Iris Murdoch - The Sea, the Sea

I stopped. Then went mechanically on, my mouth open, my eyes staring. As I stood at the end of the landing I lifted up the lamp again, and stared into the uncertain space before me, where the light of the lamp and the last outside twilight filtering through the open door of my bedroom made a dense foggy amalgam. I could make out the darkly shaded alcove, the outline of the archway, the dotted mass of the bead curtain. Then suddenly, I saw, beside the wall at the far end, between the curtain and the door of the inner room, the dark motionless figure of a woman. My first and clear thought was that I was seeing a ghost, the ghost of the house, at last! I gave a choked grunt of fear and wanted to run back down the stairs but could not move. I did not drop the lamp.

The figure moved, turned more fully towards me. It was a real woman, not a ghost. Then in a flash it looked familiar. Then I could see the face in the lamplight. It was Rosina Vamburgh.

‘Good evening, Charles.’

I was still trembling and quickly digesting my fear. I felt intense relief mixed with rising anger. I wanted to curse aloud but I remained silent, controlling my breathing.

‘Why, Charles, you’re all of a tremble, what’s the matter?’ Rosina speaks, off the stage, if such a woman can ever be said to be off the stage, with an odd slight, I suppose Welsh, accent which is all her own.

The house felt terribly cold, and for a second I felt I hated it and it hated me.

‘What are you doing here, why are you in my house?’

‘Just paying a visit, Charles.’

‘Let me see you off then.’

I went away down the stairs and on into the kitchen where I lit another lamp. I went into the little red room and lit the wood fire. Hunger, temporarily suspended by fear, returned. I came back into the kitchen and turned on the calor gas stove to warm the room a little, and set out a glass, a plate, bread, butter and cheese and a bottle of wine. Rosina had followed me and was standing near the stove.

‘Won’t you give me a drink, Charles?’

‘No. Go away. I don’t like people who break into my house at night and play at ghosts. Just go, will you. I don’t want to see you!’

‘Don’t you want to know why I’ve come, Charles?’ Her repetition of my name was hypnotic and menacing.

‘No.’

‘You’re surprised, you’re curious.’

‘I haven’t seen or heard of you for two years, three years, and even then I think I only met you at a party. Now you suddenly turn up in this perfectly hateful manner. Or is it supposed to be funny? Am I expected to be glad to see you? You aren’t part of my life. Just clear off, will you.’

‘I am part of your life, you know. Yes, you are frightened, Charles. It’s interesting, it’s a revelation, it’s so easy to frighten people, to bewilder them and persecute them and terrify them out of their wits and make their lives a misery. No wonder dictators flourish.’

I sat down, but I could not eat or drink in her presence. Rosina found herself a glass, poured out some wine, and sat down opposite to me at the table. I was still cold with anger and upset about my fear but now that I was a little less hungry I did feel a grain of curiosity about Rosina’s strange manifestation of herself. Anyway, how could I get rid of her if she refused to go? It was wiser to placate her and persuade her to go of her own accord. I began to look at her. She was certainly, in her odd way, an extremely handsome woman.

‘Dear Charles. You are recovering. I can see it. That’s right, have a hearty supper, bon appétit. ’

Rosina was wearing a sort of black tweedy cloak, with slits through which she had thrust her bare forearms. Her hands were covered with rings, her wrists with bracelets, which were glinting as she lightly tapped her fingers together. Her dark wiry hair, looking almost black in the lamplight, was pinned up in some sort of Grecian crown. She had either grown it longer or helped it out with false tresses. Her face was heavily made up, patterned with pinks and reds and blues and even greens, looking in the subdued localized light like an Indian mask. She looked handsomely grotesque. Her mouth, enlarged by lipstick, was huge and moist. Her squinting eyes sparkled at me with malign intensity. She was playing a part: putting on the controlled dramatic display of emotion which seems to the actor so moving, to the spectator often so unconvincing.

‘You look a right clown,’ I said.

‘That’s good, dear, that’s like old times.’

‘Do you want anything to eat?’

‘No, I had high tea at my hotel.’

‘Your hotel?’

‘Yes. I’m staying at the Raven Hotel.’

‘Oh. I was there this evening. They wouldn’t let me into the dining room.’

‘I’m not surprised, you look like a filthy student. Seaside life suits you. You look twenty. Well, thirty. I heard them discussing you in the bar. You seem to have annoyed everyone already.’

‘I can’t have done, I haven’t met anyone-’

‘I could have told you the country is the least peaceful and private place to live. The most peaceful and secluded place in the world is a flat in Kensington.’

‘You mean the waiter turned me out even though he knew who I was?’

‘Well, he may not have recognized you. You aren’t all that famous. I’m far more famous than you.’

This was true. ‘Stars are always more famous than those who create them. May I ask what you are doing at the Raven Hotel?’

‘Visiting you.’

‘How long have you been there?’

‘Oh ages, a week, I don’t know. I just wanted to keep an eye on you. I thought it might be rather fun to haunt you.’

‘To haunt me? You mean-’

‘Haven’t you felt haunted? Not that I’ve done very much, no turnip lanterns, no dressing up in sheets-’

I wanted to shout with exasperation and relief. ‘So it was you-you broke the vase and the mirror, and you’ve been creeping round at night and peering at me-’

‘I broke the vase and the mirror, but I haven’t been creeping round at night, I wouldn’t come in here in the pitch dark. This house is creepy.’

‘But you did, you looked at me through the glass of that inner room.’

‘No, I didn’t. I never did. That must have been some other ghost.’

‘You did, someone did. How did you get in?’

‘You leave your windows open downstairs. You shouldn’t, you know.’

I suddenly then, as I was staring at her, saw a vision: it was as if her face vanished, became a hole, and through the hole I saw the snake-like head and teeth and pink opening mouth of my sea monster. This lasted a second. I suppose it was not really a vision but just a thought. My nerves were still terribly on edge. I could hear the sea again, louder. But as I could hardly suppose that Rosina had arranged for me to be haunted by a sea monster I decided not to mention it.

‘But why did you persecute me in this way? And why did you decide to let me discover you now, if you did?’

‘I saw Lizzie Scherer in the village today.’

‘Yes, she was here, she’s gone. But what has that got to do with it? I can’t understand what this is all about.’

‘Can’t you, Charles? Have you forgotten? Let me remind you.’ Rosina leaned across the table, laying her hands flat and pointing her long fingernails at me like little spears. The nails were painted a dark purple. The bracelets grated on the wooden table. ‘Have you forgotten? You promised that if you ever married anybody you would marry me.’

Fear returned to me, a vista of cold dismay, the emergence in life of the unpredictable and dangerous. Rosina’s unnervingly blue eyes were sparkling, her rings were glistening. What she said was perfectly true.