Iris Murdoch - The Sea, the Sea

‘She doesn’t know?’ said Rosina, glaring at me but mollified. ‘Then hadn’t you better tell her? Or shall I?’

‘Are you going to marry Rosina?’ said Lizzie, stiff, hands in pockets.

‘No!’

‘Charles, can I speak to you alone?’ said Lizzie.

‘No, you can’t,’ said Rosina. ‘My God, if it was only Lizzie and me we could fight for you, with kitchen knives.’

I felt I had another shivering fit coming on and I sat down again at the table. ‘I don’t feel very well.’

‘Can I speak to you alone?’

‘No,’ said Rosina. ‘Charles, I want to hear you tell her what you have just told me, I want to hear you-’

‘Is Gilbert outside?’ I asked Lizzie.

‘No, I drove down by myself. All right then, if she won’t go-’ Lizzie, ignoring Rosina, sat down opposite to me at the table. ‘I wanted to say thank you for your sweet generous letter-’

‘Tell her, tell her!’

‘Thank you for your sweet generous letter. You were being very kind to both of us.’

‘I’m terribly sorry I didn’t turn up for dinner that night, I-’

‘Very kind to both of us. But it isn’t necessary for you to be generous like that. I was a perfect fool. Gilbert doesn’t matter. Nothing matters except that I’m yours on any terms. There’s nothing to argue about. I’m just yours, and you can do what you like, I don’t care if it all goes wrong, I don’t care what happens or how long it lasts, well of course I want it to last forever, but you will do exactly what you want. I’ve come here just to say that, to give myself to you, if you still want me, like you said you did.’

‘How touching!’ said Rosina. ‘What did you say to her, Charles, let’s have the truth about that at last.’ She picked up Lizzie’s handbag and threw it onto the floor and kicked it.

Lizzie paid no attention, she was staring at me, her flushed ardent face blazing with emotion, her lips wet, her eyes bright with the truthfulness of her self-giving submission. I was very moved.

‘Lizzie, dear-dear girl-’

‘You’re too late, Lizzie,’ said Rosina, ‘Charles is going to marry a bearded lady, aren’t you, Charles, aren’t you? And we were just discussing you, and Charles said he never really cared for you at all-’

‘I didn’t say that! Look, I’m going to talk to Lizzie upstairs. You stay here. I’ll come back.’

‘You’d better come back. I’ll give you five minutes. If you two set off for London I’ll follow you and smash you into the ditch.’

‘I promise I’ll come back. And, yes, I’ll tell her. Just please don’t break anything. Come, Lizzie.’

Lizzie picked up her scarf from the table and her handbag from the floor. She did not look at Rosina. I led her out of the kitchen and up the stairs. When we got to the upper landing I hesitated. The bead curtain was immobile and I decided not to pass through it. I led Lizzie into the little middle room and shut the door. The room was dark, since not much light was coming through the long window which gave onto the drawing room, either because of the fog or because I had failed to raise the blinds. It was also empty, since I had removed the table which was still lying in the rocky crevasse where I had dropped it on my way to the tower. There was a square of threadbare carpet. There was also, now suddenly conspicuous and rather sinister, the curly cast-iron lamp bracket rather high up on the wall. The carpet emitted a damp smell when trodden on.

‘I’m so frightened of that woman. Charles, you aren’t tied up with her, are you?’

‘No, no, no, she’s just persecuting me. Lizzie-’

‘I don’t know what she was saying, but it doesn’t matter. Listen, Charles darling, I’m yours, and I must have been mad not to say so at once. I was stupidly frightened, I felt I just couldn’t bear another broken heart, I thought I wanted peace, and I imagined I could check myself from running straight back into that old terrible madness, but it’s no good, I’ve run back, I’m mad again. I felt sorry for Gilbert and I wanted time to think of a compromise but there isn’t any compromise. I don’t care what happens or what you do to me, I don’t care if I die of it. I don’t want you to be unselfish and scrupulous and generous, I want you to be the lord and the king as you’ve always been. I love you, Charles, and I belong to you and I’ll do from this moment on forever whatever you ask of me.’

We stood staring at each other and trembling in that little dark cell-like room underneath the cast-iron lamp bracket. ‘Lizzie, forgive me, it was a mistake. Sweet Lizzie, it’s no use, we cannot ever be together, I can’t take you and keep you like I thought, I can’t be the king any more. I’m sorry I wrote to you. I’m very fond of you, I love you, but not like that. It was just an empty idea, an abstract idea, like you said, you were quite right, it wouldn’t have worked, it wouldn’t have lasted. You see, I’ve met someone else, no, not Rosina, a woman I knew and loved long ago, you remember I told you, the first one. So I can’t ever be yours, little Lizzie, and you can’t be mine. You must go back to Gilbert, make him happy, let things be as they were. Oh please believe me and please forgive me. It was a mistake.’

‘A mistake,’ said Lizzie, looking down at her shiny black high-heeled shoes which were wet from the grass of the causeway. ‘I see.’ She lifted her head and looked at me, her face crimson, her lower lip trembling, her eyes vague and terrible.

‘You do remember about that girl, I told you once, well I met her again, she’s here and-’

‘I’ll say goodbye then.’

‘Lizzie, darling, don’t go like that, we’ll be friends, won’t we, won’t we, like you asked in your first letter. I’ll come and see you and Gilbert-’

‘I don’t think I’ll be with Gilbert any more. Things can’t be as they were. I’m sorry. Goodbye.’

‘Lizzie, just hold my hand for a moment-’

She gave me her limp hand. It felt damp and unresponsive and small and I could not continue the gesture into an embrace. She withdrew her hand and began to fiddle in her handbag. She brought out a fragment of the mirror which had been broken by Rosina’s kick, then a small white handkerchief. As soon as she had the handkerchief in her hand she began very quietly to cry.

I felt so touched and sad, and yet so oddly proudly detached and somehow sentimental, as I seemed to see in a second, all rolled up into a ball and all vanishing, some life that I might have had with Lizzie, my Cherubino, my Ariel, my Puck, my son: some life we might have had together if I had been different, and she had been different. Now it was gone, whatever happened next, and the world was changed. I repeated with a kind of sad self-tormenting pleasure, ‘No, Lizzie, dear heart, little brave Lizzie, it cannot be. I am so grateful to you for your-for your-’

‘It’s funny,’ said Lizzie, speaking almost calmly through her quiet tears, ‘it’s funny. The drive from London, it’s such a long way, I hired a car, I didn’t drive Gilbert’s, all the way I had a sort of marvellous love conversation with you, if only it hadn’t been for that long drive, it all came to a climax, like a coronation, I was thinking how surprised and pleased you’d be to see me, and how perfectly happy we’d both be and we’d laugh and laugh like we used to, and I kept picturing it and I felt such love and such joy-even though I was saying to myself that I might end up with a broken heart and this time it would kill me-but I thought I don’t care how it ends or how much I suffer, so long as he wants me and takes me in his arms-and now it’s ended before it even began, and I never imagined it would all be spoilt and broken at the start-and now I’ve got nothing-except my love for you-all wakened up again and rejected-all wakened up again-forever and ever-’