Iris Murdoch - The Sea, the Sea

My watch had stopped again, but the sky had an evening look with a lot of orange clouds pierced by holes of very cold very pale blue. I went downstairs and made some tea and then began drinking wine. I began to think about Hartley but cautiously, as if trying out the thoughts to see whether they would drive me mad with pain. They had to be thought, I had to take it in. I had seen the empty house, the postcard from Sydney. I contemplated her, seeing her young bland face looking at me, now removed as if behind a gauze curtain. She quietly invited me to suffer. There was a great space now, a great silent hall in which this suffering could take place. There was no urgency now, nothing to plan, nothing to achieve. What shall I do with it, I asked her, what shall I do now with my love for you which you so terribly revived by reappearing in my life? Why did you come back, if you could not content me? What can I do now with the great useless machine of my love which has no wholesome work to do? I can do nothing for you any more, my darling. I wondered if I would be fated to live with this love, making of it a shrine which could not now be desecrated. Perhaps when I was living alone and being everyone’s uncle like a celibate priest I would keep this fruitless love as my secret chapel. Could I then learn to love uselessly and unpossessively and would this prove to be the monastic mysticism which I had hoped to attain when I came away to the sea?

It began to grow dark and I lit the lamp. I closed the window to keep the moths out. It dawned on me with a vague wonderment that it had not at any point occurred to me to take a plane to Sydney. I could not remember whether Ben had said they would be living in Sydney, but Australia was not all that large and I had friends there who would be delighted to join a hunt for a girl. I could search, enquire, advertise. It would be an occupation. But it was somehow clear that I would not do so, I had given up. Follow her humbly at a distance, simply keep letting her know that I was still there? How like a frightful ghost I might become then. No, I had given up and, as it now seemed, I had done so prophetically just before her awful final flight. Why, after that unspeakable tea party, had I simply sat around waiting, imagining she would ring up? Did I really think she would ring up? Did I really imagine that she would leap, at the last moment, down into my boat? Surely I must have known by then that she was incapable of leaping. And I thought, rolling my head to and fro between my hands in anguish, oh if only it could have worked somehow for us two. If only Hartley had been my sister, I could have looked after her so happily and cared for her so tenderly.

I could not decide to eat anything. I had no desire for food or any sense that I would ever want to eat again. I went upstairs at last feeling drunk and sick. The bead curtain was jangling in some sea wind which was getting in somehow. There was a small moon racing through ragged clouds and the speed of it made me feel giddy. Perhaps she had to love Ben, hers was a loving nature and she had no alternative, no other possible object. She had wanted to love Titus but Ben had destroyed her love for Titus and in doing so destroyed her. What I had seen was a shell, a husk, a dead woman, a dead thing. Yet this was just the thing which I had so dearly wished to inhabit, to reanimate, to cherish. I took three sleeping pills. As I was falling asleep I wondered, why did she keep the letter, even though she did not read it? Why did she put the stone in the garden where I would be sure to see it? Were these, after all, hopeful signs?

I woke rather late the next morning and established from the telephone that it was nine thirty. I had a headache. I went into the kitchen and fell over the hip bath which was still standing there half full of water. I managed to empty the bath, half over the slates and half onto the lawn, and to put it back under the stairs. I tried to eat some biscuits but they had become soft and curiously wet. There was no bread and no butter and no milk. In any case I was not hungry. I thought of going shopping but I was not sure what day it was. I thought I heard distant church bells, so it might be Sunday. In a rather abstract way I wondered if I should not go to London. However I had no particular motive for going there. There was no one I wanted to see and nothing I wanted to do.

I walked out to the road to look at the weather. It was warmer and more blue. I noticed some letters in Gilbert’s clever basket. The strike or holiday or whatever it was was evidently over. Of course there was no letter from Hartley, but there was one from Lizzie. I took the letters into the little red room and sat at the table.

My dear, I am unhappy about our meeting. You were generous and sweet but I wish I had seen you alone. All that laughing was somehow awful. What were you really thinking? I feel I am somehow in the wrong, but you must put me in the right. Love me, Charles, love me enough. Since your letter I have been reliving my love for you like an inoculation, not to be ‘cured’, never that, but so that I can love you properly at last, and not just be stupidly ‘in love’. Love matters, not ‘in love’. Let there be no more partings now, Charles, no more mean possessive passions and scheming. Let there be peace between us now forever, we are no longer young. Please, my darling.

Lizzie.

P.S. Come and see us soon in London.

What a touching letter, ending with an invitation from ‘us’! And ‘I am in the wrong but you must put me in the right.’ Typical Lizzie. I opened another letter. It was from Rosemary Ashe.

Dearest Charles,

This is just to bring you the sad news that Sidney and I have split up. He wants a divorce. We are being peaceful about it all for the sake of the children and they don’t seem to mind too much. It’s a younger actress of course, our occupational hazard-that, and the transatlantic atmosphere which seems to have driven Sidney mad. Perhaps it’s temporary, I haven’t given up hope, only hoping is so painful. I’m coming home and I long to see you. May I visit you in your lovely peaceful house by the sea? That’s just what I need.

Much love,

Rosemary.

So much for the ideal marriage. I had better start polishing up my celibate uncle role. I opened another letter and for some time could not think who it was from, even though I could easily read the signature, Angela Godwin.

Dear Charles,

Listen, it’s me. And listen carefully. You don’t have to put up with the old ones, why should you? Maybe you thought you couldn’t get a young one? But you don’t look your age, you know. You don’t have to have old bags like Lizzie Scherer and Rosina Vamburgh, why should you when you can have ME? I do rather like Rosina, though, at least she’s clever, and things are decenter at home since Pam went so don’t think I regard you as an escape route, I don’t! I’ve been thinking a lot these last months and I think I’ve changed a lot and come to terms with myself at last. I’ve been thinking about my identity. I don’t yet know what I’m going to do with my life, not acting, so you needn’t think I’m after that either! I’m good at maths and I think I may become a physicist, I’m doing the Cambridge exam in the autumn. Anyhow I shall jolly well be somebody. The reason for this letter? I have had an idea of genius. That night you came to see Peregrine I was (of course) listening at the door and I heard him say how you wanted a son, or maybe you said it, I forget, but anyway it stayed in my mind. Now comes the idea. Why shouldn’t I give you one? He could be yours, I wouldn’t want to hog him. I mean I’d visit him and that. I don’t see myself tied with a child just yet, we could have a nurse. Besides I shall be jolly busy at Cambridge. And of course I’m not proposing marriage.