But John said, ‘I think this is good idea, you know. She can’t throw us all out, can she?’
‘Can’t she?’ muttered Toby; but he led the way down the stairs. I followed with mixed feelings. How on earth had I got myself into this position in twenty-four hours? I, who wasn’t going to get involved with anyone? For what they were doing I would be everlastingly in their debt, and I hardly knew them.
At the first floor I caught up with them and grabbed their arms. ‘Please,’ I said, ‘do stop and think! Supposing she says get out? That’d be infinitely worse than now! Oh, please don’t do it! I’d much rather you didn’t, honestly!’
Toby hesitated, but John plodded on down the stairs. ‘She bad woman,’ he said. ‘If she say go, we leave, find something better.’ Toby looked after him, looked despairingly at me, swallowed, and fell in behind John’s massive back. They looked so funny from behind, like a tanker and a tug; I sat down on the top step and began to giggle weakly.
They went out of sight round the bottom of the stairs, and I heard whisperings and scufflings outside Doris’s door before one of them knocked. Then there was a deathly silence; the house seemed to ring with it. I clenched my fists in suspense.
I heard the door open, but neither of the boys spoke. Instead I heard a grunting noise and then Doris’s voice saying, quite affably, ‘Come for her mattress, have you? Here it is, then, brand new, I bought it for meself, tell her. Tell her to let me have the other and I’ll get rid of it. Well, you can understand it, really,’ she went on confidentially. ‘Didn’t like the idea of sleeping on a mattress somebody’d died on. I told her Mrs Williams didn’t have nothing catching, but she just didn’t fancy it, somehow. You can understand it, really.’
When the boys came up, with the new mattress between them and stunned looks on their faces, I was lying on the stairs almost helpless with laughter. On top of everything else, I’d just remembered I’d never shown Doris the soap.
Chapter 6
WE spent that evening fiddling about with my room. I was determined to strip the wallpaper off and paint the walls sometime, and the boys, though not quite sharing my view that this was imperative, expressed themselves willing to help with the work. John also said he’d fix me up something to serve as a wardrobe. But for the time being we contented ourselves with putting in the new bulb, exchanging the embroidered teacosy-like cottage picture for my French print (Toby went into ecstasies over this), and putting down the rug, on which John, for some reason, immediately lay and rolled about, laughing exuberantly.
We hid the Alsatians in my suitcase under the bed and replaced them with my green glass. Toby stood on the table, which, though lacking grace, was sturdy, and changed the curtains, while I arranged the flowers, stepping periodically over John who lay on the rug, tracing its patterns with the flat of his hand and crooning lovingly to himself.
Then Toby suggested that John should make us a meal, something quickly cookable so that he, Toby, could not do any writing while it was being prepared. John disappeared into his own room with some of the food I’d brought while Toby and I made up the bed. We pulled it right away from the wall and shook out the blankets carefully, dislodging a few more intruders. I killed them tolerantly and without horror; I felt my battle with them was morally won. Toby lent me his Flit-gun and a king-size bottle of Dettol with which we liberally sprayed and swabbed everything, including, to some inevitable extent, each other.
I looked dubiously at the coming-away strips of wallpaper and asked if Doris had a spare key to the room. Toby said she had, but avoided climbing the stairs except to silence some intrusive clamour, so I obeyed my impulse and tore off all the loose strips. Toby pumped Flit at the plaster beneath hissing gleefully, ‘Die, blast you die!’– although there was nothing to be seen. ‘Eggs,’ he explained meaningly, filling the air with fumes.
By the time John came back with a strange concoction, the room really looked quite a lot better. Scarcely elegant, but better. You couldn’t see details for the fumes of disinfectant and the clouds of smoke from Toby’s perpetual cigarettes, which probably helped; the general impression was of a blur of colour (I’d hung my dresses and suits on the picture-rail) and some nice bright light. John gazed round approvingly and pronounced judgement: ‘Smell bad, but look good.’ The exact opposite could have been said of the meal, but with the important addendum that it tasted delicious.
Most of my share went down the drain early next morning.
I was very alarmed, apart altogether from the physical unpleasantness. Even after I’d recovered to some extent, I felt awful and looked worse. There could be no question this time of wine having caused it. I tried to convince myself that my stomach had rebelled at something John had introduced into the hash; but having proved in the past that I can eat anything that isn’t actually poisonous or rotting, I grimly told myself to come to terms with this morning horror.
I forced myself to go to work, disconcerted by the way people stared at me in the train and unable to read my paper without the print swirling before my eyes and an omninous white ache starting in my jaws.
James looked at me as I walked into his office and did a genuine double-take.
‘Sweet God, what’s wrong with you?’ he demanded indignantly. He always regarded signs of illness or emotional instability in those close to him as a personal affront.
‘Nothing,’ I said faintly. ‘I just don’t feel very well, temporarily. Leave me alone, I’ll be all right.’ I retreated to my own office, which said ‘Shalom’ to me in a far-away voice. I sat down at my desk and put my head on my arms. Reality swam away from me. My desk was as soft as a floating rubber cushion. Sounds came and went faintly and insignificantly. I dozed.
I came to with an unpleasant start to find James skulking furtively nearby with a cup of tea in his hand. For a second I thought he was a bleached version of John.
‘I brought this,’ he muttered, uncomfortable at being caught out in an act of kindness. He put it down in front of me and stood watching me warily as I slowly picked up the spoon and stirred, wondering whether it was safe to drink. ‘You look worse, not better,’ he said accusingly at last. ‘You’d better have a brandy.’
‘No, James, please, I couldn’t drink it.’
‘What’s the matter, Jane?’
I was touched by the impatience in his tone, which I well knew masked anxiety and affection.
‘I don’t know,’ I lied. ‘I must have eaten something.’
‘It’s now you’re cooking for yourself, of course,’ he upbraided me. ‘I knew no good would come of you moving.’
‘I’ve cooked for myself for years, and Father too,’ I said uselessly.
I took a sip of the tea and it seemed to stay down all right, so I drank the rest slowly. James stood by shifting about in embarrassment. Sick people put him out of countenance in some obscure way. There was a longish pause while I sat with my eyes closed.
‘I suppose you’d better go off home,’ he said finally.
I snapped awake again and said, ‘Well, if I go on feeling like this I might just as well. I’ll be about as much use to you as an ingrowing toe-nail.’ But it seemed so inexcusable, to have his veiled sympathy and let him do all my work thinking I was just ordinarily ill. ‘I tell you what, give me something to do and maybe I’ll forget to think about it.’
James brightened at once; this was the sort of positive thinking he understood. ‘That’s the ticket,’ he said briskly. ‘You’ll soon be okay.’ As though hoping by sheer weight of work to crush my disquieting illness out of existence, he heaped tasks on me, pausing once in a while to say gruffly, ‘You’re sure you’ll be able to man-age,’ but without a question mark in case I might answer ‘No’. And by about eleven, my colour was back, my queasiness had magically vanished, and James was able to say triumphantly, ‘There, you see? It’s all mental, all illness is a symptom of neurosis, that’s why I’m never ill. I should be a Christian Scientist, they’ve got all the right ideas, if only they
weren’t so bloody stupid about broken bones and thinking it’s all mixed up with God …’ He was as pleased as Punch with me for being all right again. ‘Go on off and have a damn’ good lunch on expenses,’ he said, as if he were rewarding me for some piece of cleverness.
The next morning I was sick again, and the morning after that. I put on thick make-up with lashings of foundation under my eyes, and rubbed a little lipstick mixed with cold cream on my cheeks instead of rouge, which I never wear. I looked positively bizarre, like a cross between a clown and a tart, but if James saw the difference he didn’t let himself notice it and about mid-morning each day I scrubbed it all off with Quickies and put on my normal make-up. At first I thought I would die each time I woke up, knowing that as soon as I tried to get out of bed the ghastly inner tumult would begin again; but one gets used to anything, and by the end of the week, although it was still ghastly while it was going on, I could take my mind away from the heavings of my stomach to some extent by thinking firmly, It’s quite natural and at eleven o’clock it’ll all be gone.
Unfortunately it didn’t follow quite as regular a course as I’d have liked. On one occasion, although I felt like death as usual on rising, it didn’t actually come to anything before it was time to leave the house. But I was under no illusions about having a morning off; on the contrary, as I neared the station I had reason for growing apprehension, to such an extent that I nearly turned back. But the sinister oncoming signs died down and I was encouraged to think I might hold out until I got to the hotel ladies’ room. No such luck, however, either for me or for my fellow-passengers.
During one free lunch hour I walked down Charing Cross Road and surreptitiously consulted some of the latest and most enlightened books on pregnancy, to find out how long I was going to have to submit to this misery. They seemed vague and discordant on the subject. One said that if it hadn’t stopped by the end of the third month (dear God!) the attendant GP should be called upon to Take Action as being too sick for too long was liable to cause miscarriage. Another, written by a man of course, suggested that morning sickness was a matter which a strong-minded woman could easily bring under control. I almost threw that one aside, and proceeded to a third, which said that a certain amount of sickness was inevitable in some women, who, at its onset, should recline full-length and be ministered to by their husbands, until all traces of nausea had passed.
Fate appeared bent on pushing its moral home to me around that time. It seemed that not a day passed without my picking up some magazine, or listening to some radio programme (Toby had lent me his radio to rid himself forcibly of one distraction) which had a bearing on the behaviour of husbands during their wives’ pregnancies. Stories about blooming young brides developing cravings for crushed pineapple or mango chutney, which their devoted spouses combed the town to obtain for them in the dead of night; or articles urging masculine Patience and Understanding during this Difficult Time (even if it referred to the change of life, it still reminded me); or radio plays in which married couples sat tête-à-tête holding coy conversations about names and schools and first words … Well, maybe it wasn’t quite as bad as that, in fact it can’t have been or I’d have laughed instead of crying, which I seemed to be doing with monotonous regularity each time I was alone – even without any external moralizing reminders.
My plans for redecorating my room stood in abeyance. I simply didn’t feel up to it. During the afternoons at the hotel I’d think about it, as an alternative to thinking about being pregnant, and plan to buy some paint next lunch-time and get down to it at the week-end. But somehow the week-end came and went and the remainder of the tobacco-coloured wallpaper stayed more or less in place.
Toby kept nagging at me to be more social. He was determined that I must meet this Mavis who shared the house with us. I tried to discourage Toby’s social enthusiasm, because the more people I got to know, the more would have to be told, sooner or later, about the baby. This was something I used to lie awake at nights thinking about. How would I break it to people like James, Toby and John – and of course, other friends?
These were beginning to be a problem. One day my erstwhile closest friend, a girl called Dottie Cooper, telephoned me at the office, and as soon as I said ‘Hallo?’ she exclaimed in a tone of mingled triumph and reproach ‘So!’
‘What do you mean, “So!”?’ I asked uncomfortably.
‘You haven’t gone abroad! I thought it sounded fishy.’
‘Abroad? Who said I had? What are you talking about?’
‘Your papa said so, that’s who.’
‘Father said I’d gone –’ My mind burst through its bonds of bewilderment and found itself face to face with unwilling gratitude. So he hadn’t been abusing and accusing me to all my friends. Grudgingly I had to admit to myself that he was hardly the sort to, however he might feel about me. So that was what he’d decided on, and for a basically unimaginative man it wasn’t bad. Now nobody would pester me. ‘Why was I supposed to have gone abroad?’ I asked her.
‘Some sort of exchange with another hotel owned by the same people,’ Dottie said. My respect for Father’s strategy grew. ‘He said you’d be gone about a year. I don’t know why I didn’t quite believe it – vanity, I suppose. Couldn’t credit you’d go off without letting me know. So. What gives?’
I thought of telling her, but rejected the idea without knowing quite why. ‘Dottie, I can’t tell you anything at the moment.’
‘You mean, over the phone, or at all?’
After another pause I said, ‘At all. Not yet.’
She didn’t say anything for a minute, then said, ‘Okay, sweetie. I’m no dumpkopf, I know when I’m not wanted. No, don’t be a goon,’ she said as I started to speak. ‘I’m not a bit hurt, but I would be if I thought you were rotating on the horns of some dilemma that I could help with and you didn’t come running. Look, I won’t get in touch again till I hear from you, but make it soon, eh? You’ve got me a bit worried now.’
Several times later I was tempted to go round to Dottie’s flat and ease my heart with a thoroughgoing girl-chat. But I didn’t go, principally because she would naturally want to Know All, and All was something I couldn’t talk about, even to myself. I’d shut that part of my mind off as completely as I could, and I didn’t want to risk any conversation which might open it up again.
Well, so I was trying hard to avoid enlarging my acquaintance. I told Toby again and again that I didn’t want to meet anyone else, that while I was happy to have him and John as my friends, even they exceeded my original intention, and that what I really wanted was to be left alone. But I said it without conviction, because it was no longer strictly true. I had come to depend rather heavily on the small comforts arising out of my friendship with this oddly-assorted pair. Our relationship was undemanding, yet rewarding and warm. John made me tea in the mornings to help combat my pre-noon death-wish; I did some sewing and ironing for both of them, and sometimes we all had an evening meal together, prepared either by John or me according to who felt like it, which meant it was more often John. Toby’s material contributions to our companionable threesome fluctuated, in fact they were generally limited to his own presence whenever a meal or a cup of tea or a cigarette was in the offing; but without him, there would have been no conversation. He was the adrenalin in our corporate body. I grew very fond of him as I had known I would, and although I couldn’t get rid of the shadows on his face I did put a little flesh on his bones by a course of more or less regular evening meals. I scolded him about his hair, which was never brushed, and his shirts, which were seldom washed, and although it only showed spasmodic results at least he didn’t mind; our affectionate interchange of teasing and insults, in contrast to John’s solid, easy-going calm, broken occasionally by unexpected outbursts of singing or wild, toothy laughter, soon built up a relationship that was more necessary to me than I cared to admit. I often wondered how long I would have lasted with no one to talk to or take an interest in, or be cared for by.
But I never talked about myself, though Toby fished and fished. So long as nobody knew about the baby, it didn’t seem, even to me, quite real. I could sometimes forget it almost completely.
One Saturday I was blundering about in my dressing-gown at around noon (having successfully foiled the inner demon by staying in bed until past the witching hour) when Toby came banging on my door to announce that Mavis was making coffee as only Mavis could, and I was to come down and partake. I made various excuses, but none of them washed, and eventually, more because I could now smell the coffee than out of any desire to meet its maker, I pulled on some slacks and went down to the third floor, where Mavis’s room was.
I don’t know quite what I had expected her to be like, but I know I was surprised to be greeted by an elderly and upright spinster, powdery-skinned and grey-bunned, in a well-worn cardigan and skirt, but with brightly painted lips and a touch of mascara and exuding a strong but pleasant odour of Chanel No. 9 toilet water.
When you’re living with an assortment of people who have little or no money, it’s very interesting to notice that they all permit themselves some luxury to which, in their straitened circumstances, they probably have no real right, but for which they’ll do without so-called necessities. With Toby it was – as often as he could manage it, and he’d go without food for it cheerfully – good-quality typing-paper and a new ribbon for his machine as soon as the old one started to get faint. John, who made what passed for his living playing the guitar in a club in Soho, spent a ridiculous proportion of his income on long-playing jazz records. This baffled me completely at first because of course he had nothing to play them on; but it seemed he just like to have them, and their purchase gave him the right to spend many mornings in a local record shop just listening to one record after another. So long as he occasionally bought one, nobody minded.
The L-Shaped Room Page 9
