Iris Murdoch - The Sea, the Sea

As I turned back towards the house I looked automatically at the stone dog kennel, where Gilbert had so carefully installed the basket to keep the mail out of the rainwater. I saw there was a letter in the basket. I went and picked it up. It was from Hartley. I put it in my pocket.

Lizzie came out first, carrying her handbag and crying. She started to say something to me but I held the car door open and ushered her into the passenger seat and closed the door on her with a soft final sound.

James came out, carrying his case and Lizzie’s, and stopped on the causeway wanting me to come to him, but I would not. I went round and opened the other door and stood by it. James came on and put the cases in the boot. He came round to the door.

I said, ‘I don’t want to see either of you ever again. You have spoilt each other for me with an effectiveness which I shall soon begin to see as malignant.’

‘Do not see it so. Don’t be a fool. What happened was accidental and forgivable. Just stop driving yourself mad with jealousy.’

‘I mean what I say. I don’t want to see you again, James, or you again, Lizzie, ever, between now and the end of the world. I shall destroy your letters unread, I shall close the door in your face, I shall cut you in the street. Don’t either of you come near me again. This may seem harsh, but you will soon see that there is a kind of automatic justice about it. You spoke about automatic justice, James, well this is it. You have, between you, made a machine and this is how it works. If you feel upset, I am sure you will soon console each other. I want you to be together. I shall think of you together. You don’t have to wait till I’m dead after all, you can hold hands now. As James is such a good driver you can hold hands all the way to London. Goodbye.’

‘Charles-’ said James.

I walked back to the causeway and began to cross it. I heard the door of the Bentley close quietly and the engine begin to purr. The car was moving away and the sound rose in pitch, then began to fade as it turned the corner. Then there was silence. I entered the empty house with my fingertips upon Hartley’s letter in my pocket.

I did not open the letter at once. Its presence there in my pocket was an absolute comfort. At any rate, I would feel it so for a time and banish fear. I wanted it to remain, for the moment, a thing, a simple object, a talisman, a magic stone, a sacred ring, a precious relic, something entirely protective and tender and pure. For now I had nothing left in the world but Hartley and her unspoilt separated being. Yes, James had always spoilt things for me. He had spoilt Aunt Estelle. Had I said something to him just now about Aunt Estelle? I could not clearly remember what I had said. My head boiled with feelings. My fingers touched the precious letter. My God, I needed salvation and I needed it now.

Yet even as I let Hartley’s healing and her peace stream into me in a race of therapeutic particles I was thinking in another part of my mind that in a little while I would be suffering the most frightful regret and remorse at having sent James and Lizzie off together. Why had I been such a perfect fool? It had been an ‘inevitable’ impulse of sheer destructiveness, the self-destructiveness of which James had accused me. I could have dismissed James, kept Lizzie, then dismissed her. Half an hour would have done it. I did not have to press them into each other’s arms like that. But I wanted to make what was terrible so much worse so as to be sure that it was fatal; like Hartley protecting herself by thinking I must hate her. I had sent them off together so as to make sure that I would never relent; and I had insured myself yet further. James would never never forgive such an enforced loss of face. Lizzie and James had, for me, destroyed each other, as in a suicide pact. I even suddenly pictured James with his revolver against Lizzie’s brow, then against his own. What truly demonic arrangement of fate had brought just those two together? Whatever might or might not have happened between them in the past, and I would never know, Lizzie’s hair would be spread out on James’s shoulder long before they got to London. What a trap I was in. But really I had been wise. The only cure here was death. They were both gone out of my life.

The house was curiously weirdly silent. I realized that for a long time now I had not been alone in it. What a lot of visitors I had had. Gilbert, Lizzie, Perry, James. Titus. His little plastic bag with his treasures, his tie and the cuff links and the love poems of Dante, was still lying in a corner of the bookroom like an abandoned dog. I recalled Bob Arkwright’s words. Titus had refused to be beaten by the cliff. He had tried again and again to get a hold on it and each time the strong quiet waves had simply pulled him off. Then when he was desperate and weary a yet stronger wave had dashed him against the rock. I went into the kitchen and poured out some of Perry’s whisky. A breeze was blowing in from the sea through the open door and I could hear the bead curtain clicking on the upper landing. I drank the whisky. Now everything in the world depended on Hartley’s letter. I sat down at the table. I looked at my watch. It was nearly six o’clock. James and Lizzie would stop for dinner on the way. James was sure to know a good restaurant. They would turn off the motorway. They would sit in the bar and study the menu. They would recover from their shock and feel liberated. No more secrecy now. It doesn’t matter who sees them holding hands. Oh God, if I had only told Titus, don’t swim there, it’s dangerous. If there’s any swell you can’t get out. Never swim in a rough sea, dear boy, this sea’s a killer. But the past refused to come back, as it did in dreams, to be remade. Titus walked in my dreams in the brightness of his youth, which was now made eternal. Or else I dreamed that he was dead and felt joy on waking. I took Hartley’s letter out and pressed it to my brow and prayed to her that she would save me out of the desolation and the wreck.

I looked at the envelope. I had not received a letter from Hartley, it occurred to me, for over forty years. Yet of course I had recognized the writing at once. It was much the same, a little smaller and less neat. I had kept all her old letters for a long time, then destroyed them all in a mood when it upset me (or perhaps exasperated me) too much to see them, then regretted this. I had of course already invented dozens of possible letters which she might have written to me. Charles, goodbye, I can never see you again. Or Ben has gone, whatever shall I do? Or Darling, I shall come to you, have a car ready tomorrow. I had already checked the number of the local taxi and placed it beside the telephone. I had felt the envelope and decided it was a short letter. Was that a good sign? At any rate it was not an incoherent inconclusive unburdening of the heart. I love you, but I cannot leave him, etc. etc. for pages and pages. Not that anyway. Had Hartley really made up her mind? What would we say, what could we say, when we met, about Titus? This was the overwhelming thing, this would perhaps decide all. How strange, how terrible, of fate to bring him to me and then to drown him. Would I ever mourn for him with Hartley? Whatever would this mourning be like, and whatever would it do to us? So I put off opening the letter. But of all the things I imagined, not one was what she had actually written.

In fact not a very long time passed. I stopped drinking whisky. I hate the stuff really. I walked all round the house, entering every room. I even climbed up to the attic and looked at the hole in the roof. The place was still very damp up there. Lizzie and Gilbert had put two buckets under the hole. These were both brimming full. I left them there. I searched the house as if I were looking for something, and all the time now I was holding Hartley’s letter in my hand. At last I threw myself down on my bed and began to open the letter as if I were a child and this were some strange treat which I had carried off to enjoy at last in secret. What spurred me to end the play of hopes was the thought that if I were to carry Hartley off effectively I had better book the taxi at once. And at the very last moment I fell into a frenzy because it occurred to me that I might already have delayed too long.