Bilgewater (16 page)

I went into the room on the left facing me on the landing—very plushy. Carpet ten inches thick, wallpaper cream with a grey relation of the plant at the foot of the stairs crawling all over it in bas-relief, a wooden, rather over-shiny bed, mountainous with satin eiderdown (cream) under cream candlewick. Cream bedside light. On the wall at the foot of the bed was a large fawn etching of the head of an airedale.

When I had unpacked my washing things and arranged them on the basin (the flannel didn't look so hot. It was an old one out of Paula's lost-property box) I put my spare pants and tights away in a drawer and looked round again. Wardrobe. Dressing-table. No books. It seemed early to be going down again. Passing quickly by the long mirror so that I saw only the merest suggestion of the ginger zig-zags, I went over to the french windows and out on to the balcony and stood there for a bit looking at the lights of distant Middlesbrough, for Ironstoneside was on a rise—a very superior neighbourhood. I'd been told that. That's why I had imagined the country—a sort of park-land and a terrace with stone jars. I hadn't imagined this square light over the door now just beneath my feet, with Dentist on it whose electric wire looped across the balcony and divided my room from the one next door.

As I stood there—and it was freezing cold—this light suddenly blazed out, lighting me up and the rooms behind me. I hoped it wouldn't stay on all night. And then, not exactly thinking what I was doing I stepped over the wire and took a look into the room next door along the balcony.

It was shadowy and I poked the french window with a finger and surprisingly it opened. I stepped in and saw a room identical to my own—cream and sumptuous bed, thick, soft carpet, picture too dark to see what but the same style and size as the airedale and in exactly the same place; wash-hand-basin with very clean glass upside down like mine, wardrobe, dressing-table with little lacy mat. The room was waiting for someone just as mine had been a minute before. It was a twin, but there was a difference, and as I stood there I noticed a lovely sweet romantic smell of summer and saw that on the lacy mat on the dressing-table there was a cut-glass vase and a bunch of flowers—shop flowers, freesias, rose-pink, lavender, dark yellow, and white. I'd seen some freesias, in the flower shop at home last week and they were 35p a bunch. There must have been at least two bunches here, and some asparagus fern as well.

 

I stepped quickly out of the room again feeling worse than I'd felt yet because the flowers told me two things—(1) that the other guest was more important than me (which didn't matter) but also (2) that the other guest arriving any minute with Jack was a girl. You wouldn't put out freesias for someone in the Rugger
XV
. Perhaps it was only some aunt-woman of course. Some cousin or something, I thought, trying to cheer up; but just as I thought it and stepped out back on to the balcony again there was a great swoosh and honk on the drive below and Jack Rose's laugh and by the light of the dentist lamp I saw looking down the top of his handsome head as he leapt out and ran round to the passenger seat.

Slowly I saw two long and perfect legs emerge from this seat, in jeans. Above them came a sheepskin coat, and then, her glorious hair emblazoning the night, came Grace Gathering.

I
let the hearty cries of welcome in the hall below subside and sat on my bed for a while after a door had shut leaving a great deal of silence behind it. Then with Paula's clear voice beating in my ears (“Beware of Self Pity.” “It is not oneself who is at the centre of things.” “To be happy, forget yourself and take an interest in the rest,” etc. All that unhelpful stuff) I got up and without a glance in the mirror went down to the sitting room.

I felt Jack there almost without seeing him—his big dark figure handing a glass. Mrs. Rose now sitting easily back in a vast sofa, lighting a cigarette, and Mr. Rose his feet in a heavy rug looking as if the world was a good place behind a glass of gin, his eyes on Grace as if they would never look away. For all three it was obvious, though goodness knows how one realises it just by opening a door and one be-spectaded glance (I'd gone back to the glasses), that the evening for them all had great possibilities.

Grace was draped in a chair, still in her jeans, gazing at the huge electric bars that had been fastened across the old marble fireplace. They were sturdy bars and all switched on and the room had several very efficient-looking radiators, too. I grew damp and prickly under the ginger wool the minute I opened the door for the dress had long sleeves and a high neck and was about three-quarters of an inch thick. Our House is very cold with stone floors meant for monks. You get used to it but you always wear a lot of layers. Not here.

Yet Grace—and the Head's House is no warmer—appeared to be wearing only a long cotton shirt over her jeans, very tight and not even a bra, you could tell, though she was so lovely and thin it didn't matter. The sheepskin was lying all over the back of her chair and her luggage—a sort of canvas nose-bag with a long bit of string—lay on the rose-coloured carpet. “No, just orange,” she was saying as I came in and looked up into Jack's face with a slow, sweet smile.

“Bilgie!” cried Jack swinging round. “You're here. That's great. Come on—you have Grace's gin and tonic then,” and he thrust a great big cut-glass drink into my hand, about a quarter of a pint of it. “Found your way? Good. Here's to you. We won, Humphrey.”

I looked round for someone else and then realised he was talking to his father. “That's the stuff,” said Mr. Rose. “Let's have another to celebrate.” He helped himself. “Good game?” They began to talk rugger, Mrs. Rose joining in. She spoke yery knowledgeably, in short bursts, about tries and penalties and conversions. When she wasn't talking she lit cigarettes. The glasses were refilled again and Mr. Rose waxed very jolly and going across to get himself another gin bent down and whisked away my glass which I saw was empty. I realised that I was feeling very warm and pleasant inside. I had not drunk gin before, associating it either with night clubs which I had not come across or with the sort of person I had sat next to on the bus.

But it was nice. It was making me grin.

“Bilge is grinning.” It was Grace, sipping an orange juice, dropping her eye-lashes. It was the first thing she'd said that acknowledged that I was there. Everyone looked at me and for some reason they all began to laugh, even Grace, throwing her head back and taking in my ginger dress which was getting all steamy under the arms. Jack laughed, too, as if he didn't really want to but couldn't help it. Mrs. Rose exploded briefly and Mr. Rose boomed. It wasn't quite kind the way they laughed. It was at me not with me or for me.

“That's the stuff,” bellowed out Mr. Rose passing me another quarter pint. “Drink up folks. Dinner's ready isn't it Janice?”

We all trooped down into the bowels of the house where there was a room full of curious oak furniture with bulbous legs and an oak hatch through which two hands of an unseen servant kept appearing. Messages were called out in loud voices to this servant by both the dentists—messages full of very good will like “Wotcher, Mac,” and “This looks like just the job, Mac,” “Pretty good nosh, girl. Get plenty yourself,” and you could hear the knife and fork of this person through the hatch, munching apart.

There was prawn cocktail, coq-au-vin and a wonderful chocolate pudding or rather collection of chocolate puddings—round éclair things stuffed with cream and smothered in dark chocolate sauce like Sunday House-gravy. Then there was a huge obtuse-angled triangle of soft creamy cheese and there was with all the courses a lot of wine and I had some of each kind, after drinking the second glass full of gin in a bit of a hurry before we came down.

I didn't know that there even existed food like this and I ate and ate. I wondered whatever Paula and father would make of it. I wondered how poor Jack Rose managed on our House food at school. I kept on drinking but my glass always seemed to be full and Mr. Rose and Jack walking round and round the table with more bottles. Dimly, as the evening wore on I perceived Grace, cool, silent, beautiful, leaning back with tiny teaspoonfuls of food on her plate, not bothering with it much, or relaxed, watching, smoking a cigarette. Mrs. Rose was now red and shiny in the face, Jack had a really rather silly look on his and Mr. Rose was looking like something that has been boiled for hours and turned into scarlet rubber.

“Do ourselves well here,” he cried. “No surgery tomorrow. No night work for dentists so they can live it up all their lives of a Saturday night. Eh Jack? Not the same for doctors. Doctors can't let up. You take the chance of a good time while you can get it, boy. You've only got six years left. Once you're out of medical school you'll have to stick the toffee on your nose.”

Everyone thought this dreadfully funny and I heard myself laughing like mad.

“Liqueurs,” called Mr. Rose. “Crème-de-menthe anyone? Come on Bilgewater—may I call you Bilgewater?”

I looked thoughtfully at the thimbleful of beautiful green liquid.

“I believe she will,” laughed Jack heartily and catching his glance I saw again, even through the haze and the queer tilt of the table, how remarkably small his eyes were, and how careful; and I knew that he had completely forgotten that he'd kissed me last Sarurday week on the pier.

“No thanks,” I said, “I think I'll go now.”

“Go? Not home I hope?” laughed Mrs. Rose. “Just as we've got to know you.”

I was at the door holding hard to the door handle. I couldn't quite think where I did want to go.

“Ten o'clock news?” suggested Mrs. Rose, which sent them into paroxysms of mirth.

Then Grace was mysteriously beside me hitching her canvas bag on to her shoulder and piloting me through the door. Nonchalant and confident as a pale giraffe she called over her shoulder, “D'you mind? I think it's bedtime. Goodnight.”

“Which is your room?” I heard her saying. Then all I can remember is sinking or rather having been somehow deep sunk in the cream bed, the light from the square lamp outside lighting up the vegetatious wall paper, the head of the airedale revolving slowly in terrible tilting semi-circles as the bed swooped and tossed on a silent demonic sea.

I
awoke to the knowledge that something was horribly wrong and trying to lift my head off the pillow remembered what it was. The bed had stopped tipping about. The dawn was breaking, the light outside had been put out as the winter sky lightened faintly, yellowly over Middlesbrough. Beyond the balcony I saw the noble face of Paula and the bewildered face of father gazing at me from the clouds and I felt saturated in most terrible guilt. Then all went blank again and when I next opened my eyes, carefully, one at a time, it was daylight.

I felt better and got up and went creeping out onto the landing to find a bathroom. There was a shell pink one with a pink, hairy fitted carpet made of loops and a battery of gilded taps and showers. I took off my pyjamas and had a steaming noisy and gigantic bath. Then back in the pyjamas I marched and climbed into bed and slept a bit more.

When I woke up for the third time I felt quite different and sprang out of bed, brushed my hair like mad, got into my clothes and pranced down the stairs. The clock in the hall said ten forty-five, but there was silence on every side. I went on downstairs to look for the dining room where there was a smell rather like in the foyer of the pier ballroom, but the table was laid for breakfast and had a packet of cornflakes on it. I helped myself to a large bowlful of them and, still feeling pretty good, looked round for what to do next. There was some bread on the bulbous sideboard and I ate several slices of it and a lot of butter and marmalade that were on the table. Then I looked through the hatch into the kitchen but the serf person didn't seem to be there. There was an electric kettle however and a jar of instant coffee and I felt that more than anything in the world this was what I wanted.

But how could I get at it? I went out to the passage and couldn't seem to see any kitchen door. I went back to the dining room and could only see a door into a cupboard. There was still a very thick and oppressive silence everywhere and the hatch was large, so, carefully moving a magnificent electric hot-plate to one side, I began to climb slowly and cautiously head-first through the hatch.

There was nothing to it. It was not high. It only needed the smallest upward jump, and yanking myself on to the sill I caught hold of the shelf on the other side to drag myself through, expecting at any horrible moment to hear the door behind me open and Mr. or Mrs. Rose cry out with embarrassment or amusement at my receding knickers. I will
never
drink again, I thought.

I fastened my eyes steadfastly on the coffee and the distant draining board: and then beyond me in the kitchen which was very untidy and messy I saw Jack and Grace rolling about together in silence on the floor.

 

They didn't see me.

I went to church.

Father and I have always gone to church on Sunday and Paula to her chapel. Father and I don't go to the school service at the parish church where the boarders go, but to a church labelled “High” at the end of the town where there is the Sung Eucharist every week at eleven o'clock with a difficult sermon, the Kyrie in Greek, and a good long row of lovely candles on the altar which has a cloth of gold altar-frontal at festivals.

It has never occurred to me not to go to church and I was confirmed with almost no instruction, the priest being a friend of father's who said I was a safe bet for a Christian, being father's daughter. It has worked well. I haven't been to many churches—Scarborough, Whitby, a bleak tin-hut place at Hinderwell one week-end when we tried to have a holiday but didn't stay long. Mathematics has not got in the way of faith.