Under the Net

by Iris Murdoch

  Mars attracted a lot of attention. ‘A fine dog you have there!’ someone said to me. As I gave my order I picked up an evening paper which was lying on the counter. It occurred to me that now was the time to look for a clue to the identity of H. K. This might also make clear the timetable to which Sadie and Sammy were working. I began to look through the paper. I didn’t have to look far. A headline read: MOVIE MAGNATE SAILS ON THE Q.E. And underneath: Hollywood Kingmaker Seeks Ideas in Britain: In one of the most luxurious cabins of the liner Queen Elizabeth which docks here shortly sits a quiet little man drinking coca-cola. His name, little known to the public, is one to conjure with in Hollywood. Those who really know in the movie business know that Homer K. Pringsheim is the power behind many a throne and the maker and breaker of many a film career. Mr Pringsheim, who lives simply and shuns publicity, told a press conference in New York that he went to Europe ‘as a tourist mainly’. It is well known, however, that ‘H. K.’, as this formidable figure is affectionately called in Los Angeles, is on the look-out for new stars and new ideas. Asked whether he favoured closer cooperation between the British and American film industries, Mr Pringsheim said, ‘Well, maybe.’

  That made that clear anyway. I wondered what were Sadie’s means of access to H. K. and how long it would take her to get him on the dotted line. I didn’t doubt that Sadie knew exactly what she was doing. She had probably charmed that quiet little man on some previous visit. I should have to work fast. It remained to discover when exactly the Elizabeth docked.

  I was looking through the rest of the paper to see if this was announced anywhere when I suddenly noticed a small item at the bottom of one of the pages which read as follows:ANNA QUENTIN FOR HOLLYWOOD?

  Connoisseurs of the song will be familiar with the name of Anna Quentin, distinguished blues singer and versatile vocalist. Miss Quentin’s admirers, who have been regretting her recent retirement from the limelight, will hear with mixed feelings the report that she is bound for Hollywood. Miss Quentin, leaving for a short stay in Paris, refused either to confirm or deny a rumour that she had signed a long-term contract for work in America and that she would be sailing shortly in the Liberté. Miss Quentin is the sister of the well-known screen actress Sadie Quentin.

  I studied this for about ten minutes, trying to read between the lines. Like Miss Quentin’s other admirers I had mixed feelings. On the whole I felt profound relief. This Hollywood contract was undoubtedly the offer which Anna had accepted with reluctance. Possibly she had decided that the only way to deal with Hugo’s importunities was flight. On the other hand, I knew that Anna would be sorry to leave Europe. For myself, my immediate feeling was that I would rather lose her to Hollywood than to Hugo. She might come back from Hollywood; and anyway it was still possible that she hadn’t finally made up her mind to go. My knowledge of Anna’s character suggested that if she had finally decided to do something about which she had serious misgivings she would want everyone to know about it at once.

  These were my first reactions. Within about five minutes, however, of having been relieved of my greatest fear I began, like a man cured of a fever who finds that he has the toothache, to be distressed by the alternative state of affairs on its own account. It is true that I had not felt any irresistible urge to go back to the theatre and pester Anna with my attentions. But I had known that Anna was there, and I had felt sure that before long she would summon me. As indeed she had, I remembered with pain. But Anna in the U.S.A. was very different food for thought. It occurred to me then that if I left at once I might catch her in Paris and dissuade her from going at all.

  This idea was for a short while very attractive. I was interrupted in my contemplation of it by Mars, who placed a large dry paw on my knee. ‘Yes,’ I told him, ‘I’d forgotten you.’ Of course, I could always just return Mars to Sammy. If I didn’t want to see the face Sammy would make I could bring Mars back to Chelsea and tie him up outside the door. Or I could turn him in at a police station if it came to that. What did I care really about The Wooden Nightingale ? Let them have the damn thing. It then began to seem to me that pinching Mars was one of the most foolish things I had ever done. If I hadn’t put myself in the wrong by doing that I might have taken a high moral line with Sadie and Sammy about the typescript — Sammy at any rate had a bad conscience about it - and soaked them for a lot of money. Also I was landed with the animal. If it wasn’t for him I could drop the whole tiresome business and pursue Anna.

  Yet indeed, I thought again, it would be a grave thing to go away just now. What I must certainly do was warn Hugo about Sadie’s plan. Not that there was likely to be anything that Hugo could do about it; but I would not be easy until he knew. As for my instinct in joining battle with Sammy and Sadie, it had been a sound enough instinct. At the very least something unexpected had overtaken that reptilian pair; and when I reflected on the way Sammy had treated Madge I only wished I could have devised some even greater shock for him. It remained to be seen how high a value could be put on Mars from the blackmail point of view. I ate a meat pie, and Mars ate another one, and I looked at my watch. It was ten to eight. The sooner I could find Hugo the better; and in fact as soon as his burly bear-like image was risen fairly before me I was filled with a very great eagerness to see him, the more so as I felt that there was some perverse fate that was trying to keep us apart. It was spiritually necessary for me to find Hugo.

  A few minutes later I was ringing up Lloyd’s. The Queen Elizabeth docked the day after tomorrow. That wasn’t too bad. I then rang Hugo’s Holbom number and got no answer. I forthwith telephoned the Bounty Belfounder studio. I thought it just possible that Hugo might be still there. The studio answered and told me that in fact everyone was still on the set. Whether Mr Belfounder was still there they were not sure. He had been there earlier in the evening but had perhaps gone. This was good enough. I decided to go to the studio.

  Twelve

  THE Bounty Belfounder studio is situated in a suburb of Southern London where contingency reaches the point of nausea. I went as far as my money would take me in a taxi and the rest of the way by bus. This left me penniless but I had no thoughts beyond the moment. If you have ever seen a film studio you will know how curiously in its decor the glittering and the decrepit are merged. Bounty Belfounder somewhat favoured the latter. It covered a considerable area in between a railway line and a main road and was enclosed on the road side by a very high corrugated-iron fence. The main door, which was in the centre of a strip of low temporary buildings, looked rather like the entrance to a zoo; and over it the name BOUNTY BELFOUNDER perpetually burning in neon lights raised a sigh in the breasts of girls who passed it daily on their way to work in and around the Old Kent Road.

  Mars and I alighted from the bus. If you have ever tried to get into a film studio you will know that the chances of your turning out to be an Unauthorized Person are very high indeed. I am myself a sort of professional Unauthorized Person; I am sure I have been turned out of more places than any other member of the English intelligentsia. As I stood now looking at the studio it began to occur to me that I might have difficulty in getting in. The main entrance consisted of a pair of iron gates which were not only closed but were guarded by no less than three men who sat in a small office overlooking the road and whose task and joy it plainly was to usher in the illustrious with fawning and to spurn the humble from the door. I knew that it was useless to approach them and ask for Hugo. So I thought I might as well make a tour of the outside of the place and see it there wasn’t some more inviting way in. Already I had attracted the attention of the Cerberi and their glances convicted me of loitering. It also occurred to me that, especially in this milieu, Mars might be recognized. I was really rather of Finn’s opinion that one Alsatian dog looks much like another; but then there are some people who can distinguish day-old chicks and Chinamen. We turned away looking casual.

  We followed the iron fence as far as the railway. It was covered with advance publicity of the film whi
ch was apparently being made inside at that very moment. I remembered now having seen something about it in the papers. It was a film about the conspiracy of Catiline which was to be remarkable for its painstaking care in presenting this much-disputed and doubtless misrepresented episode. At Last ! the posters announced to bewildered Londoners, The Truth About Catiline! No less than three eminent ancient historians were on the payroll. Sadie was playing the part of Orestilla, Catiline’s wife, whom Sallust says no good man ever praised save for her beauty and whom Cicero professed to believe to be not only Catiline’s wife but also his daughter. Of this latter insinuation the film makes no mention, but the former, whether prompted by research or by the necessities of the script, it repudiates by presenting Orestilla as a woman with a heart of gold and moderate reformist principles.

  The place seemed to be impregnable. There might have been a way of entering from the railway side. But I left this as a last resort; for although I am not frightened of motor cars I am rather nervous of trains. This I know is illogical since, except in moments of crisis, trains run on rails and cannot pursue you across pavements and into shops as cars can. On this occasion, however, my natural fears were augmented by the presence of Mars. I vividly pictured him being run over by a train, which to my fevered imagination seemed to be the unavoidable consequence of our venturing out on to the tracks. So I turned back towards the main gate.

  Here I noticed that the three men who had taken me for a felonious loiterer had gone, and that one man only sat framed in the window. I looked at the gate, and as I did so I saw inside it, standing in the studio yard, the big black Alvis which I had last seen gliding away from the Riverside Theatre. I was certain it was the same car. This decided me. Somewhere on the other side of these gates was Hugo. Without an idea in my head I approached the window. The man looked at me questioningly. I leaned towards him.

  ‘I’m George’s friend,’ I hissed, and looked fixedly into his eyes. I mumbled the name a bit so that it might serve equally for John or Joe or James or Jack. One or other of these bolts evidently reached a target. The man nodded in a rather contemptuous way and touched a lever. The gates opened.

  ‘Straight across the yard and on the left,’ he said. I walked in.

  I didn’t want to attract attention to Mars by calling him; I hoped he would have enough bense to follow me in at once. As I could hear the gates beginning to close behind me I couldn’t help turning slightly to see what had happened to him. But all was well. He had not only followed discreetly at my heels, but had even lowered his tail as he passed under the office window. Without looking back again I hurried across the yard, past Hugo’s car, and entered a labyrinth of buildings on the other side. On my left a large door said EXTRAS. This was doubtless the desired destination of Joe’s friend, and I wondered for a moment whether it mightn’t profit me to continue in this role. But I decided that really there was no reason why I should have to attire myself like an ancient Roman in order to find Hugo, especially as this would mean surrendering my trousers to another person, an act of which I have a primitive terror. So I went straight on and as I did so I took off my tie and knotted one end of it on to Mars’s collar. I felt ready for anything.

  In the distance I could now hear a voice holding forth in a passionate rhetorical manner. The sound of it carried clearly through the sensitive evening air. It was this way that I went, for I did not doubt that if I could find the centre of operations I should discover Hugo. There was no one about and no other sound to be heard. The office people had evidently gone home. With Mars padding beside me I ran down a lane of concrete buildings and then down another one. Somewhere ahead there was a great deal of light. Then I turned a comer and there opened before me the most astonishing scene.

  In the background, rising up in an explosion of colour and form, was a piece of ancient Rome. On brick walls and arches and marble pillars and columns there fell the brilliantlywhite radiance of the arc lamps, making the buildings stand out in a relief more violent than of nature and darkening by contrast the surrounding air into a haze of twilight. Nearer to me was a forest of wooden scaffolding festooned with cables in which were perched the huge lamps themselves; and in between, mounted on steel stilts and poised on cranes, were the innumerable cameras, all eyes. Most strange of all, in the open arena in front of the city stood a crowd of nearly a thousand men in perfectly motionless silence. Their backs were turned to me and they seemed to listen enthralled to the vibrating voice of a single figure who stood raised above them on a chariot, swaying and gesticulating in the focus of the blazing light.

  This doubtless was Catiline inflaming the Roman plebs. The unnatural whiteness of the light made the colours burn into my eyes and I had to turn my head away. At any other time I would have been fascinated to watch what was going on. At that moment, however, there was but one thought in my mind, that it was now almost certain that only a small distance separated me from Hugo. I began to move round behind the scaffolding, walking behind the beams of light as one walks behind a waterfall. I didn’t want Hugo to see me first. And as I went the city seemed to unfold, revealing by some trick of the scene vista after vista of streets and temples and pillared market places. I went on in a stupor, just outside the circle of colour, with the cascade of radiance on one side and the twilight on the other. Even Mars seemed under a spell, a gliding dog whose jointed legs swung to and fro without touching the earth. The passionate voice continued, pouring out an unending flood of exalted protest and appeal. Some of the words which it was uttering began now to find their way into my ears. It was saying: ‘And that, comrades, is the way to get rid of the capitalist system. I don’t say it’s the only way, but I do say it’s the best way.’ I stopped. For all I knew Marxism might rapidly be transforming the study of ancient history; all the same, this sounded rather odd. Then in a flash I realized that the speaker was not Catiline but Lefty.

  The voice ceased and the crowd started out of their immobility. In a murmur which rose to a roar and re-echoed from the facades of the artificial city they clapped and shouted, rustling and swaying and turning to one another. Here and there among them were togaed Romans, but the majority of the men were obviously engineers and technicians in blue overalls and shirt sleeves. On the far side of them I could see now, coming more fully into view as its bearers moved a little, a long banner stretched between two poles, on which was printed in enormous letters SOCIALIST POSSIBILITY. And at that moment I caught sight of Hugo.

  He was standing by himself a little apart from the crowd but in the full blaze of the light. He stood upon the steps of a temple on the edge of the city, looking towards Lefty over the heads of the people. In the many-angled radiance he cast no shadow and in the whiteness of the light he looked strangely pale, as if his flesh were covered with chalk. He was joining and unjoining his hands in a pensive gesture which might have been an afterthought of clapping. He stood in a characteristic way which I remembered well, his shoulders hunched and his head thrust forward, his eyes shifting sharply, stooping a little and his lips moving a little. Then he began to bite his nails. I stood rooted to the spot. Lefty began speaking again and a deep silence at once surrounded his voice.

  Hugo felt my gaze and turned slightly. Some fifteen yards only separated us. I moved from the shadow into the light. Then he saw me. For a moment we looked at each other. I felt no impulse to smile or even to move. I felt as if I looked at Hugo out of another world. Gravity and sadness fell between us like a veil and for a moment I hardly felt that he could see me, so intently was I seeing him. Then Hugo smiled and raised his hand and Mars began to tug me forward towards him. A deep distress overcame me. After the dignity of silence and absence, the vulgarity of speech. I smiled automatically and studied Hugo’s face; what did it express? Friendship, contempt, indifference, irritation? It was inscrutable. I mounted the steps and stood beside him.

  Hugo completed his smile and his salute, neither slowly nor in haste, and then turned back towards the meeting. As he did so he made a
gesture towards Lefty which seemed to signify: ‘Just listen to this!’

  ‘Hugo!’ I hissed.

  ‘Ssh!’ said Hugo.

  ‘Hugo, listen,’ I said, ‘I’ve got to talk to you at once. Can we go somewhere quiet?’

  ‘Ssh,’ said Hugo. ‘Later. I want to hear this. It’s colossal.’ He gave me a sharp sideways look and waved his hands in a deprecatory way. Lefty completed a period and a soft murmur of approval swept over the crowd.

  ‘Hugo,’ I said out loud and with strong emphasis, ‘I’ve got to warn you ...’

  Silence had fallen again. Hugo shook his head at me and put his finger to his lips and gave his attention to Lefty.

  I went on in a lowered voice, trying to drive the words into his ears. ‘Sadie is double-crossing you, she ...’

  ‘She always is,’ said Hugo. ‘Shut up, Jake, will you? We can talk later.’

  Despair overwhelmed me. I sat down on the steps at Hugo’s feet. Mister Mars sat beside me. The glare of the arc lamps was boring into my left eye and Lefty’s voice was piercing my head like a skewer. ‘Ask yourself what you really value,’ Lefty was saying. ‘You know what it says about where your treasure is your heart is.’ I suddenly felt that everything I had been doing lately was pointless — Anna was going to America, Sadie and Sammy were doing whatever they pleased and nothing would stop them, Madge had been deceived, I had found Hugo and he wouldn’t speak to me. It only remained for me to be arrested and put in prison for stealing Mars. I put an arm round the latter’s neck and he licked me sympathetically behind the ear.

  Lefty seemed good for another hour. He was really a remarkable speaker. He spoke simply but without faltering. His discourse was copious and yet well ordered too. Not without flowers, it was not without force either. Although afterwards all I could remember of what he said were a few striking phrases, I had the impression at the time that a closely reasoned argument was being presented. He somehow combined the intimate tone of the popular preacher with the dramatic and inflammatory style of the demagogue. Winged by sincerity and passion, his speech fell like an arrow from above, clean and piercing. The thousand men were under his spell. Their breaming was stilled and their eyes fixed intensely upon him. For a while I watched them so. Then there was a slight shiver at the edge of the crowd. Opposite to us and behind the speaker there were a number of boards with slogans upon them. These boards now began to sway gently to and fro like corks upon a pool which is suddenly disturbed. I noticed one or two scuffles developing on the side near the main entrance. But hardly anyone looked round. Lefty absorbed them.