Under The Net - Iris Murdoch [77]
the seats are divided in the middle. An iron arm-rest in the centre makes it impossible to stretch oneself out. I am not sure whether this is an accidental phenomenon or whether it forms part of an L. C. C. campaign against vagrancy. In any case it is very inconvenient. Various systems are possible. One may try to use the arm-rest as a pillow, or one may lie with one's knees raised over it and one's feet on the other side. Or again one may resign oneself to curling up on one half of the seat. This is a very cramped position even for someone as short as myself; but if one is a restless sleeper, as I am, this is probably the best method, and it was this that I chose. Before reposing I wrapped the pages of the Independent Socialist carefully round my legs, and tied them into position with my tie and my handkerchief. Newspaper is a good insulator, as every vagabond knows. I only wished I could have afforded two copies. Then I lay down. Mars got up on to the other half of the seat. We slept. I awoke and it was still night. The stars seemed to have moved a long way. I was feeling stiff with cold. Then Big Ben struck three. Only three! I groaned. I lay for a while in an agony of stiffness. I tried chafing my limbs, but the effort to do so was so painful that it hardly justified the results. I sat up feeling totally miserable. Then I thought of Mars. He was still there, sleeping soundly and snoring gently as he slept. Shivering and solitary I sat looking at him, while on either side the deserted pavements stretched away under lofty street lamps which lit a lurid green in the motionless leaves of plane trees and revealed below them the rows of empty seats each one as uncomfortable as ours. Naked as a bridge in a picture on which no one will ever tread, Waterloo Bridge brooded over the river. I stood up and the blood ran thick and painful into my feet. Mars was an image of Sleep. At first I just felt annoyed that he should be sleeping so peacefully while I was awake and cold. Then I began to remember stories of men in lifeboats who had been saved by being kept warm by faithful dogs. Indeed I'm not sure that I didn't get this idea from one of Mars's films. With some difficulty I wakened Mars and made him move up sufficiently for me to lie beside him. It was true. His body was radiantly warm from nose to tail. For a while we shifted about, trying to find a position which suited us both. At last we settled down with my face thrust into the loose fur of Mars's throat and his hind legs curled into my stomach. He licked my nose. It must have been like licking a block of ice. I stretched out a random hand and drew it over his head. Out of his ears it would have been no hard task to have made silk purses. And as I fell asleep I was remembering how much in my childhood I had wanted to have a dog and how thoroughly my elders had made me feel this wish to be extravagant and unseemly until it had faded sadly into a secret dream, and been replaced in about my ninth year by an equally profound yearning to be the owner of an Aston Martin. The police moved us on at about six a. m. This is the hour when, for some reason, one begins to be a menace to law and order. These things I learnt in days when I was even less successful than I am now. After a rest in Trafalgar Square, which is another place where the police don't like one to lie down, Mars and I presented ourselves at Mrs Tinckham's shop just as it was opening. There, under the scandalized gaze of half a dozen arched and prickling cats, the hero of Five in a Flood consumed a large bowl of milk, and I borrowed a pound. Finn opened the door for me at Goldhawk Road and led me straight to the bed which he had vacated. I slept again for a long time. I woke up and it was the afternoon. I woke with a dull and oppressed consciousness, as when a holiday is over and there is an accumulated pile of work waiting to be done. I pulled myself out of bed. It was raining. I stared for a while at this phenomenon. Changes of weather always take me by surprise, nor can I when the climate is set one way at all bring