The Sea, The Sea - Iris Murdoch [166]
At last he swam back to the steep rock, and clinging with fingers and toes easily levered his naked body up out of the strong rising and falling surge. He crawled up, swung over the edge and lay panting.
‘Titus, dear boy, get dressed, quick, here’s your towel.’
He obeyed, eyeing me. ‘What’s the matter? Are we going somewhere?’
‘No, but I’m afraid your father may arrive any moment.’
‘Looking for my mother. Well, I suppose he may. What will you do?’
‘I don’t know. What will he do? Listen, Titus, and please forgive my clumsy haste, there’s so much I want to say to you. Titus, we must hold on to each other, you and me—’
‘Oh yes, I’m a very important property, I’m the decoy duck, I’m the hostage!’
‘No, this is exactly my point. This is what I came out here to say to you. Not for that. For you. I mean I want you, I want to be your father, I want you to be my son, whatever happens. I mean even if your mother won’t stay with me—but I hope and believe she will—but even if she weren’t to, I still want you to accept me as your father.’
‘It’s a funny action,’ he said, ‘accepting somebody as your father, when you’re grown up. I’m not sure how it’s done.’
‘Time will show us how it’s done. You must just have the will, the intent. Please. I feel there is a real bond between us, it will grow stronger, naturally. Don’t think I’m just using you, I’m not. I feel love for you. Excuse the clumsy awkwardness of what I say, I haven’t time to think of a graceful speech. I feel that fate or God or something has given us to each other. Let us not stupidly miss this chance. Don’t let idiotic pride or suspicion or failure of imagination or failure of hope spoil this thing for us. Let us now and henceforth belong together. Never mind what it means exactly or what it will involve, we can’t see that yet. But will you accept, will you try?’
I had not prepared or anticipated quite such passionate pleading. I stared at him anxiously, hoping I had made some impression.
He was clothed by now, and we stood together on the high rock above the water. He looked at me frowning and screwing up his eyes. Then he looked away. ‘All right—I suppose—yes—OK. I’m in fact, well, a little overwhelmed, actually. I’m glad you said that about wanting me for me. I wasn’t sure. I believe you—I think. It’s funny, I’ve been thinking about you so much of my life, and I always knew I’d have to come and look at you one day, but I kept putting it off because I was afraid. I thought that if you rejected me—I mean, thought I was a sort of lying scrounger, just wanting money and that—and, well, why shouldn’t you have thought so, it’s all so odd—it would have been a sort of crippling blow. I can’t see how I would have recovered, I’d have felt so dishonoured and awful, I’d have been saddled with it somehow forever after. There was so much at stake.’
‘So much, yes, but all is well, here at least. We won’t misunderstand each other. We won’t lose each other.’
‘It’s all happened so fast.’
‘It’s happened fast because it’s right, it’s easy because it’s right.’
‘Well then, I’ll try, as you say God knows what it means, but I accept, at least I’ll try.’
He held out his hand and I grasped it and for a moment we stood there, moved and embarrassed.
Then I heard, from the roadway, the loud urgent hooting of Gilbert’s horn.
‘That’s him!’ I jumped up and began to scramble towards the house. Titus passed me and raced on before me over the grass. When I reached the kitchen door Gilbert was holding on to Titus.
‘He’s here, he came walking along the road, he stopped at the causeway but when he saw me in the car and when I started hooting he walked on.’
‘Walked on past the house?’
‘Yes. Maybe he’s going to come round the back over the rocks.’ Gilbert seemed to be really frightened.
I ran through the hall and out onto the causeway and up to the road. There was no sign of Ben. I noticed that Gilbert, no doubt to secure his own retreat, had parked the car