The Sea, the Sea

FIVE

THE NEXT DAY was one of the worst days of my life, perhaps the worst. I awoke as for execution. No one except Titus had any interest in breakfast. The hot stuffy weather continued, with a few distant grumblings of thunder now.

Hartley looked terrible. She had made up her face with especial care and this made her look pathetically older. Her yellow dress was dirty, crumpled and torn. I could not send her back to her husband in my dressing gown. I searched among my clothes and found a sort of blue unisex beach coat which I made her put on. I also found a light scarf to put over her head. It was like dressing a child. We did not dare to say much to each other. By now I wanted the whole thing to be over. I could scarcely endure the idea that she might even now say ‘I don’t think I want to go after all’; and the impulse to cry out ‘Stop!’ was a pain which I urgently wanted to be without. Perhaps she felt much the same. And I thought at one moment: why, it’s just like it was then. I’ve done everything I can for her, everything. And she’s just leaving me. I put into a plastic bag her make-up and the mottled pink stone with the white bars which I had given her (and which she had apparently not looked at since). She said nothing, but she watched me put the stone into the bag. Gilbert shouted up that the car was ready.

While Hartley was in the bathroom I went on downstairs carrying the bag and waited in the hall. They had decided that what Peregrine called ‘the delegation’ should be carried in Peregrine’s white Alfa Romeo. James and Perry and Titus were already outside. Gilbert came out of the kitchen. He said to me, ‘Charles, a funny thing, last night, I didn’t tell you.’

‘What?’

‘When I delivered that letter at his place I thought I heard a woman talking inside.’

‘It was TV.’

‘I don’t think so. Charles, there won’t be a fight, will there? I mean his asking us not to come till today. Perhaps he’s mustered all his pals to beat us up.’

This idea had occurred to me too. ‘He has no pals.’ The woodwork class?

Hartley began to come down the stairs. I pushed Gilbert and he went out. She walked slowly, clutching the banister, as if walking were difficult. She was wearing the scarf over her head, as I had intended her to, and her face was shadowed. I would have liked her to wear a veil. It was our last moment, our last second, alone together. I took her hand and pressed it and kissed her cheek and said, as if it were something quite ordinary, ‘It’s not goodbye. You will come to me. I shall be waiting.’ She squeezed my hand but said nothing. She was not tearful. Her eyes looked far away. We went out together onto the causeway. The others were waiting by the car. It was curiously like the emergence of a bride and bride-groom.

All eyes were averted as we approached the car. I had not arranged the seating. Titus opened the rear door and I hustled Hartley in and followed her, and Titus got in next to me. The other three squashed up in the front. Hartley drew her scarf forward to veil her face. The three in front did not look round.

Peregrine, who was driving, said, ‘It’s straight on and then right?’

Gilbert said, ‘It’s through the village, I’ll direct you.’

Hartley was crushed against me. She was stiff, stiff. Titus was stiff too, his eyes staring and unseeing, his pink mouth slightly open. I could feel his fast breathing. Everyone was gazing straight ahead. I folded my hands together. The sun was shining. It was a bright day for the wedding.

We were just approaching the big rocks through which the road passed in a narrow defile, the place which I called the Khyber Pass, when a stone struck the windscreen with amazing force. Everyone in the car came abruptly out of whatever trance he was in. Then another stone struck the car and then another. Peregrine stopped. Another driver might have accelerated, but not Perry. ‘What the hell is going on? Somebody’s throwing stones at us, they’re throwing on purpose.’ He got out of the car.

We were now inside the defile with yellow rocks towering up on either side. James was saying something to Peregrine, perhaps telling him to get back into the car. I had time to think: Ben has arranged a brilliant ambush, he has chosen just the right place. Then the windscreen suddenly shattered. A sizable rock, pushed over the edge from above, had fallen directly upon it. With a sizzling report the glass became white, crackled and opaque. The rock rebounded on the radiator, dinting it, and scudded onto the road. Peregrine uttered a cry of rage.

Titus had jumped out of the car and I followed him. Gilbert stayed where he was. James moved into the driver’s seat and, with a handkerchief wrapped around his hand, punched a hole in the glass. Then he too got out.

‘There! There!’ Peregrine was shouting and pointing upward.

A stone flew past my head. I looked up and outlined against the blue sky I saw Rosina. She was kneeling on one knee on top of one of the highest rocks and had evidently provided herself beforehand with an arsenal of missiles. She was black, a black witch, wearing something that looked like a peasant woman’s shawl. I saw her snarling mouth and her teeth. It soon too became apparent that her main target was Peregrine. A stone struck him on the chest, another on the shoulder.

Instead of seeking cover he began, still bellowing, to return the fire. Stones were flying round Rosina’s head, but I think none of them hit her.

‘Who is this lady?’ said James in his rather fastidious tone.

‘Peregrine’s former wife.’

‘Need she detain us?’

‘Perry, get back in the car, get back in the car!’ I grabbed his coat tail. He pulled himself angrily away and stooped to pick up more ammunition.

A stone struck me painfully upon the hand and I returned hastily towards the car.

‘Rosina! Rosina!’ It was Titus, shouting, waving. It was like a war cry. He gesticulated and danced. I pulled him back with me. James got hold of Perry. In a moment we were all back inside and Peregrine was accelerating violently. The car flashed onward and round the curve to where the village road forked inland.

Here Peregrine stopped the car with a jerk, went round to the boot and came back with a jack with which he violently knocked out the rest of the windscreen, showering us all with white fragments of glass. He inspected the dint on the radiator. ‘What the hell is that bloody bitch doing here?’ he said, but not in a tone that seemed to require an answer. A little later he said thoughtfully, ‘She used to play cricket at school.’

The bizarre violence of the incident had left me dazed, and I returned with a sick shock to my acute consciousness of Hartley who, during the whole of the episode, had not moved, and seemed not to have noticed what was happening. Then I suddenly remembered what Gilbert had said about hearing a woman talking in the bungalow last night. Had Rosina carried out her obscene threat of going to ‘console’ Ben, and if so had that been why Ben was not ready to receive Hartley last night? How else had Rosina known we were coming? This thought filled me with confused helpless anger.

By now we had passed through the village, past the church where I had talked so shyly with Hartley so long ago, and turned up the hill towards the bungalows. Peregrine, driving savagely, was red in the face, and remained so completely absorbed in his own thoughts that he took no further active part in the proceedings and seemed scarcely to know what was going on.

When I had imagined Hartley going home I had not imagined opening the car door and ushering her out and unlatching the gate and walking up the path, at any moment of which proceedings I could have cried out ‘No! No more!’ and seized her hand and dragged her away. I did not do so. I did not touch her. She slipped off the scarf and the blue coat and slithered quickly out of the car. I opened the gate for her and followed her up the path. James followed me, then Titus looking frightened, Gilbert also looking frightened, then Peregrine in some kind of private rage.

Hartley rang the bell. Its sweet chime had scarcely sounded when there was a volley of fierce barks, followed by the sound of human cursing. A door banged and the barking was less audible. Then Ben opened the door. I think he would have liked to let her in and shut it again, only in accordance with orders issued by James I went in quickly on her heels and the others came after me.

I had, equally, not imagined the scene inside the house, or in so far as I had imagined it I had pictured either an instant fracas or else a solemn council, with Hartley somehow featuring in both. As it was, no sooner was Hartley inside the door than she vanished. In a second she had slipped away like a mouse and gone into the bedroom and shut the door. (The main bedroom that is, not the little room where I had talked to Ben.)

The dog, which seemed to be a rather large animal, went on barking as an accompaniment to what was going on in the hall. Ben had retreated to the sitting room door, Gilbert was leaning against the now closed front door, Peregrine was angrily inspecting the picture of the knight in armour, James was looking at Ben with an air of interest, and Ben and Titus were staring at each other.

Ben spoke first, ‘Well, Titus, then.’

‘Hello.’

‘You coming home with mummy, you going to stay here now?’

Titus was silent, trembling and biting his lip.

‘Going to stay here now, eh? Eh?’

Titus shook his head. He said in a strangled whisper, ‘No-I think I’ll stay-away.’

I said, ‘Titus is not my son, but I propose to adopt him.’ My voice quavered with nervousness and the words sounded unconvincing, almost frivolous. Ben ignored them. Still staring at Titus he made a violent throwing-away movement. Titus winced.

Ben was the shortest man present, but physically the most formidable. His bull neck and big shoulders seemed to be bursting the old khaki shirt which was now too small for them. His black belt was pulled in tight under a slight pot-belly, but he looked in good condition. He glowed with sunburn, his short mousy hair stood up like fur, he had recently shaved. His hands hung by his sides and he kept waggling his fingers and rising slightly on his toes as if about to perform some physical feat. The hall was stuffy as I remembered it, but the smell was different, nastier. I noticed several bowls full of dead roses. The dog had now fallen silent.

I said, ‘Did you read my letter?’

Ben paid no attention to me. He was now looking at James and James was looking at him. James was frowning thoughtfully. Then he said, ‘Staff-Sergeant Fitch.’

‘Yes, that’s right.’

‘Royal Engineers.’

‘That’s right.’

‘You were the chap in that show in the Ardennes.’

‘That’s right.’

‘You did well,’ said James.

Ben’s face hardened, perhaps to inhibit some show of emotion, even some fleeting gleam of gratification. ‘You his cousin?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you still serving?’

‘Yes. Just retired actually.’

‘Wish I’d stayed in.’

There was a moment’s silence as if they were both thinking about the past and likely to break out into reminiscence. Then James said hastily, ‘I’m sorry about this business now. I-er, it wasn’t her fault at all, she’s completely innocent, and nothing happened, I give you my word of honour.’

Ben said expressionlessly, ‘OK.’ He made a movement of his head and shoulders indicative of dismissal.

James turned to me, rather blandly, like a chairman tacitly asking a distinguished speaker if he has anything further to say. I did not respond to his look, but turned to go. Gilbert opened the door, Peregrine marched out, then Gilbert, then Titus, then me, then James. The door closed softly behind us.

Before I reached the car I realized that I was still carrying the plastic bag containing Hartley’s make-up and the stone which I had given her. I automatically turned back. James tried to catch hold of me, but I dodged him and walked steadily back up the path. It was an almost superstitiously stringent necessity to leave that bag with Hartley, not to take it away, not to take it back to Shruff End to be a sort of unlucky token and collect the filth of demons. It only occurred to me afterwards that I could have left it on the doorstep. I rang the ding-dong bell and waited. The savage barking started up again. Ben shouted, ‘Shut up, you devil!’

After a moment or two he opened the door. The expressionless mask was gone. He grimaced with hatred. I felt there was a kind of levity about what I was doing, and yet it had to be done. I was also aware of interrupting the next scene. The bedroom door was open.

I held out the bag. ‘These are hers. Sorry I forgot to leave them.’

Ben seized the bag and hurled it away behind him into the hall where it bumped and clattered. He thrust his grimacing snarling head out at me and I stepped back. ‘Keep away or I’ll kill you. And tell that vile brat to keep away too. I’ll kill you!’

The door slammed with a violence which set the bell vibrating. The dog was now almost screaming. I came back down the path and crossed to the car, where Ben’s words would not have been audible.

Gilbert and Titus were sitting in the back. The seat was covered with opaque white stones like huge pearls. ‘What’s this stuff?’ I said.

‘The windscreen broke, remember?’ said James. ‘Now let’s go home. Peregrine?’

The car started, roared up the hill, turned, roared down the hill, going very fast. The air blew fiercely in through the open front window. No one spoke.

When we were getting near to the junction with the coast road Titus said, ‘Would you mind stopping? I’d like to walk from here.’

Peregrine stopped with an abruptness which sent us all flying forward. Titus began to get out.

‘Titus, you’re not going back there?’ I cried to him and grabbed at his shirt.

‘No!’ He slipped out, and said as he turned away, ‘I’m going to be sick, if you want to know.’ He started walking in the direction of the harbour. Peregrine set off again, driving violently.

Gilbert said to James, ‘What was that thing in the Ardennes that you were saying about?’

James was looking alert and rather pleased. The meeting with Ben seemed to have put him in a good mood. He said, ‘It was an odd business. That chap Fitch was a prisoner of war in a camp in the Ardennes, he must have been captured in 1944. There weren’t any officers in the camp, I suppose he was the senior NCO, anyway he was the leading figure. In May 1945 when the Germans were going to evacuate the camp before our lot arrived he staged a private war of his own. He managed to impose himself on everybody. He had a group of toughs among the prisoners, well everybody joined in, it was well organized, quite a classic piece of planning, and they sabotaged the transport, I think they even nobbled a train. They got hold of arms and started shooting up the Germans. It was rather a savage business, possibly some personal vendetta was involved. Anyway when our troops arrived the surviving Germans were the prisoners and young Fitch had got the entire camp under his control and was standing at the gate to welcome us in. It was a neat exercise of personal bravery and initiative. There was a bit of fuss about “unnecessary brutality”, but that soon blew over. He got a Military Medal.’

‘Were you there?’ said Gilbert.

‘No, I was somewhere else, but it was my outfit that relieved the camp and someone told me about it. I remember seeing a picture of the chap, he hasn’t changed. And I recalled his name, and it all somehow remained in my memory, it appealed to my imagination. He was a brave man. How odd coming across him like that!’

‘A rather unattractive sort of courage,’ I said.

‘There was a rather unattractive sort of war on,’ said James.

‘The man’s a killer.’

‘Some people are better at killing than others, it needn’t mean a vicious character. He behaved like an able soldier.’

We had reached the house. Peregrine scraped the car on a rock and it stopped with a jolt. We all got out. I looked at my watch. It was ten o’clock. The day lay ahead.

I went into the house, passed automatically through the kitchen and out onto the lawn. James, who had followed on my heels, was standing at the kitchen door looking at me. I said to him, ‘Thank you for your help. Now you’ve finished your job here I expect you’ll want to be off.’

He said, ‘Well, if you don’t mind, I think I’ll stay till tomorrow. ’

‘Please yourself.’

I went away across the rocks in the direction of the tower, passing over Minn’s bridge. I found a place down on the edge of the water where I could see into Raven Bay. A hot wind was blowing in from the sea and there was a slightly menacing swell, but the atmosphere was less thundery. Perhaps the storms had passed by.

My hand was hurting where it had been struck by Rosina’s stone. A bruise was appearing. I found that I had been sweating profusely. The hot wind was drying my shirt and denim jacket, both of which had been sticking to my back. I pulled the jacket off and loosened the shirt. There was a haze over the bay, the water was pale blue, fringed by a pretty lace of breaking waves. The big round boulders looked hot, as if the stored-up heat which they were exuding were shimmering visibly. They had a solemn, almost religious look. The dark yellow seaweed stains upon them looked like hieroglyphs. Beyond the other arm of the bay the sea was spotted with purple. I sat with my feet almost within reach of the strongly rising and falling water which was spattering the yellow rocks with a quick-drying foam. I felt that I had made a fool of myself in the recent scene and felt sad to think that in relation to anything so awful I should look ridiculous.

I heard a soft footfall and saw a shadow and James came and sat down beside me. I paid no attention to him and we sat for a while in silence.

James started fingering around in the rocks, finding small stones and tossing them into the water. He said at last, ‘Don’t worry too much, I think she’ll be all right, I’m sure she will.’

‘Why?’

‘My general assessment of the situation.’

‘I see.’

‘And also that odd episode.’

‘You think Staff-Sergeant Fitch’s respect for General Arrowby will be such-?’

‘Not exactly. But it’s as if something passed between us.’

‘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 adventure which he looks forward to gossiping about in another context. James was gently abstracted, perhaps melancholy. Titus was ashamed and resentful. I asked the other three when they would be going and expressed the wish that it might be soon, the show being over. There was general agreement that tomorrow would be departure day. Perry’s car would be ready then. James would drive him to the garage. Gilbert rather reluctantly agreed to go too, though cheered by the prospect of bringing news of me to London. After that I would be alone with Titus.

After lunch I made out, at his intelligent suggestion, a longish shopping list for Gilbert so that he could stock me up with food and drink while I still had a car available. He then went off again to the village. Titus went to swim from the cliff. Peregrine, now lobster-coloured and shining with suntan lotion, lay on the grass beside the tower. James settled in the book room on the floor, combing through my books and reading here and there. Gilbert came back with a loaded car and the report, which he had heard in the shop, that Freddie Arkwright had arrived at Amorne Farm for his holidays. Peregrine staggered back to the house with a blinding headache and went to lie down in the book room with the curtains pulled. James emerged onto the lawn and began taking the stones out of the trough and arranging them on the grass in a complicated circular design. The afternoon advanced, very hot, with renewed grumblings of distant thunder. The sea was like liquid jelly, rising and falling with a thick smooth dense movement. Then some time after Titus returned from his swim it began to change its mood. A brisk wind started to blow. The smooth swell became more powerful, the waves higher and stronger. I could hear them roaring into the cauldron. There was a long line of puffy clouds low on the horizon, but the sun was descending through a blue celebration of cloudless light. Gilbert and Titus were now over by the tower, sitting in the shadow which it cast upon the grass. I could hear them singing Eravamo tredici.

I had deliberately declared, for my maddened wounded mind, an interim. It was indeed clear that what had happened had been engineered against my will by James. If I had kept my nerve, if I had persevered, if I had only had the sense to take her right away at the start, Hartley would have abandoned herself to me. She would have given up, she would have given in, at first with the weak despair of one in whom the hope of happiness had simply been killed. It was my task and my privilege to teach her the desire to live, and I would yet do so. I, and I only, could revive her; I was the destined prince. Perhaps in a way, I reflected, it was just as well to let her go back, this time, for a short period. My shock tactics would not after all have proved useless, she would have time to reflect, to compare two men and evolve a concept of a different future. The lessons I had tried to teach her would not be lost. A dose of Ben, after having been with me, after having had the seeds of liberty sown in her mind, might very well wake her up to the possibility, then the compelling desirability, of escape. A dose of Ben would make her concentrate at last. It would in fact be better thus, because she would make her own clear decision, not simply acquiesce in mine. If she could feel a little less frightened, a little less trapped, she would reflect and she would decide to come. My mistake had been to act so suddenly and so relentlessly. I ought never to have locked her up, I saw that now. I could easily have kept her, for a short time, by strong persuasions. Then I could have touched her reason. As it was she was too shocked to take it all in. I had given her the role of prisoner and victim, and this in itself had numbed her powers of reflection. Now at least, at ‘home’ in that horrible den, she would be able to think. He could not always batter her mind and supervise her body. I would wait. She would come. I would not leave the house. She might come at any hour of the day or night. And, I thought, with a final twist, yes, and if she does not come I shall do what I said to James, I shall simply start the whole thing again from the beginning.

Evening approached. Titus and Gilbert came in to make tea, then went off in Gilbert’s car to the Black Lion. Peregrine emerged to dose his headache with whisky, then retired again. James wandered off in search of more stones for his mandala or whatever it was. Thinking these thoughts about Hartley and feeling slightly less desperate because of them, I clambered a little way over the rocks in the village direction. I could see the spray from the increasingly wild waves thrown up from the sea’s edge in a rainbow, and the droplets were reaching me in a fine rain. I slithered into a long cleft, a secret place I had discovered earlier, where the tall rocks made a deep V-shape. Part of the floor of the cleft was occupied by a narrow pool, the other part by a rivulet of pebbles. The smooth rocks were very hot and the warmth in the enclosed space comforted my body. I sat down on the pebbles. I turned some of them over. They were damp underneath. I sat still and tried to silence my mind. A pebble came rolling down the rock into my rivulet and I looked at it idly. A moment or two later another pebble rolled down. Then another. I looked up. A head, framed by two clinging hands, gazed down on me from the crest above. A tendril or two of frizzy brown hair, tugged by the wind, had also come over the top of the rock. Two bright light-brown eyes peered short-sightedly down at me, half laughing, half afraid.

‘Lizzie!’

Lizzie levered herself up onto the sharp rocky crest, got one brown leg, already grazed and bleeding slightly, over the top, then, impeded by the full skirt of her blue dress, swung the other leg over, lost her balance and slid down the long smooth surface into the pool.

‘Oh, Lizzie!’

I pulled her out and hugged her, laughing with that agonized laughter which is so close to a mixture of wild exasperation and tears.

Now Lizzie, laughing too, was squeezing out the wet hem of her dress.

‘You’ve cut yourself.’

‘It’s nothing.’

‘You’ve lost a shoe.’

‘It’s in the pool. Can I have that one, or are you collecting my shoes? Oh Charles-you don’t mind my coming?’

‘You know Gilbert’s here?’

‘Yes, he wrote to me, he couldn’t help boasting that he was staying with you.’

‘Did he ask you to come?’

‘No, no, I think he wanted to have you to himself. But I suddenly so much wanted to come and I thought, why not?’

‘You thought “why not”, did you, little Lizzie. Did you drive?’

‘No, I came by train, then taxi.’

‘Just as well. There soon won’t be any more parking space left out there. Come on inside and get dry. Don’t slip again, these rocks are tricky.’

I led her back towards the house, onto the lawn.

‘What are those stones?’

‘Oh just a sort of design someone’s making. You’re thinner.’

‘I’ve been slimming. Oh Charles-dear-are you all right?’

‘Why shouldn’t I be?’

‘Well, I don’t know-’

We went into the kitchen. ‘Here’s a towel.’ I was not going to enquire what vulgar impertinent travesty of the facts had been offered by Gilbert in his letter. The thought of how the story would be told would have tormented me if I had not had greater troubles.

Lizzie was wearing a peacock blue summer dress made out of some light bubbly material with a low V-neck and a wide skirt. She was indeed thinner. Her curling hair, wind-tangled, blown into long gingery corkscrews, strayed about on the brilliant blue collar. Her pale brown eyes, moist and shining with the wind, with tenderness, with relief, gazed up at me. She looked absurdly young, radioactive with vitality and unpredictable gaiety, while at the same time she looked at me so attentively, so humbly, like a dog reading his master’s tiniest movements. I could not help seeing how different this alert healthy being was from the heavy confused creature whom I had allowed to be carried away from my house veiled and silent. Yet love seeks its own ends and discerns, even invents, its own charms. If necessary I would have to explain this to Lizzie.

Lizzie, sitting on a chair, had thrown off her sandals and crossed one bare leg over the other, hitching up the wide trailing blue skirt, half darkened with sea water, and was drying one foot.

James came in and stopped amazed.

I said to him, ‘Another visitor. This is a theatre friend, Lizzie Scherer. This is a cousin of mine, James Arrowby.’

They said hello.

The front door bell jangled.

I ran out, already seeing Hartley on the step, wind-tormented, distraught, falling into my arms.

A man with a cap stood there. ‘Laundry.’

‘Laundry?’

‘Laundry. You wanted the laundry to call. I’m it.’

‘Oh God, yes, nothing at the moment, thank you, call again could you, next week or-’

I ran back to the kitchen. Peregrine had arrived. He of course knew Lizzie, though not well. They were still exchanging greetings when Gilbert came in with Titus.

‘Darling!’

‘Gilbert!’

‘Is this your suitcase? We found it outside.’

The front door bell rang again. Would it be Hartley now? Oh let it be.

‘Telephone?’

‘You wanted a telephone. I’ve come to install it.’

By the time I had settled where the telephone was to be the company in the kitchen were all singing Cherry Ripe.

And they went on singing. And we got drunk. And Gilbert had made a great salad and set out bread and cheese and cherries. And Titus was looking so happy, sitting in the midst with Lizzie perched on the table near him and feeding him cherries. And I thought of that stuffy room on the other side of the village where Hartley was hiding her face and saying again and again and again, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.’ I took some more wine. There was plenty of it, purchased by Gilbert at my expense. Then when it was getting dark, and they had moved on from Abide with me to The day Thou gavest, Lord, is ended, we all went out onto the lawn. James’s stone-design had already been disordered by people tripping over it. I wanted to get Lizzie to myself and explain things to her. I led her a little way across the rocks and we sat down, hidden from the house. At once she gave me one of her chaste drying clinging kisses.

‘Lizzie-’

‘Darling, sweetheart, you’re drunk!’

‘Lizzie, you’re my friend, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, forever and ever.’

‘Why did you come to me, what do you want?’

‘I want to be with you always.’

‘Lizzie, it can never be, you know that, it can never be.’

‘You did ask me-you asked me something-have you forgotten? ’

‘I forget so many things. I forgot the windscreen got broken.’

‘The-?’

‘Oh never mind. Listen. Listen, Lizzie. Listen-’

‘I’m listening!’

‘Lizzie, it cannot be. I am committed to this very unhappy person. She is going to come back to me. Did Gilbert tell you?’

‘Gilbert wrote something. You tell me.’

‘I can’t remember what you know.’

‘Rosina said you were going to marry a bearded lady, and you said that you’d met this woman from the past and that what you’d said to me was a mistake-’

‘Lizzie, I do feel love for you, but not like that. I’m bound to her, bound, it’s-it’s absolute.’

‘But she’s married.’

‘She’s going to leave her husband and come to me. He’s a vile man and she hates him.’

‘And she loves you?’

‘Yes-’

‘And is she really so ugly?’

‘She’s-Lizzie, she’s beautiful. I wonder if you know what it’s like when you have to guard somebody, to guard them in your heart against all damage and all darkness, and to sort of renew them as if you were God-’

‘Even if it’s all-not true-like in a dream?’

‘There’s a way in which it must be true, it can’t be a dream, pure love makes it true.’

‘I know-you pity her-’

‘It’s not pity-it’s something much greater, much purer. Oh Lizzie-my heart could break with it-’ I dropped my head onto my knees.

‘Oh my dear-’ Lizzie touched my hair, stroking it very gently, very tenderly, as one might touch a child or a small quiet pet.

‘Lizzie darling, are you crying? Don’t cry. I do love you. Let us two love each other whatever happens.’

‘You want everything, don’t you, Charles.’

‘Yes, but not like that. Let’s love in a free open way, like you said in your letter, free and separate and not holding on like crazy-’

‘It was a stupid letter. I think holding on like crazy is the only thing I understand-’

‘But with her, with Hartley-it’s like something eternal that’s always existed, something far greater than either of us. She will come to me, she has got to. She has always been with me and she is coming home to herself. I feel in such an odd way that my retiring, my coming here, was all a sort of giving up the world just for her. I gave her the meaning of my life long ago, I gave it to her and she still has it. Even if she doesn’t know she has it, she has it.’

‘Just like even if she’s ugly she’s beautiful and even if she doesn’t love you she loves you-’

‘But she does-’

‘Charles, either this is very fine, very noble, or else you’re mad.’

‘Dear Lizzie-I feel so full of love tonight because of her.’

‘You’ve got it to give away.’

‘Yes, but not to anybody. When you feel full to the brim with your own life, committed, given, complete, it makes you feel so free too. I don’t know what the future holds, Lizzie. I just know it’s all to do with her. But that makes other love in a way all the more real if it exists at all, because it’s pure, it’s unselfish, it’s for nothing. Will you love me for nothing, Lizzie, asking nothing, going nowhere, just because we’re us?’

‘Either this is wisdom or you’re cheating. You’re certainly drunk.’

‘Will you, Lizzie dear?’

‘Yes.’ She took my hands and began kissing them.

‘Lizzie. Lizzie, where are you?’ The voice of Gilbert.

It had become almost dark, though there was still a little light over the sea where the sunken sun was still illuminating the line of white clouds which shone like pale lamps over the waves which were racing landward. The tide was rising.

‘Lizzie, come back, we want you to sing Voi che sapete.’

She was away from me in a moment, a long bare leg stretched. I could see Gilbert now, reaching his hand down to her from above. I stayed where I was.

What a weird uncanny simulacrum of happiness the evening was, like a masque put on by the spirit of melancholy. Would I be able not to go to that house, not to know what was happening, not to burst into their lives like a storm, like rain beating upon them, like thunder?

After a little while I came back towards Shruff End. It seemed to be unusually illuminated and looked like a doll’s house. Gilbert must have bought several more lamps at my expense. Some light fell onto the lawn. As I drew near to it Lizzie was still singing solo. Her true truthful small voice wandered in the air patterning it high up, making utterly still the group of men surrounding her. Perry, who was very drunk, was standing with folded arms near the kitchen door. He checked occasional swaying movements. Gilbert, smiling sentimentally, was sitting cross-legged. Titus was kneeling, his lips apart, his face concentrated with emotion and pleasure, his eyes wide. At first I could not see James. Then I discerned him just below me reclining on the grass. A family party.

Voi che sapete had been over for some time and Lizzie was now singing Roses in Picardy. This was a song which Aunt Estelle used to sing, accompanying herself on the piano in the drawing room at Ramsdens. There came to me, with the peculiar pain of that memory, the idea that James might have asked Lizzie to sing it. Then I remembered that I had told Lizzie I liked it, but not why. Lizzie was singing it for me.

Roses in Picardy was a bit much. As I climbed down onto the lawn James, sensing me, sat up. I sat down near him but would not look at him, though he was now looking at me. After a moment he reached out and touched me, and I murmured ‘Yes, yes’. The song ended.

After that, and until the terrible thing happened, the evening seemed quietly to break up, or to become diffused and gently chaotic like the later stages of a good party. Or perhaps it is all just confused in my memory. There was some light over the rocks, though I do not recall where it came from. Perhaps the clouds were still giving off light. A moon had made its appearance, randomly shaped and spotty, large and pale as a cloud itself. The fierce foam at the edge of the sea seemed luminous. I wandered looking for Lizzie, who had vanished. Everyone seemed to be walking about on the rocks, precariously holding glasses in their hands. An owl was hooting somewhere inland and the intermittent voices of my guests sounded equally distant, equally frail and hollow. I also wanted to find James, because I felt that perhaps I had been rude to him. I wanted to say something to him, I was not sure what, about Aunt Estelle. She had shone somehow upon my childhood. Che cosa è amor indeed. I went to the cliff and watched the waves pounding it. There was a soft growling of thunder. I could see the glowing whitenesses of the wave-crests out to sea. Gilbert’s babbling baritone started up not far off. Stay dainty nymphs and speak, shall we play barley-break, tra la la? Then later on, in another quarter, Titus also by himself could be heard rendering Jock of Hazeldean. There was something absurd and touching about the solipsistic self-absorption and self-satisfaction of these drunken singers. Then at last I heard Lizzie’s voice distantly singing Full Fathom Five. I listened carefully but could get no sense of direction, so loud was the accompaniment of the restless rushing sea. Then I thought, how strangely her voice echoes. It seems almost amplified. She must be singing inside the tower.

I was still fairly near the house and I set off through what was now a somewhat darker scene. The luminous clouds had been quenched, the moon was smaller and a little brighter, not yet quite radiant, in a near-midsummer sky which still had inklings of light. I could hear Lizzie’s voice singing, calling me, over and over again. Ding dong ding dong bell, ding dong ding dong bell… I stumbled along through the rocks, making the little detours which I now knew so well. I reached the bridge over Minn’s cauldron and paused there, as I always did, to look down into the smooth pit where the waves of the incoming tide were lashing themselves in a foaming self-destructive fury. A light seemed to rise here in the spray out of the sea itself. I looked down and it was like looking into a deep dark green glass. And then-suddenly-somebody came up behind me and pushed me in.

As I am writing this story it will be evident that I survived, and I cannot hope to convey what the experience was like, how long it was, how terrible, how hopeless: a primal experience of a total loss of hope. Falling, what the child fears, what the man dreads, is itself the image of death, of the defencelessness of the body, of its frailty and mortality, its absolute subjection to alien causes. Even in a harmless fall in the road there is a little moment of horror when the faller realizes that he cannot help himself; he has been taken over by a relentless mechanism and must continue with it to the end and be subject to the consequences. ‘There is nothing more I can do.’ How long, how infinitely expansible, a second is when it contains this thought, which is an effigy of death. A complete fall into the void, something which I had often imagined on aeroplanes, is of course the most terrible thing of all. Hands, feet, muscles, all the familiar protective mechanisms of the body are suddenly useless. The enmity of matter is unleashed against the frail breakable crushable animal form, always perhaps an alien in this hard mineral gravitational scene.

It was as if each part of the body experienced its separate despair. My back and waist felt the dreadful imprint of the hands which with great sudden violence and indubitable intent propelled me over the edge. My hands reached out in vain for something to clasp. My feet, still touching the rock with which they were parting company, jerked in a weak useless spasm, a last ghostly attempt to retain balance. Then they were jerking in empty space and I was falling head downward, as if my head and shoulders were made of lead. At the same time I felt, or thought as a kind of final thought, the fragility of my head and even knew that my hands were now trying to protect it. My trunk twisted sickeningly, trying in vain to make sense of its position. I actually saw, in the diffused midsummer darkness-light, the creamy curling waves just below me, and the particular spiral of their movement in the confined space. Then I was in the water whose intense cold surprised me with a separate shock, and I made the instinctive swimmer’s movement of trying to right myself; but my body was aware that no swimming could take place in that vortex. I felt as if my neck were breaking as I looked up to see a dome of dark faintly translucent green, the wave above me. I was choking and swallowing water, absorbed in the one task of getting another breath. At the same time I was able to think: this is the end. I fought, my whole body fought, now flailing senselessly in a maelstrom of powers which seemed about to dismember me. Then my head struck violently against the smooth rock and I lost consciousness.

I was lying on my back on the rocks. I opened my eyes and saw a star. I had been having an odd familiar dream, and yet I had never had that dream before. I dreamt that cousin James was kissing me on the mouth. I was aware of the star and of a marvel: that I was breathing. I apprehended my breath as a great thing, a sort of cosmic movement, natural and yet miraculous. Slowly, gently, deeply, decisively, I was breathing. Somewhere beneath me there was a dull steady uproar, and I lay in the cup of it and looked at the star. I felt pain and yet I felt at ease, detached from it. I lay relaxed as if I had woken from some golden sleep and would now perhaps sleep again. I closed my eyes. I breathed.

Mingled with the noise, then separated from it, I heard other sounds, discerned voices, and I knew where I was. I was lying on the flat piece of rock that led to the bridge. I was also aware, but in an entirely detached way, of what had happened to me. I heard someone groan, perhaps Perry, someone sob, perhaps Titus or Lizzie. James’s voice said, ‘Keep back, don’t crowd.’ Another voice said, ‘I think he’s breathing.’ I thought, I suppose I ought to tell them I’m all right. Am I all right? I composed a sentence which I thought I might utter soon: I am perfectly all right, what is this fuss about? I felt curiously unwilling to speak, it seemed so difficult. I realized that my mouth was open. I made an effort of will and closed my mouth, then opened it again and began ‘I’m-’, and could go no further. Some sort of sound had emerged. I made a convulsive movement, an embryonic attempt to rise. I went on breathing.

Someone said, ‘Thank God.’

The voices went on talking.

‘I think we could move him now.’

‘But suppose some bones are broken?’

‘We must keep him warm, he can’t stay here.’

This argument went on for some time. Then they argued about whether they could improvise a stretcher and which was the best way to go. At last they carried me, or hauled me, with what seemed extreme roughness, in a blanket. The journey over the rocks was a nightmare. I tried to say I could walk but (as I gathered later) produced only unintelligible moaning. All my pains had now located themselves. My head was very painful and the movement made lights flash in my eyes. There was a terrible pain like toothache in my arm. I wondered if my arm was broken and the bone was beginning to break through the skin. There was a plate of anguish in my back. My bearers were fantastically inefficient and confused, constantly quarrelling about the route, and slipping and banging me against the rocks.

At last they got me into the kitchen and, with indescribable clumsiness, pulled all my clothes off and pummelled me with towels and pulled other clothes on and had arguments about whether I should be given soup, brandy, aspirins. When they had the bright idea of lighting a fire they could not find any dry wood, then could not find the matches. At last I was lying on cushions on the floor in front of the fire in the little red room. As I became warm I felt less pain, and when I was lying undisturbed I relaxed and began to feel sleepy. I felt relief and something of the strange ease which I had felt as I looked up at the star. And only then, just before I slept, did I remember that it was not an accident. Somebody pushed me.

I must here record something which I only remembered later and which I was then half disposed to think was a dream. I was lying on the floor, underneath a pile of blankets, alone, seeing the room by the flickering light of the fire. I had the urgent feeling that there was something I must do quickly before someone came back, and especially before I should forget some fact of the utmost importance which was about to vanish from my mind. I had to record this important thing, to catch it and hold it before it disappeared. I got up on my knees and reached a pen and paper from the table where I sometimes worked, and I wrote down what it was that I absolutely had to remember. What I wrote covered perhaps half a page or less. I wrote quickly but even then was not sure that I had remembered everything. I carefully folded up the paper and hid it somewhere in the room. All this, that I had written something and hidden it, I recalled rather dreamily upon the following morning. But-I could not remember what the thing was which I had thought so important or what I had written about it, and I could not, though I searched the room minutely, find the writing. An atmosphere of extreme and crucial emotion surrounded ‘the thing’; but although I constantly peered at it in my mind I could not discern what it was. And of the paper there was no trace. Possibly I had dreamt the whole episode. I had, of course, little doubt what the writing, if it existed, must concern: it concerned the identity of my would-be assassin.

‘But how on earth did I get out?’ I asked Lizzie. I was sitting up in an armchair in the little red room drinking tea and eating anchovy toast.

A rather exasperated doctor had arrived about two o’clock in the morning and woken me up and pulled me about and pronounced me sound. He said I had no broken bones and was suffering concussion and shock. I was to rest, keep warm and in future not wander about the rocks at night when I had had too much to drink. This was the first point at which it entered my confused mind that of course no one, except the assassin and me, knew that it was not an accident.

It was now about ten o’clock in the morning. It was very hot again with sounds of thunder, louder, nearer. The lightning flashes came like scarcely visible shocks. I had been visited, asked how I was, congratulated on my narrow escape. There was a slightly brusque air about these felicitations, perhaps because my friends felt they had been quite emotional enough about me last night and now felt more curt, or because they shared the doctor’s view of the matter. There was in fact a slight feeling that I had caused a lot of trouble by my stupidity. An instinct which I had not yet had time to examine advised me not, or not yet, to reveal that my fall was not accidental.

In a little while I would have to decide what to do. I was sorry I could not find my precious piece of paper. But of course I had no doubt about the identity of the murderer.

‘James thinks a freak wave lifted you up,’ said Lizzie.

Lizzie was looking radiant, her long frizzy hair tangled and bushy, growing like a healthy plant. She was wearing a striped shirt and lineny pants roughly cut off at the knee. Even after slimming she was a little too plump for this gear, but I did not object. Her skin shone with health. Only the tiny tight wrinkles round her eyes would have enabled one to guess her age. She shared none of the vague annoyance of the male contingent at my exploit. She was prepared to enjoy the drama in retrospect, since it had had a happy ending, and my survival had in some way increased her sense of owning me.

‘It can’t have done,’ I said, ‘the hole is too deep. Who actually pulled me out?’

‘Oh everybody did. When we heard you shout we all converged, only I got there last. By then Titus and James were pulling you off the bridge towards that flat rock, and Gilbert and Peregrine were helping.’

‘I can imagine how helpful they were. Funny, I can’t remember shouting.’

‘The doctor said you might not remember things which happened just before and just after the accident. It’s an effect of concussion. The brain doesn’t process it or something.’

‘Will the memory come back?’

‘I don’t know, he didn’t say.’

‘I remember being carried back to the house. I think I got as many bruises then as in the water. God, I’m bruised!’

‘Yes, that was awful, you were like a great dark dripping sack, so heavy, and we nearly dropped you down a crevasse. But that was much later.’

‘How, later?’

‘You don’t remember James giving you the kiss of life?’

‘Ah-well-sort of-’

‘You see, we thought you were drowned. He had to go on for about twenty minutes before you began to breathe properly. It was terrible-’

‘Poor Lizzie. Anyway, here I still am, ready to make more trouble for all concerned. Where did you all sleep last night? This place is getting like the Raven Hotel.’

‘I slept on the sofa in the middle room here, James has got your bed, Perry is in the book room and Gilbert is in the dining room and Titus slept outside. There’s just enough cushions and things to go round!’

‘Fancy old James bagging my bed.’

‘They felt they couldn’t get you up the stairs, and anyway the fire could be lit here-’

‘James hasn’t been to see me yet.’

‘I think he’s still asleep, he was rather knocked out.’

‘Well, I’m sorry my misadventure spoilt the party. I can remember you singing Voi che sapete.’

‘I hoped you’d be able to hear it. Oh Charles-’

‘Now, Lizzie, don’t please-’

‘Will you marry me?’

‘Lizzie, do stop-’

‘I can cook and drive a car and I love you and I’m very good-tempered and not a bit neurotic and if you want a nurse I’ll be a nurse-’

‘That was a joke.’

‘You did care about me when you wrote-’

‘I was dreaming. I told you, I love somebody else.’

‘Isn’t that the dream?’

‘No.’

‘She’s gone.’

‘Yes-but now-Lizzie-I’ve just been given a strange marvellous sign-and the way is suddenly-open.’

‘Look, it’s beginning to rain.’

‘Let us just love each other in a free way like I was saying yesterday.’

‘If you go to her, you will never want to see me again.’

It suddenly came home to me that this was true. If I came to possess Hartley I would take her right away. I would hide her, I would hide with her.

We would not go away together, not to Paris or Rome or New York, these were unreal visions. I could not introduce Hartley to Sidney Ashe or Fritzie Eitel or smart Jeanne who now styled herself a princess. I could not even take her out to dinner with Lizzie or Peregrine or Gilbert. She was in this splendid sense insortable. Hartley and I would live alone, secretly, incognito, somewhere in England, in the country, in a little house by the sea. And she would sew and go shopping and I would do the garden and paint the hall and have all the things which I had missed in my life. And we would gently cherish each other and there would be a vast plain goodness and a sort of space and quiet, unspoilt and uncorrupted. And I would join the ordinary people and be an ordinary person, and rest, my God how much I wanted to rest; and this would connect my end with my beginning in a way that was destined and proper. This, just this, was what all my instincts were seeking when I amazed everybody by giving up my work and coming here, here. Hartley and I would be alone together and see almost nobody and our faithfulness to each other would be remade and the old early innocent world would quietly reassemble itself round about us.

Lizzie, to whom I uttered none of the above, went away at last. I could see that she was sustained by hope; whatever I said she could not altogether believe in Hartley. The others looked in, at least Peregrine, Gilbert and Titus did. No one now talked of departure. It looked as if the holiday was to continue. What other joys would it provide? I asked for James but Gilbert told me that James was still resting upstairs, in my bed, suffering from total 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 à 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 might have been reflecting on those ambiguities in our relationship which struck Gilbert so much, might indeed have been put in mind of them by some crude jest of Gilbert’s. I had not thought of this fairly obvious idea before partly because I had been distracted from Titus, partly because I had somehow spread over him a canopy of innocence which derived from the suffering Hartley.

‘Don’t misunderstand me,’ I added.

Titus’s moist discontented mouth twitched in a smile or sneer.

I went on, ‘I want to tell you something.’ I had suddenly decided that I must tell Titus about Ben’s attempt to kill me.

‘If it’s about Mary-’

‘Yes-’ I had not talked to Titus since the awful scene at Nibletts when the ‘delegation’ brought the erring wife back to the hateful husband.

‘All that makes me sick. I’m sorry, forgive me. But I just don’t want to be involved. I left home so as not to be bothered with muddles like that, I hate muddles, and I’ve had them all my life with those two, muddle, muddle, muddle. They’re not bad people really, they’ve just got no sense of how to live a human life.’

‘She’s not a bad person, I agree-’

‘I can’t tell you how sick I felt when we went over to their place in the car, I wish to God I hadn’t come and seen it all, now I’ll never forget it. I felt so humiliated. Mary was being treated like a bit of property or a child. You mustn’t interfere in other people’s lives, especially married people. That’s in a way why marriage is so awful, I can’t think how anyone dares to do it. You’ve got to leave them alone. They’ve got their own way of hating each other and hurting each other, they enjoy it.’

‘If it’s so awful one ought to interfere. You mustn’t be so cynical and pessimistic.’

‘I’m not cynical and pessimistic, that’s the point, I don’t care, you think I think about it, I don’t, I don’t want to see, I don’t want to know, I don’t care a fuck about their bloody misery!’

‘Well, I do, and I’m going to get your mother out of it, I’m going to get her right out.’

‘You tried, and she just squealed to go home. I’d have let her walk. Sorry, I don’t mean that. You made a mistake, that’s all, now forget it. Honestly, I can’t understand why you should want her, I mean I can’t see it, is it sentimental or Salvation Army or something-you can’t want someone like that, I don’t see it, I don’t get the point. There’s that woman Lizzie Scherer who seems to like you a lot, and Rosina Vamburgh-’

‘I happen to love your mother.’

‘Oh-love-you mean-’

‘You may be too young to understand.’

‘I suppose it’s natural for me to be interested in girls in a normal way. When you’re old I daresay it may be different.’

I was stiff and bruised. It had been foolish to come so far. I was feeling tired, weak and exasperated. Titus’s sheer youth, his unspoilt youthful hopeful strength annoyed me to the point of screaming. His long bare brown legs, covered with reddish hairs, emerging from his roughly rolled-up trousers annoyed me. I felt I was losing touch with him, might be sharp with him and then be reduced to making an appeal.

‘I’m sorry it all upsets you so. I partly understand. But I do want your help, well, your support. And I want to tell you something rather important about your father.’

‘About Ben. Not my father. God knows who my father is. I’ll never know. Look, don’t let’s talk about Ben, he bores me. I’m not happy about this thing-’

‘What thing are we onto now?’

‘This thing between you and me. Let’s forget about them. Let’s talk about you and me.’

‘OK. I want to talk about that too. Titus, I’m not trying to kidnap you.’

‘Yes, I know-’

‘We’re free, we two, in relation to each other. There’s no need to define things.’

‘ “Father” is a definition, I should think!’

‘It’s an idea. Let’s just be friends if you prefer it. Let’s wait and see. You know there’s nothing sort of-sinister-here-you know what I mean-’

‘Oh I know that!’

‘I just want to feel that there’s a bond, a special relationship, a special connection.’

‘I don’t see why,’ said Titus. ‘Sorry, I’m being ungrateful-and I’ve been here and eaten your food and drunk your drink I know-but I’ve been thinking-after all, why should you bother about me? If you’d been my real father, great, though even then-well, anyway what I wanted to say was this. I’ve enjoyed meeting you, I’ve enjoyed being here, in spite of the horrors. Later on I’ll maybe think: that was a good time, yes, good. But I want to earn my own living and lead my own life and I want to do it in the theatre. I’m not a silly stage-struck kid, I don’t imagine I’ll be a star, I don’t even know yet if I’ll be any good at acting, but I want to work with theatre people, I guess that’s my scene. This place is fine for a holiday, but I want to get back to London where the real things happen.’

‘Don’t real things happen here?’

‘Oh-you know what I mean. Where does your cousin live?’

‘In London.’ Again the bite of the serpent of jealousy. Had James got Titus on a lead? There had seemed to be a bond between them from the start. I said quickly, ‘Please don’t talk to any of the others about, you know-’

‘Of course not, not a word, you don’t have to say that, for Christ’s sake!’

‘Good-’

‘The thing is, I don’t want you to feel any special obligation to me. If you have obligations I’ll have to have obligations. I don’t want to live here at your expense any longer, I want to get cracking. I don’t mind your helping me a bit if you like. Maybe you could help me get into an acting school. If I could get a place in a school I could get a grant and I’d be independent. Maybe it’s a bit of a fiddle to ask you to get me in, but I don’t mind fiddling that much. Then I can be on my own and we can be friends or whatever you want, but I’ve got to be on my own, see?’

How weak and helpless I felt before that brutal innocent free power. He would wriggle away before I had even learnt how to love him or learnt the trick of holding him.

‘Yes, I’ll help you into an acting school, but we’ll have to think about it. I’ll come with you to London later on. Meanwhile maybe you can help me here. But I want to tell you something about Ben, something that you ought to know. You say he’s not a bad person, but he is. He’s a wicked violent man. He tried to kill me.’ I wanted to impress Titus and to shake his appalling detachment.

‘To kill you? How?’

‘He pushed me in. I didn’t fall accidentally into that sea hole. He pushed me.’

Titus showed little emotion. He leaned forward scratching an insect bite on his ankle. ‘Did you see him?’

‘No, but I felt him!’

‘How do you know it was him?’

‘Who else could it have been? He said he’d kill me the last time we met!’

‘I can’t imagine him doing that, it’s not in character, it’s most unlikely,’ said Titus in a maddeningly bovine manner.

‘I was pushed! Someone pushed me in the back!’

‘Are you sure? You could have fallen backward on a rock and then slipped into the water and it would feel like being pushed. You’d had some drinks, you know. And the doctor said you might be a bit confused about the whole business afterwards.’

I felt too tired and wretched to go on. It was foolish to have walked so far. ‘All right, Titus, let’s leave it there. Don’t repeat what I’ve said to anyone.’

Titus looked at me out of his narrowed stone-coloured eyes. ‘You see it’s not so much fun as you expected, playing at fathers and sons.’ This was the kindest thing he had said.

I said, ‘I’ll help you about acting school. We’ll talk of that later. Now bugger off, will you.’

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.’

‘As in a family, what you were saying about Titus?’

‘Yes. Or sometimes they just seem destined. A Buddhist would say you had met in a previous life.’

‘Would you say you were a superstitious man? And don’t say it depends what you mean by superstition.’

‘In that case I can’t answer you.’

‘Do you believe in reincarnation? Do you think that if one hasn’t done well one will be reborn as a-as a-hamster-or a-woodlouse?’

‘These are images. The truth lies beyond.’

‘It seems to me a creepy doctrine.’

‘Other people’s religions often seem creepy. Think how creepy Christianity must seem to an outsider.’

‘It seems so to me,’ I said, though I had never thought this before. ‘Do Buddhists believe in life after death?’

‘It depends-’

‘Oh all right!’

‘Some Tibetans,’ said James, ‘believe-’ He corrected himself. He now always spoke of that country in the past tense as a vanished civilization. ‘Believed that the souls of the dead, while waiting to be reborn, wander in a sort of limbo, not unlike the Homeric Hades. They called it bardo. It can be rather unpleasant. You meet all kinds of demons there.’

‘So it’s a place of punishment?’

‘Yes, but a just automatic sort of punishment. The learned ones regard these figures as subjective visions, which depend on the sort of life the dead man has led.’

‘ “For in that sleep of death what dreams may come”…’

‘Yes.’

‘But what about God, or the gods? Can’t a soul go to them?’

‘The gods? The gods themselves are dreams. They too are merely subjective visions.’

‘Well, at least one might hope for some happy illusions hereafter! ’

‘Just possibly,’ said James, with a judicious air, as if he were discussing the likelihood of catching a train. ‘But very few people… are without… attendant demons…’

‘And does everybody go to bardo?’

‘I don’t know. They say that you have a chance at the moment of death.’

‘A chance?’

‘To become free. At the moment of death you are given a total vision of all reality which comes to you in a flash. To most of us this would be-well-just a violent flash, like an atom bomb, something terrifying and dazzling and incomprehensible. But if you can comprehend and grasp it then you are free.’

‘So it’s useful to know you’re going. You mean free to-?’

‘Just free-Nirvana-out of the Wheel.’

‘The wheel of reincarnation?’

‘The Wheel, yes, of attachments, cravings, desires, what chains us to an unreal world.’

‘Attachments? You mean-even love?’

‘What we call love.’

‘And do we then exist somewhere else?’

‘These are images,’ said James. ‘Some say Nirvana is and can only be here and now. Images to explain images, pictures to explain pictures.’

‘The truth lies beyond!’

We were silent then for a little time. James’s eyelids dropped but I could still see the glint of his eyes. I asked jocosely, ‘Are you meditating?’

‘No. If I were really meditating I would be invisible. We notice each other because we are centres of restless mental activity. A meditating sage is not seen.’

‘Yes, distinctly creepy!’ I could not make out whether James was serious. I presumed he was not. The conversation was making me feel thoroughly uncomfortable. I said, ‘When do you plan to leave? Tomorrow, I imagine? Apart from anything else I want my bed back!’

James said, ‘Yes, I’m sorry, you can have the bed tonight. I’ll push off tomorrow. I’ve got a lot of things to do in London. I have to prepare for a journey.’

So my guess had been right! James had not really left the Army, he was going secretly back to Tibet! I wanted to indicate tactfully to him that I knew. ‘Oh, a journey, of course! I think I can imagine-however, I ask no questions-!’

James was silent, now looking at me out of his dark unshaven face and his dark eyes. I glanced quickly at him and looked away. I decided to tell him about Ben. ‘You know-James-about my falling into that hole-’

‘Minn’s cauldron. Yes.’

‘I didn’t fall accidentally, I was pushed.’

James considered. ‘Who pushed you?’

‘Ben.’

‘You saw him?’

‘No, but somebody pushed me and it must have been him.’

James looked at me thoughtfully. Then he said, not at once, ‘Are you certain? Are you sure (a) that you were pushed and (b) that it was Ben?’

I was not going to be (a)d and (b)d by James. Nothing seemed to touch him, not even attempted murder. ‘I just thought I’d tell you. OK, forget it. So you’re going tomorrow, that’s fine.’

At that moment I heard a sound which I shall never forget. I sometimes hear it still in daylight hallucinations. It tore into my consciousness with its own immediate evidence of some frightful event, and the room was filled with fear as with fog. It was Lizzie’s voice. She shrieked somewhere out in front of the house. Then she shrieked again.

James and I stared at each other. James said, ‘Oh no-’ I rushed out, got entangled in the bead curtain and began to tumble down the stairs. I ran panting across the hall and then at the front doorway nearly fell as if a dense cloud of weariness and despair had met me and all but made me faint. I could hear James running down the stairs behind me.

Something extraordinary seemed to be happening on the road. The first person I saw was Peregrine, who was standing beside Gilbert’s car and looking along the road in the direction of the tower. Then I saw Lizzie, leaning on Gilbert’s arm, walking slowly back towards the house. Up near the tower there was a car and a group of people standing looking down at something on the ground. I thought, there’s been a road accident.

Peregrine turned and I shouted at him, ‘What’s happened?’

Instead of replying he came forward and tried to grasp my arm and detain me, but I shook him off.

James was now at my heels. He was wearing my silk dressing gown, the one that Hartley had worn. He too said to Perry, ‘What’s happened?’

I paused. Peregrine said, to James, not to me, ‘It’s Titus.’

James went up to the yellow Volkswagen and leaned against it. He mumbled something like, ‘I should have held on-’ Then he sat down on the ground.

Peregrine was saying something to me but I ran on towards the corner, passing Lizzie who was now sitting on a rock, with Gilbert kneeling beside her.

I reached the group of people. They were strangers, and they were looking down at Titus who was lying on the grass verge. But he had not been hit by a car. He was drowned.

I cannot bear to describe what happened next in detail. Titus was already dead, there can be no doubt of that, although I did not want to believe it at once. He looked so whole, so beautiful, lying there limp and naked and dripping, his hair dark with water, someone had drawn it away from his face, and his eyes were almost closed. He was lying on his side showing the tender fold of his stomach and the bedraggled wet hair of his front. His mouth was slightly open showing his teeth and I remember noticing the hare lip. Then I saw a dark mark on the side of his forehead, as if he had been struck.

I ran back towards the house shouting for James. James was still sitting on the ground beside the car. He got up slowly. ‘James, James, come, come!’ James had revived me. Surely he could revive Titus.

James looked dazed and ghostly. Peregrine had to assist him to walk.

‘Oh quick, quick, help him!’

By the time James reached the corner one of the strangers, they were tourists, was already attempting to do something. He had turned Titus over onto his front and was rather ineffectively pressing his shoulders.

Peregrine said, as if speaking for James, ‘Kiss of life is better.’

James knelt down, he seemed unable to speak, and motioned that Titus should be turned over again. There was a moment of confusion, several people talking at once, then the sound of a police siren. It turned out later that a car on the way to the Raven Hotel had taken the news on and the hotel had rung the police.

A brisk efficient policeman took charge, told us to stand back, began himself to attempt mouth to mouth respiration. An ambulance arrived.

James went away and sat down on the grass. A policeman began to ask Peregrine and me if we knew who Titus was. Peregrine answered his questions.

It appeared that the tourists, going to bathe from the rocks in Raven Bay, had seen Titus’s body being carried by the tide round the corner from the tower, and they had swum out and pulled it ashore.

There was nothing anyone could do. Men put Titus on a stretcher and slid him into the ambulance. Several cars had stopped. The police car went away, to go to Nibletts to inform the parents. The verdict of the inquest was death by misadventure. Titus died from drowning after a blow on the head. It was assumed that a wave had dashed him against a rock. What exactly had happened was never clarified.

However by then it had become dazzlingly clear to me that Titus had been murdered. We had to do with a homicidal madman. The hand that had failed to strike me down had succeeded in striking him. But I spoke of this, for the time, to no one.

Titus’s body was conveyed to a hospital in a town many miles away, and was there received into the merciful anonymity of cremation.

History