Iris Murdoch - The Sea, the Sea

‘Release Mary, or I shall go to the police.’

‘They’d laugh at you. You know quite well the police wouldn’t interfere in a case of this sort.’

‘I want my wife.’

‘She doesn’t want to go back to you, she’s had enough. I’m going to send the car round for her things.’

‘What lies has she told you?’

‘That’s your line now is it? Vilify her, put the blame on her! How splendidly you give yourself away!’

‘She’s a hysterical person who imagines a lot of things, she isn’t well.’

‘She certainly imagines she’s had enough of your cruelty. Go on, just try the police, see what happens!’

‘You don’t know what you’re meddling with, you don’t understand. She’s my wife and I love her and I’m going to take her back to her home, where she belongs and where she wants to be. Why have you suddenly come interfering in our lives, why did you decide to come and live here and pester us, we didn’t want you, we don’t want you. I know what sort of person you are, I’ve read about you, you’re a rotten man, a shit, a destroyer, you’re filth. Mary isn’t one of your show-business whores, she’s a decent woman, like you aren’t worthy to touch. Leave us alone, if you don’t want to get very hurt. I’m warning you. Leave us alone.’

Ben, incoherently searching for words to match his anger, his big bull head thrust forward, was showing his strong teeth, wet with spittle. The rhythmic hissing roar of the powerful mechanical waves entranced me for a moment, as without looking down I could sense their churning movement in the rocky pit below. I thought to myself quite clearly, with a precision which involved my whole body, I have only to step quickly forward and pitch that hateful thug over the edge. He may be stronger, but I am more agile. He cannot swim; and even a good swimmer would die at once in that boiling cauldron. No one sees us. I can say he attacked me. I have only to push him in and all my troubles are over.

As I thought this I was fixing Ben with my eyes. I felt an embryonic movement of my body, though no doubt in reality I did not visibly stir. My eyes were enough, however, and I had the certainty that he had read my intention, if indeed it could be called an intention, for of course I would never have carried it out. He retreated to the far end of the bridge and I unclenched my hands and lowered my eyes. I retreated too.

‘Bring her back!’ he said, raising his voice, as the din of the water rose like a wall between us. ‘Bring her back this morning. Or else I’ll go every possible way to destroy you. I’m telling you. I mean that.’

I said nothing.

He said, as if suddenly confused and with a catch in his voice, ‘Consider her. She wants to come home. I know she does. You don’t understand. Don’t let this go on. It’s worse for her. She’ll have to come home in the end. Don’t you see?’

I said, inaudibly, ‘Fuck off.’

He began to move away. Then he turned back and called out, ‘Tell her I brought the dog back last night. I thought she’d be so pleased.’

I watched him as, more slowly, and seeming now at last like a cripple, he climbed over the rocks, appearing and disappearing, until he had nearly reached the road. I shook myself out of my trance and began to make my way back to the house as fast as I could. I wanted to be sure he was really going away.

Titus, who was still sitting on his high rock, jumped up and followed. Gilbert was on the lawn. They both immediately started to question me, but I ran past them. They ran after me and we emerged all three onto the causeway and advanced as far as Gilbert’s car, which was still in position. We stood in a row behind the car. Ben was walking along the road towards us. Titus gazed at him for a moment, then turned round and stood there with his back to the road. The gesture was impressive. Ben passed us by, grim-faced, without a word, without a look, and walked onward unhurried in the direction of the village.

‘What happened?’ said Titus, now looking shaken, frightened.

‘Nothing.’

‘How, nothing?’

‘He said what he had to say.’

‘What did he say?’

‘Lies. He said she was hysterical and imagined things.’

‘Hysterical all right,’ said Titus. ‘She could be in hysterics for an hour. It was frightening, it was meant to be.’

‘If you’ve decided he’s your father after all you can go home with him now, I’m not stopping you.’

‘Don’t talk to me like that. I’m just so bloody sorry for her.’

‘Won’t you come up and see her?’

‘No-not while she’s-no.’

‘Oh-!’ I felt violent homicidal exasperation. I ran back into the house and up the stairs and unlocked Hartley’s door.

She was sitting on the mattress with her back against the wall and her knees up, draped in the black dressing gown. She looked at me with heavy swollen eyes and started speaking in a droning voice before I was through the door. ‘Please let me go home, I want to go home, I’ve got to go there, there isn’t anywhere else to go, let me go home, please.’

‘This is home, with me is home, you are home!’

‘Let me go now. How can you be so unkind to me? The longer I stay the worse it will be.’

‘Why do you want to go back to that hateful place? Are you hypnotized or what?’

‘I wish I was dead, I think I’m going to die soon, I feel it. Sometimes I felt I would die by wishing it when I went to sleep but I always woke up again and found I was still there. Every morning finding I’m still me, that’s hell.’

‘Well, get out of hell then! The gate’s open and I’m holding it!’

‘I can’t. I’m hell, myself.’

‘Oh, Hartley, get up ! Come on down and sit in the sun, talk to me, talk to Titus. You’re not a prisoner. Stop being so bloody miserable, you’ll drive me mad! I’m offering you freedom, happiness, I want to take you and Titus to-to Paris, to Athens, to New York, anywhere you want to go!’

‘I want to go home.’

‘What’s the matter with you? You weren’t like this yesterday.’

‘I think I’m going to die, I feel it.’

Her eyes, which refused to meet mine, had the defensive coldness of those who are determined to lose hope.

There followed some of the strangest days I can ever remember. Hartley refused to come downstairs. She stayed hid in her room like a sick animal. I locked her door in case she should drown herself, I left her no candle and matches in case she should burn herself. I feared for her safety and her well-being at every moment, and yet I did not dare to remain with her all the time or even most of it, indeed I scarcely knew how to be with her at all. I left her alone at night, and the nights were long, as she retired early, and slept soon (I could hear her snoring). She spent a great deal of time sleeping, both in the night and in the afternoon. That oblivion at least was her prompt friend. Meanwhile I watched and waited, calculating upon some deep unstatable theory the right intervals for my appearances. I escorted her in silence to the bathroom. I spent long vigils sitting outside in the corridor. I put some cushions into the empty alcove, the place where I had dreamt there was a secret door through which Mrs Chorney would emerge to reclaim possession of her house. I sat on the cushions watching the door of Hartley’s room and listening. Sometimes as she snored I dozed.

Of course I often sat in the room with her, talking with her or attempting to, or else in silence. I knelt beside her, stroking her hands and her hair and caressing her as one might caress a small bird. Her legs and feet were bare, but she would persist in wearing my dressing gown over her dress. Yet with small contacts I made acquaintance surreptitiously with her body; the weight and mass of it, her magnificent round breasts, her plump shoulders, her thighs; and I would gladly have lain with her, only she resisted, by the slightest of signs, my slightest of efforts to undress her. She fretted about having no make-up and I sent Gilbert to the village to purchase what she wanted, and then in my presence she made up her face. This little concession to vanity seemed to me a hopeful portent. But I remained afraid of her and for her. My quiet relentless refusal to let her go was violence enough. I feared that any further pressure might produce some frenzy of hostility or some more extreme withdrawal which would render me as mad as she was; for I did at moments think of her as mad. Thus we existed together in a sort of crazy mysterious precarious mutual toleration. At intervals she repeated that she wanted to go home, but she accepted my firm refusals passively, and this was encouraging. Of course with every hour that passed her fear of returning must increase, and this in itself gave me hope. Surely a moment must come when the amount of her fear would automatically make her mine?