The Sea, The Sea - Iris Murdoch [216]
James went away and sat down on the grass. A policeman began to ask Peregrine and me if we knew who Titus was. Peregrine answered his questions.
It appeared that the tourists, going to bathe from the rocks in Raven Bay, had seen Titus’s body being carried by the tide round the corner from the tower, and they had swum out and pulled it ashore.
There was nothing anyone could do. Men put Titus on a stretcher and slid him into the ambulance. Several cars had stopped. The police car went away, to go to Nibletts to inform the parents. The verdict of the inquest was death by misadventure. Titus died from drowning after a blow on the head. It was assumed that a wave had dashed him against a rock. What exactly had happened was never clarified.
However by then it had become dazzlingly clear to me that Titus had been murdered. We had to do with a homicidal madman. The hand that had failed to strike me down had succeeded in striking him. But I spoke of this, for the time, to no one.
Titus’s body was conveyed to a hospital in a town many miles away, and was there received into the merciful anonymity of cremation.
History
SIX
IT WAS A SHORT TIME LATER. Time had passed for me in a haze of misery and bitter remorse and the resolutions of hatred.
Gilbert had to go back to London to act in a television play. Lizzie stayed, and I got used to her unhappy face, reddened with crying. Peregrine stayed, but boorishly, almost angrily; dressed in tweed trousers, shirt and braces, he walked inland every day into the country near Amorne Farm, and arrived back hot and irritable. He was obviously wretched but seemed unable to drag himself away. Once or twice he drove Lizzie to the village for shopping. James stayed but was very withdrawn. He was gentle and considerate to me, but had little to say. We remained together, though we could not talk to each other, out of some sense of mutual protection. Of course they did not want to leave me alone. Perhaps each intended to be the last to go. It was as if we were all waiting for something.
Lizzie did the cooking. We lived on pasta and cheese. It was impossible to return to the ordinary feasts and festivals of human life, the meals to which people look forward and which they enjoy. We all, except James, drank a lot.
On the day which I shall now describe I woke up in the early morning and realized I had had a terrible terrible nightmare. I had dreamt that Titus was drowned. I experienced the relief of the awaking dreamer. And then remembered . . .
I got up and went to the window. It was about six o’clock and the sun had been up for some time. Cool summer weather had come back with a misty sky and a calm sea. The water was a very pale luminous grey-blue, almost white, the same colour as the sky, shifting with a quick small dancing movement, and scattered by the misted sun with little explosions of metallic pale-gold light. It had the look of a happy sea and I felt I was seeing it through Titus’s eyes.
I had returned to my own bedroom. The other three, though I disliked their proximity to each other, slept downstairs. I had decided that today I would tell them all to go. I felt strong enough now to do this, and although in a way I dreaded to be alone, my plans demanded solitude. I dressed quickly and went downstairs to the kitchen. Peregrine was there shaving. He ignored me and I went through onto the lawn. James was just climbing down from the rocks. A moment later I could hear Lizzie talking to Peregrine. We were all early risers on that day.
James sat down on the natural seat beside the trough where I put the stones I collected, or rather used to collect. Someone, perhaps Titus, had picked up the scattered stones from the lawn after the destruction of James’s ‘mandala’ on the night of the party. My stone ‘border’ was comparatively undisturbed. I went and sat down too. The rocks were already warm.
James had shaved; his face, reddened and browned by the sun, was very smooth above the dark stippling of his beard. He seemed somehow clearer and more visible than usual,