Under The Net - Iris Murdoch [33]
DEAR JAKE,
I am sorry I went off without seeing you. It was just when you were in Paris. I thought it was time to go back then because of the money. You know how I often thought of going back before. I'll be in Dublin now and the Pearl Bar will always find me. I think they forward letters, I haven't got a place to live yet. Hoping to see you when you come over to the Emerald Isle. Remember me to David. yrs P. O'FINNEY This letter upset me extremely and I exclaimed to Mrs Tinckham, 'Finn's gone back to Ireland!'
'I know,' said Mrs Tinck. 'You know?' I cried. 'How?' 'He told me,' said Mrs Tinck. The notion that Finn had made a confidant of Mrs Tinckham came to me for the first time and rushed in an instant from possibility to probability. 'He told you just before he went?' I asked. 'Yes,' said Mrs Tinckham, 'and earlier too. But he must have told you he wanted to go back?' 'He did, now I come to think of it,' I said, 'but I didn't believe him.' And somehow this phrase had a familiar ring. 'I'm a fool,' I said. Mrs Tinckham didn't dispute this. 'Did he have any special reasons for going?' I asked her. I felt pain and indignation at having to ask Mrs Tinckham questions about Finn; but I needed to know. I looked at her old placid face. She was blowing smoke rings; and I knew that she would tell me nothing. 'He just wanted to go home, I suppose,' said Mrs Tinckham. 'I imagine there were people there he wanted to see. And there's always religion,' she added vaguely. I looked down at the table, and I could feel on my brow a gentle pressure which was the gaze of Mrs Tinckham and half a dozen cats. I felt ashamed, ashamed of being parted from Finn, of having known so little about Finn, of having conceived things as I pleased and not as they were. 'Well, he's gone,' I said. 'You'll see him in Dublin,' said Mrs Tinckham. I tried to imagine this; Finn at home and I a visitor. I shook my head. 'I couldn't,' I said. I knew that Mrs Tinckham understood. 'You never know what you won't want to do when the time comes,' said Mrs Tinckham in the vague tone in which she utters those remarks of hers which may be deep counsel or may be senseless. I looked up at her quickly. The wireless murmured on and the cigarette smoke drifted between us like a veil, shifting its layers very gently in the slow summer air from the doorway. She blinked at me and her pupils seemed narrowed to vertical slits. 'Well, we'll see,' I said to her. 'That always the best thing to say, isn't it, dear?' said Mrs Tinckham. At last I took up Sadie's letter. I was extremely nervous of it. I felt sure that it would contain something unpleasant. Mars stirred at my feet and snuffed against my shoe. I opened the envelope. There were two enclosures which I set aside and unfolded a long perfumed sheet down which a narrow column of writing flowed in Sadie's elegant hand. Her letter read as follows.
DARLING JAKE,
About that wretched dog--you must think me awful not to have written sooner, but the truth is that your letter got mixed up with the most enormous pile of fan mail. (What a problem that is! One never knows whether to look at the stuff or not. Just to see it there is rather uplifting for the ego--though I suppose it does undermine the character a bit. Not that I'd ever dream of reading it even if I had time. My secretary just classifies it into cretins for, cretins against, cranks, professionals, intellectuals, religious, and offers of marriage!) I must say, I was just a little hurt by the tone of your letter--that is, until I realized that of course you didn't write it. (Did you, darling?) Yes, now about the dog. The fact is, S. and I have so much on our hands at the moment we really can't cope with the brute. (You've no idea what a bother an animal picture is. The most impossible men in tweeds come in and wander about the set--and the next thing is the Dumb Friends' League are sending in spies disguised as continuity girls.) S. thought the easiest thing would be for you to keep him if you'd like to. That is, we'd expect you to buy him, of course. (Sorry to be a business girl, but one has to watch the cash, with the cost of living and partly living what it is, and the income tax people absolutely inventing ways to make one poor. Anyway, it's S.'s thing, you know, not mine. I'm just writing on his behalf.) I should say