The Sea, the Sea

I had not understood the whole of the conversation. At moments I felt that I had hardly understood anything, except for what was so obscenely evident: those terrible tones of voice, and the sense that all this had happened before, again and again. The awful crying of souls in guilt and pain, loathing each other, tied to each other! The inferno of marriage. I could not, and did not try to, work out the meanings and implications of what had been said. Clearly the gentleman (I now suddenly started thinking of him as ‘the gentleman’) was displeased by my appearance on the scene. Well, too bad. I indulged in visions of going up to Nibletts, grabbing him by the collar when he opened the door, and pounding his face. But that would be no use. Besides, he was scarcely the ‘dear dull old husband’ imagined by Rosina. He might have a stiff leg, but he was a tough customer. He was, or perhaps just seemed to be, a dangerous man. He might be the classical bully who is supposed to collapse when threatened; but those who consider threatening bullies may well doubt whether this convenient type really exists. There would be no point in such an experiment. I simply had to get Hartley away and I had to think how to do it. Thought was difficult.

In my earlier reflections I had somehow vaguely taken it for granted that once it was clear, if it should become clear, that Hartley’s marriage was a disaster, it would not be hard for me to break it up and remove her. I did not doubt that, in those circumstances, she would want to come, that to run to me at last would be a blessed joyful escape and the acting out of a long-cherished fantasy. This assumption may seem naive, but it was not any sense of its naivety which now set me at a loss. It was simply that, having been pressed up to the point of action, I could not think exactly how to act, and the details mattered terribly. Nibletts, its roses, its horrible new carpets, the brass ornaments, the lurid curtains, the bell, impressed me not at all, these were gauzy, visionary. As he had said, pretences. What impressed me was some quality of that awful conversation itself, some sense of the many many years which had passed, a sense of the strength and texture of the cage. Yet it could still be that I had only to say to Hartley ‘come’ and she would come. Then it remained to decide just how and when to say it, and that decision seemed to raise all the obscure difficulties again. Was it simply perhaps the case that I was afraid of Ben?

About eleven o’clock I stopped running and made some tea. There was an idea which I had received from the conversation, but for some time, although it was there, I could not chisel it out or identify it. It was an idea which the gentleman himself had given me. It was something like, supposing he really were to turn her out, supposing he could be driven to reject her? Would that not solve the problems about that cage, which I had found so hard to formulate? The gentleman had said that he never would drive her away, but the fact that he mentioned it at all showed that it was possible. Let him dement himself with his own foul temper and foul jealousy or whatever it was-for indeed I could not quite see what it was-that he was so enraged about. It was surely not just my appearance, the old school friend, now a celebrity, knocking upon the door, unwelcome as that doubtless was? If he could become sufficiently worked up, if things over there could just collapse and crumble, then she would have no refuge and she would have no cage and she would come running straight into my arms. Yet-if he became mad-if his world began to totter-might he not then maim her or murder her? This was one of the thoughts that sent me skipping round the rocks like a crazed leopard. Her cry at the end: ‘Stop, stop, you’re hurting me.’ How often in those hateful years had that cry rung out? It was unbearable. I leapt up, upsetting my tea cup, chattering aloud, and ran out again onto the grass. What was I to do? So many things were now clear, but I simply could not think out the final tactics, I could not think and I could not think because I could not clear my mind of that ghastly conversation, it obstructed me like thick adhesive scum. I had to rescue Hartley, and ‘rescue’ was indeed now at last plainly the word, the very word that I had longed for. But, now it came to it, how?

Later on it seemed as if Hartley herself had come to my assistance. I saw her gentle pale unhappy face looking at me, and I felt a ghostly calm, as if a waft of her presence had come. I must, I realized, before making any overt move at all, talk to her again, and if possible more than once. My impulse was to go round to that horrible bungalow straightaway and simply remove her, and in the end it might come to that. But of course I must prepare her. If it came to a swoop there must be no bungling, no mistakes. So much had been happening in my mind of which she knew nothing. I must let her know where, in it all, I was. I decided that it was no use, at present, attempting any more meetings in the village, since she would be too upset and frightened to attend properly. The vital explanations must be done by letter. I had assumed that what she feared, not yet knowing what my intentions were, was her own heart. For all she knew, I had other sentimental commitments. She had had, no doubt, enough of remorse and the quiet mourning of an old love, so foolishly rejected. Now however I could glimpse other and more urgent fears, and I felt sick uneasy anger at the idea of that little ‘boyish’ jealous man, sitting up there with his field glasses, and waiting for her to come home. It soon seemed plain, and this further clarification was a relief, that I must simply write her a long letter, then give her time to understand it, to respond to it, and by then… It was a relief to my shocked frightened mind to reflect that there was now no terrible hurry, that I did not have to go up that hill today and decide exactly how to confront the jealous tyrant. There was the problem of conveying the letter to her, but that was not insoluble, and I had in fact already envisaged how it might be done.

I ate some corned beef with red cabbage and pickled walnuts, and the remainder of the apricots and cheddar cheese. I had no bread or butter or milk, as I had been too distracted to do any shopping. After that I rested. After that I wrote some of this diary, bringing it more nearly up-to-date. After that I wrote the letter to Hartley the text of which I will copy out in a little while. After that I washed a lot of clothes and put them out in the sun. After that I went swimming from the tower steps. Then I sat beside the tower and looked at the late afternoon sun making big blotchy shadows behind the spherical rocks of Raven Bay. After that, since I saw some tourists coming and I had nothing on, I got dressed and returned to the house and picked up my washing, which had dried. Then I fetched the snapshots of Hartley which I had brought from London and sat outside on my stone seat, beside my stone trough, and brooded on them slowly and intently.

Some of the snaps showed us both together. Who had taken those? I could not remember. From the browned curled surfaces, out of a sinless world, the bright soft unformed young faces gazed forth. It was an unspoilt world, a world of truly simple and pure pleasures, a happy world, since my trust in her was absolute, and since in our childish old-fashioned chastity we did not yet consider making love. Happier were we in this, I think, than the children of today. The light of pure love and of pure unanxious romance illuminated our days together, our nights apart. This is no absurd idealization of a youthful Arcadia. We were simple children in a simple world, we loved our parents and our teachers and were obedient to them. The pains of the human journey lay in the future, the terrible choices, the unavoidable crimes. We were free to love.

When did it begin to end? Perhaps when I ran off to London. Yet even then our love had still a time to run. And I never doubted her until the last. How long, how much, did she deceive me? Perhaps my selfish need of her was so great that I could not conceive of it not being satisfied. And as I reflected on that need it also occurred to me to think how much, in those years, Hartley had defended me against James. It seemed odd now that they knew practically nothing of each other. I scarcely ever spoke of James to Hartley, and never then of Hartley to James. She never knew how robustly her love defended me against some kind of collapse of my pride.

I shall now transcribe the letter which I wrote to Hartley, and which I had decided to find some way of delivering to her on the following day.

My dearest Hartley, my darling, I love you and I want you to come to me. This is what this letter says. But first there are things which I must tell you, things which I must explain. The chance which has brought you back to me has come like a great storm into my life. There is so much to say, so much to tell. It may seem to you that I belong now to some other world, to some ‘great world’ of which you know nothing, and that I must have in that world many friends, many relationships. It is not so. In many ways my life in the theatre now seems like a dream, the old days with you the only reality. I have few friends and no ‘amorous ties’, I am alone and free. This was what I was not able properly to tell you when we met in the village. I have had a successful career, but an empty life. That is what it comes to. I never conceived of marrying because I knew there was only one woman that I would or could marry. Hartley, think about that, believe it. I have waited for you, although I never dared to hope that I would ever see you again. And now, fleeing from worldly vanities, I have come to the sea, and to you. And I love you as I always did, my old love is there, every little fibre and tentacle and tendril of it intact and sensitive and alive. Of course I am older and it is in that sense a different man’s love, and yet it is the same love. For it has kept its identity, it has travelled with me all this way, it has almost miraculously survived. Oh my dear, how many days and nights there have been, when you knew nothing of it, when perhaps you thought of me as far away in my ‘grand world’, when I have sat alone with an aching heart, thinking of you, remembering you, and wondering