The Sea, The Sea - Iris Murdoch [250]
I felt unprepared and undressed but the hand of inevitability was upon me. This was the meeting from which I would not be put off, begging and pleading for another chance. I felt my heaviness as that of an irresistible crushing weight. Yet I had no clear idea of what I was going to do. There was no blunt instrument and no taxi. But I had come to where I had never been before, the blessed point of sufficient desperation.
I toiled up looking at the gardens and the flowers and the garden gates. I noticed how different each house was from the other. One had an oval of stained glass in the front door, another had a porch with geraniums, another had dormer windows in the attic. I reached the Nibletts blue gate with its irritatingly complicated little latch.
The curtains were partly drawn in the front bedrooms in an unusual way. I rang the ding-dong bell. The sound was different. How soon did I realize that the house was empty? Certainly before I confirmed the fact by peering in through the curtains into the larger bedroom and seeing that all the furniture was gone.
I went back to the front door and, for some reason, tried the bell again several times, listening to it echo in the deserted house.
‘Oh excuse me, were you wanting Mr and Mrs Fitch?’
‘Yes,’ I said to a woman in an apron who was leaning over the fence from the front garden next door.
‘Oh, they’ve gone, emigrated to Australia,’ she told me proudly.
‘I knew they were going, I hoped I’d catch them.’
‘They sold the house. They took their doggie with them. He’ll have to go in quarantine of course.’
‘When did they leave?’
She mentioned a date. The date was, I realized at once, very soon after I had seen them. So they had lied about the date of their departure.
‘I’ve had a postcard,’ said the proud woman. ‘It came this morning. Would you like to see it?’ She had brought it out with her to show me.
I saw, on one side, the Sydney Opera House. Upon the other in Hartley’s hand: Just arrived, I think Sydney is the most beautiful city I have ever seen, we are so happy. Ben and Hartley had both signed.
‘What a lovely card.’ I gave it back to her.
‘Yes, isn’t it, but England’s good enough for me. Are you a relative?’
‘A cousin.’
‘I thought you looked a bit like Mrs Fitch.’
‘Too bad I missed them.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t know their address, but there it is, when people are gone they’re gone, isn’t it.’
‘Well, thank you so much.’
‘I expect they’ll write to you.’
‘I expect so. Well, good day.’
She returned to her house and I moved back to the path. The roses were already looking neglected, covered with dead flowers. I noticed an unusual stone lying half covered by the earth and I picked it up. It was the mottled pink stone with the white chequering which I had given to Hartley, and brought back in a plastic bag on that awful day. I put it in my pocket.
I walked round the side of the house into the back garden, and stood on the concrete terrace outside the picture window and peered in. The curtains had been left here too, and pulled across a little, but I could see between them into the empty room. The door was open into the hall and I could see the inside of the front door and a faded place on the wallpaper where the picture of the mediaeval knight had hung. I began to feel a frenzied desire to get into the house. Perhaps Hartley had left me a message, left at least some significant trace of her presence.
The back door was locked and the sitting room windows were securely closed, but a kitchen window moved a little. I fetched a wooden box from the otherwise empty garden shed and stood on it, as Titus had stood in order to look through the hole in the fence. ‘You stood on a box, didn’t you.’ ‘Yes, I stood on a box.’ I eased the window out and got my finger into the crack. Then the window came open, not having been properly latched on the inside, and I was able to swing