The Sea, the Sea

exhaustion. He had perhaps got a chill out on the rocks, leaning over my dripping and apparently lifeless body.

The rain came down, straight and silvery, like a punishment of steel rods. It clattered onto the house and onto the rocks and pitted the sea. The thunder made some sounds like grand pianos falling downstairs, then settled to a softer continuous rumble, which was almost drowned by the sound of the rain. The flashes of lightning joined into long illuminations which made the grass a lurid green, the rocks a blazing ochre yellow, as yellow as Gilbert’s car. Tension and excitement and a kind of fear filled the house, the aftermath of my mishap now somehow being enacted by the elements. I rose from my armchair and said I would go to see James, but was told he was sleeping. Gilbert reported that the rain was coming down the stairs into the bathroom. I got as far as the kitchen and then felt giddy. My body was horribly bruised and deeply deeply cold, and I returned to the fire. As it appeared to be lunch time I ate some soup and then said I wanted to be alone and to rest. I sat in my armchair covered in blankets and began to think. The rain made so much noise that I could not hear the sea.

My assailant was of course Ben, there could be no possible doubt of that. His last words to me had been ‘I’ll kill you’. What made me the more certain was that I had myself drawn Ben’s attention to this particular spot as an excellent place for a murder. I had myself felt the impulse to push him in and he had certainly perceived my thought. There was even a certain element of nemesis involved. And that he should act now was a psychological probability. He had put up with a humiliating assault which, when he reflected upon it afterwards, his pride could not tolerate or endure. Was the act premeditated? Had he waited, hidden beside the bridge? Or had he come snooping to indulge his private hate, and then seen this irresistible opportunity? Whichever it was, he must have felt certain of doing the job properly. My survival was a truly amazing fluke, and, for him, a sickening portent.

But what next? What do you do in a civilized society when someone tries to kill you? I could not involve the law, and not only because there was no proof. I could not accuse Hartley’s husband in a law court or let the law’s vulgarities touch this situation. Neither would I consider going round with my friends and doing Ben a mischief. I wanted somehow to confront him, but the confrontation by itself would be merely a luxury, much as I should enjoy effacing the servile impression which I had made in my last interview with Ben. I must do something with what I knew, and with what I now was: a survivor with a moral fury and a motive. That was what I had meant when I had spoken to Lizzie of a strange marvellous sign. The gods who preserved me had opened a door and intended me to go through it.

The problem was the same, only the light was different. I must get Hartley away, get her to myself, and awaken her, make her quiver and twitch with a sense of possible freedom. Yes, aloneness was the key, I understood that now. I must be alone with her soon, and then thereafter, forever. When she had been my prisoner how humiliated she must have been by the presence of other people in the house. There must be no more witnesses. I would tell her that. She did not have to join my grand intimidating alien world. To wed his beggar maid the king would, and how gladly, become a beggar too. The vision of that healing humility would henceforth be my guide. This was indeed the very condition of her freedom, why had I not seen this before? I would at last see her face changing. It was, I found, a part of my thought of the future that when she was with me Hartley would actually regain much of her old beauty: like a prisoner released from a labour camp who at first looks old, but then with freedom and rest and good food soon becomes young again. The pain and anxiety would leave her face and she would be calm and beautiful; and I saw that rejuvenated face shining like a lamp out of the future. When I had left the theatre I had desired a solitude: now it was set before me in the very form of my Beatrice. Only here was happiness for me an innocent and permissible goal, even an ideal. Everywhere else where I had pursued it it had proved either a will-o’-the-wisp or a form of corruption. To find one’s true mate is to find the one person with whom happiness is purely innocent.

The immediate question however was a technical one. How to get her away? A long wait was now out of the question, since I must use my new power over Ben while it was still fresh. What I was beginning to envisage this time was not a kidnap but a bombardment. First of all I would write Hartley a letter. Then I would call with Titus. Why would Ben let us in? Because he would be guilty and frightened. He would want to see what we were up to. How was he to know that there was no proof? How was he to know there had been no witness? On this I paused. Well, why should there not have been a witness? I could tell him there had been a witness! I could even ask somebody (Gilbert? Perry?) to say that he had seen what happened. After all, anyone might have done, and very nearly did! That would scare him completely. Why should I not blackmail Ben into letting Hartley go? If I could only make him say: go then. How near was he in any case to saying this? Did his long silence after the kidnap perhaps mean that he was in two minds about wanting her back? If he could only consent, the chains would fall and my angel would step out free. Or if she could see him revealed as a murderer, that might bring her the blessing of a total revulsion: horror, disgust, fear, in a more effectively violent form. If only there was some genuine clue. What on earth had I written on that piece of paper which I had so cleverly hidden from myself?

Yes, it was vital to act soon, before Ben should have time to recover. He must be in a state of considerable shock; although unfortunately he would by now know, from the silence of his radio and television sets, that he had failed to kill famous Charles Arrowby. However, and this was now plain, I could not proceed farther than my letter to Hartley while Lizzie and James were in the house. It would be unfair to Lizzie to expect her to witness or even assist the rescue of her rival. And James: well, James made moral judgments and confused me. So I would have to get rid of those two. Gilbert and Peregrine might be useful for a little while longer. And of course Titus…

At this point I began to reflect and to wonder if I had not, in relation to Hartley, seriously misconceived Titus’s role. Would Titus fit into the paradise a deux which I had lately been envisaging? No. That need not matter of course. People often had to separate conjugal and filial relationships. I would have a quite separate connection with Titus; and indeed he had already indicated that that was what he wanted. But still I had assumed that Hartley would want Titus in the picture somehow. Was this a wrong assumption? And at about that moment the young man himself came through the door.

I had not had a peaceful serious talk with Titus for some time, and I blamed myself. Quite apart from my concern with Hartley, I was absolutely committed to the boy, he was literally a ‘godsend’. It remained to be seen how far I could, with him, make sense of the role of ‘father’. I had by now been made aware that Gilbert, and even Peregrine, saw my relation with Titus in quite another light!

During my reflections the rain had stopped and between lumpy dark grey leaden clouds the sun was managing to shine upon an extremely wet world. The lawn was waterlogged, the rocks contrived to look like sponges. Upstairs I could hear Gilbert and Lizzie shouting to each other, the former up in the attics inspecting the roof, the latter in the bathroom mopping up the flood. When Titus appeared I decided to go outside to avoid interruption and ensure privacy. I was a bit stronger and the giddiness had not returned. But as he helped me slowly over the rocks I felt like an old person; and when we reached Minn’s bridge I could hardly bring myself to cross it. How had I survived that deep pit, those smooth walls, that ferocious water?

The rocks were beginning to steam in the sun. It was as if there were hot springs everywhere. We sat down on towels which sensible Titus had brought from the kitchen, on a rock overlooking Raven Bay, not far from where I had sat with James. The sea, although it looked calm because it was so exceedingly glossy and smooth after the rain, was in a quietly dangerously violent mood, coming in in large sleek humpbacked waves which showed no trace of foam until they met the rocks in a creamy swirl. The sun continued to shine although a grey sheet of rain now obscured the horizon. A rainbow joined the land and the sea. Raven Bay was a bottle green colour which I had never seen it wear before. I wondered for a moment where Rosina was.

We had made our climb in silence and a kind of silence held us still. I kept looking at him and he kept gazing at the bay. His handsome face had an expression of discontent, the sulky shapeless look of youth was upon his mouth. The hare lip scar was deepening, seeming to pulsate, opening and closing a little with some perhaps unconscious lifelong habitual movement. His hair was extremely tangled and untidy.

‘Titus.’

‘Yes.’

‘Can you call me “Charles”? Could you get used to it? I feel it would help us both.’

‘OK, Charles.’

‘Titus-I-You are very important to me and I need you-’

Titus worked at his scar, then put a finger on it to stop its little quivering. It only then occurred to me that Titus