The Sea, The Sea - Iris Murdoch [100]
I confess I went to Peregrine not only for a drinking bout and a chat with an old friend, but for male company, sheer complicit male company: the complicity of males which is like, indeed is, a kind of complicity in crime, in chauvinism, in getting away with things, in just gluttonously enjoying the present even if hell is all around. In my case, I should however add, this did not include coarse and obscene conversation. I abhor artless bawdy. I had, long ago, to give some rather sharp lessons on this subject to Perry and to some others. Not Wilfred. He was never foul-mouthed.
So, having done my thinking and made my resolution, I had the relaxed sense of an interval, wherein I might rest and gather my strength. Hartley would wait. She would not run away. She could not run away.
‘Every persisting marriage is based on fear,’ said Peregrine. ‘Fear is fundamental, you dig down in human nature and what’s at the bottom? Mean spiteful cruel self-regarding fear, whether it makes you put the boot in or whether it makes you cower. As for marriage, people simply settle into positions of domination and submission. Of course they sometimes ‘grow together’ or ‘achieve a harmony’, since you have to deal rationally with a source of terror in your life. I suspect there are awfully few happy marriages really, only people conceal their misery and their disappointment. How many happy couples do we know? All right, Sid and Rosemary, and they’ve got nice children, and they talk to each other, they never stop chattering, it’s a kind of miracle, but do we really know, and how much longer will it last? I can’t think of any others, though I know several that look OK, only I happen to see behind the scenes! God, Charles, you were a wise man never to get married. You stayed free. Like Wilfred Dunning. Never put on a collar and chain. Christ, I loathe women. But I can’t get going on the other tack either. And you needn’t blush and look coy, I never fancied you. I know what you got up to with Fritzie Eitel! No—but I’d have had old Wilfred if he’d asked me. What did old Wilfred do for sex? No one ever knew. Perhaps he didn’t have any, and if so good on him. I still miss Wilfred. He was a sweet man. And he was generous, he liked to be the cause that wit is in other men. God, he inspired me. Getting drunk with old Wilfred was like—hell, what was it like? Did you know Lizzie Scherer was living with Gilbert Opian? I think that’s smart of both of them.’
‘I miss Wilfred too. Yes, I heard about Lizzie.’ One of my minor motives in going to see Peregrine had been to find out if there was really any gossip going round about me and Lizzie, and if so to scotch it. Apparently Perry had heard nothing. ‘So you and Pamela—?’
‘That’s over, really. I mean, she still lives in the house, but we don’t communicate. That’s hell, Charles, hell, like you don’t know. To be tied to someone where all the sources of speech are fouled up and poisoned. Everything you say is wrong or vile. Christ, I’m a rotten picker. First that bitch Rosina, then a friend like Pam. Seen Rosina lately?’
‘No.’
‘Nor have I, but every time I turn on the television there she is, that’s a bloody curse. I suppose I loved her once. Or it was just that she made me feel like Mark Antony. Penché sur elle l’ardent impérator . . . All I saw in Rosina’s eyes was a reflection of myself. Then I saw the divorce court. The trouble with Rosina is she wants every man: Julius Caesar, Jesus Christ, Leonardo, Mozart, Wilamowitz, Mr Gladstone, D. H. Lawrence, Jimmy Carter—you name him, she wants him. I suppose you wouldn’t like to take Pam off my hands too, would you? No? Ah well, I can’t convey to you what it’s like, like a fight with knives, and really it’s still going on—we haven’t either of us got the sheer bloody strength to start arranging the divorce.