‘Dear Father – I came back while you were out, so you wouldn’t have to see me. I’ve taken some things for my new room, which is rather poorly equipped; I hope you don’t mind, but most of the things are mine anyway, except the rug and the curtains and one or two small things you won’t miss. If you’re angry and want them back, and/or in case you want to contact me for any reason, here’s my address.’
I re-read it and crossed out, very heavily, the last sentence. Then I wrote it in again over the top, cursing myself for my pusillanimousness. It was like a plea for pity to leave it in, but I couldn’t bear to cut myself off from him completely. I yanked my mind away from the realization that I had been hoping he’d arrive home, miraculously early for once, while I was there, so we could make it up.
As I climbed into the taxi, my spirits bounced up again ludicrously in the knowledge that I’d eluded the clinging hands of security and comfort. I wondered for the first time about my friends. I had quite a few, chiefly the nice sort who don’t need constant attention to keep them warm. It was only to be expected that periodically one of them would phone up at home, and soon they would begin asking themselves, and each other, what had become of me. I thought it would have been only fair to give Father some hint as to what I wanted done in such cases. But again I turned my mind away. Reverting to my former hurt at being turfed out, I thought, It’s his fault I’m not at home. Let him cope. But I shivered a little at the thought that he might tell everyone.
On the way back to Fulham I stopped off to pick up some groceries and the light-bulbs. This taxi would be my last extravagance before a routine of total austerity set in. Still my heart was light from my victory, and I relished the thought of the poor little room, bedizened as it would shortly be in stolen finery. It wasn’t until we pulled up in front of the dead-eyed, peeling house and the taxi-man said uncertainly ‘Is this the place, miss?’ that the floor fell out of my jerry-built high-spirits.
Chapter 5
FOR years I’ve been struggling to base my life on the supposition that it doesn’t matter what other people think, so long as you know what you think. But some stubbornly suburban piece of social conditioning has impeded my efforts to the extent that I couldn’t even bring myself to let the taxi-man help me carry my things into the house. He had to stand uneasily beside his cab watching me stagger up the steps sagging under three separate loads; his repeated offers of aid were met by gasps of ‘No, really, it’s perfectly all right, I can manage!’ until he subsided into baffled silence.
When I completed my final sortie, I found Doris’s formidable figure parked beside my pile of boxes and bundles.
‘What’s all this, then?’ she asked suspiciously.
She had the landladies’ asset of being able to make you feel in the wrong long before you’d done anything. From the way she said it, you’d have thought I was running guns into the house.
‘Just a few things from home,’ I said defensively.
She bent and fingered the curtains, which were soft and thick with a rather elegant regency stripe. ‘What are these?’
‘Curtains,’ I said, sounding, in spite of myself, as if I were making a clean breast of it.
‘I thought so!’ she said with some triumph. ‘There’s curtains in that room already, every room in my house has curtains!’ She was very indignant. ‘What do you want to bring more curtains for, great heavy things like that? Catch all the dirt, they will.’
I forbore to say I’d be grateful if they would, and merely mumbled something about keeping the heat in. She grunted, obviously unmollified, and started picking over the other things. She let the sheets pass, though not without a sniff, but when she lifted one of the wine glasses out of the box my heart sank.
‘What do you want these for?’
‘To drink out of,’ I said with restraint.
‘Liqueur glasses, ain’t they?’ she said, in the same nasty tone as she might have said, ‘Opium pipes, eh?’
‘Wine, actually.’
She sniffed again, louder, and commented that she didn’t like tenants drinking in the rooms, and anyway what did I want two for? She didn’t like tenants to-ing and fro-ing. She seemed to have forgotten all about the advantage the presence of the tarts in the basement was supposed to confer, that of no-questions-asked, or perhaps it was that she as landlady was exempt from this convenient house-rule. She peered into the carton of groceries and said she hoped I wouldn’t be doing too much cooking as it made the place smell and added that the reason she never supplied frying-pans was that she didn’t like her walls getting splashed with fat.
Then she spotted the rug.
‘What’s that dirty-looking thing, then?’
‘It’s a rug.’
This was too much. ‘What’s wrong with the one that’s up there? My sister made that rug with her own hands, it’s a lovely rug that is, nothing wrong with that rug! I really can’t have you bringing a whole lot of junk into the house, you know. What would happen if everyone filled the place with their own blooming furniture? You wouldn’t be able to get in and out. If you’re not satisfied with the room as it is, well you don’t have to live in it, I’m sure, if it’s not what you’ve been accustomed to. It was always good enough for Mrs Williams, the lady as had it before you; lived there ten years, she did, with never a complaint. Loved that room, never touched a thing in it. A lady in all senses of the word, Mrs Williams was, not just la-di-da like some.’ She glared at me.
I would have liked to have a row then and there, but I remembered the bed-bugs and decided to hold my fire. Mildly I said, ‘I’m sorry you object to my bringing in a few of my own things; I did it because it makes me feel more at home. As for your sister’s rug, I think it’s lovely, and I’ve no wish to move it, it’s just that I’d like another one as well.’ While she was still digesting this choke-sized piece of the other cheek, I quickly gathered up as many of the offending objects as I could carry at once and started up the stairs with them.
‘Mind the paint!’ she shouted after me as a parting shot. I looked round for some paint that I might possibly damage but could see none, so presumably she just said the first thing that came into her head.
On the first landing I met Toby, finger to lip, grinning from ear to ear. He’d obviously been eavesdropping. Motioning for silence, he took my load away from me and we tiptoed conspiratorially up the next four flights of stairs.
When we were out of earshot, Toby whispered: ‘She always starts something with a new tenant, just to establish her authority. With me it was the typewriter. With John it was his guitar. Mavis – have you met Mavis yet? – she used to sing in her bath. Innocent enough, you’d think, but Doris used to come and bang on the door and yell that she was waking the house up – this at eight o’clock at night, mark you. Why didn’t you tell her where to get off? Don’t worry, she won’t throw you out, she’s a fearful snob in a Bolshie sort of way – she likes tenants with posh accents, (a) because she thinks they lend tone to the place, only that’s subconscious; the reason she gives herself for liking them is (b) that it gives her a sense of power over the broken-down remnants of the so-called ruling classes. I’ve made a deep study of Doris’s psychology; she’s easier to bear if you know what makes that half-cocked brain of hers tick.’
We reached the top of the stairs, out of breath. I said, leaning on the banister rail, ‘Is she very nosy?’
‘You mean all that stuff about to-ing and fro-ing? No, she doesn’t give a damn really. She just likes to put the wind up people. Good God, if she gave a hoot in hell about morals, the population of this house’d be more fluid than it is, by a long chalk. Any time she starts anything along those lines, you’ve only got to mutter “Jane and Sonia to you” and she’s stymied. Why, do you fancy a bit of to-ing and fro-ing?’ He gave his eyebrows a deft double-twitch upwards. ‘I’ll to if you’ll fro,’ he offered with a lecherous but gallant leer.
‘I’d rather you went down for the rest of my chattels,’ I said.
; ‘Okay,’ he said readily. ‘As I told you, any excuse not to work.’ He went rattling down the stairs.
I tapped somewhat apprehensively on John’s door. He opened it at once, and I had a glimpse of glorious disorder behind him. A surge of the powerful negro odour preceded him.
‘Hullo, how are you feeling?’
‘Much better, thank you. I hope I’m not disturbing you?’
‘No, miss, not disturb me, never. I’m not working in daytim now, you see. I sleep a lot in day, but any noise wake me up quick.’
‘Were you sleeping now?’
‘No. I hear you coming up and I wait for you to knock. Now just wait a minute, I get the soap to catch the bugs.’
He turned back into the dark tousled cavern of the little room and returned with a huge cake of washing soap. ‘I soak the bottom, you see, make it all soft and sticky. What time is it?’
‘Five o’clock, about.’
‘Maybe be too early for them. In the day, they hide, then come out at night for bite you when you’s asleep. Still, we try.’ He took my key and, opening the door, tiptoed with exaggerated caution into my room. ‘Now,’ he whispered, ‘when I say, you turn light on quick. Okay?’ I heard Toby crashing up the stairs, and shushed him with a gesture.
‘Having a bug-hunt?’
‘Sh! Quiet, now!’ hissed John.
I could see him groping his way to the bed, the tablet of soap in his right hand. ‘Now!’ John ordered. I switched on the light, and at the same moment he hitched back the covers from the bed and made several lightning dabs with the soap, moving it from place to place on the mattress as if making a feverish move in draughts. I watched, fascinated and horrified, while Toby stood at my elbow, holding the rug in his arms. John straightened up and examined the under surface of the soap. Then he showed it to us. It had four small black corpses embedded in it. John was delighted with himself, and crowed like a child.
‘We got ’em! We got ’em! Now you take and show Doris.’
I looked at Toby. He grinned laconically. ‘What will she say?’ I asked doubtfully.
‘It doesn’t matter what she says,’ he replied, ‘it’s what she does, if anything, that counts. Actually, you know, the house isn’t what you might call infested with them. My room’s practically clear of them now, since I fumigated it. Most of them were in the mattress, and I just burned that, in the back yard, one day when Doris was out. No doubt she found the remains of it, but she never said anything.’
‘Why didn’t you say something to her?’
For the first time I saw Toby look uncomfortable. He shrugged. ‘Dunno, really. She’s a bit of an old termagant when you really tackle her, at least I should think so.’
‘In other words, you’re scared of her, for all your big talk about her mental processes.’
He didn’t deny it. ‘Well, she is a bit of an old witch. She’s got a tongue like an asp.’
So – there they were, both egging me on to do something they wanted done but dared not do themselves.
I tried to decide in advance what the outcome might be. I was completely in the right, and my proof was unanswerable; but of course she could say if I didn’t like it I could go elsewhere. And indeed I could, and why the hell didn’t I? Could I face a bug or two, could I undertake constant counter-attacks with a DDT spray, for the sake of a room at 30s. a week and no raised eyebrows?
I looked at it once again. It was pretty awful, there was no doubt about that. But I’m a fool about places. They talk to me. The park in the mist that morning had reproached me subtly for my situation. My little office said ‘Shalom’ (I didn’t know why it said ‘Shalom’– perhaps because it’s a Jewish-owned hotel) every morning. Now this dismal little hovel of a room, with its repulsive inhabitants, looked at me piteously, like a mangy mongrel covered with fleas, and said ‘Love me’.
But pride had to be satisfied. ‘All right,’ I said at last, with a heavy sigh of reluctance. ‘If I get kicked out, I hope you’ll both be bloody well ashamed of yourselves.’
I took the soap gingerly and went downstairs. The men followed at a respectful distance.
I didn’t quite know where to look for Doris, but I turned sharp left at the foot of the stairs and knocked on the first door I found. I could hear voices on the other side, and a shuffling of loosely-slippered feet. The door opened a crack, and a small strip of Doris appeared in it.
‘Yers?’ she said, with off-putting sharpness.
‘I’d like to speak to you for a moment,’ I said, clutching my proof and trying to feel brave.
Without opening the door another inch, she said, ‘What about?’
‘Bugs,’ I said clearly, taking the bull by the horns.
I thought I heard a stifled snort from the next landing. The door was flung wide open to allow me to see the whole of Doris’s outraged breadth. Over her shoulder I could see another woman sitting in front of the fire looking interestedly in our direction. It was so obviously either Jane or Sonia that my eyes popped. Doris instantly stepped outside and closed the door after her. In doing this she forced me to give ground and I found myself with my back literally to the wall.
‘I – beg – your – pardon?’ she said slowly and ominously.
‘I couldn’t go to bed last night,’ I said, ‘because there are bed-bugs in the mattress.’
For a moment, it seemed Doris was going to explode. She puffed out her already enormous chest still further and grew dangerously red in the face. Her eyes actually went glassy and her shoulders shook with internal pressure. Then she lowered her head like a bull and advanced it towards my face on the end of a surprisingly long and mobile neck, and said in a voice low and trembling with conviction: ‘That is a dirty lie.’
She sounded so sure of herself that for a moment my confidence wavered. But after all, I’d seen them with my own eyes, so I found the courage to retort: ‘And this is a dirty house. I can prove it,’ I added, as she withdrew her head like a tortoise with a hiss of rage.
‘I don’t want to see your proof!’ she cried. ‘How dare you! That I should stand here in my own house and have such a thing said to me! Dirty, indeed! MY house!’ It was a marvellous act; she seemed more pained and aghast than angry at my attack. She went on for a long time about how hard she worked, how hard she’d worked all her life, to keep a decent home; how particular she was, ask anyone, all her friends and relatives kept telling her she was too pernickety in caring for the well-being of her tenants; how she’d cleaned the room out specially, from top to bottom, after Mrs Williams went, just like she always did, and what did I want for thirty bob – Windsor Castle? She kept wanting to know how I dared. I was gravelled, not for lack of matter of my own, but due to a superabundance of hers.
But at least her filibuster gave me a chance to decide on my next speech, should I ever get a chance to make it. And when at last she paused for breath I was able to say, quite tersely I felt, ‘Nevertheless, there are bugs in my mattress and I want a new one.’
That stopped her cold, but only for a moment. Then she came back with the answer I’d been expecting all along.
‘If you don’t like it,’ she said shrilly, ‘you can get out, and the quicker the better. And you can take all your rubbish with you.’
‘All right,’ I said agreeably. ‘But of course I shall stop my cheque at the bank first thing tomorrow.’ I had paid her a month’s rent in advance, at her insistence.
‘What do you mean, stop it?’ It was plain Doris wasn’t used to cheques.
‘I mean I shall phone my bank and tell them not to meet it.’ When she went on looking blank, I made my point a little clearer adding, ‘You won’t be able to cash it.’
A crafty look came into her eyes. ‘I cashed it today,’ she said with sly triumph, and then ruined it by adding, ‘at the grocer’s.’
‘Oh no you didn’t,’ I retorted, ‘because it’s a crossed cheque, and those can only be cashed through a bank.’ Although nothing was settled, I felt instinctively this was suc
h a good exit-line that I couldn’t waste it. I turned and started up the stairs, hoping she’d stop me. But she didn’t.
At the landing I was seized from either side and bundled up two more flights to a safe distance away from Doris.
‘So what?’
‘What happen now?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You going?’
‘It looks like it.’
They looked at each other in dismay.
‘This is our fault!’ moaned Toby. ‘We made you do it! God, I never thought the old bitch’d throw you out! You were terrific,’ he remembered to mention.
‘Where you go to?’ asked John.
‘God knows.’
‘That wicked, lying old cow! Oh Jesus, I am sorry, I feel terrible!’
‘So do I,’ I said. ‘Come on, you’d better help me get my things down.’ We trailed up to the top of the house.
‘Are you positive she can’t have cashed your cheque?’ asked Toby.
‘No. The grocer might have cashed it for her, if he knows her well enough.’
‘If he doesn’t know her well enough, you mean. Anyone who knew her wouldn’t trust her for sixpence.’ I packed my clothes in glum silence while the others watched guiltily.
‘If only there was something we could do,’ said Toby weakly.
I said, without looking at him, ‘How easy is it for her to find people to rent these rooms?’
‘Bloody difficult, at least to find people who won’t actually break the place up. She’s not too fussy, as you gather, but she’s got a thing about noise.’ There was a pause, and then he said, ‘Oh. I think I see what you mean.’
I said nothing.
‘It’d be pure bluff. Do you really think she’d wear it?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘We could try,’ he said, not very willingly.
John looked from one to the other of us. ‘Try what? What we try?’
‘Jane thinks if we both threatened to leave, too, she’d have to give way.’ He really sounded so unhappy about the idea that I said, ‘Look, on second thoughts, don’t. She isn’t in a very bluffable mood, and it wouldn’t improve things for all three of us to find ourselves on the street.’
The L-Shaped Room Page 8
