Under The Net - Iris Murdoch [30]
Eighteen
The first thing I did after that was to take a stiff drink. My heart was beating like an army on the march. I would never do to enroll in a conspiracy. Then I went back to the flat and fetched Mars. I took him on a bus to Barnes, had beer and sandwiches at the Red Lion, and then walked with him on the Common until the light was failing. By the time we got back to Goldhawk Road it was nearly dark. I left Mars at the flat; there was no sign of Dave. He was out at some meeting. Then I started walking at random in the direction of Hammersmith. I just wanted the hours to pass and be quick about it. The pubs were just closing, and I put down as much whisky as I could in the last ten minutes. I walked until I was nearly at the river. I wasn't thinking about anything in particular during this period, but my mind was simply dominated by Hugo. It was as if from his bed in the hospital Hugo were holding the end of a cord to which I was attached, and from time to time I could feel it twitching. Or else it was as if Hugo brooded over me like a great bird; and I took no pleasure in the prospect of our imminent encounter, save a sort of blind satisfaction at the down-rush of the inevitable. I looked at my watch. It was after midnight, and I was standing on Hammersmith Bridge, not far from the place where we had released Mars from his cage. I looked up stream and tried to make out where in the mass of buildings on the north bank the Mime Theatre lay. But it was too dark to see. Then a panic overtook me in case I should arrive back at the Hospital too late. I set off walking briskly and hailed a taxi at Hammersmith Broadway which took me back to the Goldhawk Road. But now it was still too early. I walked up and down the street several times, passing the Hospital. It was not yet one o'clock, and I had resolved not to try to enter before two. I kept walking away from the Hospital, but something kept drawing me back again. I had to set myself little tasks: this time I would walk as far as the Seven Stars before I came back again; this time I would stand under the railway bridge as long as it took me to smoke a cigarette. I was in anguish. At about twenty past one I could bear it no longer. I decided to go in. But this time, as I approached, the whole scene appeared to be most damnably exposed. The street lamps were blazing and the building seemed to be covered in lights. As I came near I could see people standing in the entrance hall, and there were lights in the windows of all the stairways, and lights too in some of the wards. I had not foreseen this degree of nocturnal illumination. The Transept gardens, it is true, were plunged in darkness, and as far as I could see there were no lights in Corelli, except for one glimmer which doubtless came from the room of the Night Sister. To reach the Transept gardens, however, meant crossing the wide gravel walk and the lawn which ran the whole length of the Hospital on either side of the courtyard, and all this area was lit up by the indefatigable street lamps. Low posts with chains swinging between them divided the gravel walk from the street. The darkness seemed a long way away. I chose a point as far from the main entrance as possible and I looked carefully both ways along the street. The scene was deserted. Then I took a quick run and sprang over the chains and darted straight across the gavel and diagonally across the main lawn. I ran very lightly, my toes hardly touching the ground; and in a moment I had reached the darkness of the Transept garden. I stopped running and stood still on the grass to get my breath. I looked back. No one. A great silence surrounded me. I looked up at Corelli. There was only that one light burning on the first floor. I began to walk along the grass, touching the cherry trees one by one as I passed. Now that I was away from the glare of the street lamps it occurred to me that it was a very light night. From the road the garden had looked pitch black; but in the garden itself the darkness was not dense but diffused, and as I walked quietly along I felt that I must be clearly visible from all the windows, and I expected at any moment to hear a voice challenging me from above. But no one spoke. From outside everything looked very different, and it took me some time to identify the window of the store room. When I did find it I was surprised to discover how high it was from the ground. I pulled at the window very gently, holding my breath. To my relief it came open without any check and without a sound. I looked about me. The garden was empty and motionless, the cherry trees turned towards me, quiet as dancers in a tableau. There was still no one on the road. I opened the casement wide, and then hooked my fingers firmly on to the steel frame of the opening on each side. But the foot of the window was just too high for me to reach it with my knee. There was no sill on the outside. I stood back. I hesitated to spring up, for fear of making a noise. Then I thought that I heard footsteps approaching along the road. Quick as a flash, I put one hand into the opening and sprang. The steel edge of the frame caught me at the hip, and next moment I was heeling over gently on to the sill on the inside, and drawing my legs after me. I stood dead still on the floor of the store room. There was a silence into which it seemed to me that I had just let loose a vast quantity of sound. But the silence continued. I drew the window to, leaving it unlatched as it had been before. Then I walked down the middle of the room, feeling rather than seeing in the dark bulks of the iron bedsteads on each side. Here it really was pitch black, with a dense darkness which seemed to coat the eyeballs. I fumbled for the handle of the door, listened for a moment, and then stepped into the corridor. The bright lights and the white walls broke through the door and dazzled me. My eyes, laid open by the dark, winced at this inrush of light, and I covered them. Then I turned in the direction of Corelli, my feet padding dully on the rubber composition floor. Here concealment was impossible. I simply had to hope that some kindly deity would see to it that I met nobody. The Hospital was deserted, yet strangely alive. I could hear it purring and murmuring like a sleeping beast, and even when at times there came as it were a wave of silence I could still sense within it its great heart beating. As I passed the Transept Kitchen I averted my head; for I feared that if I encountered any human eye my guilt would write itself so plainly on my face as to cry 'Shame!' upon itself of its own accord. I came to the main stairs. They were glittering, deserted, immense. The small sound of my footfalls echoed up far above me into the great well of the staircase, and looking up I saw the superimposed rectangles of the banisters diminishing almost to a point many floors above. By now there was no thought in my head at all, not even the most general notion of Hugo, and if anyone had stopped me I would have gibbered like an idiot. I came to the door of Corelli III. Here I paused. I had no very clear conception of how the ward was organized at night. If there were any nurses sleeping in the ward they would be downstairs. In Corelli III there would probably be nobody over and above the patients, except the Night Sister. Of this person I knew only by report, and she had figured in my mind, even before I had planned this escapade, as a sort of nocturnal goddess, a Piddingham of the underworld. Now as I thought of her, with my hand upon the door, I was taken with a fit of trembling, like a postulant approaching the cave of the Sibyl. I opened the door quietly and stepped into the familiar corridor of the ward. One or two lights were burning in the corridor, but the patients' rooms were all in darkness. The kitchen and the Administration Rooms were dark too, except for the Sister's Room, and from this a light was streaming through the door, the upper half of which was made of frosted glass. Through this semi-transparent medium I feared that the Night Sister, to whom I was ready to attribute supernatural powers, let alone any ordinary human acuteness, might see me passing by; so I manoeuvred the first part of the corridor on my hands and knees. When I was well past her door I stood up and glided on, and as I went I could not hear myself making a sound. An uncanny stillness was drinking me up. I was now at the door of Hugo's room. I took hold of the handle, which consisted of a sloping steel bar which had to be depressed in order to open the door. I wrapped it firmly in my hand as if to master it into silence and I depressed it with a strong smooth movement. Holding it well down I pushed the door. It opened like a dream door as quietly as if it were giving way to my thought. I held the handle until I was well through the doorway and then took hold of the handle on the inside with my other hand. I closed the door firmly behind me and released the handle. There had been no noise. I was in semi-darkness. In the door at about the level of the human head there was a small rectangular window about eighteen inches square through which some light came from the corridor. I could see the red of the blankets and a humped shape upon the high bed. An instinct of caution made me fall on one knee. Then the shape stirred, and Hugo's voice said sharply, 'Who is it?' I said, 'Sssh!' and added, 'It's Jake Donaghue.' There was a moment's silence and then Hugo said, 'My God!' I wanted to get out of the light. I swivelled to a sitting position and propelled myself upon my buttocks through underneath Hugo's bed. I had thoroughly cleaned the floor of this room on the previous afternoon before Hugo's arrival, and I slid upon it now as smoothly as a jack on the ice. I came to rest on the other side of the bed, where I sat against the wall with my knees drawn up. I felt completely calm. Hugo's eyes looked for me in the dark and found me. I smiled, inclining my head. 'This is a bit much!' said Hugo. 'I was asleep.' 'Don't speak so loudly,' I told him, 'or the Night Sister will hear.' He lowered his voice to a whisper. 'Wish you wouldn't keep following me about!' This annoyed me. 'I'm not following you!' I whispered back. 'Iwork here. The last thing I expected was that you'd be brought in.' You work here?' said Hugo. 'What do you do?' 'I'm an orderly.' 'Good heavens!' said Hugo. 'Still, you might have waited till tomorrow.' 'It would have been very hard to see you during the day when I'm on duty,' I said. So you're not on duty now?' said Hugo. 'No.' 'So you are following me.' 'Oh, go to hell!' I told him. 'Look, Hugo, I want to talk to you about a number of things.' 'Well, I can't get away this time, can I?' he said. He settled back into the bed and for a few moments we looked at each other in the way that people look when they cannot see each other's eyes. 'What are you so upset about, Jake?' Hugo asked. 'I felt it at the studio. For years you make no attempt to see me, and then suddenly you start chasing me about like a mad thing.' I felt I had to be truthful. 'I've seen Sadie and Anna and this reminded me of you,' I said. I could see Hugo closing up like a sea anemone. 'How did you meet those two again?' he asked in a cautious voice. I felt I had to be desperately truthful. 'The girl I was staying with threw me out, so I looked for Anna and she passed me on to Sadie.' I could see Hugo shiver. 'Did Sadie say anything about me?' he asked. 'Nothing in particular,' I said, uttering the first lie. 'But I got some news of you from Anna.' I wanted to get back to the subject of Anna. 'Yes,' said Hugo, 'Anna told me she'd seen you. You came to the theatre one night, didn't you? I wanted to see you afterwards. I was sorry when Anna said you'd gone. You evidently weren't very anxious to see me then.' I felt unable to comment on this in detail. 'I was afraid to see you, Hugo,' I said. 'I can't understand you, Jake,' said Hugo. 'I don't see how anyone could be afraid of me. I never could see why you cleared off like that before. I wanted to talk to you very much then. There was never anyone I could discuss with like you. We might have discussed that stuff of yours.' 'What stuff?' I asked. 'That book of yours,' said Hugo. 'I forget when it came out, but it must have been some time after you cleared off from Battersea, or else we would have talked about it, and I don't remember talking of it with you.' I leaned my head back and pressed it hard against the wall, as one might do to ease a crisis of drunkenness. Do you mean The Silencer?' I asked. Yes, that thing,' said Hugo. 'Of course, I found it terribly hard in parts. Wherever did you get all those ideas from?' From you, Hugo,' I said weakly. 'Well,' said Hugo, of course I could see that it was about some of the things we'd talked of. But it sounded so different.' 'I know!' I said. So much better, I mean,' said Hugo. 'I forget really what we talked about then, but it was a terrible muddle, wasn't it? Your thing was so clear. I learnt an awful lot from it.' I stared at Hugo. His bandaged head was silhouetted in the light from the little window; I could not see his expression. 'I was ashamed about that thing, Hugo,' I said. 'I suppose one always is, about what one writes,' said Hugo. 'I've never had the nerve to write anything. I hope you made some money out of it anyway. Did it sell well?' 'Not very,' I said. I wondered for a moment if he were mocking me; but it was impossible. Hugo was incapable of mockery. 'Too highbrow, I suppose,' said Hugo. 'People never like original stuff when they first see it. I hope you weren't put off. Are you writing another dialogue?' 'No!' I said, and added, just to keep the conversation going while I collected my wits, 'I thought of looking the thing over lately and developing one or two of the ideas, but I couldn't get hold of a copy.' 'A pity! You could have borrowed mine,' said Hugo. 'I keep one in the drawer of my desk and look at it sometimes. It reminds me a bit of our talks. I used to enjoy them so much. My brain's quite gone to seed since then.' 'I came to your flat one night last week,' I said, 'and you'd left a note saying Gone to the pub, and I went round the pubs looking for you.' You can't have gone far,' said Hugo. 'I was in the King Lud.' 'I went eastward,' I said. 'I met Lefty Todd that night.' 'Of course, you know Lefty, don't you,' said Hugo. 'I saw him today at the meeting, before someone chucked the brick at me.' 'How is your head, by the way?' I asked. 'Oh, it's all right,' said Hugo. 'I've just got a raging headache--which but for you would be raging in my sleep. But, Jake, you haven't told me why you cleared off. Did I do something to offend you?' 'No,' I said patiently, 'I did something to offend you. 'But I see now there was a misunderstanding. Let's skip it.' I could see Hugo looking at me intently. The bulky bandage gave him an enormous head. 'The trouble with you, Jake,' said Hugo, 'is that you're far too impressed by people. You were far too impressed by me.' I was surprised. 'I was impressed,' I said, 'but I didn't know you knew.' 'Everyone must go his own way, Jake,' said Hugo. 'Things don't matter as much as you think.' I felt exasperated with Hugo. 'I don't know what you mean,' I said. 'You thought something mattered enough when you took so much trouble with that theatre in Hammersmith.' I wanted to draw him on the subject of Anna. 'Oh, that..' said Hugo, and was silent for a moment. 'I did that to please Anna, but it was a foolish thing.' I held my breath. I had to step carefully now if I was to get out of him the full confession for which I thirsted; and as I inhaled slowly I could smell Hugo's thoughts. 'You mean, it didn't really please her,' I asked coaxingly. 'Well, it pleased her, of course, yes,' said Hugo, 'but what was the use? Lies don't get one anywhere. Not that this was exactly a lie. After all, we both understood the situation. Yet it was a sort of a lie.' I felt a little out of my depth here. 'You mean that she wasn't really interested in it, that she was somehow imprisoned in it?' I asked. 'No, she was interested all right,' said Hugo, 'but wasn't really interested. And then she would introduce all that oriental junk, heaven knows where she got it from!' 'She got it from you!' I said with as much incisiveness as I could put into a whisper. 'That's nonsense!' said Hugo. 'She may have picked up some vague notions from me, but they didn't add up to that.' 'Why did you act in the mimes then if you thought the whole thing was bad?' I asked. '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 right, all right, all right.' 'You're always expecting something, Jake,' said Hugo. '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. 'Do this thing for me, Jake,' said Hugo. 'I wouldn't ask if it wasn't urgent.' 'Damn you,' I said. I went to the door and examined my watch. It was just after four. If I was to act I must act at once. I looked at Hugo's nocturnal face. I knew that I would do whatever he wished. I had to. 'Damn you,' I said again, and I took hold of the door handle. I swung the door open quietly and left it ajar. I stood for a moment in the corridor getting used to the light. Then I began to walk quietly. The Locker Room was next door but one to the Sister's Room, on the side nearest to me. It contained lockers in one-one correlation to the number of patients in Corelli III, each locker being assigned to a particular bed. The keys of the lockers were kept there too, in a drawer. Once I could get into the room there would be no difficulty in finding Hugo's clothes; but of course the room itself might be locked. I found myself hoping sincerely that it might. 'Oh, let it be locked!' I said to myself, as my hand touched the door of the Locker Room. It was not locked. The door opened for me noiselessly. As I stood inside in the semi-darkness I had a rapid debate as to whether I wouldn't go back and tell Hugo that the door had been locked. It might have been locked. It might easily have been locked. I struggled with this idea, not certain whether or not I ought to regard it as a temptation. I tried to conjure up some sense of obligation to the Hospital; but it was too late to call upon these reserves. If I had been going to be moved by any bond or contract with the Hospital the time for that was four minutes ago. I was now embarked upon helping Hugo. I was committed to Hugo. To lie to him would be an act of treachery. I put my hand on the keys. I opened the locker and very quietly removed its contents piece by piece on to the table. Hugo's old check shirt, his even older corduroy trousers, a newish sports-coat that smelt of soap, a Jaeger vest and pants, socks with holes in, and dirty boots. Small objects jingled in Hugo's pockets. I held my breath and began to load myself, piling the garments up in my embrace and putting the boots on top, so that I could hardly see out over the armful. Then I found that I had left the locker door open and the bunch of keys hanging in the lock. One by one I replaced the things on the table, closed the locker, and returned the keys to the drawer. Not that it mattered, since the disappearance of Hugo could be noticed almost as soon as the theft from the locker; but I like to be neat. Then I loaded up again and shuffled towards the door. As I went I kept having auditory images of what it would sound like if one of Hugo's boots were to fall off on to the floor. But there was no mishap. I glided down the corridor with a feeling in my back as if someone were pointing a Sten gun at it. The door of Hugo's room was ajar and I sidled in and decanted the pile of clothes on to the bed with a soft bump. Hugo had got up and was standing by the window, dressed in a shapeless white nightgown and biting his nails. 'That's colossal!' he said. He seized on his clothes with glee while I shut the door again soundlessly. 'Hurry up!' I told him. 'If we're getting out let's get out.' I had never felt less sympathy and consideration for Hugo than at that moment. I noticed that as he dressed he kept putting his hand to his head, and I wondered idly whether this escapade mightn't really do him some serious harm; but this possibility no longer interested me, either as a debating point, since the time for debate was over, or as a factor in Hugo's welfare, since any concern I might have had about the latter was thoroughly driven out by more poignant worries about myself. I felt extreme irritation with Hugo for having put me in the position of being disloyal to the Hospital, and great anxiety about our prospects of getting out unobserved. As to what would happen to me if we were caught I felt a terror which was augmented in proportion to the vagueness of my conceptions. I trembled. Hugo was ready. He was tidying up his bed in a futile way. 'Leave that!' I told him with as much brutality as I could. 'Look,' I said to Hugo, 'we have to get past the Night Sister's room, which has glass in the door, so we shall have to crawl that bit. You'd better take those boots off. They look ready to make a noise all by themselves. Follow me and do what I do. Don't speak, and for heaven's sake see that there's nothing likely to fall out of your pockets. All right?' Hugo nodded, his eyes rounded and his face beaming with innocence. I looked at him with exasperation. Then I put my head out of the door. There was no sign of life from the Night Sister and not a sound of any kind to be heard. I slid out and Hugo followed, making a noise like a bear, a mixture of grunting and lumbering. I turned back and frowned and put my finger to my lips. Hugo nodded enthusiastically. The light was still on in the Night Sister's room, and as we approached it I could hear her moving about inside. I crouched down and scudded past, keeping well below the level of the glass. Then I turned to watch Hugo. He was hesitating. He obviously didn't know what to do with his boots, which he was carrying one in each hand. We eyed each other across the gap and Hugo made an interrogatory movement. I replied with a gesture which indicated that I washed my hands of his predicament, and walked on to the door of the ward. Then I turned back again, and nearly laughed out loud. Hugo had got his two boots gripped by their tongues between his teeth, and was negotiating the passage on hands and feet, his posterior rising mountainously into the air. I watched anxiously, wondering whether the attention of the Night Sister might not be caught by the movement of this semicircular surface which must be jutting out well into her field of vision. But nothing happened, and Hugo joined me by the door with the saliva dripping into the inside of his boots. I shook my head at him, and together we left Corelli III. Now there was no protection, only hope. We walked down the main stairs, Hugo crowned with bandages. It was blatant. The Hospital lay about us quietly, and focused its brilliant lights upon us, like a great eye watching us, into the very pupil of which the pair of us were walking. I waited for the echoing call from many stories above which should accuse us and tell us to halt; but it did not come. We left the stairway, and now we were approaching the Transept Kitchen. To my joy I saw that the Kitchen was dark; there was no one there. In a moment we should be free. Already my heart was beating with the joy of achievement and my thoughts taking to wings of triumph. We had done it! Only a few steps now separated us from the door of the store room. I turned to look at Hugo. As I did so, a figure appeared round the corner of the corridor some fifteen yards in front of us. It was Stitch, wearing a blue dressing-gown. All three of us stopped dead. Stitch took us in and we took in Stitch. Then I saw Stitch's mouth beginning to open. 'Quick, this way!' I said to Hugo out loud. These were the first words which I had uttered aloud for many hours and they rang out strangely. I leapt to the store-room door and pushed Hugo through it. 'Through the window!' I called after him. I could hear him blundering ahead of me and I could hear Stitch's feet scrabbling on the floor of the corridor. I slammed the door of the store-room behind me, and as I turned towards the window, with a sudden inspiration I seized hold of a stack of bedsteads on one side and gave it a violent pull towards the centre of the room; I felt it move to the vertical, totter, and begin to fall inwards. I sprang to the other side and in an instant I had set the stack in motion there too. Like two packs of cards meeting, and with a clatter like the day of judgement, the two piles met and interlocked across the door. I heard Stitch cursing on the other side. I followed Hugo. Hugo had left the window wide open. I sprang through it like Nijinsky, and cannoned into Hugo, who was hopping about on the lawn. 'My boots! My boots!' cried Hugo in anguish. He had evidently put them down inside the window as he was getting out. 'Never mind your bloody boots! Run for it!' I told him. Behind us there rang out the metallic din which was Stitch trying to open the door and being prevented by the barricade of bedsteads. I threw back my head to run, and saw with surprise that the garden was clearly revealed in the grey morning light; and as we sped along between the cherry trees it would not have surprised me if someone had opened fire on us from an upstairs window. We crossed the lawn and the gravel and leapt over the chains and bolted along the pavement in the direction of Goldhawk Road. Hugo's bandage was coming undone and flapped behind him like a pennant. Before we turned the corner I looked back; but there was no sign of pursuit. We slowed down. 'And how's your head now?' I said to Hugo. We must have been doing a good twenty miles per hour. 'Hellish!' said Hugo. He leaned against a wall. 'Damn it, Jake,' he said, 'you might have let me pick up my boots. They were special ones. I got them in Austria.' You'd better see a doctor some time today,' I told Hugo. 'I don't want to have any more on my conscience.' 'I'll see a chap I know in the City,' said Hugo. We walked slowly on in the direction of Shepherd's Bush. The light was increasing fast. It must have been after five, and when we reached Shepherd's Bush Green the sun was shining through a mist. There was no one about. We stopped once to fix Hugo's bandage. Then we padded along in silence. As I looked at Hugo's big feet, which were bulging through various holes in his socks, I could not but think of Anna; and with this thought I suddenly felt for Hugo a mixture of compassion and anger. What a lot of trouble the man had caused me! Yet none of it could have been otherwise. 'You've made me lose my job,' I told him. 'You may not have been recognized,' said Hugo. 'I was recognized,' I said. 'That fellow that saw us works in Corelli. He's my enemy.' 'Sorry,' said Hugo. We were walking along Holland Park Avenue. It was broad daylight and the mist had cleared. The sun, just risen over the houses, gave us sharp shadows. We passed by sleeping windows. London was not yet awake. Then one or two workmen's buses passed by. Yet still we walked. Hugo's head was down, and he was biting his nails and looking sightlessly at the pavement. I observed him closely as one might observe a picture or a dead man. I had a strange sense of his being both very distant and yet closer to me than he had ever been or would be again. I was reluctant to speak. So we went for a long time in silence. 'When are you going to Nottingham?' I said at last. 'Oh,' said Hugo vaguely, lifting his head, 'in two or three days, I hope. It depends how long it takes to wind things up here.' I looked at his face, and although no line of it had changed I saw it as the face of an unhappy man. I sighed. 'Have you anywhere to live up there?' 'Not yet,' said Hugo. 'I shall have to find digs.' 'Can I see you again before you go?' I asked him. 'I'm afraid I'll be very busy,' said Hugo. I sighed again. It then occurred to us at the same moment, both that this was the end of our conversation and that it was going to be very difficult to take leave of each other. 'Lend me half a crown, Jake,' said Hugo. I handed it over. We were still walking. 'I must dash on, if you'll excuse me,' said Hugo. O. K.,' I said. 'Thanks a lot for helping me out,' he said. 'That's all right,' I said. He wanted to be rid of me. I wanted to be rid of him. There was a moment of silence while each of us tried to think of the appropriate thing to say. Neither succeeded. For an instant our eyes met. Then Hugo said abruptly, 'I must dash. Sorry.' He began walking very fast, and turned down Campden Hill Road. I followed him at my ordinary pace. He drew ahead. I walked after him along the road. He turned into Sheffield Terrace, and when I turned the corner he was about thirty yards ahead. He looked back and saw me and quickened his pace. He turned into Hornton Street; I followed at the same pace, and saw him in the distance turning into Gloucester Walk. When I got to the corner of Gloucester Walk he had disappeared.