The Sea, the Sea

some impression.

He was clothed by now, and we stood together on the high rock above the water. He looked at me frowning and screwing up his eyes. Then he looked away. ‘All right-I suppose-yes-OK. I’m in fact, well, a little overwhelmed, actually. I’m glad you said that about wanting me for me. I wasn’t sure. I believe you-I think. It’s funny, I’ve been thinking about you so much of my life, and I always knew I’d have to come and look at you one day, but I kept putting it off because I was afraid. I thought that if you rejected me-I mean, thought I was a sort of lying scrounger, just wanting money and that-and, well, why shouldn’t you have thought so, it’s all so odd-it would have been a sort of crippling blow. I can’t see how I would have recovered, I’d have felt so dishonoured and awful, I’d have been saddled with it somehow forever after. There was so much at stake.’

‘So much, yes, but all is well, here at least. We won’t misunderstand each other. We won’t lose each other.’

‘It’s all happened so fast.’

‘It’s happened fast because it’s right, it’s easy because it’s right.’

‘Well then, I’ll try, as you say God knows what it means, but I accept, at least I’ll try.’

He held out his hand and I grasped it and for a moment we stood there, moved and embarrassed.

Then I heard, from the roadway, the loud urgent hooting of Gilbert’s horn.

‘That’s him!’ I jumped up and began to scramble towards the house. Titus passed me and raced on before me over the grass. When I reached the kitchen door Gilbert was holding on to Titus.

‘He’s here, he came walking along the road, he stopped at the causeway but when he saw me in the car and when I started hooting he walked on.’

‘Walked on past the house?’

‘Yes. Maybe he’s going to come round the back over the rocks.’ Gilbert seemed to be really frightened.

I ran through the hall and out onto the causeway and up to the road. There was no sign of Ben. I noticed that Gilbert, no doubt to secure his own retreat, had parked the car right across the end of the causeway as if it were intended as a barricade. That no doubt was why Ben had walked on. As I was still hesitating and staring about I heard Titus shouting from the other side of the house.

I passed Gilbert, who was gabbling something or other, at the door and rushed out again through the kitchen. Titus was standing up on top of one of the highest rocks, and pointing. ‘He’s there! There! I can see him. He’s coming along from the tower.’

By now I felt no more doubt about whose side Titus was on. Thank goodness for that.

I called to Titus, ‘You wait there, I’ll go and meet him. If I want you I’ll shout.’

I began to climb over the rocks keeping the tower in view, and in a moment I saw Ben, also clambering, with an impressive agility, in the direction of the house.

The place where our two paths converged, and indeed the only fairly easy way from the house to the tower, was Minn’s bridge, the rocky arch under which the sea entered the cauldron. Towards this natural meeting place we both scrambled and slid until we came onto the bridge and faced each other some ten feet apart. I wondered quickly and a bit anxiously whether we were, as I hoped, still within the view of Titus upon his high rock. I looked quickly round. We were not.

Ben was wearing blackish corduroy trousers, rubbed bald at the knees, probably from the Fishermen’s Stores, and a white shirt. No jacket, though the morning was still chilly. Had he donned this stripped gear to assure me he was carrying no weapon, or was he simply dressed for fighting? He looked burly, a bit tight for his trousers, but compact and business-like. He appeared to have shaved, which I had not. He had shaved alone over there in that suddenly empty house with God knows what thoughts in his mind as he faced himself in the mirror. His cropped mousy hair, his big boyish head, broad shoulders and short build were reminiscent of a little ram or other smallish but aggressive male animal. By contrast with his thick heavy look I felt positively willowy, loose, untidy, with uncombed hair and, I suddenly realized, my striped pyjama jacket still on over my trousers.

I advanced a little onto the bridge and so did he. The tide was coming in and the strong large waves were crowding in and washing hungrily round inside the deep smooth space of the cauldron. There was a low sibilant roar, not loud enough to impede a parley. I stood, checking on my pyjama buttons, and waiting for him to begin. The roaring sound comforted me. I hoped it disconcerted Ben. Noise has always been my friend.

I was now seeing Ben’s face closely in a good light for the first time. He was rather better-looking than I had imagined earlier. He had long brown eyes with long lashes, and a large well-formed and, though perhaps only now, slightly sneering and fastidious mouth. His chin receded into his thick neck. I was at once aware that he was, and I was relieved to see it, extremely nervous, though also extremely angry. Was he perhaps a bit frightened of me? Guilt? Guilt makes fear.

‘Where is my wife?’

‘Here, in my house, where she wants to stay. And Titus too, he wasn’t my son, as you perfectly well know, but he is now, I’ve adopted him.’

‘What?’

‘Yes!’

‘What did you say?’

I realized with further satisfaction that Ben was a bit deaf, deafer than me at any rate, and the noise was bothering him. I had rather gabbled my statement it is true. I said, with loud insulting clarity, ‘She is-here. Titus is- here. They stay-here.’

‘I’ve come to take her home.’

‘Look, you don’t really believe that Titus is my son, do you? I assure you he isn’t.’

‘I want my wife.’

‘I’m telling you something that ought to interest you. Titus is not my son.’

‘I don’t care about that story any more, it’s over, I want Mary.’

‘She wants to stay here.’

‘I don’t believe you-you are keeping her by force. You kidnapped her. I know she wouldn’t stay of her own free will, I know.’

‘She came to me, she ran to me, like she did before, that evening when you were at your woodwork class. Do you imagine that I could or would remove her from your house by force?’

‘She left her handbag behind.’

‘You don’t love her, she doesn’t love you, she’s terrified of you, why not admit it to yourselves? Why go on living this horrible lie?’

‘Release Mary, or I shall go to the police.’

‘They’d laugh at you. You know quite well the police wouldn’t interfere in a case of this sort.’

‘I want my wife.’

‘She doesn’t want to go back to you, she’s had enough. I’m going to send the car round for her things.’

‘What lies has she told you?’

‘That’s your line now is it? Vilify her, put the blame on her! How splendidly you give yourself away!’

‘She’s a hysterical person who imagines a lot of things, she isn’t well.’

‘She certainly imagines she’s had enough of your cruelty. Go on, just try the police, see what happens!’

‘You don’t know what you’re meddling with, you don’t understand. She’s my wife and I love her and I’m going to take her back to her home, where she belongs and where she wants to be. Why have you suddenly come interfering in our lives, why did you decide to come and live here and pester us, we didn’t want you, we don’t want you. I know what sort of person you are, I’ve read about you, you’re a rotten man, a shit, a destroyer, you’re filth. Mary isn’t one of your show-business whores, she’s a decent woman, like you aren’t worthy to touch. Leave us alone, if you don’t want to get very hurt. I’m warning you. Leave us alone.’

Ben, incoherently searching for words to match his anger, his big bull head thrust forward, was showing his strong teeth, wet with spittle. The rhythmic hissing roar of the powerful mechanical waves entranced me for a moment, as without looking down I could sense their churning movement in the rocky pit below. I thought to myself quite clearly, with a precision which involved my whole body, I have only to step quickly forward and pitch that hateful thug over the edge. He may be stronger, but I am more agile. He cannot swim; and even a good swimmer would die at once in that boiling cauldron. No one sees us. I can say he attacked me. I have only to push him in and all my troubles are over.

As I thought this I was fixing Ben with my eyes. I felt an embryonic movement of my body, though no doubt in