Iris Murdoch - The Sea, the Sea

‘What were they like?’

‘Oh just ordinary times, you might think it was dull, we had a quiet life-’

‘A quiet life!’

‘Ben didn’t much like his job but he liked doing things about the house, he likes DIY.’

‘DIY?’

‘Do It Yourself. We went to London once to the exhibition at Olympia. He used to go to evening classes.’

‘What was he learning at the class on that quiet evening when you left the chain on the door?’

‘He was learning to rivet china.’

‘Oh-Lord-! Hartley, what did you do all the time? Did you entertain, have friends?’

‘Well, Ben didn’t like social life. I didn’t mind. We don’t really know anybody here either.’

‘And did you go to evening classes too?’

‘I once started German, but he didn’t like me to go out in the evening and the classes were different nights.’

‘Oh-Hartley-And in all those years was he faithful to you, did he ever have anyone else?’

For a moment she seemed not to understand. ‘No, of course not!’

‘I wonder how you can be so sure. And you, did you ever have anyone else?’

‘No, of course I didn’t!’

‘Well, I suppose it would have been as much as your life would have been worth.’

‘You see really we were very wrapped up in each other, we are very-’

‘Wrapped up! Yes! I can see it all.’

‘No, you can’t see it all,’ she said, suddenly turning towards me, blinking and drawing her fingers across her eyes and her mouth. ‘You can’t see it, nobody can understand a marriage. I’ve prayed and prayed to go on loving Ben-’

‘It’s a travesty, Hartley. Don’t you see now at last that the situation is intolerable, impossible? Stop playing Jesus Christ to that torturer, if that’s what you’re doing.’

‘He suffers too and I can be-oh so unkind. It’s not his fault, and it was my fault in the beginning.’

‘You gorge me full of these awful stories and then expect me to sympathize with him ! Why did you come here, why did you come to me, why did you tell me these things at all?’

Hartley, still staring at me, seemed to reflect. She said slowly, ‘Perhaps because I had sometime, and I’ve always known this, to tell someone, to say it, to say these blasphemies, what you call these horrors to someone. And, as I told you, I’ve never really had any friends, Ben and I have lived so much together, so much on our own, so sort of secretly, a kind of hidden life, like criminals. I never had anyone to talk to, even if I had wanted to talk.’

‘So it turns out I’m your only friend!’

‘Yes, I suppose you are the only person I could inflict this on-’

‘Inflict it-you want me to share the pain-’

‘Well, in a way you were responsible-’

‘For your ruined life? Just as you were responsible for mine! So this is your revenge? No, no, I’m not serious-’

‘I didn’t mean that, just that Ben’s ideas about you have been like-like demons in our lives. But of course it wasn’t just wanting to tell someone. You know, when I saw you in the village for the first time I nearly fainted. I had just come round the corner from the bungalows and you were just going into the pub, and my knees gave way and I had to go a bit up the hill and sit on the grass. Then I thought I must be dreaming, I thought I must be mad, I didn’t know what to do. Then the next day I heard somebody talking about you in the shop, saying you’d retired and come here to live. And I wondered for a bit whether I’d tell Ben, because he mightn’t have been able to recognize you, you don’t look quite like your pictures, but then I thought he’s bound to hear anyway, someone at the boat-building class will know, so I told him I’d seen you and he was in a frenzy and said we must sell the house at once and go away, and of course he believed, or said he believed, that you’d come on purpose because of me, and of course it was very odd-’

‘But is he selling the house?’

‘I don’t know, he said he’d see the house agent, he may have done, I didn’t ask. But really I came here tonight because I wanted to tell you about Titus and about what Ben imagines and to ask your help-’

‘My help! My dearest girl, I’ve been telling you, I am all help! Let’s go, let’s just go, we can go to London tomorrow, even tonight if there’s a train-’

‘No, no, no. You see, I can’t decide, I’ve kept swinging to and fro. I thought first I’d simply ask you to go away, to sell your house and go away. If once you understood how much it mattered to me and Ben, how awful, what a nightmare it was that you’re here, you would go at once.’

‘Hartley, we are going, you and I are going, that is the answer.’

‘I thought I’d write you a letter asking you to go, but it would have been so hard to explain it all in a letter.’

‘Hartley, will you come, tonight, tomorrow? You will?’

‘And then I thought-but perhaps this really is mad-that you could somehow persuade Ben, make him see, that I’ve been telling the truth all these years, impress him somehow-’

‘How?’

‘Oh, I don’t know, swear on something sacred or with a notary or-’

The word ‘notary’ seemed to gather round it some of the sheer insanity of what she was saying. So now we were to be involved with notaries! I could imagine how much that would impress Ben. At the same time, in the swift way of thought, I was making realistic plans. Of course I still hoped that, when it came to it, Hartley would decide to stay with me now, tonight. However it was possible that she would not, and even if she did there might be some terrible revulsion of feeling afterwards. Such shock tactics might do more harm than good. Better perhaps to let her reflect quietly upon her reunion with me and draw her own conclusions. She seemed to me to be still in a dream, a woman locked up inside her own nightmare. She would emerge, but it might be slowly. I might even have a long work to do, to give her back hope and life and stir in her the instinct of freedom, which it still seemed to me was so natural to her. Meanwhile I must find ways of keeping contact with her and of making her plan, making her construct futures which contained me. Surely, once she conceived of happiness she would spring towards it. But for the moment it might be wise to humour her lunatic idea that I might ‘persuade’ Ben. If she just, bleakly, blankly, asked me to go away my task would be much harder, though it was still certain to be successful in the end. Hartley was a sick woman.

I said, ‘I think your idea about Ben is a good one, I might be able to solve that problem anyway, to make him see and believe the truth about what happened or rather didn’t happen in the old days, we must consult about how it could be done. But, Hartley, listen, the important thing is this. You are going to leave Ben and come to me, for good, forever-’

Hartley, who had been sitting entranced, absorbed in her own unusual eloquence, looked suddenly terrified. She jerked back her head and began to stare about the room. ‘Charles, what is the time?’

It was nearly eleven o’clock. I said, ‘Oh, it’s about ten to ten. Darling, why not stay here now, please ?’

‘It can’t be as early as that. It will take me thirty-five minutes to get home, and Ben usually gets back about eleven.’ She got up and said, ‘I feel drunk, I’m not used to wine, I must go.’ She turned, then made a sudden pounce towards my hand and peered at my watch, then uttered a high-pitched wailing cry. ‘It’s eleven, it’s eleven! Oh why did you do it! Why did I believe you! Why didn’t I bring my watch! What shall I do, oh what shall I do! What shall I tell him, he’s sure to know where I’ve been! Oh I’ve been so careful and I haven’t told him lies and now he’ll think-It’s as bad as can be, oh I am stupid, stupid, whatever can I do?’