The Sea, The Sea - Iris Murdoch [254]
I woke rather late the next morning and established from the telephone that it was nine thirty. I had a headache. I went into the kitchen and fell over the hip bath which was still standing there half full of water. I managed to empty the bath, half over the slates and half onto the lawn, and to put it back under the stairs. I tried to eat some biscuits but they had become soft and curiously wet. There was no bread and no butter and no milk. In any case I was not hungry. I thought of going shopping but I was not sure what day it was. I thought I heard distant church bells, so it might be Sunday. In a rather abstract way I wondered if I should not go to London. However I had no particular motive for going there. There was no one I wanted to see and nothing I wanted to do.
I walked out to the road to look at the weather. It was warmer and more blue. I noticed some letters in Gilbert’s clever basket. The strike or holiday or whatever it was was evidently over. Of course there was no letter from Hartley, but there was one from Lizzie. I took the letters into the little red room and sat at the table.
My dear, I am unhappy about our meeting. You were generous and sweet but I wish I had seen you alone. All that laughing was somehow awful. What were you really thinking? I feel I am somehow in the wrong, but you must put me in the right. Love me, Charles, love me enough. Since your letter I have been reliving my love for you like an inoculation, not to be ‘cured’, never that, but so that I can love you properly at last, and not just be stupidly ‘in love’. Love matters, not ‘in love’. Let there be no more partings now, Charles, no more mean possessive passions and scheming. Let there be peace between us now forever, we are no longer young. Please, my darling.
Lizzie.
P.S. Come and see us soon in London.
What a touching letter, ending with an invitation from ‘us’! And ‘I am in the wrong but you must put me in the right.’ Typical Lizzie. I opened another letter. It was from Rosemary Ashe.
Dearest Charles,
This is just to bring you the sad news that Sidney and I have split up. He wants a divorce. We are being peaceful about it all for the sake of the children and they don’t seem to mind too much. It’s a younger actress of course, our occupational hazard—that, and the transatlantic atmosphere which seems to have driven Sidney mad. Perhaps it’s temporary, I haven’t given up hope, only hoping is so painful. I’m coming home and I long to see you. May I visit you in your lovely peaceful house by the sea? That’s just what I need.
Much love,
Rosemary.
So much for the ideal marriage. I had better start polishing up my celibate uncle role. I opened another letter and for some time could not think who it was from, even though I could easily read the signature, Angela Godwin.
Dear Charles,
Listen, it’s me. And listen carefully. You don’t have to put up with the old ones, why should you? Maybe you thought you couldn’t get a young one? But you don’t look your age, you know. You don’t have to have old bags like Lizzie Scherer and Rosina Vamburgh, why should you when you can have ME? I do rather like Rosina, though, at least she’s clever, and things are decenter at home since Pam went so don’t think I regard you as an escape route, I don’t! I’ve been thinking a lot these last months and I think I’ve changed a lot and come to terms with myself at last. I’ve been thinking about my identity. I don’t yet know what I’m going to do with my life, not acting, so you needn’t think I’m after that either! I’m good at maths and I think I may become a physicist, I’m doing the Cambridge exam in the autumn. Anyhow I shall jolly well be somebody. The reason for this letter? I have had an idea of genius. That night you came to see Peregrine I was (of course) listening at the door and I heard him say how you wanted a son, or maybe you said it, I forget, but anyway it stayed in my mind. Now comes the