Iris Murdoch - Under the Net

The sound echoed strangely. Then a husky voice said: 'Come in.'

I stepped into the room. It was a long narrow room with large windows opening in to the river, and it was filled to overflowing with a sort of multicoloured chaos which I couldn't at the first moment take in. In the midst of this Anna sat writing at a desk with her back to me. I shut the door behind me as she turned slowly. For a long moment we looked at each other in silence. Like a filling glass I felt my soul rise into my eyes; and in the intense equilibrium of the meeting we both experienced almost a moment of contemplation. Anna got up and said 'Jake!' Then I saw her.

She was plumper and had not defended herself against time. There was about her a sort of wrecked look which was infinitely touching. Her face, which I remembered as round and smooth as an apricot, was become just a little tense and drawn, and her neck now revealed her age. The great brown eyes, which once opened so blandly upon the world, seemed narrowed, and where Anna had used to draw a dark line upward at their corners the years had sketched in a little sheaf of wrinkles. Tresses of hair which had escaped from the complex coronet curled about her neck, and I could see streaks of grey. I looked upon the face that I had known so well and now that for the first time I saw its beauty as mortal I felt that I had never loved it so dearly. Anna took in my glance, and then with an instinctive gesture she took refuge behind her hands.

'What brings you here, Jake?' said Anna.

The spell was broken. 'I wanted to see you,' I said; and now I was anxious just to avoid looking at her and to collect my wits. I looked around the room. An astonishing medley of objects lay about in piles which in places reached up to the ceiling. The contents of the room had a sort of strange cohesion and homogeneity, and they seemed to adhere to the walls like the contents of a half-empty jam jar. Yet here was every kind of thing. It was like a vast toy shop that had been hit by a bomb. In my first glance I noticed a French horn, a rocking-horse, a set of red-striped tin trumpets, some Chinese silk robes, a couple of rifles, Paisley shawls, teddy bears, glass balls, tangles of necklaces and other jewellery, a convex mirror, a stuffed snake, countless toy animals, and a number of tin trunks out of which multi-coloured costumes trailed. Exquisite and expensive playthings lay enlaced with the gimcrack contents of Christmas crackers. I sat down on the nearest seat, which happened to be the back of the rocking-horse, and surveyed the scene.

'What is this extraordinary place?' I said. 'What are you doing these days, Anna?'

'Oh, this and that,' said Anna. She had always used to say this when she didn't want to tell me something. I could see she was nervous, and as she talked she kept picking things up, now a piece of ribbon, or now a ball or a long band of Brussels lace.

'How did you find this place?' she asked. I told her.

'Why did you come?'

I didn't want to embark on a routine series of questions and answers. What did it matter why I had come? I didn't know myself.

'I've been turned out of a place where I live.' This wasn't very explicit, but I couldn't think of anything to tell but the truth. 'Oh!' said Anna.

Then she asked, 'What have you been doing all these years?'

I wished I had something impressive to say, but again I could think of nothing but the truth. 'I've done some translating and some broadcasting,' I said. 'I've managed.'

But I could see Anna wasn't really listening to my replies. She picked up a pair of red gloves, and pulled one of them on, smooth-out the fingers and averting her eyes from me.

'Seen any of our old friends, lately?' she asked.

I felt I really couldn't answer this. 'Who cares about our old friends?' I said.

What is more tormenting than a meeting after a long time, when all the words fall to the ground like dead things, and the spirit that should animate them floats disembodied in the air? We both felt its presence.

'You look just the same, Jake,' said Anna. It was true. I still looked much as I did when I was twenty-four.

She added, 'I wish I did!'

'You look lovely,' I said.

Anna laughed, and picked up a wreath of artificial flowers. 'What a mess this place is!' she said. 'I keep meaning to tidy it.'

'It's lovely too,' I said.

'Well, if you call this lovely!' said Anna.

All this time she avoided my eye. In a moment we should be talking soberly like two old acquaintances. I wasn't going to allow this. I looked at her, and amid the enchanting chaos of silks and animals and improbable objects that seemed to rise almost to her waist she looked like a very wise mermaid rising out of a motley coloured sea; but in a moment she would have escaped me. The strangeness of the whole day was suddenly present to me with a kind of impetus; and immediately I had an idea. In the old days the living-room of Anna's Bayswater flat had been so surrounded by other windows that there was only one corner of the loom, low down on the floor, which was not overlooked. So if I wanted to kiss Anna this was the only place where I could do it. At that time too I had, in a not entirely disinterested fashion, been teaching Anna some Judo, and one of our customs had been that when I came in I would seize her and throw her down into this corner to be kissed. The memory of this rose in me now like an inspiration and I advanced upon her. I took her wrist, and for on instant saw her eyes wide with alarm, very close to mine, and then in a moment I had thrown her, very carefully, on to a pile of velvet costumes in the corner of the room. My knee sank into the velvet beside her, and straight away a mass of scarves, laces, tin trumpets, woolly dogs, fancy hats and other objects came cascading down on top of us until we were half buried. I kissed Anna.

Her eyes were still wide and her lips parted and for a moment she lay stiffly in my arms like a great doll. Then she began to Wight, and I laughed too, and we both laughed enormously with Measure and relief. I felt her sigh and relax, and her body became 'minded and pliant, and we looked into each other's faces and mailed a long smile of confidence and recognition.

'Darling Anna!' I said. 'However have I existed without you!'

I pulled some embroidered silk up behind her head to make a pillow. She threw her back into it and regarded me and then drew me closer.

'I want to tell you all sorts of things, Jake,' said Anna, 'but I don't know whether I can now. I'm terribly glad to see you. You can see that, can't you?' She looked into my eyes and I felt the old warm spicy breeze blowing. Of course I couldn't doubt it.

'You crook!' I said.

Anna laughed at me as she had always done. 'So some girl has thrown you out!' said Anna. She always counter-attacked.

'You know you could have had me forever if you'd wanted me,' I said. I wasn't going to let her get away with it, and what I said was more or less true after all.

'I loved you,' I added.

'Oh, love, love!' said Anna. 'How tired I am of that word. What has love ever meant to me but creaking stairs in other people's houses? What use has all this love ever been that men forced on me? Love is persecution. All I want is to be left alone to do some loving on my own account.'

I contemplated her coolly, framing her head in my arms. 'You wouldn't be so careless of it if you'd ever lacked the love of others,' I said.

She met my look now, and there was something detached and theoretical in her eye which I had never noticed there before.

'No really, Jake,' she said. 'This talk of love means very little. Love is not a feeling. It can be tested. Love is action, it is silence. It's not the emotional straining and scheming for possession that you used to think it was.'

This seemed to me very foolish talk. 'But love is concerned with possession,' I said. 'If you knew anything about unsatisfied love, you'd know this.'