Iris Murdoch - The Sea, the Sea

I climbed onward and sat on a wet rock overlooking Raven Bay. The sun was still shining and the seaward sky was still grey. The smooth foamless sea was rising and falling against the rocks with a gentle inviting rhythm. The longer shadows made the big spherical stones of the bay stand out, half dark, half gleaming. The long quite pretty façade of the Raven Hotel showed very clear and detailed in the odd brilliant light.

I was just getting over my annoyance about the table when I noticed a man walking along the road in the direction of Shruff End, having just turned the corner from the bay side. He was dressed in a smart suit and a trilby hat, and looked in that vivid landscape like an incongruous figure in a surrealist picture. I surveyed his oddity. Walkers on that road were even rarer than cars. Then he began to look familiar. Then I recognized him. Gilbert Opian.

My first instinct was to hide, and in fact I moved into the moist salt-smelling interior of the tower, under the bright round of sky, feeling a small unpleasant shock. However I could not seriously regard Gilbert as a menacing figure and it then occurred to me that of course he was bringing Lizzie; so I hurried out again and began to scramble over the rocks in the direction of the road. By the time I reached the tarmac Gilbert had seen me and turned back. We met each other, he smiling.

Gilbert was wearing a light-weight black suit with a striped shirt and flowery tie. When he saw me he took off his hat. It was three or four years since I had seen Gilbert and he had aged a lot. The mysterious awful changes which alter the human face from youth to age may gently dally and delay, then act decisively all at once. Gilbert in young middle age looked rosy and boyish. Now he was all wrinkled and humorous and dry, with that faint air of quizzical cynicism which clever elderly people often instinctively put on, and which may be quite new to them, a final defence. When I last saw him he still wore a fresh unselfconscious air of childish conceit. Now his face was full of wary watchful anxiety masquerading as worldly detachment, as if he were cautiously trying out his new wrinkles as a mask. Though podgier, he still contrived to look handsome, and his white curly hair still had a jaunty look, had not learnt to seem old.

I was wearing jeans and a white shirt which had escaped from them. Seeing Gilbert’s tie, his tie-pin, his (or was I mistaken?) discreet make-up, I felt a quick contemptuous pity for him, together with a sense of how fit I was, how hard. I could see Gilbert taking these things in, the pity, the fitness. His moist light-blue faintly pinkish eyes flickered anxiously between their dry layers of wrinkles.

‘Darling, you look marvellous, so brown, so young-my God, your complexion’-Gilbert always speaks in a rich fruity ringing voice as if addressing the back of the stalls.

‘Have you brought Lizzie?’

‘No.’

‘A letter, message?’

‘Not exactly-’

‘What, then?’

‘Is that funny-looking house yours?’

‘Yes.’

‘I wouldn’t mind a drink, guv’nor.’

‘Why have you come?’

‘Darling, it’s about Lizzie-’

‘Of course, but get on with it.’

‘It’s about Lizzie and me. Please, Charles, take it seriously and don’t look like that or I shall cry! Something has really happened between us, I don’t mean like that sort of thing, but like real love like, God, in this awful world one doesn’t often have such divine luck, sex is the trouble of course, if people would only search for each other as souls-’

‘Souls?’

‘Like just see people and love them quietly and tenderly and seek for happiness together, well I suppose that’s sex too but it’s sort of cosmic sex and not just to do with organs-’

‘Organs?’

‘Lizzie and I are really connected, we’re close, we’re like brother and sister, we’ve stopped wandering, we’re home. Till Lizzie came I was just waiting for the next drink, gin then milk, then gin then milk, you know how it used to go, I thought it would go on till I dropped. Now everything’s different, even the past is different, we’ve talked all our lives over together, every damn thing, we’ve talked it all out, we’ve sort of repossessed the past together and redeemed it-’

‘How perfectly loathsome.’

‘I mean we did it reverently, especially about you-’

‘You discussed me ?’

‘Yes, how could we not, Charles, you’re not invisible-oh, please don’t be cross, you know how I’ve always felt about you, you know how we both feel about you-’

‘You want me to join the family.’

‘Exactly! Please don’t be sort of dry and sarcastic and make a joke of it, please try to understand. You see, I believe in miracles, now, dear Charles, miracles of love. Love is a miracle, real love is. It’s far above the sort of boundaries and limits we were always tripping over. Why define, why worry, why not just be simple and free and loving with other people? We aren’t young any more-’

‘Have you given up boys, no more dangerous adventures?’

Gilbert, who had been gazing at the open neck of my shirt all the time he was speaking, raised his eyes to mine. His eyes rolled and swung in an odd characteristic manner, perhaps the effect of drink, and he had a way of wrinkling his nose and pulling down the corners of his mouth which he had copied from Wilfred Dunning. He went through a sort of painful humorous grimace. How selfconscious these old actors’ faces are. ‘Listen, king of shadows, Lizzie has made me happy. I’m new, I’m changed like they say in religion. Of course I’m not a totally reformed character and I wouldn’t mind a drink absolutely now. But listen, Lizzie won’t give me up, you can’t break this bond between us. If you think it’s trivial or funny you haven’t understood. All you can do is make both of us very unhappy by being violent and cruel. Oh yes, we’re frightened of you, yes, like we always were. Or you can make us very happy and make yourself happy just by being gentle and kind and by loving us and letting us love you. Why ever not? And if you make us miserable you’ll feel wretched yourself in the end. Why not opt for happiness all round? Christ, darling, can’t you see, it’s a choice between good and evil!’

Gilbert’s tirade, which was rather longer and more mawkish and repetitive than what I have set down here, was of course absurd. But what really annoyed me was the idea of Gilbert and Lizzie analysing each other and discussing in God knows what beastly detail their relations with me. I should add here that as far as the theatre went, which in his case was most of the way, I had made Gilbert. He owed me everything. And now this puppet was talking back and positively threatening me with moral sanctions! However, I laughed. ‘Gilbert, come back to reality. I am amused by your touching description of your relations with Lizzie, but really it won’t do. You claim to be changed, but you didn’t answer my question about boys. I am totally sceptical about your ménage and I don’t see why I should respect it. Why come and bother me with all this drivel about brotherhood and cosmic sex? This matter concerns me and Lizzie. It is nothing to do with you, and I’m shocked that she even told you about it. Even if you are fond of each other, sisters don’t have to get their brothers’ permission for everything. I summoned her, not you. She and I will decide what to do, and you’re not part of it. If you hang around here you’ll simply get burnt.’

As I spoke I was becoming conscious of that old familiar possessive feeling, the desire to grab and hold, which had been somehow blessedly absent from my recent thoughts about Lizzie. Perhaps that was a miracle, or maybe just lack of imagination, the ‘abstract idea’ she had accused me of. This reflection increased my annoyance with Gilbert. He was making me coarsen and define an impulse which had been splendidly generous and vague. This bickering was mean and undignified, but now I could not stop.