by Iris Murdoch
‘Indeed,’ I said, ‘I could wish no greater good to England than that English socialism should become inspired and rejuvenated. But what is the use of an intellectual renaissance that doesn’t move the people? Theory and practice only unite under very special circumstances.’
‘E.g. when?’ said Lefty.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘e.g. when the Bolshevik party fought for power in Russia.’
‘Ah,’ said Lefty, ‘you’ve chosen a bad example for your own argument. Why are we so impressed by the very high degree of consciousness which these people seem to have had of what they were up to? Because they succeeded. If they hadn’t succeeded they’d look like a little gang of crackpots. It’s in retrospect that we see the whole thing as a machine of which they understood the workings. You can’t judge the unity of theory and practice in a moment-to-moment way. The principle of their disunity is important too. The trouble with you is you don’t really believe in Socialist Possibility. You’re a mechanist. And why are you a mechanist? I’ll tell you. You call yourself a socialist, but you were brought up on Britannia rules the waves like the rest of them. You want to belong to a big show. That’s why you’re sorry you can’t be a communist. But you can’t be — and neither have you enough imagination to pull out of the other thing. So you feel hopeless. What you need is flexibility, flexibility!’ Lefty pointed at me an immensely long and supple finger. ‘Maybe we have lost one chance to be the leaders of Europe,’ he said. ‘But the point is to deserve it. Then perhaps we’ll have another one.’
‘And meanwhile,’ I said, ‘what about the Dialectic?’
‘There you go,’ said Lefty. ‘It’s like the evil eye. You don’t really believe in it, yet it paralyses you. Even the adherents of the Dialectic know that the future is anyone’s guess. All one can do is first reflect and then act. That’s the human job. Not even Europe will go on for ever. Nothing goes on for ever.’
Dave was at the bar again.
‘Except the Jews,’ I said.
‘Yes, you’re right,’ said Lefty, ‘except the Jews.’
We both looked at him.
‘What?’ said Dave.
‘It’s time now, please,’ said the barmaid.
‘So you do recognize certain mysteries?’ I asked Lefty.
‘Yes, I’m an empiricist,’ he said.
We handed in our glasses.
By now I had enough alcohol inside me to feel despair at the prospect of having to stop drinking. Also I was beginning to take rather a fancy to Lefty.
‘Can we buy a bottle of brandy here?’ I asked.
‘I think so,’ he said.
‘Well, suppose we buy one and continue this discussion somewhere?’ I said.
Lefty hesitated. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘but we’ll need more than one bottle. Four half bottles of Hennessy, please, Miss,’ he said to the barmaid.
We emerged into Queen Victoria Street,. It was a very still, hot night, burnt with stars and flooded by a moon. A few drunks reeled off and left us the scene. We stood looking towards St Paul’s, each man with a brandy bottle in his pocket.
‘Whither?’ said Dave.
‘Let me just collect my wits,’ said Lefty. ‘I have to go to the post office and send off some letters.’
It is characteristic of central London that the only thing you can buy there at any hour of the day or night is a stamp. Even a woman you can’t get after about three-thirty a.m. unless you are bien renseigne. We set off in the direction of the General Post Office, and as we turned into King Edward Street I took a swig from my bottle. As I did so I realized I was already very drunk indeed.
The General Post Office was spacious, cavernous, bureaucratic, sober, and dim. We entered hilariously, disturbing the meditation of a few clerks and of the people who are always to be found there at late hours penning anonymous letters or suicide notes. While Lefty bought stamps and dispatched cables I organized the singing in round of Great Tom is Cast, which continued, since I never have the presence of mind necessary to stop a round once it is started, until an official turned us out. Outside we studied the fantastic letter-boxes, great gaping mouths, where one can watch the released letter falling down and down a long dark well until it lands upon a tray in a lighted room far below. ‘This so fascinated Finn and me that we decided we must write some letters forthwith, and we returned inside and bought two letter cards. Dave said he already received more letters than he wanted and there was no sense in inviting yet more by pointless acts of correspondence. Finn said he was going to write to someone in Ireland. I started to write to Anna, pressing the card vertically against the wall of the Post Office; but I could think of nothing to say to her except I love you, which I wrote several times over, very badly. Then I added, you are beautiful, and sealed the letter. I put it well into the mouth of the box and let it go and it fell, turning over and over like an autumn leaf.
‘Come on!’ said Lefty.
‘Where?’
‘Here,’ he said, and led us suddenly down beside the edge of the Post Office. In a daze I saw Lefty ahead of me rising from the ground. He was on top of a wall beckoning to me. The way I felt at that moment I could have walked up the side of the Queen Mary. I followed, and the others followed me. A moment later we found ourselves in what seemed like a small enclosed and much overgrown garden. In the light summer darkness I discerned a fig tree which leaned across an iron gateway. Grass grew knee deep about fallen white stones. We sat. Then I realized that we were in what had once been the nave of St Leonard Foster. I lay back in the deep grass and my eyes filled with stars.
A little while later Lefty was saying to me, ‘What you need is to become involved. As soon as you do something and knock into people you’ll begin to hate a few of them. Nothing destroys abstraction so well as hatred.’
‘It’s true,’ I said lazily. ‘At present I hate nobody.’
We spoke in low voices. Near by Finn and Dave lay murmuring to each other.
‘Then you ought to be ashamed,’ said Lefty.
‘But what could I do?’ I asked him.
‘That would have to be studied,’ said Lefty. ‘We treat our members scientifically. We ask about each one: where is the point of intersection of his needs and ours? What will he most like doing which will also most benefit us? Of course, we ask for a certain amount of simple routine work as well.’
‘Of course,’ I said. I was watching Orion rising through a forest of grass.
‘In your case,’ said Lefty, ‘it’s fortunately quite plain what you can do.’
‘What?’
‘Write plays,’ said Lefty.
‘I can’t,’ I said. ‘Won’t novels do?’
‘No,’ said he. ‘Who reads novels now? Ever tried to write a play?’
‘No.’
‘Well, the sooner you start the better. Aimed at the West End, naturally.’
‘It’s not easy to get a play put on in the West End,’ I told him.
‘Don’t you believe it!’ said Lefty. ‘It’s just a matter of making certain routine concessions to popular taste. Before you start you can make a scientific analysis of a few recent successes. The trouble with you is you don’t like hard work. Give it the right framework and then you can fill in any message you please. You’d better come round and discuss it with me some time next week. Now then, when can you come?’
Lefty produced his diary and began turning over its thickly marked pages. I tried to think of some reason why this was impossible, but I could think of none. Orion was putting his foot into my eye.
‘Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday ...’ I said to him. ‘But I promise nothing.’
‘I’m pretty filled up,’ said Lefty. ‘What about Friday at about three-fifteen? I’m free till four, and with luck a bit longer. Come to the Ind. Soc. Office.’
‘All right, all right,’ I said. I could see the pallor of Lefty’s face turned towards me.
‘You’ll forget,’ he said. And he took out a card, and wrote down the time and place, and
pushed it into my pocket.
‘And now,’ he said to me, ‘perhaps you’ll tell me what it was you were doing in these parts?’
This question moved me, partly because it was the first direct indication I had had that Lefty was human, and partly because it reminded me of Hugo, who had been unaccountably absent from my mind during the last few hours. I dragged myself to a sitting position. My head felt as if it were on a spring and someone were trying to pull it off. I clutched it violently with both hands.
‘I was looking for Belfounder,’ I told him.
‘Hugo Belfounder?’ said Lefty, and there was a note of interest in his voice.
‘Yes, do you know him?’ I asked.
‘I know who you mean,’ said Lefty.
I looked towards him, but his enormous eyes showed only as two black patches in the pallor of his face. ‘Did you see him this evening?’ I asked.
‘He didn’t come into the Skinners’,‘ said Lefty.
I wanted to ask Lefty more questions; I wondered how he saw Hugo. As a capitalist? But my head claimed all my attention for the moment.
It was a bit later again, it must have been some time after two, when Finn expressed a desire to go swimming. Lefty had been talking to Dave, and I was just getting my second wind. The night was faultlessly warm and still. As soon as Finn suggested this idea it seemed to all of us except Dave an irresistible one. We discussed where to go. The Serpentine was too far away and so was Regent’s Park, and the St James’s Park area is always stiff with police. The obvious thing was to swim in the Thames.
‘You’ll get swept away by the tide,’ said Dave.
‘Not if we swim when it’s on the turn,’ said Finn. This was brilliant. But when was it on the turn?
‘My diary will tell us,’ said Lefty. We crowded round while he struck a match. High tide at London Bridge was at two fifty-eight. It was perfect. A moment later we were climbing the wall.
‘Watch out for police,’ said Lefty. ‘They’ll think we’re going to rob a warehouse. If you see one, pretend to be drunk.’
This was rather superfluous advice.
Across a moonswept open space we followed what used to be Fyefoot Lane, where many a melancholy notice board tells in the ruins of the City where churches and where public houses once stood. Beside the solitary tower of St Nicholas we passed into Upper Thames Street. There was no sound; not a bell, not a footstep. We trod softly. We turned out of the moonlight into a dark labyrinth of alleys and gutted warehouses where indistinguishable objects loomed in piles. Scraps of newspaper blotted the streets, immobilized in the motionless night. The rare street lamps revealed pitted brick walls and cast the shadow of an occasional cat. A street as deep and dark as a well ended at last in a stone breakwater, and on the other side, at the foot of a few steps, was the moon again, scattered in pieces upon the river. We climbed over on to the steps and stood in silence for a while with the water lapping our feet.
On either side the walls of warehouses jutted out, cutting our view and sheltering the inlet where the river came to us thick with scum and floating spars of wood, full to overflowing in the bosom of London. There was a smell as of rotten vegetables. Finn was taking off his shoes. No man who has faced the Liffey can be appalled by the dirt of another river.
‘Careful,’ said Lefty. ‘Keep well down on the steps, then no one can see us from the street. Don’t talk aloud, and don’t dive in. There may be river police around.’ He pulled his shirt off.
I looked at Dave. ‘Are you coming in?’ I asked him.
‘Of course not!’ he said. ‘I think you are all mad.’ And he sat down with his back to the breakwater.
My heart was beating violently. I began to undress too. Already Finn was standing pale and naked with his feet in the water. He was thrusting aside the flotsam with his foot and walking slowly down the steps. The water reached to his knees, to his buttocks, and then with a soft splash he was away and the wood was knocking upon the stone as the ripples came back.
‘What an infernal row he’s making!’ said Lefty.
My stomach was chill and I was shivering. I pulled off my last garment. Lefty was already stripped.
‘Keep it quiet,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to be copped for this!’
We looked at each other and smiled in the darkness. He turned to the river and began edging awkwardly down, his body diminishing into the black water. The night air touched my body with a touch which was neither warm nor cold, only very soft and unexpected. My blood buzzed behind my skin with a nervous beat. Then without a sound Lefty had followed Finn. The water took my ankles in a cold clasp. As I went down I could see from the comer of my eye Dave crouched above me like a monument. Then the water was about my neck and I shot out into the open river.
The sky opened out above me like an unfurled banner, cascading with stars and blanched by the moon. The black bulls of barges darkened the water behind me and murky towers and pinnacles rose indistinctly on the other bank. I swam well out into the river. It seemed enormously wide; and as I looked up and down stream I could see on one side the dark pools under Blackfriars Bridge, and on the other the pillars of Southwark Bridge glistening under the moon. The whole expanse of water was running with light. It was like swimming in quicksilver. I looked about for Finn and Lefty, and soon saw their heads bobbing not far away. They came towards me and for a while we swam together. We had caught the tide beautifully upon the turn and there was not the least hint of a current.
I was easily the best swimmer of the three. Finn swims strongly but awkwardly, wasting his power in unnecessary movements and rolling too much from side to side. Lefty swam with neatness but without vigour. I guessed that he would soon tire. I swim excellently, giving myself to the water, and I have an effortless crawl which I can keep up indefinitely. Swimming has natural affinities with Judo. Both arts depend upon one’s willingness to surrender a rigid and nervous attachment to the upright position. Both bring muscles into play throughout the whole body. Both demand, over an exceptionally wide area of bodily activity, the elimination of superfluous motion. Both resemble the dynamism of water which runs through many channels to find its own level. In fact, however, once one has learnt to control one’s body and overcome the primeval fear of falling which is so deep in the human consciousness, there are few physical arts and graces which are not thereby laid open to one, or at any rate made much easier of access. I am, for instance, a good dancer and a very creditable tennis player. If it were possible for anything to console me for my lack of height, these things would console me.
Now the other two had gone back to the steps. I swam to one of the barges, and clung on to the cable for a while, throwing my head back to scan a panorama of blue-black sky and black and silver water, and stilling my body until the silence entered me with a rush. Then I climbed up the cable until I was free of the water, and clung to it like a white worm. Then I let go with my feet, and clambered down hand over hand lowering myself noiselessly back into the river. As my legs broke the surface I could feel a gentle and continuous pull. The tide was beginning to run out again. I made for the steps.
Finn and Lefty were dressing in a state of smothered hilarity. I joined them. A tension had been released, a ritual performed. Now we should have liked to have shouted and fought. But the necessity of silence turned our energy into laughter. When I was dressed I felt warm, and nearly sober, and ravenously hungry. I searched the pockets of my mackintosh and found the biscuits and foie gras which I had taken from Sadie. These were received with quiet acclamation. We sat upon the steps which were lengthening now as the tide receded and deposited at our feet broken crates and tin cans and a miscellany of vegetable refuse. I opened the tins of pâté with my knife and made a distribution of biscuits. There was still some brandy left in the bottles other than mine; but Dave said he had had enough and resigned his rights to me. Lefty announced that he must go soon, as the Party were moving into a new Branch Office that morning. He offered the rest of his bottle to Finn, an
d it was not refused. We ate joyously, passing the tins from hand to hand. The brandy was going down my throat like divine fire and making my blood race at the speed of light.
What happened after that I’m not very sure. The rest of the night appears in patches through the haze that hangs over it in my memory. Lefty went away, after we had sworn eternal friendship, and I had pledged myself to the cause of socialist exploration. I had a long sentimental talk with Dave about something or other, Europe perhaps. Finn, who was even drunker than I, got mislaid. We left him somewhere with his feet in the water. Dave said some time later that he thought it was perhaps his head that had been in the water, so we came back to look for him but couldn’t find him. As we walked those empty streets under a paling sky a strange sound was ringing in my ears which was perhaps the vanishing bells of St Mary and St Leonard and St Vedast and St Anne and St Nicholas and St John Zachary. The coming day had thrust a long arm into the night. Astonishingly soon the daylight came, like a diffused mist, and as we were passing St Andrew-by-the-Wardrobe and I was finishing the brandy the horizon was already streaked with a clear green.
Nine
THE next thing that I remember is that we were in Covent Garden Market drinking coffee. There is an early-morning coffee-stall there for the use of the porters, but we seemed to be its only customers. It was broad daylight now and had been, I believe, for some time. We were standing in the part of the market that is devoted to flowers. Looking about me and seeing exceedingly many roses I was at once reminded of Anna. I decided I would take her some flowers that very morning, and I told Dave so. We wandered into an avenue of crated blossoms. There were so few people about and there were so many flowers that it seemed the most natural thing to help ourselves. I passed between walls of long stemmed roses still wet with the dew of the night, and gathered white ones and pink ones and saffron ones. Round a comer I met Dave laden with white peonies, their bursting heads tinged with red. We put the flowers together into an armful. As there seemed no reason to stop there, we rifled wooden boxes full of violets and anemones, and crammed our pockets with pansies, until our sleeves were drenched and we were half suffocated with pollen. Then, clutching our bouquets, we walked out of the Market and sat down on a doorstep in Long Acre.
