To Room Nineteen (33 page)

He turned to face her, troubled, then slowly smiling. There was the same rich unscrupulous quality of appreciation in that smile as there had been in Dorothy’s laugh over her husband and Lady Edith. ‘You think so?’ They laughed together, irrepressibly and loudly.

‘What’s the joke?’ shouted Dorothy.

‘I’m laughing because your drawings are so good,’ shouted Stella.

‘Yes, they are, aren’t they?’ But Dorothy’s voice changed to flat incredulity: ‘The trouble is, I can’t imagine how I ever did them, I can’t imagine ever being able to do it again.’

‘Downstairs,’ said Jack to Stella, and they went down to find Dorothy nursing the baby. He nursed with his whole being, all of him in movement. He was wrestling with the breast, thumping Dorothy’s plump pretty breast with his fists. Jack stood looking down at the two of them, grinning. Dorothy reminded Stella of a cat, half closing her yellow eyes to stare over her kittens at work on her side, while she stretched out a paw where claws sheathed and unsheathed themselves, making a small rip-rip-rip on the carpet she lay on.

‘You’re a savage creature,’ said Stella, laughing.

Dorothy raised her small vivid face and smiled. ‘Yes, I am,’ she said, and looked at the two of them calm, and from a distance, over the head of her energetic baby.

Stella cooked supper in a stone kitchen, with a heater brought by Jack to make it tolerable. She used the good food she had brought with her, taking trouble. It took some time, then the three ate slowly over a big wooden table. The baby was not asleep. He grumbled for some minutes on a cushion on the floor, then his father held him briefly, before passing him over, as he had done earlier, in response to his mother’s need to have him close.

‘I’m supposed to let him cry,’ remarked Dorothy. ‘But why should he? If he were an Arab or an African baby he’d be plastered to my back.’

‘And very nice too,’ said Jack. ‘I think they come out too soon into the light of day, they should just stay inside for about eighteen months, much better all round.’

‘Have a heart,’ said Dorothy and Stella together, and they all laughed; but Dorothy added, quite serious: ‘Yes, I’ve been thinking so too.’

This good nature lasted through the long meal. The light went cool and thin outside; and inside they let the summer dusk deepen, without lamps.

‘I’ve got to go quite soon,’ said Stella, with regret.

‘Oh, no, you’ve got to stay!’ said Dorothy, strident. It was sudden, the return of the woman who made Jack and Dorothy tense themselves to take strain.

‘We all thought Philip was coming. The children will be back tomorrow night, they’ve been on holiday.’

‘Then stay till tomorrow, I
want
you,’ said Dorothy, petulant.

‘But I can’t,’ said Stella.

‘I never thought I’d want another woman around, cooking in my kitchen, looking after me, but I do,’ said Dorothy, apparently about to cry.

‘Well, love, you’ll have to put up with me,’ said Jack.

‘Would you mind, Stell?’

‘Mind
what?’
asked Stella, cautious.

‘Do you find Jack attractive?’

‘Very.’

‘Well, I know you do. Jack, do you find Stella attractive?’

‘Try me,’ said Jack, grinning; but at the same time signalling warnings to Stella.

‘Well, then!’ said Dorothy.

‘A
ménage à trois?’
asked Stella, laughing. ‘And how about my Philip? Where does he fit in?’

‘Well, if it comes to that, I wouldn’t mind Philip myself,’ said Dorothy, knitting her sharp black brows and frowning.

‘I don’t blame you,’ said Stella, thinking of her handsome husband.

‘Just for a month, till he comes back,’ said Dorothy. ‘I tell you
what, we’ll abandon this silly cottage, we must have been mad to stick ourselves away in England in the first place. The three of us’ll just pack up and go off to Spain or Italy with the baby.’

‘And what else?’ inquired Jack, good-natured at all costs, using his pipe as a safety valve.

‘Yes, I’ve decided I approve of polygamy,’ announced Dorothy. She had opened her dress and the baby was nursing again, quietly this time, relaxed against her. She stroked his head, softly, softly, while her voice rose and insisted at the other two people: ‘I never understood it before, but I do now. I’ll be the senior wife, and you two can look after me.’

‘Any other plans?’ inquired Jack, angry now. ‘You just drop in from time to time to watch Stella and me have a go, is that it? Or are you going to tell us when we can go off and do it, give us your gracious permission?’

‘Oh I don’t care what you do, that’s the point,’ said Dorothy, sighing, sounding forlorn, however.

Jack and Stella, careful not to look at each other, sat waiting.

‘I read something in the newspaper yesterday, it struck me,’ said Dorothy, conversational. ‘A man and two women living together – here, in England. They are both his wives, they consider themselves his wives. The senior wife has a baby, and the younger wife sleeps with him – well, that’s what it looked like, reading between the lines.’

‘You’d better stop reading between the lines,’ said Jack. ‘It’s not doing you any good.’

‘No, I’d like it,’ insisted Dorothy. ‘I think our marriages are silly. Africans and people like that, they know better, they’ve got some sense.’

‘I can just see you if I did make love to Stella,’ said Jack.

‘Yes!’ said Stella, with a short laugh which, against her will, was resentful.

‘But I wouldn’t mind,’ said Dorothy, and burst into tears.

‘Now, Dorothy, that’s enough,’ said Jack. He got up, took the baby, whose sucking was mechanical now, and said: ‘Now listen, you’re going right upstairs and you’re going to sleep. This little
stinker’s full as a tick, he’ll be asleep for hours, that’s my bet.’

‘I don’t feel sleepy,’ said Dorothy, sobbing.

‘I’ll give you a sleeping pill, then.’

Then started a search for sleeping pills. None to be found.

‘That’s just like us,’ wailed Dorothy, ‘we don’t even have a sleeping pill in the place … Stella, I wish you’d stay, I really do. Why can’t you?’

‘Stella’s going in just a minute, I’m taking her to the station,’ said Jack. He poured some Scotch into a glass, handed it to his wife and said: ‘Now drink that, love, and let’s have an end to it. I’m getting fed-up.’ He sounded fed-up.

Dorothy obediently drank the Scotch, got unsteadily from her chair and went slowly upstairs. ‘Don’t let him cry,’ she demanded, as she disappeared.

‘Oh you silly bitch,’ he shouted after her. ‘When have I let him cry? Here, you hold on a minute,’ he said to Stella, handing her the baby. He ran upstairs.

Stella held the baby. This was almost for the first time, since she sensed how much another woman’s holding her child made Dorothy’s fierce new possessiveness uneasy. She looked down at the small, sleepy, red face and said softly: ‘Well, you’re causing a lot of trouble, aren’t you?’

Jack shouted from upstairs: ‘Come-up a minute, Stell.’ She went up, with the baby. Dorothy was tucked up in bed, drowsy from the Scotch, the bedside light turned away from her. She looked at the baby, but Jack took it from Stella.

‘Jack says I’m a silly bitch,’ said Dorothy, apologetic, to Stella.

‘Well, never mind, you’ll feel different soon.’

‘I suppose so, if you say so. All right. I
am
going to sleep,’ said Dorothy, in a stubborn, sad little voice. She turned over, away from them. In the last flare of her hysteria she said: ‘Why don’t you two walk to the station together? It’s a lovely night.’

‘We’re going to,’ said Jack, ‘don’t worry.’

She let out a weak giggle, but did not turn. Jack carefully deposited the now sleeping baby in the bed, about a foot from Dorothy. Who suddenly wriggled over until her small, defiant white
back was in contrast with the blanketed bundle that was her son.

Jack raised his eyebrows at Stella: but Stella was looking at mother and baby, the nerves of her memory filling her with sweet warmth. What right had this woman, who was in possession of such delight, to torment her husband, to torment her friend, as she had been doing – what right had she to rely on their decency as she did?

Surprised by these thoughts, she walked away downstairs, and stood at the door into the garden, her eyes shut, holding herself rigid against tears.

She felt a warmth on her bare arm – Jack’s hand. She opened her eyes to see him bending towards her, concerned.

‘It’d serve Dorothy right if I did drag you off into the bushes …’

‘Wouldn’t have to drag me,’ he said; and while the words had the measure of facetiousness the situation demanded, she felt his seriousness envelop them both in danger.

The warmth of his hand slid across her back, and she turned towards him under its pressure. They stood together, cheeks touching, scents of skin and hair mixing with the smells of warmed grass and leaves.

She thought: What is going to happen now will blow Dorothy and Jack and that baby sky-high; it’s the end of my marriage; I’m going to blow everything to bits. There was almost uncontrollable pleasure in it.

She saw Dorothy, Jack, the baby, her husband, the two half-grown children, all dispersed, all spinning downwards through the sky like bits of debris after an explosion.

Jack’s mouth was moving along her cheek towards her mouth, dissolving her whole self in delight. She saw, against closed lids, the bundled baby upstairs, and pulled back from the situation, exclaiming energetically: ‘Damn Dorothy, damn her, damn her, I’d like to kill her …’

And he, exploding into reaction, said in a low furious rage: ‘Damn you both! I’d like to wring both your bloody necks …’

Their faces were at a foot’s distance from each other, their eyes staring hostility. She thought that if she had not had the vision of
the helpless baby they would now be in each other’s arms – generating tenderness and desire like a couple of dynamos, she said to herself, trembling with dry anger.

‘I’m going to miss my train if I don’t go,’ she said.

‘I’ll get your coat,’ he said, and went in, leaving her defenceless against the emptiness of the garden.

When he came out, he slid the coat around her without touching her, and said: ‘Come on, I’ll take you by car.’ He walked away in front of her to the car, and she followed meekly over rough lawn. It really was a lovely night.

When I first came into this flat of four small boxlike rooms, the bedroom was painted pale pink, except for the fireplace wall, which had a fanciful pink and blue paper. The woodwork was a dark purple, almost black. This paint is sold by a big decorating shop in the West End and is called Bilberry.

Two girls had the flat before me. Very little money, obviously, because the carpeting was going into holes and the walls were decorated with travel posters. The woman upstairs told me they often had parties that lasted all night. ‘But I liked to hear them, I enjoy the sounds of life.’ She was reproachful. I don’t have parties often enough for her. The girls left no forwarding address, following the tradition for this flat. Over the years it has often happened that the bell rings and people ask for ‘Angus Ferguson – I thought he lived here?’ And the Maitlands? And Mrs Dowland? And the young Caitsbys? All these people, and probably many others, have lived in this flat, and departed leaving nothing behind. I know nothing about them, nor does anyone else in the building, though some of them have lived here for years.

I found the pink too assertive, and after several mistakes settled on. white walls, leaving the plum-colour, or Bilberry, woodwork. First I had grey curtains, then blue ones. My bed is under the window. There is a desk, which I had meant to write on, but it is always too cluttered with papers. So I write in the living room or on the kitchen table. But I spend a lot of time in the bedroom. Bed is the best place for reading, thinking, or doing nothing. It is my room; it is where I feel I live, though the shape is bad and there are things about it that can never be anything but ugly. For instance, the fireplace was of iron – a bulging, knobbed, ornamented black.
The girls had left it as it was, using a small gas heater in the opening. Its heavy ugliness kept drawing my eyes towards it; and I painted a panel from the ceiling downwards in the dark plum colour, so that the fireplace and the small thick shelf over it would be absorbed. On either side of the panel since I could not have the whole wall in plum, which at night looks black, were left two panels of the absurd wallpaper, which has bright people like birds in pink and blue cages. The fireplace seemed less obtrusive, but my fire is a gas fire, a square solid shape of bronze, brought from an earlier flat where it did not look too bad. But it does not fit here at all. So the whole wall doesn’t work, it fails to come off.

Another wall, the one beside my bed, is also deformed. Over the bed swells a grainy irregular lump two or more feet across. Someone – Angus Ferguson? The Maitlands? Mrs Dowland? – attempted to replace falling plaster and made a hash of it. No professional plasterer could have got away with such a protuberance.

On the whole, this wall gives me pleasure: it reminds me of the irregular whitewashed walls of another house I lived in once. Probably I chose to paint this room white because I wanted to have the whitewashed lumpy walls of that early house repeated here in London?

The ceiling is a ceiling: flat, white, plain. It has a plaster border which is too heavy for the room and looks as if it might fall off easily. The whole building has a look of solid ugliness, but it was built cheap and is not solid at all. For instance, walls, tapped, sound hollow; the plaster, when exposed, at once starts to trickle as if the walls were of loose sand held together by wallpaper. I can hear anything that goes on over my head, where the old woman who likes to hear a bit of life lives with her husband. She is Swedish, gives Swedish lessons. She dresses prettily, and looks a dear respectable old thing. Yet she is quite mad. Her door has four heavy, specially fitted locks inside, as well as bolts and bars. If I knock she opens the door on a chain four inches long and peers through to make sure that I (or they) will not attack her. Inside is a vision of neatness and order. She spends all day cleaning and arranging. When she can’t find anything more to do in her flat she
posts notices on the stairs saying: ‘Any person who drops rubbish on these stairs will be reported to the Authorities!’ Then she visits every flat in turn (there are eight identical flats one above the other) and says confidingly: ‘Of course the notice isn’t meant for you.’

Her husband works for an export firm and is away a good deal. When she expects him back, she dresses as carefully as a bride and goes off to meet him, blushing. On the nights he comes back from his trips the bed creaks over my head, and I hear them giggling.

They are an orderly couple, bed at eleven every night, up every morning at nine. As for myself, my life has no outward order and I like having them up there. Sometimes, when I’ve worked late, I hear them getting up and I think through my sleep or half sleep: Good, the day’s started, has it? And I drift back to a semiconsciousness blended with their footsteps and the rattling of cups.

Sometimes, when I sleep in the afternoons, which I do because afternoon sleep is more interesting than night sleep, she takes a nap too. I think of her and of myself lying horizontally above each other, as if we were on two shelves.

When I lie down after lunch there is nothing unplanned about it. First I must feel the inner disturbance or alertness that is due to overstimulation, or being a little sick or very tired. Then I darken the room, shut all the doors so the telephone won’t wake me (though its distant ringing can be a welcome dream-progenitor) and I get into bed carefully, preserving the mood. It is these sleeps which help me with my work, telling me what to write or where I’ve gone wrong. And they save me from the fever of restlessness that comes from seeing too many people. I always drift off to sleep in the afternoons with the interest due to a long journey into the unknown, and the sleep is thin and extraordinary and takes me into regions hard to describe in a waking state.

But one afternoon there was no strange journey, nor was there useful information about my work. The sleep was so different from usual that for some time I thought I was awake.

I had been lying in the semidark, the curtains, of varying shades of dark blue, making a purply-moving shade. Outside it was a busy afternoon. I could hear sounds from the market underneath, and
there was angry shouting, a quarrel of some kind, a man’s voice and a woman’s. I was looking at the fireplace and thinking how ugly it was, wondering what sort of person had deliberately chosen such a hideous shape of black iron. Though of course I had painted it over. Yes, whether I could afford it or not, I must get rid of the square bronze gas fire and find a prettier one. I saw the bronze shape had gone; there was a small black iron grate and a small fire in it, smoking. The smoke was coming into the room, and my eyes were sore.

The room was different; I felt chilled and estranged from myself as I looked. The walls had a paper whose general effect was a dingy brown, but looking closely at it I saw a small pattern of brownish-yellow leaves and brown stems. There were stains on it. The ceiling was yellowish and shiny from the smoke. There were some shreds of pinky-brown curtains at the windows with a rear in one so that the bottom edge hung down.

I was no longer lying on the bed, but sitting by the fire across the room, looking at the bed and at the window. Outside a shrill quarrel went on, the voices rising up from the street. I felt cold, I was shivering, and my eyes watered. In the little grate sat three small lumps of shiny coal, smoking dismally. Under me was a cushion or a folded coat, something like that. The room seemed much larger. Yes, it was a largish room. A chest of brown-varnished wood stood by the bed which was low, a good foot lower than mine. There was a red army blanket stretched across the bed’s foot. The recesses on either side of the fireplace had shallow wooden shelves down them, holding folded clothes, old magazines, crockery, a brown teapot. These things conveyed an atmosphere of thin poverty.

I was alone in the room, though someone was next door. I could hear sounds that made me unhappy, apprehensive. From upstairs a laugh, hostile to me. Was the old Swedish lady laughing? With whom? Had her husband come back suddenly?

I was desolate with loneliness that felt it would never be assuaged, no one would ever come to comfort me. I sat and looked at the bed which had the cheap red blanket on it that suggested illness, and sniffed because the smoke was tearing at the back of my throat. I
was a child, I knew that. And that there was a war, something to do with war, war had something to do with this dream or memory –
whose
? I came back to my own room, lying on my bed, with silence upstairs and next door. I was alone in the flat, watching my soft dark blue curtains softly moving. I was filled with misery.

I left my pretty bedroom and made myself tea; then returned to draw the curtains and let the light in. I switched on the gas heater which came up hot and red, driving the memory of cold away; and I looked behind its bronze efficiency into a grate that had not had coals in it, I knew, for years.

I have tried to dream myself back into that other room which is under this room, or beside it, or in it, or existing in someone’s memory. Which war was it? Whose was the chilly poverty? And I would like to know more about the frightened little child. He (or she) must have been very small for the room to look so big. So far I have failed. Perhaps it was the quarrel outside in the street that … that
what
? And why?