The Sea, The Sea - Iris Murdoch [147]
He was frowning again now, looking stern, his head thrown back, stretching his long thin neck. ‘I’m sorry. I mean, I’m sorry I troubled you.’
‘Oh, Titus, I’m so glad you’ve come!’ This was the most immediate of a great number of things which I wanted to say to him and which I was already inhibiting and placing in order in my mind. I held out my hand to him.
With a little air of dignified surprise he shook my hand rather formally and then took a step backward. ‘I’m sorry. It was a stupid question. And perhaps—impertinent.’
Something about the slight hesitation conveyed, in the odd way that speech so quickly can, an impression of intelligence. I had also noticed his clear almost reflective articulation, although he spoke with the flattened Liverpool-style voice which was now the tribal accent of the young, and which I had found my novice actors so reluctant to abandon.
I said, ‘No, not—at all—’ And then, ‘So you are a student? You are at Leeds University?’
He frowned again, scratching his scar and narrowing his eyes and lips. ‘No, I’m not at any university. I just bought this. You can buy them in shops, you don’t have to be what it says.’ He continued in an explanatory tone, ‘They have American ones too, Florida and—California and—Anyone can buy them.’
‘I see.’ The whirl of my thoughts then brought up the obvious, the uncomfortable, question. ‘You’ve been with them?’
‘Them?’
‘Your father and mother.’
He reddened, his face and neck flushing quickly. ‘You mean Mr and Mrs Fitch?’
‘Yes.’ I was terrified, the awkwardness, the vulnerability, terrified of hurting him as if he were a little helpless bird.
‘They are not my father and mother.’
‘Yes, I know, they adopted you—’
‘I have been looking for my parents. But I was unlucky—there are no records. There should be records, I have a right to know. But there are none. Then I rather hoped that—’
‘That I was your father?’
He said, with a look of sternness and formality, ‘That I could clear the matter up somehow. But I never really imagined—’
‘Have you been with them, over there, at the bungalow, where they live?’
He gave me his cold wet-stone stare, withdrawn and stiff. ‘No. I only came here to see you. I’m going now.’
I kept my head against a wave of panic. The boy could vanish, be lost, never seen again. ‘Aren’t you going to see them, to tell them you’re here? They are very worried about you, they’ll be glad to see you.’
‘No. I’m sorry I bothered you.’
‘How did you know where I lived?’
‘I saw it in a magazine I take—a music magazine.’ He added, ‘You’re famous, people know.’
‘Tell me about yourself. What are you doing now?’
‘Nothing. I’m on the dole. Unemployed. Like everyone else.’
‘But did you finish your training—electricity, was it?’
‘No. The college was closed down. I couldn’t get into another. Well, I didn’t try. I took the dole. Like everyone else.’
‘How did you get here?’
‘Hitch-hike. I’m sorry. I’ve bothered you, taken up your time. I’m going now.’
‘Oh, I hope not. I’ll go with you to the road, it’s easier this way. But first, would you mind fetching my field glasses? They’re over there on that rock.’
Titus seemed pleased to be asked this. In a second he had slithered down the steep incline which I had so laboriously ascended, and was leaping goat-like from rock to rock in the direction of the bridge. I wanted a short interval in which to think. Oh, he was slippery, slippery, touchy, proud. I must hold him, I must be tactful, careful, gentle, firm, I must understand how. Everything, everything, I felt, now depended on Titus, he was the centre of the world, he was the key. I was filled with painful and joyful emotions and the absolute need to conceal them. I could so easily, here, alarm, offend, disgust.
He was back but too soon, coming up the steep rock in a precarious scrabbling run, handing me the glasses with the first smile I had seen on that reserved suspicious still half-childish face. ‘Here. Did you know there’s quite a good table lying over there in the rocks?’
I had forgotten the table. ‘Oh yes,