Iris Murdoch - Under the Net

Since I knew how much the whole project would displease him, I had felt myself bound to conceal Hugo's identity. I had presented the thing to Dave as a dramatic exercise, rather remotely based on conversations which I had had with a variety of people. But now in a little while I found myself being regarded in certain circles as a kind of sage, and many of my friends pressed me to let them see the manuscript. Eventually I did show it to a few more people and began to get used to the idea that it should circulate a little. All this time I was still working on it, and drawing additional matter from my current conversations with Hugo. I had continued to keep my friendship with Hugo completely secret from all my other friends. I did this at first out of a jealous desire to keep my remarkable find to myself, and later on also because I feared that Hugo might discover my treachery.

People were now constantly suggesting to me that I should publish the thing, at which I just laughed. But the notion was attractive to me all the same. It was attractive at first in the way something can attract one when one knows one will never do it. As publication was so absolutely out of the question I felt it was quite safe to brood upon it in imagination. I thought what a remarkable book it would make, how original, how astonishing, how illuminating. I amused myself inventing titles for it. I would sit holding the manuscript in my hands, and then I would fancy it reproduced a thousand-fold. I suffered continually at that time from a fear of losing the manuscript, and although I typed out two or three copies I still felt it very likely that somehow or other they would all be destroyed and the thing lost for ever--which I couldn't help thinking would be a pity. Then one day a publisher approached me directly with a proposal for its publication.

This took me by surprise. I had never been spontaneously approached by a publisher before and such condescension rather turned my head. It occurred to me that if this book were a success, which I couldn't doubt, this might smooth my way considerably in the literary world. It's easier to sell junk when you're known than works of genius when you're unknown. If I could leap to fame in this way my career as a writer would be made. I set this idea aside, telling myself that the project was an impossible one. I couldn't palm off Hugo's ideas as my own. Most of all, I couldn't use material drawn from my intimacy with Hugo to present the public with a work which would fill Hugo himself with repulsion and disgust. But the idle dreams of publication which I had nourished earlier now unmasked themselves as a real will. I became obsessed with the notion that I would publish. A sort of fatality drew me towards it. I saw all my past acts as leading inevitably to this end. I remembered a drunken evening during which I passed in fantasy through every stage of the process which should bring the dialogue into print. By then the idea had too great a reality in imagination for it to be long before it should become actual. I rang up the publisher at his home.

He knew of my reluctances, and arrived early the next morning with the contract, which I signed with a flourish of abandon and a splitting headache. After he had gone I took out the manuscript and looked at it as one looks at the woman for whom one has lost one's honour. I entitled it The Silencer and added an author's preface to the effect that I owed many of the ideas contained therein to a friend who should be nameless, but that I had no reason to believe that he would approve of the form in which I was presenting them. Then I sent the thing away and left it to its fate.

While this crisis had been gathering, Hugo had begun to put his money into films. He started to do this in a vaguely philanthropic way, in order to give the British film industry a leg up. But then it all began to interest him, and by the time Bounty Belfounder was founded Hugo knew his way about pretty well in the film world. He was in fact a remarkable man of business. He inspired universal confidence and had an iron nerve. Bounty Belfounder went ahead like wildfire. It had an experimental stage, if you remember, largely I think inspired by Hugo himself, when it produced a lot of silent films of the kind which used to be called 'expressionist'; but it soon settled down to making quite ordinary films, with occasional experiment departures. Hugo didn't talk to me much about his film ventures, though we were seeing each other frequently all this time. I think he was a little ashamed of being so successful. I, on the contrary, felt proud of him for being so versatile, and took an especial pleasure in going to the cinema to see, before the credit titles, the familiar shot of City Spires, and hear the crescendo of City Bells, while the words Presented by Hugo Belfounder grew solemnly upon the screen.

At first my secret activity had seemed to make no difference at all to my friendship with Hugo. Our talks continued, with all their old freshness and spontaneity, and our subject matter was inexhaustible. As the book grew and gained strength, however, it seemed to drain some of the blood away from my other intimacy. It began to constitute itself a rival. What had seemed at first an innocent suppressio veri began to grow into a very poisonous suggestio falsi. The knowledge that I was deceiving Hugo took the frankness out of my responses to him even infields quite unconnected with this particular deception. Hugo never seemed to notice anything, and I continued to take great pleasure in his company. But when at last I had signed the contract and the book had gone away to the publisher I felt I could hardly any more look Hugo in the face. After a day or two I got used to seeing him, even under these conditions, but an awful melancholy began to hang over our association. I knew now that our friendship was doomed.

I wondered whether I dared, even at this stage, tell Hugo the truth. Once or twice I felt myself on the brink of a confession. But each time I drew back. I was unable to face his scorn and anger. But what most deterred me was the feeling that after all the thing was still not totally irrevocable. I could still go to the publisher and ask to be released from my contract. By offering him some pecuniary compensation I could probably even now get out of the thing altogether. But at the thought of this my heart sank. My only consolation lay in a dreadful fatalism--and the notion that I was still a free agent, and that the crime could still be avoided, was too intensely painful to entertain. The mere idea that Hugo might demand that I withdraw the book caused me such distress that I could not bring myself even to contemplate telling him of my action; and this was not because I had any longer a desire to see the book in print. The sweetness of this prospect had been killed for some time now by my desolation at the thought of losing Hugo. It was just that I could console myself with nothing except the dreadful certainty, which I hugged closer to myself every day, that the die was cast.

I fell during this period into such a melancholy that, although I saw Hugo as often as ever, I found it extremely difficult to talk to him. I would sometimes sit for hours in his presence, silent except for such brief responses as were needed to keep him talking. Hugo soon noticed my depression and questioned me about it. I feigned illness; and the more worried and solicitous Hugo became concerning my condition, the greater grew my torment. He started sending me presents of fruit and books, tins of glucose and iron tonic, and implored me to see a doctor; and indeed by this time I had made myself really ill.

On the day when the book was to be published I was beside myself. I had an appointment to meet Hugo that evening, on the bridge as usual. By about midday I felt that evidence of my treachery must be displayed in every bookshop in London. I thought it likely that Hugo would not yet have seen the book. But it could only be a matter of a short time before he would see it, as he often went into bookshops. Our appointment was at five-thirty. I spent the afternoon drinking brandy--and about five o'clock I went out into Battersea Park. A sort of calm had descended on me, as I knew now that I should not meet Hugo that day, or any other day ever again. A tragic fascination drew me to the riverside, from which I could see the bridge. Hugo appeared punctually and waited. I sat on a seat and smoked two cigarettes. Hugo walked up and down. After a while longer I saw him cross the bridge to the south bank and I knew he was going to my lodgings. I lighted another cigarette. Half an hour later I saw him walk slowly back across the bridge and disappear.