Under the Net

by Iris Murdoch

  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 laugh, and I laughed too, and we both laughed enormously with pleasure and relief. I felt her sigh and relax, and her body became rounded and pliant, and we looked into each other’s faces and smiled 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.’

  ‘No,’ said Anna strangely. ‘Unsatisfied love is concerned with understanding. Only if it is all, all understanding, can it remain love while being unsatisfied.’

  I was not listening to this serious speech because my attention had been caught by the word ‘silence’.

  ‘What is this place, Anna?’ I asked.

  ‘That’s one of the things that would be hard to explain, Jakie,’ said Anna, and I could feel her hands seeking each other in the small of my back. She locked me to her, then she said, ‘It’s a little experiment.’

  This phrase grated on me. It didn’t sound like Anna at all. There was some other voice here. I thought I would pick my way round this.

  ‘What about your singing?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, I’ve given up singing,’ said Anna. ‘I shan’t sing any more.’ Her glance fied away over my shoulder and she withdrew her hands.

  ‘Why in heaven’s name not, Anna?’

  ‘Well,’ said Anna, and I could still sense the curious artificiality in her tone, ‘I don’t care for that way of earning a living. The sort of singing I do is so’ - she searched for the word - ‘ostentatious. There’s no truth in it. One’s just exploiting one’s charm to seduce people.’

  I took her by the shoulders and shook her. ‘You don’t believe what you’re saying!’ I cried.

  ‘I do, Jake!’ Anna looked up at me almost imploringly.

  ‘How about the theatre?’ I asked. ‘How does that come in?’

  ‘This is pure art,’ said Anna. ‘It’s very simple and it’s very pure.’

  ‘Anna, who’s been getting at you?’ I asked her.

  ‘Jake,’ said Anna, ‘you were always like that. As soon as I said anything that surprised you, you said that someone had been getting at me!’

  During the last part of our conversation she had laid her hand upon my shoulder so that her wrist watch was just in sight, and I could see her gaze passing lightly over it from time to time. I felt furious.

  ‘Stop looking at your watch!’ I said. ‘You haven’t seen me for years. You can spare me a little time now!’

  I guessed that Anna had it in mind that very soon our tête-à-tête would be interrupted. Our interview had a schedule of which Anna was continuously aware. All Anna’s life worked to schedule ; like a nun, she would have been lost without her watch, I took the wrist with the watch upon it, and twisted it until I heard her gasp. She faced me now with an intensity and a bright silent defiance which I remembered and loved from long ago. We regarded each other so for a moment. We knew each other very well. I kept her pinioned, but released the tension enough for us to kiss. Her body was tense again, but now it was as if my grip had communicated to it some positive force, and it was like a rigid missile to which I clung as we hurtled through space. I kissed her stiffened neck and shoulder.

  ‘Jake, you’re hurting me,’ said Anna.

  I let her go and lay heavily upon her breasts, completely limp. She stroked my hair. We lay so in silence for a long time. The universe came to rest like a great bird.

  ‘You’re going to say that I must go,’ I said.

  ‘You must,’ said Anna, ‘or rather, I must. Now get up, please.’

  I got up, and I felt as if I were rising from sleep. I looked down on Anna. She lay amid the coloured debris like a fairy-tale princess tumbled from her throne. The silks were at hip and breast. A long tress of hair had escaped. She lay still for a moment, receiving my gaze, her foot arching with consciousness of it.

  ‘Where’s your crown?’ I asked.

  Anna searched under the pile and produced a gilded coronet. We laughed. I helped her up and we dusted bits of tinsel, gold dust, and loose spangles off her dress.

  While Anna did her hair I ranged about the room, examining everything. I suddenly felt quite at ease now. I knew that I should see Anna again.

  ‘You must explain about this place,’ I said. ‘Who acts here?’

  ‘Mainly amateurs,’ said Anna. ‘Some of my friends. But it’s a quite special technique.’

  ‘Yes, I could see that,’ I said.

  Anna turned on me. ‘So you went into the theatre?’

  ‘Yes, just for an instant. Did it matter? It looked very impressive,’ I said. ‘Is it something Indian?’

  ‘There are connexions with India,’ said Anna, ‘but it’s really something on its own.’ I could see she was thinking of something else.

  ‘Well, that’s a prop you’ll hardly need much!’ I said, pointing to the thundersheet.

  A thundersheet, in case you don’t know, is a thin piece of metal, a couple of yards square, which when shaken produces a mysterious rumbling noise not unlike thunder. I went up to it.

  ‘Don’t touch it!’ said Anna. ‘Yes, we’re going to sell that.’

  ‘Anna, did you mean it about singing?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said Anna, ‘it’s’ corrupt,‘ she said. I had again the curious feeling of seeing someone in the grip of a theory.

  ‘Only very simple things can be said without falsehood,’ she added.

  ‘What I saw in that theatre wasn’t simple,’ I told her.

  Anna spread her hands. ‘What did you want me for?’ she asked.

  This question brought me back to reality. I said cautiously, ‘I wanted to see you. You know that. But I’ve also got a problem about somewhere to live. Perhaps you can advise me. I suppose I couldn’t live here,’ I asked, ‘in an attic or something?’

  Anna shivered. ‘No,’ she said, ‘that would be impossible.’

  We looked at each other, both thinking fast.

  ‘When shall I see you again?’ I asked.

  Anna’s face was rigid and withdrawn. ‘Jake,’ she said, ‘you must leave me alone for a while. I have a lot of things to think about.’

  ‘So have I,’ I said. ‘We might think together.’

  She smiled
a pale smile. ‘If I need you I’ll call for you,’ she said. ‘And I may need you.’

  ‘I hope you will,’ I said, and I wrote Dave’s address for her on a piece of paper. ‘I give you notice that if a long time passes without my being needed I shall appear whether I’m needed or not.’

  Anna was looking at her watch again.

  ‘May I write to you?’ I asked. In my experience women who have any interest at all in keeping a hand on you will rarely refuse this. It binds without compromising. Anna, who knew my thoughts on this topic, as on most others, eyed me, and we both smiled.

  ‘I don’t mind,’ she said. ‘A letter to the theatre finds me.’

  She was picking up her things now and frowning slightly. It occurred to me that the problem that preoccupied her was how to get me out of the building without being seen.

  ‘I haven’t anywhere to sleep tonight,’ I told her: my first lie. ‘May I stay here?’

  Anna eyed me again, wondering how much I knew about what she was thinking. She considered it.

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘Stay here - and don’t come down with me now. Only you must promise not to prowl around and to leave the place early tomorrow.’ I promised.

  ‘Suggest where I can live, Anna,’ I said.

  I thought that now that she’d come as far as letting me stay the night she might relent in the matter of an attic. Anna set her desk in order and locked the drawers.

  ‘Look,’ she said. ‘You might try Sadie. She’s going to the States and she wants a caretaker to look after her flat. You might just do.’ She scribbled down an address.

  I took it with reserve. ‘Are you friends with Sadie now?’ I asked.

  Anna laughed a bit impatiently. ‘She’s my sister. We put up with each other. You could go and see her anyway - this idea might just work.’ And she looked at me doubtfully.

  ‘Well, let’s meet tomorrow and discuss it some more,’ I suggested.

  This decided Anna. ‘No,’ she said. ‘You go and see Sadie - and don’t come back here unless I summon you.’

  She turned to go. I took her hand, and then embraced her with immense tenderness. She returned the embrace. We parted.

  I heard no sound after the door closed, and for some time I stood as one enchanted in the middle of the room. During my talk with Anna it had become quite dark in the room, but outside it was still a late blue summer evening that made the trees and the river vibrate with colour. Some little while later I heard the sound of a car starting. I went to the window, and by leaning out a little could command a piece of the roadway. As I looked out a luxurious black Alvis purred round the comer and up towards the main road. I wondered if Anna was inside. For the moment I hardly cared. As for her ambiguous dismissal of me, I was used to this. Most of the women I know behave in this way, and I have become accustomed to asking no questions, and even to thinking no questions. We all live in the interstices of each other’s lives, and we would all get a surprise if we could see everything. I knew that there was a man in it somewhere; there always was where Anna was concerned. But that speculation could wait.

  I was glad to be alone. I had had what was for me an intolerably eventful day - and now for a long time I leaned on the window sill, looking down towards Hammersmith Bridge. The river murmured past, carrying with it the last fragments of daylight, and finally it became a dark gulf of unseen movement. I thought over my meeting with Anna. She had said some strange things, but it was not on these that I was brooding. I was remembering the way she moved her hands, her nervous gestures as she fingered now a ball and now a necklace, the curve of her thigh as she lay on the floor, the grey locks in her hair, the weariness at her neck. All this called up what seemed to me to be a new love, a hundred times more profound than the old one. I was deeply moved. Yet at the same time I took the thing with a grain of salt. I had often known myself to be moved in the past, and little had come of it. What was certain was that something had remained intact of that which there had formerly been between us ; and it could not be but that the passage of time had somehow made this remnant the more precious. I thought with some satisfaction of our interview and how splendidly Anna had responded to all the old cues.

  Street lamps were lighted now on the bridge, and far away the dark river ran into a crackle of light. I turned back into the room and stumbled my way to the door. I clicked the electric-light switch, and somewhere in the comer a lamp went on, buried under a covering of gauzy materials. Anna had asked me not to prowl; but it had been rather a vague prohibition, and I thought that just a little prowling might be in order. I felt a great desire to stand again in the little theatre; indeed, it had been largely for this that I had asked Anna on the spur of the moment to let me stay. By the dim light I found the switch on the landing, and closing the door of the props room behind me I went to the door of the theatre. I would not have been surprised to find the silent mime in progress there in the dark. I tried the door, but it was locked. I tried the other doors on the landing and then the doors in the hallway downstairs. To my great exasperation they were all locked. Then the stillness of the place began to choke me like a mist, and a sudden panic came over me in case I should come back and find the door of the props room locked too. I ran noiselessly up the stairs again and bounded into the room. The lamp still burnt dimly and all was as before. I thought of going outside and trying to get into the auditorium from the road, but some spirit forbade me to leave the house. I removed two or three layers of textiles from the lamp and surveyed the room. It looked, in this half light, more fantastic than ever. I wandered about for a while, picking up the objects which Anna had handled. My gaze kept returning to the thundersheet and I felt a nervous urge to rush up to it and strike it. I thought of all the superb noise that lay asleep there, and how I could make the whole house rock with it. I made myself almost sweat with nervousness imagining it. But something compelled me to silence, and I even walked about on tiptoe.

  After a while I began to have an uneasy feeling of being ob served. I am very sensitive to observation, and often have this feeling not only in the presence of human beings but in that of small animals. Once I even traced the source of it to a large spider whose mysterious eyes were fixed upon me. In my experience the spider is the smallest creature whose gaze can be felt. I now began to search around to see what it could be that was looking at me. I could find no living thing, but eventually I came upon a set of masks, similar to those I had seen on the stage, whose slanting eyes were turned mournfully in my direction. No doubt I had noticed them unconsciously as I was rambling about the room. I now examined them with care and was struck by the unnerving beauty of their design, and the serenity which was expressed by even the more unpleasant ones. They were made of a light wooden material, and slightly painted, some full face and some in profile. There was something a trifle oriental in their mood, something which spoke more even perhaps in the subtly curving mouth than in the slanting eyes. One or two of them distantly reminded me of Indian Buddhas I had seen. They were all a bit larger than life. I found them very alarming objects indeed and put them down nervously after a little while. They clattered dully as I released them and that made me start and experience the silence anew. Then I began to discern that the room was full of eyes, the big vacant eyes of the rocking-horse, the beady eyes of teddy bears, the red eyes of the stuffed snake, the eyes of dolls and puppets and gollywogs. I began to feel extremely uneasy. I took the remaining pieces of gauze off the lamp, but even then it gave precious little light. Something in the far comer subsided softly. I sat down cross-legged in the middle of the floor and tried to think about something realistic.

  I took from my pocket the piece of paper which Anna had given me. It bore an address in Welbeck Street. I looked at it, and wondered to myself, in a spirit of prediction rather than intention, whether I would ever present myself at Sadie’s door. I felt reluctant to, for the reasons already mentioned. On the other hand, the whole matter looked different now that it was Anna who had suggested that I
should see Sadie. If Anna and Sadie were friends, then to consort with Sadie was one way of keeping in touch with Anna. Also I was curious, now that I reflected on the matter, to see how Sadie would receive me. Finally, few people are so free of earthly vanity as not to find it pleasant, other things being equal, to be on matey terms with someone whose face is displayed all over London on posters twelve feet high. It then struck me how absolutely splendid it would be if Sadie did in fact go away and leave me in possession of a luxurious rent-free flat with a central address. This seemed so highly desirable that it was certainly worth risking a rebuff to obtain. It began to seem to me very likely indeed that I would at least investigate the situation at Welbeck Street.

  When I had reached this purely inductive conclusion about my future movements I felt better and at once began to be very sleepy. The floor was so encumbered with objects that I had to set to work to clear myself a space. A strip of stained white carpet began to emerge. Then I looked about for something to use as a blanket. There was no lack of textiles. In the end I selected a bear-skin complete with snout and claws. I didn’t switch out the light, but covered the lamp up again with gauzy stuffs until it gave only a faint glow. I didn’t want to risk waking up later and finding myself alone in the dark in such a room. Then I thrust my hands and feet into the bear’s paws and let the great snarling snout fall over my forehead. It made a snug sleeping-suit. Before I finally curled up I thought some more about Anna and about what in the world she could be up to. I could believe that this theatre was Anna’s creation; and yet clearly there was some other mind at work as well, and some of the things which Anna had said were certainly not her own. It also occurred to me to wonder where the money had come from. At last I yawned and stretched myself out. An oriental shawl served me as a pillow. Soft objects were falling on to my feet. Then there was stillness. Sleep never forsakes me or makes me wait for long after it is bidden. Almost at once I fell asleep.