The Sea, the Sea

‘So you admit you went away?’

‘I suppose so, it’s so long ago.’

‘You said I’d be unfaithful.’

‘Did I? I can’t remember.’ I had lived my life on her words, and now she could not even recall them! ‘I suppose I must have gone away because I can remember feeling guilty.’

‘Guilty about hurting me?’

‘Yes. Really I did always feel guilty and thought you blamed me. And in a funny way I had to protect myself from you by the idea that you hated me.’

‘How on earth would that “protect” you?’

‘When I saw you in the village I thought you had seen me and pretended not to because you hated me.’

‘But I never hated you, darling, never for a second!’

‘I had to think so.’

‘But why?’

‘So that I could be sure that you had really gone, that it was really over. To make it sort of dead in my mind.’

‘Oh, Hartley. For me it was never over, never dead in my mind. So you wanted me, you missed me, you were afraid to think about me? Doesn’t that prove that you love me?’

‘I think you did hate me, though, you feel resentment.’

‘You mean now? You’re dotty.’

‘It’s resentment really, otherwise you wouldn’t be so unkind.’

‘Hartley, don’t torment me, you reason like a mad person.’

‘Or it’s curiosity, like a tourist, you’re visiting me, visiting my life and feeling superior.’

‘Hartley, stop, will you! Or are you just trying to hurt me? You are the one who’s unkind. There is an eternal bond between us, you know there is, it’s the clearest thing in the world, clearer than Jesus. I want you to be my wife at last, I want you to rest in me. I want to look after you forever, until I drop dead.’

‘I wish I could drop dead.’

‘Oh shut up-’

‘I wish it could be all over, I have had my life. I wish someone would kill me-’

‘So he has threatened your life?’

‘No, no, it’s all in my mind-’

‘You can’t go back now, I won’t let you, even if you don’t want me. It’s so simple, only you complicate things so.’

‘You want to make things complicated in your way, you twist and turn, you’re like an eel, I remember that about you.’

‘So now I’m like an eel! I never twisted and turned where you were concerned. I always wanted you and no one else. I am the faithful one. I never got married.’

‘Yes, but you lived with women, you lived with that old actress. ’

‘All right, but I couldn’t find you! You were the one I wanted! I tried and tried to find you, I searched and searched and somehow I never really gave up hope-and perhaps that’s why I’ve found you now.’

‘I’ve been unjust to Ben.’

‘Oh God, can’t we forget Ben, Ben’s over.’

‘He suffered so much about Titus, when Titus disappeared, it was like a penance.’

‘Maybe he did, but he deserved to suffer, he drove Titus away. I expect he was glad really.’

‘No, no, he wasn’t so bad to Titus, not as much as I said. He was severe-’

‘He was violent. And to you. Don’t try to defend him. Oh don’t let’s talk about that bloody man.’

‘The protection of children people never came, I said they did but they didn’t.’

‘Oh damn the protection of children people, what do I care whether they came or not?’

‘But I said they did, and they didn’t.’

‘Even if they didn’t come, they ought to have come.’

‘But it wasn’t true.’

‘Why are you trying to whitewash that vile cruel man? Titus hates him. Isn’t that evidence enough? It is for me.’

‘Ben hasn’t anyone in the world but me. He hasn’t any thing in the world.’

‘He’ll survive. What about me? Why not be sorry for me for a change? I’ve waited long enough. There’s nothing so derelict as an old actor. What have I got now but my memories? I’ve stripped myself of all the power and all the glamour-for something-and the something, although I didn’t know it, was you. You can’t let me down now.’

‘Do you believe in God?’

‘No.’

‘I think I believe in Jesus Christ. You’ve got to believe in something and hold on to something. People would go mad without God, wouldn’t they. We used to talk about that, didn’t we.’

‘I’m glad you haven’t forgotten those talks. You remember when we were confirmed? It meant a lot, didn’t it? Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire…’

‘I think I believe in the remission of sins.’

‘We all need a spot of that.’

‘Love redeems, that means something, doesn’t it?’

‘Well don’t tell me you propose to redeem Ben by love! I’m getting sick of Ben. What about redeeming me?’

‘No one else will redeem him, no one else will love him.’

‘Jesus will love him.’

‘No, you see, for Ben, I’ve got to be Jesus.’

‘This is mad talk, darling, really mad. Just try to think a bit. Doesn’t it occur to you that Ben would heave a sigh of relief if you left him? Damn it, you’ve left him already. You aren’t all that necessary. He mightn’t want to send you off, but he’ll be jolly pleased now you’ve bolted.’

‘You want to make him unreal, but he’s real.’

‘Real things become unreal when you enter into the truth.’

‘Our love wasn’t real, it was childish, it was like a game, we were like brother and sister, we didn’t know what love was then.’

‘Hartley, you know that we loved each other-’

‘Yes, but we didn’t make love properly, I wish we had.’

‘I thought you didn’t want to, I wanted to all right-Oh, Christ!’

‘We were children. You never became part of my real life.’

‘What you call your real life appears to have been hell on earth! Damn it, you said so yourself. A happy woman doesn’t talk about death.’

‘I wish I hadn’t told you things, I’ll regret having told you things. Of course it’s a muddle, but it’s my muddle, it’s where I live and what I am. I can’t run out of it and leave it behind all jagged and loose like a broken shell.’

‘That’s exactly what you can do! Escape, run, leave it all behind! See that the pain can stop!’

‘Can it? Can the pain stop?’

As she now stared at me, wide-eyed with a sudden pausing puzzlement, I wondered, is she mad, is her mind totally astray, is she just a poor wreck, or has she become some sort of fey spiritual being, refined by suffering? Had that strange wild look of her youthful beauty which I had loved so and worshipped been the first prophetic flush of a weird spirituality? There are secret saints with strange destinies. Yet no, she was a wreck, a poor broken twig, her integrity, her last identity, destroyed by the cruel force which had made her abandon Titus. But whatever she was I loved her and was committed to her and had always been, here and out beyond the stars, those stars behind stars behind stars which I had seen that night when I lay on the rocks and the golden sky slowly turned the universe inside out.

‘Yes, my darling, my queen, my angel, it can stop.’

Oh if only I could touch and liberate her mind! I wanted to see her hoping, to see some dawn of hope or desire, the desire for cherishing, for a happy life. But she frowned now in her puzzlement and reverted to Ben.

‘I’ve never been good enough to him.’