The Sea, The Sea Part 2

A little while ago the thought came to me that she was dead. That strange pallor, those dilated pupils: perhaps these were presages of disease, of some quiet killer biding its time? Perhaps really she had died long ago when I was still young? In a way I would be glad to know that she was dead. What would my love for her do then? Would it peacefully die too, or be transformed into something selfless and innocent?

Would jealousy, the jealousy which has burned even in these pages, leave me at last, and the smell of fire and brimstone fade away?

Even now I shake and tremble as I write. Memory is too weak a name for this terrible evocation. Oh Hartley, Hartley, how timeless, how absolute love is. My love for you is unaware that I am old and you perhaps are dead.

I ate three oranges at eleven o'clock this morning. Oranges should be eaten in solitude and as a treat when one is feeling hungry. They are too messy and overwhelming to form part of an ordinary meal. I should say here that I am not a breakfast eater though I respect those who are. I breakfast on delicious Indian tea. Coffee and China tea are intolerable at breakfast time, and, for me, coffee unless it is very good and made by somebody else is pretty intolerable at any time. It seems to me an inconvenient and much overrated drink, but this I will admit to be a matter of personal taste. (Whereas other views which I hold on the subject of food approximate to absolute truths.) I do not normally eat at breakfast time since even half a slice of b.u.t.tered toast can induce an inconvenient degree of hunger, and eating too much breakfast is a thoroughly bad start to the day. I am however not at all averse to elevenses which can come in great variety. There are, as indicated above, moments for oranges. There are also moments for chilled port and plum cake.

The orange feast did not dim my appet.i.te for lunch, which consisted of fish cakes with hot Indian pickle and a salad of grated carrot, radishes, watercress and bean shoots. (I went through a period of grated carrot with everything, but recovered.) Then cherry cake with ice cream. I had mixed feelings about ice cream until I realized that it must always be eaten with a cake or tart, never with fruit alone. By itself it is of course pointless, even if stuffed with nuts or other rubbish. And by 'ice cream' I mean the creamy vanilla sort. 'Flavoured' ice cream is as repugnant to the purist as 'flavoured' yoghurt. Nor have I ever been able to see the raison d'etre raison d'etre of the so-called 'water ice', which transforms itself offensively on the tongue from a searing lump of hard frozen material into a mouthful of equally tasteless water. I am grieved that my lack of a refrigerator involves me in a marginal waste of food. My refrigeratorless mother never wasted a crumb. Everything hot consumed lived to fight another day. How we loved her bread puddings! of the so-called 'water ice', which transforms itself offensively on the tongue from a searing lump of hard frozen material into a mouthful of equally tasteless water. I am grieved that my lack of a refrigerator involves me in a marginal waste of food. My refrigeratorless mother never wasted a crumb. Everything hot consumed lived to fight another day. How we loved her bread puddings!

I have reread what I wrote about Hartley and feel moved simply by the fact that I was able to write it. It is but a shadowy tribute; if I can bear to write more on the subject I may try to improve it. How strange memory is. Since I wrote, so many more pictures of her, stored up in the dense darkness of my mind, have become available. Her long legs bicycling, her bare dusty feet in sandals. Her lithe movement from crouching to standing, balanced upon the parallel bar in the gym display. The feel other strong hands through my s.h.i.+rt, holding on to my shoulders. We did not caress each other in an immodest way. Our burning youth was docile to the chivalry of a pure pa.s.sion. We were prepared to wait. Alas and alas. Never so pure and gentle, never so intense did it come to me after, that absolute and holy yearning of one human body and soul for another. But reading my story I feel again the terrible mystery of it. When did she start to turn away? Did she deceive me? Oh why did it happen?

I have spent the afternoon tidying the house. I carried two dustbins to the end of the causewayI note with displeasure that the dustmen last time let some rubbish fall down onto the rocks below. I have had to climb down and collect it. I cleaned the kitchen and washed the huge black slates of the floor. They are worthy of a cathedral. A man came to deliver calor gas cylinders, rather to my surprise. (I had mentioned the matter in the Fishermen's Stores.) I must remember to enquire if they can supply a calor gas fridge. The remainder of the ice cream has melted. My larder is still damp. I have lit a fire in the little red room and left the downstairs doors open. I moved quite a lot of wood into the downstairs inner room where I hope it will get dry. I am getting used to the smell of wood smoke which now pervades the house. It has stopped raining and the sun is s.h.i.+ning, but over most of the sea the sky is a thick leaden grey. The sunny golden rocks stand out against that dark background. What a paradise, I shall never tire of this sea and this sky. If I could only carry a chair and table over the rocks to the tower I could sit and write there with the view of Raven Bay. I must go out and study my rock pools while this intense light lasts. I think I am becoming more observant I lately noticed a colony of delightful very small crabs, like little transparent yellow grapes, and some ferocious-looking tiny fish with whiskers which resemble miniature coelacanths.

I feel calmer now already about Hartley, as if the thought of her has been somehow mercifully absorbed into the sane open air of my home. This is indeed a test of my new environment. ('You'll go mad with loneliness and boredom', they said!) All my instincts were right. I would like to tell all these things to someone, perhaps to Lizzie. I left in store with that first love so much of my innocence and gentleness which I later destroyed and denied, and which is vet now perhaps at last available again. Can a woman's ghost, after so many years, open the doors of the heart?

History

ONE.

I did not look at the crabs after all. I became obsessed with the idea of carrying a chair and table out to the tower, and I set off across the rocks with the little folding table which I had moved from the middle room to the drawing room. This object soon began to seem absurdly heavy, and I found to my annoyance that the smooth steep faces of the rocks were too difficult to climb while I was holding the table in one hand. Eventually I let the thing fall into a creva.s.se. I must try to pioneer some easier way to get to the tower.

I climbed onward and sat on a wet rock overlooking Raven Bay. The sun was still s.h.i.+ning and the seaward sky was still grey. The smooth foamless sea was rising and falling against the rocks with a gentle inviting rhythm. The longer shadows made the big spherical stones of the bay stand out, half dark, half gleaming. The long quite pretty facade of the Raven Hotel showed very clear and detailed in the odd brilliant light.

I was just getting over my annoyance about the table when I noticed a man walking along the road in the direction of Shruff End, having just turned the corner from the bay side. He was dressed in a smart suit and a trilby hat, and looked in that vivid landscape like an incongruous figure in a surrealist picture. I surveyed his oddity. Walkers on that road were even rarer than cars. Then he began to look familiar. Then I recognized him. Gilbert Opian.

My first instinct was to hide, and in fact I moved into the moist salt-smelling interior of the tower, under the bright round of sky, feeling a small unpleasant shock. However I could not seriously regard Gilbert as a menacing figure and it then occurred to me that of course he was bringing Lizzie; so I hurried out again and began to scramble over the rocks in the direction of the road. By the time I reached the tarmac Gilbert had seen me and turned back. We met each other, he smiling. Gilbert was wearing a light-weight black suit with a striped s.h.i.+rt and flowery tie. When he saw me he took off his hat. It was three or four years since I had seen Gilbert and he had aged a lot. The mysterious awful changes which alter the human face from youth towage may gently dally and delay, then act decisively all at once. Gilbert in young middle age looked rosy and boyish. Now he was all wrinkled and humorous and dry, with that faint air of quizzical cynicism which clever elderly people often instinctively put on, and which may be quite new to them, a final defence. When I last saw him he still wore a fresh unselfconscious air of childish conceit. Now his face was full of wary watchful anxiety masquerading as worldly detachment, as if he were cautiously trying out his new wrinkles as a mask. Though podgier, he still contrived to look handsome, and his white curly hair still had a jaunty look, had not learnt to seem old.

I was wearing jeans and a white s.h.i.+rt which had escaped from them. Seeing Gilbert's tie, his tie-pin, his (or was I mistaken?) discreet make-up, I felt a quick contemptuous pity for him, together with a sense of how fit I was, how hard. I could see Gilbert taking these things in, the pity, the fitness. His moist lightblue faintly pinkish eyes flickered anxiously between their dry layers of wrinkles.

'Darling, you look marvellous, so brown, so youngmy G.o.d, your complexion'Gilbert always speaks in a rich fruity ringing voice as if addressing the back of the stalls.

'Have you brought Lizzie?'

'No.'

'A letter, message?'

'Not exactly'

'What, then?'

'Is that funny-looking house yours?'

'Yes.'

'I wouldn't mind a drink, guv'nor.'

'Why have you come?'

'Darling, it's about Lizzie '

'Of course, but get on with it.'

'It's about Lizzie and me. Please, Charles, take it seriously and don't look like that or I shall cry!

Something has really happened between us, I don't mean like that sort of thing, but like real love like, G.o.d, in this awful world one doesn't often have such divine luck, s.e.x is the trouble of course, if people would only search for each other as souls'

'Souls?'

'Like just see see people and love them quietly and tenderly and seek for happiness together, well I suppose that's s.e.x too but it's sort of cosmic s.e.x and not just to do with organs ' people and love them quietly and tenderly and seek for happiness together, well I suppose that's s.e.x too but it's sort of cosmic s.e.x and not just to do with organs '

'Organs?'

'Lizzie and I are really connected, we're close, we're like brother and sister, we've stopped wandering, we're home. Till Lizzie came I was just waiting for the next drink, gin then milk, then gin then milk, you know how it used to go, I thought it would go on till I dropped. Now everything's different, even the past is different, we've talked all our lives over together, every d.a.m.n thing, we've talked it all out, we've sort of repossessed the past together and redeemed it'

'How perfectly loathsome.'

'I mean we did it reverently, especially about you'

'You discussed me?'

'Yes, how could we not, Charles, you're not invisible-oh, please don't be cross, you know how I've always felt about you, you know how we both feel about you '

'You want me to join the family.'

'Exactly! Please don't be sort of dry and sarcastic and make a joke of it, please try to understand. You see, I believe in miracles, now, dear Charles, miracles of love. Love is a miracle, real love is. It's far above the sort of boundaries and limits we were always tripping over. Why define, why worry, why not just be simple and free and loving with other people? We aren't young any more'

'Have you given up boys, no more dangerous adventures?'

Gilbert, who had been gazing at the open neck of my s.h.i.+rt all the time he was speaking, raised his eyes to mine. His eyes rolled and swung in an odd characteristic manner, perhaps the effect of drink, and he had a way of wrinkling his nose and pulling down the corners of his mouth which he had copied from Wilfred Dunning. He went through a sort of painful humorous grimace. How selfconscious these old actors' faces are. 'Listen, king of shadows. Lizzie has made me happy. I'm new, I'm changed like they say in religion. Of course I'm not a totally reformed character and I wouldn't mind a drink absolutely now. But listen, Lizzie won't give me up, you can't break this bond between us. If you think it's trivial or funny you haven't understood. All you can do is make both of us very unhappy by being violent and cruel. Oh yes, we're frightened of you, yes, like we always were. Or you can make us very happy and make yourself happy just by being gentle and kind and by loving us and letting us love you. Why ever not? And if you make us miserable you'll feel wretched yourself in the end. Why not opt for happiness all round? Christ, darling, can't you see, it's a choice between good and evil!'

Gilbert's tirade, which was rather longer and more mawkish and repet.i.tive than what I have set down here, was of course absurd. But what really annoyed me was the idea of Gilbert and Lizzie a.n.a.lysing each other and discussing in G.o.d knows what beastly detail their relations with me. I should add here that as far as the theatre went, which in his case was most of the way, I had made Gilbert. He owed me everything. And now this puppet was talking back and positively threatening me with moral sanctions!

However, I laughed. 'Gilbert, come back to reality. I am amused by your touching description of your relations with Lizzie, but really it won't do. You claim to be changed, but you didn't answer my question about boys. I am totally sceptical about your menage and I don't see why I should respect it. Why come and bother mo with all this drivel about brotherhood and cosmic s.e.x? This matter concerns me and Lizzie. It is nothing to do with you, and I'm shocked that she even told you about it. Even if you are fond of each other, sisters don't have to get their brothers' permission for everything. I summoned her, not you. She and I will decide what to do, and you're not part of it. If you hang around here you'll simply get burnt.'

As I spoke I was becoming conscious of that old familiar possessive feeling, the desire to grab and hold, which had been somehow blessedly absent from my recent thoughts about Lizzie. Perhaps that was a miracle, or maybe just lack of imagination, the abstract idea' she had accused me of. This reflection increased my annoyance with Gilbert. He was making me coa.r.s.en and define an impulse which had been splendidly generous and vague. This bickering was mean and undignified, but now I could not stop.

'Charles, can't we go into your funny house and have a drink?'

'No.'

'Well, do you mind if I sit down?' Gilbert hitched his trousers and sat down carefully on a rock. He laid his hat on the gra.s.s and surveyed his well-polished mud-fringed shoes. 'Charles dear, let's be calm about this, shall we? Do you remember sometimes when it was all rather fraught and you were furious with us, you used suddenly to stop and say, 'All right, this is the English, not the Turkish, court'?'

'Gilbert, just keep out of my way, will you? If Lizzie wants to come she'll come, if not not. You don't understand what this thing is all about, between Lizzie and me, how can you? I don't want it messed around with your dreams of miracles and perfect love. I don't believe in your set-up, I strongly suspect you're deceiving yourself and deceiving Lizzie too. I'm beginning to feel it may even be my duty to bust up your rotten arrangement. So don't provoke me. And take your b.l.o.o.d.y hand off my sleeve.'

'Darling, don't give way to anger, you frighten me so, you always did'

'I don't think I frighten you enough.'

'You always had such a b.l.o.o.d.y bad temper and it didn't help any of us ever. I know you thought it did, but that was an illusion. There is a worse way and there is a better way here. G.o.d, didn't you read Lizzie's letter?'

'Did she show it to you?'

'No, but I know what she said.'

'Did she show you my letter?'

'Er-no-'

'All this makes me sick!'

'Charles, you can't take Lizzie away from me, don't be so conventional, what does ordinary s.e.x matter here, you'd respect a marriage, well perhaps you wouldn't, but you must believe Lizzie and at least respect her, it's a sacred bond and she won't leave me, she's said so a thousand times'

'A woman can lie a thousand times.'

'Lizzie's right, you despise women.'

'Did she say that?'

'Yes. And she thinks you're not serious. You can't take Lizzie away, but you can spoil things, you can make her mad with misery and regret, you can make her fall in love with you again in a rotten hopeless way, you can make both of us perfectly wretched'

'Gilbert, stop. I'm not going to play your game or enter your muddle. You can muddle away and dream away by yourself. Why isn't Lizzie here to tell me what she thinks and wants? She's afraid to see me because she loves me.'

Charles darling, you know I care for you very much, you could simply murder my peace of mind '

'Oh d.a.m.n your peace of mind'

At that moment Lizzie appeared. She materialized as a dark blur in the corner of my eye, in the evening suns.h.i.+ne, and I knew it was she before I turned to look at her. And as soon as I saw her that old wicked possessive urge jumped inside me for joy and I knew that the battle was over. But of course I showed no feeling apart from a little air of annoyance.

Gilbert picked up his hat and crushed it onto his face. He said to Lizzie, 'You said you wouldn't, you said you didn't want to, oh why did I let you come'

I took in Lizzie, but looked beyond her at the sea, which was so calm and blue and quiet after the stupid yapping of my argument with Gilbert. I turned and walked along the road, and then leapt onto the rocks and began to make my way as fast as I could in the direction of the tower. At once I could hear the soft scrabbling pattering sound of Lizzie following me. She did well, considering I knew the rocks and she did not, and reached the gra.s.sy patch beside the tower very soon after I did, panting and with the strap of one sandal broken. As I turned round I saw Gilbert beginning to slip and slither on the rocks in his polished London shoes. He disappeared into a creva.s.se. There was a distant sound of lamenting and cursing.

I went on through the stone doorway into the interior of the tower. Lizzie followed and suddenly we were alone together in that strange greenish light, with the white round eye of the sky up above us, and cool gra.s.ses about our ankles. The moist atmosphere inside the tower had produced a quite different vegetation, longer lusher gra.s.s and dandelions and some white nettles which were just coming into flower. Lizzie was wearing a very thin white cotton dress, straight like a s.h.i.+ft, and she was holding her handbag close up against her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and shuddering a little. She looked slightly slimmer. Her abundant fuzzy cinnamon-brown hair was loose and tangled, and as the breeze blew it I could see the whiteness of her scalp. She was blus.h.i.+ng extremely, but she stood very upright and stared at me, and her terracottapink mouth was firm and she looked brave, like a n.o.ble girl facing execution. She too looked older, older at any rate than the radiant teasing boyish creature I most remembered. But there was a contained canny shrewdness in her face which gave it form and still made it handsome: the strong brow and the sweeping line to the delicate almost retrousse nose. Her bright light-brown eyes were red-rimmed with recent tears. As I gazed at her I felt triumphant and delighted; but I looked grim. Lizzie dropped her eyes, reached out one hand to the wall, balanced to shake her broken sandal off, and put her bare foot down into the gra.s.s. She said, 'Did you know that there was a table there among the rocks?'

'Yes, I put it there.'

'I thought the sea might have brought it in.'

I was silent, gazing at her.

In a moment, in a whisper, she said, '0h, I'm sorryI'm sorry, I'm sorry'

I said, 'So you discussed me with Gilbert?'

'I didn't tell him anything that mattered'she was looking down at her bare foot, and gently touched a white nettle with her toes.

'Liar.'

'I didn't, I '

'You lied to him, then?'

'Oh don't-don't-'

'Why didn't you want to see me?'

'I was afraid'

'Afraid of love?'

'Yes.'

We were both standing very stiff, the wind coming in through the open door tugging at her skirt, and at my errant s.h.i.+rt.

I recalled her chaste dry clinging kisses and I desired them now. I wanted to seize her in my arms and shout with delighted triumphant laughter. But I did not, and when she made a slight movement towards me I forbade it with a quick gesture. 'You must go nowback to London with Gilbert.'

'Oh, please'

'Please what? Dear Lizzie, I don't want to be unkind, but I want things to be clear, I always did. I don't know what we can do or be for each other now, but we can only find out if we both take the risk of being wholehearted. I want all your attention. I can't share you with someone else, I'm amazed that you ask it! If you want to see me you must get rid of Gilbert, and get rid of him properly. If you want to stay with Gilbert then you won't see me, and I mean that, we won't meet again. That seems fair enough. Let me know soon, will you? And now please go, your friend is waiting.'

Lizzie, once more hugging her bag and her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, started talking very quickly. 'I must have timeI can't just leave Gilbert like that, I can't, I can't hurt him soI want you to understandpeople don't understand and they've been beastly to us but you must understand then you'll see'

'Lizzie, don't be stupid, you were never stupid beforeI don't want to 'understand' your situation, it's your business. But you must either get out of it and come to me or stay in it and not come to me.'

'OhCharlesdarlingdarling' She suddenly turned, the stiffness left her body and it was that of a dancer. She threw her handbag onto the gra.s.s and in a moment she would have been in my arms, only I stepped back and again forbade it. 'No, I don't want your hugs and kisses. You must go away and think.'

A few drops of rain fell and long dark stains appeared on her dress. She touched her blazing cheeks, and then with a continuation of her motion swooped and picked up her bag.

'Go now. Lizzie child, I don't want us to have a messy conversation or an argument. Goodbye.'

She gave a little wailing cry, then turned and fled out of the doorway. I waited a moment or two and when I came out she had almost reached the road. A yellow Volkswagen was now parked on the gra.s.s, pointing towards Raven Bay. I saw Gilbert jump out and open the pa.s.senger door. Lizzie plunged into the car. Both doors slammed and the car leapt away round the corner. A couple of minutes later it reappeared on the road to the hotel I watched until it had pa.s.sed the hotel and vanished where the road turned inland. Then I went back into the tower and picked up Lizzie's broken sandal. She must have had a sore foot by the time she reached the road.

It is now two hours later and I am sitting in the little red room. I have just written out my account of Lizzie's visit as a story and it has somehow excited and pleased me to put it down in this way. If one had time to write the whole of one's life thus bit by bit as a novel how rewarding this would be. The pleasant parts would be doubly pleasant, the funny parts funnier, and sin and grief would be softened by a light of philosophic consolation.

I am moved by having seen Lizzie and am wondering whether I have been clever or foolish. Of course if I had taken poor Lizzie in my arms it would all have been over in a second. At the moment when she hurled her handbag away she was ready to give in, to make every concession, to utter every promise. And how much I wanted to seize her. This ghost embrace remains with me as a joy mislaid. (I must admit that, after having seen her, my ideas are a good deal less 'abstract'!) Yet perhaps it was wise, and I feel satisfied with my firmness. If I had taken Lizzie then, accepted her acceptance, there would still have remained the problem of Gilbert, and I would have had the task of getting rid of him. Much better to let Lizzie do this, and do it promptly under pressure of the fear of losing me. I want that situation cleared up and cleared away, and meanwhile I prefer not to think about it. I cannot attach much importance to Lizzie's other 'objection', expressed in her letter, her fear that I might break her heart! That risk will not deter her. And I think on reflection that this was just an excuse, an arguing point put in to gain time. She must have seen at once that she had to cas.h.i.+er Gilbert, and given his slimy tenacity this might have seemed a difficulty. Have I really been such a Don Juan? Compared with others, certainly not. As for my stem policy with Lizzie, I really have nothing to lose. If she delays too long I shall go and fetch her. If she still tries to say no I shall not take it for an answer. My threats of 'never again' are empty of course, but she will not think so. If she really decides in the end not to come then that will prove she is not worthy of me. In spite of it all I can let Lizzie go. If she won't, she won't. I think I shall now walk round the bay to the Raven Hotel and ask them about delivering some wine. If I like the menu I may even have dinner there. I am beginning to be hungry. I suddenly feel pleased as if all will be well.

Shortly after this something very disconcerting happened, and then... But first... I walked to the Raven Hotel and asked for a delivery of wine and bought a bottle of some Spanish red stuff to take home. I looked at the rather unsatisfactory dinner menu, but was feeling so hungry that I attempted to enter the restaurant, only a waiter prevented me because I was not wearing a tie. I was tempted to tell them who I was, but did not; let them discover later. I caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror: I had tucked in my s.h.i.+rt tails, but I did look rather a tramp in stained jeans with jagged uncombed hair and an old cardigan on inside out. I set off again for home.

The walk to the hotel had been pleasant, but now it was colder and darker, and by the time I was nearing Shruff End the sun had set, though there was still a lot of light in the sky, now a radiant occluded azure and clear of clouds. The evening star was huge and brilliant over the sea, near to a pale l.u.s.treless moon, and faint dots of other stars were appearing. Some rather large bats were flitting around over the rocks. I could hear the sea booming into Minn's cauldron as I pa.s.sed by. I approached the house by the causeway, carrying the bottle in one hand.