The Sea, The Sea Part 12

'No, you can't see it all,' she said, suddenly turning towards me, blinking and drawing her fingers across her eyes and her mouth. 'You can't see it, n.o.body can understand a marriage. I've prayed and prayed to go on loving Ben'

'It's a travesty. Hartley. Don't you see now at last at last that the situation is intolerable, impossible? Stop playing Jesus Christ to that torturer, if that's what you're doing.' that the situation is intolerable, impossible? Stop playing Jesus Christ to that torturer, if that's what you're doing.'

'He suffers too and I can beoh so unkind. It's not his fault, and it was my fault in the beginning.'

'You gorge me full of these awful stories and then expect me to sympathize with him him! Why did you come here, why did you come to me, why did you tell me these things at all?'

Hartley, still staring at me, seemed to reflect. She said slowly, 'Perhaps because I had sometime sometime, and I've always known this, to tell someone, to say it, to say these blasphemies, what you call these horrors to someone. And, as I told you, I've never really had any friends, Ben and I have lived so much together, so much on our own, so sort of secretly, a kind of hidden life, like criminals. I never had anyone to talk to, even if I had wanted to talk.'

'So it turns out I'm your only friend!'

'Yes, I suppose you are the only person I could inflict this on-'

'Inflict ityou want me to share the pain'

'Well, in a way you were responsible'

'For your ruined life? Just as you were responsible for mine! So this is your revenge? No, no, I'm not serious'

'I didn't mean that, just that Ben's ideas about you have been likelike demons in our lives. But of course it wasn't just wanting to tell someone. You know, when I saw you in the village for the first time I nearly fainted. I had just come round the corner from the bungalows and you were just going into the pub, and my knees gave way and I had to go a bit up the hill and sit on the gra.s.s. Then I thought I must be dreaming, I thought I must be mad, I didn't know what to do. Then the next day I heard somebody talking about you in the shop, saying you'd retired and come here to live. And I wondered for a bit whether I'd tell Ben, because he mightn't have been able to recognize you, you don't look quite like your pictures, but then I thought he's bound to hear anyway, someone at the boat-building cla.s.s will know, so I told him I'd seen you and he was in a frenzy and said we must sell the house at once and go away, and of course he believed, or said he believed, that you'd come on purpose because of me, and of course it was was very odd' very odd'

'But is he selling the house?'

'I don't know, he said he'd see the house agent, he may have done, I didn't ask. But really I came here tonight because I wanted to tell you about t.i.tus and about what Ben imagines and to ask your help'

'My help! My dearest girl, I've been telling you, I am all help! Let's go, let's just go go, we can go to London tomorrow, even tonight if there's a train'

'No, no, no. You see, I can't decide, I've kept swinging to and fro. I thought first I'd simply ask you to go away, to sell your house and go away. If once you understood how much it mattered to me and Ben, how awful awful, what a nightmare it was that you're here, you would go at once.'

'Hartley, we we are going, you and I are going, are going, you and I are going, that that is the answer.' is the answer.'

'I thought I'd write you a letter asking you to go, but it would have been so hard to explain it all in a letter.'

'Hartley, will you come, tonight, tomorrow? You will?'

'And then I thoughtbut perhaps this really is madthat you could somehow persuade Ben, make him see see, that I've been telling the truth all these years, impress him somehow'

'How?'

'Oh, I don't know, swear on something sacred or with a notary or'

The word 'notary' seemed to gather round it some of the sheer insanity of what she was saying. So now we were to be involved with notaries! I could imagine how much that would impress Ben. At the same time, in the swift way of thought, I was making realistic plans. Of course I still hoped that, when it came to it. Hartley would decide to stay with me now, tonight. However it was possible that she would not, and even if she did there might be some terrible revulsion of feeling afterwards. Such shock tactics might do more harm than good. Better perhaps to let her reflect quietly upon her reunion with me and draw her own conclusions. She seemed to me to be still in a dream, a woman locked up locked up inside her own nightmare. She would emerge, but it might be slowly. I might even have a long work to do, to give her back hope and life and stir in her the instinct of freedom, which it still seemed to me was so natural to her. Meanwhile I must find ways of keeping contact with her and of making her plan, making her construct futures which contained me. Surely, once she conceived of happiness she would spring towards it. But for the moment it might be wise to humour her lunatic idea that I might persuade' Ben. If she just, bleakly, blankly, asked me to go away my task would be much harder, though it was still certain to be successful in the end. Hartley was a sick woman. inside her own nightmare. She would emerge, but it might be slowly. I might even have a long work to do, to give her back hope and life and stir in her the instinct of freedom, which it still seemed to me was so natural to her. Meanwhile I must find ways of keeping contact with her and of making her plan, making her construct futures which contained me. Surely, once she conceived of happiness she would spring towards it. But for the moment it might be wise to humour her lunatic idea that I might persuade' Ben. If she just, bleakly, blankly, asked me to go away my task would be much harder, though it was still certain to be successful in the end. Hartley was a sick woman.

I said, 'I think your idea about Ben is a good one, I might be able to solve that problem anyway, to make him see and believe the truth about what happened or rather didn't happen in the old days, we must consult about how it could be done. But, Hartley, listen, the important thing is this. You are going to leave Ben and come to me, for good, forever'

Hartley, who had been sitting entranced, absorbed in her own unusual eloquence, looked suddenly terrified. She jerked back her head and began to stare about the room. (Charles, what is the time?'

It was nearly eleven o'clock. I said, 'Oh, it's about ten to ten. Darling, why not stay here now, please please?'

'It can't be as early as that. It will take me thirty-five minutes to get home, and Ben usually gets back about eleven.' She got up and said, 'I feel drunk, I'm not used to wine, I must go.' She turned, then made a sudden pounce towards my hand and peered at my watch, then uttered a high-pitched wailing cry.

'It's eleven, it's eleven! Oh why did you do it! Why did I believe you! Why didn't I bring my watch! What shall I do, oh what shall I do! What shall I tell him, he's sure to know where I've been! Oh I've been so careful and I haven't told him lies and now he'll thinkIt's as bad as can be, oh I am stupid, stupid, whatever can I do?'

'Stay here, you don't have to go back!'

I was shaken and a bit ashamed when I saw her grief and terror, but I also thought: let there be disaster upon disaster, crisis on crisis, let it all break down quickly into a shambles. That will benefit me. And then I thought too: unless he kills her. And then I thought: I must keep her here. That settles it, it must all be achieved now now. I must not let her go home.

'I can't go back, I can't stay. I shall have to tell him I've been with you, but how can I, it'll be like those nights, oh I shall die, I shall die, I want to be dead, why do I have to suffer and suffer like this. Oh what can can I do, what I do, what can can I do?' I do?'

'Hartley, stop being hysterical. Just make up your mind to stay here.'

'I can't stay, I must run, run. But it's no good. He must be home now, and he'll be so worried and so angry. I can't do it, I can't go back, oh why have I been so thoughtless and so foolish, it's like what I always do, making things worse and worse, I should have known the time'

'Don't blame yourself, think of it this way, you left your watch behind on purpose so as to commit yourself to me and if you've now made it impossible to go back, so much the better!'

'I shouldn't have come here, I shouldn't have told you those things, he'll know I've told you, he'll make me tell him everything I said.'

'You came here to see an old friend, there's nothing wrong in that, and I am your friend, you said so, and I'm so glad you did, and friends help each other'

'Oh if only I'd gone an hour ago everything would have been all right! I must run, I must get out of here '

'Hartley, be calm! If you insist on going I will walk along with you'

'No, you must leave me alone, we must never meet again! Oh how I wish I were dead!'

'Stop this wailing, I can't stand it!'

As she was crying out Hartley had been running to and fro in the kitchen like a demented animal, taking a few little rus.h.i.+ng steps towards the door, then a few steps back to the table. In her agitation she even picked up the tea towel and stuffed it into her pocket. The spectacle of this frightened anguish was beginning to appal me and I was now feeling frightened too. To allay my own fear I ran to her and seized her in my arms. 'Oh my darling, don't be so afraid, stop it stop it, stay here stay here, I love you, I'll look after you '

She then began to fight me, silently, violently, and with a surprising strength, kicking my ankles, writhing her body about, one hand pinching my arm, the other pressed hard against my neck. I caught a glimpse other open mouth and other glistening frothy teeth. I tried to lift her and to capture one other hands, and then it became too dreadful and too hard to attempt to crush this pinching, kicking animal into submission and I abruptly let her go, and with the impetus staggered backwards, banged into the table and upset the candles. In that instant Hartley was gone, rus.h.i.+ng out of the kitchen, not towards the front door but out of the back door straight onto the gra.s.s and onto the rocks. I ought to have rushed after her like a flash, like a faithful dog. I ought to have dragged her back and kept her in the house by force. Instead some stupid instinct made me pause to pick up the candles. Then, leaving them fallen awry in their tea cups, I ran out into the blue almost-darkness and the silent emptiness of the rocky sh.o.r.e. After looking at the bright candles I could at first see nothing, and it struck me in an odd way that while I was talking to Hartley I had forgotten about the sea, forgotten it was there and now felt confounded and at a loss to find myself half blind among those terrible rocks. There was no sign of Hartley, she must immediately have clambered and sprung with the agility of a girl somewhere over the ring of rocks which surrounded my small lawn. I called out 'Hartley!' and the sound was dreadful, dangerous dangerous. Which way had she gone? There was no easy way back to the road in either direction, either on the village side or on the tower side. There was nothing in that blue dimness all round about but wrinkled, folded rocks and slippery pools and deep sudden creva.s.ses. I stood there and listened, hoping to hear her call me or to hear the sound of her scrambling. What had seemed to be silence now revealed itself as a medley of small sounds, though no sound could tell me which way Hartley had gone. There was a faint lapping and sucking of the wavelets touching the foot of the little cliff, and then retreating and then touching again. There was the very distant murmur of a car on the road near the Raven Hotel. There was a scarcely audible humming which was perhaps, as a result of the wine I had drunk, inside my head. And there was a rhythmical hissing noise followed by a muted echoing report which was the sound produced by the water retreating from Minn's cauldron. The thought of the cauldron now shocked me into another awful fear: could Hartley swim? I had not till now formulated the thought that she might have run straight out of the house to hurl herself into the sea. She had cried out, 'I want to die.' Had she, in those years, contemplated suicide, indeed how could she not? A strong swimmer would scarcely cast himself into a calm sea hoping for death, but to a nonswimmer the sea might be the very image of restful death itself. Could Could she swim? She had never learnt in the old days, when the sea was for both of us a far-off dream. It had never occurred to us to venture together into the black ca.n.a.l, although I had become a diffident swimmer at the age of fourteen, when I went to Wales with Mr McDowell. In our first talk at the bungalow she had said Ben could not swim, but had said nothing about herself. Had she now run straight from my arms and from my deception into the easeful peace of the drowning sea? she swim? She had never learnt in the old days, when the sea was for both of us a far-off dream. It had never occurred to us to venture together into the black ca.n.a.l, although I had become a diffident swimmer at the age of fourteen, when I went to Wales with Mr McDowell. In our first talk at the bungalow she had said Ben could not swim, but had said nothing about herself. Had she now run straight from my arms and from my deception into the easeful peace of the drowning sea?

As I was thinking this I was climbing over the rocks towards the right, in the direction of the village, since if she was running home she would instinctively turn in this direction. The easier way back to the road was by way of the tower, because of a deep gulley between the road and the rocks on the village side, not too hard to negotiate by daylight, but very hazardous in the dark. Hartley might not know this however. I clambered and slithered, now calling again and able to see a little more in the diffused halfdarkness. The evening star was present, perhaps other stars, a blanched moon. I thought and I prayed: let her just fall and sprain her ankle and I will carry her back to the house and keep her and let that devil do what he will.

It was extremely difficult to keep up any pace over the rocks since they were so unpredictable and devoid of reason. Their senselessness senselessness had never so much impressed me. I kept trying to get near to the edge of the sea but the rocks kept defeating me, not by malign interest but by sheer muddle, and I kept slipping down slopes into seaweedy pools and confronting black clefts and holes and smooth unclimbable surfaces. I had an intuition of light over the sea and I wanted to be able to look there and be sure there was not somewhere the dark head of a drowning woman and her desperate arms breaking the calm surface. I moaned softly as I clutched and skipped, hallooing her name at intervals like an owl's call, and at last I came unexpectedly over the smooth dome of a tall rock and found myself just above the water. I stood up on the highest, point of the dome and looked out to sea. There was nothing upon the luminous faintly-wrinkled expanse except wavery yellow replicas of the evening star and the low crouching moon. The sky was still a dimmed glowing blue, not yet sunk into the blackish blue of night. One or two pin-point stars were just visible beyond the big jagged lamp of the evening star. I turned to look inland. I was conscious now of the warm air, the warm rocks, after the strange chill of my house. The rocks stretched away, visible as almost colourless lumps above black hollows. Beyond was the road, and some scattered distant lights of the village and of Amorne Farm. I shouted out more loudly now, 'Hartley! Hartley! Call to me and I'll come to you.' Call and I'll come: that was it indeed. But there was no answer, only the silence made up of little noises. had never so much impressed me. I kept trying to get near to the edge of the sea but the rocks kept defeating me, not by malign interest but by sheer muddle, and I kept slipping down slopes into seaweedy pools and confronting black clefts and holes and smooth unclimbable surfaces. I had an intuition of light over the sea and I wanted to be able to look there and be sure there was not somewhere the dark head of a drowning woman and her desperate arms breaking the calm surface. I moaned softly as I clutched and skipped, hallooing her name at intervals like an owl's call, and at last I came unexpectedly over the smooth dome of a tall rock and found myself just above the water. I stood up on the highest, point of the dome and looked out to sea. There was nothing upon the luminous faintly-wrinkled expanse except wavery yellow replicas of the evening star and the low crouching moon. The sky was still a dimmed glowing blue, not yet sunk into the blackish blue of night. One or two pin-point stars were just visible beyond the big jagged lamp of the evening star. I turned to look inland. I was conscious now of the warm air, the warm rocks, after the strange chill of my house. The rocks stretched away, visible as almost colourless lumps above black hollows. Beyond was the road, and some scattered distant lights of the village and of Amorne Farm. I shouted out more loudly now, 'Hartley! Hartley! Call to me and I'll come to you.' Call and I'll come: that was it indeed. But there was no answer, only the silence made up of little noises.

I wondered what to do next. Had Hartley managed to get across the gulley onto the road? Possibly she knew those rocks better than I did. Possibly she and Ben used to come and have picnics here. It was true that marriages were secret places. What was it like in there, and were Hartley's out-pourings the exaggerated half-dreams of a hysterical woman? What did Ben really believe? I decided to get back onto the road and return towards the tower. It took me about five minutes of cautious scrambling to cross the gulley, and then I ran back, calling out, until I had pa.s.sed the house and reached the turn in the road from which I could see the lights of the Raven Hotel. Nothing, no one. By now it was getting really dark and it seemed pointless to do any more rock scrambling. Was Hartley home by nowor was she lying unconscious in one of those dark clefts in the rocks or worse? What was I to do next? One thing I clearly could not do was to go back to Shruff End and blow out the candles and go to bed. It was obvious by now that I would have to go to Nibletts, either to a.s.sure myself by eavesdropping that Hartley was back there, orI was not sure what the alternative was. I set off briskly walking back again towards the village. I realized I was still wearing the Irish jersey and by now felt very hot, so I pulled the jersey off and stuffed it down behind the Nerodene Nerodene milestone and went on, almost running, and tucking my s.h.i.+rt in. I had intended at first to go the longer, safer way round by the harbour and up beside the wood, approaching the house by the back way, but my anxiety was too extreme and I took the usual diagonal path towards the village. Three yellow street lamps shone upon an empty scene as I ran past the silent darkened shop and under the hanging sign of the rampant Black Lion. The pub too was shut, few windows were lit, the villagers were early bedders. My running footsteps echoed the sound of urgency and fear. I reached the church and turned panting up the hill. There were no lights here and the road lay dark under the shadow of the hanging woodland beyond. I slowed to a walk and realized that I had almost reached my objective. There were the lights of Nibletts, the door of the bungalow wide open, and there, standing at the gate and gazing down the road towards me, was Ben. milestone and went on, almost running, and tucking my s.h.i.+rt in. I had intended at first to go the longer, safer way round by the harbour and up beside the wood, approaching the house by the back way, but my anxiety was too extreme and I took the usual diagonal path towards the village. Three yellow street lamps shone upon an empty scene as I ran past the silent darkened shop and under the hanging sign of the rampant Black Lion. The pub too was shut, few windows were lit, the villagers were early bedders. My running footsteps echoed the sound of urgency and fear. I reached the church and turned panting up the hill. There were no lights here and the road lay dark under the shadow of the hanging woodland beyond. I slowed to a walk and realized that I had almost reached my objective. There were the lights of Nibletts, the door of the bungalow wide open, and there, standing at the gate and gazing down the road towards me, was Ben.

It was too late to hide and in any case I now had no desire to do so. The pettiness of concealment seemed out of place and was, I suddenly hoped, now in any case a thing of the past. I hurried on towards Ben, who had come out of the gate to peer at me. Perhaps in the dark he thought that the approaching figure might be his wife.

'Is Hartley back?'

Ben stared at me and I thought, how idiotic, he calls her Mary, he has probably never heard her real name.

I said, 'Is Mary back?'

'No. Where is she?'

The light from the front window and from the open door showed Ben's cropped boyish bullet head and the blue colour of the military style jacket of blue denim which he was wearing. He looked worried and young and for a second I saw him, not as the 'devil' of Hartley's awful stories, but as an anxious young husband wondering if his wife has met with an accident.

'I met her in the village and asked her back for a drink, but she only stayed a short while and then she said she'd take a short cut home across the rocks and after she'd gone I suddenly wondered if she might have fallen and sprained her ankle.' It sounded so feeble and false.

'A short cut across the rocks?' This was an almost senseless conception, but Ben seemed too worried to challenge it or even to exhibit hostility. 'You mean the rocks near your house? She could have fallen there. We'd better go and look, orI'll get a torch '

As he went into the house I turned from the window and the lighted path and looked away down the road. After a moment I saw a dark figure. It was Hartley, slowly coming towards me up the hill. I had a large number of instant thoughts. One was that it had been crazy of me to come here as now I had ruined whatever lying excuse for her absence Hartley might meanwhile have invented. I also thought that I must instantly warn her that I had told Ben of her visit. I also thought that I must somehow now stay with them so as to protect her against him. I also thought with anguish that this was impossible. I also thought, well why not just run down the hill, seize her by the hand, and pull her away with me, run away, anywhere, through the village, out into the fields. Spend the night at Amorne Farm and go to London by train tomorrow. Or get a lift on a lorry going anywhere: Manchester, York, Bristol, Cardiff, Glasgow, Carlisle. This seemed impossible too, for reasons which I could not quite work out. (I had no money, Ben would follow us, she would be too frightened to come etc. etc.) I also thought, let it crash, let them have the awfullest beastliest row they've ever had. She ran to me once. She will run to me again. She will run to me again. I have only to wait. I have only to wait.

By the time I had thought all this in about four seconds I had run down the hill as fast as I could and met Hartley. I did not touch her; I said very quickly, but distinctly, in a low voice, 'I'm sorry, I got worried, I told him we met accidentally in the village and I asked you for a drink, and then you set off home over the rocks. I can't stay now, but come to me soon. Come soon and come forever. You must not continue your life here. I shall be waiting for you every day.'

I could not see Hartley's face, but her whole figure expressed not fear so much as a total dejected resigned misery which had pa.s.sed beyond fear. She had an air of being dripping wet as if She had in truth been drowned and this was her ghost.

Ben was back at the gate now, and I called to him, 'She's here!' and Hartley and I walked on to meet him.

Ben came out onto the pavement. As we approached he said 'OK then. OK. Goodnight.' Then he turned and went back into the house, not waiting to see if Hartley would follow. I held the gate open. She pa.s.sed me with her blind dripping drowned head.

I had an impulse to follow, to push after her into the house, to sit down, make conversation, demand coffee. But it was impossible, it would only make things worse for her. Everything had gone amiss. The door banged.

I had no wish now to eavesdrop, indeed I had almost no curiosity left, so strongly did my mind shy away in horror from the interior of that house and of that marriage. I felt disgust with myself, with him, even with her.

I walked home, neither fast nor slowly. I remembered to pick up my jersey, which was now wet with dew. I found the house in darkness. The candles had fallen over again and burnt themselves out on the wooden top of the table, making long dark burns which remained there ever after to remind me of that terrible night.

History

FOUR.

What follows this, and also what directly precedes it, has been written at a much later date. What I have now written is therefore more deeply reflected and more systematically remembered than it would be if I were continuing to write a diary. Events, as it happened, did not subsequently leave me much time for diary-writing, although what immediately follows has something of the air of an interlude (perhaps a comic one). This novelistic memoir, as it has now become, is however, as far as its facts are concerned (though, as James would say, what indeed are facts?), accurate and truthful. I have in particular, and this may be a professional attribute, an extremely good memory for dialogue, and I am sure that a taperecording of my candlelit conversation with Hartley would differ but little from what I have transcribed. My account is curtailed, but omits nothing of substance and faithfully narrates the actual words spoken. How very deeply indeed many of the conversations, past and to come, recorded in this book, are engraved upon my mind and my heart!

After my return on the evening described I had had enough and I went to bed and to sleep. (I did not eat the Korean clams; later on I threw them away.) I awoke after nine the next morning and it was raining. The English weather had put on another of its transformation scenes. The sea was covered by a clear grey light together with a thick rain curtain. The rain was exhibited in the light as if it were an illuminated grille, and as if each raindrop were separately visible like the beads upon my bead curtain. There it hung, faintly vibrating in the brilliant grey air, while the house hummed like a machine with the steady sound of pattering. I got up and staggered around in the kitchen making myself tea and lowering my head like a sullen beast against any urgency of reflection. I did not wonder what had happened at Nibletts after I left. All that would soon be past history. Then as I sat in the little red room, with my head still sullenly lowered against the light of the rainy morning, I made it out that perhaps I had achieved something by thrusting the situation on into an area of crisis. Really I need not at present do anything at all but wait. Surely she would would come. And... if she did not... there were other plans which I was already quietly making. I would not be without resources. I would wait. And with that I settled into a weird uneasy sort of peace. come. And... if she did not... there were other plans which I was already quietly making. I would not be without resources. I would wait. And with that I settled into a weird uneasy sort of peace.

A little later, I mean a day or two later in my condition of sursis sursis, like a half-expected apparition Gilbert Opian made his appearance. Why was I not really surprised when a timid brief tinkle of the midmorning bell revealed a nervously smiling Gilbert, and beyond him at the end of the causeway his yellow car? Oddly enough I had already made a sort of plan which included someone like Gilbert, and he would certainly do. Fate was co-operating for once. 'Lizzie?' 'No.' Just as well. It was still raining. I put on a show of surprise and annoyance.

'What is it then?'

'May I come in, king of shadows? The rain is running down my neck.'

I led the way back into the kitchen where I had been eating chocolate digestive biscuits and drinking Ovaltine. A feature of my interim condition was that, from ten thirty in the morning onwards, I had to have regular treats and snacks all day long. A wood fire was blazing in the little red room, its lively mobile structures showing bright through the open door, and casting a flickering glow into the raincurtained kitchen. Gilbert was dripping.

'Well?'

'My dear. Lizzie has left me.'

'So?'

'So I decided to come here, I felt the urge. I wanted to tell you about Lizzie, I somehow felt I ought to. She's sick, you know, I mean in her mind. She's madly in love with you again, it's the old disease, I was afraid it would come back. And one of the symptoms is she can't stand me. Well, I suppose our cohabitation was a sort of precarious miracle. Anyway it's all over now, our idyll is over, our little house is smashed. I'm bombed out. She's gone. I don't even know where she is.'

'She's not here, if that's what you imagine.'

'Oh I don't-'

'I suppose you think it's my fault, is that what you came to say?'

'No, no, I accuse no one. Destiny, G.o.d perhaps, myself. The battle of life and how to fight it. Whoever conscripted me made a big mistake. Now she's gone, it seems incredible she could have cared for me and made that house with me, we chose things together like real people. No, I just thought I'd come. You've always been a magnet to me, and now I'm getting old I don't care what people think or how much they snub me, it's always worth trying, I only wish I'd been more forward when I was young. You know how I feel about you, all right you hate that bit, you despise it, it disgusts you, though actually anybody's lucky to be loved by anybody and ought to be grateful, well anyway as I haven't a job at present I thought I'd come and see you and maybe you would let me stay for a while and be useful, I can't bear being alone at home without her where everything reminds me'

'Useful?'

'Yes, I could cook or clean up, do odd jobs, why not? I've always felt I ought to belong to somebody, I mean really legally as a sort of possession, just a chattel, not anything troublesome, not with rights rights, I mean. I often think I have the soul of a slave. Perhaps I was a Russian house-serf in a previous incarnation, I should like to think I was, all cosy and protected with simple things to do, kissing my master's shoulder and sleeping on the stove '

'Do you want to be my house-serf?'

'Yes, please, guv'nor. I'll live in that dog kennel if you like.'

'OK, you're engaged.'

Thus began an odd little period of my life to which strangely enough I look back with a certain sad nostalgia, perhaps simply because it was such a dead calm before such a terrible storm. I even became rather fond of Gilbert in his role as serf. In the past, although his servility had inhibited my regard, yet his devotion to me had proved that he had some sound ideas. And he was, even at this stage, useful; later on he was essential. My standard of living rose. Gilbert cleaned the house, he even got the stains off the bath. I let him cook in a style which was a compromise between his own and mine. I could not bring him up to my level of simplicity and it would have been cruelty to attempt it. Grilled sardines on toast and bananas and cream were not Gilbert's idea of a good lunch, and equally I had no use for his thick over-rich Gallic messes. We ate exquisitely dressed green salads and new potatoes, a favourite dish of mine. (The shop no'

had lettuces and young spuds.) I let him concoct vegetarian soups and stews and I taught him to make fritters in the j.a.panese style, which he was at once able to do better than me. I also let him bake cakes. He shopped for me in the village and fetched Spanish wine from the Raven Hotel, where he amused himself by posing as my butler. At night he slept on the big broken-bellied sofa in the middle room downstairs, among the drift-wood. The sofa was damp, but I let him have the hot water bottle. I swam every day, sometimes in the sun, sometimes in the rain, and began to feel soaked in the sea as if it were penetrating my skin. When the sun shone I spent time out on the rocks. Gilbert kept watch over the front door and went out to look for letters, only no one called and Hartley did not write. I returned to my obsessive task of collecting stones, picking them out of tide-washed crannies and rock pools and carrying them back to the lawn, where Gilbert helped me with my border round the edge of the gra.s.s. The stones, so close-textured, so variously decorated, so individual, so handy, pleased me as if they were a small harmless tribe which I had discovered. Some of them were beautiful with a simple wit beyond that of any artist: light grey with thin pink traceries, black with elaborate white crosses, brown with purple ellipses, spotted and blotched and striped, and their exquisitely smooth forms lightly dinted and creased by the millennial work of the sea. More and more of them now found their way into the house, to lie upon the rosewood table or on my bedroom window ledge. Gilbert would have liked to collect stones too, and to pick flowers, but as soon as he ventured onto the rocks in his leather-soled London shoes he immediately fell. He bought some plimsolls at the Fishermen's Stores, but still tumbled. He never, of course, ventured Into the sea. However he sawed wood and carried it into the house and this activity, which he felt to be in some way symbolic, gave him much satisfaction. He continued to be busy all day long with self-invented serf activities. He washed the bead curtain with Vim, making it s.h.i.+ne and removing the slightly sticky filthy surface to which I had become accustomed. Thus, for a brief time, we lived together, each absorbed in his own illusions, and together we regressed into a life of primal simplicity and almost fetis.h.i.+stic private obsession. When I grew tired of hunting for stones I used to sit for long periods upon the rocky archway bridge beneath which the angry tide raced in and out of Minn's cauldron, dangling my bare feet over the edge and letting them bathe in the flying rainbow of the spray. It gave me a gloomy fatalistic pleasure to observe the waves, as they rushed into that deep and mysteriously smooth round hole, destroy themselves in a boiling fury of opposing waters and frenzied creaming foam. Then when the tide was receding the cauldron became an equally furious sucking whirlpool as the water churned itself into a circling froth in its desperate haste to escape through the narrow outlet under the arch, and as it met head-on the whipping power of the sea wind. The wind blew continually during those days and when it was strong the waves slapped the rocks and wailed and sucked in and out of the crannies with a noise which in my tense fretful state I was beginning to find tiring. I would never have imagined that I would dislike the sound of the sea, but sometimes, and especially at night, it was a burden to the spirit. In the evenings I sat beside the wood fire in the little red room. Sometimes Gilbert sat in the kitchen, enjoying himself being a servant. (I suspect he would have liked to dress as a housemaid, but was right in a.s.suming that this would not please me.) Sometimes he sat with me, in silence like a dog, gazing at me and rolling his eyes about in that disconcerting manner. Sometimes we talked a little. In the lamplight now and then he came to look uncannily like Wilfred Dunning, a resemblance of course created by Gilbert's unconscious acquisition of his hero's facial mannerisms. Yet to my vulnerable attentive nerves, it seemed more than that, something more like a real visitation. If so, it did Gilbert credit that he should be the vehicle. We talked about the past, about Wilfred and Clement and the old days. A shared past, that is something. And I thought about Clement. In a way, if there were justice, it was Clement who spanned my life and made me, and about whom this book should be written. But in such matters there is no justice, or rather justice is cruel.

'Charles, darling.'

'Yes.'

'You don't mind my asking? Did you really love Clement or was it just that Clement loved you?

People often wondered.'

'Of course I loved Clement.'

Well, I came to love her. Did I love her at first? I loved her beauty, her fame, her talent, her flattery, her help. Would I have found Hartley if I had not become Clement's possession? Clement stretched over the years, she was the one permanent thing, only removed by death. I had been her boy lover, her creation, her business partner, the nearest thing she ever had to a husband, finally her middle-aged neverestranged son. The transformation of my love for Clement, its metamorphoses, had been one of the main tasks and achievements of my life: that love which so often almost failed but never quite failed. Would I ever sit by the fire with Hartley and tell her about Clement? Would she understand, would she want to know? How important it seems to continue one's life by explaining oneself to people, by justifying oneself, by memorializing one's loves.

'Charles.'

'Yes.'

'I heard something funny in the pub today.'

'Oh.'

'That chauffeur you had, Freddie Arkwright, he's the brother of the pub man, he's coming to stay at Whitsun.'

'Oh.' Shame, guilt, another demon trail.

'Funny isn't it, the way people come back into one's life.'

'Yes.'