Iris Murdoch - The Sea, the Sea

‘So it’s useful to know you’re going. You mean free to-?’

‘Just free-Nirvana-out of the Wheel.’

‘The wheel of reincarnation?’

‘The Wheel, yes, of attachments, cravings, desires, what chains us to an unreal world.’

‘Attachments? You mean-even love?’

‘What we call love.’

‘And do we then exist somewhere else?’

‘These are images,’ said James. ‘Some say Nirvana is and can only be here and now. Images to explain images, pictures to explain pictures.’

‘The truth lies beyond!’

We were silent then for a little time. James’s eyelids dropped but I could still see the glint of his eyes. I asked jocosely, ‘Are you meditating?’

‘No. If I were really meditating I would be invisible. We notice each other because we are centres of restless mental activity. A meditating sage is not seen.’

‘Yes, distinctly creepy!’ I could not make out whether James was serious. I presumed he was not. The conversation was making me feel thoroughly uncomfortable. I said, ‘When do you plan to leave? Tomorrow, I imagine? Apart from anything else I want my bed back!’

James said, ‘Yes, I’m sorry, you can have the bed tonight. I’ll push off tomorrow. I’ve got a lot of things to do in London. I have to prepare for a journey.’

So my guess had been right! James had not really left the Army, he was going secretly back to Tibet! I wanted to indicate tactfully to him that I knew. ‘Oh, a journey, of course! I think I can imagine-however, I ask no questions-!’

James was silent, now looking at me out of his dark unshaven face and his dark eyes. I glanced quickly at him and looked away. I decided to tell him about Ben. ‘You know-James-about my falling into that hole-’

‘Minn’s cauldron. Yes.’

‘I didn’t fall accidentally, I was pushed.’

James considered. ‘Who pushed you?’

‘Ben.’

‘You saw him?’

‘No, but somebody pushed me and it must have been him.’

James looked at me thoughtfully. Then he said, not at once, ‘Are you certain? Are you sure (a) that you were pushed and (b) that it was Ben?’

I was not going to be (a)d and (b)d by James. Nothing seemed to touch him, not even attempted murder. ‘I just thought I’d tell you. OK, forget it. So you’re going tomorrow, that’s fine.’

At that moment I heard a sound which I shall never forget. I sometimes hear it still in daylight hallucinations. It tore into my consciousness with its own immediate evidence of some frightful event, and the room was filled with fear as with fog. It was Lizzie’s voice. She shrieked somewhere out in front of the house. Then she shrieked again.

James and I stared at each other. James said, ‘Oh no-’ I rushed out, got entangled in the bead curtain and began to tumble down the stairs. I ran panting across the hall and then at the front doorway nearly fell as if a dense cloud of weariness and despair had met me and all but made me faint. I could hear James running down the stairs behind me.

Something extraordinary seemed to be happening on the road. The first person I saw was Peregrine, who was standing beside Gilbert’s car and looking along the road in the direction of the tower. Then I saw Lizzie, leaning on Gilbert’s arm, walking slowly back towards the house. Up near the tower there was a car and a group of people standing looking down at something on the ground. I thought, there’s been a road accident.

Peregrine turned and I shouted at him, ‘What’s happened?’

Instead of replying he came forward and tried to grasp my arm and detain me, but I shook him off.

James was now at my heels. He was wearing my silk dressing gown, the one that Hartley had worn. He too said to Perry, ‘What’s happened?’

I paused. Peregrine said, to James, not to me, ‘It’s Titus.’

James went up to the yellow Volkswagen and leaned against it. He mumbled something like, ‘I should have held on-’ Then he sat down on the ground.

Peregrine was saying something to me but I ran on towards the corner, passing Lizzie who was now sitting on a rock, with Gilbert kneeling beside her.

I reached the group of people. They were strangers, and they were looking down at Titus who was lying on the grass verge. But he had not been hit by a car. He was drowned.

I cannot bear to describe what happened next in detail. Titus was already dead, there can be no doubt of that, although I did not want to believe it at once. He looked so whole, so beautiful, lying there limp and naked and dripping, his hair dark with water, someone had drawn it away from his face, and his eyes were almost closed. He was lying on his side showing the tender fold of his stomach and the bedraggled wet hair of his front. His mouth was slightly open showing his teeth and I remember noticing the hare lip. Then I saw a dark mark on the side of his forehead, as if he had been struck.

I ran back towards the house shouting for James. James was still sitting on the ground beside the car. He got up slowly. ‘James, James, come, come!’ James had revived me. Surely he could revive Titus.

James looked dazed and ghostly. Peregrine had to assist him to walk.

‘Oh quick, quick, help him!’

By the time James reached the corner one of the strangers, they were tourists, was already attempting to do something. He had turned Titus over onto his front and was rather ineffectively pressing his shoulders.

Peregrine said, as if speaking for James, ‘Kiss of life is better.’

James knelt down, he seemed unable to speak, and motioned that Titus should be turned over again. There was a moment of confusion, several people talking at once, then the sound of a police siren. It turned out later that a car on the way to the Raven Hotel had taken the news on and the hotel had rung the police.

A brisk efficient policeman took charge, told us to stand back, began himself to attempt mouth to mouth respiration. An ambulance arrived.

James went away and sat down on the grass. A policeman began to ask Peregrine and me if we knew who Titus was. Peregrine answered his questions.

It appeared that the tourists, going to bathe from the rocks in Raven Bay, had seen Titus’s body being carried by the tide round the corner from the tower, and they had swum out and pulled it ashore.

There was nothing anyone could do. Men put Titus on a stretcher and slid him into the ambulance. Several cars had stopped. The police car went away, to go to Nibletts to inform the parents. The verdict of the inquest was death by misadventure. Titus died from drowning after a blow on the head. It was assumed that a wave had dashed him against a rock. What exactly had happened was never clarified.

However by then it had become dazzlingly clear to me that Titus had been murdered. We had to do with a homicidal madman. The hand that had failed to strike me down had succeeded in striking him. But I spoke of this, for the time, to no one.

Titus’s body was conveyed to a hospital in a town many miles away, and was there received into the merciful anonymity of cremation.

History

IT WAS A SHORT TIME LATER. Time had passed for me in a haze of misery and bitter remorse and the resolutions of hatred.

Gilbert had to go back to London to act in a television play. Lizzie stayed, and I got used to her unhappy face, reddened with crying. Peregrine stayed, but boorishly, almost angrily; dressed in tweed trousers, shirt and braces, he walked inland every day into the country near Amorne Farm, and arrived back hot and irritable. He was obviously wretched but seemed unable to drag himself away. Once or twice he drove Lizzie to the village for shopping. James stayed but was very withdrawn. He was gentle and considerate to me, but had little to say. We remained together, though we could not talk to each other, out of some sense of mutual protection. Of course they did not want to leave me alone. Perhaps each intended to be the last to go. It was as if we were all waiting for something.