Iris Murdoch - The Sea, the Sea

I ate some corned beef with red cabbage and pickled walnuts, and the remainder of the apricots and cheddar cheese. I had no bread or butter or milk, as I had been too distracted to do any shopping. After that I rested. After that I wrote some of this diary, bringing it more nearly up-to-date. After that I wrote the letter to Hartley the text of which I will copy out in a little while. After that I washed a lot of clothes and put them out in the sun. After that I went swimming from the tower steps. Then I sat beside the tower and looked at the late afternoon sun making big blotchy shadows behind the spherical rocks of Raven Bay. After that, since I saw some tourists coming and I had nothing on, I got dressed and returned to the house and picked up my washing, which had dried. Then I fetched the snapshots of Hartley which I had brought from London and sat outside on my stone seat, beside my stone trough, and brooded on them slowly and intently.

Some of the snaps showed us both together. Who had taken those? I could not remember. From the browned curled surfaces, out of a sinless world, the bright soft unformed young faces gazed forth. It was an unspoilt world, a world of truly simple and pure pleasures, a happy world, since my trust in her was absolute, and since in our childish old-fashioned chastity we did not yet consider making love. Happier were we in this, I think, than the children of today. The light of pure love and of pure unanxious romance illuminated our days together, our nights apart. This is no absurd idealization of a youthful Arcadia. We were simple children in a simple world, we loved our parents and our teachers and were obedient to them. The pains of the human journey lay in the future, the terrible choices, the unavoidable crimes. We were free to love.

When did it begin to end? Perhaps when I ran off to London. Yet even then our love had still a time to run. And I never doubted her until the last. How long, how much, did she deceive me? Perhaps my selfish need of her was so great that I could not conceive of it not being satisfied. And as I reflected on that need it also occurred to me to think how much, in those years, Hartley had defended me against James. It seemed odd now that they knew practically nothing of each other. I scarcely ever spoke of James to Hartley, and never then of Hartley to James. She never knew how robustly her love defended me against some kind of collapse of my pride.

I shall now transcribe the letter which I wrote to Hartley, and which I had decided to find some way of delivering to her on the following day.

My dearest Hartley, my darling, I love you and I want you to come to me. This is what this letter says. But first there are things which I must tell you, things which I must explain. The chance which has brought you back to me has come like a great storm into my life. There is so much to say, so much to tell. It may seem to you that I belong now to some other world, to some ‘great world’ of which you know nothing, and that I must have in that world many friends, many relationships. It is not so. In many ways my life in the theatre now seems like a dream, the old days with you the only reality. I have few friends and no ‘amorous ties’, I am alone and free. This was what I was not able properly to tell you when we met in the village. I have had a successful career, but an empty life. That is what it comes to. I never conceived of marrying because I knew there was only one woman that I would or could marry. Hartley, think about that, believe it. I have waited for you, although I never dared to hope that I would ever see you again. And now, fleeing from worldly vanities, I have come to the sea, and to you. And I love you as I always did, my old love is there, every little fibre and tentacle and tendril of it intact and sensitive and alive. Of course I am older and it is in that sense a different man’s love, and yet it is the same love. For it has kept its identity, it has travelled with me all this way, it has almost miraculously survived. Oh my dear, how many days and nights there have been, when you knew nothing of it, when perhaps you thought of me as far away in my ‘grand world’, when I have sat alone with an aching heart, thinking of you, remembering you, and wondering where you were. How is it that people can vanish so that we know not where they are? Hartley, I never stopped wanting you-I want you now.

I have come to know-never mind how, but I do know -that you are most unhappily married. I know that you live with a tyrannical perhaps violent man-I wonder how often in the past you may have wished to escape, and have sunk back, defeated and wretched, because there was nowhere to escape to? Hartley, I am offering you, now, my home, my name, my eternal devotion. I am still waiting for you, my only love. Will you not come, will you not escape to me, to be with me inseparably for the years that remain? Oh Hartley, I could make you so happy, I know I could! But let me also say this: if I thought that you were happy already, happy in your marriage, I would not dream of disturbing you with declarations of my persisting love, I would suffer my love silently, even perhaps dissemble it, perhaps go away. I suspect, and forgive me for glancing at this, that you may have suffered more than one hour of remorse as you thought of me living my ‘exciting life’ and how utterly, as it seemed, you had lost me. But if I thought that nevertheless you had even a moderately contented or reasonably endurable life, I would not meddle, I would gaze at you from afar and turn away. But knowing you to be very unhappy I cannot and will not pass by. How could I, loving you as I do, let you go on suffering? Hartley, you must and you will come to me, to the place where you ought always to have been.

Do not be upset or frightened by wondering what to do about this letter. There is no need for you to do anything immediately, even to reply. I wanted simply to tell you of my love and my readiness. It is for you to consider when and how you are to respond. Obviously I am not necessarily expecting you to come running to my house at once. But, when you have reflected, when you have got used to the idea of coming back to me-coming back to me, my dearest girl-then perhaps you will begin to consider how to start to do it. And then-we shall be ready to talk to each other-and we shall find the means to talk. Let us quietly take one step at a time-one step-at a time. When you can give me some sign that you are prepared to let me look after you forever, then I will think what we are to do, and I will, when you desire it, take charge. Do not worry, my Hartley, all will be well, you will see, all will be well.

For a day or two, or a few days, as you will, just think about what I have told you. Then-when you will-write me a letter and send it by post. That is, for the present, best. Do not worry, do not fear. I will find means of communicating with you. I will love you and cherish you and do my most devoted best to make you happy at last. Yours always, as once now, and in all the years,

Your faithful,

Charles.

P.S. Come to me anyway, of course there are no conditions, just let me help you and serve you, you can then decide freely and in peace where and how you want to live.

I wrote this letter quickly and passionately and without corrections. When I read it through I was at first tempted to alter it because it sounded, well, at moments a bit self-important: a little pompous, a little histrionic, perhaps? Then I thought, no, this is my voice, let her hear it. She will hardly be, as she reads this letter, in a critical mood. If I were to amend and polish it, it might sound insincere and lose its force. And as for self-centred, of course I am self-centred. Let her indeed be sure that I am pursuing my own interests here and not just altruistically hers! Let her know that she can give me happiness by giving herself freedom.