Under The Net - Iris Murdoch [16]
me with a gentle shock. I stared and stared. There was something about that hulking form that seemed vaguely familiar. At that moment, with one of the movements, the stage creaked, and the backcloth shivered slightly. This sound brought me to myself, and brought with it the sudden alarming realization that the actors could see me. On tiptoe I moved back on to the landing and closed the door. The silence was over me like a great bell, but the whole place throbbed with a soundless vibration which it took me a moment to recognize as the beating of my own heart. I turned now to look at the other doors. One at the far end of the landing had a little notice on it. I read, in large letters, Props Room, and underneath in smaller letters, Miss Quentin. I closed my eyes for a moment and stilled my breathing. Then I knocked. The sound echoed strangely. Then a husky voice said: 'Come in.' I stepped into the room. It was a long narrow room with large windows opening in to the river, and it was filled to overflowing with a sort of multicoloured chaos which I couldn't at the first moment take in. In the midst of this Anna sat writing at a desk with her back to me. I shut the door behind me as she turned slowly. For a long moment we looked at each other in silence. Like a filling glass I felt my soul rise into my eyes; and in the intense equilibrium of the meeting we both experienced almost a moment of contemplation. Anna got up and said 'Jake!' Then I saw her. She was plumper and had not defended herself against time. There was about her a sort of wrecked look which was infinitely touching. Her face, which I remembered as round and smooth as an apricot, was become just a little tense and drawn, and her neck now revealed her age. The great brown eyes, which once opened so blandly upon the world, seemed narrowed, and where Anna had used to draw a dark line upward at their corners the years had sketched in a little sheaf of wrinkles. Tresses of hair which had escaped from the complex coronet curled about her neck, and I could see streaks of grey. I looked upon the face that I had known so well and now that for the first time I saw its beauty as mortal I felt that I had never loved it so dearly. Anna took in my glance, and then with an instinctive gesture she took refuge behind her hands. 'What brings you here, Jake?' said Anna. The spell was broken. 'I wanted to see you,' I said; and now I was anxious just to avoid looking at her and to collect my wits. I looked around the room. An astonishing medley of objects lay about in piles which in places reached up to the ceiling. The contents of the room had a sort of strange cohesion and homogeneity, and they seemed to adhere to the walls like the contents of a half-empty jam jar. Yet here was every kind of thing. It was like a vast toy shop that had been hit by a bomb. In my first glance I noticed a French horn, a rocking-horse, a set of red-striped tin trumpets, some Chinese silk robes, a couple of rifles, Paisley shawls, teddy bears, glass balls, tangles of necklaces and other jewellery, a convex mirror, a stuffed snake, countless toy animals, and a number of tin trunks out of which multi-coloured costumes trailed. Exquisite and expensive playthings lay enlaced with the gimcrack contents of Christmas crackers. I sat down on the nearest seat, which happened to be the back of the rocking-horse, and surveyed the scene. 'What is this extraordinary place?' I said. 'What are you doing these days, Anna?' 'Oh, this and that,' said Anna. She had always used to say this when she didn't want to tell me something. I could see she was nervous, and as she talked she kept picking things up, now a piece of ribbon, or now a ball or a long band of Brussels lace. 'How did you find this place?' she asked. I told her. 'Why did you come?' I didn't want to embark on a routine series of questions and answers. What did it matter why I had come? I didn't know myself. 'I've been turned out of a place where I live.' This wasn't very explicit, but I couldn't think of anything to tell but the truth. 'Oh!' said Anna. Then