Iris Murdoch - The Sea, the Sea

I heard a faint straining scraping sound. I looked up and saw the wire from the front door bell quivering. Then I heard the resonant incoherent clamour. Ben? I turned round quickly and flung the door open.

Peregrine Arbelow was standing outside holding a suitcase.

‘Hello, Charles, what a funny place.’

‘Perry!’

‘I wish you’d call me “Peregrine”. How many times have I said that to you? A thousand?’

‘What on earth are you doing here?’

‘What on earth am I doing here, he says. You issued an invitation, I accepted it. It’s Whit weekend, remember? I have had a very long and tiring drive. I have been looking forward to open arms and cries of joy for the last hundred miles.’

I could now see Peregrine’s white Alfa Romeo parked where James’s Bentley had lately stood.

‘Peregrine, I’m terribly sorry, you can’t stay here, there aren’t any beds and-’

‘Look, may I just push my way in?’ He did so.

Peregrine’s loud voice had alerted the conspirators in the kitchen.

‘Peregrine!’

‘Gilbert! What a pleasant surprise. Charles, I can have Gilbert’s bed.’

‘You bloody won’t, I shall defend my sofa.’

‘Introduce your charming boy friend, Gilbert.’

‘This is Titus Fitch. Not my property alas.’

‘Hello, Titus. I am Peregrine Arbelow. Gilbert, get me a drink, will you, there’s a good fellow.’

‘OK, but there’s nothing but wine and sherry here, you know. Charles doesn’t drink spirits.’

‘Oh, fuck, I’d forgotten, I should have brought a bottle.’

‘Peregrine,’ I said, ‘you won’t be happy here. There’s nothing for you to drink and nowhere for you to sleep. I’m sorry I forgot the date and I don’t actually think I invited you at all. There’s an excellent hotel just down the road-’

At that moment the front doorbell ran again. Peregrine turned to open the door and over his shoulder I could see my cousin James.

‘Hello,’ said Peregrine, ‘welcome to Hospitality Hall, proprietor Charles Arrowby, there’s nothing to drink and nowhere to sleep but-’

‘Hello,’ said James. ‘I’m sorry to come back, Charles, but the Raven Hotel is full up, and I wondered-’

‘I imagine that’s the place where he wanted to park me,’ said Peregrine.

‘Let’s go into the kitchen,’ said Gilbert.

Gilbert went first, then Titus, then Perry, then James. I stood for a moment, then picked up the wine glass from the stairs and followed.

‘I am Peregrine Arbelow.’

‘I think I’ve heard of you,’ said James.

‘Oh goodie -’

‘This is my cousin, General Arrowby,’ I said.

‘You never said he was a general,’ said Gilbert.

‘I never knew you had a cousin,’ said Peregrine. ‘Hello, sir.’

I took James by the sleeve of his immaculate white coat and pulled him back into the hall. ‘Look, you can’t stay here, I suggest you-’

At that moment I saw James’s eyes widen, looking behind me, and I realized that Hartley was standing on the stairs.

At our sudden silence the other three emerged. We all stood there looking up at Hartley.

She was still wearing my black silk dressing gown with the red rosettes. It reached to her feet and with the collar turned up to frame her hair it had something of the effect of an evening dress. Her eyes, startled and large, had their violet tint; and although, with her disordered grey hair she looked old and mad, she seemed in that arrested moment like a queen.

I recovered in a second or two and made for the stairs. As she saw me move Hartley turned and fled. I saw the flash of a bare ankle, a bare foot. I caught her at the curve of the stairs and hurried her towards the upper landing.

We almost ran together along the landing and I pushed her in through the door of her room. She went at once and sat down on the mattress, like an obedient dog. I do not think that in the whole period of her incarceration I ever saw her sit upon the chair.

‘Hartley, darling, where were you going? Were you coming down to look for me? Or did you think that Ben had come? Or were you going to run away?’

She pulled the dressing gown closer about her and simply shook her head several times. She was breathless with agitation. Then she peered up at me with a sad timid sweet look which suddenly reminded me of my father.

‘Oh, Hartley, I love you so much!’ I sat down on the chair and lifted my hands to my face. I grimaced into my hands. I felt so helplessly, vulnerably close to my childhood. ‘Hartley, don’t leave me. I don’t know what I’d do if you went away.’

Hartley said, ‘Who was that man?’

‘What man?’

‘The man you were with when I was on the stairs?’

‘My cousin James.’

‘Oh yes-Aunt Estelle’s son.’

This unexpected exhibition of memory made me sick with shock.

Down below in the kitchen I could hear a lively murmur of voices. Gilbert and Titus, feeling released by Hartley’s apparition from any necessity to be discreet, were doubtless telling all they knew and more to James and Peregrine.

I groaned into my hands.

That night we slept as follows: I slept in my bedroom, Hartley slept in the middle room, Gilbert slept on his sofa, Peregrine slept on the cushions in the bookroom, James slept on a couple of chairs in the little red room, and Titus slept out on the lawn. It was a very hot night but there was no storm.

The next morning there was a holiday atmosphere among my guests. Titus swam from the cliff as usual. James, after exploring the tower and uttering various historical conjectures about it, swam from the tower steps. (I had still forgotten to fix a rope, but it was high tide.) Peregrine, a great white blob, lay half-naked sun-bathing upon the grass and got thoroughly burnt. Gilbert drove into the village and came back with a mass of foodstuffs and several bottles of whisky which he put down to my account at the shop. Later James drove to the village to get The Times and failed. There was general amazement at my ability to live without ‘news’. ‘Who’s dead, who’s hijacked, who’s on strike,’ as Perry summed it up. He had brought a transistor set with him, but I told him to keep it out of my way. James pioneered a popular plan to go to the Raven Hotel to watch the Test Match on television, only Gilbert, again despatched to shop, this time for sunburn lotion for Peregrine, reported that electrical disturbances had put the local TV out of order. Gilbert and Titus, hoping to find recruits for their choir, succeeded with Perry who sang a gruff and shaggy bass, but failed with James, who could not sing a note. I had managed on the previous evening to warn Titus and Gilbert not to tell Peregrine about Rosina’s visit. This was just as well, since in the morning I was almost incapable of rational thought. I felt as if something had snapped inside my head, a brain tumour had burst or something.

My desperate state was caused partly by the presence of James, who seemed to be a centre of magnetic attraction to the other three. Each of them separately told me how much he liked James. No doubt they expected to please me by this information. Titus said, ‘It’s funny, I feel as if I’d met him before, and yet I know I haven’t. Perhaps I saw him in a dream.’ The other thing which drove me half mad was a sudden change in Hartley’s tone. She had been saying that she must go home, but she had lately said it almost listlessly as if she knew it was becoming impossible. Now she began to say it as if she meant it, and to back it up with almost-rational arguments.

‘I know that you think you’re being kind to me-’

‘Kind! I love you.’

‘I know you think it’s for the best and I’m grateful-’