Iris Murdoch - The Sea, the Sea

At my suggestion Titus had rinsed his hair in fresh water. Dried and combed it became fluffy, a thick mass of spiralling red-brown tendrils, and much improved his appearance. In the evening he put on the cleanish shirt, but not the cuff links. Gilbert surreptitiously washed the Leeds University tee shirt.

We dined, Titus and I, by candlelight. He said suddenly, ‘It’s so romantic!’ We both laughed wildly.

Titus now looked curiously at Gilbert and Gilbert’s too impeccable performance, but asked no questions. I vaguely volunteered, ‘He’s an old actor, down on his luck’ and that seemed to account for him sufficiently for the present.

At dinner we talked of theatre and television. He seemed to have seen a remarkable number of London plays and knew the names of a great many actors. He described how he had directed The Admirable Crichton at school. He was modest, diffident about his ambition. ‘It’s just an idea.’ I did not press him, about this or about anything. We laughed a good deal.

He went to bed early, sleeping on cushions among my books in the front room downstairs. He expressed great interest in the books, but blew his candle out early. (I was watching from the stairs). At breakfast, he agreed to stay to lunch. I allowed the obsequious Gilbert to join us for general conversation at breakfast time. I did not want Gilbert to become an interesting mystery.

After breakfast I turned Titus loose to swim and explore the rocks, indicating that I would be busy with my ‘writing’. I thought it better not to crowd him with my company and in any case I wanted time to think. Titus seemed very happy, playing boyishly by himself. I watched his agile appearances and disappearances from the window with a piercing mixture of affection and envy. He returned at last bearing the errant table ostentatiously raised with one arm above his head. He put the table on the grass, then suggested that we should eat outside, but I vetoed this. (I agree with Mr Knightley about al fresco meals.) Gilbert meanwhile had been out shopping and had made, under my direction, a decent kedgeree with frozen coley.

At lunch, where Titus and I were again tête-à-tête, I decided it was time to speak seriously. I had had enough of gaining his confidence and refraining from scaring him. In any case my nerve was giving out and I wanted to know my fate.

‘Titus, listen, there’s something important I want to say to you.’

He looked alarmed and put one hand flat on the table as if ready to leap up and bolt.

‘I want you to stay here, for a time at any rate. I’ll explain why. I want you to see your mother.’

The eyes narrowed further, the pretty lips almost sneered. ‘I’m not going over there.’

‘I’m not suggesting you should. She will come over here.’

‘So you’ve told them. You said you wouldn’t.’

‘I haven’t told them. I’m just suggesting, asking you. If your mother knows you’re here she’ll come. There’s no need to tell him.’

‘She’ll tell him. She always does.’

‘She won’t this time, I’ll persuade her not to. I just want her to visit you here. Anyway, what can he do, even if he does know? He’s got to pretend to be pleased. There’s nothing to be afraid of.’

‘I’m not afraid!’

This was a bad start, I was fumbling and confused, and even as I spoke I imagined Ben snarling at the door.

Titus said thoughtfully, ‘I’m sorry for him in a way. He hasn’t had much of a life either, to use your phrase.’

‘A life is a life, to use yours. If you’re sorry for him you should all the more be sorry for her. She has grieved about you so much. Won’t you see her and make her happy?’

‘Nothing could make her happy. Nothing. Ever.’ The bland finality of the reply was dreadful.

‘Well, you can try!’ I said with exasperation. ‘It can’t be very nice for her not knowing what’s happened to you.’

‘OK then, you can tell her you saw me.’

‘That’s not enough. You must see her yourself. She must come here.’

Titus was looking handsomer again today, his cheeks lightly touched by the sun, his brighter softer hair framing the bony lumpiness of his face. The horrible tee shirt was already dry, but he was again wearing the striped shirt with the collar open.

‘Look, you said you saw them “occasionally”. That sounds odd to me. You were the bogy man for years, the devil himself. I can remember the desperate look in her eyes when your name came up. They can’t have forgiven you? All right, you haven’t done anything, but you know what I mean. Do you go round and play bridge or what?’

‘No, of course not. He still detests me, I imagine, and God knows what he really believes. Maybe he doesn’t know himself. But I’m beginning to think he doesn’t matter much.’

‘Why, pray?’

‘Because I think your mother is going to leave him.’

‘She never would. Never. No way.’

‘I think she would under certain circumstances. I think she would if she could only conceive of it as possible. If she saw it as possible she would see it as easy.’

‘But where would she go to?’

‘To me.’

‘You mean-you want her?’

‘Yes.’

‘And so you want me to persuade my mother to leave my father? You’ve got to be joking! That’s a lot to expect in return for lunch and dinner.’

‘And breakfast and tea.’

‘You’re a cool one.’

I was not feeling cool. Everything in this conversation was going wrong, being crudely, grossly presented. I was anxious not to drive him to any sudden reaction by striking too portentous a note. At the same time he must appreciate my seriousness. The maddening fact was that I now had all the pieces for a solution, but would I be allowed to fit them together? ‘My dear Titus, of course I don’t want you to persuade your mother of anything. I want you to see her because I know this would very profoundly relieve her mind. And I want you to see her here because it would only be possible here.’

‘I’m to be a lure-a kind of-hostage-’

This was dreadfully near the truth, but I had left out something very important which I now saw I ought to have mentioned at the start. ‘No, no. Just listen carefully. I want to tell you something else. Why do you think I persuaded you to stay here instead of letting you go away?’

‘I’m beginning to think it’s because you want my mother to come to you because of me.’

The wording of this went so far that I could scarcely say again: no. It was true in a way, but true in a harmless way, an innocuous way, even a wonderful way. As we stared at each other I hoped that he might suddenly, in this light, see it. But he kept, rather deliberately perhaps, his hard suspicious mask. I said, holding his eyes and frowning with intent, ‘Yes, I do want that. But I want it also because of you, through you, for you, you’re part of it, you’re part of everything now. You’re essential.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I persuaded you to stay here because I like you.’

‘Oh, thanks a lot!’

‘And you stayed because you like me.’

‘And the food. And the swimming. OK!’

‘Put it this way, and for the moment as hypothetically as you please. You are searching for a father. I am searching for a son. Why don’t we make a deal?’

He refused to be impressed or startled. ‘I suspect you’ve just thought of this son idea. Anyway, I’m looking for my real father, and not because I need one or want one, but just to kill a devil of miserable biting curiosity that I’ve lived with all my life.’

No, he was not at all what I had expected, though I could not now think why I had expected a dullard. Something in Hartley’s rather desperate account of him had suggested this perhaps. He was a clever attractive boy and I was going to do my damnedest to get hold of him. To get hold of him and then of his mother.