The Sea, The Sea Part 4

She said, ' Remember Remember.'

She switched on the headlights and I made out the form of a low red two-seater. She backed the car onto the road. As she turned it now and as it began to move in the direction of the hotel, a figure suddenly materialized, someone who had evidently been walking along the road. Rosina had stepped hard on the accelerator and the car leapt suddenly forward and the pedestrian was caught for a moment in the headlights, cowering back against the rock. The car swerved with a screech and then roared away down the road. I dropped my torch into the long gra.s.s and was left in darkness. The pedestrian whom Rosina had almost run down was the old village woman who had so strangely reminded me of Hartley. Now in that moment of bright light, I saw. The old woman did not resemble Hartley. She was Hartley She was Hartley.

History

TWO.

Now in London I am writing the story of Rosina's arrival and. of what happened just after it. After Rosina's car raced away I stood quite still in a condition of total shock, the kind of shock which annihilates s.p.a.ce and time and renders one almost contemplative. I was paralysed. I cannot think why I did not fall to the ground, the revelation was, in its initial impact, so terrible. I grasped it first, I do not quite know why, in this way, not as something unwelcome or horrible, but purely as the impossible come true, like what we cannot imagine about the end of the world. And indeed it was the end of the world. I remember then very slowly reaching out my hand so that I could support myself against the rock. By the time I was able to reach down to the ground and pick up the torch I somehow knew that Hartley must have gone, must have continued down the road and by now be far ahead, or that perhaps she was taking a short cut across the fields. I was in any case not sure which way she had been going when the car lights caught her. My mind was so shocked I could not make the simplest decision about what to do. I started off hurrying towards the village and then stopped. It did not occur to me to call out her name, that would have been impossible impossible. I hardly indeed remembered her name, it would have emerged, as in a dream, as an incoherent bellow. I hurried back and stupidly shone the torch about, inspecting the place where I had seen her. The bright light revealed the marks of the car tyres, the trampled gra.s.s, the yellow pock-marked rock, the mist moving. At last slowly, and like a man returning from a funeral, I walked back across the causeway to the house. The lamps were still burning in the kitchen, the fire was alight in the little red room. It was all quiet and as it had been when, in a previous age of the world, I had been talking with Rosina. I was trembling. Eating, drinking, were equally impossible. I went into the little red room and sat down by the fire. Is she a widow? Is she a widow? This agonizing question had somehow, it seemed, formulated itself at once, in the very first awful moment of recognition. Awful, not because she had so almost completely changed, but because I knew that everything was in ruins about me, every old a.s.sumption was gone, every terrible possibility was open. That there could soon be dreadful pain did not then occur to me at all, I think. It was not envisaging pain that made me feel so shattered, it was just experience of the change itself. I felt a present anguish such as an insect must feel as it emerges from a chrysalis, or the crushed foetus as it batters its way into the world. It was not, either, a removal to the past. Memory seemed now almost irrelevant. It was a new condition of being. This agonizing question had somehow, it seemed, formulated itself at once, in the very first awful moment of recognition. Awful, not because she had so almost completely changed, but because I knew that everything was in ruins about me, every old a.s.sumption was gone, every terrible possibility was open. That there could soon be dreadful pain did not then occur to me at all, I think. It was not envisaging pain that made me feel so shattered, it was just experience of the change itself. I felt a present anguish such as an insect must feel as it emerges from a chrysalis, or the crushed foetus as it batters its way into the world. It was not, either, a removal to the past. Memory seemed now almost irrelevant. It was a new condition of being.

I did eventually go to bed where I slept instantly like a dead thing. I had by then composed one or two more simple thoughts or questions. Is she a widow? Is she a widow? was so pervasive as to be scarcely a question, it was the atmosphere I breathed. I wondered had she seen me in the village and if so had she recognized me? I had seen her distantly several times. Oh my G.o.d how was so pervasive as to be scarcely a question, it was the atmosphere I breathed. I wondered had she seen me in the village and if so had she recognized me? I had seen her distantly several times. Oh my G.o.d how terrible terrible. I had seen her and not known her. But surely I, who was scarcely changed, must have been recognizable at once. Why then had she not spoken to me? Perhaps she had chanced not to see me, perhaps she was short-sighted, perhapswhat was she doing in the village anyway? Did she live here, or was she on holiday? Perhaps she would disappear tomorrow, never be seen again. Where was she going to along the misty sea road at night? The idea came to me that she might be working at the Raven Hotel. But she was over sixty, Hartley was over sixty. I had never put it to myself that Hartley too was growing old. Then I wondered if she had seen me in the dark, and if so had she realized that I had recognized her? Then I thought: she saw me with Rosina. What might she have overheard, what had we been saying? I could not remember. Then I decided she could not possibly have seen me as I was behind the headlights. And tomorrow: tomorrow I would search and search for her and find her and then...

I woke up next morning to an instant sense of a changed world. The awful feeling was less, and there was a new extremely anxious excitement and a sheer plucking physical longing to be in her presence, the fierce indubitable magnetism of love. There was also a weird hovering joy, as if I had been changed in the night into a beneficent being powerful for good. I could produce, I could bestow, good. I was the king seeking the beggar maid. I had power to transform, to raise up, to heal, to bring undreamt-of happiness and joy. My G.o.d, I had come here, to this very place, and against all the chances I had found her at last! I had come here because of Clement, and I had found Hartley. But: is she a widow? is she a widow?

I was in the village before nine o'clock. It was a sunny morning promising heat. I walked quickly round the little streets. Then I went down to the harbour and back by a footpath which led up the hill to the bungalows. As soon as the two shops were open I visited both of them. I walked round again. Then I went into the church, which was empty, and sat for a while with my head in my hands. I found that I was able to pray and was indeed praying. This was odd since I did not believe in G.o.d and had not prayed since I was a child. I prayed: let me find Hartley and let her be alone and let her love me and be made happy by me forever. My being able to make Hartley happy had become the most desirable thing in the world, something the possession of which would crown my life and make it perfect. I went on praying and then in a strange way it was as if I had fallen asleep. I certainly had the experience of waking up and feeling panic in case I had lost Hartley, as my only chance to find her had come and gone while I was sleeping. Her holiday was over, she had gone home, she had run away, she had suddenly died. I jumped up and looked at my watch. It was only twenty past nine. I ran out of the church. And then at last I saw her. I saw: a stout elderly woman in a shapeless brown tent-like dress, holding a shopping bag and working her way, very slowly as if in a dream, along the street, past the Black Lion in the direction of the shop. This figure, which I had so vaguely, idly, noticed before was now utterly changed in my eyes. The whole world was its background. And between me and it there hovered, perhaps for the last time, the vision of a slim long-legged girl with gleaming thighs. I ran.

I reached her, running up from behind, when she had just pa.s.sed the pub, and as I came level with her I touched one of the wide brown sleeves of her dress. She stopped, I stopped. I could say nothing. The familiar face turned to me, the pale round fey face with the secret-violet eyes, and with a sort of almost reflective movement of relief I thought: I can make sense of it, yes, it is the same person, and I can see see it as the same person, after all. it as the same person, after all.

Hartley's face, which now seemed absolutely white, expressed such an appalling terror that I would have felt terrified myself had I not been engaged in some urgent almost mechanical search for 'similarities', for ways to blend the present with the far past. Yes, that was Hartley's face, though it was haggard and curiously soft and dry. A sheaf of very fine sensitive wrinkles at the comer of the eye led upwards to the brow and down towards the chin, framing the face like a wreath. There were magisterial horizontal lines upon the forehead and long darkish hairs above the mouth. She was wearing a moist red lipstick and face powder which had caked here and there. Her hair was grey and neat and conventionally waved. But the shape of her face and head and the look other eyes conveyed something untouched straight from the past into the present.

She started to murmur something. 'Ohit's' It was of course at once clear that she knew who I was. She mumbled 'Oh', staring at me in a kind of blank terrified supplication. I managed at last to say 'Comecome' and pulled again at her sleeve and began to move back towards the church. I did not attempt to walk with her. She followed me a few feet behind and I kept looking back at her and stumbling. G.o.d knows who witnessed this encounter. Perhaps a dozen people, perhaps no one. I could not see anything except Hartley's terrified eyes. I went into the church and held the big heavy door open for her. The place was still empty. The big windows of plain gla.s.s gave a bright cool light. I sat down in a nearby pew and she sat down close to me in the next row in front, so that she had to turn round to see me. In the damp musty atmosphere I could smell her face powder and feel the warmth of her body. She had dropped her bag and gripped the back of the pew with her two hands. The hands were red and wrinkled and in a moment she hid them again. She murmured 'I'm sorry' and closed her eyes. I laid my brow on the polished wooden surface where her hands had been and said, 'Oh, Hartley-Hartley-Hartley-'

It occurred to me later that I never for a second doubted that her emotion was as strong as my own; although this could well have been otherwise. When I lifted my head she was dabbing her face with a handkerchief and breathing open-mouthed in a shuddering way, not looking at me.

'Hartley, I-oh, Hartley-oh, my dear-where do you live, do you live in the village?' I do not know why I asked this question first, perhaps just because it was easy to answer. Speech of any sort seemed the problem, as if we spoke different languages and must teach each other to talk.

'Yes.'

'You're not on holiday, you live here?'

'Yes.'

'So do I. I'm retired now. Where do you live?'

'Up on the hill.'

'In one of those bungalows?'

'Yes.' She added, 'There's a lovely view.' She too was babbling. Her handkerchief had smudged some lipstick onto her cheek.

'You got married, didn't youare you stillI mean is your husband stillhave you got ahusbandnow?'

'Yes, yes, oh yes. My husband is alivehe's with me, yeswe livewe live here.'

I was silent while a whole world of possibilities gradually folded themselves up, like some trick of stagecraft, quietly collapsing, folding, merging, becoming very small and vanis.h.i.+ng. So thatwas thatat any rate. And I would have to think, to invent, in a new way, to exist in this situation which was now, I realized, whatever was the case with Hartley, the continuing and only situation for me, the final state of affairs, the world centre.

'I'm sorry,' I said.

She shook her head slightly, jerked it with emotion, at this last awkward tribute. A short litany, a vast brief Amen.

I went on, 'I'm not married, I never married.'

She moved her head again, staring down at the reddened handkerchief. And we were silent for a moment together, as if surveying breathlessly a huge event which had just taken place. Then as in a crisis people will hurry on to talk at random, I said quickly, 'Did you see me before at all, did you See me in the street, perhaps you didn't recognize me?'

'Oh yes. I saw you nearly three weeks ago. I recognized you. You haven't changed.'

I could not bring myself to say 'You haven't changed', though later I cursed myself for not saying it. How much do women mind when they lose their looks, how much do they know? But I was instantly caught up and appalled by another thought. 'But then why didn't you speak to me?'

'I wasn't sure if you would want to know me. I thought perhaps you felt it would be better if we didn't recognize each other', 'You mean you thought I'd recognized you andand cut you just ignored you? How could could you think that?' you think that?'

'I didn't knowI didn't know how you felt after all those yearswhether you blamed me or had forgotten me. You are so grand and famous you mightn't like me or want to know me '

'Oh, Hartley, how can you, if you only knewI've spent the years looking for you, I've never stopped loving you ' I touched the shoulder of the brown dress, taking the collar of it for a second between my fingers.

'Don't, don't,' she murmured, moving slightly away.

'Did you know that I saw you last night?'

'Yes.'

'I only recognized you then. I've been in a frenzy ever since. I 'wouldn't have pretended not to know you, what a terrible thing! How could you think I'd blame you or forget you! You are my love, you are still that, you are still what you were for me'

She gave an odd little grimace like a smile and shook her head, still not looking at me. I could not say more, I had to blunder on into the terrible things. 'You're still with the same husband the one you marriedthen?'

'Yes, the same one.'

'I never knew his name, I I don't know your married name.'

'I'm Mrs Fitch. His name is Fitch, Benjamin Fitch.'

I bowed over this as over a stomach blow. There was now a name attached to this horror of her being married, this horror that I would have to live with somehow. An awful wave of self-pity overcame me and I wrinkled up my face with pain. 'Hartley what does he do, I mean, what does he, does he work at?'

'He's disabled a bit, he went about in a car as a representative, did various jobs, like a salesman, he's retired now. We came here, we were in the Midlands, we came here, to the bungalow to live'

'Oh isn't it strange, Hartley, we both came here to meet each other again, and we didn't know. It seems like fate, doesn't it?' But oh the pain of it.

Hartley said nothing. She looked at her watch.

'Andchildrenhave you?'

'We have a son. He's eighteen. He's away just now.'

She spoke more calmly and with a sort of deliberation, as if getting some necessary task over.

'What's his name?'

She said after a moment, 't.i.tus.' She repeated, 't.i.tus is his name.' Then she said, looking at her watch again, 'I must go, I must go to the shop, I shall be late.'

'Hartley, please, stay here please, I must go on talking to you, tell me oh tell me, what did your husband do, sell, before he retired?' I must just keep on asking questions.

'Fire extinguishers. He was in fire extinguishers.' She added, 'He was always so tired in the evenings.'

This sudden vista of her evenings, years and years of her evenings, led me on blunderingly to ask, 'And are you happily married. Hartley, have you had a good life?'

'Oh yes, yes, I've been very happy, a very happy marriage, yes.'

It was impossible to tell if she was sincere. Probably she was. A good life. What an odd phrase I had used. And had both our lives pa.s.sed, and had they somehow been completed, since we last met? Hartley's voice, retaining the thin droning slightly monotonous, to me so immensely attractive, sound which it had always had, with the touch of the local accent, made me realize how much my own voice had changed. I was suddenly breathless and put both of my hands onto the back of the pew. My little finger touched her dress and she moved slightly again. Something black seemed to threaten me from a little way above my head. She had been happy all these years, yes, why not, and yet I could not believe it, could not bear it. She had existed all these years and our lives were gone. I breathed quickly through my mouth and the darkness went away. I thought, I must be ingenious, and the word 'ingenious' seemed like a help to me. I must be ingenious ingenious and see to it that I do not suffer too much. I must look for some happiness, simply for some comfort, here, ingeniously. and see to it that I do not suffer too much. I must look for some happiness, simply for some comfort, here, ingeniously.

I said, not knowing quite what I meant to say nor why, 'That woman in the car last night, she's a well-known actress, Rosina Vamburgh, she was just visiting me'

'We hardly ever go to the theatre'

'She was just visiting me on business'

'I saw you on telly.'

'Did you, what was it?'

'I forget. I must go now,' she repeated and got up and retrieved her shopping bag. I felt panic. 'Hartley, don't go, you lookoh so tired' This was not the best thing to say, but it expressed a sort of anguish of protectiveness and tenderness and pity and a kind of humility which I felt about her then as I saw her standing there before me in the guise of an old woman. She did look tired, tiredness was somehow the expression other face, not sadness or suffering so much as a vast weariness as of one who has worked too hard for years and years.

'I'm very well, apart from endless tummy trouble. You look well, Charles, and so young. I must go.'

She shuffled past me in the direction of the door.

I leapt up and followed her. 'But what shall we do?'

Hartley looked at me as if she was not sure what this question meant. I repeated, 'What shall we do? I meanoh. Hartley, Hartley, when shall I see you, can we meet after you've done your shopping, can we meet in the pub, or would you come down to my house' Vistas of madness opened beyond these words.

Hartley opened the church door, pulling at it laboriously, and over her shoulder I could see Dummy's grave and the criss-cross iron gate and the village street with people in it and the far horizon line of the sea. I said wildly, 'Of course I'll call on you, I'd so much like to meet your husband, you must both come down to my funny house and have a drink, you know I live'

'Yes, I know, thank you, but not just now, my husband is not too well'

'But I'll see you, I mustwhat's your address, which bungalow?'

'It's called Nibletts, it's the last one, but don't I'll let you know'

'Please, Hartley, see me after you've done your shopping, let me help you '

'No, no, I'm late. Don't come, you stay here. I'll see you later, I mean on another day, please don't do anything, I'll let you know. I must run now, I'll let you know. Please Please stay here. Goodbye.' stay here. Goodbye.'

I had wanted to touch her, but somehow only with my fingertips as if she were a ghost which might dissolve, I had wanted to hold her dress between my fingers. Now I felt a more precise need to take her head and draw it quietly against me and hear her heart beating. Old desires were suddenly present. I saw her blue, blue eyes and the curious mad look other round face which was so unchanged. And her lips which had been so white and so cold.

I started to say, 'I'm not on the telephone'

She went quickly out of the church and closed the door carefully. Obeying her I stayed. I went back to the same place and sat down and once more put my hands where her hands had been. What was I going to do, how was I going to manage manage myself for the rest of my life now that I had found Hartley again? Was I going to go round to 'Nibletts' once a week and have tea with Mr and Mrs Benjamin Fitch? Or entertain them to beans and sausages and claret at Shruff End? Take them up to London for a show? Take an interest in t.i.tus's future? Look after them all? Leave t.i.tus my money? My mind leapt wildly about, huge vistas opened, immense areas of the future were suddenly live and quick with possibilities, all of them terrible. Ingenious, I thought, I must be ingenious. I looked at my watch. It was ten twenty. So much awful thought in so little time. I sat for a while until I reckoned that Hartley would have done her shopping and gone back up the hill, and then emerged from the church and sat on Dummy's grave, leaning against the gravestone which bore the image of the 'foul anchor'. From there I could see, over some trees, the roofs of the bungalows, including the last one, the residence of Mr and Mrs Fitch. A disabled travelling salesman. What was the matter with him? A cripple? I knew that I would have to go and take a look at Mr Benjamin Fitch, very soon. myself for the rest of my life now that I had found Hartley again? Was I going to go round to 'Nibletts' once a week and have tea with Mr and Mrs Benjamin Fitch? Or entertain them to beans and sausages and claret at Shruff End? Take them up to London for a show? Take an interest in t.i.tus's future? Look after them all? Leave t.i.tus my money? My mind leapt wildly about, huge vistas opened, immense areas of the future were suddenly live and quick with possibilities, all of them terrible. Ingenious, I thought, I must be ingenious. I looked at my watch. It was ten twenty. So much awful thought in so little time. I sat for a while until I reckoned that Hartley would have done her shopping and gone back up the hill, and then emerged from the church and sat on Dummy's grave, leaning against the gravestone which bore the image of the 'foul anchor'. From there I could see, over some trees, the roofs of the bungalows, including the last one, the residence of Mr and Mrs Fitch. A disabled travelling salesman. What was the matter with him? A cripple? I knew that I would have to go and take a look at Mr Benjamin Fitch, very soon.

Why had Hartley been so reluctant, why had she not said 'Yes, come and see us' or 'We'd love to come and see you'? Sanity demanded such gestures, whatever she felt. Politeness demanded them and by politeness one might, for the present at any rate, be saved. Or was the crippled husband really ill, suffering, peevish and bedridden perhaps? But oh what did Hartley feel, what made her seem so strained and anxious? Her reluctance to invite me to her house was perhaps understandable, indeed very understandable. 'You are so grand and famous.' She was perhaps a little bit ashamed other house and her husband. That need not mean she did not love him. But did she love him? I had to know. Was she really happy? I had to know. And that old horrible sweetish thought now kept coming to me: she must regret it so much, that wrong choice. She must have spent her life regretting that she had not married me. 'I saw you on telly.' What was that like? What mean gnawing pains of remorse did she feel when she saw me as a 'celebrity'? How could she know that I was still just me and that I still missed her? And must she not think of me as surrounded by attractive women, as probably possessing a permanent mistress? She had seen Rosina, she might have seen Lizzie. Perhaps, it suddenly occurred to me, and this was so painful and so sweetish too, she is reluctant to see me precisely because other regrets: remorse, jealousy, the waywardness of fruitless daydream. She does not want to know any more about what might have been. Oh G.o.d, those years, our whole life, that we might have spent together. She does not want... to start to love me... all over again...

I already had enough instinct for dangerous thoughts to thrust this one aside. I was indeed, as I leaned back against the sun-warmed lichen-spotted surface of Dummy's laconic monument, sketching a kind of programme for survival. Roughly, the programme was like this. There was no doubt that I must now somehow contrive to devote the rest of my life to Hartley. (I quickly banished the idea that Mr Fitch was seriously ill and would shortly die.) This could only be done if I accepted accepted their marriage and could successfully attempt to construct a friends.h.i.+p with her, and presumably with him. Hartley and I were not just revisiting each other as tourists, that was out of the question. At the least, the husband must tolerate me. Perhaps I could be allowable as a figure of fun? I did not quite care for this, but so quick is imagination that I already heard Hartley saying to her spouse, Why there's dear old Charles again, he can't keep away''while she their marriage and could successfully attempt to construct a friends.h.i.+p with her, and presumably with him. Hartley and I were not just revisiting each other as tourists, that was out of the question. At the least, the husband must tolerate me. Perhaps I could be allowable as a figure of fun? I did not quite care for this, but so quick is imagination that I already heard Hartley saying to her spouse, Why there's dear old Charles again, he can't keep away''while she felt feltsomething a little different. Perhaps the husband might even be flattered that a 'show business personality' admired his wife. However these were unsavoury or at any rate premature speculations.

What I must now concentrate upon was the possibility of love in the form of a pure deep affectionate mutual respect, a steady constant binding awareness. Of course it would be, it would have to be, love between us, but love purged of possessive madness, purged of self, disciplined by time and the irrevocability of our fates. We must find out how at last to be absolutes to each other, never to lose each other, without putting any foot wrong or spilling one drop of some br.i.m.m.i.n.g vessel of truth and history which was held up austerely between us. I will respect her, I will respect her, I kept saying to myself. I felt a tenderness for her that was deep and pure, a miracle of love preserved. How clear it flowed, that fountain from the far past. Yes, we must quietly collect our past, collect it up with tacit understanding, without any intensity or drama, blaming and exonerating ourselves with a difference. And how wonderfully possible it seemed, this silent process of redemption, as I rethought our pa.s.sionate, yet gentle and divinely inept little conversation in the church. Was that that what it was like, meeting the great love of one's life again after all those years? And had we not been for each other the shy direct innocent creatures we had once been? The nature of our converse had never been spoilt, and in that blundering conversation its note could unmistakably be heard again. Perhaps I would indeed, through her and through our old childish love, now irremediably chaste, be enabled to become what I had hoped to become when I came away to the sea, pure in heart. what it was like, meeting the great love of one's life again after all those years? And had we not been for each other the shy direct innocent creatures we had once been? The nature of our converse had never been spoilt, and in that blundering conversation its note could unmistakably be heard again. Perhaps I would indeed, through her and through our old childish love, now irremediably chaste, be enabled to become what I had hoped to become when I came away to the sea, pure in heart.

The question: is she a widow? already seemed to belong to the remote past, to some vanished and entirely obsolete method of thinking. The question which was now, in spite of the programme for rational survival with which I was consoling myself, in danger of becoming agonizingly urgent, was: is she happy is she happy?

To decide this it was necessary to inspect Mr Fitch. And moreover it was quite impossible to wait. As I walked slowly back to Shruff End I thought: I have got to see Mr Fitch today. I will call on them about six o'clock this evening.

It was not until I was actually ringing the bell at Nibletts that it occurred to me to wonder whether in all those years Hartley had ever actually told him anything about me at all!

Nibletts is a small square bungalow built of a red brick which has been partly and mercifully whitewashed. Without compromise it squats upon the hill, with a group of wind-tormented trees opposite to it, beside it the slope to the village, behind it the slope to the sea, beyond and above it, woodland. It has a firm solid air. Other houses might be built upon sand or even be made of sand, but not so Nibletts. The bricks are unchipped, sharp and uneroded at the comers. There is no moss upon the roof and one feels that none will ever grow there. An equally undimmed red-tiled path leads to the front door between beds of spiky little rose bushes in their first flowering; A fuzzy ma.s.s of white clematis, growing up one of the wooden posts of the porch, soothes with some grace the blue front door which is covered with very thick, very s.h.i.+ny paint. The door has an oval panel of opaque frosted gla.s.s which seems to creep before the eyes. Nibletts is not a charmless house, it is pretty and homey, with its discreet patchy whitewash and its bright flower-fringed door. Within there are four main rooms, the sitting room and kitchen-dining room being both at the back where a descending lawn is overwhelmed by the view of the sea. But I antic.i.p.ate. The day had become hot. The temperature had risen to eighty degrees in the afternoon and the air was still s.h.i.+mmering with heat. From the hillside one could see the distant headlands of the bay couchant in a light-brownish heat haze. The vast bowl of the sea was glowing a very pale blue with silvery mirages and streaks of light. The crowded roses were hotly odorous. The bell, which I rang just as I suddenly thought that perhaps Mr Fitch was unaware that I knew his wife, and that this accounted for her panic, was penetratingly sweet, like a tuning fork struck for a choir of angels. Low voices were at once heard within. Then, after a moment. Hartley opened the door.

I got the shock again other changed appearance, since in my intense and cheris.h.i.+ng thought she had become young again, before I saw on her face a look of fear which instantly vanished. Then I could see nothing but her large eyes, seeming violet and somehow glazed and veiled as if they were looking beyond me. I could feel myself blus.h.i.+ng, the accursed red wave surging up through my neck and face. I had deliberately prepared nothing to say. I said, 'Oh excuse me, I was pa.s.sing by, returning from a walk and I just thought I'd call in for a moment.'

I had time before she replied to think: I ought to have let her speak first! Then if she had indeed never told her husband about me she could pretend I was selling brushes. I was wearing my jeans with a clean white s.h.i.+rt and my faded but decent cotton jacket. I tried to look into her eyes but it was impossible, and the fear or whatever it was had gone.

She said nothing to me but turned to speak back into the house. It sounded like'It's him' As she spoke she swung the door back, half closing it in my face, and for a moment I thought she was simply going to shut it.

There was the sound of an e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n within, perhaps just 'Oh'.

The door swung open again and Hartley was smiling at me.

'Do come in for a minute.'

I wiped my feet on the large clean bristly orange mat and stepped into the hall, blinded by the change of light.

All the way from Shruff End, and indeed all day since my resolve to call on Hartley, I had been feeling sick with excitement, sick with a blend of obscure bodily agitation and clarified fear, not unlike (only this was much worse) what I used to feel when I dived off very high boards in California to impress Fritzie. I could not now see Hartley properly in the sudden darkness of the interior, but I felt her presence as a violent diffused magnetism which somehow pervaded the whole house, as if Hartley were the house and as if I had been swept into a cavern where she embraced me and I could not touch her. Indeed the impossibility of touching her made my whole body shake with a kind of negative electricity. At the same time I was sickeningly conscious of the invisible husband. I had vividly imagined and reimagined beforehand the moment of arrival, ringing the bell, meeting Mr Fitch, and this had seemed in antic.i.p.ation like a dive into the unknown, indeed into the irrevocable. Only now it was proving an agonizingly slow dive, as if the water towards which I was moving was receding, leaving me falling slowly through the air. Hartley actually left me standing in the hall and went back into a room for a whispered consultation, almost closing the door. The hall was tiny. I was now conscious of an altar-like table with a rose bowl, and above it a large brown print of a mediaeval knight. Hartley emerged and threw open another door, ushering me into an empty room which proved to be the sitting room. She said, 'I'm so sorry, we're in the middle of our tea, we'll join you in a moment.' Then she left me again, closing the door. I realized now how dangerously I had acted and how foolish I had been. Six o'clock for me meant drinks. I had imagined it would be a sensible and humane time to call. In fact I had interrupted their evening meal. To beguile the frightful interval I looked round the room. A large bow window with a big semi-circular white-painted window-ledge gave a partial view of the village and a full view of the harbour and the sea. A pair of expensive-looking field gla.s.ses lay on the ledge beside a ma.s.sive bowl of roses. The sea was s.h.i.+ning into the room like an enamelled mirror with its own especial clear light. This light excited and upset me, and dazzled me so that now I could scarcely see my surroundings. There was a thick carpet underfoot and the room was hot and stuffy and smelt excessively of roses. Hartley came in followed by her husband. In my first dazzled view of him Fitch looked grossly boyish. He was rather short and thick-set and had a bullet-headed boy's look, with a thick neck and short mousy hair. He had very dark brown narrow eyes, a rather large clear-cut sensual mouth, and a prominent s.h.i.+ny nose with broad flaring nostrils. He was broad shouldered and powerful looking. If he was crippled it certainly did not show. He came in smiling. I beamed, blinking a little, and we spontaneously shook hands. 'Glad to meet you.' 'I hope you didn't mind my calling?' 'Not at all.'

Hartley, who had been wearing something blue, perhaps an overall, when she opened the door, was now revealed in a yellow cotton dress with a tight bodice and a big skirt. She moved nervously about, not looking at me. 'Oh dear, I must open a window. How stuffy this room is. Won't you sit down?'

I sat down in, or got stuck into, a tubby velvety low-slung armchair. Hartley said to Fitch, 'Shall we bring our meal in here?'

He said, 'Why not?'

Hartley went back into the kitchen where they had evidently been eating and returned with two plates, while Fitch pulled a gate-leg table out from the wall and set it up rather uncertainly upon the thick carpet. Hartley then handed the two plates to Fitch, who stood holding them while she fussed looking for table mats to put them on. The two plates, with their knives and forks upon them, were then put down, a plate of bread or something was fetched, upright chairs were pulled across the resistant carpet, and Hartley and Fitch sat down, their chairs half turned so as to accommodate me. They had been eating ham and salad, but it was now immediately clear that further eating had become impossible. Hartley said to me, 'Would you like anything to eat?'

'Oh no thanks. I only called for a moment. I'm terribly sorry, I see I've interrupted your'

'Not at all.'

Fitch said nothing but looked at me with his dark narrow eyes, flaring out his nostrils into two great holes. His big mouth in repose looked rather forbidding.

Surprise, or perhaps a flurried annoyance, seemed to have deprived them of the power of conversing, so I floundered quickly to get something going. I had decided to depart after the very briefest possible polite interchange.

'What a lovely view you have.'