Iris Murdoch - The Sea, the Sea

The next morning it was still raining a little but the wind had dropped and it was less cold. A thick clammy pearly-grey mist surrounded the house, it was impossible to see the end of the causeway. I carried the dustbins, which had not been cleared for some time, out to the road, and stood there for a while listening. The invisible countryside was a vast silence. I came in again, wet with fog and drizzle, and treated myself to a long breakfast of porridge with tinned cream and brown sugar, poached eggs, biscuits and honey (I had run out of bread) and several pots of hot tea. Sitting afterwards with a rug over my knees, my hand encountered in my pocket an object which my fingers were unable to ‘read’. I drew it forth and it turned out to be Hartley’s slide, which I had pocketed on the night when she ‘ran to me’. I stared at the almost senseless little thing and tried to grasp it as an omen, but it just looked pathetic and filled me with sadness and I put it away in a drawer in the red room.

I resumed my rug and began to review the situation.

One consoling and clarifying thought which kept returning to me as I tried to imagine Hartley’s state of mind, was that she might decide to wait until the last moment before making a dash for it. Let Ben go to Australia. It was certainly his wish, his idea, not hers. She could perhaps actually brush him off forever by slipping away just as he was about to sail. Then she would leap, like Lord Jim, down into my boat. Ben’s impetus would be greatest when he was all set to go, and he might then very well say: to hell with her. This view of the matter was ingenious and plausible. But could I rely on it sufficiently to remain inactive, and could I and dare I endure that much inactivity without a firm assurance from Hartley?

I decided I could afford to allow a span of two or three days more for Hartley to reflect upon the letter which I had left with her. I was glad she had that letter and I imagined it working upon her on my behalf like a little resident imp. I recalled too that I had the wit to give her my telephone number. Doubtless by now the woodwork class would know Ben no more, but he would surely have to leave the house sometimes to go somewhere, to pick up tickets, visas, money; and even though he might take Hartley with him he could not supervise her every move. Surely she could get away to a telephone and ring me up. Very few words would be necessary: Wait, I will come. Imagining those words carried me over one or two bad patches. And the constant possibility of the telephone call made endurable the short period of sheer waiting which I had decreed for myself.

But supposing nothing happened… and nothing happened…? Then of course I must contrive to see Hartley, by some method yet to be invented, and even if it were to involve some sort of ‘showdown’ with Ben. There must be no more charades. The prospect of this perhaps decisive showdown filled me with a mixture of fear and pleasurable excitement, as I saw this as the final barrier beyond which I could, if I knocked it down, see my prize secure. The ‘knocking down’ image was not altogether a reassuring one however. At the very least I must be prepared to use force in self-defence. Ben was a more violent man by nature, which was psychologically a considerable advantage. He probably liked hitting people. He was younger than me, a burly strong fellow, but now getting fat and a little out of condition, whereas I was fit and agile. The theatre demands physical fitness and I had always responded to this demand with the scrupulous keenness of an athlete.

With a view to self-defence I searched Shruff End for a suitable blunt instrument. At any moment I might, after all, receive a visit not from Hartley but from Ben. The idea of killing Ben had not entirely left my mind. It was as if, contrary to reason and more calm reflection, a deep trace had been left in my mind, like a memory trace, only this was concerned with the future. It was a sort of ‘intention trace’, or like what might exist in the mind of someone who could ‘remember’ the future as we remember the past. I am aware that this scarcely makes sense, but what I felt here was neither a rational intention nor a premonition nor even a prediction. It was just a sort of mental scar which I had received and had to reckon with. I refrained, as yet, from planning. I vaguely envisaged the moment of ‘battering through’ as a scene of legitimate self-defence. And I searched for a blunt instrument.

It was now late in the evening of the day following my meeting with Perry and Rosina. A bit earlier I had felt a distinct temptation to walk along to the Raven Hotel and follow Peregrine’s example of drowning my sorrows in the bar. I felt a need simply to see a few ordinary human beings who were living ordinary human lives, having holidays, honeymoons, quarrels, trouble with their motor cars, trouble with their mortgages. However I feared to discover the Arbelows still there and I felt I could now do with a long interval before encountering that pair again. Perhaps I would go one day to visit the darling little theatre in Londonderry, but I thought it more likely that I would not. I did not want to go to the Black Lion because of the painful proximity to Hartley and because of the inquisitive dangerous hostility of the clientele and because I might run into Freddie Arkwright. Besides I had to stay near the telephone. Looking for a weapon was at least an occupation.

Mrs Chorney had left various things behind in the attics, which I had searched by daylight and in vain. I had found, lying behind the bath, a long piece of metal, perhaps for use as a crowbar, but it was too heavy and too large to be carried in, as I envisaged the matter, a mackintosh pocket. I had of course reviewed my own tools, but these were ridiculously scanty: screwdrivers but no chisel, and only a sort of little ‘lady’s hammer’. Now in the dark late twilight, I was searching with the help of a candle a space I had discovered under the sink which seemed to be a hiding place of various items. Probing, amidst damp rotting wood and a colony of woodlice, I found a thick heavy piece of metal which turned out to be a hammer head. The shank or handle, or whatever the wooden shaft is called that propels the head, was lying separately and I placed both items on the table.

It was now almost dark outside, the mist, more like a cloud descended, obscuring whatever light the twilit sky might still have offered. A small rain was falling, and although the wind was not strong the house seemed to be moving, shaking itself and twitching, jerking and creaking and stretching like a wooden ship. I could hear the window frames shifting, the bead curtain clicking, the front door rattling, and a little very high tinny vibration which I had, after some search, detected as coming from the front door bell which hung in the kitchen. I was also startled by a sound coming from outside, from across the sea, a prolonged repeated booming, not unlike a ship’s foghorn. I had never heard a foghorn before upon our strangely unfrequented sea; perhaps it was a ship that had lost its way and would, after an interval of silence, suddenly crunch upon my rocks with a most unimaginable din? The foghorn noise, if it was one, had ceased for a time; but now there was another sound, the peculiar regular slapping boom which was produced by the water racing into Minn’s cauldron and being abruptly forced out again. I put the candle on the table between the hammer head and the wooden handle which looked, oddly separated from each other, like ritual instruments belonging to some unfamiliar cult. I listened to the loud hollow regular noise from the cauldron and the force of it seemed to enter my body, it began to seem like a strong beating heart, like a strong beating of my own heart, and then like the menacing accelerating sound of the wooden clappers used in the Japanese theatre.