The Sea, The Sea - Iris Murdoch [215]
‘Minn’s cauldron. Yes.’
‘I didn’t fall accidentally, I was pushed.’
James considered. ‘Who pushed you?’
‘Ben.’
‘You saw him?’
‘No, but somebody pushed me and it must have been him.’
James looked at me thoughtfully. Then he said, not at once, ‘Are you certain? Are you sure (a) that you were pushed and (b) that it was Ben?’
I was not going to be (a)d and (b)d by James. Nothing seemed to touch him, not even attempted murder. ‘I just thought I’d tell you. OK, forget it. So you’re going tomorrow, that’s fine.’
At that moment I heard a sound which I shall never forget. I sometimes hear it still in daylight hallucinations. It tore into my consciousness with its own immediate evidence of some frightful event, and the room was filled with fear as with fog. It was Lizzie’s voice. She shrieked somewhere out in front of the house. Then she shrieked again.
James and I stared at each other. James said, ‘Oh no—’ I rushed out, got entangled in the bead curtain and began to tumble down the stairs. I ran panting across the hall and then at the front doorway nearly fell as if a dense cloud of weariness and despair had met me and all but made me faint. I could hear James running down the stairs behind me.
Something extraordinary seemed to be happening on the road. The first person I saw was Peregrine, who was standing beside Gilbert’s car and looking along the road in the direction of the tower. Then I saw Lizzie, leaning on Gilbert’s arm, walking slowly back towards the house. Up near the tower there was a car and a group of people standing looking down at something on the ground. I thought, there’s been a road accident.
Peregrine turned and I shouted at him, ‘What’s happened?’
Instead of replying he came forward and tried to grasp my arm and detain me, but I shook him off.
James was now at my heels. He was wearing my silk dressing gown, the one that Hartley had worn. He too said to Perry, ‘What’s happened?’
I paused. Peregrine said, to James, not to me, ‘It’s Titus.’
James went up to the yellow Volkswagen and leaned against it. He mumbled something like, ‘I should have held on—’ Then he sat down on the ground.
Peregrine was saying something to me but I ran on towards the corner, passing Lizzie who was now sitting on a rock, with Gilbert kneeling beside her.
I reached the group of people. They were strangers, and they were looking down at Titus who was lying on the grass verge. But he had not been hit by a car. He was drowned.
I cannot bear to describe what happened next in detail. Titus was already dead, there can be no doubt of that, although I did not want to believe it at once. He looked so whole, so beautiful, lying there limp and naked and dripping, his hair dark with water, someone had drawn it away from his face, and his eyes were almost closed. He was lying on his side showing the tender fold of his stomach and the bedraggled wet hair of his front. His mouth was slightly open showing his teeth and I remember noticing the hare lip. Then I saw a dark mark on the side of his forehead, as if he had been struck.
I ran back towards the house shouting for James. James was still sitting on the ground beside the car. He got up slowly. ‘James, James, come, come!’ James had revived me. Surely he could revive Titus.
James looked dazed and ghostly. Peregrine had to assist him to walk.
‘Oh quick, quick, help him!’
By the time James reached the corner one of the strangers, they were tourists, was already attempting to do something. He had turned Titus over onto his front and was rather ineffectively pressing his shoulders.
Peregrine said, as if speaking for James, ‘Kiss of life is better.’
James knelt down, he seemed unable to speak, and motioned that Titus should be turned over again. There was a moment of confusion, several people talking at once, then the sound of a police siren. It turned out later that a car on the way to the Raven Hotel had taken the news on and the hotel had rung the police.
A brisk efficient policeman took charge, told us to stand back, began himself to attempt mouth to mouth respiration.