The Sea, The Sea - Iris Murdoch [190]
‘Well said, Titus,’ said James.
Titus gave James a look which stirred my ever-vigilant jealousy.
Peregrine said, ‘You don’t understand marriage, Charles, you’ve never been in it, it’s deep. You think a tiff means shipwreck, the end, it’s not so.’
I said, ‘To begin with, “free” doesn’t apply here, we’re dealing with a frightened person, a prisoner. She has to be pulled out, she’ll never walk. So it’s got to be fixed now. If she goes back she’ll never leave him, she’ll never escape.’
James said, ‘Well, isn’t that significant too? Isn’t that to admit that she ought to go back? That she’ll choose to stay there? Oftener than you might think what human beings actually do is what they want to do.’
‘She may stay. But “choose”? This isn’t a matter of a “tiff”, to use Perry’s ludicrous word which shows that he has no idea what this is all about. She’s a bullied terrorized woman who has never been happy with that man, she told me so herself.’
‘Her marriage may not have been happy, but it has survived a long time. You think too much about happiness, Charles. It’s not all that important.’
‘That’s what she said.’
‘There you are.’
‘Titus,’ I said, ‘is happiness important?’
‘Yes, of course it is,’ he said, and looked at me at last.
‘There you are,’ I said to James.
‘A young man’s reply,’ said James. ‘Now let me make a further point—’
‘Your trouble, Charles,’ said Peregrine, who was still drinking whisky, ‘as I said before, is that you despise women, you regard them as chattels. You regard this woman as a chattel—’
‘A further point. This drama has been developing very fast and it’s a whirling mass of emotions and ideas. You say you’ve kept this image of a pure first love beside you all these years. You may even have come to think of it as a supreme value, a standard by which all other loves have failed—’
‘Yes.’
‘But should you not criticize this guiding idea? I won’t call it a fiction. Let us call it a dream. Of course we live in dreams and by dreams, and even in a disciplined spiritual life, in some ways especially there, it is hard to distinguish dream from reality. In ordinary human affairs humble common sense comes to one’s aid. For most people common sense is moral sense. But you seem to have deliberately excluded this modest source of light. Ask yourself, what really happened between whom all those years ago? You’ve made it into a story, and stories are false.’
(At this point Titus, who could bear it no longer, surreptitiously seized a piece of ham and some bread.)
‘And you are using this thing from the far past as a guide to important and irrevocable moves which you propose to make in the future. You are making a dangerous induction, and induction is shaky at the best of times, consider Russell’s chicken—’
‘Russell’s chicken?’
‘The farmer’s wife comes out every day and feeds the chicken, but one day she comes out and wrings its neck.’
‘I don’t understand, let’s leave this chicken out.’
‘I mean, you are assuming on as far as I can see very insubstantial evidence, your memory of some idyllic times at school and so on, that if you were to carry her off you would be able to love her and make her happy, and she would be able to love you and make you happy. Such situations are in fact fairly rare and hard of achievement. Further, as a matter inseparable from the happiness you prize so much, you assume that it is morally right thus to rescue her, even in the apparent absence of her consent. Now should you not—’
‘James, please just stop insulting me with your pompous speculations will you? I wonder if you realize how insupportable you are? As you said, this business has developed fast and it’s