Again the bite of the serpent of jealousy. Had James got Titus on a lead? There had seemed to be a bond between them from the start. I said quickly, ‘Please don’t talk to any of the others about, you know-’

‘Of course not, not a word, you don’t have to say that, for Christ’s sake!’

‘Good-’

‘The thing is, I don’t want you to feel any special obligation to me. If you have obligations I’ll have to have obligations. I don’t want to live here at your expense any longer, I want to get cracking. I don’t mind your helping me a bit if you like. Maybe you could help me get into an acting school. If I could get a place in a school I could get a grant and I’d be independent. Maybe it’s a bit of a fiddle to ask you to get me in, but I don’t mind fiddling that much. Then I can be on my own and we can be friends or whatever you want, but I’ve got to be on my own, see?’

How weak and helpless I felt before that brutal innocent free power. He would wriggle away before I had even learnt how to love him or learnt the trick of holding him.

‘Yes, I’ll help you into an acting school, but we’ll have to think about it. I’ll come with you to London later on. Meanwhile maybe you can help me here. But I want to tell you something about Ben, something that you ought to know. You say he’s not a bad person, but he is. He’s a wicked violent man. He tried to kill me.’ I wanted to impress Titus and to shake his appalling detachment.

‘To kill you? How?’

‘He pushed me in. I didn’t fall accidentally into that sea hole. He pushed me.’

Titus showed little emotion. He leaned forward scratching an insect bite on his ankle. ‘Did you see him?’

‘No, but I felt him!’

‘How do you know it was him?’

‘Who else could it have been? He said he’d kill me the last time we met!’

‘I can’t imagine him doing that, it’s not in character, it’s most unlikely,’ said Titus in a maddeningly bovine manner.

‘I was pushed! Someone pushed me in the back!’

‘Are you sure? You could have fallen backward on a rock and then slipped into the water and it would feel like being pushed. You’d had some drinks, you know. And the doctor said you might be a bit confused about the whole business afterwards.’

I felt too tired and wretched to go on. It was foolish to have walked so far. ‘All right, Titus, let’s leave it there. Don’t repeat what I’ve said to anyone.’

Titus looked at me out of his narrowed stone-coloured eyes. ‘You see it’s not so much fun as you expected, playing at fathers and sons.’ This was the kindest thing he had said.

I said, ‘I’ll help you about acting school. We’ll talk of that later. Now bugger off, will you.’

He got up. ‘I must help you back.’

‘I can manage.’

‘You can’t. Besides it’s beginning to rain.’

He held out his hand. I took it and he pulled me up, and then still held me. He said, ‘We’ll get to know each other one day. There’s time.’

‘There’s time.’

Hartley, dearest, listen to me. I want to say several things. First, that I am sorry I took you away like that and kept you with me. It was an act of love, but I now see that it was foolish. I frightened you and confused you. Forgive me. It was at least a demonstration that I care absolutely and am in earnest about taking you away. You belong to me and I am not going to give you up. So you will be seeing me again soon!

I expect you have been thinking things over since you got back and may now see them a little bit more from my point of view. After all, my darling, why stay in the land of unhappiness? It isn’t as if I were a stranger offering you someone and something you know nothing of. You said yourself I was your only friend! And you seemed, when you were here, almost ready to say ‘yes’-only you were frightened of him. Fear is a habit after all. But do you not feel in your heart now that you are changing? One day soon you’ll be able to do what you’ve wanted to do for years-walk out of the door!

And listen-I want to tell you this. I don’t want to take you into some grand glamorous world full of actors and famous people. I don’t live in that sort of world anyway. You said you liked a quiet life. Well, so do I. That’s why I came here, after all! We’ll go away, just the two of us, and live simply in a little house in a little place, in England in the country, near the sea if you like, and we’ll make each other happy in simple ways. That’s the life I’ve always wanted and now I’m free of the theatre I can have it at last, with you. We’ll live quietly, Hartley, and enjoy simple things. Can you not want that sufficiently to walk out of a house where you are bullied and unloved? And of course we shall help Titus and he will come to us in freedom and all those old scars will heal. We shall care for him. But what will always matter most is you and me.

Now I want to tell you something else, something rather terrible. Two nights ago Ben tried to kill me. He pushed me off the rocks in the dark into a frightful tide race. God knows how I managed to survive it. I’ve got concussion and am generally knocked about. I’ve been seeing the doctor. (But don’t worry, I am all right.) Attempted murder is not the sort of thing which one can quietly ignore and carry on as if nothing had happened. I have not yet been to the police. Whether I go to them or not depends on Ben. I should add, a very material point, that there was a witness of what happened.