Iris Murdoch - The Sea, the Sea

‘There’s no need to. I’ve sent Opian round with a note saying you’re here with Titus, so he won’t worry, he’ll come here. Then Gilbert can run you all back.’

Titus whistled. He saw at once the enormity of what I had done.

Hartley was a moment taking it in. ‘You mean-you mean you’ve told him, deliberately told him-oh, you wicked-oh, you fool-you don’t know-you don’t know-’ Tears of rage and despair sprang into her eyes and her face blazed at me. I stepped back.

I said, pursuing the role that I had adopted, but also speaking sincerely, ‘Hartley, you mustn’t be so frightened of him! I’m absolutely fed up with your attitude to that bloody man. Why should you feel you have to lie to him all the time? Why the hell shouldn’t you be here with Titus, it’s perfectly natural and proper!’

Titus looked at Hartley with interested concern and at me quizzically. ‘And did you invite him here? Jesus!’ He added, ‘Of course he won’t have seen the letter yet because he won’t be home.’

Hartley, looking at her watch, had just realized this too. ‘Oh yes, he mustn’t see it, he mustn’t see it! If we go at once there’ll be time to get it before he sees it. Then everything will be all right. He just mustn’t see the letter. Please, we must go at once, the car, the car!’

I said, with a maddening air of calm, ‘I’m terribly sorry, but the car isn’t there. It’s gone on to the garage by the Raven Hotel, there’s a fault in the engine.’

‘When will it be back?’ said Titus.

‘I don’t know, oh soon, I daresay.’

‘We could ring them up.’

‘I haven’t got a telephone.’

Hartley cried, ‘I must go, I must go, I must go, if I run I can get there in time-’

‘I’ll run for you,’ said Titus.

‘No, you won’t,’ I said, glaring at him. ‘Now, Hartley, just sit down here at the table and stop behaving like a mad person. The car will probably be back any moment. But listen, I don’t want you to go back there, back to him, back to his house. I want you to stay here, to stay here with Titus and me. ’ I gave Titus another meaningful look. I felt as if I were sifting the sense into her head.

Hartley sat down. She looked from me to Titus and back like a frightened animal. I sat down beside her. She was trembling, and I saw some dawning of understanding in her terrified eyes. There was a sudden atmosphere of crisis.

Titus said, ‘She wants to go back. And I’ll go back with her. I’ve decided to.’

I said, still trying to gain time, ‘No, no, both of you stay here. Hartley, my dear, he’ll know where you are, he won’t think you’ve drowned. He can come and see Titus here. Titus stays here, he lives here. Titus, you don’t really want to go over there, do you?’

Titus, visibly distressed, said again, ‘She wants to go back. She doesn’t want him to see the letter. There’s still time. I could run over there in twenty minutes. It’s just beyond the village, isn’t it?’

‘Oh go, please, please,’ cried Hartley, ‘go now, the door isn’t locked, you can just-’

‘Or should I run to the hotel? Which is nearer?’

I said to Titus, ‘I want him to see the letter. And you are both to stay here. Are we that man’s slaves? I want to let your mother out of that cage.’

Hartley gave a cry of woe.

‘Why do you want him to see the letter?’ said Titus. ‘I don’t understand all this, it’s like some sort of plot. I know you said you hoped she’d want to see me here, and that. But I didn’t think you meant to pull the whole bag of tricks down on her head.’

‘That is exactly what I do want to do,’ I said, ‘to pull the whole bag of tricks down on her head.’

‘No, no!’ Hartley leapt up and made a dash for the door.

I blundered after her, and reaching for her shoulder grabbed the neck of the dress, which tore a little. When she felt it tear she stopped. Then she came back to the table and sat down with her face in her hands.

Titus said, ‘Look, I don’t like this. You can’t keep her here against her will.’

‘I want her to be able to decide freely.’

‘Freely? She can’t,’ said Titus. ‘She’s forgotten about freedom long ago. Besides, if you keep her here she’ll be far too frightened to think. You don’t know what this is like, she might go mad. I’m afraid I misunderstood. You didn’t say so, but I thought you had some sort of understanding with her. I thought she was sort of prepared. But you can’t suddenly make someone leave someone they’ve lived with for years.’

‘Why not? When people do leave people they’ve lived with for years they usually do it suddenly because that’s the only possible way. I’m helping her to do what she really wants to do but without help can’t. Isn’t that clear?’

‘Not awfully.’

‘She’ll calm down, she’ll be able to think, soon, tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow? Here? ’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re going to keep her all night?’

‘Yes.’

‘Suppose he comes?’

‘I don’t think he will. To answer your earlier question, I did not invite him.’

‘Oh, Jesus. What’ll he think?’

‘I don’t care a fuck what he thinks,’ I said, ‘in fact, the worse he thinks the better. Let him think anything his foul imagination can beget.’

‘That’s part of-pulling everything down?’

‘Yes.’

‘My God,’ said Titus. Then he said, ‘I think it’s obscene. And I don’t like this talking about her as if she were a child or mental patient. I’m going to swim.’

‘Titus-don’t think too ill of me-you see-’

‘Oh I don’t think ill of you, in a way I’m quite breathless with admiration. I just couldn’t do it myself.’

‘You’re not going to run over there for the letter?’

‘No. I expect it’s too late anyway.’

‘And you won’t run away from me?’

‘I won’t run away from you.’

He went out of the back door.

Outside it was a hazier later evening and the shadows of the rocks were long, long on the grass. I did not look at my watch. I sat down beside Hartley.

She had taken her hands from her face and was sitting limp, staring at the table. Where I had dragged at her dress there was a little triangular tear. I could see the deep reddish streak of sunburn that led downward from her throat. I could see her brassière and the roundness of her contained breasts. The quick almost panting movement of her breath.

It was indeed obscene. I had, from the inception of this plan in my mind, intended to keep Hartley here, by force if necessary; but I had not imagined the details, and I had somehow hoped that as soon as she saw Titus in my house she would make the great mental leap, the intuition, the necessary conjecture: she would see her freedom and the possibility of living with Titus and me. And once she had grasped her freedom I had the strong and reasonable hope that she would come to me, even though Titus was an unknown quantity and had his own freedom to dispose of. But perhaps I had indeed, inspired by the boy’s providential appearance, tried to move too fast. The horrors of the last half hour had shaken my resolution so that I nearly conceived of, after all, taking her home. Yet could I, now? He was almost certainly back and had read that letter and-my plan had succeeded so well that it had trapped me also. I did now look at my watch. It was twenty-five past nine.

I took her hands and put them neatly one on top of the other, and my hand above them. Then I turned her face round to look at me. She had not been crying. To my unspeakable relief I received, not the harsh anxious glare that I so much dreaded, but a new quiet look, gentle and reflective; and although she looked so sad yet she seemed younger, more like her old self, and also more alive, less apathetic, more intelligent. My confidence returned. Perhaps, after all, her freedom was stirring. Perhaps my plan had been right. It was a question of a cure, a psychological cure. And in the instant I decided that it would now be fatal to show any weakness. I must be absolute, I must be to the full the being who had made Titus breathless with admiration.