The Sea, the Sea

and sat down on the mattress, like an obedient dog. I do not think that in the whole period of her incarceration I ever saw her sit upon the chair.

‘Hartley, darling, where were you going? Were you coming down to look for me? Or did you think that Ben had come? Or were you going to run away?’

She pulled the dressing gown closer about her and simply shook her head several times. She was breathless with agitation. Then she peered up at me with a sad timid sweet look which suddenly reminded me of my father.

‘Oh, Hartley, I love you so much!’ I sat down on the chair and lifted my hands to my face. I grimaced into my hands. I felt so helplessly, vulnerably close to my childhood. ‘Hartley, don’t leave me. I don’t know what I’d do if you went away.’

Hartley said, ‘Who was that man?’

‘What man?’

‘The man you were with when I was on the stairs?’

‘My cousin James.’

‘Oh yes-Aunt Estelle’s son.’

This unexpected exhibition of memory made me sick with shock.

Down below in the kitchen I could hear a lively murmur of voices. Gilbert and Titus, feeling released by Hartley’s apparition from any necessity to be discreet, were doubtless telling all they knew and more to James and Peregrine.

I groaned into my hands.

That night we slept as follows: I slept in my bedroom, Hartley slept in the middle room, Gilbert slept on his sofa, Peregrine slept on the cushions in the bookroom, James slept on a couple of chairs in the little red room, and Titus slept out on the lawn. It was a very hot night but there was no storm.

The next morning there was a holiday atmosphere among my guests. Titus swam from the cliff as usual. James, after exploring the tower and uttering various historical conjectures about it, swam from the tower steps. (I had still forgotten to fix a rope, but it was high tide.) Peregrine, a great white blob, lay half-naked sun-bathing upon the grass and got thoroughly burnt. Gilbert drove into the village and came back with a mass of foodstuffs and several bottles of whisky which he put down to my account at the shop. Later James drove to the village to get The Times and failed. There was general amazement at my ability to live without ‘news’. ‘Who’s dead, who’s hijacked, who’s on strike,’ as Perry summed it up. He had brought a transistor set with him, but I told him to keep it out of my way. James pioneered a popular plan to go to the Raven Hotel to watch the Test Match on television, only Gilbert, again despatched to shop, this time for sunburn lotion for Peregrine, reported that electrical disturbances had put the local TV out of order. Gilbert and Titus, hoping to find recruits for their choir, succeeded with Perry who sang a gruff and shaggy bass, but failed with James, who could not sing a note. I had managed on the previous evening to warn Titus and Gilbert not to tell Peregrine about Rosina’s visit. This was just as well, since in the morning I was almost incapable of rational thought. I felt as if something had snapped inside my head, a brain tumour had burst or something.

My desperate state was caused partly by the presence of James, who seemed to be a centre of magnetic attraction to the other three. Each of them separately told me how much he liked James. No doubt they expected to please me by this information. Titus said, ‘It’s funny, I feel as if I’d met him before, and yet I know I haven’t. Perhaps I saw him in a dream.’ The other thing which drove me half mad was a sudden change in Hartley’s tone. She had been saying that she must go home, but she had lately said it almost listlessly as if she knew it was becoming impossible. Now she began to say it as if she meant it, and to back it up with almost-rational arguments.

‘I know that you think you’re being kind to me-’

‘Kind! I love you.’

‘I know you think it’s for the best and I’m grateful-’

‘Grateful! Oh good!’

‘But it’s all a nonsense, an accident, an incident-we can’t stay together, it doesn’t make sense.’

‘I love you. You love me.’

‘I do care for you-’

‘Don’t use that whimsy language. You love me.’

‘All right, but in an unreal way, in a dream, in a might-have-been. Really, all this was over long ago and we’re dreaming it.’

‘Hartley, have you no sense of the present tense, can’t you live in the present? Wake up and try it!’

‘I live in long-times, not in sudden present moments, don’t you see-I’m married, I’ve got to go back to where I am. If you took me to London like you just said I’d have to run away from you. You make everything worse and worse, you won’t understand-’

‘OK, you’re married, so what? You haven’t been happy.’

‘It doesn’t matter-’

‘I should say it matters a lot. I can’t think of anything that matters more.’

‘I can-’

‘You admit you love me.’

‘One can love a dream. You think that makes a sort of push to action-’

‘A motive, yes!’

‘No, because it is a dream. It’s made of lies.’

‘Hartley, we have futures. That means we can make things true.’

‘I have to go back.’

‘He’ll kill you.’

‘I have to go through that door, it’s the only way for me.’

‘I won’t let you.’

‘Please-’

‘What about Titus? He’ll be with me. Don’t you want to be with Titus?’

‘Charles, I must go home.’

‘Oh stop, can’t you just think of something better and want it?’

‘One can’t do that to one’s mind. You don’t understand people like me, like us, the other ones. You’re like a bird that flies in the air, a fish that swims in the sea. You move, you look about you, you want things. There are others who live on earth and move just a little and don’t look-’

‘Hartley, trust me, come with me, ride on my back. You too can move about and look at things-’

‘I want to go home.’

I left her and locked the door and rushed out of the house. I climbed over a rock or two and saw my cousin standing on the bridge over the cauldron. He waved and called to me and I went to join him.

‘Charles, just look at the force of that water, isn’t it fantastic, isn’t it terrifying?’ I could just hear his voice above the roar of the outgoing tide.

‘Yes.’

‘It’s sublime, yes, in the strict sense, sublime. Kant would love it. Leonardo would love it. Hokusai would love it.’

‘I daresay.’

‘And the birds-just look at those shags-’

‘I thought they were cormorants.’

‘They’re shags. And I saw some choughs, and oyster-catchers. And I heard a curlew round in the bay.’

‘When are you leaving?’

‘I say, I like your friends.’

‘They like you.’

‘The boy seems good.’

‘Yes-’

‘My hat, look at that water, what it’s doing now!’