Iris Murdoch - The Sea, the Sea

The kitchen was empty, not entirely clean, and a tap dripping. Little rolls of fluff moved around on the floor in the draught from the window. I opened the larder, where there was already a trace of mould on the shelves. I walked about the sitting room and went into the two bedrooms. There was nothing, not a handkerchief, not a pin, no memento of my love. I went into the bathroom and looked at the stain on the bath. Then at last I saw something of interest. Beyond the edge of the linoleum, where it ended against the wall, there was the tiniest line of white. I stooped and pulled. A letter had been hidden, thrust in under the linoleum. I drew it carefully out and looked at it. It was my last letter to Hartley and it was unopened. I inspected it for a moment or two, wondering if it could have been opened and then stuck itself up again as letters sometimes do. But no. It had never been opened at all.

I was about to pocket it but decided not to. I tore it across into four pieces, stuffed it well down into the lavatory pan and pulled the chain. I went back and secured the kitchen window, then let myself out of the front door. The woman next door watched disapprovingly and even opened her front window and stared after me down the hill.

When I had reached the bottom and turned to the right into the village street, I suddenly saw a familiar figure approaching me. I was aware that it was someone I knew and was not pleased to see, just before I recognized it as Freddie Arkwright. Escape was impossible. He had already seen me and was bearing down.

‘Mr Arrowby!’

‘Why, it’s Freddie!’

‘Oh Mr Arrowby, I’m so glad to see you, I’ve kept missing you! I knew you were here. I was down at Whitsun and I hoped I’d see you, what luck to meet you now!’

‘Well, Freddie, it’s been a long time. How are you, what are you up to?’

‘Didn’t Bob tell you? I’m an actor!’

‘An actor? Good for you!’

‘I always wanted to be. That’s why I went after that job with you, but it was like a sort of romance, I didn’t think it would ever come real. And I loved working for you, it was great, all about London, all over the place, we did whizz about, didn’t we? Then when you went away, I thought “Why not?” and then when I got my Equity card, and I wasn’t so young either, somehow it always helped me that I’d worked for you, you always brought me luck, Mr Arrowby. You were so kind to me in those days, you encouraged me so much. “Decide what you want and go for it, Fred, it’s just a matter of will power!” I remember you saying that to me more than once.’

I did not recall saying this nor did it sound like anything which anyone would say more than once, assuming he had ever had the misfortune to say it at all, but I was glad that Freddie had such rosy memories. We walked down as far as the footpath which led to the coast road. ‘My, those were good times, Mr Arrowby, Savoy, Connaught, Ritz, Carlton, you name it, we were there! The old Carlton’s gone of course, but London’s still the best city in the world, and I’ve seen a few now. Paris, Rome, Madrid, I been there on jobs. I was in a film in Dublin a while ago, did we drink!’

‘What’s your stage name?’

‘Oh, I kept my name, Freddie Arkwright, it seemed to be me. Can’t say I’ve ever had any great parts, but I’ve loved every moment. All along of you, you were so kind to me, you encouraged me so much, and then everyone was saying, “Oh, you’re a friend of Charles Arrowby, aren’t you”, well, I wasn’t going to say no and it helped a packet. My, it’s good to see you, Mr Arrowby, and you don’t look a day older. Fancy your coming to live here, I came from here, you know, I was born at Amorne Farm, my uncle and auntie still live there. You’re retired now, aren’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘I can’t imagine ever retiring from the theatre. “No people like show people”, you can say that again! But you still come to London, maybe we could get together? I’d love you to meet my friend I live with, Melbourne Pavitt, ever heard of him? No? Well, you will. He’s a stage designer.’

‘I expect we’ll meet again around here-’

‘Sorry, I’ve been talking my head off, why not let’s go to the Black Lion and have drinks on the house?’

‘No, I must hurry back, here’s my turning. It’s been very nice to see you, Freddie, and I’m glad you’re doing so well.’

‘I’ll get my agent to send you some cuttings.’

‘Do that, and the best of luck.’

‘God bless you, Mr Arrowby, and thanks a million.’

I went away down the footpath, waving cordially. I might stride as a demon in the dreams of some, but in the mind of Freddie Arkwright I evidently figured, quite undeservedly, as a beneficent deity.

When I reached the house it was not yet two o’clock. I tried a little cold jellied consommé straight out of the tin, but soon gave that up. I took two aspirins and went upstairs and lay down on my bed and fully expected, as one sometimes does in acute unhappiness and shock, to become quickly unconscious, but instead I drifted away into some sort of hell.

If there is any fruitless mental torment which is greater than that of jealousy it is perhaps remorse. Even the pains of loss may be less searching; and often of course these agonies combine, as now they did for me. I say remorse not repentance. I doubt if I have ever experienced repentance in a pure form; perhaps it does not exist in a pure form. Remorse contains guilt, but helpless hopeless guilt which knows of no cure for the painful bite.

I could not really think about Hartley, or not yet. The shock had been too great, or I may have been already surreptitiously guarding myself against too much suffering. And it was too as if, with a blandness which belonged to her youth, almost with a gesture, she had stood aside. She was constantly present to me, as if she hummed in my consciousness, but I did not concentrate upon her. I had sometimes felt, in my final struggle with her, that I wanted to rest; and now, quite suddenly, she had made me idle. But into the gap created by the finality of her disappearance came Titus, returning to me for his portion of my guilt and my grief.

The horrors of remorse abound in unfulfilled conditionals. I could not abate the proliferation of sturdy visions of happiness which knew not of their own futility. I would take Titus to London, he would go to acting school, he would come bounding in to see me with his friends, I would take him for long wonderful holidays, I would love him and look after him. Why had I not seen at once that this, the possession of Titus, my anxious fumbling responsible fatherhood of him, was somehow the point, the pure gift, that which the gods had really sent me, along with so much irrelevant packaging? That was what I should have grasped, that and not the chimera. I recalled Rosina’s prophetic words about Titus: he too will prove a dream child, he will fade away and vanish. Why had I not seized him and made a reality between us, given him my whole attention and taken him away from the ruthless unchilding sea? Of course Gilbert and the others would have laughed their cynical laughs, but they would have been wrong. The sacred relation of paternity can come into being, even as strangely as that, and holy moral bonds would have made me Titus’s protector, his mentor, his servant, with no demands made for myself. Perhaps this was an ideal picture. I might have been tyrannical, I might have been jealous, but I can recognize an absolute when I see one and I would have kept faith with Titus. But amid these thoughts as they rambled on there was always the picture, with its bright sea-light, of Titus lying dead, limp, dripping, with his half-open eyes and the hare-scar upon his lip.

I experienced his eternal absence as something almost impossible to comprehend. He had been with me such a short time; and he had come to me as to his death, as to his executioner. By what strange path of accidents, alive with so many other possibilities, had he made his way to the base of that sheer rock where he had tried again and again to pull himself out of the moving teasing killing sea? I ought to have warned him, I ought never to have dived in with him on that first day; I had destroyed him because I so rejoiced in his youth and because I had to pretend to be young too. He died because he trusted me. My vanity destroyed him. It is a matter of causality. The payment for faults is automatic. I relaxed my hold and he lay dead. Such thoughts as these carried me at last into a wretched comatose slumber; and when I awoke I had forgotten that Hartley was gone and I started at once on my old activity of planning what I would do to get her back.