Under The Net - Iris Murdoch [119]
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