Under The Net - Iris Murdoch [38]
in a stern masculine voice that I'm out indefinitely. There's an utter darling. Now I must absolutely run.' When'll you be back?' I asked, rather overwhelmed by these instructions. 'Oh, late tonight,' said Sadie. 'Don't wait up. Just choose yourself one of the spare rooms. The beds are all made.' Then she kissed me with considerable enthusiasm and went away. When the door had closed and there was silence in the large sunlit flat except for distant street noises, I stretched out my arms luxuriously and set out to survey the domain. Rugs from Kazakstan and Afghanistan and the Caucasus shifted softly underfoot on the parquet flooring. Rosewood and satinwood and mahogany curved and splayed and tapered in surfaces which glowered with care and quality. Tiny jade objects squatted on white mantel-shelves. Damask curtains stirred gently in the summer breeze. Sadie had come a long way since the days of the Quentin sisters. Here and there, under china animals or French paper-weights, were neat piles of letters or press cuttings or thousand-franc notes. I prowled quietly around, whistling to myself. Several Georgian cut-glass decanters, with enamel labels round their necks, stood on a low table; and in a cupboard I found a vast number of half-empty bottles of sherry, port, vermouth, pernod, gin, whisky and brandy. In the kitchen there was a good deal of hock and claret in one of the cupboards, and the larder was filled with various candies, small sausages, and crab and jellied chicken in tins. I found about twelve kinds of biscuits, but no sign of any bread. In the fridge was salmon, raspberries, and considerable quantities of butter, milk, and cheese. I went back to the sitting-room and poured myself out a long drink of Italian vermouth and soda water, to which I added some ice from the fridge. I took a cigarette from a little S�es casket that perched on gilded feet. Then I sank gently into a deep armchair and let my sense of time be stilled into a long regular undulation which seemed to pass through my body like a sigh. It was a hot day. The windows opened upon the distant intermittent murmur of London. My head was empty and my limbs were leaden with content. After a long time I reached out for some of my manuscripts and began to sort them. As I was looking at them all thought of Sadie and of the recent tumult was already far away. It diminished to a pinpoint and disappeared. I stretched out my legs, crumpling an exquisitely golden yellow and midnight blue striped Kazak rug into folds at my feet. If sleep could have come to me now it would have been one deep cascade of refreshment and peace. But I lay wakeful and soon ceased to turn over the typed and scribbled pages. I let them slide to the floor. It was some time later again, and my eye was wandering along a low white bookshelf on the other side of the room. On top of this at intervals were Worcester and Dresden figures. I surveyed these, and my glance came lazily back along the top row of books. Then suddenly I stiffened and leapt up as if I'd been stabbed, scattered foolscap and typing-paper to the right and left. I strode to the bookcase. There, right in the centre, was a copy of The Silencer. I hadn't seen one for years. It even had its paper cover on. I looked at it with repulsion and fascination. Then I pulled it out, telling myself how foolish I was to be so moved at seeing the paltry work again; and as I held it in my hand I began to feel suddenly no longer repulsed but affectionate and protective towards it, and curious. I sat down cross-legged on the floor beside the bookshelves and opened it. It's always a strange experience to read one's own writings again after an interval. They so rarely fail to impress. As I turned the pages of this curious journal I felt that the years which separated me from the moment of its creation had given it a strange independence. It was like meeting as an adult someone whom one knew long ago as a child. It wasn't that I liked the thing any better, but that now it somehow stood alone; and the idea crossed my mind that now at last it might