The Sea, The Sea - Iris Murdoch [56]
When I decided to write about myself of course the question arose: am I then to write about Hartley? Of course, I thought, I must write about Hartley, since that is the most important thing in my life. And yet how can I, what style can I adopt or master worthy of such a sacred tale, and would not the attempt to relive those events upset me to some intolerable degree? Or would it be simply a sacrilege? Or suppose I were to get the wrong tone, making the marvellous merely grotesque? It might be better to tell my life without mentioning Hartley, even though this omission would amount to a gross lie. Can one, in such a self-portrait, omit something which affected one’s whole being and which one has thought of every day of one’s life? ‘Every day’ exaggerates, but not much. I do not need to ‘recall’ Hartley, she is here. She is my end and my beginning, she is alpha and omega.
I thought it better to draw a veil over this question, which was starting to worry me too much. I decided simply to write and to see if I could somehow approach, or find that I had approached, the vast subject of Hartley. And, just as I found myself unexpectedly and spontaneously writing ‘My paternal grandfather was a market gardener in Lincolnshire’, so now I find that, wandering in my cavern, I have in fact come near to the great light-source and am ready to speak about my first love. But what can I say? I feel just as suddenly tongue-tied. My first love, and also my only love. All the best, even Clement, have been shadows by comparison. The necessity of this seems, in my own case, so great that I find it hard to imagine that it is not so with everyone. On n’aime qu’une fois, la première.
Her name was Mary Hartley Smith. How quickly, readily I write it down. Yet my heart beats fast too. Oh my God. Mary Hartley Smith.
That is the heading of the story then. But really I cannot tell the story. I will write some notes for the story and perhaps never tell it. Or indeed it may be untellable, since there are hardly any ‘events’ in it, only feelings, the feelings of a child, of a youth, of a young man, nebulous and holy and stronger than anything in the whole of life. I can scarcely remember a time when I did not know Hartley. I went to a school for boys only, but the girls’ school was nearby next door and we saw the girls all the time. As there were a lot of Marys around in those days she was always known as ‘Hartley’ and that was somehow very much her name. We paired off early on, but merrily, childishly, and without any deep shaking emotions, as far as I can remember, in those earliest days. When we were about twelve the emotions began. They puzzled us, amazed us. They shook us as terriers shake rats. To say we were ‘in love’, that vague weakened phrase, cannot express it. We loved each other, we lived in each other, through each other, by each other. We were each other. Why was it such pure unadulterated pain?
It is odd that I now write down (and will not change) the word ‘pain’, for of course what it was was pure joy. Perhaps the point is that whatever it was it was extreme and pure. (I am told that a blindfolded man cannot distinguish severe burning from severe freezing.) Or perhaps at that age emotions tend to be felt as pains because they are not lightened by reflection. Everything becomes dread and fear, and the more wonderful and the more joyful, the more dread and the more fear. But let me repeat that this was not reflection, not thought. I did not harbour intelligent doubts about whether Hartley would go on loving me, naturally I knew that she was mine forever. But as we closed our eyes upon tears of joy there was cosmic dread.