The Furnished Room (29 page)

At that moment the front door opened, and Ilsa walked out.

The policeman saw her, and gave her a quick, hard glance, noting her description.

She walked down the street towards Beckett. She had not seen him yet.

Beckett stood as if frozen. He could not run now, for that would attract her attention, which would in turn attract the attention of the policeman. He kept still, just inside Gash's gate. Ilsa was on the other side of the street, and might not notice him.

She was wearing her slim white dress with the gold belt. She paused to light a cigarette, screening the match with the open flap of her handbag, and he saw the thin awkward angle of her arm as she fumbled the match.

The policeman also watched her.

Then she saw Beckett, and shouted to him across the street: ‘Joe-Joe!' She ran towards him, teetering, in her tight dress and high heels, in an odd Charleston run as if her knees were tied together. As she ran, she waved enthusiastically, and screamed in her strident voice: ‘Honey! I went to your house and the old bitch told me you'd left! Told me you'd done a flit!'

Then she was in his arms, and he said with automatic affection: ‘Ilsa, Ilsa, Ilsa.'

‘I get so choked with anybody else but you.' She buried her face in the shoulder of his zipper jacket.

As he held her, he thought, ironically, that it was typical that he should be betrayed by this girl for whom he felt the unreal parallels of love and indifference. She had prevented his heroic gesture of giving himself up and had subjected him to the humiliation of capture.

In the end the lie had won. He was speaking the easy words of love: ‘Ilsa, darling Ilsa,' although dissociation was like a cold stone in his mind.

He accepted that he was like that. With people, he would never get farther than a kindness born of basic indifference. He would always live behind a glass wall. But although he was condemned to live in unreality, he had been given, as recompense, the power to experience ultra-reality. He had been equipped to receive experiences like his vision on the hill. This equipment, built into his brain, was his recompense for his difference from other people. He decided that it was worth the price.

Over Ilsa's blonde head he met the eyes of the policeman, who was watching with folded arms and a tight smile of satisfaction.

Beckett held the girl, but was already alone as the policeman started to walk towards him.

The children were wheeling and shouting as always; their screams ricocheted from the buildings. Two women walked along the pavement, pushing their shopping in wheeled baskets. A front door banged, a radio played. The sky was London grey over Tewkesbury Road on a Saturday morning.

Laura Del-Rivo was born in 1934 to middle-class Catholic parents in Cheam, Surrey. Her father worked in a bank. She was educated at Holy Cross Convent, New Malden, and left school at sixteen. She had various unremarkable jobs and went to Soho cafés after work. She lived in furnished rooms before she joined a house of writers and painters in Chepstow Villas, Notting Hill. Laura Del-Rivo was part of a loose group of writers which included Colin Wilson. She was photographed by Ida Kar and recently appeared in Kar's retrospective at the National Portrait Gallery.

The
Furnished Room
was released as a film,
West 11
, starring Alfred Lynch, Eric Portman, Kathleen Breck and Diana Dors, in 1963. Laura Del-Rivo became, and remains, a Portobello Road market trader. Her most recent novel is
Speedy and Queen Kong
, published by Paupers' Press. She is still writing.

Adrift in Soho
by Colin Wilson - also available as an ebook

Baron's Court, All Change
by Terry Taylor (introduction by Stewart Home) - also available as an ebook

King Dido
by Alexander Baron (introduction by Ken Worpole) - ebook coming soon

Rosie Hogarth
by Alexander Baron (introduction by Andrew Whitehead) - ebook coming soon

October Day
by Frank Griffin (introduction by Andy Croft)

Scamp
by Roland Camberton
(introduction by Iain Sinclair)

Rain on the Pavements
by Roland Camberton

This Bed Thy Centre
by Pamela Hansford Johnson (introduction by Zoë Fairbairns)