The Sea, The Sea - Iris Murdoch [154]
I wondered: did he then come to me in loneliness, in desperation? And if so would this not make him all the more ready to accept—my overtures—my love?
It was the evening of the same day. There seemed no point in waiting longer. I had even told Gilbert the outline of the plan, though part of it I still concealed, even from Titus. Gilbert, who was now to play the key part which I had envisaged earlier, was enjoying the whole drama disgracefully. I had waited, hidden in the wood, for nearly an hour when Hartley appeared. There was no sign of the gentleman.
I watched her for a moment quietly. She was wearing the yellow dress with the brown flower pattern, and over it a loose blue overall. She walked a little awkwardly, her shoulders hunched, her head down, her hands deep in the pockets of the overall. She came down to the end of the garden and stood there for a while, like an animal, staring dully at the grass. Then she lifted her head and started looking at the sea, image of an inaccessible freedom. Then she removed one hand from her pocket and touched her face. She must be crying. I could scarcely bear it.
Cautiously I uncovered the pocket mirror and leaning forward tilted it to catch the sun. The little running bright reflection, like a tiny live creature, appeared at once upon the hillside just below the garden. I was careful to keep it well away from the house. I brought the brilliant little patch of light slowly up the hill towards her feet; and in a moment I knew that she had noticed it, and that she realized what it meant. This was a trick which we used to play on each other in summers when we were children. I sent the flash up for a moment to her face, and then began to lead it away, making a line across the grass in the direction of the wood.
Hartley stood staring towards me. I rose to a kneeling position and gently stirred the creamy-flowering branch of an elder bush. Hartley made a gesture, lifting her hand to her throat. Then she turned and moved back towards the house. I nearly called out with vexation, but then realized that she was probably going to check on Ben’s activity and whereabouts. Perhaps he was riveting china. I waited for an anxious minute, and then she came out again, minus the overall, ran to the fence, stooped through the wire, and came running across the grass towards me.
I retreated a bit into a little glade underneath an ash tree. A large branch had been wrenched from the tree by some winter gale, and through the gap the sun shone down upon a wild rose bush in pallid flower and a mass of fading cow parsley and buttercups. I stood beside the ash tree whose dense-textured grey smooth trunk brought back some elusive childhood memory connected with Hartley. I could now see her thrusting aside the big flat flower-heads of the elder. In a moment she had come to me, and I noticed how she instinctively avoided the patch of sunlight.
I put my arms around her and she consented to be held, a little stiff, bowing her head. I drew my hand down her back, pressing her against me, feeling her soft warmth, my knee touching her knee. She sighed and turned her head sideways but her hands still hung limply. The warmth of her body beneath the frail dress made me close my eyes and almost forget my plan and its urgency.
‘Oh, Hartley, my darling, my own.’
‘You shouldn’t have come.’
‘I love you.’ I sat down at the foot of the tree, leaning against it, and drew her down beside me. I wanted her to lie relaxed with her head on my breast. ‘Come. We were often like this, weren’t we. Remember?’ But she would not. I saw her in the sunny shady light, her breasts straining the buttons of her dress, as so much lovelier, so much like her old self, as if some woodland magic had made her young again.
She knelt beside me, clasping one of my hands, and staring at me with her big darkened eyes. Then, suddenly, and tenderly, she lifted my hand and kissed it.
This gesture moved and upset me so much that it actually served to bring me to my senses. The urgent matter