Under the Net

by Iris Murdoch

  When the sun was set I might perhaps go to sleep. I never let myself sleep during the day. Daytime sleep is a cursed slumber from which one wakes in despair. The sun will not tolerate it. If he can he will pry under your eyelids and prise them apart; and if you hang black curtains at your windows he will lay siege to your room until it is so stifling that at last you stagger with staring eyes to the window and tear back the curtains to see that most terrible of sights, the broad daylight outside a room where you have been sleeping. There are special nightmares for the daytime sleeper: little nervous dreams tossed into some brief restless moments of unconsciousness and breaking through the surface of the mind to become confused at once with the horror of some waking vision. Such are these awakenings, like an awakening in the grave, when one opens one’s eyes, stretched out rigid with clenched hands, waiting for some misery to declare itself; but for a long time it lies to suffocation upon the chest and utters no word.

  I was afraid to go to sleep. Whenever I began to feel drowsy I would move to some less comfortable position: which was not difficult since I was lying on Dave’s camp-bed, which resumed innumerable possibilities of discomfort. It was one of those beds in which the canvas is slung in a rectangle of rigid rods supported by four W-shaped steel legs. At the junction of the legs with the rectangle there are bulging joints into which the rods supporting the canvas also fit. By shifting my body about I could make one or other of these joints bore into my ribs or back. So I would lie for a time contorted, while the haze of sleep was dispelled and replaced by an aching stupor which I knew from experience could continue indefinitely without ever darkening into unconsciousness. My pillow was propped up on a rucksack of Dave’s which contained a coagulated mass of boots and old clothes which had not been taken out for years; and sometimes the pillow would fall off, and leave me propped against the rucksack and bathed in its aura of the perspiration of long ago. I needed to see the window. The sun was still moving.

  Mars was somewhere in the room. He would lie so silent for long periods that I would think that perhaps he had gone away, and start looking for him with my eyes; only to find him lying close to me and looking at me. Occasionally he would attempt to lie on the bed beside me, but I discouraged this. His warm fur had an aroma of sleep which made me afraid. Then he would stretch out near me on the floor and for a time I would dangle my hand upon his neck. Later on he would poke about the room in a bored way until he threw himself down in a far corner with a grunting sound. Later on again I would hear his claws click on the linoleum and he would come and thrust his long nose into my face and give me a look of anguish which came so near to transcending his nature that I would push his face away and ruffle up the fur of his back to satisfy myself that he was only a dog.

  I was worried that he was getting no exercise. Dave, it is true, took him out every morning and evening as far as Shepherd’s Bush Green, and there, Dave would tell me, he would race about like a mad thing until it was time to come home again. But this could not be enough for such a big dog; and Dave, who was due to start teaching at a summer school in a day or two, would then have even less time to devote to him. I wondered if Mars was unhappy ; and then I wondered whether, supposing that he could not be said to know that he was unhappy, he could properly be said to be unhappy. I decided to ask Dave about this some time.

  Dave was often in during the day, and I would hear the distant sound of his typewriter. Then there would be silence. He brought me a meal at midday and in the evening. We did not speak. Sometimes in the afternoon he would open the door and look at me for a while. I saw him as one sees someone through the wrong end of a telescope. Then much later I would remember that the door had shut and he was gone. Dave had seen me like this before. The bed creaked and shivered as I turned upon it restlessly. I was dressed in my shirt and pants, and although it was a sunny day I had two blankets drawn over me. I felt cold in the marrow of my bones. I retrieved my pillow and balanced it again upon the rucksack. I turned away from the window. No sun came into this room, but in the reflected light from the Hospital wall everything was revealed with an abnormal clarity, as if an extra dimension had been added to space, and objects projected and receded with a sharpness which made them almost unbearably present. I lay looking at my shoes and wondering what could have happened to Finn.

  I had come back from Paris on the morning of the fifteenth. I had found Dave and Mars at Goldhawk Road and heard from Dave the story of how he and Finn had spent the previous afternoon at Sandown Park where Lyrebird had obliged us all by winning at such fancy odds. They had placed the bet at the course, and as soon as Dave collected the money he had given Finn his share, which amounted to two hundred and ten pounds. Finn had stowed this sum, which was largely in five-pound notes, in odd pockets all over his person. This he had done in silence, somewhat with the air of a man donning a parachute for a dangerous jump. After that he had shaken Dave mutely by the hand for some time. Then he had turned and disappeared into the crowd. He had not returned to Goldhawk Road that night, and Dave had thought it possible that he had gone to join me, until I had arrived on the following morning and, after looking about for Finn, asked for news of him. Since then he had not reappeared. I was not yet seriously worried. Finn was probably on the drink. I had known him go off once before on a blind which lasted for three days and from which he was brought home in an ambulance. I didn’t imagine that anything serious could have happened to him. All the same I wanted him very badly to come back.

  After my arrival I had written at once to someone at the Club des Fous asking him to try to find out where Anna was and to let me know. But I had not had any reply. I had also tried fruitlessly to contact Hugo. There was no answer from his flat, and the studio said that he had gone into the country. Dave had shown me a copy of the letter which he had sent to Sadie about Mars, which was a masterly compound of friendly argumentation and menace. But so far Sadie had shown no sign of life either. I had written to Jean Pierre congratulating him on his success. After that I had lain down on the camp-bed. The day of my appointment with Lefty had come and gone, and since then he had rung up twice and asked for me; and Dave had told him that I was ill, which I suppose was true.

  The Hospital wall was now almost entirely in shadow. There was only a triangle of gold at the top of the window where I could still see it touched by the evening sun. Dave opened the door and called to Mars, and I could hear him dancing and barking in the hall at the prospect of his evening walk. When Dave brought Mars back I might consider going to sleep. Or perhaps it would still be too early; and so I might sleep and wake again before the night had really started. I had a horror of this. I rose and tidied my bed just to wake myself up a bit. I lowered myself slowly back on to the bed and lay very still until it had ceased to tremble. Mars was back, looking closely into my face, and bringing with him a disquieting freshness from the outside world. His wet nose and his eyes were shining, and the light brown markings upon his brow gave him a perpetual look of expectation. He barked once. ‘Be quiet!’ I told him. The disturbing sound rang in my ears for long afterwards as the structure of silence recomposed itself.

  It was the following morning and I was waiting to hear the postman come. I did this every morning now. My watch had stopped, but I could tell the time from the Hospital wall. It was nearly time. It was time. Then I heard his feet on the stairs and the rattle of the letter box, and a moment later a heavy bump. There must be a lot of letters this morning I heard Dave going into the hall. This was the only real moment of the day. I waited. There was silence. Now Dave was approaching my door. He looked in.

  ‘Nothing for you, Jake,’ he said.

  I nodded my head and turned it away. I could see that Dave was still standing in the doorway. Mars had pushed past him into the hall.

  ‘Jake,’ said Dave, ‘for the Lord’s sake get up and do something, anything at all. I’m a nervous wreck thinking of you lying there all the time. I can’t do philosophy when you are making me feel so nervous.’ I said nothing
.

  Dave waited a little longer. Then he said, ‘Don’t mind me, Jake. Who am I to speak? But you ought to get up for the sake of yourself.’

  I shut my eyes, and a bit later I heard the door close. Then I heard Dave going out with Mars. Then it was later still and Mars was in the room again, and Dave had gone away perhaps to his summer school. I decided to get up.

  At first I couldn’t find my clothes. The room seemed to be a chaos of unrelated objects. I found myself automatically beginning to unpack Dave’s rucksack. I kicked it away. Then I saw my trousers in a heap in the corner where Mars had been using them as a bed. They were covered with short black hairs. I shook them out and put them on. Then I opened the window wide and did some breathing exercises. The heat wave was over and it was a brisk rapid day with a summer wind. I leaned out and looked up at the sky, far off above the top of the Hospital wall, and saw the blue and white haste of the small clouds. Mars was prancing round me and whining with pleasure and jumping up at me with his rough paws. When he stood on his hind legs he was almost as tall as I was. But then, as I mentioned before, I am not very tall. I tidied the room a little. Then I found my coat and left the house with Mars.

  Goldhawk Road was hideous. The traffic made a continual jagged uproar and the pavements were crowded with people jostling past each other in front of shop windows full of cheap crockery and tin cans. I managed to get with Mars as far as the Green, and I sat down under a tree upon the hard earth which had tried to produce a little grass and all but failed. Mars ran about and played with some other dogs. He kept coming back to assure me that he had not forgotten me. I fixed my eyes upon the sky above the Shepherd’s Bush Empire. With an extraordinary speed the curdling masses of white cloud were tumbling down behind the roofs. The whole sky had put on a gigantic and harmonious haste which made the scurrying of the people in the streets about me seem nervous and paltry. I got up and walked several times round the Green, escorted by Mars. Then I took him back to the flat. It made me too anxious to have him with me in the middle of so much traffic, and I had forgotten to bring his lead. I telephoned to Hugo’s flat and to the studio, but with the same negative results as before. After that I went out again and walked about by myself until the pubs opened.

  As I was coming back towards Dave’s flat I found myself passing the front of the Hospital, and I paused. The Hospital is a great white concrete structure with regular square windows and a flat roof. It was built not long ago and pictures of it appeared in the architectural reviews. There are a number of wings or transepts which jut out in different directions from the main block and cunningly divert the eye from its monotony of line. In the wells or gullies created by these transepts they have planted gardens, with grassy lawns and small trees which will one day be large trees, the preservation of which will be a matter debated endlessly by hospital committees torn between the therapeutic benefits of the charms of nature and the need to let a little more light into the wards on the lower floors. I stood for a while watching the cars coming and going in the square courtyard in front of the main entrance. Then I crossed the road and went in and asked for a job.

  Seventeen

  IT amazed me, in retrospect, when I considered how readily I had been engaged: no questions put, no references asked for. Perhaps I inspire confidence. I had never in my life before attempted to get a job. Getting a job was something which my friends occasionally tried to do, and which always seemed to be a matter for slow and difficult negotiation or even intrigue. Indeed, it was the spectacle of their ill success which, together with my own temperament, had chiefly deterred me from any essays in this direction. It had never occurred to me that it might be possible to get a job simply by going and asking for it, and in any normal state of mind I would never even have made the attempt. You will point out, and quite rightly, that the job into which I had stepped so easily was in a category not only unskilled but unpopular where a desperate shortage of candidates might well secure the immediate engagement of anyone other than a total paralytic; whereas what my friends perhaps were finding it so difficult to become was higher civil servants, columnists on the London dailies, officials of the British Council, fellows of colleges, or governors of the B.B.C. This is true. I was nevertheless feeling impressed, at the point which our story had now reached, and not only by my having got the job, but also by the efficient way in which I turned out to be able to perform it.

  I was what was termed an orderly. My hours were eight to six, with three-quarters of an hour for lunch, and one day off a week. I was attached to a ward which specialized in head injuries and was called ‘Corelli’ in accordance with the Hospital custom of calling its wards by the names of wealthy benefactors: Mr Corelli having been a soap manufacture from Sicily whose son once received a fractured skull through driving his Lancia when under the influence of drink in the Uxbridge Road. His child restored, the elder Corelli had acted with suitable generosity, and hence the name of the ward in which I had now been working for four days.

  My tasks were simple. When I arrived at eight a.m. I took a mop and bucket and cleaned three corridors and two flights of stairs. These surfaces were easy to clean, and I achieved spectacular alterations of colour with the help of a little soap. After this, I washed up the crockery of the patients’ breakfast which was stacked up waiting for me by now in the ward kitchen. Corelli occupied three corridors, one on the ground floor called Corelli I, and two on the first floor called Corelli II and III. The ward kitchen was in Corelli III, and it was here that my activity centred, and in a cubby hole next to the kitchen that I left my coat, and retired to sit and read the newspapers should there ever be a spare moment. After the washing up I went and fetched the cans of milk from the main kitchen, which was known as the Transept Kitchen, and took them back to Corelli III on a trolley which I brought up on a special service-lift. I enjoyed this bit very much. To reach the Transept Kitchen I had to walk quite a long way through the corridors of other wards with strange names; and as I walked quickly along, passing unfamiliar people in white coats, they on their tasks and I on mine, I felt like a man entrusted with an important mission. When I got back to Corelli I was allowed to perform an operation of almost clinical significance, that is to warm the milk on the big electric stove and pour it into mugs which the nurses took to those of the patients who were allowed to have it. After that I cut bread and butter and then washed up the mugs and saucepans and cleaned the kitchen.

  I was still more than a little nervous of my colleagues and superiors and very anxious to please. With the nurses, who were mainly young Irish girls without a thought in their heads, unless obsession with matrimony may be called a thought, I immediately got on very well. They were calling me ‘Jakie’ on the second day, and treating me with an affectionate teasing tyranny. I noticed with interest that none of them took me seriously as a male. I exuded an aroma which, although we got on so splendidly, in some way kept them off; perhaps some obscure instinct warned them that I was an intellectual. With the Ward Matron I got on well too, though in a different way. The Ward Matron was so august a person, so elderly and austere and with such a high notion of her own dignity, that the possibility of certain frictions was removed simply by the social distance which lay between us. My personal peculiarities could not offend her since she was totally uninterested in my pretensions to be a person. The only question which I raised was whether or not I did my work well and kept out of the way; and as I did these things she showed her approval by ignoring me, except that on the first occasion on each day when we passed each other in the corridor she would turn her head very slightly with a faint intensification of expression which if produced almost indefinitely might have become a smile.

  Beyond the Ward Matron into the stratosphere of the Hospital hierarchy my vision did not extend. It was with the intermediate portions of my small society that my relations were most uneasy. Under the Matron were three Sisters, one for each of the Corellis, and it was from these beings that I directly received most of my orders.
The lives of these women, already far advanced, were made a misery, on the one hand by the Matron, who treated them with unremitting despotism, and on the other by the nurses who repaid them with continual veiled mockery for the pains which the Sisters, in order to recoup their own dignity, felt bound to inflict upon those beneath them. The Sisters found me hard to understand. They suspected me of wanting to score off them, not only because of my friendly relations with their enemies the nurses, but because, more than anyone else with whom I had contact in the Hospital, they divined something of my real nature. I presented them with a problem that made them nervous; and for them alone of all the women with whom I had to do in that place, I indubitably existed as a man. An electrical current passed between us, they continually avoided my eye, and when they gave me orders, their high-pitched voices went a semitone higher.

  I was particularly fond of the Sister of Corelli III, which was the one with whom I had most to do, who was called Sister Piddingham and known to the nurses as The Pid. The Pid must have been about fifty, or perhaps more, and many years might have passed since she had started dyeing her long grey hair black. Her voice and eyes, made sharp by verbal warfare and professional habits of critical scrutiny, followed me continually as I worked in the kitchen. Her very anxiety to criticize me made a bond between us; I should have liked to have done something special and unexpected to please her, such as bringing her flowers, but I knew that she took me seriously enough to be capable of construing this as an act of condescension and hating me for it. For the sad mystery of her mode of existence I felt a respect which almost amounted to terror. The only other Hospital people of whom I saw anything were a man called Stitch, who was a sort of resident head-porter, who was very stupid and hated me heartily, and one or two ward maids who were more or less semi-deficient.