The Sea, the Sea

He got up. ‘I must help you back.’

‘I can manage.’

‘You can’t. Besides it’s beginning to rain.’

He held out his hand. I took it and he pulled me up, and then still held me. He said, ‘We’ll get to know each other one day. There’s time.’

‘There’s time.’

Hartley, dearest, listen to me. I want to say several things. First, that I am sorry I took you away like that and kept you with me. It was an act of love, but I now see that it was foolish. I frightened you and confused you. Forgive me. It was at least a demonstration that I care absolutely and am in earnest about taking you away. You belong to me and I am not going to give you up. So you will be seeing me again soon!

I expect you have been thinking things over since you got back and may now see them a little bit more from my point of view. After all, my darling, why stay in the land of unhappiness? It isn’t as if I were a stranger offering you someone and something you know nothing of. You said yourself I was your only friend! And you seemed, when you were here, almost ready to say ‘yes’-only you were frightened of him. Fear is a habit after all. But do you not feel in your heart now that you are changing? One day soon you’ll be able to do what you’ve wanted to do for years-walk out of the door!

And listen-I want to tell you this. I don’t want to take you into some grand glamorous world full of actors and famous people. I don’t live in that sort of world anyway. You said you liked a quiet life. Well, so do I. That’s why I came here, after all! We’ll go away, just the two of us, and live simply in a little house in a little place, in England in the country, near the sea if you like, and we’ll make each other happy in simple ways. That’s the life I’ve always wanted and now I’m free of the theatre I can have it at last, with you. We’ll live quietly, Hartley, and enjoy simple things. Can you not want that sufficiently to walk out of a house where you are bullied and unloved? And of course we shall help Titus and he will come to us in freedom and all those old scars will heal. We shall care for him. But what will always matter most is you and me.

Now I want to tell you something else, something rather terrible. Two nights ago Ben tried to kill me. He pushed me off the rocks in the dark into a frightful tide race. God knows how I managed to survive it. I’ve got concussion and am generally knocked about. I’ve been seeing the doctor. (But don’t worry, I am all right.) Attempted murder is not the sort of thing which one can quietly ignore and carry on as if nothing had happened. I have not yet been to the police. Whether I go to them or not depends on Ben. I should add, a very material point, that there was a witness of what happened.

However I am not concerned about revenge. I want simply to take you away. Apart from anything else, you surely cannot want to stay with a man who has proved himself capable of murder. Just stop wanting to suffer, will you? And please start sorting out your things, deciding what clothes to take with you, and so on. I’m not going to hurry you. But now I am going to be around the place, I’m going to be a regular intruder, I shall tramp in and out! If Ben objects he can either consent to your departure or force me to go to the police. This isn’t blackmail, it’s a fair field at last!

No need to tell Ben about this, unless you want to. I’ll be along pretty soon on the heels of this letter and I’ll tell him myself! As my death hasn’t been announced he will know by now that he is not a murderer. Relax, darling, and don’t worry, and now leave it all to me. Sort out those clothes. I love you. We’ll be together, dear one.

C.

I had considered writing directly to Ben, but it seemed better to prepare Hartley first. The difficulty was, once more, how to get it to her. I did not want to risk spoiling my entrance by delivering it myself. I did not like to ask Titus to go, and Gilbert, whom I sounded, said he was afraid. And I did not want James or Lizzie, or Peregrine for that matter, to know anything about it. I thought of sending it by post in a typed envelope, but of course he opened all her letters. Perhaps it did not matter too much if he opened this one. The game was nearing its end.

It was the following day and I had written my letter in the morning, but was still undecided about what to do with it. It remained now to get rid of James and Lizzie. I could simply ask James to go. Lizzie might have to be told some lie.

James was, rather surprisingly, still in bed. He had slept, on and off, for many hours. Whereas I, who had had the real ordeal, was now feeling better. I went up to see him.

‘James, you slug. Are you all right? Touch of the old malaria?’

James was lying back in my bed, propped up in a cunningly arranged nest of pillows, his arms stretched out straight over the blankets. He had not been reading. He looked alert, as if he had been thinking. Yet his body looked floppy with relaxation. He had some growth of beard which changed his face, making him look Spanish, an ecclesiastic, perhaps an ascetic warrior. Then he smiled cheerfully, and I remembered how much that inane smile used to irritate me, how it had seemed to betoken a facile superiority. There was quietness in the room and the sound of the sea was dulled.

‘I’m all right. Must have caught a chill. I’ll get up soon. How are you feeling?’

‘Fine. Can I get you anything?’

‘No, thanks, I don’t want to eat. Lizzie brought me some tea.’

I frowned.

‘Where’s Titus?’ said James.

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘Keep an eye on him.’

‘He can look after himself.’

There was silence for a moment. ‘Sit down,’ said James, ‘don’t look as if you’re going.’

I sat down. James’s relaxation seemed to have affected me. I stretched out my legs and felt as if I might sleep myself, even though I was sitting in an upright chair. I felt my shoulders and arms become soft and heavy. Of course I was very exhausted.

‘You’re not still wanting Titus to go back to Ben, are you?’ I said.

‘Did I say that?’

‘You implied it.’

‘He does in a way belong with them.’

‘With them?’ Soon, very soon, there would be no more ‘them’.

James, following this, said, ‘Are you still dreaming of that rescue?’

‘Yes.’

There was another silence as if we were both going to sleep. Then James went on, ‘After all, he is in a real and deep sense their child. My impression was that that relationship was not beyond salvage.’

I was irritated by his ‘impression’. What could it be based on? The horrible answer occurred to me: conversations with Titus. I had come up to see James in order to hasten his departure, and I had decided not to say anything to him about Ben’s crime. This revelation would be too interesting. But now I felt tempted to shake his complacency. While I reflected on this I said, ‘I am going to adopt Titus.’

‘Adopt him, legally, can you?’

‘Yes.’ In fact I did not know. ‘I am going to make his career. And I shall leave him my money.’

‘It’s not so easy.’

‘What isn’t?’

‘To establish relationships, you can’t just elect people, it can’t be done by thinking and willing.’

I was tempted to reply, I daresay you don’t find it easy! Then I recalled Titus’s voice saying ‘Where does your cousin live?’ And I remembered what Toby Ellesmere had told me about the sherpa whom James was fond of who died on the mountain, and I felt a momentary nervous urge to ask him about this ‘attachment’. But it would have been a dangerous impertinence. I was never unaware that James retained the power to hurt me very much. How odd it was that even now my fear was an ingredient of our converse! Cousinage, dangereux voisinage. I felt annoyance with him all the same, he was making me feel awkward and incompetent, and I wanted to stir up his sleepy calm. I could not decide whether or not to tell him about Ben. If I told him would that delay his departure? Yet I very much wanted to tell him. It is indeed awe- inspiring to think that every tiny action has its consequences, and can mark a parting of ways which lead to vastly separate destinations.

James said, pursuing the topic, ‘Most real relationships are involuntary.’