The Sea, The Sea - Iris Murdoch [68]
There was someone or something inside the house. What was I to do? I could now hear the soft grating sound of the waves, like a gentle scratching of fingers upon a soft surface. And I felt upon the empty darkening road a shuddering sense of my utter solitude, my vulnerability, among these silent rocks, beside this self-absorbed and alien sea. I thought of walking back to the Raven Hotel and staying the night. But this seemed absurd; and would they give me a room, with my wild appearance and no luggage? I then thought I might walk on to the village, to the Black Lion—but—and then? I had no friends in the village. A further more dreadful realization came to me. I would be afraid to walk anywhere now in this gathering dark along this awful empty road. There was nowhere else to go but into the house.
I began to walk slowly back across the causeway. I had left the back door open, but the front door was locked, so I would have to walk round to the kitchen. Then how quickly could I find matches, light a lamp? Supposing there was an intruder inside, he would hear me stumbling round to the back and would be waiting for me. How stupid it would be to be accidentally killed by a frightened burglar! I hesitated, but went on because by now my fear of the outside was as great as my fear of the inside, and most of all I feared my own fear and wanted desperately to end it or at least change it. Perhaps I had, in this funny light, imagined the whole thing, and would soon be laughing at myself and eating my supper.
I recalled where there was an electric torch on a shelf inside the kitchen door, and I pictured where the lamp was, and the matches near it. I got a last glimpse of the sky, full of subdued light, and then I began noisily fumbling with the handle of the door. I blundered in, leaving the door open, found the torch, then the lamp and the matches. I lit the lamp and turned it up. Silence. I called out ‘Hello there’. The foolish frightened cry echoed in the hollow house. Silence.
I walked to the door, holding up the lamp, and looked into the hall. Nothing. I walked quickly to the front room where I had seen the ‘figure’. It was empty. I searched the other downstairs rooms. Nothing. I tried the front door. Still locked. Then I began more slowly to mount the stairs. I had always somehow felt that if there was anything sinister in the house it was located on that long upper landing. As I was mounting the last few steps I heard a sudden and prolonged clicking sound. The bead curtain had been moved.
I stopped. Then went mechanically on, my mouth open, my eyes staring. As I stood at the end of the landing I lifted up the lamp again, and stared into the uncertain space before me, where the light of the lamp and the last outside twilight filtering through the open door of my bedroom made a dense foggy amalgam. I could make out the darkly shaded alcove, the outline of the archway, the dotted mass of the bead curtain. Then suddenly, I saw, beside the wall at the far end, between the curtain and the door of the inner room, the dark motionless figure of a woman. My first and clear thought was that I was seeing a ghost, the ghost of the house, at last! I gave a choked grunt of fear and wanted to run back down the stairs but could not move. I did not drop the lamp.
The figure moved, turned more fully towards me. It was a real woman, not a ghost. Then in a flash it looked familiar. Then I could see the face in the lamplight. It was Rosina Vamburgh.
‘Good evening,