The Sea, The Sea - Iris Murdoch [169]
‘Nothing.’
‘How, nothing?’
‘He said what he had to say.’
‘What did he say?’
‘Lies. He said she was hysterical and imagined things.’
‘Hysterical all right,’ said Titus. ‘She could be in hysterics for an hour. It was frightening, it was meant to be.’
‘If you’ve decided he’s your father after all you can go home with him now, I’m not stopping you.’
‘Don’t talk to me like that. I’m just so bloody sorry for her.’
‘Won’t you come up and see her?’
‘No—not while she’s—no.’
‘Oh—!’ I felt violent homicidal exasperation. I ran back into the house and up the stairs and unlocked Hartley’s door.
She was sitting on the mattress with her back against the wall and her knees up, draped in the black dressing gown. She looked at me with heavy swollen eyes and started speaking in a droning voice before I was through the door. ‘Please let me go home, I want to go home, I’ve got to go there, there isn’t anywhere else to go, let me go home, please.’
‘This is home, with me is home, you are home!’
‘Let me go now. How can you be so unkind to me? The longer I stay the worse it will be.’
‘Why do you want to go back to that hateful place? Are you hypnotized or what?’
‘I wish I was dead, I think I’m going to die soon, I feel it. Sometimes I felt I would die by wishing it when I went to sleep but I always woke up again and found I was still there. Every morning finding I’m still me, that’s hell.’
‘Well, get out of hell then! The gate’s open and I’m holding it!’
‘I can’t. I’m hell, myself.’
‘Oh, Hartley, get up! Come on down and sit in the sun, talk to me, talk to Titus. You’re not a prisoner. Stop being so bloody miserable, you’ll drive me mad! I’m offering you freedom, happiness, I want to take you and Titus to—to Paris, to Athens, to New York, anywhere you want to go!’
‘I want to go home.’
‘What’s the matter with you? You weren’t like this yesterday.’
‘I think I’m going to die, I feel it.’
Her eyes, which refused to meet mine, had the defensive coldness of those who are determined to lose hope.
There followed some of the strangest days I can ever remember. Hartley refused to come downstairs. She stayed hid in her room like a sick animal. I locked her door in case she should drown herself, I left her no candle and matches in case she should burn herself. I feared for her safety and her well-being at every moment, and yet I did not dare to remain with her all the time or even most of it, indeed I scarcely knew how to be with her at all. I left her alone at night, and the nights were long, as she retired early, and slept soon (I could hear her snoring). She spent a great deal of time sleeping, both in the night and in the afternoon. That oblivion at least was her prompt friend. Meanwhile I watched and waited, calculating upon some deep unstatable theory the right intervals for my appearances. I escorted her in silence to the bathroom. I spent long vigils sitting outside in the corridor. I put some cushions into the empty alcove, the place where I had dreamt there was a secret door through which Mrs Chorney would emerge to reclaim possession of her house. I sat on the cushions watching the door of Hartley’s room and listening. Sometimes as she snored I dozed.
Of course I often sat in the room with her, talking with her or attempting to, or else in silence. I knelt beside her, stroking her hands and her hair and caressing her as one might caress a small bird. Her legs and feet were bare, but she would persist in wearing my dressing gown over her dress. Yet with small contacts I made acquaintance surreptitiously with her body; the weight and mass of it, her magnificent round breasts, her plump shoulders, her thighs; and I would gladly have lain with her, only she resisted, by the slightest of signs, my slightest of efforts to undress her. She fretted about having no make-up and I sent Gilbert to the village to purchase what she wanted, and then in my presence she made up her face. This little concession to vanity seemed to me a hopeful portent. But I remained afraid of