The Sea, The Sea - Iris Murdoch [82]
I said, as I went through the dim hall towards the glaring brightness of the oval glass on the door, ‘Well, we must be in touch, mustn’t we, I do hope you’ll both come over and have a drink and see my funny house and—’
Hartley swung the front door open.
‘Goodbye, thanks for calling,’ said Fitch.
I was on the red tiled path and the door had closed. As soon as I was out of sight I began to run. I reached the village street panting and began to walk more slowly along the footpath which led to the coast road. As I walked I began to have a weird uncomfortable sensation in my back which, amid all the wild emotions and sensations which were rushing about inside me, I could identify as the sensation of being observed. I was about to turn round when it came to me that I was now well inside the span of the Nibletts view and within range of Fitch’s powerful field glasses, should he care to sit on the window ledge and check on my departure. Parts of the village street were plainly visible from Nibletts, though the church and the churchyard were hidden by trees. So was that the explanation of Hartley’s uneasiness, her thought that perhaps Fitch had actually seen me meet her and lead her away towards the church? She had, I remembered, walked behind me, not with me. How odd it must have looked though, with me as a crazed Orpheus and her as a dazed Eurydice. Yet why should she be afraid of being seen to meet somebody, even me, in the street? Resisting the present temptation to look back I walked smartly on and was soon among the stunted trees and gorse bushes and rocky outcrops near to the road, and out of sight from the hill. It was still very hot. I pulled off my jacket. It was soaked under the arms with dark stains of anxious perspiration and the dye had stained my shirt.
I then began to wonder many things, some very immediate, others vastly remote and metaphysical. First there was the question I had so belatedly asked myself when I was ringing the bell. Evidently Hartley had told her husband that she knew me, but when and how, and indeed why, had she told him? Years and years ago when she first met him? After they got married? When they ‘saw me on telly’? Or even, when she got home this morning from our meeting in the street? ‘Oh, I just met someone I used to know, such a surprise.’ And she might then recall their having seen me on television. But no, this was too elaborate. She must have told him much earlier, after all why on earth not: did I want her to have kept me a secret? As indeed I had so devotedly kept her a secret . . . Why had I done so? Because she was something holy which almost any speech would profane. In so far as I had ever mentioned Hartley to anyone I had always regretted it. No one understood, no one could understand. Better the austere sterility of silence. One of the horrors of marriage is that the partners are supposed to tell each other everything. ‘It’s him.’ They had obviously been talking about me today. I just hated the idea that, through all those years, they could have chatted about me, dismissed me, demeaned it all, chewed it all up into some sort of digestible matrimonial pabulum. ‘Your schoolboy admirer has done well for himself!’ Fitch called her ‘Mary’. Well, that was her name too. But ‘Hartley’ was her real name. In choosing to abandon it had she deliberately abandoned her past?
When I got home, although it was still very light outside, the house seemed dark and by contrast with the sunshine, cool and damp. I poured myself some sherry and bitters and took it out onto my little rock-surrounded lawn at the back and sat on the rug which I had placed upon the rock seat beside the trough where I put the stones. But it was at once intolerable not to see the water, so I climbed up a bit, gingerly holding my glass, and sat on top of a rock. The sea was now a bluish purple, the colour of Hartley’s eyes. Oh God, what was I to make of it all? Whatever happened