Under The Net - Iris Murdoch [22]
Four
The next day round about ten o'clock I was walking down Welbeck Street. I was in a bad temper. By daylight the whole project seemed very much less attractive. I felt that to be snubbed by a film star would put me in a bad state of mind for months. But I regarded the matter as something which had been decided and which now simply had to be carried out. I often used this method for deciding difficult cases. In stage one I entertain the thing purely as a hypothesis, and in stage two I count my stage one thinking as a fixed decision on which there is no going back. I recommend this technique to any of you who are not good at making decisions. I felt a certain temptation to return to the theatre to see if I could find Anna again, but I was afraid of offending her. So there was nothing to be done but to get over with seeing Sadie. Sadie's flat was on the third floor, and I found the door open. A naive char appeared who told me that Miss Quentin was not at home. She then informed me that Miss Quentin was at the hairdresser, and she named an expensive Mayfair establishment. I had taken the precaution of mentioning that I was Miss Quentin's cousin. I thanked her and set off again towards Oxford Street. I have often visited women in hairdressing establishments and the idea held no terrors for me. Indeed I find that women are often especially charitable and receptive if one visits them at the hairdresser, perhaps because they like being able to show off some captive member of the male sex to so many other women when the latter are not so fortunate as to have their male retainers by them. To play this role, however, one must be presentable, and so I went straight away to a barber's and had a good shave. After that I bought myself a new tie in a shop in Oxford Street and threw away my other tie. As I mounted the heavily perfumed stairway of Sadie's hairdresser and caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror I thought that I looked a fine figure of a man. Women's hairdressers obey some obscure law of nature which rules that, contrary to what is the case in other spheres, the more expensive the firm the less is the privacy given to the clients. Shop girls in Putney can have their hair done in the seclusion of a curtained cubic'e, but wealthy women in Mayfair have to sit exposed in rows and watch each other being metamorphosed. I found myself in a big room where elegant heads were in various stages of assembly. A row of well-dressed backs were presented to me, and as I looked up and down searching for Sadie, I felt myself under observation in a dozen rose-tinted mirrors. I couldn't see her anywhere. I started to glide along one of the rows, looking into each mirror, and seeing here a young face and there an old one looking at me from under crimped and plastered locks. Each pair of eyes met mine with a questioning look until I began to feel like a prince in a fairy tale. I was glad I had thought of investing in the new tie. At the end of the row there were several figures whose heads were covered by purring electric driers. Here at last I met in the mirror a pair of eyes which were unmistakably Sadie's. I stopped and put my hands on the back of her chair. I stood a while and looked gravely into these eyes while their owner returned my glance first with casualness, then with hostility, and at last with dawning recognition. Sadie gave a little scream. 'Jake!' she cried. I could feel we were being looked at. I began to be pleased that I'd come. 'Hello, Sadie!' I said, and I didn't have to fake my delighted smile. 'My dear creature,' said Sadie. 'I haven't seen you for centuries! How lovely! Were you looking for me?' I said that I was, and I fetched a chair and sat just behind her shoulder. We grinned at each other in the mirror. I thought we were a fine-looking pair. Sadie looked very handsome, even with her hair in a net, and if