The Sea, the Sea

streets. Then I went down to the harbour and back by a footpath which led up the hill to the bungalows. As soon as the two shops were open I visited both of them. I walked round again. Then I went into the church, which was empty, and sat for a while with my head in my hands. I found that I was able to pray and was indeed praying. This was odd since I did not believe in God and had not prayed since I was a child. I prayed: let me find Hartley and let her be alone and let her love me and be made happy by me forever. My being able to make Hartley happy had become the most desirable thing in the world, something the possession of which would crown my life and make it perfect. I went on praying and then in a strange way it was as if I had fallen asleep. I certainly had the experience of waking up and feeling panic in case I had lost Hartley, as my only chance to find her had come and gone while I was sleeping. Her holiday was over, she had gone home, she had run away, she had suddenly died. I jumped up and looked at my watch. It was only twenty past nine. I ran out of the church. And then at last I saw her.

I saw: a stout elderly woman in a shapeless brown tent-like dress, holding a shopping bag and working her way, very slowly as if in a dream, along the street, past the Black Lion in the direction of the shop. This figure, which I had so vaguely, idly, noticed before was now utterly changed in my eyes. The whole world was its background. And between me and it there hovered, perhaps for the last time, the vision of a slim long-legged girl with gleaming thighs. I ran.

I reached her, running up from behind, when she had just passed the pub, and as I came level with her I touched one of the wide brown sleeves of her dress. She stopped, I stopped. I could say nothing.

The familiar face turned to me, the pale round fey face with the secret-violet eyes, and with a sort of almost reflective movement of relief I thought: I can make sense of it, yes, it is the same person, and I can see it as the same person, after all.

Hartley’s face, which now seemed absolutely white, expressed such an appalling terror that I would have felt terrified myself had I not been engaged in some urgent almost mechanical search for ‘similarities’, for ways to blend the present with the far past. Yes, that was Hartley’s face, though it was haggard and curiously soft and dry. A sheaf of very fine sensitive wrinkles at the corner of the eye led upwards to the brow and down towards the chin, framing the face like a wreath. There were magisterial horizontal lines upon the forehead and long darkish hairs above the mouth. She was wearing a moist red lipstick and face powder which had caked here and there. Her hair was grey and neat and conventionally waved. But the shape of her face and head and the look of her eyes conveyed something untouched straight from the past into the present.

She started to murmur something. ‘Oh-it’s-’ It was of course at once clear that she knew who I was. She mumbled ‘Oh-’, staring at me in a kind of blank terrified supplication.

I managed at last to say ‘Come-come-’ and pulled again at her sleeve and began to move back towards the church. I did not attempt to walk with her. She followed me a few feet behind and I kept looking back at her and stumbling. God knows who witnessed this encounter. Perhaps a dozen people, perhaps no one. I could not see anything except Hartley’s terrified eyes.

I went into the church and held the big heavy door open for her. The place was still empty. The big windows of plain glass gave a bright cool light. I sat down in a nearby pew and she sat down close to me in the next row in front, so that she had to turn round to see me. In the damp musty atmosphere I could smell her face powder and feel the warmth of her body. She had dropped her bag and gripped the back of the pew with her two hands. The hands were red and wrinkled and in a moment she hid them again. She murmured ‘I’m sorry-’ and closed her eyes. I laid my brow on the polished wooden surface where her hands had been and said, ‘Oh, Hartley-Hartley- Hartley-’

It occurred to me later that I never for a second doubted that her emotion was as strong as my own; although this could well have been otherwise. When I lifted my head she was dabbing her face with a handkerchief and breathing open-mouthed in a shuddering way, not looking at me.

‘Hartley, I-oh, Hartley-oh, my dear-where do you live, do you live in the village?’ I do not know why I asked this question first, perhaps just because it was easy to answer. Speech of any sort seemed the problem, as if we spoke different languages and must teach each other to talk.

‘Yes.’

‘You’re not on holiday, you live here?’

‘Yes.’

‘So do I. I’m retired now. Where do you live?’

‘Up on the hill.’

‘In one of those bungalows?’

‘Yes.’ She added, ‘There’s a lovely view.’ She too was babbling. Her handkerchief had smudged some lipstick onto her cheek.

‘You got married, didn’t you-are you still-I mean is your husband still-have you got a-husband-now-?’

‘Yes, yes, oh yes. My husband is alive-he’s with me, yes-we live-we live here.’

I was silent while a whole world of possibilities gradually folded themselves up, like some trick of stagecraft, quietly collapsing, folding, merging, becoming very small and vanishing. So that-was that-at any rate. And I would have to think, to invent, in a new way, to exist in this situation which was now, I realized, whatever was the case with Hartley, the continuing and only situation for me, the final state of affairs, the world centre.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

She shook her head slightly, jerked it with emotion, at this last awkward tribute. A short litany, a vast brief Amen.

I went on, ‘I’m not married, I never married.’

She moved her head again, staring down at the reddened handkerchief. And we were silent for a moment together, as if surveying breathlessly a huge event which had just taken place. Then as in a crisis people will hurry on to talk at random, I said quickly, ‘Did you see me before at all, did you see me in the street, perhaps you didn’t recognize me?’

‘Oh yes. I saw you nearly three weeks ago. I recognized you. You haven’t changed.’

I could not bring myself to say ‘You haven’t changed’, though later I cursed myself for not saying it. How much do women mind when they lose their looks, how much do they know? But I was instantly caught up and appalled by another thought. ‘But then why didn’t you speak to me?’

‘I wasn’t sure if you would want to know me. I thought perhaps you felt it would be better if we didn’t recognize each other-’

‘You mean you thought I’d recognized you and-and cut you-just ignored you? How could you think that?’

‘I didn’t know-I didn’t know how you felt after all those years-whether you blamed me or had forgotten me. You are so grand and famous-you mightn’t like me or want to know me-’

‘Oh, Hartley, how can you, if you only knew-I’ve spent the years looking for you, I’ve never stopped loving you-’ I touched the shoulder of the brown dress, taking the collar of it for a second between my fingers.

‘Don’t, don’t,’ she murmured, moving slightly away.

‘Did you know that I saw you last night?’

‘Yes.’

‘I only recognized you then. I’ve been in a frenzy ever since. I wouldn’t have pretended not to know you, what a terrible thing! How could you think I’d blame you or forget you! You are my love, you are still that, you are still what you were for me-’

She gave an odd little grimace like a smile and shook her head, still not looking at me.

I could not say more, I had to blunder on into the terrible things. ‘You’re still with the same-husband-the one you married-then? ’

‘Yes, the same one.’

‘I never knew his name, I-I don’t know your married name.’

‘I’m Mrs Fitch. His name is Fitch, Benjamin Fitch.’

I bowed over this as over a stomach blow. There was now a name attached to this horror of her being married, this horror that I would have to live with somehow. An awful wave of self-pity overcame me and I wrinkled up my face with pain. ‘Hartley-what does he do, I mean, what does he, does he work at?’

‘He’s disabled a bit, he went about in a car as a representative, did various jobs, like a salesman, he’s retired now. We came here, we were in the Midlands, we came here, to the bungalow to live-’

‘Oh isn’t it strange, Hartley, we both came here to meet each other again, and we didn’t know. It seems like