Iris Murdoch - Under the Net

'Be quiet!' said Hugo, 'you're talking almost out loud.'

'Who is it that you're in love with?' I said. 'Which of them?'

'Sadie,' said Hugo.

'Are you sure?' I asked.

'Bloody hell!' he said. 'I ought to know! I've suffered more than a year of misery about that woman! But I thought you knew all this?'

'She told me,' I said. 'She told me! But, of course, I didn't believe her.' I sat back on to the floor and rocked my head in my hands.

'Why "of course"?' said Hugo. 'After all, she called you in to defend her against me, didn't she? Only you walked out!' He spoke bitterly.

'She locked me in,' I said. 'I couldn't stand that.'

'My God! I wish she'd locked me in!' said Hugo.

'I couldn't believe her, I couldn't!' I said.

'Did she tell you I'd been awful?' said Hugo.

'Well, she said something vague about your possibly bursting in.'

'She's a kind woman,' said Hugo, 'if she told you no more than that. I behaved like a mad thing. I broke in once in the night, and another time I came during the day while she was at the studio and looked for letters and took away some of her things. I was absolutely insane about her. I tell you, Jake, my life's been a perfect chaos for nearly a year. That's why I've got to clear myself out of it all and begin again.'

'But, Hugo, it's not possible!' I said. 'You can't love Sadie!'

'Why not?' said Hugo. He was angry.

I felt incoherent. The impossibility of Hugo's loving Sadie loomed over me inexpressibly, and as I stared at the fact of Hugo's loving Sadie I could only babble. 'She isn't worth it' was on the tip of my tongue, but I didn't say it. That wasn't the reason anyhow. 'But you knew Anna.' I said. 'How could anyone know Anna and prefer Sadie?'

'I'll tell you one reason,' said Hugo, and his voice was edged with fury. 'Sadie's more intelligent!'

I had a confused sense of something terrible raising itself up between us. Hugo saw it too, and added immediately, 'Jake, you're a fool. You know anyone can love anyone, or prefer anyone to anyone.'

We were silent, I still clutching the blanket and Hugo half sitting up in bed. I could feel his legs close to my hand and they were rigid.

'I still don't understand,' I said at last. 'It isn't just that I thought the thing impossible. But everything was pointing the other way. Why did you take all that trouble about the Mime Theatre?'

'I've told you,' said Hugo, ' it was to please Anna.'

'But why, why?' I struggled with this idea.

'Well, I don't know,' said Hugo impatiently. 'I probably oughtn't to have. Nothing can come of these concessions. One is just telling lies.'

His words entered dully and blankly into my mind. Then quite suddenly I realized the truth. I stood up. 'Anna loves you,' I said. 'Yes, of course,' said Hugo. 'She's as crazy about me as I am about Sadie. But I thought you were in on all this, Jake?'

'I was in on it,' I said. 'I knew everything. I got it all the wrong way round, that's all!'

I walked to the door and looked out through the little window. I saw a row of white doors opposite me and a red floor. I turned back towards Hugo, and saw his face clearly for the first time. He was still very pale, and as he looked up at me anxiously from underneath the bandage, his face wrinkled and intent, he looked like Rembrandt.

I came back to the other side of the room. I wanted Hugo's face darkened. 'I didn't realize all this,' I said. 'I might have behaved differently.'

I couldn't at the moment think just in what way I would have behaved differently; all I knew was that I had a wrench which dislocated past, present, and future. Hugo was looking at me hard, and I gave him my face though not my eyes. If he could read the truth there, good luck to him. I knew that for myself it would take a long time to become clear.

'Just say something more about Anna, would you, Hugo?' I said. 'Say anything that comes into your head. Anything might give me a better understanding.'

'Well, I don't know what to say,' said Hugo. 'I'm terribly sorry about all this, Jake; it's like life, isn't it? I love Sadie, who's keen on you, and you love Anna, who's keen on me. Perverse, isn't it?'

'Come on, Hugo,' I said, 'say something about Anna. Tell me when all this started.'

'It was long ago,' said Hugo. 'I ran into Anna through Sadie, and she took one look, Anna, I mean.'

'Don't worry about the pronouns!' I said. 'It's all clear from now on.'

'At first she pursued me,' said Hugo. 'She stopped doing everything else and simply pursued me. It was no use my leaving London and staying at a hotel. In a day or two she would turn up. I was frantic.'

'I find this hard to believe,' I said to Hugo. 'I don't mean that I think you've invented it. I just find it hard to believe.'

'Well, have a try,' said Hugo.

I was struggling to recognize in this frenzied maenad the Anna that I knew, the coolly tender Anna who was for ever balancing the claims of her admirers one against another with the gentle impartiality of a mother. I was in considerable pain.

'You said "at first",' I said. 'What happened then?'

'Nothing much ever happened,' said Hugo. 'She wrote me hundreds of letters. Beautiful letters. I kept some of them. Then she became more sensible and I saw a bit more of her.' I winced. 'I liked to see her,' said Hugo, 'because I could talk to her about Sadie.'

'Poor Anna!' I said.

'I know,' said Hugo. 'I've been a brute to both of them. But now I'm clearing out. I advise you to clear out too,' he added.

'I don't know what you mean,' I said, 'but I'm damned if I will!'

'Some situations can't be unravelled,' said Hugo, 'they just have to be dropped. The trouble with you, Jake, is that you want to understand everything sympathetically. It can't be done. One must just blunder on. Truth lies in blundering on.'

'Oh, to hell with truth!' I told him. I felt very confused and very ill.

'It's odd,' I said. I was picking about among the things I had just learnt. 'I was so sure the theatre was all your idea. It seemed so like you. "Actions don't lie, words always do." But now I see that this was all a hallucination.'

'I don't know what you mean by "like me",' said Hugo. 'The theatre was all Anna's idea. I just joined in. She had some sort of general theory about. it, but I never understood properly what it was.'

'That was just what was yours,' I said. 'It was you reflected in Anna, just as that dialogue was you reflected in me.'

'I don't recognize the reflections,' said Hugo. 'The point is that people must just do what they can do, and good luck to them.'

'What can you do?' I asked him.

Hugo was silent for a long time. 'Make little intricate things with my hands,' he said.

'Is that all?' I asked.

'Yes,' said Hugo. We were silent again.

'What will you do about it?' I said.

'I'm going to become a watch-maker,' said Hugo.

'A what?' I said.

'A watch-maker. Of course, it'll take me many years. But I've already arranged to be apprenticed to a good man in Nottingham.'

'In where?'

'In Nottingham. Why not?'

'I don't know why not,' I said. 'But why this at all? Why a watch-maker?'

'I've told you,' said Hugo. 'I'm good at that sort of thing. Remember how clever I was with the set pieces? Only there was so much nonsense about set pieces.'

'Isn't there nonsense about watches too?' I asked him. 'No,' said Hugo, 'it's an old trade. Like baking bread.' I stared into Hugo's darkened face. It was masked, as ever, by a sort of innocence. 'You're mad,' I said.

'Why do you say that, Jake?' said Hugo. 'Every man must have a trade. Yours is writing. Mine will be making and mending watches, I hope, if I'm good enough.'

'And what about the truth?' I said wildly. 'What about the search for God?'