The Sea, The Sea - Iris Murdoch [52]
I must soon go over to the Raven Hotel to get some more wine. I think I will stop talking about ghosts and monsters in the Black Lion.
Decided not to swim today.
I have been out shopping. The shop keeps promising lettuce but so far has had none. No fresh fish of course. I found some more letters in my stone dog kennel. Nothing from Lizzie. A communication from Peregrine Arbelow however. For lunch made my heavenly vegetarian stew of onions, carrots, tomatoes, bran, lentils, pearl barley, vegetable protein, brown sugar and olive oil. (The vegetable protein I brought with me from London.) I add a little lemon juice just before eating. With that (it is very light) a baked potato with cream cheese. Then Battenberg roll and prunes. (Carefully cooked prunes are delicious. Drain and add lemon juice or a dash of orange flower water, never cream.) If any one wonders at the absence of ‘eating’ apples from my diet let me explain that this is one case where I have spoilt my palate with an aristocratic taste. I can eat only Cox’s Orange Pippins, and am in mourning applewise from April to October.
I will transcribe as an introduction to him, Peregrine’s letter.
Charles, how are you getting on? We are all consumed with curiosity. No one admits to having been invited. But don’t you miss us terribly? Perhaps you have sneaked back to live secretly in your new flat, not answering the phone and going out at night? Someone said your house was on a lonely wave-washed promontory but that can’t be true. I see you in a cosy marine bungalow on the sea front. After all, how could you live without your liquidizer? I couldn’t bear it if you had really changed your life. That is something which I have always wanted to do but never could and never will. I shall die with my boots off, the bastard I have ever been. I have been drinking for a week after returning from hell, alias Belfast. Civilization is terrible, but don’t imagine that you can ever escape it, Charles. I want to know what you are doing. And don’t imagine that you can ever hide from me, I am your shadow. I think I shall come down and see you at Whitsun. (Someone dared me to and you know I can’t resist dares.) Various people would send their love if they knew I was writing, but of course it isn’t love, it’s insolent curiosity. Few are worthy of you, Charles. Is the undersigned one? Time will show. Shall I come and bring my swimming trunks? I haven’t swum since our epic days in Santa Monica. Another theory is that you are not in England at all but gone to Spain with a girl. To disprove which you must write. Your shadow salutes you.
Peregrine.
It is after lunch (it is perfectly true that I miss my liquidizer) and I am sitting at my upstairs seaward window. It is cloudy and the sea is a choppy dark blue-grey, an aggressive and unpleasant colour. The seagulls are holding a wake. The house feels damp. Perhaps I am still depressed by last night’s experience, which was of course a simple visual illusion. (However I will check about the moon.) And at least I can write ‘depressed’ and not ‘afraid’. There is nothing to be afraid of.
Perhaps I shall make some notes for a character sketch of Peregrine. This will involve writing something about Rosina, and I would rather forget that lady. Well, autobiography cannot be self-indulgent fun all of the time.
Peregrine (he detests being called ‘Perry’ as much as I detest being called ‘Charlie’; only people who do not know me call me ‘Charlie’) is one of those who have a strong concept of the life they want to lead and the role they want to play and lead it and play it at the expense of everyone, especially their nearest and dearest. And the odd thing is that such people can in a sense be wrong, can as it were miscast themselves, and yet battle on successfully to the end, partly because their ‘victims’ prefer a definite simple impression to the pains of critical thought. Peregrine, although in many ways a gentle kind man, has cast himself as a noisy bear. This ‘role-playing