Iris Murdoch - Under the Net

I had come back from Paris on the morning of the fifteenth. I had found Dave and Mars at Goldhawk Road and heard from Dave the story of how he and Finn had spent the previous afternoon at Sandown Park where Lyrebird had obliged us all by winning at such fancy odds. They had placed the bet at the course, and as soon as Dave collected the money he had given Finn his share, which amounted to two hundred and ten pounds. Finn had stowed this sum, which was largely in five-pound notes, in odd pockets all over his person. This he had done in silence, somewhat with the air of a man donning a parachute for a dangerous jump. After that he had shaken Dave mutely by the hand for some time. Then he had turned and disappeared into the crowd. He had not returned to Goldhawk Road that night, and Dave had thought it possible that he had gone to join me, until I had arrived on the following morning and, after looking about for Finn, asked for news of him. Since then he had not reappeared. I was not yet seriously worried. Finn was probably on the drink. I had known him go off once before on a blind which lasted for three days and from which he was brought home in an ambulance. I didn't imagine that anything serious could have happened to him. All the same I wanted him very badly to come back.

After my arrival I had written at once to someone at the Club des Fous asking him to try to find out where Anna was and to let me know. But I had not had any reply. I had also tried fruitlessly to contact Hugo. There was no answer from his flat, and the studio said that he had gone into the country. Dave had shown me a copy of the letter which he had sent to Sadie about Mars, which was a masterly compound of friendly argumentation and menace. But so far Sadie had shown no sign of life either. I had written to Jean Pierre congratulating him on his success. After that I had lain down on the camp-bed. The day of my appointment with Lefty had come and gone, and since then he had rung up twice and asked for me; and Dave had told him that I was ill, which I suppose was true.

The Hospital wall was now almost entirely in shadow. There was only a triangle of gold at the top of the window where I could still see it touched by the evening sun. Dave opened the door and called to Mars, and I could hear him dancing and barking in the hall at the prospect of his evening walk. When Dave brought Mars back I might consider going to sleep. Or perhaps it would still be too early; and so I might sleep and wake again before the night had really started. I had a horror of this. I rose and tidied my bed just to wake myself up a bit. I lowered myself slowly back on to the bed and lay very still until it had ceased to tremble. Mars was back, looking closely into my face, and bringing with him a disquieting freshness from the outside world. His wet nose and his eyes were shining, and the light brown markings upon his brow gave him a perpetual look of expectation. He barked once. 'Be quiet!' I told him. The disturbing sound rang in my ears for long afterwards as the structure of silence recomposed itself.

It was the following morning and I was waiting to hear the postman come. I did this every morning now. My watch had stopped, but I could tell the time from the Hospital wall. It was nearly time. It was time. Then I heard his feet on the stairs and the rattle of the letter box, and a moment later a heavy bump. There must be a lot of letters this morning I heard Dave going into the hall. This was the only real moment of the day. I waited. There was silence. Now Dave was approaching my door. He looked in.

'Nothing for you, Jake,' he said.

I nodded my head and turned it away. I could see that Dave was still standing in the doorway. Mars had pushed past him into the hall.

'Jake,' said Dave, 'for the Lord's sake get up and do something, anything at all. I'm a nervous wreck thinking of you lying there all the time. I can't do philosophy when you are making me feel so nervous.' I said nothing.

Dave waited a little longer. Then he said, 'Don't mind me, Jake.

Who am I to speak? But you ought to get up for the sake of yourself.'

I shut my eyes, and a bit later I heard the door close. Then I heard Dave going out with Mars. Then it was later still and Mars was in the room again, and Dave had gone away perhaps to his summer school. I decided to get up.

At first I couldn't find my clothes. The room seemed to be a chaos of unrelated objects. I found myself automatically beginning to unpack Dave's rucksack. I kicked it away. Then I saw my trousers in a heap in the corner where Mars had been using them as a bed. They were covered with short black hairs. I shook them out and put them on. Then I opened the window wide and did some breathing exercises. The heat wave was over and it was a brisk rapid day with a summer wind. I leaned out and looked up at the sky, far off above the top of the Hospital wall, and saw the blue and white haste of the small clouds. Mars was prancing round me and whining with pleasure and jumping up at me with his rough paws. When he stood on his hind legs he was almost as tall as I was. But then, as I mentioned before, I am not very tall. I tidied the room a little. Then I found my coat and left the house with Mars.

Goldhawk Road was hideous. The traffic made a continual jagged uproar and the pavements were crowded with people jostling past each other in front of shop windows full of cheap crockery and tin cans. I managed to get with Mars as far as the Green, and I sat down under a tree upon the hard earth which had tried to produce a little grass and all but failed. Mars ran about and played with some other dogs. He kept coming back to assure me that he had not forgotten me. I fixed my eyes upon the sky above the Shepherd's Bush Empire. With an extraordinary speed the curdling masses of white cloud were tumbling down behind the roofs. The whole sky had put on a gigantic and harmonious haste which made the scurrying of the people in the streets about me seem nervous and paltry. I got up and walked several times round the Green, escorted by Mars. Then I took him back to the flat. It made me too anxious to have him with me in the middle of so much traffic, and I had forgotten to bring his lead. I telephoned to Hugo's flat and to the studio, but with the same negative results as before. After that I went out again and walked about by myself until the pubs opened.

As I was corning back towards Dave's flat I found myself passing the front of the Hospital, and I paused. The Hospital is a great white concrete structure with regular square windows and a flat roof. It was built not long ago and pictures of it appeared in the architectural reviews. There are a number of wings or transepts which jut out in different directions from the main block and cunningly divert the eye from its monotony of line. In the wells or gullies created by these transepts they have planted gardens, with grassy lawns and small trees which will one day be large trees, the preservation of which will be a matter debated endlessly by hospital committees torn between the therapeutic benefits of the charms of nature and the need to let a little more light into the wards on the lower floors. I stood for a while watching the cars coming and going in the square courtyard in front of the main entrance. Then I crossed the road and went in and asked for a job.

Seventeen

It amazed me, in retrospect, when I considered how readily I had been engaged: no questions put, no references asked for. Perhaps I inspire confidence. I had never in my life before attempted to get a job. Getting a job was something which my friends occasionally tried to do, and which always seemed to be a matter for slow and difficult negotiation or even intrigue. Indeed, it was the spectacle of their ill success which, together with my own temperament, had chiefly deterred me from any essays in this direction. It had never occurred to me that it might be possible to get a job simply by going and asking for it, and in any normal state of mind I would never even have made the attempt. You will point out, and quite rightly, that the job into which I had stepped so easily was in a category not only unskilled but unpopular where a desperate shortage of candidates might well secure the immediate engagement of anyone other than a total paralytic; whereas what my friends perhaps were finding it so difficult to become was higher civil servants, columnists on the London dailies, officials of the British Council, fellows of colleges, or governors of the B. B. C. This is true. I was nevertheless feeling impressed, at the point which our story had now reached, and not only by my having got the job, but also by the efficient way in which I turned out to be able to perform it.