Under The Net - Iris Murdoch [127]
I glanced at this and then tore it up. ' Your public career is over!' I said to Mars. Then I took out of my coat the bundle of notes which I had taken from Hugo's safe. I began to count them. Mrs. Tinckham watched with interest, but made no inquiry. The bundle contained exactly a hundred pounds. I tied them up again and put them away. 'Could you sell me some writing-paper and envelopes?' I asked Mrs Tinckham. She handed them over. 'These are on the house,' she said. 'I shall never manage to sell them.' They were yellow with dust and age. Inside the cover of the pad I made a short calculation. My winnings on Lyrebird amounted to six hundred pounds. This, with Hugo's hundred pounds, and what I had in the bank, brought my credit up to about seven hundred and sixty pounds. I looked at this figure for a while, but more in sorrow than in hesitation. Of course I had to buy Mars. I didn't need to pause to ask myself whether or even why. It was written in the heavens, and not to do it would be to prove myself an underling. Nor did it occur to me to try to beat Sadie down. The formal properties of the situation left me with no choice. I must pay up, and without argument or comment. This was no moment for haggling with destiny. I would only allow myself the luxury, when it had all been settled, of one brief note to Sadie: a note which she would not pretend to have mislaid among her fan mail. As I thought this I knew that Sadie concerned me. There was no doubt that we should meet again. But that was for the future. The future--it opened for a moment before me, a land of hills and far distances; and I closed my eyes. Sadie would keep. There is only one thing which will make a woman keep, and that is intelligence. Sadie had it. Hugo was right. I wrote the cheque. I reckoned that this left me with just about as much cash to my name as I had had when I left Earls Court Road at the beginning of this story. I sighed a little over this, and for a moment the spectral fortunes which I had been so near to winning rose about me in a whirl till I was blinded in a snowstorm of five-pound notes. But the tempest subsided; and I knew that I had no deep regrets. Like a fish which swims calmly in deep water, I felt all about me the secure supporting pressure of my own life. Ragged, inglorious, and apparently purposeless, but my own. I completed the letter to Sadie's solicitor, and asked him to send the typescript to me care of Mrs Tinckham. I could raise money on that as soon as I wished. There would be no more translating. I began to undo the parcel of manuscripts. I spread them out on the table; and as I touched them my hands were trembling like the hands of a water-diviner. I began to glance through them, looking with surprise on what I had done. There was a long poem, the fragment of a novel, a number of curious stories. It seemed to me that I had written them long ago. These things were mediocre, I saw it. But I saw too, as it were straight through them, the possibility of doing better--and this possibility was present to me as a strength which cast me lower and raised me higher than I had ever been before. I took out Hugo's copy of The Silencer, and the sight of it gave me joy. This too was only a beginning. It was the first day of the world. I was full of that strength which is better than happiness, better than the weak wish for happiness which women can awaken in a man to rot his fibres. It was the morning of the first day. I stretched and yawned, and Mars stretched too, shaking each limb. I spread out my arms and smiled at Mrs Tinckham. She smiled back through the haze like a Cheshire cat. But as I stretched my body out, trying to embrace the world, there was a strange whisper going on in my head, as if someone I knew were murmuring into my ear, as if someone I loved were trying to tell me a secret; and I stiffened slowly as one who is listening. 'There's a friend of yours on the wireless,' said Mrs Tinckham. 'Who?' I asked. 'Name of Quentin,' said Mrs Tinckham. She passed me the Radio Times, and as I fumbled with the pages she suddenly turned