Iris Murdoch - The Sea, the Sea

Hartley came in followed by her husband. In my first dazzled view of him Fitch looked grossly boyish. He was rather short and thick-set and had a bullet-headed boy’s look, with a thick neck and short mousy hair. He had very dark brown narrow eyes, a rather large clear-cut sensual mouth, and a prominent shiny nose with broad flaring nostrils. He was broad shouldered and powerful looking. If he was crippled it certainly did not show. He came in smiling. I beamed, blinking a little, and we spontaneously shook hands. ‘Glad to meet you.’ ‘I hope you didn’t mind my calling? ’ ‘Not at all.’

Hartley, who had been wearing something blue, perhaps an overall, when she opened the door, was now revealed in a yellow cotton dress with a tight bodice and a big skirt. She moved nervously about, not looking at me. ‘Oh dear, I must open a window. How stuffy this room is. Won’t you sit down?’

I sat down in, or got stuck into, a tubby velvety low-slung arm-chair.

Hartley said to Fitch, ‘Shall we bring our meal in here?’

He said, ‘Why not?’

Hartley went back into the kitchen where they had evidently been eating and returned with two plates, while Fitch pulled a gate-leg table out from the wall and set it up rather uncertainly upon the thick carpet. Hartley then handed the two plates to Fitch, who stood holding them while she fussed looking for table mats to put them on. The two plates, with their knives and forks upon them, were then put down, a plate of bread or something was fetched, upright chairs were pulled across the resistant carpet, and Hartley and Fitch sat down, their chairs half turned so as to accommodate me. They had been eating ham and salad, but it was now immediately clear that further eating had become impossible.

Hartley said to me, ‘Would you like anything to eat?’

‘Oh no thanks. I only called for a moment. I’m terribly sorry, I see I’ve interrupted your-’

‘Not at all.’

Fitch said nothing but looked at me with his dark narrow eyes, flaring out his nostrils into two great holes. His big mouth in repose looked rather forbidding.

Surprise, or perhaps a flurried annoyance, seemed to have deprived them of the power of conversing, so I floundered quickly to get something going. I had decided to depart after the very briefest possible polite interchange.

‘What a lovely view you have.’

‘Yes, isn’t it, we got the house for the view really.’

‘My house just looks on the rocks and the sea. It’s nice for swimming though. Do you swim much?’

‘No, Ben can’t swim.’

‘I like your big window, you can see all round.’

‘Yes, it’s nice, isn’t it.’ She added, ‘It’s our dream house.’

‘Have you got electricity?’ asked Fitch, who had hitherto been silent.

I rated this as a definitely friendly remark. ‘No. You have, haven’t you, that must be a blessing. I get along with oil lamps and calor gas.’

‘Got a car?’

‘No. Have you?’

‘No. What brought you to this part of the world?’

‘Well, no special reason, a friend of mine described it to me, she grew up near here, and I wanted to retire near the sea, and houses are cheaper here than-’

‘They aren’t all that cheap,’ said Fitch.

All this while my visible surroundings were, now that I was accustomed to the light, imprinting themselves upon me with the sharpness and authority of a picture. I was conscious of my awkwardly outstretched legs, my still flushed face, my fast heartbeat, the stuffy rose-scented air to which the open window seemed to have made no difference, and the fact that I felt at a disadvantage in a low chair. I took in the brown and yellow floral design on the carpet, the light brown wallpaper, the shiny ochre tiles round the electric fire which was set in the wall. Two round brass bas-reliefs representing churches hung on either side of the fire. A funny-looking shaggy rug upon the carpet was making extra difficulties for one of the table legs. There was a large television set with more roses on top of it. No books. The room was very clean and tidy, so perhaps, except for watching television, life went on in the kitchen. The one sign of habitation was, on one of the chairs, a glossy mail order catalogue and an ash tray with a pipe in it.

At the table Hartley and Fitch were sitting stiff and upright, like a married pair rendered by a primitive painter. There was something especially primitive about the clear outlines and well-defined surfaces of Fitch’s eccentric and not altogether unpleasing face. Hartley’s face was, perhaps just in my timid fugitive vision of it, hazier, restless, a soft moon of whiteness with hidden eyes. I was able to look only at her flowing yellow dress, round-necked, rather resembling a night-dress, and patterned all over with tiny brown flowers. Fitch was wearing a shabby light blue suit, jacket and trousers, with a thin brown stripe. Braces were visible through the unbuttoned jacket, which he had probably pulled on when I was announced. His blue shirt was clean. Hartley patted down, then plumped up, the waves of her grey hair. I felt sick with emotion and embarrassment and shame and a desire to get away and assess what all this was doing to me.

‘Have you lived here long?’

‘Two years,’ said Fitch.

‘Still settling in really,’ said Hartley.

‘We saw you on television,’ said Fitch. ‘Mary was thrilled, she remembered you.’

‘Yes, of course, she remembered me from school, of course-’

‘We don’t know any celebrities, quite a thrill, eh?’

To get off this loathsome subject I said, ‘Is your son still at school?’

‘Our son?’ said Fitch.

‘No, he’s left school,’ said Hartley.

‘He’s adopted, you know,’ said Fitch.

Earlier on they had been fiddling now and then with their forks, pretending to be about to eat. Now they had laid them down. They were looking, not at me, but at the carpet near my feet. Fitch shot an occasional glance at me. I decided it was time to go.

‘Well, it’s very kind of you to let me call. I must be off now. I’m so sorry I interrupted your-your meal. I do hope you’ll come over and visit me soon. Are you on the telephone?’

‘Yes, but it’s out of order,’ said Fitch.

Hartley had risen hastily. I got up and tripped over the shaggy rug. ‘What a nice rug.’

‘Yes,’ said Hartley, ‘it’s a rag rug.’

‘A-?’

‘A rag rug. Ben makes them.’ She opened the sitting-room door.

Fitch got up more slowly and as he now moved, standing aside to wave me out of the room, I saw that he limped. He said, ‘You go first, I’ve got a gammy leg. Old war wound.’

I said, as I went through the dim hall towards the glaring brightness of the oval glass on the door, ‘Well, we must be in touch, mustn’t we, I do hope you’ll both come over and have a drink and see my funny house and-’

Hartley swung the front door open.

‘Goodbye, thanks for calling,’ said Fitch.

I was on the red tiled path and the door had closed. As soon as I was out of sight I began to run. I reached the village street panting and began to walk more slowly along the footpath which led to the coast road. As I walked I began to have a weird uncomfortable sensation in my back which, amid all the wild emotions and sensations which were rushing about inside me, I could identify as the sensation of being observed. I was about to turn round when it came to me that I was now well inside the span of the Nibletts view and within range of Fitch’s powerful field glasses, should he care to sit on the window ledge and check on my departure. Parts of the village street were plainly visible from Nibletts, though the church and the churchyard were hidden by trees. So was that the explanation of Hartley’s uneasiness, her thought that perhaps Fitch had actually seen me meet her and lead her away towards the church? She had, I remembered, walked behind me, not with me. How odd it must have looked though, with me as a crazed Orpheus and her as a dazed Eurydice. Yet why should she be afraid of being seen to meet somebody, even me, in the street? Resisting the present temptation to look back I walked smartly on and was soon among the stunted trees and gorse bushes and rocky outcrops near to the road, and out of sight from the hill. It was still very hot. I pulled off my jacket. It was soaked under the arms with dark stains of anxious perspiration and the dye had stained my shirt.