Iris Murdoch - The Sea, the Sea

I then began to wonder many things, some very immediate, others vastly remote and metaphysical. First there was the question I had so belatedly asked myself when I was ringing the bell. Evidently Hartley had told her husband that she knew me, but when and how, and indeed why, had she told him? Years and years ago when she first met him? After they got married? When they ‘saw me on telly’? Or even, when she got home this morning from our meeting in the street? ‘Oh, I just met someone I used to know, such a surprise.’ And she might then recall their having seen me on television. But no, this was too elaborate. She must have told him much earlier, after all why on earth not: did I want her to have kept me a secret? As indeed I had so devotedly kept her a secret… Why had I done so? Because she was something holy which almost any speech would profane. In so far as I had ever mentioned Hartley to anyone I had always regretted it. No one understood, no one could understand. Better the austere sterility of silence. One of the horrors of marriage is that the partners are supposed to tell each other everything. ‘It’s him.’ They had obviously been talking about me today. I just hated the idea that, through all those years, they could have chatted about me, dismissed me, demeaned it all, chewed it all up into some sort of digestible matrimonial pabulum. ‘Your schoolboy admirer has done well for himself!’ Fitch called her ‘Mary’. Well, that was her name too. But ‘Hartley’ was her real name. In choosing to abandon it had she deliberately abandoned her past?

When I got home, although it was still very light outside, the house seemed dark and by contrast with the sunshine, cool and damp. I poured myself some sherry and bitters and took it out onto my little rock-surrounded lawn at the back and sat on the rug which I had placed upon the rock seat beside the trough where I put the stones. But it was at once intolerable not to see the water, so I climbed up a bit, gingerly holding my glass, and sat on top of a rock. The sea was now a bluish purple, the colour of Hartley’s eyes. Oh God, what was I to make of it all? Whatever happened I must try not to suffer. But in order for me not to suffer two incompatible states of affairs had to exist: I had to achieve a steady permanent and somehow close relationship with Hartley, and I had to avoid entering a hell of jealousy. Also of course I must not disturb her marriage. And yet why ‘of course’…?

No, no, I could not, would not think of disturbing her marriage. It would be unthinkably immoral to try, and there was no reason to imagine that I would necessarily succeed if I did try! That way madness lay. I did not, looking at that pair, imagine that the glamour of a ‘celebrity’ would be much to conjure with. This made me think of how Hartley looked, that slightly vague fey look she had always had of looking past one. I had sometimes allowed myself the luxury of brooding upon her remorse. Perhaps she had felt remorse. But now-the person I had loved, and loved now, was not likely to be stupidly dazzled by a ‘reputation’. So if I was searching for cracks in the fabric… Well of course I was not doing that, I was just trying to understand. I could make little, on reflection, of le mari. I had expected, I now realized, an insignificant little man. I had doubtless required and wanted an insignificant little man. But Fitch was somehow, I could not quite think why, not insignificant. What was he like? What went on inside the sealed container of this marriage? And would I ever know? I could not help at least feeling rather pleased that Titus was adopted.

All this led me back to the now somehow central question: is she happy? Of course I knew enough about the mystery of marriage to be aware that this may be a frivolous question to ask about a married person. People may be settled into ways of life which preclude continued happiness, but which are satisfactory and far to be preferred to alternatives. A small number of married couples are increasingly pleased with each other and radiate happiness. Sidney and Rosemary Ashe radiated happiness. There was certainly no such radiation up at Nibletts; though of course I must take into account the unease caused by my sudden appearance. There had been an awkwardness the cause of which was obscure. And surely, if they had been very happy together, they would both instinctively have wanted to show off this happiness to the intruding outsider? A happy couple cannot help showing off. Sidney and Rosemary did it all the time. So did Victor and Julia. And yet this was inconclusive. What was plain, and this indeed was the thought which prevented the awful pain from beginning, was that I must soon see Hartley again, alone if possible, and get some clearer picture of the situation.

As the sun began to go down and the sea was turning gold under a very pale green sky I laid my empty glass in a cranny and crawled up to a higher rock from which I could get a view of the whole expanse of water. In the lurid yet uncertain light I found that I was now suddenly scanning the scene and watching it intently. What was I looking for? I was looking for that sea monster.

The next day before nine o’clock I was entering the church. I had reached it by a roundabout route, first climbing over the rocks on the other side of the road, then veering away through the gorse in the direction of the Raven Hotel, crossing the bog on the seaward side of Amorne Farm, going through three fields and three prickly hedges, and approaching Narrowdean from inland along the main road. By this method I did not at any point enter the Nibletts ‘view’. I tried not to feel sure that Hartley would come to the church; in any case I decided that it was the only place where it was worth keeping a vigil, since it was more unlikely that she would walk out to Shruff End. Of course there was no one there, although someone had been in since yesterday and had put upon the altar a vast odorous bowl of white roses which disturbed me with all sorts of deep incoherent unconceptualized apprehensions. Time had suffered a profound disturbance, and I could feel all sorts of dark debris from the far past shifting and beginning to move up towards the surface. I sat feeling sick and reading the Ten Commandments which were almost illegibly inscribed upon a brown board behind the roses, and trying not to pay any special attention to the tenth and seventh and trying not at every moment to expect Hartley. The bright sun was blazing in through the tall rounded leaded faintly-greenish glass windows of the church and making the big room, for that after all was all that it was, feel weird and uneasy. There was a good deal of dust about, moving idly and airily in the sunlight, and the smell of the roses mingled with the dust and with some old musty woody smell, and the place seemed unused and very empty and a little mad. It seemed a suitable spot for a strange momentous interview. I felt frightened. Was I frightened of Fitch?

I waited in the church for more than an hour. I walked up and down. I read all the memorial tablets carefully. I smelt the roses. I read pieces of the horrible new prayer book (no wonder the churches are empty). I inspected the embroidered hassocks wrought by the local ladies. I climbed onto the pews and looked out of the windows. I thought of poor Dummy lying out there in the churchyard, scarcely more speechless now than he ever was. At about twenty past ten I decided that I had to get out into the air. It was all a great mistake, hiding in the church when Hartley might be walking openly about the streets. I wanted to see her so much that I was nearly moaning aloud. I ran out and went down through the iron gate and sat on a seat where I could see quite a lot of the little ‘high street’, but without being visible from the hillside. After a few minutes I saw a woman who looked like Hartley creeping along by the wall on the far side of the street, going in the direction of the shop. I say ‘creeping along’ because that was part of my first vision of her as an old woman, before I knew who she was, and it was this ‘old woman’ image that I was seeing now. I jumped up and set off after her. As she crossed the road she turned slightly and saw me and increased her pace. It was Hartley all right and she was running away from me! She did not go into the shop, but whisked round into what I called Fishermen’s Stores Street. When I reached the corner running, she was nowhere to be seen. I went into the Fishermen’s Stores, but she was not there. I wanted to howl with exasperation. I ran along to the end of the street where it petered out in a few derelict cottages and a five-barred gate and a large meadow fringed by trees. She could not have crossed that meadow. Had she gone into one of the houses? I ran back; then I saw a little alleyway leading off the street, a narrow sunless fissure between the blank sides of two houses. I ran down it, stumbled over a strewing of pebbles, and turned a sharp corner into a square enclosed space between the low whitewashed walls of backyards, where there were a number of overflowing dustbins and old cardboard boxes and an abandoned bicycle. And there, standing quite still in the middle of this scene, was Hartley. She was standing just behind a low outcrop of the sparkling yellow rock which surrounded my house.