The Sea, The Sea - Iris Murdoch [205]
I was lying on my back on the rocks. I opened my eyes and saw a star. I had been having an odd familiar dream, and yet I had never had that dream before. I dreamt that cousin James was kissing me on the mouth. I was aware of the star and of a marvel: that I was breathing. I apprehended my breath as a great thing, a sort of cosmic movement, natural and yet miraculous. Slowly, gently, deeply, decisively, I was breathing. Somewhere beneath me there was a dull steady uproar, and I lay in the cup of it and looked at the star. I felt pain and yet I felt at ease, detached from it. I lay relaxed as if I had woken from some golden sleep and would now perhaps sleep again. I closed my eyes. I breathed.
Mingled with the noise, then separated from it, I heard other sounds, discerned voices, and I knew where I was. I was lying on the flat piece of rock that led to the bridge. I was also aware, but in an entirely detached way, of what had happened to me. I heard someone groan, perhaps Perry, someone sob, perhaps Titus or Lizzie. James’s voice said, ‘Keep back, don’t crowd.’ Another voice said, ‘I think he’s breathing.’ I thought, I suppose I ought to tell them I’m all right. Am I all right? I composed a sentence which I thought I might utter soon: I am perfectly all right, what is this fuss about? I felt curiously unwilling to speak, it seemed so difficult. I realized that my mouth was open. I made an effort of will and closed my mouth, then opened it again and began ‘I’m—’, and could go no further. Some sort of sound had emerged. I made a convulsive movement, an embryonic attempt to rise. I went on breathing.
Someone said, ‘Thank God.’
The voices went on talking.
‘I think we could move him now.’
‘But suppose some bones are broken?’
‘We must keep him warm, he can’t stay here.’
This argument went on for some time. Then they argued about whether they could improvise a stretcher and which was the best way to go. At last they carried me, or hauled me, with what seemed extreme roughness, in a blanket. The journey over the rocks was a nightmare. I tried to say I could walk but (as I gathered later) produced only unintelligible moaning. All my pains had now located themselves. My head was very painful and the movement made lights flash in my eyes. There was a terrible pain like toothache in my arm. I wondered if my arm was broken and the bone was beginning to break through the skin. There was a plate of anguish in my back. My bearers were fantastically inefficient and confused, constantly quarrelling about the route, and slipping and banging me against the rocks.
At last they got me into the kitchen and, with indescribable clumsiness, pulled all my clothes off and pummelled me with towels and pulled other clothes on and had arguments about whether I should be given soup, brandy, aspirins. When they had the bright idea of lighting a fire they could not find any dry wood, then could not find the matches. At last I was lying on cushions on the floor in front of the fire in the little red room. As I became warm I felt less pain, and when I was lying undisturbed I relaxed and began to feel sleepy. I felt relief and something of the strange ease which I had felt as I looked up at the star. And only then, just before I slept, did I remember that it was not an accident. Somebody pushed me.
I must here record something which I only remembered later and which I was then half disposed to think was a dream. I was lying on the floor, underneath a pile of blankets, alone, seeing the room by the flickering light of the fire. I had the urgent feeling that there was something I must do quickly before someone came back, and especially before I should forget some fact of