Under The Net - Iris Murdoch [123]
a neat self-conscious hand which I recognized as Sadie's. The other packet was very much larger. I flicked it over as one flicks a pack of cards. All these letters were from Anna. 'Beautiful letters,' Hugo had called them. Guilt and triumph and despair battled in me as I clutched them. I sat down on the settee. Now I would see that which I had been unable to imagine. I drew out the first envelope. At that moment I heard the sound of a vehicle drawing up, with a great screeching of brakes, in the street outside. I hesitated. I was blushing and trembling. I got up and climbed on to a chair and put my head out of the window, still holding the letters in my hand. A lorry had drawn up outside the door. I watched it for a moment, but nobody emerged, so I got down again. I looked at the envelope; and as I did so I saw as in a vision the dark wood and the figure of Anna stepping into it barefoot. My fingers fumbled with the letter inside. It was a letter of many pages. I began to unfold it. Then I heard the sound of a car. It approached with a strong crescendo and then stopped. I stood rigid, cursing to myself. I climbed on to the chair again. Far below I saw Hugo's black Alvis. It was drawn up in the road just behind the lorry. An emotion which was neither pleasure nor fear but a mixture of both made me watch the car with a fast-beating heart. I shivered. Hugo was imminent. Someone got out of the car. But it was not Hugo. I stared for a moment. Then I recognized the fair head and slim figure of Lefty. I watched with parted lips, gripping the edge of the window. Lefty was standing on the pavement, consulting with two men who had just climbed out of the lorry. The strong sun cast their tall shadows upon the pavement. Then I saw across the windscreen of the Alvis the letters NISP. And I understood. I leapt down from the chair. I whirled about and looked at the room as a man might look for a foothold upon a crumbling mountain-side. I snatched up my note to Hugo and put it in my pocket. I stood for a moment paralysed. Then far below I could hear feet upon the stairs. I took in the scene: the rifled desk, the open safe. I looked at the letters which I still held in my hand, and I slipped the one which I had been opening back into the packet. I held them for a second longer and made as if to put them into my pocket. But it was impossible. They were burning my hand. I hurled them back into the safe. Then I selected the largest of the bundles of one-pound notes and thrust it inside my coat. "That's something the Revolution won't get!' I said out loud; and I made for the door. I crossed the landing in three strides, and as I entered Hugo's kitchen I could hear Lefty's voice on the stairs. I opened the kitchen window and vaulted out on to the flat roof. I walked firmly across the roof. The skylights of the next door office building were propped wide open to the summer afternoon. I lowered myself through one of them, and found myself on a deserted landing. I began to descend the stairs, and a minute or two later emerged from a door into a side alley. I walked back on to the street and crossed the road; and as I walked nonchalantly past Hugo's house on the other side they were already carrying out the Renoirs.
Twenty
MARS was delighted to see me. He had been shut in all day. I fed him, and made up the rest of his meat into a parcel. Then I packed some of my clothes into a bag. There were a few letters and a package for me in the hall; I stuffed them into the bag too without looking at them. I wrote a note to Dave, thanking him for his hospitality, and I left the house with Mars. We got on to an eighty-eight bus. Mars provoked a flood of remarks from the conductor. We sat in the front seat on top, the seat in which I had sat not so very long ago thinking about Anna until I had had to get off the bus and go looking for her. And as I looked down now on the crowds in Oxford Street and stroked Mars's head I felt neither happy nor sad, only rather unreal, like a man shut in a glass. Events stream past us like these crowds and the face of each is