The Lodger: A Novel (2 page)

Dorothy hesitated, searching for words to describe how far she had come. This was why she’d reached out to Jane after all this time: she wanted a long-standing friend to help reconcile her past self with the strange adventure of the present. And Jane had responded to her letter at once, with an invitation to stay for the weekend, so perhaps she felt the same need.

Dorothy took a sip of the delicate amber wine, feeling the warmth of it sliding through her veins, giving her courage. “After my mother died, I longed to escape from the world of women,” she said, slowly. “So I moved to London; I live in a boardinghouse in Bloomsbury. I’m a secretary to a Harley Street dentist at a pound a week. The hours are long, and I don’t have much leisure. But the reward is a kind of freedom—I’m able to attend lectures and a range of political meetings. London is a melting pot of societies and ideas, and I can dip in and out of them as I please.”

She stopped, realizing that in order to hold the Wells’s attention, she would have to be clever and amusing. She probed her mind for a suitable anecdote, yet without knowing quite how it happened, found herself pouring out her heart about work. She told them about the grueling hours, the cold which turned her fingernails blue, the cleaning solution used for dental instruments that dried and cracked her skin …

She broke off, worried she’d lost them. But Bertie was nodding sympathetically.

“Years ago, I worked as a draper’s apprentice,” he said. “I knew the grind of it all: the endless hours, the suffocating tedium, the many petty tyrannies. The feeling that I was trapped forever in a mindless, soulless machine from which there was no way out … but I can suggest a way of freeing yourself at one blow.”

“How?”

“Do what I did. Write a novel.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Just like that?”

“Of course not. It takes more work than goes into many a doctoral thesis, and countless arid days and fruitless attempts.”

Dorothy found herself watching the curious mouthing of his lips as they formed the words, half hidden by the thin mustache, and saved from weakness only by his ironic smile.

“
The Time Machine
was born after years of poverty and disappointments and cutting my teeth with journalism,” he went on. “I wrote it on holiday in Sevenoaks. Do you remember, Jane?”

“Indeed I do, my dear.”

“I couldn’t have done it without Jane,” Bertie admitted. “Her unwavering belief in me kept me going, even long after I’d ceased to believe in myself.” He turned to Jane. “Remember how we used to feel: it was you and me against the world?”

“Yes, I remember.” Jane was looking at him fondly.

For a moment, Bertie laid his hand on the back of Jane’s neck, beneath her hair. It was an astonishingly private gesture, so intimate and tender, Dorothy could hardly bear to watch. A pang of envy and longing shot through her.

“I wrote at an open window on hot August nights, with the moths hurling themselves against the lamp,” he said. “I could hear the landlady in the garden below complaining loudly over the fence to her neighbor about my immoderate use of her lamp. So I wrote faster than ever, but she was still unhappy with me. She’d discovered, by snooping in our luggage and finding divorce papers from my first wife, that Jane and I weren’t yet married. She was scandalized by our morals and by the shameless way we’d foisted ourselves on her and taken advantage of her innocence…”

As they were about to get up from the table, Bertie said “Hasn’t she got roses in her cheeks now, eh Jane? You must come and see us more often, Miss Richardson. Being here evidently agrees with you. And we like having you around, don’t we Jane?”

A sense of belonging was being offered. For a moment she hesitated, not quite sure how to respond. “Thank you, I like being here,” she said shyly.

Meeting Jane’s eyes, she was surprised by their suddenly tense and watchful expression.

*   *   *

DOROTHY GOT READY
for bed in the comfortable high-ceilinged guest room. When she turned out the gas, the windows shone faintly with moonlight. The air around her was still warm from the gas. She climbed into the four-poster bed, feeling drained. Perhaps, she’d be able to sleep properly here.

She closed her eyes. Almost at once, the well-known flashbacks started arriving, playing themselves out vividly behind her sealed eyelids, transporting her back to the event that had torn her life apart.

She sat upright, trying to erase the image of her mother’s body sprawled on the floor, runnels of blood forming viscous pools on the tattered linoleum. So much blood; Dorothy never knew a person’s frame contained that much.

She pressed her knuckles hard into her eyes; pinpricks of brilliant white light danced in front of them. But it was useless; the memory was indelibly seared into her mind. Life had turned her inside out in seconds; everything disintegrated, and nothing was ever the same. All that was familiar vanished in a few instants, and the grief and guilt were like swallowing splinters of broken glass.

*   *   *

AFTER BREAKFAST THE
next morning, Dorothy went for a walk in the garden. Jane was busy with household chores, and Bertie was nowhere to be seen. She was relieved to be alone. The night had left her raw and disunited; she needed space to gather up the scattered pieces of herself and glue them back into a semblance of normality.

The garden was large and well kept, and it took time to explore. At the bottom of the lawn was a rose garden filled with lush bushes, the roses still in bud. A covered walk made of growing plants trained over a trellis ran down the middle of it. Pansies and foxgloves bloomed thickly in wide flower beds. She wandered arbitrarily across a walled vegetable garden that held cherry and apple trees, and through a door into a terraced square.

Bertie was sitting at a stone table, pen in hand and sheets of paper spread in front of him. Jane had warned Dorothy not to disturb him, but when he looked up and saw her, a pleased smile lit his face. He patted the empty space on the stone bench next to him and said, “Come and sit with me for a while.”

“Are you sure? I don’t want to disturb you.”

“It’s only a book review. Something I’m scribbling for
The Saturday Review
.”

She did as she was told, feeling suddenly awkward and shy. She glanced down at her hands twined in her lap. They looked large and raw, like inert cuts of meat—repulsive. Why did no one else’s hands look like that? Bertie’s hands were strong and blunt-fingered; his rolled-up shirtsleeves revealed forearms covered with golden hairs. She looked up and saw him following her gaze. His eyes were densely blue; the dark bands circling the irises looked like they had been dipped in ink. His expression was hard to read.

For a long moment they sat in silence, the sunshine pouring down on them like melted butter. The air was cool and refreshing; Dorothy could feel it soothing away the ravages of the night, making a delicious contrast to the warmth of the sun on her face. A light breeze moved Bertie’s sandy hair.

“May I look?” she asked.

“Not yet. It’s still in its infancy.” He stacked up the pages with care and placed them face down on the table.

“Is it easier than writing novels?”

“In some ways, but it’s a great responsibility. The reviewer must take care not to destroy early attempts, especially ones by writers who are just honing their skills. Authors are like tender young seedlings, they need a great deal of nursing. Sadly, not all critics realize that.”

Bertie paused, his face alight with humor. “We reviewers tread a fine line; it’s not easy to get right. Some of us behave like careless gardeners, soaking the plants in the water of compliments and drowning them, while others refuse sustenance entirely until the plants shrivel up and die. There are a handful of wise and long-sighted caretakers, but they’re a rare breed.”

Dorothy smiled, half closing her eyes. His views seemed less objectionable than they had last night. In fact, he had a vivid way of looking at things that lifted them out of the commonplace.

She opened her eyes. The sunlight cut into the trees in front of her, producing a mass of glittering spires. Two blackbirds, singing a duet in contrary rhythm, stopped at the same moment. In their silence, she could faintly hear Jane, out of sight behind the red walls of the vegetable garden, humming and enjoying herself as she worked. Dorothy could picture her in her old faded bonnet, a basket at her feet and her beloved red-handled gardening shears in her gloved hands.

Two

It would be better not to see the Wellses again. There was something all wrong about being with them … back in London, it seemed wrong. Heavy-limbed with fatigue, Dorothy got off the train and dragged herself up the long platform. She could feel the weight of her Gladstone bag thumping against her leg. Inside was her signed copy of
The Time Machine.

The station was shrouded by clouds of billowing grey smoke. The platform lights, battling to cut through it, served only to thicken and reflect the murk. The air smelled of smoke and metal; a dry bitter tang that scorched Dorothy’s nostrils and lingered unpleasantly in the back of her throat. The dark figures and spectral faces of fellow passengers loomed out at her as they approached, then vanished again, as though gulped down by the besieging shadows. A train shrieked suddenly, a harsh blast that startled her.

Her family and the Harley Street dentists would certainly think spending time with the Wellses was wrong if they knew Bertie had divorced his first wife for Jane. They had heard of his work, they knew he was standing on the brink of fame … that people were starting to talk about him. But if they saw how he had looked at Dorothy, they would be shocked. They would never understand his extraordinary ideas, his way of seeing the world. He was rather like Lucifer; a fallen angel. It would be impossible to describe the visit to anyone she knew.

The sense of lit streets waiting for her under the night sky, of a rich interesting London life, revived her for the walk home.

Emerging from the station, the quiet dark buildings and the blackness between the lamps seemed to expand around her. The moon was almost full; a hard, cold plate in the sky. She savored the clipped sound her footfalls made on the irregular flags of the pavement, the traffic rumbling past, the sudden blaze of yellow shop light. People walked by, looking pallid under the streetlamps; their faces caught up in invisible thoughts. A young woman in a silver cloak and a matching floating scarf, walking rapidly, her head bent. A bald man with a terrier in a tartan coat. It was a relief to feel part of the familiar London atmosphere, to be absorbed by it.

She followed Endsleigh Gardens as it opened out of Gower Place, bordered by the gloom of the dimly lit Euston Road and the mysterious bulk of St. Pancras Church. The roadway was lined with majestic plane trees, their shadows clear on the narrow pavement; dense with secret perspectives.

The dusky figures of prostitutes stood at intervals against the lamplit green. They looked like sentinels, warning her. She knew they would be there, yet the sight of them never failed to send a jolt through her.

A strident voice rang out as Dorothy turned off into her own road … “I said to him, I’ll bloody stab you if you come any closer…” The words ricocheted around Dorothy; she fought a rising desire to break into a run. The street was full of anger and violence. The woman’s grating voice seemed very near; Dorothy could picture her truculent expression … Jack the Ripper had carried out his grisly murders not so very long ago, not far from here … he had left his horribly mutilated victims in plain sight, for anyone to stumble on. Dorothy could almost hear the pad of footfalls behind her, she half braced herself for the cold bite of the knife in her neck … Fear quickened her steps to an urgent trot.

She reached her front door with relief. The house had always seemed to belong to her. The first time she’d seen it, after answering the advertisement for boarders, she had the sense it had been waiting for her through all the years of turmoil. It was a refuge, despite its air of genteel decrepitude—or perhaps, because of it. She loved the sleepy grey street, the high stately houses with their rows of gracious balconies, the green squares at either end like oases, sweetening the air with their breath.

She fished in her bag for her proud latchkey and opened the door. The hall was hushed and deserted. Gaslight streamed down onto the smudged marble top of the hall table and glared against the dining-room door. The interior had a rich comfortable brownness. It was one dark even tone throughout, like living in brown soup. Dorothy walked up the dimly lit stairs, past dark landings and closed doors whose polished wood gleamed dully. The tall windows were concealed by soot-stained lace curtains. Dust lay in the cracks between the floorboards and coated the skirting. There was a strong smell of dust in the air.

She reached the short winding flight of uncarpeted stairs that led to her attic room and ran up it thankfully, anticipating the peaceful evening that lay ahead of her. She would be able to mull over her weekend with the Wellses; to straighten it out in her head. In the train, she had been battered by a gale of thoughts. They had swept over her tumultuously, each exchange with Bertie and Jane rising up and clamoring to be analyzed. An interval of solitary reflection was necessary; she could picture the gaslight under the sloping roof, making a winter coziness in springtime.

The brass doorknob wobbled in her hand; the hinges creaked as she pushed open the door.

She gasped; peace draining out of her. Standing on the hearthrug was Benjamin.

Dorothy looked at the frock-coated Russian student in dismayed silence. She was stricken with guilt for not once having thought about him during the weekend. At the same time, she had the strange sense that their not-quite-ended entanglement had already shifted into the past.

Her mind flew back to the early days with him. She had been cajoled into giving him English lessons by the landlady, who was anxious to retain her hold on a well-to-do foreign boarder. They had quickly discovered a shared love of books and ideas. Yet it was as though their joyful establishing of common bonds across different languages and cultures had happened to two entirely different people, who now seemed slightly out of focus, like a fading photograph.