The Sea, The Sea Part 17

'You know me. I know you.'

'I've felt as if I didn't exist, as if I were invisible, miles away from the world, miles away. You can't imagine how much alone I've been all my life. It wasn't anybody's fault. It was my fault.'

'I can see you. Hartley, you exist, you're here. I love you, t.i.tus loves you. We'll all be together.'

't.i.tus stopped loving me long ago.'

'Don't cry. He loves you, I know he does, he told me so. All will be well now that you've got away from that hateful man.'

I kept touching the quiet tears upon her cheek, and at last, half thrusting me away, she began to caress my face. 'Oh, CharlesCharlesso strange.'

'We're like we used to be, lying in the woodsHartley, will you be with me tonight please at last, just to be together quietly? We don't have to lie here like this all night, do we?'

She became rigid, then sat up. 'It's the wineI'm not used to itI must be drunkdrunk'

'Well, don't ask me to take you back now! It's much too late, from every possible point of view!'

She got to her knees, then stiffly to her feet. I rose and faced her, gently touching her elbows with my fingertips.

'Charles, you don't know what you've done. Of course I shall go back tomorrow. I must sleep now, I just want to sleep now, by myself, I wish I could die in my sleep, I wish I could run out and fall into the sea.'

'What rubbish. Can you swim?'

'No.'

'Let's go upstairs, promise me you won't run away in the night.'

'Tomorrow I must go back there. This is just more of my stupidity, oh I am so stupid, always stupid, I should never have left the house. I'm not angry with you. It's my fault, everything is my fault. Yes, I suppose I love you, I've never forgotten you, and when I saw you I felt it all again, but it's something childish, it isn't part of the real world. There was never any place for our love in the world. If there had been it would have won and we wouldn't have parted. It wasn't just me, it was you, you went away, you can't remember how it wasand there isn't any place for this love in the world now, it's pointless, it's irrelevant, it's a dream, we're in a dream place and tomorrow we must leave it. You say it was fated, perhaps it is but not like you think. It's an evil fate, it's my fate, I made it happen somehow, this muddle, this horror. Why did you come here? I somehow made you come, like people are lured to destruction, not for any good but just for disaster and death. That's what I've been making all my life, not a home, not a child, but just horrors.'

I recalled t.i.tus's words, 'She's a bit of a fantasist.' And no doubt she was indeed quite drunk. There was certainly no point in arguing now with the madness of her words. I hugged her hard. 'Stop it, old thing, darling little Hartley. I did not go away from you, not like that, you know you're only making excuses! Our love will make its place in the world, you'll see, now that you're here, it's all very simple really. Just wait till the morning and the daylight and then you'll feel brave. Come along upstairs with me and you shall sleep where you like.'

I led her out through the kitchen, carrying the candle. As we came to the stairs I saw a faint light under the door of the front room where t.i.tus was sleeping, and I heard the murmur of voices. At the thought of t.i.tus and Gilbert sitting on the floor on those cushions by candlelight I felt a quick spasm of jealousy. Hartley and I went upstairs.

I showed her the bathroom. I waited for her. I led her up and into my bedroom, but it was quite clear that she would not sleep with me. It was in any case better now to leave her alone A kind of superst.i.tious terror had taken hold of her, which took the form of a frenzied desire for unconsciousness. 'I want to sleep, I must sleep, only sleep matters, sleep, I will sleep.' I had had the sense to antic.i.p.ate this situation and had made up a bed on the floor of the little centre room upstairs, with the mattress off my divan. I had also provided a candle, matches, even a chamber pot. I offered her a pair of pyjamas, but she lay down at once in her dress and pulled the blanket up over her head as if she were a corpse covering itself. And she did seem then to go to sleep instantly: the quick flight into oblivion of the chronically unhappy person.

I withdrew and left her. I closed the door and quietly locked it on the outside. I would never now lose that nightmare image of a distraught woman rushing to drown herself in the sea. I went to my room and kicked my shoes off and crawled into bed. I was completely exhausted, but imagined I would be too excited to sleep. I was wrong. I was fast asleep in seconds.

The-next morning I woke to a sense of an utterly changed and perhaps dreadful world, like on the first day of a war. Joy, hope, came too, but fear first, and a black sense of confusion as if the deep logic of the universe had suddenly gone wrong. What was it that I had been so certain of, so confident about?

What exactly was I up to? Had I done something mad and frightful yesterday, like a crime committed when drunk, remembered sober? There was also, to be expected, a visit from Ben. The presence of Hartley in the house was itself like a dream, her sheer survival overnight now something urgently in question. I felt like a child who rushes to the cage of its new pet fearing to find only a lifeless body. With a sick stomach and a pounding heart I ran out into the corridor, beat my way through the bead curtain, softly unlocked her door and tapped. No response. Had she died in the night like a captured animal, had she somehow escaped and drowned herself? I opened the door and peered in. She was there and awake. She had pushed the pillows up against the wall and lay upon the mattress with her head propped, the blanket pulled up over her mouth. Her eyes stared at me under drooped lids. Her head kept moving slightly and I saw she was shivering.

'Hartley, darling, are you all right, did you sleep? Were you warm enough?'

She lowered the blanket a little and her mouth moved.

'Hartley, you're going to stay with me forever. This is the first day of our new worldisn't it? Oh, Hartley'

She began very awkwardly to pull herself up, leaning her back against the wall, still hiding behind the blanket.

She said in a mumbling, gabbling tone, not looking at me, 'I must go home.'

'Don't start that again.'

'I came without my bag, without anything, I've got no make-up or anything.'

'G.o.d, as if that mattered!'

I could see that, for her, it might matter however. In the bleak drained morning light which filtered in from the window which gave onto the drawing room she looked terrible. Her face was puffy and greasy, her brow corrugated, lines of haggardness outlined her mouth. Her tangled hair, dry and frizzy, looked like an old wig. As I gazed at her I felt a kind of new strength composed of pity and tenderness. And as I thought to show her how little I minded her shabby helplessness, my t.i.tanic love could even have wished for greater odds.

'Come on, old thing,' I said, 'get up. Come on down and we'll have breakfast. Then I'll send Gilbert over to Nibletts for all your things. It's perfectly simple.' Or at least I hoped it would seem so to her. She pulled herself up slowly, and then got onto all fours and rose laboriously to her feet. Her yellow dress was horribly hopelessly crumpled and she pulled at it ineffectually. Her whole body expressed the slightly ashamed awkwardness of the very afflicted person.

'Look, I'll lend you my dressing gown, I've got such a nice one.' I ran to my bedroom and brought her my best black silk dressing gown with the red rosettes. She stood at the door other room staring at the bead curtain.

'What's that?'

'Well may you ask. A bead curtain. Now put this on. There's the bathroom, you remember.'

She let me help her into the dressing gown, then walked slowly down to the bathroom. I waited, sitting on the stairs. When she emerged she climbed back up towards her room, moving heavily like an old woman.

'Wait then, I'll get you a comb, or you can come and use the mirror in my room, would you like, it's brighter in there.'

She went on back into her own room. I fetched the comb and a hand mirror. She combed her hair, not looking into the gla.s.s, then sat down again on the mattress. There was indeed no other furniture, since the table which t.i.tus had retrieved from the rocks was still downstairs.

'Won't you come down?'

'No, I'll stay here.'

'I'll bring you something.'

'I feel sick, the wine has made me sick.'

'Would you like tea, coffee?'

'I feel sick.' She lay down again and pulled up the blanket.

I looked at her with despair, then went out. I closed and locked the door. I did not exclude the possibility that after this show of apathy she might suddenly run for it, rushing out of the house and disappearing among the rocks, hurling herself into the sea.

I went downstairs and found Gilbert sitting at the kitchen table. He rose respectfully as I entered. t.i.tus was at the stove, which he had mastered, cooking eggs. He seemed now to be completely at home in the house. At this I felt both pleasure and displeasure.

'Morning, guv'nor,' said Gilbert.

'h.e.l.lo, dad.'

I did not care for this pleasantry from t.i.tus.

'If you must be familiar, my name is Charles.'

'Sorry, Mr Arrowby. How is my mother this morning?'

'Oh, t.i.tus, t.i.tus-'

'Have a fried egg,' said Gilbert.

'I'll take her up some tea. Does she take milk, sugar?'

'I can't remember.'

I made up a little tray with tea, milk and sugar, bread, b.u.t.ter, marmalade. I carried it up, balanced it, unlocked the door. Hartley was still lying under the blanket.

'Lovely breakfast. Look.'

She stared at me with almost theatrical misery.

'Wait. I'll get a table and chair.' I ran downstairs and came back with the little table and a chair. I unpacked the tray onto the table. 'Come, darling, don't let your tea get cold. And look, I've brought you such a lovely present, a stone, the most beautiful stone on the sh.o.r.e.' I laid down beside her plate the elliptical stone, my very first one, the prize of my collection, hand-sized, a mottled pink, irregularly crisscrossed with white bars in a design before which Klee and Mondrian would have bowed to the ground. Hartley came slowly, crawling then rising, and stood by the table, pulling the dressing gown round her. She did not look at the stone or touch it. I put my arms round her for a moment and kissed her wiglike hair. Then I kissed her warm silk-clad shoulder. Then I left her and locked the door. At any rate she had said no more about going back. No doubt she was afraid; and if she feared to think of returning now, then every hour which kept her here would help to gain my point. But her air of apathetic misery appalled me. Later I was not surprised to find that she had drunk a little tea but eaten nothing. I looked at my watch. It was still not eight o'clock. I wondered when, and how, Ben would arrive. I remembered uneasily what Hartley had said about his having kept his army revolver. I went down to the kitchen to issue orders.

Gilbert was eating fried eggs, fried bread, grilled tomatoes.

'Where's the boy?'

'He's gone to swim. How's Hartley?'

'Ohterrible. I mean, all right. Listen, Gilbert, could you go outside and keep watch? All right, finish your breakfast first, you're doing well, aren't you!'

'What do you mean, keep watch?' said Gilbert suspiciously.

'Just stand, or if you like sit, on the road, at the end of the causeway, and come in and tell me when you see him him coming.' coming.'

'How am I to know him? By his horsewhip?'

'He's unmistakable.' I described Ben minutely.

'Suppose he creeps up on me or something? He can't be feeling very pleased. You said he was a tough, a sort of thug. I love you, darling, but I'm not going to fight.'

'n.o.body is going to fight.' I hope.

'I don't mind sitting in the car,' said Gilbert. 'I'll sit in the car with the doors locked and watch the road. Then if I see him I'll hoot the horn.'

This seemed a good idea. 'All right, but make it snappy.'

I went out of the back and across the gra.s.s and climbed over the rocks as far as the little cliff in time to see t.i.tus's long pale legs elevated to heaven as he dived under the green water. He reminded me of Breughel's Icarus. Absit omen. Absit omen.

I had not the heart to swim, and anyway I did not want Ben to find me trouserless; and there was enough of a swell on for me to see that I might have difficulty getting out. t.i.tus would be all right of course. I must remember to fix another 'rope' at the steps.

The sun was already high and the sea was a lucid green nearer to the rocs, a glittering azure farther out, shifting and flashing as if large plates of white were floating on the surface. The horizon was a line of gold. A surge of rather large but very smooth slow waves was coming in towards me and silently frothing up among the rocks; there was a quiet menace in the graceful yet machine-like power of their strong regular motions.

I waited rather impatiently for young t.i.tus to finish his swim. He had no business to be diverting himself at a moment of crisis. He saw me, waved, but was clearly in no hurry. He shouted to me to come in but I shook my head.

I urgently wanted t.i.tus on the land, partly because I wanted to efface the rather raw impression of our stupid exchanges in the kitchen. Also I wanted t.i.tus beside me, clothed and efficient and in his right mind, when the gentleman turned up. I did not really imagine that Ben would come round and murder us all, but unless there was some show of strength he might possibly wish to punch my head; and while I am athletic and fairly strong, the arts of aggression have never been among my accomplishments. I often wondered during the war how it was that men were able to face other men and kill them. Training helped and I suppose fear. I was glad that it had not been my lot.

It also then occurred to me, as I dourly watched t.i.tus's dolphin antics, that I did not really know how he he would react. He had fairly indicated that he detested his adoptive father. But the young mind is mysterious. Confronted with him he might be cowed, or else moved by sudden sympathy. Or by old deep resistless filial emotions. would react. He had fairly indicated that he detested his adoptive father. But the young mind is mysterious. Confronted with him he might be cowed, or else moved by sudden sympathy. Or by old deep resistless filial emotions. Could t.i.tus change sides? Could t.i.tus change sides? Did t.i.tus himself know? Did t.i.tus himself know?

At last he swam back to the steep rock, and clinging with fingers and toes easily levered his naked body up out of the strong rising and falling surge. He crawled up, swung over the edge and lay panting.

't.i.tus, dear boy, get dressed, quick, here's your towel.'

He obeyed, eyeing me. 'What's the matter? Are we going somewhere?'

'No, but I'm afraid your father may arrive any moment.'

'Looking for my mother. Well, I suppose he may. What will you do?'

'I don't know. What will he do? Listen, t.i.tus, and please forgive my clumsy haste, there's so much I want to say to you. t.i.tus, we must hold on to each other, you and me'

'Oh yes, I'm a very important property, I'm the decoy duck, I'm the hostage!'

'No, this is exactly my point. This is what I came out here to say to you. Not for that. For you. I mean I want you you, I want to be your father, I want you to be my son, whatever happens. I mean even if your mother won't stay with mebut I hope and believe she willbut even if she weren't to, I still want you to accept me as your father.'

'It's a funny action,' he said, 'accepting somebody as your father, when you're grown up. I'm not sure how it's done.'

'Time will show us how it's done. You must just have the will, the intent. Please. I feel there is a real bond between us, it will grow stronger, naturally. Don't think I'm just using you, I'm not. I feel love for you. Excuse the clumsy awkwardness of what I say, I haven't time to think of a graceful speech. I feel that fate or G.o.d or something has given us to each other. Let us not stupidly miss this chance. Don't let idiotic pride or suspicion or failure of imagination or failure of hope spoil this thing for us. Let us now and henceforth belong together. Never mind what it means exactly or what it will involve, we can't see that yet. But will you accept, will you try?'

I had not prepared or antic.i.p.ated quite such pa.s.sionate pleading. I stared at him anxiously, hoping I had made some impression.

He was clothed by now, and we stood together on the high rock above the water. He looked at me frowning and s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up his eyes. Then he looked away. 'All rightI supposeyesOK. I'm in fact, well, a little overwhelmed, actually. I'm glad you said that about wanting me for me. I wasn't sure. I believe youI think. It's funny, I've been thinking about you so much of my life, and I always knew I'd have to come and look at you one day, but I kept putting it off because I was afraid. I thought that if you rejected meI mean, thought I was a sort of lying scrounger, just wanting money and thatand, well, why shouldn't you have thought so, it's all so odd it would have been a sort of crippling blow. I can't see how I would have recovered, I'd have felt so dishonoured and awful, I'd have been saddled with it somehow forever after. There was so much at stake.'

'So much, yes, but all is well, here at least. We won't misunderstand each other. We won't lose each other.'

'It's all happened so fast.'

'It's happened fast because it's right, it's easy because it's right.'

'Well then, I'll try, as you say G.o.d knows what it means, but I accept, at least I'll try.'

He held out his hand and I grasped it and for a moment we stood there, moved and embarra.s.sed. Then I heard, from the roadway, the loud urgent hooting of Gilbert's horn.

'That's him!' I jumped up and began to scramble towards the house. t.i.tus pa.s.sed me and raced on before me over the gra.s.s. When I reached the kitchen door Gilbert was holding on to t.i.tus.

'He's here, he came walking along the road, he stopped at the causeway but when he saw me in the car and when I started hooting he walked on.'

'Walked on past the house?'

'Yes. Maybe he's going to come round the back over the rocks.' Gilbert seemed to be really frightened.

I ran through the hall and out onto the causeway and up to the road. There was no sign of Ben. I noticed that Gilbert, no doubt to secure his own retreat, had parked the car right across the end of the causeway as if it were intended as a barricade. That no doubt was why Ben had walked on. As I was still hesitating and staring about I heard t.i.tus shouting from the other side of the house. I pa.s.sed Gilbert, who was gabbling something or other, at the door and rushed out again through the kitchen. t.i.tus was standing up on top of one of the highest rocks, and pointing. 'He's there! There! I can see him. He's coming along from the tower.'

By now I felt no more doubt about whose side t.i.tus was on. Thank goodness for that. I called to t.i.tus, 'You wait there, I'll go and meet him. If I want you I'll shout.'

I began to climb over the rocks keeping the tower in view, and in a moment I saw Ben, also clambering, with an impressive agility, in the direction of the house. The place where our two paths converged, and indeed the only fairly easy way from the house to the tower, was Minn's bridge, the rocky arch under which the sea entered the cauldron. Towards this natural meeting place we both scrambled and slid until we came onto the bridge and faced each other some ten feet apart. I wondered quickly and a bit anxiously whether we were, as I hoped, still within the view of t.i.tus upon his high rock. I looked quickly round. We were not.