Hartley is Charles’s girlfriend from adolescence, and when he rediscovers her, she becomes the focus of his present life. She is the catalyst for much of the plot, as Charles fixates on her in an attempt to reclaim the happiness of their youth. As a first-person narrator, Charles does his best to create the impression that Hartley is unable and unwilling to take care of herself and commit to her own happiness. However, his representation of her reveals a quiet, nonconfrontational character who knows what she wants but isn’t always able to communicate it. 

Hartley’s language as she describes her marriage is plain and unrhetorical. “I live in long-times, not in sudden present moments, don’t you see—I’m married, I’ve got to go back to where I am” (326). Charles takes this as an acknowledgment of a broken marriage, but this statement also reveals how she has organized her life. She married Ben when she was young and has stayed 36 years, and to her, what she has managed to build is worth preserving. She has moments of uncertainty, where she potentially sees another path, but overall, she is realistic about what she has and wants, telling Charles that his idea of a life together is a “miracle in the mind” (273).

While Charles sees a woman who agrees with him but can’t admit it, the narrative offers a portrait of a woman who doesn’t want him in her life but lacks the force needed to eject him. She knows the shape of his love because she once felt the same kind of pressure from him as a girl. Her account of why she left him is not the romantic recantation Charles wants, as she admits that she found him “sort of bossy” (213), and she didn’t want to be an actor’s wife.

Against Charles’s framing, Hartley emerges as a woman who made and paid for her choices and is unwilling to spend her remaining years undoing them at his invitation. Although Hartley is a static character, the narrative’s representation of her provides an arc that shifts from presenting her as a passive woman who needs rescuing to one who escapes from Charles to Australia, revealing a stronger, more certain woman than Charles represented her to be.

Ben is Hartley’s husband, and Charles establishes him as the antagonist of the story, as he stands in the way of renewing a relationship with Hartley. After eavesdropping on an argument between Ben and Hartley, Charles describes Ben as a “vile cruel half-mad ingenious torturer” (222). Ben is an ex-soldier, and when James recognizes him, the narrative reveals that he received a Military Medal for taking a German camp in the Ardennes (346). Both Hartley and Titus reveal that Ben is violent and occasionally abusive to both of them, and he is also jealous, believing that Titus is Hartley and Charles’s son, the product of a long-standing affair.

Ben is a static, round character, and like his wife, his speech is straightforward. His refrain, “I want my wife” (287), echoes Hartley’s own repeated statements that she wants to go home. Ben does not argue Hartley’s case, does not invoke love, and does not claim to make her happy, but the marriage is what it is, and he intends to keep it. Again, his attitude echoes Hartley’s own. When Charles offers reasons—that she is unhappy, that he is cruel, that Hartley wants to leave—Ben simply repeats the demand.

His belief that Titus is Charles’s son, sustained over 18 years against all evidence, offers an example of Jealousy as a Distorting Lens. He never confirms it; he never disconfirms it. The suspicion has organized his treatment of Titus and his marriage from the start, and Hartley’s late and frightened admission of having known Charles only confirms what he had already decided. Despite his portrayal and Hartley and Titus’s admissions of abuse, Titus also clarifies that he believes his mother isn’t blameless in the arguments. The narrative supports this more complicated view of the marriage, resisting Charles’s simplistic categorization of Ben as antagonist, with moments that show a different side, as when he adopts the dog to make Hartley happy. Throughout the novel, Ben and Hartley offer a tense and uneasy portrait of marriage, but their decisions always align, showing their shared mindset.

Titus is Hartley and Ben’s adopted son. He left home a few years before the novel begins and returns at the age of 18. He first appears climbing the tower on Charles’s property, a picture of youth and health. Scrambling down the side of the tower, he asks Charles, “Are you my father?” (245), and he accepts Charles’s negative answer with visible disappointment. His search for his real father has produced nothing—the adoption society’s records were lost in a fire—and Charles is the last plausible candidate. Despite this fact, however, Titus remains with Charles, and they build a relationship based on their connection through Hartley. Titus’s appearance at Charles’s doorstep gives Charles a glimpse of an alternate future in which he and Hartley remained together and had a child.

Titus is also important to Charles because he becomes another way to reach Hartley. Titus sees Charles’s plan for what it is and names it: “I’m to be a lure—a kind of—hostage” (257). When Charles protests that Titus is also wanted for himself, Titus accepts the qualification without much warmth: “I don’t want your money or your bloody influence, I didn’t come here for that!” (258). Titus’s hesitations and half-finished sentences are later revealed to be the product of a tumultuous and abusive childhood, spent watching his parents fight about him.

However, Titus also holds to his own moral code, refusing to let Charles direct his part in the unfolding drama. His refusal to enter Nibletts during Hartley’s return is the clearest moral line any character draws in the novel. He turns his back on the bungalow, revealing that although he is participating, he refuses to play an active role in his parents’ marriage.

Titus is a static character who represents youth and an alternate life for Charles, but his drowning is the only true tragedy of the novel, and the event, which appears to be no one’s fault, refuses closure. Charles also feels uncharacteristic culpability for Titus’s death. Although he refuses to accept responsibility for most of his past actions, Charles guiltily ruminates about wanting to appear young and strong, and so not warning Titus about the cliff. He sees Titus’s death as the result of his vanity, and this revelation is one of the few instances in the novel in which Charles accepts responsibility and feels the full weight of the effect of his actions on others’ lives.

James is Charles’s cousin and lifelong rival, and Charles’s account of him is shaped by that rivalry. He is also the only person in the novel who acts on Charles’s behalf without expecting anything for himself. He knows Charles well and reveals himself to be both insightful and empathetic. He is a source of wisdom for Charles, asking probing questions that force Charles to contemplate his role and responsibility for the events of the novel. Charles has been jealous of James his entire life, and he has difficulty reconciling James’s good influence and advice with the competitiveness he feels.

When James arrives at Shruff End, he understands the situation immediately, partly because he understands Charles himself. He warns Charles against the rescue plan and organizes the delegation that returns Hartley. He recognizes Ben from his war record and treats him as a fellow soldier, which lowers the temperature of the confrontation. After Charles is pulled from Minn’s cauldron, James resuscitates him, confusing Charles’s feelings about his cousin even further.

James offers Charles a different perspective on unfolding events, based in a life philosophy formed during his time in Tibet. His adoption of Buddhism isn’t superficial or temporary, but the novel also delves into mysticism through his character. He tells Charles a story from the Himalayas: He had learned to raise his body temperature by concentration, took a sherpa over a snowy pass, and miscalculated, resulting in the sherpa’s death. His role in the novel is to provide a moral and philosophical center, but his character also highlights the cultural appropriation of Tibetan culture and Buddhism by Westerners like himself. After his death, Charles moves into his apartment and is able to inhabit Charles’s life, surrounding himself with artifacts from James’s travels. Although James himself is an earnest practitioner of Buddhism and takes its precepts and wisdom seriously, his apartment full of artifacts again illustrates the colonial cooption of culture; to Charles, they look like souvenirs, and a visit from museum officials who look longingly through the apartment reinforces the idea that, however earnest, James is still guilty of colonial acquisitiveness.

Lizzie, an actor, loved Charles for years, but it was an unrequited love of which Charles unabashedly took advantage, keeping their relationship active only when he wanted it. She was made unhappy by him for years, but by the time he writes the letter that opens the novel, she has built a life without him, finally moving on. She has set up household with Gilbert Opian on the principle that love and sex can be uncoupled, and that what she needs from a partner is tenderness without the threat of abandonment.

Lizzie’s appearance in the novel illustrates Charles’s selfish nature, as he returns to her when he is bored, even at the cost of her happiness. Her role in the narrative, in which she is constantly leaving and returning, highlights Charles’s power over her while also developing his character as self-absorbed. His treatment of her foreshadows his treatment of Hartley, as their feelings and words are disregarded, underscoring his narrow perspective, in which his version of the truth is the only one.

Rosina is Charles’s former lover and Peregrine’s ex-wife. She is the only character Charles has wronged in the way he believes he has been wronged by Hartley, and her sense of injustice has left her seeking revenge. He took her from Peregrine deliberately, breaking up their marriage, kept her until he tired of her, and left her for Lizzie. She also blames him for her decision to have an abortion. When she breaks into Shruff End, she has been holding these grievances for years.

Her threat to Charles is not jealousy of Hartley—she sees Hartley accurately enough to dismiss her as competition—but a claim on the promise Charles made when he wanted her: “I am not going to permit you to marry anybody else. I shall hold you to your promise” (104). The pledge was casual, and now it is a contract. She intends to enforce it by making any other relationship impossible. She acts as a foil for Charles because, like him, she is only interested in her own narrative about their history and disbelieves whatever he says. Like Charles doesn’t listen to Hartley, she doesn’t listen to Charles, and she subjects him to the same treatment Hartley is receiving from him.

Her reconciliation with Peregrine, when it comes, is precipitated by his attempt on Charles’s life. The violence on her behalf, the desire to fight for her, is what she had wanted from him for years. Of all the characters in Charles’s circle, she is the most like Charles, a fact that he never seems to understand.