The Sea, The Sea - Iris Murdoch [203]
‘Just like even if she’s ugly she’s beautiful and even if she doesn’t love you she loves you—’
‘But she does—’
‘Charles, either this is very fine, very noble, or else you’re mad.’
‘Dear Lizzie—I feel so full of love tonight because of her.’
‘You’ve got it to give away.’
‘Yes, but not to anybody. When you feel full to the brim with your own life, committed, given, complete, it makes you feel so free too. I don’t know what the future holds, Lizzie. I just know it’s all to do with her. But that makes other love in a way all the more real if it exists at all, because it’s pure, it’s unselfish, it’s for nothing. Will you love me for nothing, Lizzie, asking nothing, going nowhere, just because we’re us?’
‘Either this is wisdom or you’re cheating. You’re certainly drunk.’
‘Will you, Lizzie dear?’
‘Yes.’ She took my hands and began kissing them.
‘Lizzie. Lizzie, where are you?’ The voice of Gilbert.
It had become almost dark, though there was still a little light over the sea where the sunken sun was still illuminating the line of white clouds which shone like pale lamps over the waves which were racing landward. The tide was rising.
‘Lizzie, come back, we want you to sing Voi che sapete.’
She was away from me in a moment, a long bare leg stretched. I could see Gilbert now, reaching his hand down to her from above. I stayed where I was.
What a weird uncanny simulacrum of happiness the evening was, like a masque put on by the spirit of melancholy. Would I be able not to go to that house, not to know what was happening, not to burst into their lives like a storm, like rain beating upon them, like thunder?
After a little while I came back towards Shruff End. It seemed to be unusually illuminated and looked like a doll’s house. Gilbert must have bought several more lamps at my expense. Some light fell onto the lawn. As I drew near to it Lizzie was still singing solo. Her true truthful small voice wandered in the air patterning it high up, making utterly still the group of men surrounding her. Perry, who was very drunk, was standing with folded arms near the kitchen door. He checked occasional swaying movements. Gilbert, smiling sentimentally, was sitting cross-legged. Titus was kneeling, his lips apart, his face concentrated with emotion and pleasure, his eyes wide. At first I could not see James. Then I discerned him just below me reclining on the grass. A family party.
Voi che sapete had been over for some time and Lizzie was now singing Roses in Picardy. This was a song which Aunt Estelle used to sing, accompanying herself on the piano in the drawing room at Ramsdens. There came to me, with the peculiar pain of that memory, the idea that James might have asked Lizzie to sing it. Then I remembered that I had told Lizzie I liked it, but not why. Lizzie was singing it for me.
Roses in Picardy was a bit much. As I climbed down onto the lawn James, sensing me, sat up. I sat down near him but would not look at him, though he was now looking at me. After a moment he reached out and touched me, and I murmured ‘Yes, yes’. The song ended.
After that, and until the terrible thing happened, the evening seemed quietly to break up, or to become diffused and gently chaotic like the later stages of a good party. Or perhaps it is all just confused in my memory. There was some light over the rocks, though I do not recall where it came from. Perhaps the clouds were still giving off light. A moon had made its appearance, randomly shaped and spotty, large and pale as a cloud itself. The fierce foam at the edge of the sea seemed luminous. I wandered looking for Lizzie, who had vanished. Everyone seemed to be walking about on the rocks, precariously holding glasses in their hands. An owl was hooting somewhere inland and the intermittent voices of my guests sounded equally distant, equally frail and hollow. I also wanted to find James, because I felt that perhaps I had been rude to him. I wanted to say something to him, I was not sure what, about Aunt Estelle. She had shone somehow upon my childhood. Che