Iris Murdoch - The Sea, the Sea

I have just said that I now found Titus simpler than I had thought at first. This was so in relation to his mother and to my own problems. (Perhaps by ‘simpler’ I just mean ‘vaguer’, ‘less attentive’.) But it was certainly noteworthy, and Gilbert noticed it too, that Titus was in superficial ways more cultivated than one would expect a boy to be who had left school early to ‘do electricity’ at a polytechnic. Where had Titus been during the last year or two? This remained mysterious. I remembered the cuff links and the book of Dante’s love poems. My own hypothesis was that he had been living with an older woman. He was just now about the age which I had been when I was kidnapped by Clement; baby-snatching, as everybody called it. Had someone snatched Titus-and then, and lately, discarded him? Gilbert’s theory, not surprisingly, was that Titus had been living with a man. Titus himself remained, on this subject, silent. (Perhaps this is the place to say that Perry was of course wrong about the nature of my relations with Fritzie Eitel.)

I have spoken of histories and changes. And indeed in a way later on it seemed to me that what I was doing in those days was reliving the whole history of my love for Hartley, not only the old times, but all the intermediate times as well. Every day, every hour, I remembered more. On about the evening of the second day Hartley became for a while more talkative and had the air of having been reflecting, the talk being the fruit of the reflection. This led to a dialogue which had a most distressing conclusion.

We were sitting on the floor, she on the mattress, I on the bare boards, with our legs outstretched, and facing the long high-up window which gave onto the drawing room. The middle room, usually darkish, was now in twilight, though the evening glow communicated a dim warm illumination. I touched Hartley’s hand. I felt from head to foot connected with her.

‘Darling, my silk dressing gown suits you, but won’t you take it off sometimes?’

‘I’m cold.’

‘Aren’t you beginning to feel that you live here?’

‘You think the important thing is that I made a mistake in not marrying you.’

‘There was a mistake. What’s more important is to undo it now.’

‘You just want someone to remember things with.’

‘That’s very unfair, when I want so much to talk of the future, only you won’t!’

‘You feel resentment against me because I went away.’

‘So you admit you went away?’

‘I suppose so, it’s so long ago.’

‘You said I’d be unfaithful.’

‘Did I? I can’t remember.’ I had lived my life on her words, and now she could not even recall them! ‘I suppose I must have gone away because I can remember feeling guilty.’

‘Guilty about hurting me?’

‘Yes. Really I did always feel guilty and thought you blamed me. And in a funny way I had to protect myself from you by the idea that you hated me.’

‘How on earth would that “protect” you?’

‘When I saw you in the village I thought you had seen me and pretended not to because you hated me.’

‘But I never hated you, darling, never for a second!’

‘I had to think so.’

‘But why?’

‘So that I could be sure that you had really gone, that it was really over. To make it sort of dead in my mind.’

‘Oh, Hartley. For me it was never over, never dead in my mind. So you wanted me, you missed me, you were afraid to think about me? Doesn’t that prove that you love me?’

‘I think you did hate me, though, you feel resentment.’

‘You mean now? You’re dotty.’

‘It’s resentment really, otherwise you wouldn’t be so unkind.’

‘Hartley, don’t torment me, you reason like a mad person.’

‘Or it’s curiosity, like a tourist, you’re visiting me, visiting my life and feeling superior.’

‘Hartley, stop, will you! Or are you just trying to hurt me? You are the one who’s unkind. There is an eternal bond between us, you know there is, it’s the clearest thing in the world, clearer than Jesus. I want you to be my wife at last, I want you to rest in me. I want to look after you forever, until I drop dead.’

‘I wish I could drop dead.’

‘Oh shut up-’

‘I wish it could be all over, I have had my life. I wish someone would kill me-’

‘So he has threatened your life?’

‘No, no, it’s all in my mind-’

‘You can’t go back now, I won’t let you, even if you don’t want me. It’s so simple, only you complicate things so.’

‘You want to make things complicated in your way, you twist and turn, you’re like an eel, I remember that about you.’

‘So now I’m like an eel! I never twisted and turned where you were concerned. I always wanted you and no one else. I am the faithful one. I never got married.’

‘Yes, but you lived with women, you lived with that old actress. ’

‘All right, but I couldn’t find you! You were the one I wanted! I tried and tried to find you, I searched and searched and somehow I never really gave up hope-and perhaps that’s why I’ve found you now.’

‘I’ve been unjust to Ben.’

‘Oh God, can’t we forget Ben, Ben’s over.’

‘He suffered so much about Titus, when Titus disappeared, it was like a penance.’

‘Maybe he did, but he deserved to suffer, he drove Titus away. I expect he was glad really.’

‘No, no, he wasn’t so bad to Titus, not as much as I said. He was severe-’

‘He was violent. And to you. Don’t try to defend him. Oh don’t let’s talk about that bloody man.’

‘The protection of children people never came, I said they did but they didn’t.’

‘Oh damn the protection of children people, what do I care whether they came or not?’

‘But I said they did, and they didn’t.’

‘Even if they didn’t come, they ought to have come.’

‘But it wasn’t true.’

‘Why are you trying to whitewash that vile cruel man? Titus hates him. Isn’t that evidence enough? It is for me.’

‘Ben hasn’t anyone in the world but me. He hasn’t any thing in the world.’

‘He’ll survive. What about me? Why not be sorry for me for a change? I’ve waited long enough. There’s nothing so derelict as an old actor. What have I got now but my memories? I’ve stripped myself of all the power and all the glamour-for something-and the something, although I didn’t know it, was you. You can’t let me down now.’

‘Do you believe in God?’

‘No.’

‘I think I believe in Jesus Christ. You’ve got to believe in something and hold on to something. People would go mad without God, wouldn’t they. We used to talk about that, didn’t we.’

‘I’m glad you haven’t forgotten those talks. You remember when we were confirmed? It meant a lot, didn’t it? Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire… ’

‘I think I believe in the remission of sins.’

‘We all need a spot of that.’

‘Love redeems, that means something, doesn’t it?’

‘Well don’t tell me you propose to redeem Ben by love! I’m getting sick of Ben. What about redeeming me?’

‘No one else will redeem him, no one else will love him.’

‘Jesus will love him.’

‘No, you see, for Ben, I’ve got to be Jesus.’

‘This is mad talk, darling, really mad. Just try to think a bit. Doesn’t it occur to you that Ben would heave a sigh of relief if you left him? Damn it, you’ve left him already. You aren’t all that necessary. He mightn’t want to send you off, but he’ll be jolly pleased now you’ve bolted.’

‘You want to make him unreal, but he’s real.’

‘Real things become unreal when you enter into the truth.’