Under The Net - Iris Murdoch [54]
on. The door was open. I quickened my pace. Two or three lorries stood outside. I bounded into the hall, and as I did my feet rang upon an uncarpeted floor. I flew up the stairs, scarcely touching the boards, and flung myself into Anna's room. The room was completely bare. It took me a moment to be quite sure that it was indeed the same room. The whole multicoloured chaos was gone, and of it not a spangle, not a silken thread remained. The room had been stripped and swept. The windows stood wide open upon the river. Only in the far corner were a pair of trestle tables with a pile of papers upon them. I stood there sick with amazement. Then I stepped back on to the landing. It was clear that the transformation had affected the whole house. It hummed and creaked and echoed. I could hear voices in several of the rooms and heavy boots striking on bare boards. Doors were banging. Through every window there came in the busy murmur of the summer morning. Violent hands had been laid upon the house; it had been violated. With a sudden impulse I approached the door of the auditorium. I shook it, but it was still locked. Whatever secret the heart of that strange building had contained here at least it could, for a while longer, brood upon it still. A cheerful-looking girl in blue jeans came up the stairs whistling. When she saw me standing there she said, 'Oh, have you come for the retail trade figures?' I stared at her like a maniac, and after a moment she said, 'Sorry, I thought you were the man from the Paddington group.' 'I was looking for one of the Theatre people,' I said. 'Oh, I'm afraid they've all gone away,' said the girl. She went into Anna's room. I was still standing there, clutching the banisters with one hand and an armful of flowers with the other, when two men in corduroys passed me carrying a large wooden board. Upon the board were painted the letters NISP. I found myself out in the street. Two more lorries had drawn up. I began to walk along the road parallel to the river. When I was level with the last lorry, one of the ones that had been there when I arrived, something inside it caught my eye. I paused and came closer. Then I was filled by a strange emotion. What the lorry contained was the contents of Anna's room. Inside this enormous box, only just held in by the high tail-board, were piled higgledy-piggledy all the treasures that I remembered. I took a quick look round. No one was watching. And in a moment I had clambered over the tail-board and slipped flowers and all, amid a rain of falling petals, into a yielding mass of toys and textiles. I looked about me. All my old friends were there: the rocking horse, the stuffed snake, the thundersheet, the masks. I looked at them all and I was filled with sorrow. As the harsh sunlight blazed in upon them they seemed but a soiled and broken chaos. The mysterious order which had reigned over their confusion in the theatre room, and which had flowed so gently and naturally from the presence of Anna in their midst, had been withdrawn. They lay now awkwardly one against another, lengthwise and corner-wise, and their magic had departed. As I was looking at them there was a sudden jolt and the lorry started. I was pitched forward, bruising my cheek upon something hard, while a cascade of miscellaneous objects nearly buried me in the belly of the vehicle. I lay still for a while where I was, my face stuck close up against one of the leering masks, while the mouth of a tin trumpet bored into my back. Then slowly I shook myself free. The lorry was going along King Street. I wondered to myself if there was any possibility that if I stayed in it it would take me to Anna. But I felt on reflection extremely sure that it wouldn't. These things had the air of abandoned things, and it was more likely that they were bound for the warehouse of some auctioneer. I began slowly and sadly to pick them over, recognizing and saluting each one; and as I did so I crumbled the flowers too, spreading the petals of roses and peonies upon the gimcrack heap, with a sense that I was strewing the