The Sea, The Sea - Iris Murdoch [221]
‘I am an actor. And perhaps I was pleased to see you. We sometimes like to see people whom we hate and despise so that we can stir them up to further demonstrations of how odious they are.’
‘So you’ve been waiting all these years for revenge!’
‘No, not like that. I enjoyed leading you on and just looking at you and gloating and thinking how surprised you’d be if you knew what I really felt. You’ve been a bad dream to me all these years, you’ve been with me like a demon, like a cancer.’
‘Oh my God. I’m sorry—’
‘If you imagine I want to hear you apologizing now—’
‘I may have behaved badly to you, but I didn’t deserve to die for it.’
‘No, all right, I admit it was an impulse and I was drunk. I just pushed you and walked on. I didn’t really see what happened and I didn’t care.’
‘But you said you were non-violent, you said you never—’
‘OK, you were a special case. The last straw was seeing bloody Rosina suddenly sitting on top of that rock like a black witch. I thought you must still be carrying on with her, well obviously you are—’
‘I’m not.’
‘I don’t care—’
‘I wondered why you stopped talking about her. You were planning to kill me.’
‘I don’t care, I don’t want to know, I don’t believe anything you say, I think you’re a worthless person. I just couldn’t stand seeing her there, and the windscreen getting broken, I couldn’t stand it, it was a shock, it made me feel mad, it made a sort of hole in me, and all the old stored-up hate came pouring out and all the green-eyed jealousy, as fresh as ever. I had to do something to you. I really just wanted to push you into the sea. I daresay I was pretty drunk. I didn’t choose that spot, I didn’t think it was that awful whirlpool or whatever you call it—’
‘Then you were lucky, weren’t you. I might be dead.’
‘Oh I don’t care,’ said Peregrine, ‘I wish you were dead. I thought of calling you out, only then I thought you might kill me instead, because you drink less than I do. I suppose honour is satisfied now anyway, and I won’t have to offer you any more drinks, thank God, and I won’t even want to tell you what a four-letter man you are. You’re an exploded myth. And you still think you’re Genghis Khan! Laissez-moi rire. I can’t think why I let you haunt me all these years, I suppose it was just your power and the endless spectacle of you doing well and flourishing like the green bay tree. Now you’re old and done for, you’ll wither away like Prospero did when he went back to Milan, you’ll get pathetic and senile, and kind girls like Lizzie will visit you to cheer you up. At least they will for a while. You never did anything for mankind, you never did a damn thing for anybody except yourself. If Clement hadn’t fancied you no one would ever have heard of you, your work wasn’t any bloody good, it was just a pack of pretentious tricks, as everyone can see now that they aren’t mesmerized any more, so the glitter’s fading fast and you’ll find yourself alone and you won’t even be a monster in anybody’s mind any more and they’ll all heave a sigh of relief and feel sorry for you and forget you.’
There was a moment’s silence.
I said, ‘But if you’re so pleased about it, why tell? You only had to keep quiet—or did you want me to know?’
‘I don’t care what you know or don’t know. Your cousin got it out of me by one of his interrogation techniques. He said you thought it was Ben and you were working yourself up.’
‘You pretend you always detested me, it isn’t true. You aren’t all that good an actor. You told me about your Uncle Peregrine.’
‘I have no Uncle Peregrine.’
I felt totally confused. I said, ‘But what about Titus?’
‘What do you mean?’ said James.
‘What happened to Titus? Who killed Titus? I mean—I thought—surely Ben killed him?’
Lizzie answered this after a moment. She said, ‘Charles, it was an accident, no one killed him.’
Peregrine got up. He said, ‘Well, that’s that, that’s sorted that out, and I hope the General is satisfied. I’m going back to London. Goodbye Lizzie, nice to have