Iris Murdoch - The Sea, the Sea

‘Yes,’ said Peregrine.

‘I think I agree with Charles in some ways,’ said Gilbert.

‘For instance, where will you take her? The details have to be considered. What will she do all day?’

‘That question alone,’ said Peregrine, ‘is enough to deter any man from getting married.’

‘Charles, please don’t think me impertinent and above all don’t think me unkind. I can’t just stand by and see you make a mucker of this business. It calls for a joint operation. I wonder if you’d let me talk to her, just once very briefly?’

‘ You? Talk to her? You must be mad!’

At that moment I heard a terrible sound, a sound which in fact I had been dreading ever since I embarked upon my perilous adventure. Hartley upstairs had suddenly started screaming and banging the door. ‘Let me out, let me out!’

I ran out of the kitchen, slamming the door behind me, and up the stairs. When I reached Hartley’s door she was still screaming and kicking at the panels. She had never done anything like this before. ‘Let me out! Let me out!’

I wanted to scream myself. I pounded the door frenziedly with my fist. ‘Oh stop it! Stop it! Shut up! Stop shouting, will you?’

Silence.

I ran downstairs again. There was silence in the kitchen too. I ran out of the front door and across the causeway and started walking along the road towards the tower.

Later on that day, towards evening, sitting on the rocks with James, I had begun to agree to things which had by now begun to seem inevitable.

‘Charles, it’s a terrible situation. That’s one reason why you’ve got to end it. And there is only one way to end it. You do see that now?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you’ll write the letter?’

‘Yes.’

‘I think the letter is important. You can explain things clearly in the letter.’

‘He won’t read it. He’ll tear it up and stamp on it.’

‘Well-or may keep it as evidence against you, but I think that risk is worth taking. I believe he’ll read it out of curiosity.’

‘He’s below the level of curiosity.’

‘And you agree that we should come?’

‘I agree that you should come.’

‘I think the more the better.’

‘But not Titus of course.’

‘Yes, Titus too. It might help her, and it could help Titus, if he could be polite to his father for five minutes.’

‘ Polite? It sounds like a tea party.’

‘The liker it is to a tea party the better.’

‘Titus wouldn’t agree.’

‘He has agreed.’

‘Oh.’

‘Then it’s OK that Peregrine can go into the village now and make that telephone call?’

I hesitated. It was the last moment. If I said yes now the whole situation would slide out of my control. I would be sanctioning a totally new and unpredictable future. ‘Yes.’

‘Good. You stay here, I’ll go and brief Peregrine.’

In the afternoon I had talked with Hartley. I did not admit it to James, but his ‘discussion’ had helped me to see certain things more clearly, or had battered certain ideas into my head; or else I had in any case reached a certain decisive point of despair. That terrible ‘let me out, let me out’ had cracked my faith and my hope. I asked her if she really wanted to go home. She said she did. I said all right. I did not make any more appeals or offer any more arguments. And as we looked at each other, silently, neither venturing to add to the words firmly spoken, I felt a fresh barrier rise between us. Before, I had thought our communication difficult. Now I realized how close we had been.

The plan was that Peregrine should go to the village and telephone Ben and say that Mr Arrowby and his friends would be bringing ‘Mary’ back. Would Ben say, ‘Go to hell, I don’t want her now’? No. Very unlikely. Whatever he ultimately wanted he would not oblige me by that move. But perhaps he would be away, perhaps he would have disappeared, perhaps when it came to it Hartley would change her mind… But by now anything was better than hope.

James was re-appearing, leaping over the rocks.

My heart beat violently, sadly.

‘It’s all right, he says bring her round, but he says tomorrow morning, not tonight.’

‘That’s odd. Why not tonight?’ His woodwork class perhaps!

‘He wants to pretend he doesn’t care. It’s an available insult. He wants to make it clear we come at his convenience. It’s just as well. It gives you more time to write that letter. It might be as well to deliver the letter before we all arrive, he’ll be more likely to read it.’

‘Oh, James-’

‘Not to worry. Sic biscuitus disintegrat. ’

‘What?’

‘That’s the way the cookie crumbles.’

Dear Mr Fitch,

This is not a very easy letter to write. I just want to make a number of things quite clear. The main thing is that I brought your wife to my house and kept her there against her will. The fact that she did not even take her handbag with her is proof, if proof be needed, that she was not ‘running away’. (Forgive me if I say the obvious, I want this letter to be a final and definitive account of what has happened.) I decoyed her into my car by telling her that Titus was at my house, which he was. When she arrived I locked her up. So you were right to charge me with having ‘kidnapped’ her. She has not ceased to ask to go home. It goes without saying that I have had no ‘relations’ with her. She has throughout resolutely resisted all my proposals and plans and has desired simply to be allowed to return to you. She is therefore totally blameless in this matter. My friends Mr Opian and Mr Arbelow, and my cousin General Arrowby, who have been here with me in the house throughout, will vouch for the truth of what I say.

There is no point in apologies and little point in further explanations. I have been in a state of illusion and caused much fruitless distress to your wife and to yourself, which I regret. I did not act out of malice, but out of the promptings of an old romantic affection which I now see to have nothing to do with what exists at present. And perhaps at this point I should add (again something obvious) that of course I have not seen or communicated with your wife in any way since she was a young girl, and our recent meeting was completely accidental.

I trust and assume that since you are a reasonable and just man you will take no reprisal against your wife who is completely innocent. This is a matter of deep concern to me, my cousin and my friends. She has been perfectly loyal to you in word and deed and deserves your respect and gratitude. As for myself, I trust you will feel that I have suffered enough humiliation, not least in consciousness of my folly,

Yours truly,

Charles Arrowby.

It was just as well that I had the extra time since it took me all the evening to compose this letter. It was indeed a difficult letter to write and I was far from satisfied with the final result. My first version was considerably more bellicose, but as James, to whom I showed it, pointed out, if I accused Ben of being a bully and a tyrant this would at once suggest that Hartley had said so. I could not justify my proceedings on that ground without casting an aspersion upon the ‘perfect loyalty’ which I had perjured myself by swearing that Hartley had exhibited. This omission of course left my self-defence almost non-existent, and I was well aware, without having it mentioned to me by James, that in another age both Ben and I would have been forced by convention and our own honourable consciences to fight each other to the death. In another age, and, in the case of a man like Ben, perhaps in this one too. My slender ‘apologies’ were also difficult to word, since I had to crawl sufficiently to propitiate, should Ben be disposed to forgive, but not so much as to seem negligible should he prefer to fight. I could only hope that Ben’s own sense of guilt would weaken his aggressive instincts. The pompous reference to ‘my cousin and my friends’ was James’s idea, though the false assertion that they had been present ‘throughout’ Hartley’s sojourn was mine. James thought that the vague presence of a more disinterested, more formidable, group of persons might make Ben feel that his proceedings had an audience, and might thus temper the violence of his reactions. I did not believe this. His behaviour might be a matter of ‘deep concern’ to all sorts of worthy persons other than myself, but once the front door was closed upon the married pair Ben would do as he pleased. James did not repeat his request to be allowed to talk to Hartley. It was in any case too late. Gilbert dropped my missive through the letter box at Nibletts at about ten o’clock that evening.