Iris Murdoch - The Sea, the Sea

‘Yes. It shouldn’t have happened.’ I moved on.

He called after me. ‘My brother Freddie knows you. He knows you.’

I did not turn round. Lizzie and I were silent all the way home. I decided I would tell James to go tomorrow, and I would despatch Lizzie the following day. I could not cashier them together because I did not want James to give Lizzie a lift to London. I felt I no longer needed her, and I could certainly dispense with him, and it was beginning to be intolerable to have them as witnesses of what I increasingly felt to be the punishing horror of my degradation.

I entered the house resolved to seek my cousin out and tell him to leave the next morning, when I heard a most extraordinary rhythmical shrieking sound. It took me a moment to realize that it was the telephone, whose presence I had forgotten. This was the first time that it had rung, and I immediately thought that it might be Hartley. Then of course I could not find the thing, could not remember which room it was in. I located it at last in the bookroom and ran to it with desperate hope.

It was Rosina’s voice.

‘Charles. It’s me.’

‘Hello.’

‘I say, I’m sorry about that wretched boy.’

‘Yes.’

‘Very sorry. Well, what can one say? But listen, Charles, I want to ask you something.’

‘What?’

‘Is it true that Peregrine tried to kill you?’

‘He pushed me into the sea. He wasn’t trying to kill me.’

‘But he pushed you into that awful hole where the sea churns about.’

‘Yes.’

‘Good heavens.’

‘Where are you?’

‘At the Raven Hotel. I’ve got a bit of news.’

‘What?’

‘You know that monster epic film of the Odyssey that Fritzie Eitel is going to make?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, he’s offered me the part of Calypso!’

‘That should suit you.’

‘Isn’t it marvellous? I don’t know when I’ve felt so delighted and so happy.’

‘Good. Just leave me alone, will you, Rosina?’

‘I am leaving you alone.’ She rang off.

As I came out of the book room I could now hear Lizzie talking to James in the kitchen. The door was shut, but something about the tone of the conversation struck me as odd. I paused, then went and opened the kitchen door. James, looking at me over Lizzie’s shoulder, said, ‘Charles.’

Prophetic terror pounces quickly. My heart became fast, my mouth dry.

‘Yes?’

They came out into the hall. Lizzie was red-faced, frightened.

‘Charles, Lizzie and I want to tell you something.’

Very fast does the human mind rush towards the most precise visions of disaster. I lived in two seconds through a long experience of mental torture. I said, ‘I know what you are going to say.’

‘You don’t,’ said James.

‘You are going to say that you have become very attached to each other and feel that you must tell me so. OK.’

‘No,’ said James, ‘Lizzie is attached to you, not to me. That is the point, and that is why I have got to tell you something which I ought to have told you long ago.’

‘What?’

‘Lizzie and I have known each other for a long time, only we decided not to tell you because you would be sure to be irrationally jealous. That is the matter in a nutshell.’

I stared at James. He looked as I had I think never seen him look in all his life. He looked not exactly guilty but somehow confused and at a loss. I turned round for a moment and opened the front door wide.

‘You see-’ said Lizzie, near to tears.

‘Let me do this,’ said James.

‘I don’t think you need to say anything more,’ I said.

‘You are leaping to conclusions,’ said James.

‘What do you expect me to do?’

‘Listen to the truth. I met Lizzie a long time ago at a party which you gave for a first night. I happened to be in London, I happened to come.’

‘For once. I think I can even remember the occasion.’

‘Lizzie remembered me simply because I was your cousin. Then at a later time, after you’d left her and when she was unhappy, she rang me up to ask if I knew your address in Japan-that was when you were working in Tokyo.’

‘I wanted to write to you, I felt I had to,’ said Lizzie in a choked voice. ‘It was my idea, I pushed him into it-’

‘But you met each other,’ I said, ‘you didn’t just talk on the telephone.’

‘Yes, we did meet, but very very rarely, perhaps in all those years six times.’

‘Do you expect me to believe that?’

‘He was sorry for me,’ said Lizzie.

‘You bet he was! So you met to discuss me.’

‘Yes, but only in what I might call a business-like way.’

‘Oh, very business-like!’

‘I mean, Lizzie just wanted to know where you were, how you were. We never otherwise discussed you. Our acquaintance was slight and it was impersonal and unemotional.’

‘That cannot be true.’

‘It was entirely concerned with you, not with Lizzie and me. And as I say, we scarcely ever met or indeed communicated in any way.’

‘He told me to stop bothering him,’ said Lizzie, ‘but sometimes I so much wanted to know how you were-’

‘James is the last person who ever knew how I was!’

‘Of course,’ said James, ‘we ought to have told you long ago that we knew each other slightly. But the nature of the acquaintance was likely to irritate you. I know, if you will forgive my saying so, what an insanely jealous disposition you have.’

‘You have been at pains to make clear that I had left Lizzie at the time your acquaintance ripened-’

‘It never ripened. And la jalousie naît avec l’amour… ’

‘That’s true enough.’

‘What does it mean?’ said Lizzie, who was still looking red and frightened and miserable.

‘Jealousy is born with love, but does not always die with love.’

‘But why tell me now?’ I asked James. ‘You could both have gone on fooling me forever.’

‘I should have told you earlier,’ he repeated, ‘it should not have happened at all. Any lie is morally dangerous.’

‘You mean you may be found out!’

‘It has been a barrier. And a-and a-’ he found the word judiciously, ‘ a flaw. ’

‘In your conception of yourself.’

‘In our-our-’ he searched again, ‘friendship, and-yes-in me.’

‘Friendship! Whatever it is between you and me it certainly isn’t friendship!’

‘And earlier I felt I must protect Lizzie.’

‘Of course!’

‘But now-lately-it becomes necessary to tell you, for Lizzie’s sake, so that there may be no impediment.’

‘Impediment to what, for God’s sake?’

‘To her loving you, to your loving her. Secrets are almost always a mistake and a source of corruption.’

‘And then there was Toby,’ blurted Lizzie.

‘ Toby? Christ in heaven, how does Toby come into this? You don’t mean Toby Ellesmere, do you?’ I asked Lizzie.

‘He saw me and Lizzie in a bar together,’ said James. He hated this bit.

‘Talking about me of course!’

‘Yes.’

‘And as you were afraid he’d tell me you felt you had to! Otherwise you’d have gone on and on lying.’

‘We would have told you anyway,’ said Lizzie. ‘We felt we had to. It was beginning to be a nightmare, at least it was to me. It seemed such a little thing to begin with, there was so little to it, and it just seemed sensible, not to tell you, knowing what you’re like. And you must understand, we only met sort of every other year for five minutes. And I very very occasionally rang him up to ask about you. Usually he wasn’t there anyway-’

‘Too bad. You were both spying on me. At least that’s how it started-’