The Lodger: A Novel (13 page)

Bertie’s eyes were closed as he moved on top of her. He had an expression of great concentration on his face; she wondered what he was thinking. He began to move with growing urgency. Suddenly, he moaned and fell on top of her, a dead weight.

Afterward, there wasn’t enough room for both to lie on the bed without one of them being on the damp sticky patch, or on the daubs of her own blood on the sheet. So Bertie sat upright, his back against the wall.

He was unusually quiet and calm. The curtains were drawn; the light was muted and faint. He picked up his box of cigarettes and offered her one. She shook her head. She reached for the counterpane and pulled it over herself; she was in a daze. Bertie lit up and inhaled deeply. Dorothy wondered if he felt as deflated as she did. Blowing smoke from his nostrils, he turned to look as her.

“Are you all right?”

She nodded.

“I know it hurts the first time. It gets better.”

Despite the reassuring words, there was an expression on his face she hadn’t seen before. It was gentle, questioning, somewhat puzzled. He gazed deeply into her eyes, as though he was searching for something inside her very soul.

Dorothy was flooded with sadness. They knew so little of each other. How could any man and woman hope to know each other?

*   *   *

DOROTHY AND BERTIE
made love many more times, but it was no better. It didn’t hurt anymore, but always Dorothy found her mind disengaging itself. It seemed to hover in the air above them, observing, weirdly dislocated from the actions of their bodies.

She was fully conscious of her failure, for she knew how badly Bertie craved perfect physical relations with a woman whose mind was in tune with his. Her lack of sensual response must have been a bitter blow to him. But Bertie was kind and gentle, burying his disappointment deep. They never spoke of it.

She, too, was disappointed by this side of their life. It was uncomfortable in every sense. She wanted to join his transports, and her inability to do so made her feel lonely and left behind. At the same time, she disliked the way he lost himself, turning into a creature of instinctual, unconscious hunger. There was a blind, rooting quality about him that reminded her of a baby, fastened to its mother’s breast.

Her disappointment was compounded by an acute sense of isolation. There was no one she could share her feelings with, nor talk to about the love affair. Her sisters, scattered all over England and living in a different universe, would be shocked and upset. They had been through enough with their mother without Dorothy causing additional grief. Her London friends were too new to trust with such a secret. Ironically, she felt the one person who would have understood was Jane.

When Jane and Bertie met, he was married to his cousin Isabel, a dark-haired girl with a grave and beautifully shaped face and a slim, graceful body. Bertie was profoundly attracted to Isabel, yet the marriage was not a success. Isabel was naive, unperceptive, frigid or shy in bed, and totally lacking in ambition. She was ill equipped to deal with Bertie’s imagination, his aspirations, or his moods of searing dissatisfaction with life. Amy Catherine was a student in his science class at the University Tutorial College. Disappointment with his marriage made Bertie vulnerable to what he felt he was missing, and the attraction between them developed quickly. Amy Catherine was witty, intelligent, educated, and beautiful. She shared Bertie’s intellectual curiosity, encouraged his literary ambitions, and reciprocated his growing feelings for her. It was a terrible dilemma. Bertie eventually left Isabel and went to live in lodgings with Amy. When his divorce came through, they married. Dorothy had heard only the bare outlines of the story, but she realized there were enough parallels between their situations for Jane to know exactly how Dorothy was feeling.

Dorothy’s isolation was made worse because of Bertie’s aversion to being seen with her in public. “It’s an unstated law of public life that an open scandal kills a career,” he explained. “My publisher would drop me like a hot potato. Society penalizes people who abandon duty for love. Power, influence, and authority belong mainly to men with blameless lives, men who have never tasted passion.”

*   *   *

SOMETIMES, THE OLD
magic returned.

He took her to the theater. She borrowed a midnight-blue cloak from her sister and spent an entire week’s salary on an evening blouse. But it was worth not having the money for food when she saw him responding: drawing himself upright, smiling back at her, his grey-blue eyes dark with longing. “You’re a lovely sight in midnight blue. You are always pretty. But tonight … tonight, you’re dazzling.”

It began as the sort of night that lived forever, arrested in time. The glancing gleaming light inside the hansom cab as they hurried down dark empty roads, not talking much, listening to the leathery rattle and jingle of the harness, the clop of horses’ hooves, the slur of wheels; the smell of horse and leather mingling headily with Bertie’s cologne. He was spruce in evening dress, his warm body pressed against hers, his arm securely around her, cushioning the jolts. She leaned her head against the curve of his shoulder; it was a point of perfect rest and contentment. Presently, they reached gold-lamped streets that seemed to be full of other hansoms carrying dinner and theater people in evening dress, all talking and laughing.

The cab dropped them in front of the wide light-spangled front of the theater. Bertie paid, leaving a tip that made the driver smile and say “God bless you, sir, and your pretty missus.”

They found themselves caught up in the crowd of people flowing inside the building. The men looked distinguished; the women were like so many gorgeous birds in their richly colored gowns. They possessed an easy confidence that came of having enough good nourishing food and freedom from fatigue and anxiety. They seemed to float in a private atmosphere of privilege.

Bertie and Dorothy sat discreetly hidden in a box at the very top of the building. The orchestra began to play and the lights dimmed. The curtain rose with a smooth swish, revealing the lit battlements of Castle Elsinore. Soldiers on their watch were speaking in hushed tones about the ghost they had seen, and Dorothy was transported into another world.

She glanced at Bertie. His face, shadowy in the half light, looked perfectly contented. He was at ease; this evening in town was his time off. It was a break from the long, isolated hours spent at his desk, striving to achieve, compelling himself on to ever greater endeavors. It was a break, too, from Jane, who had long ago ceased to be his lover, and had transformed herself seamlessly into the custodian of his well-being.

“What are you thinking?” he whispered, taking her hand.

“
Hamlet
is wonderful. I never realized it was so full of quotations.”

He laughed, but gently.

During the interval, a waiter brought a bottle of champagne to their box. Bertie picked up a dish of almonds and offered it to her. “Well, what have you been doing since I last saw you?”

“Oh, just drifting along.”

He took a handful of nuts and crunched them loudly. “You know, I can’t help feeling you could do more with yourself. You’re highly intelligent and energetic, yet most of your capabilities are unused.”

“I’m happy the way I am. Free to dip in and out of societies and lectures whenever I want; be it socialists, anarchists, Tolstoyans…”

“What has it taught you?”

“I’ve realized, in the midst of my admiration and interest, that there’s something missing in all of them. Though I did go to something the other day that felt like a homecoming.”

She told him about the Quaker meeting, in a tiny hall above the cramped old shops of St. Martin’s Lane. She described the congregation, who were surprisingly young and modern, and the way her initial horror that men and women were seated separately had given way to excited astonishment at the alive, positive quality of their silences, from which everything fell into proportion and clear focus. It was a revitalizing atmosphere that existed in reference to a higher presence, yet was unlike anything she had ever met in church.

“You ought to be a journalist, Dora. Your lifestyle provides masses of material, and you have a real gift for creating sketches that’s wasted on Harley Street. Granted it would be a risk to chuck in your job, but you have courage in heaps. Most women would have been ground under by the life you’ve led, but you rise above it all, quite unravaged. You’ve managed to retain a wonderfully open quality; there’s not a trace of bitterness about you. I admire that.”

“I don’t want to chuck in my job. It suits me precisely because it leaves my mind untouched to explore other worlds. At the end of the day, I walk away and work simply scrolls up and vanishes. Anything with more responsibility would mold and brand me; it would take away something vital. That’s one reason I can’t be a journalist.”

“What’s the other?”

“I loathe taking sides.”

“Well, you’ll have to take a stand in the end. All that promise and potential must attach itself to something worthwhile, or it will fizzle out. You’re wasting your life.”

“How can one waste life?”

“Drifting isn’t living life to the full.”

“On the contrary. Most people are so busy striving to become, they have no time for reflection and solitude. They lose their essential core.”

“Life, if we’re to achieve
anything
, Dora, doesn’t allow for in-depth explorations of each other’s souls. We can’t just sit around, wallowing in feelings. We’re constantly moving, we’ve got to keep moving, or things will crumble; they’ll slide away from us.”

Dorothy hesitated, biting her lip. There was no way of getting him to acknowledge the individual reality that lay deep within; he was not in the least bit interested. It ran contrary to everything he stood for. She could feel all the unexpressed things surrounding her mockingly. It seemed there was always some unexpressed thing between them, some barrier to communication. So much time was spent trying to meet him on his terms, in a world shaped by his scientific way of thinking.

She sipped her champagne. She had hardly eaten anything during the day, and she could feel the alcohol leaping to her head and coursing through her bloodstream, spreading warm silky fingers.

“You’ve had no end of a good time in London,” Bertie was saying. “It’s been a terrific adventure. But if you’re not careful, it’ll end up grinding you down. You want a bucolic existence. A baby. Then you’d be able to settle down and write…”

As he talked, Dorothy found herself looking at the inward picture conjured by his words. Leafy woodlands, shimmering and rustling softly in the wind, all dappled light and shadow. Green open country, untrammelled and empty beneath soft grey skies; the fresh raw smell of mingled earth and rain; a little house with a garden … The perfection of the vision was marred only by Bertie’s desire to try to shape her.

She found herself yielding to his spell. She began to listen to the tones of his voice, rather than his words, to its high huskiness and all the small creaks and intonations. She became caught up in it, surrendering to champagne and the undeclared promise in what he was saying. His voice was like the texture of his skin … at that moment, it seemed more intimate to be listening to him than touching him.

“You’re very quiet,” he said at last.

“Do you mind?”

He picked up her hand and kissed the soft skin on the inside of her wrist. “A fellow would always rather be listened to than talked at.”

Afterward, they stood outside her boardinghouse, holding hands like a couple of young sweethearts who couldn’t bear to part (she didn’t care who saw them; she was shameless). He had promised Jane he would be home that evening.

“Good night, my love.”

“Good night.”

“Sleep well.”

Their hand slid apart; only their fingertips were touching.

“I’ll write to you tomorrow. No, I’ll write on the train home tonight.”

“Will you? I’d like that.”

“I must go now,” he said.

He took a few steps away from her. Dorothy could still feel the tingling warmth of his fingers on her skin.

“Goodnight,” Bertie said again. He raised his hand in a half-wave; then turned and started walking toward the station, back to his home and Jane.

As Dorothy let herself into the unlit house, she realized he hadn’t fixed a time for their next meeting. The thought punctured her happiness abruptly, cutting her adrift. She saw afresh how precarious their love was, how clandestine and duplicitous. It was bitter as ashes.

The hall was silent and full of shadows; the dim staircase disappeared up into darkness. She untied the midnight blue cloak, slipped it off her shoulders, and began to trudge up the stairs with it over her arm.

She noticed a rip in the delicate fabric of her new blouse. Damn! She hadn’t realized it would tear so easily. What on earth had possessed her to buy it?

She had wanted to dazzle Bertie with the blouse. More than that, she’d cherished a secret fantasy (no use denying it) of toppling the fragile balance of their arrangement. It was amazing what power she’d attributed to a piece of silk. She had hoped to turn Bertie’s head, to bring his barriers crashing down, to have him helplessly promising … promising what exactly? To leave Jane, to love Dorothy eternally, to be lost without her? She wasn’t quite sure what she’d hoped for, but she did know her lack of control over their situation was galling. She hated the gaps between meetings, spent waiting for him to be free. Well, the blouse hadn’t worked any magic. Faced with a week of going hungry, it seemed a stupid and ruinous extravagance.

By the time she reached her attic, she felt exhausted and convinced of her unworthiness to lay claim to any significant part of Bertie’s life. He had such a profusion of interests: they seemed to float, vivid and alluring, just out of her reach. What could she possibly offer to match them? Only her unconnected dissenting self, poor in every sense of the word, peculiar and unworthy …

Perhaps it would be better to give him up entirely than to have such a meager share of him. The joy of his company was virtually extinguished by the uncertainty and the dislocating wrench of parting.