Iris Murdoch - The Sea, the Sea

After lunch I cut off a length of my rope and tied it onto the iron banister at the tower steps, and now it trails handily into the sea, moving darkened in the waves. I have knotted the seaward end for easier grasp. I have had less success with the ‘cliff’ for the simple reason that there is nothing here to attach the rope to. The rocks are too humpy and smooth, and the rope is not long enough to reach the house. Buy a longer piece and attach it to the kitchen door or to the post at the bottom of the stairs, and haul the long wet end into the kitchen every night? These problems too are not without interest. The rope itself is beautiful stuff, lightly burnished and smelling like retsina. I am told it is made locally.

I spent part of the afternoon lying upon my rock ‘bridge’, between the house and the tower, and watching the waves coming flying through beneath me and killing themselves in fits of rage in the deep enclosed rocky area on the inland side. The sight of the rushing foaming water made me feel, after a while, almost light-headed, as if I might have become giddy and fallen in. Most enjoyable. I am a bit dismayed however to find, from studying the picture postcards in the shop, that my bridge and its whirlpool are well-known local features. Fortunately the cards seemed rather old and crumpled, and I bought up the entire stock for less than a pound. I want no trippers here seeking for a ‘beauty spot’. In fact the ‘bridge’ is nothing much, just a hump of rock with a hole in it and an open pit beyond. At certain states of the tide the water, forcing itself through, produces a loud hollow report; I hope this does not draw attention to the place. I learnt from the cards that the enclosed whirlpool is called ‘Minn’s cauldron’. I asked the shop lady who Minn was, but she did not know.

Statements made by distant church bells remind me it is Sunday. Today the sky has become cloudy. I have been watching the clouds and it occurs to me that I have never done this in my life before, simply sit and watch clouds. As a child I would have been far too anxious to ‘waste time’ in this way. And my mother would have stopped me. As I write this I am sitting on my plot of grass behind the house where I have put a chair, cushions, rugs. It is evening. Thick lumpy slate-blue clouds, their bulges lit up to a lighter blue, move slowly across a sky of muddy and yet brilliant gold, a sort of dulled gilt effect. At the horizon there is a light glittering slightly jagged silver line, like modern jewellery. Beneath it the sea is a live choppy lyrical goldeny-brown, jumping with white flecks. The air is warm. Another happy day. (‘Whatever will you do down there?’ they asked.)

In a quiet surreptitious way I am feeling very pleased with myself.

Another day. I have decided not to put dates as they break up the sense of a continuous meditation. I have been rereading the opening pages of my autobiography! How full, for me at any rate, of frightful resonance those statements are which I have made, with such an odd and sudden air of authority, about my childhood. I had never thought of myself as being that much interested. I had intended to write about Clement. Do I really want to describe my childhood?

I have not swum today. I went to the tower steps in the afternoon intending to swim but found to my annoyance that the rope which I had fixed to the banister had somehow become untied and floated away. I am not very good at knots. In any case, that rope is perhaps too thick to knot easily. It occurs to me that a long piece of nylon cloth might be more serviceable.

Felt a little depressed but was cheered up by supper: spaghetti with a little butter and dried basil. (Basil is of course the king of herbs.) Then spring cabbage cooked slowly with dill. Boiled onions served with bran, herbs, soya oil and tomatoes, with one egg beaten in. With these a slice or two of cold tinned corned beef. (Meat is really just an excuse for eating vegetables.) I drank a bottle of retsina in honour of the undeserving rope.

It is now late at night and I am sitting upstairs, with one of my old oil lamps and the new lamp. The new one gives a less beautiful light but it is easier to carry. I must get more of these lamps, though I suppose I shall never be able to dispense with candles. Mrs Chorney left me about a dozen candlesticks, handy though not things of beauty, and I have placed these, complete with candles and matches, at strategic positions throughout the house. The smell of the new lamp reminds me of Fritzie. I shall now continue my autobiography.

I was born at Stratford-upon-Avon. Or to be exact, near it, or to be more exact, in the Forest of Arden. I grew up in leafy central England, as far as it is possible to be in this island from the sea. I did not see the sea until I was fourteen. Of course I owe my whole life to Shakespeare. If I had not lived close to a great theatre, indeed close to that great theatre, I would never have managed to see any plays. My parents never went to the theatre, my mother positively disapproved of it. There was little enough spare money for ‘going out’ anywhere, and we never went out. I did not go to a restaurant until after I left school. I did not enter a hotel till later still. For holidays we went to Shaxton, or to Ramsdens or to the farm where my mother had worked as a secretary. I would never have gone to a theatre at all if it had not been that Shakespeare was ‘work’. A master at the school was Shakespeare-mad. That man too made my life. His name was Mr McDowell. We went to the plays often, we saw everything. Sometimes Mr McDowell paid for me. And of course we acted plays too. Mr McDowell was stage-struck, an actor manqué. I became his stage-struck pet. (It was he who took me and some other boys to the sea in Wales for a week. I think this was one of the most important and happy weeks I have ever spent. ‘Happy’ hardly expresses it. I was nearly insane with joy the whole time.) My mother accepted the theatre-going because it was ‘part of my school work’. I even cunningly pretended that I did not really enjoy it: it was just necessary for my exam. Wicked lying little boy. I was in heaven. My father knew, but we would never have confessed to each other that we were deceiving my mother.

My father was a quiet bookish man and somehow the gentlest being I have ever encountered. I do not mean he was timid, though I suppose he was timid. He had a positive moral quality of gentleness. I can picture him now so clearly, bending down with his perpetual nervous smile to pick up a spider on a piece of paper and put it carefully out of the window or into some corner of the house where it would not be disturbed. I was his comrade, his reading companion, possibly the only person with whom he ever had a serious conversation. I always felt that we were in the same boat, adventuring along together. We read the same books and discussed them: children’s books, adventure stories, then novels, history, biography, poetry, Shakespeare. We enjoyed and craved for each other’s company. What a test that is: more than devotion, admiration, passion. If you long and long for someone’s company you love them. I remember feeling in later life that no one else ever knew how good my father was; I doubt if even my mother knew. Of course I loved my mother too, but she had a hard line in her where my father had none. She believed in a just God. Perhaps this belief supported her through what may have proved a somewhat disappointing life.

The trouble with my parents, at least from my point of view, was that they did not want to go anywhere or do anything. My mother disapproved of going anywhere or doing anything, partly because this involved spending money, and partly because of the worldly vanities which any such removal might lead us to encounter. My father did not want to go anywhere or do anything, partly because my mother was against it, and partly because of his timidity and a certain indolence of character. I may have made it sound as if my father was a sad man but this was not so. He understood the pleasures of the simple life and how to look forward to little treats. He did his dull office work diligently I am sure, and did odd jobs about the house with zeal. He enjoyed his reading which, when he was not partaking in my education, tended to be novels and adventure stories. I can remember him, when he was fatally ill, reading Treasure Island with a magnifying glass. He loved and cherished my mother and me. And there his world ended. He was not interested in politics or travel or any form of entertainment, or even any form of art other than literature. He had no friends (except me). It may be mentioned that he liked his brother Abel, though just how much I was never sure. He never entirely got on with my cousin James because he saw him as a rival to me. Aunt Estelle embarrassed him. My mother detested the lot of them, but behaved very well in spite of it.