The Sea, the Sea

‘Military telepathy.’

‘Sort of. I think-it’s hard to put-some vein of honour is touched-’

‘Oh rubbish,’ I said. ‘It’s funny, James, but whenever you start talking soldiery you seem to me to become utterly stupid. Military vanity, I suppose.’

We were silent for a bit longer. I found a few stones myself and dropped them in, after examining each one to see if it was worth keeping. I imagined Ben would soon throw away that pretty stone in the plastic bag. Perhaps he would throw it at the dog. I felt sorry for that dog.

James said, ‘I hope you don’t feel that I’ve influenced you in any way against your better judgment?’

‘No.’ I was not going to argue that point. Of course he had influenced me. But what was my judgment, let alone my better judgment?

‘What are you going to do about Titus?’

‘What?’

‘What are you going to do about Titus?’

‘I don’t know. He’ll probably clear off.’

‘He won’t if you hold on to him, but you’ll have to hold. He says he wants to be an actor.’

‘He told me that, oddly enough.’

‘Can you get him into an acting school?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Titus will be an occupation for you.’

‘Thanks for thinking about my occupations.’

‘I suppose you’ll leave this house now?’

‘Why the hell should I?’

‘Well, wouldn’t it be better-?’

‘This is my home. I like it here.’

‘Uh-huh-’

We threw a few more stones.

‘Can I go on talking, Charles?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ve been thinking-Are you sure you don’t mind?’

‘Oh go on, what does it matter.’

‘Time can divorce us from the reality of people, it can separate us from people and turn them into ghosts. Or rather it is we who turn them into ghosts or demons. Some kinds of fruitless preoccupations with the past can create such simulacra, and they can exercise power, like those heroes at Troy fighting for a phantom Helen.’

‘You think I’m fighting for a phantom Helen?’

‘Yes.’

‘She is real to me. More real than you are. How can you insult an unhappy suffering person by calling her a ghost?’

‘I’m not calling her a ghost. She is real, as human creatures are, but what reality she has is elsewhere. She does not coincide with your dream figure. You were not able to transform her. You must admit you tried and failed.’

I said nothing to this. I had certainly tried and failed to do something. But what, and what did this failure prove?

‘So having tried, can you not now set your mind at rest? Don’t torment yourself any more with this business. All right, you had to try, but now it’s over and I’m sure you’ve done her no lasting harm. Think of other things now. There’s a crime in the Army called deliberately making oneself unfit for duty. Don’t do that. Think about Titus.’

‘Why keep dragging Titus in?’

‘Sorry. But seriously, look at it this way. Your love for this girl, when she was a girl, was put by shock into a state of suspended animation. Now the shock of meeting her again has led you to re-enact all your old feelings for her. It’s a mental charade, a necessary one perhaps, it has its own necessity, but not like what you think. Of course you can’t get over it at once. But in a few weeks or a few months you’ll have run through it all, looked at it all again and felt it all again and got rid of it. It’s not an eternal thing, nothing human is eternal. For us, eternity is an illusion. It’s like in a fairy tale. When the clock strikes twelve it will all crumble to pieces and vanish. And you’ll find you are free of her, free of her forever, and you can let the poor ghost go. What will remain will be ordinary obligations and ordinary interests. And you’ll feel relief, you’ll feel free. At present you’re just obsessed, hypnotized.’

While James was speaking he was leaning down over the water and skimming some of the flatter stones so that they leapt upon the surface; only there was too much of a swell for them to jump very far. Watching the skimming stones I was filled with anguish because I remembered playing just that game with Hartley on an old pond near our house. She did it better than I did.

I replied, ‘What you say sounds clever but it’s empty. Love makes nonsense of that sort of mean psychology. You seem unable to imagine that love can endure. But just that endurance belongs to its miraculous nature. Perhaps you’ve never loved anybody all that much.’

As I said this I recalled something that Toby Ellesmere had said to me in some context where I was wondering whether James was homosexual. Toby had told me that James had had a great affection for some soldier servant in India, a Nepalese sherpa, who had died somehow on a mountain. Of course one never knows about other people’s loves, and I would certainly never know about James’s. To cover my crude remark I went on, ‘You seem to think the past is unreal, a pit full of ghosts. But to me the past is in some ways the most real thing of all, and loyalty to it the most important thing of all. It isn’t just a case of sentimentality about an old flame. It’s a principle of life, it’s a project.’

‘You mean you still believe in your idea after trying it, after having to admit that she wanted to go home and that she had better go home?’

‘Yes. That’s why I’ve got to stay here. I’ve got to wait. I’ve got to be at my post. She’ll know that I’ll wait, that I’ll be here. She has got her uncertainties too. She had to go back now because it was all happening too quickly. But after this she’ll think, and she’ll find the chain has been broken after all. She’ll come to me here, sooner or later, I know she will. She came before. She will come again.’

‘And if she doesn’t come?’

‘I’ll stay forever, it’s my duty, it’s my post, I’ll stay till the end. Or rather-I’ll wait-and then-I’ll simply start the whole thing over again from the beginning.’

‘You mean the rescue plan?’

‘Yes. And do stop throwing those stones.’

‘Sorry,’ said James. ‘We used to do that, remember, on that pond near Shaxton when you came over with Uncle Adam and Aunt Marian.’

‘I’ve got to wait. She’ll come to me here. She’s part of me, it’s not a caprice or a dream. When you’ve known someone from childhood, when you can’t remember when they weren’t there, that’s not an illusion. She’s woven into me. Don’t you understand how one can be absolutely connected with somebody like that?’

‘Yes,’ said James. ‘Well, I must go. I’ve got to go along with Peregrine to the garage and drive him back. See you at lunch. I suppose there will be lunch.’

There was lunch, though it was not a very cordial affair. We had fresh mackerel which Gilbert had procured from somewhere. He had also found some wild fennel. He cooked of course. No one ate much except Titus. I was very relieved when he turned up, returned like a dog to prove where its home is. Yes, I would help him, I would cherish him, would make of him an occupation and a preoccupation; only at present we avoided each other’s eyes. A kind of shame hung on us both. He felt ashamed of his parents, of his unhappy ageing mother, of his stupid brutish father. I felt ashamed of having failed to keep Hartley, of having been forced to let her go back, indeed to take her back, to that matrimonial hell. Yes, I was forced to do it, I thought, somehow by James, and not only by James, but by Gilbert, by Peregrine, even by Titus. If only I had been left alone I would have had faith and I would have succeeded, would have kept her. I had been demoralized by all these spectators.

Peregrine had recovered, or feigned to have recovered, his usual aggressive equanimity. He and Gilbert kept up some sort of chatter. Gilbert exuded the secret satisfaction of one who has come unscathed through a fascinating