Iris Murdoch - Under the Net

The General Post Office was spacious, cavernous, bureaucratic, sober, and dim. We entered hilariously, disturbing the meditation of a few clerks and of the people who are always to be found there at late hours penning anonymous letters or suicide notes. While Lefty bought stamps and dispatched cables I organized the singing in round of Great Tom is Cast, which continued, since I never have the presence of mind necessary to stop a round once it is started, until an official turned us out. Outside we studied the fantastic letter-boxes, great gaping mouths, where one can watch the released letter falling down and down a long dark well until it lands upon a tray in a lighted room far below. This so fascinated Finn and me that we decided we must write some letters forthwith, and we returned inside and bought two letter cards. Dave said he already received more letters than he wanted and there was no sense in inviting yet more by pointless acts of correspondence. Finn said he was going to write to someone in Ireland. I started to write to Anna, pressing the card vertically against the wall of the Post Office; but I could think of nothing to say to her except I love you, which I wrote several times over, very badly. Then I added, you are beautiful, and sealed the letter. I put it well into the mouth of the box and let it go and it fell, turning over and over like an autumn leaf.

'Come on!' said Lefty.

'Where?'

'Here,' he said, and led us suddenly down beside the edge of the Post Office. In a daze I saw Lefty ahead of me rising from the ground. He was on top of a wall beckoning to me. The way I felt at that moment I could have walked up the side of the Queen Mary. I followed, and the others followed me. A moment later we found ourselves in what seemed like a small enclosed and much overgrown garden. In the light summer darkness I discerned a fig tree which leaned across an iron gateway. Grass grew knee deep about fallen white stones. We sat. Then I realized that we were in what had once been the nave of St Leonard Foster. I lay back in the deep grass and my eyes filled with stars.

A little while later Lefty was saying to me, 'What you need is to become involved. As soon as you do something and knock into people you'll begin to hate a few of them. Nothing destroys abstraction so well as hatred.'

'It's true,' I said lazily. 'At present I hate nobody.'

We spoke in low voices. Near by Finn and Dave lay murmuring to each other.

'Then you ought to be ashamed,' said Lefty.

'But what could I do?' I asked him 'That would have to be studied,' said Lefty. We treat our members scientifically. We ask about each one: where is the point of intersection of his needs and ours? What will he most like doing which will also most benefit us? Of course, we ask for a certain amount of simple routine work as well.'

'Of course,' I said. I was watching Orion rising through a forest of grass.

'In your case,' said Lefty, it's fortunately quite plain what you can do.'

'What?'

Write plays,' said Lefty.

'I can't,' I said. 'Won't novels do?'

'No,' said he. 'Who reads novels now? Ever tried to write a play?'

'No.'

'Well, the sooner you start the better. Aimed at the West End, naturally.'

'It's not easy to get a play put on in the West End,' I told him.

'Don't you believe it!' said Lefty. 'It's just a matter of making certain routine concessions to popular taste. Before you start you can make a scientific analysis of a few recent successes. The trouble with you is you don't like hard work. Give it the right framework and then you can fill in any message you please. You'd better come round and discuss it with me some time next week. Now then, when can you come?'

Lefty produced his diary and began turning over its thickly marked pages. I tried to think of some reason why this was impossible, but I could think of none. Orion was putting his foot into my eye.

'Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday...' I said to him 'But I promise nothing.'

'I'm pretty filled up,' said Lefty. 'What about Friday at about three-fifteen? I'm free till four, and with luck a bit longer. Come to the Ind. Soc. office.'

'All right, all right,' I said. I could see the pallor of Lefty's face turned towards me.

'You'll forget,' he said. And he took out a card, and wrote down the time and place, and pushed it into my pocket.

'And now,' he said to me, 'perhaps you'll tell me what it was you were doing in these parts?'

This question moved me, partly because it was the first direct indication I had had that Lefty was human, and partly because it reminded me of Hugo, who had been unaccountably absent from my mind during the last few hours. I dragged myself to a sitting position. My head felt as if it were on a spring and someone were trying to pull it off. I clutched it violently with both hands.

'I was looking for Belfounder,' I told him.

'Hugo Belfounder?' said Lefty, and there was a note of interest in his voice.

Yes, do you know him?' I asked.

'I know who you mean,' said Lefty.

I looked towards him, but his enormous eyes showed only as two black patches in the pallor of his face. 'Did you see him this evening?' I asked.

'He didn't come into the Skinners',' said Lefty.

I wanted to ask Lefty more questions; I wondered how he saw Hugo. As a capitalist? But my head claimed all my attention for the moment.

It was a bit later again, it must have been some time after two, when Finn expressed a desire to go swimming. Lefty had been talking to Dave, and I was just getting my second wind. The night was faultlessly warm and still. As soon as Finn suggested this idea it seemed to all of us except Dave an irresistible one. We discussed where to go. The Serpentine was too far away and so was Regent's Park, and the St James's Park area is always stiff with police. The obvious thing was to swim in the Thames.

'You'll get swept away by the tide,' said Dave.

'Not if we swim when it's on the turn,' said Finn. This was brilliant. But when was it on the turn?

'My diary will tell us,' said Lefty. We crowded round while he struck a match. High tide at London Bridge was at two fifty-eight. It was perfect. A moment later we were climbing the wall.

'Watch out for police,' said Lefty. 'They'll think we're going to rob a warehouse. If you see one, pretend to be drunk.'

This was rather superfluous advice.

Across a moonswept open space we followed what used to be Fyefoot Lane, where many a melancholy notice board tells in the ruins of the City where churches and where public houses once stood. Beside the solitary tower of St Nicholas we passed into Upper Thames Street. There was no sound; not a bell, not a footstep. We trod softly. We turned out of the moonlight into a dark labyrinth of alleys and gutted warehouses where indistinguishable objects loomed in piles. Scraps of newspaper blotted the streets, immobilized in the motionless night. The rare street lamps revealed pitted brick walls and cast the shadow of an occasional cat. A street as deep and dark as a well ended at last in a stone breakwater, and on the other side, at the foot of a few steps, was the moon again, scattered in pieces upon the river. We climbed over on to the steps and stood in silence for a while with the water lapping our feet.

On either side the walls of warehouses jutted out, cutting our view and sheltering the inlet where the river came to us thick with scum and floating spars of wood, full to overflowing in the bosom of London. There was a smell as of rotten vegetables. Finn was taking off his shoes. No man who has faced the Liffey can be appalled by the dirt of another river.

'Careful,' said Lefty. 'Keep well down on the steps, then no one can see us from the street. Don't talk aloud, and don't dive in. There may be river police around.' He pulled his shirt off.