The Sea, The Sea - Iris Murdoch [113]
‘What delusions do you mean?’
‘I remember your talking about a first love, but these things are imaginary, they are fables. You’re just suffering from the shock of seeing her, give it a fortnight. And she’s got a bourgeois marriage and a son, and, Charles, she’s ordinary, you can’t do it to an ordinary woman just because you fancied her at school, it’s nonsense and she wouldn’t understand! Besides, you wouldn’t be able to, you’re not all-powerful, not in real life you aren’t. You’d simply get yourself into a very unpleasant mess, just the sort of mess which you of all people hate. You’d lose face! Think of that! Have enough self-knowledge to see how you’d hate it, you haven’t any role here, you haven’t any lines. You even admit she doesn’t want to talk to you!’
‘That’s because she’s afraid, she loves me too much, and she doesn’t yet know enough to trust my feelings. She will trust them. And then her love will simply sweep her to me.’ I thought: I must let her know, I must convince her, that I love her absolutely, I must write a long letter and get it to her secretly, and once she really understands . . .
In my solemn but rather general and undetailed version of the story I had mentioned Titus but had not, for some reason, said anything about his being adopted, or about his having run away. Perhaps I was still reluctant on my own account to reflect on the subject of Titus, and on how he might affect my chances. Nor did I describe my thoroughly unnerving tête-à-tête with Ben. Here the idea of ‘losing face’ could indeed find a foothold! I said that Titus was not at home and that I had had inconclusive meetings with Hartley in the village and polite conversations with her and her husband. I had not conveyed the fear and danger in the situation. Fortunately Rosina was too amused to ask really detailed questions.
‘Charles, be human. She’s timid, she’s shy, she must feel terribly inadequate and mousy and dull, after her life, meeting you after your life. She probably feels ashamed of her dull husband, and feels protective about him, and resentful against you. Use your imagination! And she’d bore you, darling, she’d bore you into a frenzy, and she knows it, poor old dear. She’s an old-age pensioner, she wants to rest now, she wants to put her feet up and watch television, not to have disturbances and adventures. And then supposing you did carry her off and then felt bored, whatever would you do, with yourself or with her? You’re used to witty unconventional women, and you’re an old bachelor now anyway, you couldn’t really stand living with anybody, unless it was a clever old friend like me. You couldn’t start a new woman, and that’s what she really is for all your touching memories of jaunts on bikes. I think you just want to break up her marriage, like you just wanted to break up mine. I’m pretty tough, but as it is you gave me a lot of misery over a long time, and I’m not going to let you off, you’re going to have to pay for my tears, like people in the sagas pay. You’ve lived in a hedonistic dream all your life, and you’ve got away with behaving like a cad because you always picked on women who could look after themselves. And my God you told us the score, you never committed yourself, you never said you loved us even when you did! A cold fish with clean hands! But it was just luck really if the girls survived. You’re like a man firing a machine gun into a supermarket who happens not to become a murderer. No, no, but it’s different here, you must respect the poor old thing’s choice, her life, her son, her dear dull old husband, her nice little new house. Leave her alone, Charles. No wonder she runs a mile when she sees you!’
‘You don’t understand.’ How indeed could she? Much of what she said was sensible, more sensible even than she realized. But there was just one thing omitted: the absolute nature of the bond between