The Sea, the Sea

We began to walk back towards the house. It was nearly time for lunch, if such conventions still existed.

James, who had evidently brought his seaside holiday outfit, had on some very old cotton khaki trousers, rolled up, and a clean but ancient blue shirt which he wore loose and unbuttoned, revealing the upper part of his thin scantily-haired pink body. He was also wearing sandals which exposed his skinny white feet with long prehensile bony toes which used to appal me when I was young. (‘James has feet like hands’ I told my mother, as if discovering a secret deformity.)

As we neared the house, he said, ‘What are you going to do?’

‘About what?’

‘About her.’

‘I don’t know. When are you leaving?’

‘May I stay till tomorrow?’

‘All right.’

We came into the kitchen and I automatically picked up the tray which Gilbert had put out for Hartley. I carried it upstairs, unlocked the door, and went in and put the tray on the table as usual.

She was crying and would say nothing to me.

‘Oh, Hartley, don’t destroy me with this grief, you don’t know what you’re doing to me.’

She said nothing and made no sign, just continued to cry, leaning back against the wall and gazing in front of her, mopping the slow tears occasionally with the back of her hand.

I sat with her for a little while in silence. I sat on the chair and looked about me as if so ordinary an occupation could bring her comfort. I noted a damp patch on the ceiling, a crack in one of the panes of the long window. Purple fluff on the floor, doubtless from Mrs Chorney’s furniture. At last I got up, touched her shoulder gently and went away. I never stayed to see her eat. I locked the door.

When I came back to the kitchen I found all four of them there, standing round the table where Gilbert had laid out a lunch of ham and tongue with green salad and new potatoes, and hard-boiled eggs for James. By now of course I took no interest in their food and very little in my own. Two open bottles of white wine were cooling in the sink. Peregrine, improved by being clothed, was drinking whisky and listening to the cricket on his transistor. They fell silent when I entered. Perry switched off the radio. There was an air of expectancy.

I poured myself out a glass of wine and picked up a slice of ham. ‘You carry on. I’m going to eat outside.’

‘Don’t rush away, we want to talk to you,’ said Peregrine.

‘Well, I don’t want to talk to you.’

‘We want to help you,’ said Gilbert.

‘Oh, fuck off.’

‘Please stay a minute,’ said James. ‘Titus has something to say to you. Haven’t you, Titus?’

Titus, red in the face, not looking at me, mumbled, ‘I think you ought to let my mother go home.’

‘This is her home.’

‘But seriously, old man-’ said Peregrine.

‘I don’t want your advice. I didn’t ask you to come here, any of you.’

James sat down, and the other three followed suit. I remained standing.

‘We don’t want to intrude-’ said James.

‘Don’t then.’

‘And we don’t in fact want to force any advice on you. We can’t see what this situation is, how could we? My impression is that you hardly understand it yourself. We don’t want to persuade you-’

‘Then why did you put Titus up to saying what he just said?’

‘Because it’s part of the evidence. It’s something that Titus thinks, but which he was afraid to tell you.’

‘Oh bosh.’

‘You have got a difficult and, as far as I can see, fairly urgent decision to make and if you would only consent to talk to us we could help you to make it in a rational way, and we could also help you to carry it out in a rational way. You must see that you need help, you need it.’

‘I need a chauffeur. Nothing else.’

‘You need support. I am your only relation. Gilbert and Peregrine are your close friends.’

‘They aren’t.’

‘Titus says he regards you as his father.’

‘You all seem to have had a jolly good talk about me.’

‘Don’t be angry, Charles,’ said Peregrine. ‘We didn’t expect to be landed in this soup. We came here for a holiday. But we see you in trouble and we want to back you up.’

‘There’s nothing you can do for me.’

‘There is,’ said James. ‘I think it would help you a great deal to discuss the whole business with us, not necessarily the details, but the sort of strategy of it. You could do this without disloyalty. Now roughly there are two possible courses of action: you keep her or you return her. OK? Well, let’s consider first what happens if you return her-’

‘I’m not going to return her, as you put it. She’s not a bottle.’

‘I gather from Titus that one of your reasons for not taking her back, even if she wants to go-’

‘She doesn’t.’

‘Is that you fear that her husband may be violent to her.’

‘That’s one reason, there are about a hundred others.’

‘But supposing his violence depended on a misunderstanding, and supposing that that misunderstanding could be removed-’

‘James, don’t be a fool, you know perfectly well that there isn’t any explanation or any excuse for what I have done, whatever it may be. And I advise you to be careful what you say to me.’

‘Look,’ said James, ‘I’m saying two things. First, that if you are going to take her back it must be done intelligently. We should all go with you, as a show of force, but also to back up your statement. ’

‘My statement?!’

‘And secondly, that if fear of violence is one of your reasons for not returning her, and if that fear can be reduced, this could be relevant to what you decide to do.’

‘Do you see what he means?’ said Peregrine.

‘Yes! But as James admits, you cannot understand the situation! You speak of explaining or making statements-you might as well try to explain to a bison. In any case this whole argument is beside the point since there are not two possibilities. I do not admit her return to her husband as possible.’

‘Well, then let us consider the other course-’ said James.

‘We will consider nothing! I don’t want you lot tramping around over this problem. You are being impertinent, and I resent it extremely! But since the matter has come up I should like to ask Titus why he thinks I ought to let his mother go home.’

Titus, who had been staring at the ham (perhaps he was hungry) all this time, seemed reluctant to answer, blushed and would not look up. He said, ‘Well-you see-I feel I may be to blame-’

‘Why on earth?’

‘It’s so difficult, one has so many sort of-emotions, and sort of-prejudices, about fathers and mothers. I feel I may have made you think it was awfuller than it was, though it was awful. And she does exaggerate, she has fantasies and ideas in her head. I don’t know. Maybe she does prefer to be with him, and I’m against forcing people, I think they should be free. You’re in a hurry to fix it all at once. But if she wants to come to you she can come better later on when she’s had time to think it over.’

‘Well said, Titus,’ said James.

Titus gave James a look which stirred my ever-vigilant jealousy.

Peregrine said, ‘You don’t understand marriage, Charles, you’ve never been in it, it’s deep. You think a tiff means shipwreck, the end, it’s not so.’

I said, ‘To begin with, “free” doesn’t apply here, we’re dealing with a frightened person, a prisoner. She has to be pulled out, she’ll never walk. So it’s got to be fixed now. If she goes back she’ll never leave him, she’ll never escape.’

James said, ‘Well, isn’t that significant too? Isn’t that to admit that she ought to go back? That she’ll choose to