The Sea, the Sea

It took me a moment to realize that she was not being sarcastic. Alone? Well, yes. Her tone suggested that she had not imagined, not speculated.

‘You say you just decided you didn’t want me, but that isn’t an explanation, I want to know-’

‘Oh stop-it just didn’t happen. If I’d loved you enough I would have married you, if you’d loved me enough you would have married me. There aren’t any reasons.’

‘You say if I’d loved you enough-Don’t drive me mad! I loved you to the limit, I still do, I tried to the limit, I didn’t run away, I didn’t marry anyone else, it was all your fault, you’ll drive me crazy if you start-’

‘We mustn’t talk of these things-we’re just sort of-plunging about-and it doesn’t mean anything now. Look, I must tell you certain things only you won’t listen-’

I thought, I mustn’t go mad with emotion, I must stop questioning her now, though I will find out, I will. ‘Hartley, have some wine.’ I poured out a glass of the Spanish wine and she began mechanically to sip it. ‘Have an olive.’

‘I don’t like olives, they’re sour. Please listen to me-’

‘I’m sorry it’s so cold here, this house manages to be cold even when-All right, you tell me things. But just remember, you’re here and you stay-whatever happened or didn’t happen in the past you belong to me now. But tell me one thing, that night when you were on the road here and that car shone its lights on you, were you coming to see me then, that night?’

‘No-but I-I just wanted to look at your house. It was a woodwork night, you see.’

‘You wanted to look at my house. To stand in the road and look at the lighted windows. Oh my dear, you do love me, you can’t help it.’

‘Charles, it doesn’t matter-’

‘What do you mean, you’ll make me mad again!’

‘There isn’t any place, any possibility, any sort of-structure-everything’s broken down, you’ll understand when I’ve told you-what I came to tell you-’

‘All right, I’ll listen now, but first let me kiss you. Then everything will be well. The kiss of peace.’ I leaned over and very gently but persistingly let my dry lips touch her wet lips. How different different kisses are. This was a sort of holy kiss. We both closed our eyes. ‘OK, now go on.’ I filled up her wine glass. My hand was shaking and the wine splashed on the table.

She said again, ‘There’s so little time, and we’ve spent some of it.’ Then she said, ‘Oh God, I haven’t got my watch with me, what time is it?’

I looked at my watch. It was a quarter to ten. I said, ‘It’s ten past nine.’

‘Charles, it’s about Titus.’

‘Titus?’ Titus? I had given no serious thought to Titus, and I felt dismayed.

‘Yes, now I want to tell you. Oh God I feel drunk already, I’m not used to wine. I must tell you. I’ve sometimes thought, since I saw you in the village, that perhaps you could help somehow, but really you can only help by keeping away, by keeping right away-’

‘That’s nonsense-’

‘You see, I told you Titus was adopted-’

‘Yes, yes-’

‘We hoped for a child, Ben wanted one, so did I, and we waited. And then I wanted to adopt and he didn’t, he kept hoping. And I began to be so anxious because of the time limit, they only let you adopt if you’re under a certain age, even then I had to lie about my age. Ben’s younger than me and with him it was-’

‘Is he? I thought he was in the war.’

‘He was, but only in the later part-’

‘What did he do in the war?’

‘He was in the infantry. He doesn’t talk about it much. He was captured, he was in a prisoner of war camp.’

‘I was in ENSA-’

‘I think he quite enjoyed the war, he saw himself as a soldier. He kept his army revolver, he was so fond of it, he wasn’t supposed to. He never really settled down in civilian life. Sometimes he says, “Roll on the next war.” ’

‘But you were married then, when he was a prisoner? Where were you?’

‘I was living in Leicester, on a housing estate. I worked as a clerk in the ration book office. It was a lonely time.’

It was a lonely time. So when I was frigging around with Clement and travelling the counties in a bus to bring theatre to the war effort, Hartley was unhappy and alone. Christ, I even went to Leicester. ‘Oh my God-’

‘But listen, about Titus-you see, I did at last, at the last moment as it were, persuade Ben that we should adopt. He didn’t really want to, but he did it because, I suppose, he saw what a state I was in-I was nearly-I was nearly-I was very upset-and really I arranged it all, I did it all, all the formalities, all the papers and so on, and Ben just signed the things without looking, he did it in a dream, he didn’t want to know. I could see he was unhappy about it, but I thought that-when the little baby was there-he’d love it-everything would be different-and we’d all be happy-’

‘Don’t cry, Hartley darling, here, let me hold your hand, I’ll look after you now-’

‘Titus was such a poor little mite, with a hare lip, they had to operate-’

‘Yes, yes, stop crying and get on with the story, if you must tell it.’

‘Now I made a great mistake-’

‘Hartley, don’t grieve so, I can’t bear it, have some more wine-’

‘I made a terrible terrible mistake-and I have paid for it terribly-I ought to have known better-’

‘Well, what was it?’

‘I never told Ben about you. I mean, I didn’t at the start tell him, and then later on it seemed more and more impossible to tell him-’

‘Never told him how we’d grown up together, loving each other-?’

‘Never told him how things were. When he asked had there been anybody, I said no. And of course he didn’t know anything about it, my cousins didn’t know, you remember how we were so sort of secretive, when we were children-’

‘Yes. It was so precious, Hartley. Of course we were secretive. It was precious and secret and holy.’

‘So there was really no danger that anyone else would tell him-’

‘Danger? But why did it matter? After all you’d left me.’

‘Ben was so jealous, he’s such a terribly jealous person-and at first I didn’t understand about jealousy, I mean I didn’t understand it could be like madness.’

Yes, like madness. I understood that all right.

‘And before we got married he used-almost to threaten me. If I annoyed him he’d say, “I’ll pay you out when we’re married!”, and I was never sure if it was a joke. And it was usually about jealousy things. If I looked at another man, I mean just literally looked, he got so angry-and that went on and on after we got married-And then at last I just got frightened and lost my head and told him.’

‘Told him you had loved me, and I had loved you?’

‘Told him, sort of. I didn’t want to make it seem important, but of course the fact I hadn’t told him earlier made it look so terribly serious-’

‘It was important, it was serious!’

‘If only I had had the sense and the nerve either to tell him at the start or never to tell him at all. But you see, when I saw how jealous Ben was, what an angry jealous man he was, I began to be terrified in case one day-you would turn up-’

‘And I have!’

‘And I had to protect myself by at least having mentioned you before. You see, I was afraid someone might say something or that you’d find out where I was-I tried so hard not to let anyone know, anyone who could tell you, I cut off all the connections, and my parents had moved, I thought you might try to find me and-’

‘You cut the connections all right! But, Hartley, if you were so frightened of him at the very start, why did you marry the blighter?’