Iris Murdoch - The Sea, the Sea

And yet of course it was also at the same time a scene of carnage. (Why do I so much enjoy writing this down?) I told her from the start that I had no conception of marrying her. Was it blind stupid hope nevertheless which made her so infinitely kind to me? An ungrateful thought: I am sure she had no hope. I told her that the affair was temporary, that my love for her was temporary, and doubtless her love for me was temporary. I spoke of mortality and the fragile and shadowy nature of human arrangements and the jumbled unreality of human minds, while her large light brown eyes spoke to me of the eternal. She said, I want to be perfect for you so that you can leave me without pain, and this perfect expression of love simply irritated me. She said, I will wait forever, although I know… I am not… waiting for… anything. What a love duet, and how much I enjoyed it although in her suffering I suffered a little too. Certainly she concealed her pain as much as she could; but towards the end it was impossible. She cried before me with wide open eyes, not staunching the tears. Her tears fell on my sleeve, on my hand like storm rain. And when at last I told her to go she went like a shadow, with silent swift obedience. After that I went on my second visit to Japan. The taste of sake still makes me remember Lizzie’s tears.

She never prospered in the theatre after I went away. (All the ladies went downhill after I left them, except Rosina. Clement of course I never really left, even when we both had other lovers, which was rather horrid for the other lovers.) Two years after Lizzie’s apotheosis as Ariel they were asking, whatever happened to Lizzie Scherer? I was so grateful to her, and this alone has made her ‘last’ in my mind. The dear girl never made me feel guilty! A light of courage and truth shines on her in my memory. She is possibly the only woman (with one exception) who never lied to me. And the remembrance of her sufferings often filled me with a kind of tender joy, whereas when I think of the sufferings of other women I tend to feel indifference, even annoyance.

I wanted a wife once when I was young, but the girl fled. Since then I have never really seriously thought of marriage. My observation of the state never made me fancy it. The only happily married couples I know at all well are my Cambridge friends Victor and Julia Banstead, and, in the theatre, Sidney and Rosemary Ashe; and even they, who knows… People are so secretive. I might also count Will and Adelaide Boase, but they only survive because she gives in all the time, which I suppose is one method. What suits me best is the drama of separation, of looking forward to assignations and rendezvous. I cannot prefer the awful eternal presence of marriage to the magic of meetings and partings. I do not even care for sharing a bed, and I rarely want to spend the whole night with a woman I have made love to. In the morning she looks to me like a whore. Marriage is a sort of brainwashing which breaks the mind into the acceptance of so many horrors. How untidy and ugly and charmless married people often let themselves become without even noticing it. I sometimes reflect on these horrors simply in order to delight myself by thinking how I have escaped them!

In this respect Clement understood me perfectly, perhaps because she was always so excessively conscious of being ‘old enough to be my mother’. How often, glowing with that famous beauty and charm which she retained for so long, she battered me with that phrase! We knew that we would never marry and we knew that we would make each other suffer, yet we schemed for our happiness, we really used our joint intelligence on that problem. Of course in a way it was a hopeless case, but it was a hopeless case which marvellously lasted for the rest of Clement’s life, so I did not do too badly by that wonderful maddening woman. Was I a little cruel to her, never quite saying how much I loved her, always trying to keep her ‘on the hop’, puzzled, baffled, at a disadvantage? Perhaps. I was afraid of being ‘swallowed’. I went away, I came back, I went away again. She was not alone either. She was always beset. I was never terribly jealous, except perhaps for a short while of Marcus, because I had such a close connection with Clement, just as if (though I never used these words to her) she were indeed my mother! She became very irritable and possessive in the last years; and she went on so touchingly trying to please me. She could not stop flirting. When she was ill she became rather hideous towards the end and had to be lied to about her appearance. She lost her figure and went about in corduroy trousers and a baggy jacket. She looked like an old bachelor with drink stains and snuff all down her clothes. Yet still she would spend an hour a day ‘doing her face’. Perhaps that is the last pleasure which a woman leaves. No, I never considered marriage. That first girl made all the rest seem shoddy. Or perhaps it was just the comparison with Shakespeare’s heroines.

I am writing this after dinner. For dinner I had an egg poached in hot scrambled egg, then the coley braised with onions and lightly dusted with curry powder, and served with a little tomato ketchup and mustard. (Only a fool despises tomato ketchup.) Then a heavenly rice pudding. It is fairly easy to make very good rice pudding, but how often do you meet one? I drank half a bottle of Meursault to salute the coley. I am running out of wine.

Lizzie, yes. She has stayed the course. I have felt more passion with less comfort elsewhere: the mysterious deep half-blind preferences of human beings for each other, the quick probing tentacles that seek in the dark, why one inexplicably and yet certainly loves A and is indifferent to B. I was at ease with Lizzie, her gentle clever teasing made me feel free. Yes, the final question is, how much does one crave for someone’s company; that is more radical, it matters more than passion or admiration or ‘love’. And am I wondering who will cherish me when I am old and frightened? On the whole I am rather relieved that her letter can be taken as a simple negative. No more anxieties and decisions. I shall let the matter drift. As for Gilbert, that water fly, he is not near my conscience. I rather wonder at Lizzie’s touching belief in him. It is true that I could put a most terrible pressure upon both of them, but of course I shall not. No doubt I have done enough damage by simply reminding poor Lizzie of my existence!

‘Do you know what a poltergeist is, Mr Arkwright?’

Mr Arkwright allows a scornful interval to pass, while he slowly mops the counter. His silence does not connote hesitation. ‘Yes, sir.’ The ‘sir’ is sarcastic, not respectful.

‘Did you ever hear that there was one at Shruff End?’

‘No, sir.’

‘A what? What did he say?’ asks one of the clients.

‘A poltergeist ’, says Mr Arkwright. ‘It’s a-sort of a-’

He cannot quite say, so I come in. ‘It’s a kind of a ghost that breaks things.’

‘A ghost-?’ There is a significant silence.

‘You never heard tell that Shruff End was haunted?’

‘Any house might be haunted,’ someone volunteers.

‘Mrs Chorney haunted it,’ someone else says.

‘She looked like a-like a-’ The simile remains elusive. I leave the matter there.

My question to Mr Arkwright was not prompted solely by the fate of my ugly vase. Something rather frightful happened last night. I was wakened at about five-thirty, as it turned out, by a most fearful shattering crash down below. It was already daylight, but the hall and stairs are dark so I lit a candle. I went down, thoroughly frightened, I must confess, and found that the big oval mirror in the hall had fallen to the ground. The glass was shattered into tiny pieces. What is odd is that both the wire at the back of the mirror and the nail, which remained in the wall, appeared to be intact. I was so appalled and upset I did not stop to investigate properly, and I was afraid that my candle would go out. There was a surprisingly strong draught. I returned promptly to bed. This morning I rather stupidly pulled the nail out of the wall and threw it away without inspecting it properly. Of course the nail must have been gradually bent by the weight of the mirror until the wire slipped over the end. I feel curiously unwilling to reflect about the matter in detail. I am very sorry about the mirror. The frame is undamaged and it can be reglazed, but the original glass was mysteriously silvery and beautiful. It took me some time to get to sleep after the crash, and I left my candle burning in the dawn light. When at last I fell asleep I dreamt that Mrs Chorney had come out through a door in the alcove to ask me what I was doing in her house. She looked like a-