Under The Net - Iris Murdoch [124]
seen only for a minute. What is urgent is not urgent for ever but only ephemerally. All work and all love, the search for wealth and fame, the search for truth, like itself, are made up of moments which pass and become nothing. Yet through this shaft of nothings we drive onward with that miraculous vitality that creates our precarious habitations in the past and the future. So we live; a spirit that broods and hovers over the continual death of time, the lost meaning, the unrecaptured moment, the unremembered face, until the final chop that ends all our moments and plunges that spirit back into the void from which it came. So I reflected; and was reluctant to get off the bus. But when we reached Oxford Circus I rose and pulled Mars after me down the stairs. It was the rush hour. I threaded my way through the crowd with the dog at my heels, and turned down Rathbone Place. Soho was hot and dusty, sulky idle and senseless with the afternoon. People stood about waiting for opening time. In an upper room someone was playing a piano. Someone else picked up the tune and whistled it, going away into the distance. I walked along Charlotte Street. The scene trembled and shimmered before me perhaps with the heat or perhaps with fear. Like one pursued I quickened my step. Mrs Tinckham's voice came to me out of the wreaths of tobacco smoke. She seemed to have been expecting me. But then she always expected me. I sat down at the little table. 'Hello, dearie,' said Mrs Tinck, 'you've been a long time.' 'It took a long time,' I said. Mars sniffed discreetly at one or two of the nearest cats. They seemed to have got used to him and merely turned away their delicate heads and blinked. Behind Mrs Tinck they rose, tier upon tier, and I could see their eyes through the smoke like the lights of a railway termini.. in the fog. Mars lay down at my feet. I stretched out my legs. 'What about a drink?' I said to Mrs Tinckham. 'It's nearly opening time.' 'Whisky and soda?' she said. I could hear the glass clinking under the counter and the gurgle of the whisky and the fizz of the soda. Mrs Tinckham passed it to me and I threw my head back and closed my eyes. Very distantly the wireless was murmuring like the voice of another world. The sounds of a Soho evening came in through the doorway. I could feel Mars leaning against my foot. I took two gulps of the whisky; it ran through me like quickgold and, almost physically, I felt a sort of shiver of possibility. I opened my eyes and found Mrs Tinckham looking at me. She had something on the counter under her hand. I recognized it as the parcel containing my manuscripts. I reached out for it and she passed it over without a word. I laid the parcel on the table. Then I extracted from my bag the small pile of letters which I had brought from Dave's. I saw at once that there was a letter from Sadie among them, and I set that one aside. 'Do you mind if I read my letters?' I said to Mrs Tinckham. 'Do what you please, dear,' said Mrs Tinck. 'I'll get on with my story. I'm just at the exciting part.' I didn't want to open Sadie's letter first. So I took up a letter with a London postmark and an unfamiliar hand and opened it It was from Lefty. I read it through several times and I smiled. Lefty wrote in an elegant and faintly rhetorical manner with colons, semi-colons, and parentheses. His first paragraph dealt with our night beside the Thames: a midsummer night's dream Lefty said it had been for him; he only hoped that he had not played the ass. He seemed to remember talking his head off. He went on to say that he was sorry to hear that I had been ill. He suggested that when I felt better I should come and call on him: and if I felt I could do any sort of political work he would be glad, but that I should call anyway; after all, life wasn't entirely a matter of politics, was it? I got a good impression from this letter; and although I doubted whether Lefty really entertained the final sentiment I felt that here I had to do with a man. I pocketed Lefty's letter and turned my attention to the package. I had already