Iris Murdoch: Under the Net

Now there was no protection, only hope. We walked down the main stairs, Hugo crowned with bandages. It was blatant. The Hospital lay about us quietly, and focused its brilliant lights upon us, like a great eye watching us, into the very pupil of which the pair of us were walking. I waited for the echoing call from many stories above which should accuse us and tell us to halt; but it did not come. We left the stairway, and now we were approaching the Transept Kitchen. To my joy I saw that the Kitchen was dark; there was no one there. In a moment we should be free. Already my heart was beating with the joy of achievement and my thoughts taking to wings of triumph. We had done it! Only a few steps now separated us from the door of the store room. I turned to look at Hugo. As I did so, a figure appeared round the corner of the corridor some fifteen yards in front of us. It was Stitch, wearing a blue dressing-gown. All three of us stopped dead. Stitch took us in and we took in Stitch. Then I saw Stitch's mouth beginning to open.

'Quick, this way!' I said to Hugo out loud. These were the first words which I had uttered aloud for many hours and they rang out strangely. I leapt to the store-room door and pushed Hugo through it.

'Through the window!' I called after him. I could hear him blundering ahead of me and I could hear Stitch's feet scrabbling on the floor of the corridor. I slammed the door of the store-room behind me, and as I turned towards the window, with a sudden inspiration I seized hold of a stack of bedsteads on one side and gave it a violent pull towards the centre of the room; I felt it move to the vertical, totter, and begin to fall inwards. I sprang to the other side and in an instant I had set the stack in motion there too. Like two packs of cards meeting, and with a clatter like the day of judgement, the two piles met and interlocked across the door. I heard Stitch cursing on the other side. I followed Hugo.

Hugo had left the window wide open. I sprang through it like Nijinsky, and cannoned into Hugo, who was hopping about on the lawn.

'My boots! My boots!' cried Hugo in anguish. He had evidently put them down inside the window as he was getting out.

'Never mind your bloody boots! Run for it!' I told him. Behind us there rang out the metallic din which was Stitch trying to open the door and being prevented by the barricade of bedsteads. I threw back my head to run, and saw with surprise that the garden was clearly revealed in the grey morning light; and as we sped along between the cherry trees it would not have surprised me if someone had opened fire on us from an upstairs window.

We crossed the lawn and the gravel and leapt over the chains and bolted along the pavement in the direction of Goldhawk Road. Hugo's bandage was coming undone and flapped behind him like a pennant. Before we turned the corner I looked back; but there was no sign of pursuit. We slowed down.

'And how's your head now?' I said to Hugo. We must have been doing a good twenty miles per hour.

'Hellish!' said Hugo. He leaned against a wall. 'Damn it, Jake,' he said, 'you might have let me pick up my boots. They were special ones. I got them in Austria.'

You'd better see a doctor some time today,' I told Hugo. 'I don't want to have any more on my conscience.'

'I'll see a chap I know in the City,' said Hugo. We walked slowly on in the direction of Shepherd's Bush.

The light was increasing fast. It must have been after five, and when we reached Shepherd's Bush Green the sun was shining through a mist. There was no one about. We stopped once to fix Hugo's bandage. Then we padded along in silence. As I looked at Hugo's big feet, which were bulging through various holes in his socks, I could not but think of Anna; and with this thought I suddenly felt for Hugo a mixture of compassion and anger. What a lot of trouble the man had caused me! Yet none of it could have been otherwise.

'You've made me lose my job,' I told him.

'You may not have been recognized,' said Hugo.

'I was recognized,' I said. 'That fellow that saw us works in Corelli. He's my enemy.'

'Sorry,' said Hugo.

We were walking along Holland Park Avenue. It was broad daylight and the mist had cleared. The sun, just risen over the houses, gave us sharp shadows. We passed by sleeping windows. London was not yet awake. Then one or two workmen's buses passed by. Yet still we walked. Hugo's head was down, and he was biting his nails and looking sightlessly at the pavement. I observed him closely as one might observe a picture or a dead man. I had a strange sense of his being both very distant and yet closer to me than he had ever been or would be again. I was reluctant to speak. So we went for a long time in silence.

'When are you going to Nottingham?' I said at last.

'Oh,' said Hugo vaguely, lifting his head, 'in two or three days, I hope. It depends how long it takes to wind things up here.'

I looked at his face, and although no line of it had changed I saw it as the face of an unhappy man. I sighed. 'Have you anywhere to live up there?'

'Not yet,' said Hugo. 'I shall have to find digs.'

'Can I see you again before you go?' I asked him.

'I'm afraid I'll be very busy,' said Hugo. I sighed again.

It then occurred to us at the same moment, both that this was the end of our conversation and that it was going to be very difficult to take leave of each other.

'Lend me half a crown, Jake,' said Hugo. I handed it over. We were still walking.

'I must dash on, if you'll excuse me,' said Hugo.

O. K.,' I said.

'Thanks a lot for helping me out,' he said.

'That's all right,' I said.

He wanted to be rid of me. I wanted to be rid of him. There was a moment of silence while each of us tried to think of the appropriate thing to say. Neither succeeded. For an instant our eyes met. Then Hugo said abruptly, 'I must dash. Sorry.'

He began walking very fast, and turned down Campden Hill Road. I followed him at my ordinary pace. He drew ahead. I walked after him along the road. He turned into Sheffield Terrace, and when I turned the corner he was about thirty yards ahead. He looked back and saw me and quickened his pace. He turned into Hornton Street; I followed at the same pace, and saw him in the distance turning into Gloucester Walk. When I got to the corner of Gloucester Walk he had disappeared.

Nineteen

As I walked through Kensington the day began. There was nothing to do in it. I wandered along looking into the windows of shops. I went into Lyons' and had some breakfast. That took up quite a long time. Then I set off walking again. I walked down the Earls Court Road and stood for a while outside the house where Madge had lived. The curtains on the windows had been changed. Everything looked different. I began to doubt whether it was the same house. I moved on. Beside Earls Court Station I had a cup of tea. I thought of ringing up Dave, but couldn't think that I had anything particular to say to him.

It was the middle of the morning. At the Hospital they would be washing up the mugs in the kitchen of Corelli III. I went into a flower shop and ordered a grotesquely large bunch of roses to be sent to Miss Piddingham. I sent no note or message with them. She would know very well who they were from. At last the pubs opened. I had a drink. It occurred to me that I had something to say to Dave after all, which was to ask whether there was any news of Finn. I telephoned the Goldhawk Road number, but got no answer. My need of Finn began to be very great and I had to force my attention away from it. I had some more drinks. The time passed slowly.

During this time I didn't at first think of anything special. There was too much to think about. I just sat quietly and let things take shape deeply within me. I could just sense the great forms moving in the darkness, beneath the level of my attention and without my aid, until gradually I began to see where I was. My memories of Anna had been completely transformed. Into each one of them a new dimension had been introduced. I had omitted to ask Hugo when exactly it was that Anna had encountered him and, as he so horribly put it, taken one look. But it was very likely that since Hugo's acquaintance with Sadie dated back such a long way, Hugo's acquaintance with Anna might well overlap with the later phases of my relations with her, before our long absence from each other. At this thought, it seemed that every picture I had ever had of Anna was contaminated, and I could feel my very memory images altering, like statues that sweat blood.