The Sea, The Sea - Iris Murdoch [267]
I wonder if James was mad? I have found myself thinking this for the first time. Would not this hypothesis explain many things? For instance his illusion that he lifted me up out of that whirlpool by some sort of abnormal power? But wait a moment, was not that my illusion? Perhaps I am mad? I am certainly drunk and I was dozing just now. It is later than my bed time. The Buddhas close in. To bed, to bed.
Thinking further about James something obvious has only just occurred to me. He is not dead at all, he has simply gone underground! The whole charade was organized by the intelligence service! I was too upset at the time to see how extremely fishy it all was. I never saw James’s body. By the time I arrived the mysterious Colonel Blackthorn was already in charge and the ‘body’ had been removed. I never even discovered who was supposed to have identified it. The extremely shifty Indian doctor was obviously also in the pay of British Intelligence. His letter was a masterpiece of bafflement. I was so confused and impressed by it, I was unable to reflect on the extreme oddness of what was going on. James was in perfect health when I last saw him. The notion of his killing himself by will power was just as absurd as the idea of his walking on the water. It occurs to me that I have never found his passport in the flat. Where is my cousin now? Not in purgatory or nirvana, but seated upon an army-issue yak, proceeding to a snowy rendezvous with some slit-eyed informer!
Since writing the above I have noticed several oriental persons hanging around in the streets nearby. I hope they are not the others, who are mistaking me for James? As for that tulpa tribesman, he was certainly an intelligence agent, which was why James was so annoyed that I saw him.
I have just heard the terrible shocking news that Peregrine has been murdered by terrorists in Londonderry. I can hardly believe it. I realize now that I regarded his activities as purely comic. Some men play their whole lives as a comedy. Only death is not comic—but then it is not tragic either. That blank horror touches me again, with a grief that is pure fear, but I know I am not really grieving for Perry but for other deaths, perhaps my own. Poor Perry. He was a brave man. I cannot pretend I ever really loved him, but I do admire him for trying to kill me, and if it hadn’t been for that freak wave he would have succeeded too. That weird vision of James which seemed so important must have been a result of the blow on the head. It was a lucky escape.
There have been a number of tributes to Peregrine from Catholic and Protestant bishops. He is quite a martyr. They are setting up a Peregrine Arbelow Peace Foundation. Rosina, returned from California to bask in the martyr’s glory, is organizing a lot of American money. Lizzie says she heard that Rosina had actually left Perry before his death with no intention of returning, but this may be just malicious gossip.
The shock of Perry’s death has, in a curious way, made me a good deal less certain about James’s. The theory I deployed above remains a good one, extremely plausible. I just feel less inclined to believe it. Perhaps I would prefer to think of him as dead, the spirit that disturbed me for so long at peace at last. There are no mysteries after all. James died of a heart attack. As for the ‘oriental persons’, I realize now that they are simply waiters from an Indian restaurant in the Vauxhall Bridge Road.
No, I do not want to believe that cousin James is alive and well and living in Tibet, any more than I want to believe that Hartley is alive and well and living in Australia; and there are times when I actually feel persuaded that she too has died.
Peregrine opened the door and fell to the