Iris Murdoch - The Sea, the Sea

Ever since those terrible days I have feared the possibility of an overwhelmingly powerful pain-source in my life, and I have nursed myself so as not to suffer too much. Possibly this is the deep reason why I have not married. What a queer gamble our existence is. We decide to do A instead of B and then the two roads diverge utterly and may lead in the end to heaven and to hell. Only later one sees how much and how awfully the fates differ. Yet what were the reasons for the choice? They may have been forgotten. Did one know what one was choosing? Certainly not. There are such chasms of might-have-beens in any human life. When I was confirmed I was determined to be good forever, and I still feel a ghostly illusion that I could have been. The image of Hartley changed in my mind from fiery pain to sadness, but never became blank. And in a way I did keep on searching for her, only it was a different and quite involuntary kind of search, a sort of dream-search. It was as if in my persisting memory of her I seemed to ‘body her forth’, the ways she moved, the ways she walked, as if a physical scheme of her being kept me always company. And so, and especially as the pain faded, I kept ‘seeing’ her, seeing shadow forms of her imposed upon quite different women; her shoulders, her hair, her walk, her puzzled fey expression. I still sometimes see these shadows. I saw one lately upon an old woman in the village, a transient look of her head placed like a mask upon somebody entirely different. Once or twice in London, long ago, I even followed these ghosts, not because I thought they were she, but simply to torment myself, to punish myself for still remembering.

A little while ago the thought came to me that she was dead. That strange pallor, those dilated pupils: perhaps these were presages of disease, of some quiet killer biding its time? Perhaps really she had died long ago when I was still young? In a way I would be glad to know that she was dead. What would my love for her do then? Would it peacefully die too, or be transformed into something selfless and innocent? Would jealousy, the jealousy which has burned even in these pages, leave me at last, and the smell of fire and brimstone fade away?

Even now I shake and tremble as I write. Memory is too weak a name for this terrible evocation. Oh Hartley, Hartley, how timeless, how absolute love is. My love for you is unaware that I am old and you perhaps are dead.

I ate three oranges at eleven o’clock this morning. Oranges should be eaten in solitude and as a treat when one is feeling hungry. They are too messy and overwhelming to form part of an ordinary meal. I should say here that I am not a breakfast eater though I respect those who are. I breakfast on delicious Indian tea. Coffee and China tea are intolerable at breakfast time, and, for me, coffee unless it is very good and made by somebody else is pretty intolerable at any time. It seems to me an inconvenient and much overrated drink, but this I will admit to be a matter of personal taste. (Whereas other views which I hold on the subject of food approximate to absolute truths.) I do not normally eat at breakfast time since even half a slice of buttered toast can induce an inconvenient degree of hunger, and eating too much breakfast is a thoroughly bad start to the day. I am however not at all averse to elevenses which can come in great variety. There are, as indicated above, moments for oranges. There are also moments for chilled port and plum cake.

The orange feast did not dim my appetite for lunch, which consisted of fish cakes with hot Indian pickle and a salad of grated carrot, radishes, watercress and bean shoots. (I went through a period of grated carrot with everything, but recovered.) Then cherry cake with ice cream. I had mixed feelings about ice cream until I realized that it must always be eaten with a cake or tart, never with fruit alone. By itself it is of course pointless, even if stuffed with nuts or other rubbish. And by ‘ice cream’ I mean the creamy vanilla sort. ‘Flavoured’ ice cream is as repugnant to the purist as ‘flavoured’ yoghurt. Nor have I ever been able to see the raison d’être of the so-called ‘water ice’, which transforms itself offensively on the tongue from a searing lump of hard frozen material into a mouthful of equally tasteless water. I am grieved that my lack of a refrigerator involves me in a marginal waste of food. My refrigeratorless mother never wasted a crumb. Everything not consumed lived to fight another day. How we loved her bread puddings!

I have reread what I wrote about Hartley and feel moved simply by the fact that I was able to write it. It is but a shadowy tribute; if I can bear to write more on the subject I may try to improve it. How strange memory is. Since I wrote, so many more pictures of her, stored up in the dense darkness of my mind, have become available. Her long legs bicycling, her bare dusty feet in sandals. Her lithe movement from crouching to standing, balanced upon the parallel bar in the gym display. The feel of her strong hands through my shirt, holding on to my shoulders. We did not caress each other in an immodest way. Our burning youth was docile to the chivalry of a pure passion. We were prepared to wait. Alas and alas. Never so pure and gentle, never so intense did it come to me after, that absolute and holy yearning of one human body and soul for another. But reading my story I feel again the terrible mystery of it. When did she start to turn away? Did she deceive me? Oh why did it happen?

I have spent the afternoon tidying the house. I carried two dustbins to the end of the causeway-I note with displeasure that the dustmen last time let some rubbish fall down onto the rocks below. I have had to climb down and collect it. I cleaned the kitchen and washed the huge black slates of the floor. They are worthy of a cathedral. A man came to deliver calor gas cylinders, rather to my surprise. (I had mentioned the matter in the Fishermen’s Stores.) I must remember to enquire if they can supply a calor gas fridge. The remainder of the ice cream has melted. My larder is still damp. I have lit a fire in the little red room and left the downstairs doors open. I moved quite a lot of wood into the downstairs inner room where I hope it will get dry. I am getting used to the smell of wood smoke which now pervades the house.

It has stopped raining and the sun is shining, but over most of the sea the sky is a thick leaden grey. The sunny golden rocks stand out against that dark background. What a paradise, I shall never tire of this sea and this sky. If I could only carry a chair and table over the rocks to the tower I could sit and write there with the view of Raven Bay. I must go out and study my rock pools while this intense light lasts. I think I am becoming more observant-I lately noticed a colony of delightful very small crabs, like little transparent yellow grapes, and some ferocious-looking tiny fish with whiskers which resemble miniature coelacanths.

I feel calmer now already about Hartley, as if the thought of her has been somehow mercifully absorbed into the sane open air of my home. This is indeed a test of my new environment. (‘You’ll go mad with loneliness and boredom’, they said!) All my instincts were right.

I would like to tell all these things to someone, perhaps to Lizzie. I left in store with that first love so much of my innocence and gentleness which I later destroyed and denied, and which is yet now perhaps at last available again. Can a woman’s ghost, after so many years, open the doors of the heart?

I DID NOT LOOK at the crabs after all. I became obsessed with the idea of carrying a chair and table out to the tower, and I set off across the rocks with the little folding table which I had moved from the middle room to the drawing room. This object soon began to seem absurdly heavy, and I found to my annoyance that the smooth steep faces of the rocks were too difficult to climb while I was holding the table in one hand. Eventually I let the thing fall into a crevasse. I must try to pioneer some easier way to get to the tower.