The Sea, the Sea

‘That’s true enough.’

‘What does it mean?’ said Lizzie, who was still looking red and frightened and miserable.

‘Jealousy is born with love, but does not always die with love.’

‘But why tell me now?’ I asked James. ‘You could both have gone on fooling me forever.’

‘I should have told you earlier,’ he repeated, ‘it should not have happened at all. Any lie is morally dangerous.’

‘You mean you may be found out!’

‘It has been a barrier. And a-and a-’ he found the word judiciously, ‘a flaw.’

‘In your conception of yourself.’

‘In our-our-’ he searched again, ‘friendship, and-yes-in me.’

‘Friendship! Whatever it is between you and me it certainly isn’t friendship!’

‘And earlier I felt I must protect Lizzie.’

‘Of course!’

‘But now-lately-it becomes necessary to tell you, for Lizzie’s sake, so that there may be no impediment.’

‘Impediment to what, for God’s sake?’

‘To her loving you, to your loving her. Secrets are almost always a mistake and a source of corruption.’

‘And then there was Toby,’ blurted Lizzie.

‘Toby? Christ in heaven, how does Toby come into this? You don’t mean Toby Ellesmere, do you?’ I asked Lizzie.

‘He saw me and Lizzie in a bar together,’ said James. He hated this bit.

‘Talking about me of course!’

‘Yes.’

‘And as you were afraid he’d tell me you felt you had to! Otherwise you’d have gone on and on lying.’

‘We would have told you anyway,’ said Lizzie. ‘We felt we had to. It was beginning to be a nightmare, at least it was to me. It seemed such a little thing to begin with, there was so little to it, and it just seemed sensible, not to tell you, knowing what you’re like. And you must understand, we only met sort of every other year for five minutes. And I very very occasionally rang him up to ask about you. Usually he wasn’t there anyway-’

‘Too bad. You were both spying on me. At least that’s how it started-’

‘It wasn’t like that,’ said James, ‘but of course if one starts lying one deserves what one gets.’

‘And when you met here you pretended not to have met each other-that’s a scene I shall remember!’

‘We didn’t tell you because we knew you’d be determined to misunderstand,’ said Lizzie, ‘and you are determined to misunderstand. ’

‘So I suppose you both think it’s all my fault for being, as you put it, insanely jealous!’

‘The fault is mine,’ said James.

‘No, no, it’s my fault,’ said Lizzie. ‘I forced it on him, I knew he hated it-’

‘Perhaps I know James better than you do after all,’ I said to Lizzie. ‘He is a man on whom no one ever forced anything he hated.’

‘It isn’t his fault-’

‘This argument does not interest me,’ I said. ‘You can continue it elsewhere and I am sure you will both enjoy it very much.’

‘I told you he’d be like that,’ said Lizzie to James, ‘I told you he wouldn’t understand-’

‘Well,’ said James, ‘there it is. It’s not a very attractive confession, but I hope you can see, or will see when you calm down-’

‘What do you mean, calm down?’

‘That it’s not, from your point of view, a matter of world-shaking importance. Naturally it irritates you. But you will see on reflection that it does not damage your relation with Lizzie, nor, I hope, your relation with me. It’s obvious how and why it happened, OK, it shouldn’t have happened, and I’m sorry-’

‘Do you imagine that I believe you?’

‘Yes,’ said James. He looked at me frowning but his face expressed an almost absurd sort of distress at a loss of dignity, at a loss, for once, of the initiative.

‘Well, I don’t. Why should I? How can I? It’s mean, it’s horrible. You admit you only told me because Toby saw you secretly meeting Lizzie in a bar. Am I supposed to be pleased that you’ve been meeting for years-’

‘Very very infrequently.’

‘And talking about me?’

‘You don’t see what it was like,’ said Lizzie, with tears in her eyes. ‘It wasn’t an all- the-time sort of thing at all, and it wasn’t like you think a relationship, it was just that we did happen to have met accidentally at that party-’

‘The moral is, never give parties.’

‘And we couldn’t undo that, and I did ask James sometimes how you were and where you were, because I loved you, and it was my only connection with you, all the time you were with Jeanne and-and that time when you were in Japan and in Australia and-I was thinking about you-and there wasn’t anyone but James I could-’

‘There wasn’t anyone but James, a very adequate substitute I daresay. Can’t you see how wickedly hurtful this is?’

‘She’s right,’ said James, ‘it isn’t like what you are thinking at all. However-’

‘I can just see you holding hands and talking about me!’

‘We never held hands!’ said Lizzie.

‘Christ! Do I care whether you held hands or not? Or whatever else you did which you will never confess? You’ve been telephoning and meeting and looking into each other’s eyes-I expect you’ve known each other forever, I daresay you knew Lizzie before I ever met her, you were there first, you were there before me, as you were with-as you were with-with Aunt Estelle and-and with Titus-you’d met Titus before, he said he’d seen you in a dream. I expect you were the person he was living with for those two years, no wonder he wouldn’t say! And you made Lizzie sing that special song of Aunt Estelle’s. I’m sure Lizzie dreams about you every night, you’re everywhere, spoiling everything in my life, you’d spoil Hartley if you could, only you can’t get at her, she’s the only thing that’s absolutely mine!’

‘Charles!’

‘You’ve been everywhere before me and you’ll be everywhere after me, when I’m dead you and Lizzie will be sitting in a bar discussing me, only then it won’t matter who sees you.’

‘Charles, Charles-’

‘I’m disappointed in you,’ I said to James. ‘I didn’t ever think you’d do anything mean or treacherous, I didn’t ever believe you’d put yourself into this sort of squalid muddle. It’s a kind of ordinary sly human stupidity which I was foolish enough to imagine you didn’t suffer from. You’ve behaved like ordinary people do who can’t imagine consequences. And one of the consequences is that, I don’t believe you, I can’t believe you. There could be anything between you and Lizzie. Ordinary mediocre people think that if they confess one tenth of the truth they’re in the clear. You’ve made all your words into lies, you’ve devalued your speech and-and in a moment you’ve spoilt the past-and there’s nothing to rely on any more.’

‘Perhaps it was a mistake to tell you in this way,’ said James. He seemed to be getting annoyed though he was also very upset. ‘Of course you were bound to hate it whenever it emerged, we never underestimated that. I hope and believe that you will appreciate later that the thing concealed was trivial, though the fact of the concealment was not. I realize that all this has been an affront to your dignity-’

‘Dignity? My dignity?’

‘Well, an affront. I am heartily sorry for it. But given the mistake, the fault, you can hardly have wished it to continue. This truth-telling is something painful which we do for your sake. Lizzie felt that she could not be as she wished for you with the lie unconfessed. She wanted there to be, especially now, no barrier of untruth between you.’

‘Why “especially now”? What’s special about now?’

‘Please,’ began Lizzie, ‘please-’

‘Don’t worry, I’m not excited, I’m not even angry, this isn’t anger.’ I had not raised my voice at all.

‘Then it’s all right,’ she said. ‘It’s all all right?’