Iris Murdoch - The Sea, the Sea

I felt suddenly very uneasy and decided to lock the door onto the lawn. As I moved to it, with my back to the candle, I could see the scene outside dimly through the window. I stopped with a sharp pang of fright, seeing a dark figure standing near to the door, between the house and the rocks. Then the next second I somehow realized that it was James. We looked at each other through the glass. Instead of opening the door I turned back, picked up the candle, and went out into the hall to find one of the oil lamps. I lit the lamp, blew out the candle, and came back with the lamp into the kitchen. James had come inside in the dark and was sitting at the table. I put the lamp down, turned up the wick, and said, ‘Oh, it’s you,’ as if I had not seen him before or perhaps expected it to be somebody else.

‘You don’t mind my turning up?’

‘No.’

I sat down and started fiddling with the hammer. James rose, took off his jacket which was spotted with rain, shook it, hung it over the back of his chair, folded back his shirt cuffs, and sat down again with his elbows on the table and watched me.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Mending this hammer.’ The problem was that the head fitted onto the handle all right, but loosely, so that it would come off in use.

‘The head’s loose,’ said James.

‘I have noticed that!’

‘You need a wedge.’

‘A wedge?’

‘Put a chip of wood in to keep it tight.’

I found a chip of wood (the house was littered with chips of wood for some reason), balanced it inside the metal hole and drove the shaft in, keeping the chip in place. I swung the hammer. The head held firmly.

‘What do you want it for?’ said James.

‘To crush a black-beetle.’

‘You like black-beetles, at least you did when we were young.’

I got up and found a litre bottle of Spanish red wine, opened it and put it on the table with two glasses. The room was cold so I lit the calor gas stove.

‘What larks we had,’ said James.

‘When?’

‘When we were young.’

I could not recall any larks I had had with James. I poured out the wine and we sat in silence.

James, not looking at me, was making patterns on the table with his finger. Possibly he was embarrassed; and at the idea that he might feel himself for once in the position of a suppliant I felt embarrassed too. However I was in no mood to help him out. The silence continued. This was getting like a Quaker meeting.

James said, ‘Can you hear the sea?’

‘That was Keats’s favourite quotation from Shakespeare.’ I listened. The beating sound had stopped and been succeeded by a kind of regular wailing hiss as the large methodical waves climbed the rocks and drenched them and fell back. The wind must have increased. ‘Yes.’

After another pause he said, ‘Anything to eat?’

‘Vegetable protein stew.’

‘Oh good, I’m sick of eggs.’

We sat on drinking for a while. James poured water into his wine and I followed suit. Then I got up to heat the stew. (I had thrown it together that morning as an emergency ration, it keeps well.) As I did so I reflected that the machine which I had ingeniously constructed to separate myself from my cousin forever did not seem to be working very well.

‘Bread?’

‘Yes, please.’

‘Hell, there’s no bread, only biscuits.’

‘OK, anything.’

We settled down to the stew.

‘When are you coming back to London?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know.’

‘What about Hartley?’

‘What about her?’

‘Any news, views?’

‘No.’

‘You’ve given up?’

‘No.’

‘Seen her?’

‘I had tea with her and Ben.’

‘What was it like?’

‘Polite. More wine?’

‘Thank you.’

I was afraid that James was going to pester me with more questions, but he did not, he seemed to have lost interest. With an air now of generalizing he said, ‘I think you’re nearly through, out of it. You’ve built a cage of needs and installed her in an empty space in the middle. The strong feelings are all around her-vanity, jealousy, revenge, your love for your youth-they aren’t focused on her, they don’t touch her. She seems to be their prisoner, but really you don’t harm her at all. You are using her image, a doll, a simulacrum, it’s an exorcism. Soon you will start seeing her as a wicked enchantress. Then you will have nothing to do except forgive her and that will be within your capacity.’

‘Thank you-but as it happens I don’t love her image, I love her, even what’s awful.’

‘Her preferring him to you? That would be a feat.’

‘No, wreckage, carnage, what’s in her mind.’

‘Well, what is in her mind? Perhaps she was simply bound to your memory by a sense of guilt. When you released her from it she was grateful, but then her own resentment was set free, her memories of how tiresome you were perhaps, and after that she could revert to a state of indifference. Any cheese?’

‘James, you understand absolutely nothing here. And I have not given up, nor am I nearly, as you put it, out or through!’

‘It may even be your destiny to live alone and be everybody’s uncle like a celibate priest, there are worse ends. Any cheese?’

‘I’m not ending just yet I hope! Yes, there is cheese.’ I set out the cheese and opened another bottle of wine.

‘By the way,’ said James, ‘I hope you believed what I said to you about Lizzie?’

I filled our glasses. ‘I can believe it was all her idea and you had to be a gent about it.’

James sat for a moment concentrating. I guessed that he was wondering whether to start again on details about how often they had met and so on. I decided it didn’t matter. I believed him. ‘It doesn’t matter. I believe you.’

‘I’m sorry it happened,’ he said. It was not exactly an apology.

‘OK. OK now.’

James returned to making patterns on the table and I felt embarrassed again. I said rather awkwardly, ‘Well, tell me about yourself, what are you up to?’

‘I’m going away-’

‘Aha, so you said, you said you were going on a journey. To where there are mountains maybe, and snow maybe, and demons in and out of boxes maybe?’

‘Who knows? You’re a sea man. I’m a mountain man.’

‘The sea is clean. The mountains are high. I think I am becoming drunk.’

‘The sea is not all that clean,’ said James. ‘Did you know that dolphins sometimes commit suicide by leaping onto the land because they’re so tormented by parasites?’

‘I wish you hadn’t told me that. Dolphins are such good beasts. So even they have their attendant demons. Well, you’re off are you, let me know when you’re back.’

‘I’ll do that thing.’

‘I can’t understand your attitude to Tibet.’

‘To Tibet?’

‘Yes, oddly enough! Surely it was just a primitive superstitious mediaeval tyranny.’

‘Of course it was a primitive superstitious mediaeval tyranny,’ said James, ‘who’s disputing that?’

‘You seem to be. You seem to regard it as a lost Buddhist paradise. ’ I had never ventured to say anything like this to James before, it must have been the drink.

‘I don’t regard it as a Buddhist paradise. Tibetan Buddhism was in many ways thoroughly corrupt. It was a wonderful human relic, a last living link with the ancient world, an extraordinary untouched country with a unique texture of religion and folklore. All this has been destroyed deliberately, ruthlessly and un-selectively. Such a quick thoughtless destruction of the past must always be a matter of regret whatever the subsequent advantages. ’

‘So you speak as an antiquarian?’

James shrugged his shoulders. He was examining several moths which were circling about the lamp. ‘You have some splendid moths here. I haven’t seen an Oak Eggar for ages. Oh dear, I think that poor fellow’s had it. Do you mind if I close the window? Then they won’t come in.’ He deftly caught two of the moths and put them outside, together with the corpse of their handsome companion, and closed the window. I noticed that it had stopped raining and the air was clearer. The wind had blown the mist away.