Iris Murdoch - The Sea, the Sea

‘Why are you here?’

‘Can’t you make an effort to be civil to an old friend?’

‘I’m not in a social mood.’

‘So I see. Yet you already have two charming guests, in fact three guests, including lady-love. All right, I’m not angling for an invitation to stay. I think this is the nastiest meanest most unpleasant house I’ve ever entered.’

‘It has bad vibes,’ said Titus.

‘You can say that again,’ said Gilbert.

They were ganging up against me.

‘But is your funny lady really upstairs? Whatever are you going to do with her? You know, you promised to tell me what was going on in your interesting love life, only of course I ought to know by now that you don’t keep promises. Anyway I decided I’d come and see how you were getting along. I’ve been working hard and I thought I needed a holiday. I’m at the Raven Hotel again, I like it there, I like the bay and those extraordinary boulders. And the food is excellent, not your style.’

‘I hope you have a pleasant stay at the Raven Hotel.’

‘The most amazing rumours about you are circulating in London.’

‘I’m sure everyone is fascinated.’

‘Well, they’re not actually. I had to start a few rumours myself to keep your memory a bit greenish. They’ve forgotten you already. You were pretty old hat when you were still with us, now you’re ancient history. The young people have never heard of you, Charles. You’re exploded, you’re not even a myth. I can see it now, Charles dear, you’re old. Where’s all that charm we used to go on about? It was nothing but power really. Now you’ve lost your power you’ve lost your charm. No wonder you have to make do with a Bearded Lady.’

‘Just buzz off, Rosina, will you?’

‘But what’s happening, Charles? I’m mad with curiosity. I gather from these two that she’s a sort of prisoner here. May I go up and poke her through the bars?’

‘Rosina, please-’

‘But, Charles, what are you up to? There’s a husband in the case, isn’t there, if I remember? Not that husbands ever worried you much. But you can’t be going to carry her off, you can’t want to marry her! Really, you are becoming ridiculous. You were never ridiculous in the old days. You used to have dignity and style.’

Titus and Gilbert, less amused, were looking embarrassed and studying the great slate flagstones of the kitchen floor.

‘I’ll see you to the road, Rosina. Is your car out there?’

‘Oh, I don’t want to go yet. I want to sing some more. Who’s pretty-boy?’ She indicated Titus.

‘That is my son Titus.’

Titus frowned and stroked his scarred lip. Gilbert raised his eyebrows, Rosina changed colour, shot me a quick look of piercing malignancy, then laughed. ‘Well, well-All right, I’ll go. My car’s outside. You may escort me to it. Goodbye, you two, I enjoyed the sing-song.’ She marched out of the kitchen swinging her handbag and I followed.

Rosina walked straight out of the front door and across the causeway without looking back. I followed her as far as her horrible red car.

There she turned on me, her vixen face pointed with rage. ‘Is that boy really your son?’

‘Well, no, I’ve sort of taken him on. I always wanted a son. He’s their son, he’s the adopted son-of-of Hartley and her husband.’

‘I see. I might have known it was a stupid joke. For one moment I thought perhaps-what are you going to do about that woman? You can’t collect a half-crazy female at this stage of her life. You can’t keep her like a mad thing on a chain. Or have I got it all wrong?’

‘She’s not a prisoner. She loves me. She’s just been brainwashed. ’

‘Marriage is brainwashing. Not necessarily a bad thing. Your brain could do with a wash. Oh God, I feel so tired. That bloody long drive-I think your mind’s going, you’re getting senile, you’re living in a dream world, a rather nasty one. Shall I tell you something to wake you up?’

‘No, thank you.’

‘You say you “always wanted a son”. That’s just a sentimental lie, you didn’t want trouble, you didn’t want to know. You never put yourself in a situation where you could have a real son. Your sons are fantasies, they’re easier to deal with. Do you imagine you could really “take on” that silly uneducated adolescent boy in there? He’ll vanish out of your life like everything else has done, because you can’t grasp the stuff of reality. He’ll turn out to be a dream child too-when you touch him he’ll fade and disappear-you’ll see.’

‘All right, you’ve had your say, now go.’

‘I haven’t started yet. I never told you this at the time, I thought I never would. You made me pregnant. I got rid of the child.’

I drew a circle in the dust on the radiator of the car. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Because you weren’t there to tell, you’d gone, gone off with Lizzie or whoever was the next dream girl. God, the sickening casual brutality of men-the women who are left behind to make agonizing decisions alone. I made that decision alone. Christ, how I wish I hadn’t done it. I was crazy. I did it partly out of hatred of you. Why the hell didn’t I keep that child. He’d have been nearly grown up by now.’

‘Rosina-’

‘And I’d have taught him to hate you-that would have been a consolation too.’

‘I’m sorry-’

‘Oh, you’re sorry. And I daresay I wasn’t the only one. You broke up my marriage deliberately, industriously, zealously, you worked at it. Then you walk off and leave me with nothing, with less than nothing, with that horrible crime which I had to commit by myself, I cried for months-for years-about that-I’ve never stopped crying.’ Her dark eyes filled with tears for a second, and then she seemed to magic them away. She opened the door of the car.

‘Oh-Rosina-’

‘I hate you, I loathe you, you’ve been a devil in my mind ever after-’

‘Look, all right, I left you, but you drove me to it, you were responsible too. Women’s Lib hasn’t stopped women from putting all the blame on us when it suits them. You tell me this terrible story now to-’

‘Oh shut up. What’s the name of that female?’

‘You mean-Hartley-?’

‘Is that her surname?’

‘No, her surname is Fitch.’

‘Fitch, OK. Mr Fitch, here I come.’

‘What on earth do you mean?’

‘He lives here, doesn’t he? I shall find out where he lives and I shall go and console him. It’ll do him good to meet a real live woman instead of an old rag-bag. He’s probably forgotten what women are like. I won’t hurt him, I’ll just cheer him up, I’ll do him less harm than you’re doing her. I’ve got to have some amusement on my holiday. I thought of seducing pretty-boy, but it would be too easy. The father would be a far more interesting project. After all, life is full of surprises. The only thing that’s become absolutely dull, dull, dull is you, Charles. Dull. Goodbye.’

She got into the car and slammed the door. The car shot off like a red rocket in the direction of the village.

I stared after her. Soon there was nothing on the road but a cloud of dust and above it the pale blue sky. For a short while I felt that I should go mad if I reflected too much on what Rosina had told me about what happened in the past.

The rest of the day (before something else happened in the evening) passed like a feverish dream. The weather, sensing my mood, infected by it perhaps, became hotter but with that sinister breathless heat that betokens a thunderstorm. The light was darkened although the sun blazed from a cloudless sky. I felt weak and shivery as if I were developing the ’flu. My impression increased that perhaps Hartley was ill. Her eyes glittered, her hands were hot. Her stuffy smelly room had become that of an invalid. She was rational, not frenzied, she actually argued with me. I begged her to come downstairs, to come outside into the sun and air, but she lay back as if exhausted at the very thought. Even her rationality had something unnerving about it, as if it were the reasoning of a quiet maniac or an exercise undertaken simply for its own sake. She constantly said she wanted to go home, that there was no alternative, and so on and so on, but she seemed to me to lack the final real will to go. I kept on trying to regard this absence of will as a hopeful factor, but somehow now it was beginning to frighten me.