Iris Murdoch - The Sea, the Sea

‘No, this is exactly my point. This is what I came out here to say to you. Not for that. For you. I mean I want you, I want to be your father, I want you to be my son, whatever happens. I mean even if your mother won’t stay with me-but I hope and believe she will-but even if she weren’t to, I still want you to accept me as your father.’

‘It’s a funny action,’ he said, ‘accepting somebody as your father, when you’re grown up. I’m not sure how it’s done.’

‘Time will show us how it’s done. You must just have the will, the intent. Please. I feel there is a real bond between us, it will grow stronger, naturally. Don’t think I’m just using you, I’m not. I feel love for you. Excuse the clumsy awkwardness of what I say, I haven’t time to think of a graceful speech. I feel that fate or God or something has given us to each other. Let us not stupidly miss this chance. Don’t let idiotic pride or suspicion or failure of imagination or failure of hope spoil this thing for us. Let us now and henceforth belong together. Never mind what it means exactly or what it will involve, we can’t see that yet. But will you accept, will you try?’

I had not prepared or anticipated quite such passionate pleading. I stared at him anxiously, hoping I had made some impression.

He was clothed by now, and we stood together on the high rock above the water. He looked at me frowning and screwing up his eyes. Then he looked away. ‘All right-I suppose-yes-OK. I’m in fact, well, a little overwhelmed, actually. I’m glad you said that about wanting me for me. I wasn’t sure. I believe you-I think. It’s funny, I’ve been thinking about you so much of my life, and I always knew I’d have to come and look at you one day, but I kept putting it off because I was afraid. I thought that if you rejected me-I mean, thought I was a sort of lying scrounger, just wanting money and that-and, well, why shouldn’t you have thought so, it’s all so odd-it would have been a sort of crippling blow. I can’t see how I would have recovered, I’d have felt so dishonoured and awful, I’d have been saddled with it somehow forever after. There was so much at stake.’

‘So much, yes, but all is well, here at least. We won’t misunderstand each other. We won’t lose each other.’

‘It’s all happened so fast.’

‘It’s happened fast because it’s right, it’s easy because it’s right.’

‘Well then, I’ll try, as you say God knows what it means, but I accept, at least I’ll try.’

He held out his hand and I grasped it and for a moment we stood there, moved and embarrassed.

Then I heard, from the roadway, the loud urgent hooting of Gilbert’s horn.

‘That’s him!’ I jumped up and began to scramble towards the house. Titus passed me and raced on before me over the grass. When I reached the kitchen door Gilbert was holding on to Titus.

‘He’s here, he came walking along the road, he stopped at the causeway but when he saw me in the car and when I started hooting he walked on.’

‘Walked on past the house?’

‘Yes. Maybe he’s going to come round the back over the rocks.’ Gilbert seemed to be really frightened.

I ran through the hall and out onto the causeway and up to the road. There was no sign of Ben. I noticed that Gilbert, no doubt to secure his own retreat, had parked the car right across the end of the causeway as if it were intended as a barricade. That no doubt was why Ben had walked on. As I was still hesitating and staring about I heard Titus shouting from the other side of the house.

I passed Gilbert, who was gabbling something or other, at the door and rushed out again through the kitchen. Titus was standing up on top of one of the highest rocks, and pointing. ‘He’s there! There! I can see him. He’s coming along from the tower.’

By now I felt no more doubt about whose side Titus was on. Thank goodness for that.

I called to Titus, ‘You wait there, I’ll go and meet him. If I want you I’ll shout.’

I began to climb over the rocks keeping the tower in view, and in a moment I saw Ben, also clambering, with an impressive agility, in the direction of the house.

The place where our two paths converged, and indeed the only fairly easy way from the house to the tower, was Minn’s bridge, the rocky arch under which the sea entered the cauldron. Towards this natural meeting place we both scrambled and slid until we came onto the bridge and faced each other some ten feet apart. I wondered quickly and a bit anxiously whether we were, as I hoped, still within the view of Titus upon his high rock. I looked quickly round. We were not.

Ben was wearing blackish corduroy trousers, rubbed bald at the knees, probably from the Fishermen’s Stores, and a white shirt. No jacket, though the morning was still chilly. Had he donned this stripped gear to assure me he was carrying no weapon, or was he simply dressed for fighting? He looked burly, a bit tight for his trousers, but compact and business-like. He appeared to have shaved, which I had not. He had shaved alone over there in that suddenly empty house with God knows what thoughts in his mind as he faced himself in the mirror. His cropped mousy hair, his big boyish head, broad shoulders and short build were reminiscent of a little ram or other smallish but aggressive male animal. By contrast with his thick heavy look I felt positively willowy, loose, untidy, with uncombed hair and, I suddenly realized, my striped pyjama jacket still on over my trousers.

I advanced a little onto the bridge and so did he. The tide was coming in and the strong large waves were crowding in and washing hungrily round inside the deep smooth space of the cauldron. There was a low sibilant roar, not loud enough to impede a parley. I stood, checking on my pyjama buttons, and waiting for him to begin. The roaring sound comforted me. I hoped it disconcerted Ben. Noise has always been my friend.

I was now seeing Ben’s face closely in a good light for the first time. He was rather better-looking than I had imagined earlier. He had long brown eyes with long lashes, and a large well-formed and, though perhaps only now, slightly sneering and fastidious mouth. His chin receded into his thick neck. I was at once aware that he was, and I was relieved to see it, extremely nervous, though also extremely angry. Was he perhaps a bit frightened of me ? Guilt? Guilt makes fear.

‘Where is my wife?’

‘Here, in my house, where she wants to stay. And Titus too, he wasn’t my son, as you perfectly well know, but he is now, I’ve adopted him.’

‘What?’

‘Yes!’

‘What did you say?’

I realized with further satisfaction that Ben was a bit deaf, deafer than me at any rate, and the noise was bothering him. I had rather gabbled my statement it is true. I said, with loud insulting clarity, ‘She is-here. Titus is-here. They stay-here.’

‘I’ve come to take her home.’

‘Look, you don’t really believe that Titus is my son, do you? I assure you he isn’t.’

‘I want my wife.’

‘I’m telling you something that ought to interest you. Titus is not my son.’

‘I don’t care about that story any more, it’s over, I want Mary.’

‘She wants to stay here.’

‘I don’t believe you-you are keeping her by force. You kidnapped her. I know she wouldn’t stay of her own free will, I know. ’

‘She came to me, she ran to me, like she did before, that evening when you were at your woodwork class. Do you imagine that I could or would remove her from your house by force?’

‘She left her handbag behind.’

‘You don’t love her, she doesn’t love you, she’s terrified of you, why not admit it to yourselves? Why go on living this horrible lie?’