The Sea, the Sea

History
ONE

I DID NOT LOOK at the crabs after all. I became obsessed with the idea of carrying a chair and table out to the tower, and I set off across the rocks with the little folding table which I had moved from the middle room to the drawing room. This object soon began to seem absurdly heavy, and I found to my annoyance that the smooth steep faces of the rocks were too difficult to climb while I was holding the table in one hand. Eventually I let the thing fall into a crevasse. I must try to pioneer some easier way to get to the tower.

I climbed onward and sat on a wet rock overlooking Raven Bay. The sun was still shining and the seaward sky was still grey. The smooth foamless sea was rising and falling against the rocks with a gentle inviting rhythm. The longer shadows made the big spherical stones of the bay stand out, half dark, half gleaming. The long quite pretty façade of the Raven Hotel showed very clear and detailed in the odd brilliant light.

I was just getting over my annoyance about the table when I noticed a man walking along the road in the direction of Shruff End, having just turned the corner from the bay side. He was dressed in a smart suit and a trilby hat, and looked in that vivid landscape like an incongruous figure in a surrealist picture. I surveyed his oddity. Walkers on that road were even rarer than cars. Then he began to look familiar. Then I recognized him. Gilbert Opian.

My first instinct was to hide, and in fact I moved into the moist salt-smelling interior of the tower, under the bright round of sky, feeling a small unpleasant shock. However I could not seriously regard Gilbert as a menacing figure and it then occurred to me that of course he was bringing Lizzie; so I hurried out again and began to scramble over the rocks in the direction of the road. By the time I reached the tarmac Gilbert had seen me and turned back. We met each other, he smiling.

Gilbert was wearing a light-weight black suit with a striped shirt and flowery tie. When he saw me he took off his hat. It was three or four years since I had seen Gilbert and he had aged a lot. The mysterious awful changes which alter the human face from youth to age may gently dally and delay, then act decisively all at once. Gilbert in young middle age looked rosy and boyish. Now he was all wrinkled and humorous and dry, with that faint air of quizzical cynicism which clever elderly people often instinctively put on, and which may be quite new to them, a final defence. When I last saw him he still wore a fresh unselfconscious air of childish conceit. Now his face was full of wary watchful anxiety masquerading as worldly detachment, as if he were cautiously trying out his new wrinkles as a mask. Though podgier, he still contrived to look handsome, and his white curly hair still had a jaunty look, had not learnt to seem old.

I was wearing jeans and a white shirt which had escaped from them. Seeing Gilbert’s tie, his tie-pin, his (or was I mistaken?) discreet make-up, I felt a quick contemptuous pity for him, together with a sense of how fit I was, how hard. I could see Gilbert taking these things in, the pity, the fitness. His moist light-blue faintly pinkish eyes flickered anxiously between their dry layers of wrinkles.

‘Darling, you look marvellous, so brown, so young-my God, your complexion’-Gilbert always speaks in a rich fruity ringing voice as if addressing the back of the stalls.

‘Have you brought Lizzie?’

‘No.’

‘A letter, message?’

‘Not exactly-’

‘What, then?’

‘Is that funny-looking house yours?’

‘Yes.’

‘I wouldn’t mind a drink, guv’nor.’

‘Why have you come?’

‘Darling, it’s about Lizzie-’

‘Of course, but get on with it.’

‘It’s about Lizzie and me. Please, Charles, take it seriously and don’t look like that or I shall cry! Something has really happened between us, I don’t mean like that sort of thing, but like real love like, God, in this awful world one doesn’t often have such divine luck, sex is the trouble of course, if people would only search for each other as souls-’

‘Souls?’

‘Like just see people and love them quietly and tenderly and seek for happiness together, well I suppose that’s sex too but it’s sort of cosmic sex and not just to do with organs-’

‘Organs?’

‘Lizzie and I are really connected, we’re close, we’re like brother and sister, we’ve stopped wandering, we’re home. Till Lizzie came I was just waiting for the next drink, gin then milk, then gin then milk, you know how it used to go, I thought it would go on till I dropped. Now everything’s different, even the past is different, we’ve talked all our lives over together, every damn thing, we’ve talked it all out, we’ve sort of repossessed the past together and redeemed it-’

‘How perfectly loathsome.’

‘I mean we did it reverently, especially about you-’

‘You discussed me?’

‘Yes, how could we not, Charles, you’re not invisible-oh, please don’t be cross, you know how I’ve always felt about you, you know how we both feel about you-’

‘You want me to join the family.’

‘Exactly! Please don’t be sort of dry and sarcastic and make a joke of it, please try to understand. You see, I believe in miracles, now, dear Charles, miracles of love. Love is a miracle, real love is. It’s far above the sort of boundaries and limits we were always tripping over. Why define, why worry, why not just be simple and free and loving with other people? We aren’t young any more-’

‘Have you given up boys, no more dangerous adventures?’

Gilbert, who had been gazing at the open neck of my shirt all the time he was speaking, raised his eyes to mine. His eyes rolled and swung in an odd characteristic manner, perhaps the effect of drink, and he had a way of wrinkling his nose and pulling down the corners of his mouth which he had copied from Wilfred Dunning. He went through a sort of painful humorous grimace. How selfconscious these old actors’ faces are. ‘Listen, king of shadows, Lizzie has made me happy. I’m new, I’m changed like they say in religion. Of course I’m not a totally reformed character and I wouldn’t mind a drink absolutely now. But listen, Lizzie won’t give me up, you can’t break this bond between us. If you think it’s trivial or funny you haven’t understood. All you can do is make both of us very unhappy by being violent and cruel. Oh yes, we’re frightened of you, yes, like we always were. Or you can make us very happy and make yourself happy just by being gentle and kind and by loving us and letting us love you. Why ever not? And if you make us miserable you’ll feel wretched yourself in the end. Why not opt for happiness all round? Christ, darling, can’t you see, it’s a choice between good and evil!’

Gilbert’s tirade, which was rather longer and more mawkish and repetitive than what I have set down here, was of course absurd. But what really annoyed me was the idea of Gilbert and Lizzie analysing each other and discussing in God knows what beastly detail their relations with me. I should add here that as far as the theatre went, which in his case was most of the way, I had made Gilbert. He owed me everything. And now this puppet was talking back and positively threatening me with moral sanctions! However, I laughed. ‘Gilbert, come back to reality. I am amused by your touching description of your relations with Lizzie, but really it won’t do. You claim to be changed, but you didn’t answer my question about boys. I am totally sceptical about your ménage and I don’t see why I should respect it. Why come and bother me with all this drivel about brotherhood and cosmic sex? This matter concerns me and Lizzie. It is nothing to do with you, and I’m shocked that she even told you about it. Even if you are fond of each other, sisters don’t have to get their brothers’ permission for everything. I summoned her, not you. She and I will decide what to do, and you’re not part of it. If you hang around here you’ll simply get burnt.’

As I spoke I was becoming conscious of that old familiar possessive feeling, the desire to grab and hold, which had been somehow blessedly absent from my recent thoughts about Lizzie. Perhaps that was a miracle, or maybe just lack of imagination, the ‘abstract idea’ she had accused me of. This reflection increased my annoyance with Gilbert. He was making me coarsen and define an impulse which had been splendidly generous and vague. This bickering was mean and undignified, but now I could not stop.

‘Charles, can’t we go into your funny house and have a drink?’

‘No.’

‘Well, do you mind if I sit down?’ Gilbert hitched his trousers and sat down carefully on a rock. He laid his hat on the grass and surveyed his well-polished mud-fringed shoes. ‘Charles dear, let’s be calm about this, shall we? Do you remember sometimes when it was all rather fraught and you were furious with us, you used suddenly to stop and say, “All right, this is the English, not the Turkish, court”?’

‘Gilbert, just keep out of my way, will you? If Lizzie wants to come she’ll come, if not not. You don’t understand what this thing is all about, between Lizzie and me, how can you? I don’t want it messed around with your dreams of miracles and perfect love. I don’t believe in your set-up, I strongly suspect you’re deceiving yourself and deceiving Lizzie too. I’m beginning to feel it may even be my duty to bust up your rotten arrangement. So don’t provoke me. And take your bloody hand off my sleeve.’

‘Darling, don’t give way to anger, you frighten me so, you always did-’

‘I don’t think I frighten you enough.’

‘You always had such a bloody bad temper and it didn’t help any of us ever. I know you thought it did, but that was an illusion. There is a worse way and there is a better way here. God, didn’t you read Lizzie’s letter?’

‘Did she show it to you?’

‘No, but I know what she said.’

‘Did she show you my letter?’

‘Er-no-’

‘All this makes me sick!’

‘Charles, you can’t take Lizzie away from me, don’t be so conventional, what does ordinary sex matter here, you’d respect a marriage, well perhaps you wouldn’t, but you must believe Lizzie and at least respect her, it’s a sacred bond and she won’t leave me, she’s said so a thousand times-’

‘A woman can lie a thousand times.’

‘Lizzie’s right, you despise women.’

‘Did she say that?’

‘Yes. And she thinks you’re not serious. You can’t take Lizzie away, but you can spoil things, you can make her mad with misery and regret, you can make her fall in love with you again in a rotten hopeless way, you can make both of us perfectly wretched-’

‘Gilbert, stop. I’m not going to play your game or enter your muddle. You can muddle away and dream away by yourself. Why isn’t Lizzie here to tell me what she thinks and wants? She’s afraid to see me because she loves me.’

‘Charles darling, you know I care for you very much, you could simply murder my peace of mind-’

‘Oh damn your peace of mind-’

At that moment Lizzie appeared. She materialized as a dark blur in the corner of my eye, in the evening sunshine, and I knew it was she before I turned to look at her. And as soon as I saw her that old wicked possessive urge jumped inside me for joy and I knew that the battle was over. But of course I showed no feeling apart from a little air of annoyance.

Gilbert picked up his hat and crushed it onto his face. He said to Lizzie, ‘You said you wouldn’t, you said you didn’t want to, oh why did I let you come-’

I took in Lizzie, but looked beyond her at the sea, which was so calm and blue and quiet after the stupid yapping of my argument with Gilbert. I turned and walked along the road, and then leapt onto the rocks and began to make my way as fast as I could in the direction of the tower. At once I could hear the soft scrabbling pattering sound of Lizzie following me. She did well, considering I knew the rocks and she did not, and reached the grassy patch beside the tower very soon after I did, panting and with the strap of one sandal broken. As I turned round I saw Gilbert beginning to slip and slither on the rocks in his polished London shoes. He disappeared into a crevasse. There was a distant sound of lamenting and cursing.

I went on through the stone doorway into the interior of the tower. Lizzie followed and suddenly we were alone together in that strange greenish light, with the white round eye of the sky up above us, and cool grasses about our ankles. The moist atmosphere inside the tower had produced a quite different vegetation, longer lusher grass and dandelions and some white nettles which were just coming into flower.

Lizzie was wearing a very thin white cotton dress, straight like a shift, and she was holding her handbag close up against her breasts and shuddering a little. She looked slightly slimmer. Her abundant fuzzy cinnamon-brown hair was loose and tangled, and as the breeze blew it I could see the whiteness of her scalp. She was blushing extremely, but she stood very upright and stared at me, and her terracotta-pink mouth was firm and she looked brave, like a noble girl facing execution. She too looked older, older at any rate than the radiant teasing boyish creature I most remembered. But there was a contained canny shrewdness in her face which gave it form and still made it handsome: the strong brow and the sweeping line to the delicate almost retroussé nose. Her bright light-brown eyes were red-rimmed with recent tears. As I gazed at her I felt triumphant and delighted; but I looked grim.

Lizzie dropped her eyes, reached out one hand to the wall, balanced to shake her broken sandal off, and put her bare foot down into the grass. She said, ‘Did you know that there was a table there among the rocks?’

‘Yes, I put it there.’

‘I thought the sea might have brought it in.’

I was silent, gazing at her.

In a moment, in a whisper, she said, ‘Oh, I’m sorry-I’m sorry, I’m sorry-’

I said, ‘So you discussed me with Gilbert?’

‘I didn’t tell him anything that mattered’-she was looking down at her bare foot, and gently touched a white nettle with her toes.

‘Liar.’

‘I didn’t, I-’

‘You lied to him, then?’

‘Oh don’t-don’t-’

‘Why didn’t you want to see me?’

‘I was afraid-’

‘Afraid of love?’

‘Yes.’

We were both standing very stiff, the wind coming in through the open door tugging at her skirt, and at my errant shirt.

I recalled her chaste dry clinging kisses and I desired them now. I wanted to seize her in my arms and shout with delighted triumphant laughter. But I did not, and when she made a slight movement towards me I forbade it with a quick gesture. ‘You must go now-back to London with Gilbert.’

‘Oh, please-’

‘Please what? Dear Lizzie, I don’t want to be unkind, but I want things to be clear, I always did. I don’t know what we can do or be for each other now, but we can only find out if we both take the risk of being wholehearted. I want all your attention. I can’t share you with someone else, I’m amazed that you ask it! If you want to see me you must get rid of Gilbert, and get rid of him properly. If you want to stay with Gilbert then you won’t see me, and I mean that, we won’t meet again. That seems fair enough. Let me know soon, will you? And now please go, your friend is waiting.’

Lizzie, once more hugging her bag and her breasts, started talking very quickly. ‘I must have time-I can’t just leave Gilbert like that, I can’t, I can’t hurt him so-I want you to understand-people don’t understand and they’ve been beastly to us-but you must understand then you’ll see-’

‘Lizzie, don’t be stupid, you were never stupid before-I don’t want to “understand” your situation, it’s your business. But you must either get out of it and come to me or stay in it and not come to me.’

‘Oh-Charles-darling-darling-’ She suddenly turned, the stiffness left her body and it was that of a dancer. She threw her handbag onto the grass and in a moment she would have been in my arms, only I stepped back and again forbade it. ‘No, I don’t want your hugs and kisses. You must go away and think.’

A few drops of rain fell and long dark stains appeared on her dress. She touched her blazing checks, and then with a continuation of her motion swooped and picked up her bag.

‘Go now, Lizzie child, I don’t want us to have a messy conversation or an argument. Goodbye.’

She gave a little wailing cry, then turned and fled out of the doorway.

I waited a moment or two and when I came out she had almost reached the road. A yellow Volkswagen was now parked on the grass, pointing towards Raven Bay. I saw Gilbert jump out and open the passenger door. Lizzie plunged into the car. Both doors slammed and the car leapt away round the corner. A couple of minutes later it reappeared on the road to the hotel-I watched until it had passed the hotel and vanished where the road turned inland. Then I went back into the tower and picked up Lizzie’s broken sandal. She must have had a sore foot by the time she reached the road.

It is now two hours later and I am sitting in the little red room. I have just written out my account of Lizzie’s visit as a story and it has somehow excited and pleased me to put it down in this way. If one had time to write the whole of one’s life thus bit by bit as a novel how rewarding this would be. The pleasant parts would be doubly pleasant, the funny parts funnier, and sin and grief would be softened by a light of philosophic consolation.

I am moved by having seen Lizzie and am wondering whether I have been clever or foolish. Of course if I had taken poor Lizzie in my arms it would all have been over in a second. At the moment when she hurled her handbag away she was ready to give in, to make every concession, to utter every promise. And how much I wanted to seize her. This ghost embrace remains with me as a joy mislaid. (I must admit that, after having seen her, my ideas are a good deal less ‘abstract’!) Yet perhaps it was wise, and I feel satisfied with my firmness. If I had taken Lizzie then, accepted her acceptance, there would still have remained the problem of Gilbert, and I would have had the task of getting rid of him. Much better to let Lizzie do this, and do it promptly under pressure of the fear of losing me. I want that situation cleared up and cleared away, and meanwhile I prefer not to think about it. I cannot attach much importance to Lizzie’s other ‘objection’, expressed in her letter, her fear that I might break her heart! That risk will not deter her. And I think on reflection that this was just an excuse, an arguing point put in to gain time. She must have seen at once that she had to cashier Gilbert, and given his slimy tenacity this might have seemed a difficulty. Have I really been such a Don Juan? Compared with others, certainly not.

As for my stern policy with Lizzie, I really have nothing to lose. If she delays too long I shall go and fetch her. If she still tries to say no I shall not take it for an answer. My threats of ‘never again’ are empty of course, but she will not think so. If she really decides in the end not to come then that will prove she is not worthy of me. In spite of it all I can let Lizzie go. If she won’t, she won’t.

I think I shall now walk round the bay to the Raven Hotel and ask them about delivering some wine. If I like the menu I may even have dinner there. I am beginning to be hungry. I suddenly feel pleased as if all will be well.

Shortly after this something very disconcerting happened, and then… But first…

I walked to the Raven Hotel and asked for a delivery of wine and bought a bottle of some Spanish red stuff to take home. I looked at the rather unsatisfactory dinner menu, but was feeling so hungry that I attempted to enter the restaurant, only a waiter prevented me because I was not wearing a tie. I was tempted to tell them who I was, but did not; let them discover later. I caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror: I had tucked in my shirt tails, but I did look rather a tramp in stained jeans with jagged uncombed hair and an old cardigan on inside out. I set off again for home.

The walk to the hotel had been pleasant, but now it was colder and darker, and by the time I was nearing Shruff End the sun had set, though there was still a lot of light in the sky, now a radiant occluded azure and clear of clouds. The evening star was huge and brilliant over the sea, near to a pale lustreless moon, and faint dots of other stars were appearing. Some rather large bats were flitting around over the rocks. I could hear the sea booming into Minn’s cauldron as I passed by. I approached the house by the causeway, carrying the bottle in one hand.

The house of course was dark within but stood out rather starkly in the brilliant twilight, its awkward tall thin shape appearing against the high horizon of the sea. When I was about half way across the causeway I thought I saw a movement at one of the downstairs windows. I stopped and stood perfectly still, staring at the house. It was difficult to look at it because of the vividness of the sky behind it, and my eyes kept jumping and refusing to focus. For a moment or two I could see nothing clearly, but I was now sure that I had seen that movement, something moving inside, in the book room. I moved very slowly forward, blinking and staring. Then I saw, momentarily but plainly, a dark figure standing inside the house, at the window, looking out. The figure dissolved into darkness and my eyes seemed blinded. I dropped the bottle and it slid down the steep side of the rock and quietly shattered below. I walked quickly back across the causeway to the road.

There was someone or something inside the house. What was I to do? I could now hear the soft grating sound of the waves, like a gentle scratching of fingers upon a soft surface. And I felt upon the empty darkening road a shuddering sense of my utter solitude, my vulnerability, among these silent rocks, beside this self-absorbed and alien sea. I thought of walking back to the Raven Hotel and staying the night. But this seemed absurd; and would they give me a room, with my wild appearance and no luggage? I then thought I might walk on to the village, to the Black Lion-but-and then? I had no friends in the village. A further more dreadful realization came to me. I would be afraid to walk anywhere now in this gathering dark along this awful empty road. There was nowhere else to go but into the house.

I began to walk slowly back across the causeway. I had left the back door open, but the front door was locked, so I would have to walk round to the kitchen. Then how quickly could I find matches, light a lamp? Supposing there was an intruder inside, he would hear me stumbling round to the back and would be waiting for me. How stupid it would be to be accidentally killed by a frightened burglar! I hesitated, but went on because by now my fear of the outside was as great as my fear of the inside, and most of all I feared my own fear and wanted desperately to end it or at least change it. Perhaps I had, in this funny light, imagined the whole thing, and would soon be laughing at myself and eating my supper.

I recalled where there was an electric torch on a shelf inside the kitchen door, and I pictured where the lamp was, and the matches near it. I got a last glimpse of the sky, full of subdued light, and then I began noisily fumbling with the handle of the door. I blundered in, leaving the door open, found the torch, then the lamp and the matches. I lit the lamp and turned it up. Silence. I called out ‘Hello there’. The foolish frightened cry echoed in the hollow house. Silence.

I walked to the door, holding up the lamp, and looked into the hall. Nothing. I walked quickly to the front room where I had seen the ‘figure’. It was empty. I searched the other downstairs rooms. Nothing. I tried the front door. Still locked. Then I began more slowly to mount the stairs. I had always somehow felt that if there was anything sinister in the house it was located on that long upper landing. As I was mounting the last few steps I heard a sudden and prolonged clicking sound. The bead curtain had been moved.

I stopped. Then went mechanically on, my mouth open, my eyes staring. As I stood at the end of the landing I lifted up the lamp again, and stared into the uncertain space before me, where the light of the lamp and the last outside twilight filtering through the open door of my bedroom made a dense foggy amalgam. I could make out the darkly shaded alcove, the outline of the archway, the dotted mass of the bead curtain. Then suddenly, I saw, beside the wall at the far end, between the curtain and the door of the inner room, the dark motionless figure of a woman. My first and clear thought was that I was seeing a ghost, the ghost of the house, at last! I gave a choked grunt of fear and wanted to run back down the stairs but could not move. I did not drop the lamp.

The figure moved, turned more fully towards me. It was a real woman, not a ghost. Then in a flash it looked familiar. Then I could see the face in the lamplight. It was Rosina Vamburgh.

‘Good evening, Charles.’

I was still trembling and quickly digesting my fear. I felt intense relief mixed with rising anger. I wanted to curse aloud but I remained silent, controlling my breathing.

‘Why, Charles, you’re all of a tremble, what’s the matter?’ Rosina speaks, off the stage, if such a woman can ever be said to be off the stage, with an odd slight, I suppose Welsh, accent which is all her own.

The house felt terribly cold, and for a second I felt I hated it and it hated me.

‘What are you doing here, why are you in my house?’

‘Just paying a visit, Charles.’

‘Let me see you off then.’

I went away down the stairs and on into the kitchen where I lit another lamp. I went into the little red room and lit the wood fire. Hunger, temporarily suspended by fear, returned. I came back into the kitchen and turned on the calor gas stove to warm the room a little, and set out a glass, a plate, bread, butter and cheese and a bottle of wine. Rosina had followed me and was standing near the stove.

‘Won’t you give me a drink, Charles?’

‘No. Go away. I don’t like people who break into my house at night and play at ghosts. Just go, will you. I don’t want to see you!’

‘Don’t you want to know why I’ve come, Charles?’ Her repetition of my name was hypnotic and menacing.

‘No.’

‘You’re surprised, you’re curious.’

‘I haven’t seen or heard of you for two years, three years, and even then I think I only met you at a party. Now you suddenly turn up in this perfectly hateful manner. Or is it supposed to be funny? Am I expected to be glad to see you? You aren’t part of my life. Just clear off, will you.’

‘I am part of your life, you know. Yes, you are frightened, Charles. It’s interesting, it’s a revelation, it’s so easy to frighten people, to bewilder them and persecute them and terrify them out of their wits and make their lives a misery. No wonder dictators flourish.’

I sat down, but I could not eat or drink in her presence. Rosina found herself a glass, poured out some wine, and sat down opposite to me at the table. I was still cold with anger and upset about my fear but now that I was a little less hungry I did feel a grain of curiosity about Rosina’s strange manifestation of herself. Anyway, how could I get rid of her if she refused to go? It was wiser to placate her and persuade her to go of her own accord. I began to look at her. She was certainly, in her odd way, an extremely handsome woman.

‘Dear Charles. You are recovering. I can see it. That’s right, have a hearty supper, bon appétit.’

Rosina was wearing a sort of black tweedy cloak, with slits through which she had thrust her bare forearms. Her hands were covered with rings, her wrists with bracelets, which were glinting as she lightly tapped her fingers together. Her dark wiry hair, looking almost black in the lamplight, was pinned up in some sort of Grecian crown. She had either grown it longer or helped it out with false tresses. Her face was heavily made up, patterned with pinks and reds and blues and even greens, looking in the subdued localized light like an Indian mask. She looked handsomely grotesque. Her mouth, enlarged by lipstick, was huge and moist. Her squinting eyes sparkled at me with malign intensity. She was playing a part: putting on the controlled dramatic display of emotion which seems to the actor so moving, to the spectator often so unconvincing.

‘You look a right clown,’ I said.

‘That’s good, dear, that’s like old times.’

‘Do you want anything to eat?’

‘No, I had high tea at my hotel.’

‘Your hotel?’

‘Yes. I’m staying at the Raven Hotel.’

‘Oh. I was there this evening. They wouldn’t let me into the dining room.’

‘I’m not surprised, you look like a filthy student. Seaside life suits you. You look twenty. Well, thirty. I heard them discussing you in the bar. You seem to have annoyed everyone already.’

‘I can’t have done, I haven’t met anyone-’

‘I could have told you the country is the least peaceful and private place to live. The most peaceful and secluded place in the world is a flat in Kensington.’

‘You mean the waiter turned me out even though he knew who I was?’

‘Well, he may not have recognized you. You aren’t all that famous. I’m far more famous than you.’

This was true. ‘Stars are always more famous than those who create them. May I ask what you are doing at the Raven Hotel?’

‘Visiting you.’

‘How long have you been there?’

‘Oh ages, a week, I don’t know. I just wanted to keep an eye on you. I thought it might be rather fun to haunt you.’

‘To haunt me? You mean-’

‘Haven’t you felt haunted? Not that I’ve done very much, no turnip lanterns, no dressing up in sheets-’

I wanted to shout with exasperation and relief. ‘So it was you-you broke the vase and the mirror, and you’ve been creeping round at night and peering at me-’

‘I broke the vase and the mirror, but I haven’t been creeping round at night, I wouldn’t come in here in the pitch dark. This house is creepy.’

‘But you did, you looked at me through the glass of that inner room.’

‘No, I didn’t. I never did. That must have been some other ghost.’

‘You did, someone did. How did you get in?’

‘You leave your windows open downstairs. You shouldn’t, you know.’

I suddenly then, as I was staring at her, saw a vision: it was as if her face vanished, became a hole, and through the hole I saw the snake-like head and teeth and pink opening mouth of my sea monster. This lasted a second. I suppose it was not really a vision but just a thought. My nerves were still terribly on edge. I could hear the sea again, louder. But as I could hardly suppose that Rosina had arranged for me to be haunted by a sea monster I decided not to mention it.

‘But why did you persecute me in this way? And why did you decide to let me discover you now, if you did?’

‘I saw Lizzie Scherer in the village today.’

‘Yes, she was here, she’s gone. But what has that got to do with it? I can’t understand what this is all about.’

‘Can’t you, Charles? Have you forgotten? Let me remind you.’ Rosina leaned across the table, laying her hands flat and pointing her long fingernails at me like little spears. The nails were painted a dark purple. The bracelets grated on the wooden table. ‘Have you forgotten? You promised that if you ever married anybody you would marry me.’

Fear returned to me, a vista of cold dismay, the emergence in life of the unpredictable and dangerous. Rosina’s unnervingly blue eyes were sparkling, her rings were glistening. What she said was perfectly true.

I said lightly, ‘Did I? I can’t remember. I must have been drunk. Anyway I’m not proposing to get married.’

‘No? And you promised that if you ever settled permanently with anyone you would settle with me.’

This also was unfortunately true.

Rosina smiled. She has slightly irregular long, white teeth and a kind of ‘smile’ whereby she advances her lower teeth to meet her upper ones and draws back her lips. The effect is terrible. ‘You were not drunk. And you remember, Charles.’

I was trying to think what line I had better adopt with this dangerous woman. I had certainly not expected her to reappear in my life. But now that she had done so I recognized and respected her style. The broken vase, the smashed mirror were not idle portents. Why these reminders now, what had set it all off? The reference to Lizzie was the clue, though unfortunately I had no time to reflect upon it. If that was her drift, suppose I told her that Lizzie’s presence here meant nothing? This would only put off the crisis whose nature I was just beginning to grasp. Had I, in my recent thoughts, considered Lizzie in the hypothetical light of a permanent partner? Possibly. Had I thought seriously of marrying Lizzie? No. But Rosina’s terrorism was intolerable, an impertinence. I decided it was better to be aggressively firm and direct straightaway.

‘Look here, just stop this, will you. I forget what I said exactly but it was momentary emotional nonsense, as you perfectly well know. One can’t bind oneself like that and I’m not bound. Those were just words, not a promise.’

‘Promises are words. You are bound, Charles. Bound.’ She repeated the word softly with an intense emphasis.

‘Rosina, don’t talk rubbish. People say all sorts of things during love affairs which they don’t mean, you know that. Or if you prefer, all right I promised, but I shall break my promise just as soon as it suits me, like everybody else.’

‘So you are going to marry her?’

‘Who? What are you talking about? Do you mean Lizzie?’

‘So it’s true?’

‘No, of course I’m not going to marry her.’

‘So you’re not going to marry her?’

‘Rosina, will you leave me alone? Whatever put this idea into your head anyway?’

‘Oh, as to that,’ said Rosina, snapping her fingers, ‘it’s all over London. She had to crow. She’s gone round telling everybody that you’re plaguing her with proposals.’

I did not believe this of course.

Rosina went on, ‘Gilbert Opian has rushed about trying to make up some sort of party against you. Everyone is very amused.’

Gilbert was the culprit.

‘And I gather you didn’t even know Lizzie was living with Gilbert. Surprise, surprise. Everybody knew that. If you aren’t interested enough to know who she’s living with you aren’t interested enough in her to marry her.’

‘I’m not going to marry her.’

‘You’ve said that twice.’

‘I mean-oh go away, Rosina. And they aren’t lovers.’

‘You believe that?’

‘I mean I shall do what I want to do.’

‘You’ve always known who I was living with.’

‘You flatter yourself. I don’t care what you do or who you’re with so long as you keep away from me. Now clear off.’

Rosina did not move, except that she stretched out one hand across the table until the long pointed nail of her middle finger touched my shirt sleeve. Then I could feel the nail sticking into my arm. I sat rigid, not wincing. ‘You have not understood,’ she said. ‘Why do you think I have come to you now? I did not enter your house and break things just to amuse myself and laugh with you afterwards. I want to tell you this. You may or you may not marry me, but I am not going to permit you to marry anybody else. I shall hold you to your promise.’

‘You can’t. You are living in a dream world.’

‘Oh you can go through a marriage ceremony, or settle down with a lovebird of your choice, but you will not live happily ever after. If you set up with Lizzie I shall spoil your life as you spoilt mine. You will not be able to hide from me. I will be with you all the time, I will be in your mind day and night, I will be a demon in your life and in her life. Until she cries with misery because she ever met you. It is very easy to frighten people, Charles. I know, I have done it. It is easy to maim people and utterly destroy their peace of mind and cripple all their joy. I shall not tolerate your marriage, Charles. If you wed this wench, or if you keep her as your love, I shall dedicate my life to spoiling yours, and I shall find it very easy.’

She drew her hand back. A stain of blood appeared on the sleeve of my shirt. These were not the idle momentary ravings of a jealous woman. This was hatred, and hatred can destroy, it has its own magic. Rosina had the will and the power to do exactly what she threatened. And as I thought this I felt with a pang that this black will was, when it was otherwise directed, the very thing which had made me love her. She was smiling again, showing her white fishy teeth.

I took a reasonable tone, which did not deceive her, for she could feel my fear. ‘Your threats are rather premature, but if you bother me for any reason I shall certainly retaliate. Why have a war on your hands, why waste your life and your time? This is hate not love. You’re a rational woman. Forget it. Why make yourself miserable with these paroxysms of peevish jealousy?’ These words were a bad mistake.

Rosina struck the table with the flat of her hand and her eyes sparkled with violence. ‘You dare to talk of jealousy! As if I cared about that little lump you are running after! All right, you left me, me, to take up with her, and I haven’t forgotten. I could have maimed her or maddened her, only I knew you’d get tired of her, and you did, you get tired of everybody. You wrecked my marriage, you prevented me from having children, for you I made a slaughter of all my friends. And when you’d begged me on your knees to leave my husband, and when I’d left him, you abandoned me for that baby-face. Do you not remember what our love was like? Have you forgotten why you uttered those words?’

‘Mercifully one forgets one’s love affairs as one forgets one’s dreams.’

‘You never had any imagination, no wonder you couldn’t write plays. You are a cold child. You want women but you are never interested in the people you want, so you learn nothing. You’ve had love affairs but somehow you’ve stayed innocent, no not innocent, you are fundamentally vicious, but somehow immature. Your first mistress was your mother, Clement was baby-snatching. But don’t you see that it has all been a mirage? Those women loved you for your power, your magic, yes, you have been a sorcerer. And now it’s over-I am the only one who loved you for yourself and not your invincible locks.’

‘This speech would be more impressive if you had uttered it earlier and not just because you’ve heard a rumour about Lizzie!’

‘I was waiting to see if you would really give up the world, as you boasted you would. I wanted you stripped and alone. Then you might have been almost worthy of me. Well, what a fool I was to think that I would ever be able to admire you for anything except that facile sorcery! But the fact remains that you made that promise to me in a moment of truth, in an absolute of love such as few men are privileged to have in their lives ever. And that promise belongs to me, it is all I have got in exchange for my broken marriage and for the love which I poured out for you as I have never done for any man. I have got that promise and I will hold it and use it even if there is nothing I can do with it except make your life a desolation and a ruin.’

I got up suddenly, and she became tense and actually lifted up her glittering hands like clawed paws. She looked like a ballet dancer playing a cat.

‘Listen, my cross-eyed beauty, it’s late, just get along will you, go back to the Raven Hotel. I’m going to bed. And please don’t creep around this house any more breaking things and peering through panes of glass. I have no plans for getting married or settling down with any female.’

‘Do you swear that?’

‘No arrangement exists. Lizzie is living with Gilbert. That’s how it is. And of course I never proposed to her, that was just a crazy rumour. Now go, I’m exhausted, and you must be too after that long performance.’

She got up and pulled her cloak more closely around her, her arms emerging through the slits, gripping each other in front. She stood for a moment glaring at me. ‘I will go. But tell me you believe what I have said.’

‘I believe some of it.’

‘Tell me you believe what I have said.’

‘I believe it. Now for Christ’s sake get out.’

I walked out with the lamp towards the front door and she followed. I opened the door. The light of the lamp revealed a mist which was waiting outside like a presence. It was impossible to discern the end of the causeway.

‘I’ll light you to the road,’ I said, and I went back for the electric torch. ‘But look, I’d better walk with you to the hotel. Oh hell.’

‘You needn’t,’ she said in a dull lifeless tone. ‘My car is near.’

I lighted her across the causeway with the torch. The mist was less thick on the road. ‘Where is your car?’

‘It’s here, in this place behind the rock.’

We walked to it and she got in. I said, ‘Goodnight.’

She said, ‘Remember.’

She switched on the headlights and I made out the form of a low red two-seater. She backed the car onto the road. As she turned it now and as it began to move in the direction of the hotel, a figure suddenly materialized, someone who had evidently been walking along the road. Rosina had stepped hard on the accelerator and the car leapt suddenly forward and the pedestrian was caught for a moment in the headlights, cowering back against the rock. The car swerved with a screech and then roared away down the road. I dropped my torch into the long grass and was left in darkness.

The pedestrian whom Rosina had almost run down was the old village woman who had so strangely reminded me of Hartley. Now in that moment of bright light, I saw. The old woman did not resemble Hartley. She was Hartley.

History