Iris Murdoch - The Sea, the Sea

James is now a general of course, I forget what kind. I suppose he too has been in a way a successful man. My own feeling that I have ‘won the game’ comes partly from a sense that he has been disappointed by life, whereas I have not.

‘A man would drown there in a second.’

‘Three seconds.’

‘A second.’

‘Three seconds.’

Example of Black Lion conversation and level of debate. The clientele seem to resent the fact that I go swimming in a sea whose killer propensities they are so proud of. Conversations of this sort arise as soon as I appear, not of course addressed to me.

I join in. ‘I’m a strong swimmer.’

‘It’s them that drowns.’

‘You swim bare,’ someone adds.

‘Bare?’

‘You swim bare.’

‘Oh-you mean naked.’ So I am watched.

They look at me with dull silent hostility.

‘Seen any seals?’ Mr Arkwright asks brightly.

‘No, not yet.’

I was sorry to observe, visiting the tower steps this morning, that my curtain ‘rope’ had also somehow come undone and vanished. I swam nevertheless. I think that my muscles are stronger and I am becoming more skilful at climbing out. I always manage to scrape or cut myself however. The yellow rocks, which look so smooth from a distance, have a rough scratchy surface, as if they were closely covered over with millions of tiny sharp broken-off limpet shells. Yesterday I dived from Shruff End ‘cliff’ at high tide and managed to get out all right, though a little anxiety spoilt the swim. I am certainly not going to lose face at the Black Lion by going along to the ‘ladies’ bathing place’!

Today there is a pleasant very light haze over the whole sky, and the sea has a misleadingly docile silvered look, as if the substantial wavelets were determined to stroke the rocks as hard as they could without showing any trace of foam. It is a compact radiant complacent sort of sea, very beautiful. There ought to be seals, the waves themselves are almost seals today, but still I scan the water in vain with my long-distance glasses. Enormous yellow-beaked gulls perch on the rocks and stare at me with brilliant glass eyes. A shadow-cormorant skims the glycerine sea. The rocks are thronged with butterflies. The temperature remains high. I wash my clothes and dry them on the lawn. I have been swimming every day and feel very fit and salty. Still no move from Lizzie, but I am not worried. I feel happy in my silence. If the gods have some treat in store for Lizzie and me, good. If not, also good. I feel innocent and free. Perhaps it is all that swimming.

How high-flown, almost pompous, I am becoming, now that I am a prose-writer! I know many playwrights who regard continuous prose as a sort of alien language which they could not dream of mastering. I think I may have felt like this myself at one time. And yet look at all the pages I have already covered! I have been looking back over my little sketch of James and it is quite stylish. Is it true however? Well, it is not totally misleading, but it is far too short and ‘smart’. How can one describe real people? James looks, in my description of him, so complete, so hard. I have omitted to say that he has little square teeth and an inane childish grin. Sometimes his mouth hangs vacantly open. He has a hooked nose and a dark complexion. Aunt Estelle was rather dark too. Perhaps she had Red Indian blood?

I must work harder on these portraits. Perhaps that is what this book will turn out to be, simply my life told in a series of portraits of the people I have known. What a funny heterogeneous crew: Clement, Rosina, Wilfred, Sidney, Peregrine, Rita, Fritzie, Jeanne, Al Bull… I must write about Clement. She is the main theme. How mad and bad she became at the end when she had lost her beauty and was losing her wits. And what a bitchy old bore she was, telling the same scandalous obscene stories over and over again. That terrible atmosphere in her flat, the smell of drink, the smell of tears and hysterics. Her deep sonorous drunken voice droned on in endless recrimination. Did I face it well? I think I did. Forgiveness and mercy were so ready to hand as soon as I knew that she was doomed. That sounds cynical. I always loved her; and we were rewarded. At the very end we were both perfect. Poor Clement. That is a dreadful land, old age. I shall soon be entering it myself. Is that why I feel I need Lizzie?

I am writing this the next morning. I was sitting writing the above late last night in my drawing room when something very disconcerting happened. I looked up and was for a moment perfectly sure that I saw a face looking at me through the glass of the inner room. I sat absolutely still, paralysed by sheer terror. The vision was only momentary but, although I cannot now describe the face, very definite. Perhaps it is significant that I cannot remember the face? After an interval of course I got up to investigate. The new oil lamp is easy to carry so I was not reduced to peering about with a candle. And of course there was nothing to be seen. I even walked round the house. I felt, I must confess, very odd. I went, with a sort of deliberate slowness, up the stairs to bed and took a sleeping pill. I thought I heard the bead curtain clinking in the night, but that is a natural phenomenon. A little wind has arisen today and the sea is blue and white again.

I have considered two possible explanations of my apparition. One is that it was simply a reflection of my own face in the blackness of the glass. But (unless I had unconsciously risen?) I was sitting well below the level at which I could have been thus mirrored. Also, the face appeared rather high up in the window, and so (a further thought) must have belonged to a very tall person or to someone standing on something. (Only there is nothing to stand on, since I have moved the folding table in here.) Another theory I shall check tonight. The window that gives onto the sea was uncurtained and there was an almost full moon. Could I have seen the moon reflected in the inner glass?

‘Everything is full of gods’, cousin James once said, quoting somebody. Perhaps I have been surrounded by little gods and spirits all my life, only the magic of the theatre exorcized or absorbed them? Theatre people are notoriously superstitious. Now we are all alone together! Well, I have never gone in for persecution mania and do not propose to start now.

I must soon go over to the Raven Hotel to get some more wine. I think I will stop talking about ghosts and monsters in the Black Lion.

Decided not to swim today.

I have been out shopping. The shop keeps promising lettuce but so far has had none. No fresh fish of course. I found some more letters in my stone dog kennel. Nothing from Lizzie. A communication from Peregrine Arbelow however. For lunch made my heavenly vegetarian stew of onions, carrots, tomatoes, bran, lentils, pearl barley, vegetable protein, brown sugar and olive oil. (The vegetable protein I brought with me from London.) I add a little lemon juice just before eating. With that (it is very light) a baked potato with cream cheese. Then Battenberg roll and prunes. (Carefully cooked prunes are delicious. Drain and add lemon juice or a dash of orange flower water, never cream.) If any one wonders at the absence of ‘eating’ apples from my diet let me explain that this is one case where I have spoilt my palate with an aristocratic taste. I can eat only Cox’s Orange Pippins, and am in mourning applewise from April to October.

I will transcribe as an introduction to him, Peregrine’s letter.

Charles, how are you getting on? We are all consumed with curiosity. No one admits to having been invited. But don’t you miss us terribly? Perhaps you have sneaked back to live secretly in your new flat, not answering the phone and going out at night? Someone said your house was on a lonely wave-washed promontory but that can’t be true. I see you in a cosy marine bungalow on the sea front. After all, how could you live without your liquidizer? I couldn’t bear it if you had really changed your life. That is something which I have always wanted to do but never could and never will. I shall die with my boots off, the bastard I have ever been. I have been drinking for a week after returning from hell, alias Belfast. Civilization is terrible, but don’t imagine that you can ever escape it, Charles. I want to know what you are doing. And don’t imagine that you can ever hide from me, I am your shadow. I think I shall come down and see you at Whitsun. (Someone dared me to and you know I can’t resist dares.) Various people would send their love if they knew I was writing, but of course it isn’t love, it’s insolent curiosity. Few are worthy of you, Charles. Is the undersigned one? Time will show. Shall I come and bring my swimming trunks? I haven’t swum since our epic days in Santa Monica. Another theory is that you are not in England at all but gone to Spain with a girl. To disprove which you must write. Your shadow salutes you.