The Sea, The Sea - Iris Murdoch [138]
‘I can’t go back, I can’t stay. I shall have to tell him I’ve been with you, but how can I, it’ll be like those nights, oh I shall die, I shall die, I want to be dead, why do I have to suffer and suffer like this. Oh what can I do, what can I do?’
‘Hartley, stop being hysterical. Just make up your mind to stay here.’
‘I can’t stay, I must run, run. But it’s no good. He must be home now, and he’ll be so worried and so angry. I can’t do it, I can’t go back, oh why have I been so thoughtless and so foolish, it’s like what I always do, making things worse and worse, I should have known the time—’
‘Don’t blame yourself, think of it this way, you left your watch behind on purpose so as to commit yourself to me and if you’ve now made it impossible to go back, so much the better!’
‘I shouldn’t have come here, I shouldn’t have told you those things, he’ll know I’ve told you, he’ll make me tell him everything I said.’
‘You came here to see an old friend, there’s nothing wrong in that, and I am your friend, you said so, and I’m so glad you did, and friends help each other—’
‘Oh if only I’d gone an hour ago everything would have been all right! I must run, I must get out of here—’
‘Hartley, be calm! If you insist on going I will walk along with you—’
‘No, you must leave me alone, we must never meet again! Oh how I wish I were dead!’
‘Stop this wailing, I can’t stand it!’
As she was crying out Hartley had been running to and fro in the kitchen like a demented animal, taking a few little rushing steps towards the door, then a few steps back to the table. In her agitation she even picked up the tea towel and stuffed it into her pocket. The spectacle of this frightened anguish was beginning to appal me and I was now feeling frightened too. To allay my own fear I ran to her and seized her in my arms. ‘Oh my darling, don’t be so afraid, stop it, stay here, I love you, I’ll look after you—’
She then began to fight me, silently, violently, and with a surprising strength, kicking my ankles, writhing her body about, one hand pinching my arm, the other pressed hard against my neck. I caught a glimpse of her open mouth and of her glistening frothy teeth. I tried to lift her and to capture one of her hands, and then it became too dreadful and too hard to attempt to crush this pinching, kicking animal into submission and I abruptly let her go, and with the impetus staggered backwards, banged into the table and upset the candles. In that instant Hartley was gone, rushing out of the kitchen, not towards the front door but out of the back door straight onto the grass and onto the rocks.
I ought to have rushed after her like a flash, like a faithful dog. I ought to have dragged her back and kept her in the house by force. Instead some stupid instinct made me pause to pick up the candles. Then, leaving them fallen awry in their tea cups, I ran out into the blue almost-darkness and the silent emptiness of the rocky shore. After looking at the bright candles I could at first see nothing, and it struck me in an odd way that while I was talking to Hartley I had forgotten about the sea, forgotten it was there and now felt confounded and at a loss to find myself half blind among those terrible rocks.
There was no sign of Hartley, she must immediately have clambered and sprung with the agility of a girl somewhere over the ring of rocks which surrounded my small lawn. I called out ‘Hartley! ’ and the sound was dreadful, dangerous. Which way had she gone? There was no easy way back to the road in either direction, either on the village side or on the tower side. There was nothing in that blue dimness all round about but wrinkled, folded rocks and slippery pools and deep sudden crevasses. I stood there and listened, hoping to hear her call me or to hear the sound of her scrambling.
What had seemed to be silence now revealed itself as a medley of small sounds, though no sound could tell me which way Hartley had gone. There was a faint lapping and sucking of the wavelets touching the foot of the little cliff, and then retreating