The Sea, The Sea - Iris Murdoch [171]
I could not get used to hearing him call her ‘Mary’.
‘Mary, why not come out in the sun, it’s cold in here.’
‘No, thank you.’
‘Are you feeling better?’ The convention that she was ill had usefully arrived from somewhere. With an appearance of banal complacency they discussed the bungalow. But perhaps they scarcely knew what they were saying.
‘And there’s a nice garden? We didn’t have a proper garden at number thirty-four, did we? More like a yard.’
‘Yes, more like a yard at number thirty-four.’
‘I always remember the old mangle in the shed there. Remember the old mangle?’
‘Yes—’
‘So now you can grow roses. You always wanted that, didn’t you?’
‘Yes, lots of roses, all colours.’
‘And you can see the sea right out of the window like we used to say would be so nice?’
I could not make out what this did for Hartley. I realized I had been naïve in imagining that mother and son would clasp each other and at once discover a language of love. Well, perhaps this was a language of love. Love was there, I have no doubt, but the two of them remained amazingly awkward and tongue-tied with each other. The dialogue was forced clumsily along mainly by Titus. They soon exhausted the charms of the bungalow, to my relief. Their most successful conversations then consisted of childishly simple reminiscence concerning pointless details of houses and gardens in Titus’s childhood.
‘Remember the hole in the fence I used to look through when we lived at number sixty-seven?’
‘Yes—’
‘I stood on a box, didn’t I?’
‘Yes, on a box.’
Why could they not talk? Had her sympathy with Titus been really broken in those years, and his with her? A dreadful thought. Later I saw that of course it was the whole situation which made them speechless; and it was I who created and who maintained that situation.
This time of Hartley’s incarceration stretches out in my memory as if it contained a whole history of mental drama, vast developments, changes, checks, surprises, progresses, revulsions, crises. In fact it was a period of only four to five days. History, drama, change it did indeed contain. It is odd that after the first day I stopped worrying terribly about Ben. Of course I did not forget him, of course I expected him. I locked the doors carefully at night. It did occur to me that he might try to set fire to the house, and this haunted me a bit; after all he was a sort of professional fireman. But I ceased being obsessed with him, perhaps because I had by now succeeded in imprisoning myself mentally as well, and the danger of Ben seemed less real. Why did he not move? Was he making an elaborate plan or did he just prefer to torment himself by waiting and thus feed his rage? Was it possible that he was afraid of Titus? I soon ceased to wonder.
As for Titus and Gilbert, as soon as they could get away from Hartley and me they behaved as if they were on holiday. Titus did not want to discuss his mother or his father. He had opted out of these problems. He swam every day, always from the little cliff, sometimes twice or three times a day. He covered himself in suntan lotion and lay about naked on the rocks. Any scruples about ‘cadging’ now seemed to be completely gone. He accepted my hospitality as of right and gave nothing in return, no help, no warmth. Of course this is an unfair judgment. I cannot blame Titus for ‘not wanting to know’ what was going on upstairs. I think he did not even speculate; and indeed it would have been difficult to do so. Moreover, I gave him very little of my time and he may have resented this rather crucial neglect. I had decided by now that Titus was a simpler character than I had imagined at first; or perhaps, faced with horrors, he had chosen simplicity.
Gilbert was a good deal more curious and also good-naturedly anxious to help (he even wanted to put flowers in Hartley’s room), only I kept him well out of it. He remained essential of course. He cooked. He shopped while Titus sunbathed. But I did not let him come to the upper landing. A curious feature of the time and one which can still terribly bring