Under the Net

by Iris Murdoch

  ‘You’re right; I oughtn’t to have,’ said Hugo, ‘but I did it to please her — and after all she did seem to be making something there.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘she can create things.’

  ‘You can both create things, I mean you and Anna,’ said Hugo.

  ‘Why do you say it like that?’ I asked.

  ‘It just strikes me,’ said Hugo. ‘I never made a thing in my life,’ he added.

  ‘Why did you destroy the theatre?’ I asked.

  ‘I didn’t destroy it,’ said Hugo. ‘Anna did. She suddenly began to feel that it was all pointless, and she went away.’

  ‘Poor Hugo!’ I said. ‘So then you gave it to NISP.’

  ‘Well,’ said Hugo, ‘NISP were urgently wanting a place and I thought they might as well have it.’

  I felt sorry for Hugo. I pictured him standing alone in the theatre after the being had departed that had been its life. ‘I didn’t know you had any political views,’ I said. ‘You must have developed them since I last saw you.’

  ‘I haven’t exactly got any political views,’ said Hugo, ‘but I think Lefty’s ideas are decent.’ This was a very high term of praise in Hugo’s vocabulary.

  ‘Are you working with him?’ I asked.

  ‘Good heavens, no!’ said Hugo. ‘I wouldn’t know how. I just give him money. That’s all I can do.’

  ‘I suppose Rockets are still going strong,’ I said. ‘I notice that the municipality of Paris is a customer of yours.’

  ‘Oh, Rockets,’ said Hugo. ‘I’ve sold the factory, you know.’

  ‘I didn’t,’ I said. ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, I don’t really believe in private enterprise,’ said Hugo, ‘at least I think I don’t. I’m so bad at understanding these things. And if one’s in any doubt about a racket one ought to clear out, don’t you think? Anyhow, while I had the factory I just couldn’t help making money, and I don’t want that. I want to travel light. Otherwise one can never understand anything.’

  ‘I’ve always travelled light,’ I said, ‘and I don’t see that it’s ever helped me to understand anything. But what about films, or are they different?’

  ‘I’m clearing out of that too,’ said Hugo. ‘There’s a new Anglo-French show that’s going to take over Bounty Belfounder, and good luck to them.’

  ‘I see,’ I said. I felt moved. ‘But you’ll still be a rich man, Hugo,’ I added.

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Hugo. ‘I’m reluctant to think about it. I expect I’ll get rid of the money somehow. I’ll give a lot to Lefty. You can have some too, if you like.’

  ‘You’re a strange man, Hugo,’ I said. ‘Why this sudden urge to strip yourself?’

  ‘It’s not sudden,’ said Hugo. ‘It’s just that I’ve been cowardly and muddled. I don’t suppose I should have made up my mind to do anything even now if it hadn’t been that my life had got into such a ghastly mess that even I can’t overlook it.’

  I thought of Anna. ‘You’ve been very unhappy?’

  ‘That, of course,’ said Hugo. ‘I’ve been nearly demented. But that was no excuse for behaving so badly. By the way, I’m sorry I cut you off that day on the phone when I rang up Welbeck Street. I was so taken aback when I heard your voice, it made me feel so ashamed of myself that I rang off.’

  I couldn’t understand this. ‘What were you so ashamed about?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, well,’ said Hugo, ‘things I’d been doing, and things I intended to do. You think far too well of me, Jake. You’re a sentimentalist.’

  ‘Sssh!’ I said to him sharply, and we both fell silent.

  There was a sound of feet in the corridor. I realized with a shock where I was. The soft sound of the footfalls drew nearer. Perhaps our voices had been heard, as in the excitement of the discussion they grew louder. I moved quietly up against the edge of the bed, to make sure that I was invisible from the door. Perhaps it was simply the Night Sister on her rounds, and we had not been heard after all. The steps came to a stop outside Hugo’s door, and the square aperture was darkened. I pressed my face into the red blanket and held my breath. I wondered suddenly if Hugo would denounce me to the Night Sister, and for a moment I felt him to be capable of it. But Hugo lay rigid, and I could hear him breathing deeply. Then a moment later the face was withdrawn and the footsteps went slowly on to the next room. I relaxed, and still leaning against the bed looked up at Hugo while my thoughts reassembled.

  I felt that I was playing a big fish. Hugo was communicative. Now, it was only a matter of saying the right things and he would tell me all.

  I broke the silence with a low whisper. ‘Anna’s stopped singing.’

  Hugo was silent for a moment. ‘Anna’s all right,’ he said, rather shortly.

  I felt that this had been a wrong move. I tried something more direct. ‘Hugo,’ I said, ‘what was it that you felt ashamed of when you rang up there and I answered the phone?’

  Hugo hesitated. I could see him fiddling with his bandage and looking past me. ‘I behaved badly to her,’ he said.

  ‘How?’ I breathed out the question, reducing my presence to a minimum. I wanted Hugo to soliloquize. I saw Anna’s fleeing figure.

  ‘Oh, I persecuted her terribly,’ said Hugo.

  ‘Did she love you?’ I murmured, and the air all about me was trembling.

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Hugo, ‘it was hopeless. You know,’ he said, ‘I sometimes thought that she was keen on you.’

  The muscles relaxed one by one all over my body like little animals falling asleep, and I stretched out my legs. I felt sorry for Hugo as for a moment or two I brooded upon the picture he had conjured up. But now there was no time for brooding. I must get the facts; theories could come later. My mood at that moment was almost scientific. ‘What made you think that?’ I asked. ‘I mean, that she was keen on me.’

  ‘She talked about you a lot,’ said Hugo, ‘and asked me questions about you.’

  ‘What a bore for you,’ I said, and I smiled to myself. Nothing is more maddening than being questioned by the object of one’s interest about the object of hers, should that object not be you.

  ‘I was glad to be of service to her,’ said Hugo, with a disgustingly humble air.

  Was Hugo being frank with me? I suddenly wondered. ‘When will you see her again?’ I asked. ‘Is she really going away?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Hugo. ‘I really don’t know what she plans to do. She’s like the weather. One simply never knows with Sadie.’

  ‘You mean Anna, yes,’ I said.

  ‘I mean Sadie!’ said Hugo.

  The names of the two women rang out like the blasts of a horn which echo through a wood. A pattern in my mind was suddenly scattered and the pieces of it went flying about me like birds.

  I rose to one knee and my face was close to Hugo’s. ‘Who have we just been talking about?’ I asked him.

  ‘Sadie, of course,’ said Hugo. ‘Who else do you imagine?’

  My grip closed upon the blanket. Already my thought, turned back the other way, was showing me an entirely different scene. ‘Hugo,’ I said, ‘can we get this absolutely clear?’

  ‘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?’

  ‘What more do you want?’ said Hugo. ‘God is a task. God is detail. It all lies close to your hand.’ He reached out and took hold of a tumbler which was standing on the table beside his bed. The light from the door glinted on the tumbler and seemed to find an answering flash in Hugo’s eyes, as I tried in the darkness to see what they were saying.

  ‘All right,’ I said, ‘all light, all right, all right.’

  ‘You’re always expecting something, Jake,’ said H
ugo.

  ‘Maybe,’ I said. I was beginning to find the conversation a burden. I decided to go away. I got up. ‘How’s your head now?’ I asked Hugo.

  ‘It’s rather better,’ he said. ‘You made me forget about it. How long do you think they’ll keep me in this place?’

  ‘About five days, the Sister said.’

  ‘Good God!’ said Hugo. ‘I can’t have that! I’ve got all sorts of things to do.’

  ‘Perhaps they’ll let you out sooner,’ I said. I wasn’t interested. I wanted to sit somewhere quietly and digest what Hugo had told me. ‘I’m off,’ I said.

  ‘Not without me!’ said Hugo, and he began to get out of bed.

  I was scandalized. I seized him and began pushing him back. The hospital ethic was already deep in me. A patient must do what he is told and not presume to behave like a free agent. ‘Get back at once!’ I said in a loud whisper.

  For a moment we struggled. Then Hugo relaxed and drew his feet back into bed. ‘Have a heart, Jake,’ he said. ‘If you don’t help me to get away now I may not be let out for days. You know what these places are. They take your clothes away and you’re simply helpless. Where are my clothes, anyway?’

  ‘In a locker at the end of this corridor,’ I answered foolishly.

  ‘Be a sport. Go and get them for me,’ said Hugo, ‘and show me the way out.’

  ‘You’re not well enough to move,’ I said. ‘The Sister said it would be dangerous for you to move.’

  ‘You’ve just invented that this moment,’ said Hugo. ‘In fact I’m perfectly fit, and I know it and you know it. I’ve got to get out of this place. These are very urgent things I have to do tomorrow, and I’m damned if I’m going to be imprisoned here. Now go and get my clothes.’

  Hugo was speaking now with a sudden air of authority, and I noticed with distress a strong tendency in myself to obey him. Resisting it, I replied, ‘I work here, Hugo. If I do this I’ll lose my job.’

  ‘Does anyone know that you’re here?’ asked Hugo.

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Then no one will know that it was you who helped me.’

  ‘We shall be caught on the way out,’ I told him.

  ‘You needn’t come with me,’ said Hugo.

  ‘I’d have to,’ I said. ‘You couldn’t find the way alone.’ I was cursing Hugo heartily. I didn’t want to take this risk for him, and I could see now that I was going to.