Iris Murdoch - The Sea, the Sea

‘Charles, can’t we go into your funny house and have a drink?’

‘No.’

‘Well, do you mind if I sit down?’ Gilbert hitched his trousers and sat down carefully on a rock. He laid his hat on the grass and surveyed his well-polished mud-fringed shoes. ‘Charles dear, let’s be calm about this, shall we? Do you remember sometimes when it was all rather fraught and you were furious with us, you used suddenly to stop and say, “All right, this is the English, not the Turkish, court”?’

‘Gilbert, just keep out of my way, will you? If Lizzie wants to come she’ll come, if not not. You don’t understand what this thing is all about, between Lizzie and me, how can you? I don’t want it messed around with your dreams of miracles and perfect love. I don’t believe in your set-up, I strongly suspect you’re deceiving yourself and deceiving Lizzie too. I’m beginning to feel it may even be my duty to bust up your rotten arrangement. So don’t provoke me. And take your bloody hand off my sleeve.’

‘Darling, don’t give way to anger, you frighten me so, you always did-’

‘I don’t think I frighten you enough.’

‘You always had such a bloody bad temper and it didn’t help any of us ever. I know you thought it did, but that was an illusion. There is a worse way and there is a better way here. God, didn’t you read Lizzie’s letter?’

‘Did she show it to you?’

‘No, but I know what she said.’

‘Did she show you my letter?’

‘Er-no-’

‘All this makes me sick!’

‘Charles, you can’t take Lizzie away from me, don’t be so conventional, what does ordinary sex matter here, you’d respect a marriage, well perhaps you wouldn’t, but you must believe Lizzie and at least respect her, it’s a sacred bond and she won’t leave me, she’s said so a thousand times-’

‘A woman can lie a thousand times.’

‘Lizzie’s right, you despise women.’

‘Did she say that?’

‘Yes. And she thinks you’re not serious. You can’t take Lizzie away, but you can spoil things, you can make her mad with misery and regret, you can make her fall in love with you again in a rotten hopeless way, you can make both of us perfectly wretched-’

‘Gilbert, stop. I’m not going to play your game or enter your muddle. You can muddle away and dream away by yourself. Why isn’t Lizzie here to tell me what she thinks and wants? She’s afraid to see me because she loves me.’

‘Charles darling, you know I care for you very much, you could simply murder my peace of mind-’

‘Oh damn your peace of mind-’

At that moment Lizzie appeared. She materialized as a dark blur in the corner of my eye, in the evening sunshine, and I knew it was she before I turned to look at her. And as soon as I saw her that old wicked possessive urge jumped inside me for joy and I knew that the battle was over. But of course I showed no feeling apart from a little air of annoyance.

Gilbert picked up his hat and crushed it onto his face. He said to Lizzie, ‘You said you wouldn’t, you said you didn’t want to, oh why did I let you come-’

I took in Lizzie, but looked beyond her at the sea, which was so calm and blue and quiet after the stupid yapping of my argument with Gilbert. I turned and walked along the road, and then leapt onto the rocks and began to make my way as fast as I could in the direction of the tower. At once I could hear the soft scrabbling pattering sound of Lizzie following me. She did well, considering I knew the rocks and she did not, and reached the grassy patch beside the tower very soon after I did, panting and with the strap of one sandal broken. As I turned round I saw Gilbert beginning to slip and slither on the rocks in his polished London shoes. He disappeared into a crevasse. There was a distant sound of lamenting and cursing.

I went on through the stone doorway into the interior of the tower. Lizzie followed and suddenly we were alone together in that strange greenish light, with the white round eye of the sky up above us, and cool grasses about our ankles. The moist atmosphere inside the tower had produced a quite different vegetation, longer lusher grass and dandelions and some white nettles which were just coming into flower.

Lizzie was wearing a very thin white cotton dress, straight like a shift, and she was holding her handbag close up against her breasts and shuddering a little. She looked slightly slimmer. Her abundant fuzzy cinnamon-brown hair was loose and tangled, and as the breeze blew it I could see the whiteness of her scalp. She was blushing extremely, but she stood very upright and stared at me, and her terracotta-pink mouth was firm and she looked brave, like a noble girl facing execution. She too looked older, older at any rate than the radiant teasing boyish creature I most remembered. But there was a contained canny shrewdness in her face which gave it form and still made it handsome: the strong brow and the sweeping line to the delicate almost retroussé nose. Her bright light-brown eyes were red-rimmed with recent tears. As I gazed at her I felt triumphant and delighted; but I looked grim.

Lizzie dropped her eyes, reached out one hand to the wall, balanced to shake her broken sandal off, and put her bare foot down into the grass. She said, ‘Did you know that there was a table there among the rocks?’

‘Yes, I put it there.’

‘I thought the sea might have brought it in.’

I was silent, gazing at her.

In a moment, in a whisper, she said, ‘Oh, I’m sorry-I’m sorry, I’m sorry-’

I said, ‘So you discussed me with Gilbert?’

‘I didn’t tell him anything that mattered’-she was looking down at her bare foot, and gently touched a white nettle with her toes.

‘Liar.’

‘I didn’t, I-’

‘You lied to him, then?’

‘Oh don’t-don’t-’

‘Why didn’t you want to see me?’

‘I was afraid-’

‘Afraid of love?’

‘Yes.’

We were both standing very stiff, the wind coming in through the open door tugging at her skirt, and at my errant shirt.

I recalled her chaste dry clinging kisses and I desired them now. I wanted to seize her in my arms and shout with delighted triumphant laughter. But I did not, and when she made a slight movement towards me I forbade it with a quick gesture. ‘You must go now-back to London with Gilbert.’

‘Oh, please-’

‘Please what? Dear Lizzie, I don’t want to be unkind, but I want things to be clear, I always did. I don’t know what we can do or be for each other now, but we can only find out if we both take the risk of being wholehearted. I want all your attention. I can’t share you with someone else, I’m amazed that you ask it! If you want to see me you must get rid of Gilbert, and get rid of him properly. If you want to stay with Gilbert then you won’t see me, and I mean that, we won’t meet again. That seems fair enough. Let me know soon, will you? And now please go, your friend is waiting.’

Lizzie, once more hugging her bag and her breasts, started talking very quickly. ‘I must have time-I can’t just leave Gilbert like that, I can’t, I can’t hurt him so-I want you to understand-people don’t understand and they’ve been beastly to us-but you must understand then you’ll see-’

‘Lizzie, don’t be stupid, you were never stupid before-I don’t want to “understand” your situation, it’s your business. But you must either get out of it and come to me or stay in it and not come to me.’

‘Oh-Charles-darling-darling-’ She suddenly turned, the stiffness left her body and it was that of a dancer. She threw her handbag onto the grass and in a moment she would have been in my arms, only I stepped back and again forbade it. ‘No, I don’t want your hugs and kisses. You must go away and think.’