The Sea, The Sea - Iris Murdoch [96]
History
THREE
‘EVERY PERSISTING MARRIAGE is based on fear,’ said Peregrine Arbelow.
But let me explain. I am writing these pages, as I have written the previous ones (since page 100 in fact), in London, in my peculiar miserable derelict new flat. It has even occurred to me that if I wanted to live as a hermit retired from the world this would be a far better habitat! (Someone said something like this to me lately, Rosina?) So much has been happening, I thought I would write it as a continuous narrative without too many reversions to the present tense. So I am writing my life, after all, as a novel! Why not? It was a matter of finding a form, and somehow history, my history, has found the form for me. There will be plenty of time to reflect and remember as I go along, to digress and philosophize, to inhabit the far past or depict the scarcely formulated present; so my novel can still be a sort of memoir and a sort of diary. The past and the present are after all so close, so almost one, as if time were an artificial teasing out of a material which longs to join, to interpenetrate, and to become heavy and very small like some of those heavenly bodies scientists tell us of.
I arrived here two days ago and have spent most of the time writing. On the second evening, as I shall shortly recount, I visited Peregrine. Today I shall continue to write; it is oddly enough easier to write here, amid all this cramped chaos, than in the open spaces at Shruff End. I have been able to concentrate; and my God there is plenty to concentrate on. This evening I shall take the train back home. (Home? Home.) I have telephoned to the local taxi to meet me at the station. I am sitting at a rickety table up against a window, from which I can see the unutterably feathery tops of a very bland green plane tree and beyond its lilting leaves a jumble of walls and windows and chimneys, and backs of houses built out of the crusty dung-brown Victorian brick out of which this part of London seems to be constructed. I sold my big airy apartment in Barnes, so near the river, so near the railway, in a fever of haste when I was buying Shruff End. And this little flat was, almost in my intention, a sort of penitential chapel. I have not even yet had time to arrange the furniture. Beside me as I write is an armchair with a television set on top of it. (Thank God for the impossibility of television at Shruff End.) Beyond, a bookcase stands facing the wall, presenting to me its greyish back, draped with cobwebs and pitted with woodworm. Pictures, lamps, books, ornaments and rolled-up rugs cover the floor, together with a sinister scattering of pieces of broken glass and china. I hustled the removal men and they were not at their best. Crates of kitchen ware, not unpacked, fill the tiny kitchen. Even though I sold many things and put some in store (including several trunks full of theatre souvenirs) there is far too much stuff here. The two bedrooms are small, but have an attractive view down a mews where many plants and trees are growing outside the little houses. The kitchen, if you can get in, is satisfactory, with a good gas stove and a refrigerator. Yesterday I lunched on tinned macaroni cheese jazzed up with oil, garlic, basil, and more cheese, and a lovely dish of cold boiled courgettes. (Courgettes should never be fried, in my opinion.) I must remember to buy more courgettes and some green peppers to take back with me. And talking of food, I have just this moment remembered that last night (when I was with Perry) was the night when I was supposed to be dining with Lizzie and Gilbert, and I forgot to cancel it. They will have spent the whole day