The Sea, the Sea

‘Oh.’

‘Then it’s OK that Peregrine can go into the village now and make that telephone call?’

I hesitated. It was the last moment. If I said yes now the whole situation would slide out of my control. I would be sanctioning a totally new and unpredictable future. ‘Yes.’

‘Good. You stay here, I’ll go and brief Peregrine.’

In the afternoon I had talked with Hartley. I did not admit it to James, but his ‘discussion’ had helped me to see certain things more clearly, or had battered certain ideas into my head; or else I had in any case reached a certain decisive point of despair. That terrible ‘let me out, let me out’ had cracked my faith and my hope. I asked her if she really wanted to go home. She said she did. I said all right. I did not make any more appeals or offer any more arguments. And as we looked at each other, silently, neither venturing to add to the words firmly spoken, I felt a fresh barrier rise between us. Before, I had thought our communication difficult. Now I realized how close we had been.

The plan was that Peregrine should go to the village and telephone Ben and say that Mr Arrowby and his friends would be bringing ‘Mary’ back. Would Ben say, ‘Go to hell, I don’t want her now’? No. Very unlikely. Whatever he ultimately wanted he would not oblige me by that move. But perhaps he would be away, perhaps he would have disappeared, perhaps when it came to it Hartley would change her mind… But by now anything was better than hope.

James was re-appearing, leaping over the rocks.

My heart beat violently, sadly.

‘It’s all right, he says bring her round, but he says tomorrow morning, not tonight.’

‘That’s odd. Why not tonight?’ His woodwork class perhaps!

‘He wants to pretend he doesn’t care. It’s an available insult. He wants to make it clear we come at his convenience. It’s just as well. It gives you more time to write that letter. It might be as well to deliver the letter before we all arrive, he’ll be more likely to read it.’

‘Oh, James-’

‘Not to worry. Sic biscuitus disintegrat.’

‘What?’

‘That’s the way the cookie crumbles.’

Dear Mr Fitch,

This is not a very easy letter to write. I just want to make a number of things quite clear. The main thing is that I brought your wife to my house and kept her there against her will. The fact that she did not even take her handbag with her is proof, if proof be needed, that she was not ‘running away’. (Forgive me if I say the obvious, I want this letter to be a final and definitive account of what has happened.) I decoyed her into my car by telling her that Titus was at my house, which he was. When she arrived I locked her up. So you were right to charge me with having ‘kidnapped’ her. She has not ceased to ask to go home. It goes without saying that I have had no ‘relations’ with her. She has throughout resolutely resisted all my proposals and plans and has desired simply to be allowed to return to you. She is therefore totally blameless in this matter. My friends Mr Opian and Mr Arbelow, and my cousin General Arrowby, who have been here with me in the house throughout, will vouch for the truth of what I say.

There is no point in apologies and little point in further explanations. I have been in a state of illusion and caused much fruitless distress to your wife and to yourself, which I regret. I did not act out of malice, but out of the promptings of an old romantic affection which I now see to have nothing to do with what exists at present. And perhaps at this point I should add (again something obvious) that of course I have not seen or communicated with your wife in any way since she was a young girl, and our recent meeting was completely accidental.

I trust and assume that since you are a reasonable and just man you will take no reprisal against your wife who is completely innocent. This is a matter of deep concern to me, my cousin and my friends. She has been perfectly loyal to you in word and deed and deserves your respect and gratitude. As for myself, I trust you will feel that I have suffered enough humiliation, not least in consciousness of my folly,

Yours truly,

Charles Arrowby.

It was just as well that I had the extra time since it took me all the evening to compose this letter. It was indeed a difficult letter to write and I was far from satisfied with the final result. My first version was considerably more bellicose, but as James, to whom I showed it, pointed out, if I accused Ben of being a bully and a tyrant this would at once suggest that Hartley had said so. I could not justify my proceedings on that ground without casting an aspersion upon the ‘perfect loyalty’ which I had perjured myself by swearing that Hartley had exhibited. This omission of course left my self-defence almost non-existent, and I was well aware, without having it mentioned to me by James, that in another age both Ben and I would have been forced by convention and our own honourable consciences to fight each other to the death. In another age, and, in the case of a man like Ben, perhaps in this one too. My slender ‘apologies’ were also difficult to word, since I had to crawl sufficiently to propitiate, should Ben be disposed to forgive, but not so much as to seem negligible should he prefer to fight. I could only hope that Ben’s own sense of guilt would weaken his aggressive instincts. The pompous reference to ‘my cousin and my friends’ was James’s idea, though the false assertion that they had been present ‘throughout’ Hartley’s sojourn was mine. James thought that the vague presence of a more disinterested, more formidable, group of persons might make Ben feel that his proceedings had an audience, and might thus temper the violence of his reactions. I did not believe this. His behaviour might be a matter of ‘deep concern’ to all sorts of worthy persons other than myself, but once the front door was closed upon the married pair Ben would do as he pleased. James did not repeat his request to be allowed to talk to Hartley. It was in any case too late. Gilbert dropped my missive through the letter box at Nibletts at about ten o’clock that evening.

I spent a little time with Hartley. It was very odd. I told her that she was going home tomorrow. She nodded, blinking her eyes intelligently. I asked her if she wanted to come down and have supper with the others. She declined, to my relief. I did not ask her again if she was content to go. We sat on the floor and played cards, a form of ‘snap’ which we had invented for ourselves when we were children. Everyone in the house went to bed early.

History

FIVE

THE NEXT DAY was one of the worst days of my life, perhaps the worst. I awoke as for execution. No one except Titus had any interest in breakfast. The hot stuffy weather continued, with a few distant grumblings of thunder now.

Hartley looked terrible. She had made up her face with especial care and this made her look pathetically older. Her yellow dress was dirty, crumpled and torn. I could not send her back to her husband in my dressing gown. I searched among my clothes and found a sort of blue unisex beach coat which I made her put on. I also found a light scarf to put over her head. It was like dressing a child. We did not dare to say much to each other. By now I wanted the whole thing to be over. I could scarcely endure the idea that she might even now say ‘I don’t think I want to go after all’; and the impulse to cry out ‘Stop!’ was a pain which I urgently wanted to be without. Perhaps she felt much the same. And I thought at one moment: why, it’s just like it was then. I’ve done everything I can for her, everything. And she’s just leaving me. I put into a plastic bag her make-up and the mottled pink stone with the white bars which I had given her (and which she had apparently not looked at since). She said nothing, but she watched me put the stone into the bag. Gilbert shouted up that the car was ready.

While Hartley was in the bathroom I went on downstairs carrying the bag and waited in the hall. They had decided that what Peregrine called ‘the delegation’ should be carried in Peregrine’s white Alfa Romeo. James and Perry and Titus were already outside. Gilbert came out of the kitchen. He said to me, ‘Charles, a funny thing, last night, I didn’t tell you.’

‘What?’