The Sea, The Sea - Iris Murdoch [162]
‘You think it odd I’m so quiet. It’s like a sort of peace. Sometimes I feel I haven’t much further to go.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Sometimes I wish he would—’
‘Would what? Has he threatened you?’
‘No, no—that wasn’t what I was going to say.’
‘What do you mean then? Look, you can’t go back to him, I won’t let you, even if you don’t want to stay with me.’ But what did I think I would do then, set her up in a flower shop?
‘Hartley, you’ve got to stay with me and Titus, it’s your place. Apart from anything else, Titus having come to me will confirm Ben’s idea that he is my son.’
‘Have you only just thought of that?’
‘Oh, Hartley, darling, be gentle with me, don’t be so sort of remote. Admit it, say it, you’ve never really loved anybody but me, you’ve come home at last. That night when I saw you in the car headlights you had come here, you had to come. Say that you love me, say that it will be all right, that we’ll be happy. Christ, don’t you want to be happy at last and live with a man who loves you and is kind to you and believes what you say? Hartley, look at me. No, come in here, I don’t know why we’re sitting at this stupid table.’
I picked up the candle and pulled her into the little red room and drew the curtains. I sat in the armchair and wanted to take her on my knee, but she slipped to the floor at my feet and held on to my hand. I began very slowly and carefully to kiss her, then to caress her breasts. We were like children, adolescents. I felt for her a desire which was marvellously indistinguishable from pure love, reverent, strong, consumingly protective. And my desire was also that of a boy, incompetent, unskilled and humble. I did not know how to hold her or how to make her dry lips respond. Finally I got down on the floor too, manœuvred her to lie full length beside me, and clasped her, peering awkwardly into her face.
‘Hartley, you love me, don’t you, don’t you?’
‘Oh—yes—but what does it mean?’
‘We’re close, we know each other.’
‘Yes, it’s strange, but in a way I do know you, and there isn’t anyone else who’s near me like that. I suppose it’s just because we were young, and later you can’t know people, or I couldn’t.’
‘You know me. I know you.’
‘I’ve felt as if I didn’t exist, as if I were invisible, miles away from the world, miles away. You can’t imagine how much alone I’ve been all my life. It wasn’t anybody’s fault. It was my fault.’
‘I can see you, Hartley, you exist, you’re here. I love you, Titus loves you. We’ll all be together.’
‘Titus stopped loving me long ago.’
‘Don’t cry. He loves you, I know he does, he told me so. All will be well now that you’ve got away from that hateful man.’
I kept touching the quiet tears upon her cheek, and at last, half thrusting me away, she began to caress my face. ‘Oh, Charles—Charles—so strange.’
‘We’re like we used to be, lying in the woods—Hartley, will you be with me tonight please at last, just to be together quietly? We don’t have to lie here like this all night, do we?’
She became rigid, then sat up. ‘It’s the wine—I’m not used to it—I must be drunk—drunk—’
‘Well, don’t ask me to take you back now! It’s much too late, from every possible point of view!’
She got to her knees, then stiffly to her feet. I rose and faced her, gently touching her elbows with my fingertips.
‘Charles, you don’t know what you’ve done. Of course I shall go back tomorrow. I must sleep now, I just want to sleep now, by myself, I wish I could die in my sleep, I wish I could run out and fall into the sea.’
‘What rubbish. Can you swim?’
‘No.’
‘Let’s go upstairs, promise me you won’t run away in the night.’
‘Tomorrow I must go back there. This is just more of my stupidity, oh I am so stupid, always stupid, I should never have left the house. I’m not angry with you. It’s my fault, everything is my fault. Yes, I suppose I love you, I’ve never forgotten you, and when I saw you I felt it all again, but it’s something childish, it isn’t part of the real world. There was never any place for our love in the world. If there had