It took me ages to puzzle out all the illegible bits and interpret the non sequiturs. Something about the scattiness of the style troubled me. The contrast between it and the clear, lucid prose of the letters of her book was staggering, though often in ordinary correspondence she was careless and let her mind jump from one thing to another. But this was worse than I had ever known.
I went to the telephone with a feeling of undefined reluctance. I had a dim, unreasoning fear she wouldn’t answer, but she did, and the fear lifted sharply, like a blind snapping up to let the sun in.
‘Addy – it’s me –’
‘Yes, darling? What is it?’
‘Oh – nothing – I just wanted to thank you for your letter … I felt foolish in my relief.
There was a long pause, and then her voice came faintly, as if she were only half paying attention to the conversation, ‘Oh good … sorry to be so unhelpful …’
‘Is this a bad line? I can hardly hear you.’
There was another pause and then she said, ‘Is that better?’ It was. She went on, ‘I’m glad you phoned … have you finished the book yet?’
‘Yes, I finished it last night. I’m sending it off today.’
‘You’re wonderful … so quick …’ The conversation petered out again.
‘When will you be coming up? Why did you say it was impossible?’
‘Did I?’ she said vaguely. ‘Oh – well, I’m tied up at the moment – and there’s the garden – I hate to leave it at this time of year, just when everything’s trying to grow.’
‘Would you like me to come and help?’
‘No, thank you,’ she said with sudden firmness.
I felt rebuffed. I hadn’t meant it to sound like fishing for an invitation to stay. She seemed to sense it, and went on quickly, ‘You can help me best by contacting the Willie woman, that agent. I’m going to send the whole manuscript back to you, just keep one copy for myself, it looks so nice, all typed, bless you …’
There was another unaccountable silence. ‘Addy?’
‘Yes, dear?’
‘I wondered if you were still there.’
‘Just lighting a cigarette … Has the baby started to move yet?’
‘I think so – there’ve been little movements for a month or more – not real kicks though. The doctor says that’s all right. Some babies are more peaceable than others.’
‘How long will it be now?’
‘Three months …’
She said, ‘Oh …’
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Matter? Nothing, why?’
‘You sounded funny …’
‘I’d got it muddled. I thought it was due sooner.’
Something in her tone made me stick my neck out again. ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t like me to come down?’
‘Quite sure, thank you,’ she said briskly. And then, on the same note: ‘Well, I must be off. Things to do. Take care of yourself.’
I barely had time to say good-bye before she’d hung up.
The last note struck in the conversation left me slightly reassured. It sounded like her usual self. I went and got the last of the manuscript ready for the post. At the last moment something made me write a note to her: ‘You sounded so strange and far-away on the phone today – you’re not ill or anything, are you?’ But as soon as I had the words on paper I tore it up quickly. It was a stupid idea. I refused to let it take root or give it the least encouragement to be true.
Chapter 20
THE day Addy sent the completed manuscript back to me I telephoned Billy Lee and made an appointment. She was a flashy, hard-bitten little woman with many jangling charm-bracelets and dyed red hair. Why I should immediately have liked her I can’t think, but I did. Perhaps because she didn’t waste time or make any false promises.
‘I’ll read it quickly,’ she said. ‘I can’t say more. Publishing’s costly and first books by old people are very hard to sell.’
When I got home John was waiting for me with a grin across his face which shone like a new moon through the darkness at the top of the stairs.
‘I got something for you,’ he said. ‘Two things.’
One was the cradle. It was a long box with a roof-like hood at one end, on rockers. It had all been carefully sandpapered and painted white, and there was a flower-carving on each side. Hanging from the peak of the hood was a bottle of Guinness.
I let out a hoot. ‘John, it’s perfect, but what on earth’s that for?’
‘That for us – not for the baby,’ he said. ‘You like it? Really?’
I rocked the cradle. It swayed smoothly from side to side without any bumping. ‘It’s a beautiful cradle,’ I said. ‘And a beautiful Guinness. Let’s have it now.’
‘Good.’ He poured it into two glasses and held his up. ‘Now you got to drink me good luck,’ he said.
‘I do – I do!’
‘But special. Something good happen today.’
‘Hooray! What?’
‘Wait there,’ he said.
He went into his own room and shouted, ‘Listen now!’ After a moment I was astonished to hear a trumpet solo with a full orchestral background, playing St Louis Woman. Hurrying after him, Guinness in hand, I found him crouched over a small but brand-new record-player.
‘John! You got one!’
‘Yes. And tonight, I buy the dinner, and cook too, while we listen to all my records I never played.’ He beamed up at me. ‘I got me a new job. Bloody good. Better than old one – I play solo now, good band, no more club, not work all night, Union rates.’
‘Marvellous!’
Suddenly I staggered and dropped the glass. John jumped up and held my shoulders.
‘What’s the matter?’
It was the most extraordinary sensation. It had to happen twice before I realized what it was. Then I wanted to shout with excitement. ‘Feel! Feel!’ I cried, holding his hand over the baby. A second later he snatched it away. He danced about pretending it was hurt.
‘Boy, he kicking like a footballer!’
And he went on kicking.
His hitherto gentle stirrings within me had merely reassured me that he was there; they hadn’t served to remind me, as the recurrent kicks now did throughout the day and most of the night, that he was not only there but alive, growing, fighting towards the fast-approaching day when he would plunge head-first into life.
This tangible life-force drove me, literally, from within. Addy’s letter had its intellectual effect, but the kicks and blows from my inner mentor were probably the deciding factor in my abrupt emergence from lethargy.
I began, belatedly, to go to classes, to take exercises; I was told reprovingly that it was probably too late to save me much ‘discomfort’ at my confinement (the word ‘pain’ is avoided so strenuously at pre-natal clinics that one becomes over-conscious of it by its very absence); but none the less, I was encouraged to persevere – ‘for baby’s sake’. It never failed to grate on my nerves when well-meaning people referred to ‘baby’ instead of ‘the baby’ or ‘your baby’. It seemed, somehow, an unwarranted familiarity if not a downright twee-ism. But the very irritation I felt at small things of this sort encouraged me. It was a sign that I was fully alive and aware again.
I removed the cheap kilt-pins and bits of elastic with which I had been carelessly enlarging the plackets of my ordinary skirts, put them away and bought two inexpensive but quite passable sets of maternity ‘separates’. I dug out the dog-eared list of books that Dr Graham had given me months ago, got them out of the library and read them carefully. One of them thoughtfully supplied a list two and a half pages long, of ‘everything you’ll need for your baby’. Because it said ‘your’ baby I was prepared to give it serious consideration; but if I had bought everything on it, not only would I have had to go deep into debt but I would have been left with no living space. I took it to Dr Maxwell, and he roared with laughter and put a check-mark beside about one-fifth of the items, and query beside another f
ifth. The checks were musts; the queries were things it would be helpful to have, if I could afford them. The pram, the bath and the crib came into the second category.
‘He can sleep in a nice clean drawer and be bathed in a nice clean sink,’ he said briskly. ‘Only don’t close the drawer by mistake, and mind the taps.’ I was rather shocked and asked him if he were joking, but he looked put out and said certainly not. ‘Of course, if he turns out to be delicate, that’s different. But normal babies are tough as old boots. Give ’em plenty of love and they don’t give a damn if you put ’em to bed in a window box and bath ’em in the rain-barrel.’
‘Won’t I need a pram to exercise him?’
Maxwell snorted. ‘Ever stop to figure out how much exercise a baby gets, lying in a pram? It’ll be high summer when he comes – take all his clothes off and lie him in the sun on a groundsheet.’
‘But when I go shopping?’
‘Carry him on your back like the Indians.’
I laughed. ‘I can’t do that!’
‘Why not? Well, get a pram then, an old one. Now I come to think of it, we’ve got one at home somewhere, probably up in the attic if my wife hasn’t chucked it out. May be a bit cobwebby, after all we haven’t had a baby for ten years – and it’s done for three of mine – perhaps it’s a bit battered, too. Still, if you don’t mind a few snooty looks from the nannies in Kensington Gardens …’
It was a perfectly wonderful pram. Nor was it either cobwebby or shabby, by the time the doctor’s wife and eldest son got through cleaning and painting it. They even offered to keep it for me until I was ready for it.
I bought the rest of the things the doctor had checked, plus some of the ‘queried’ items. I regarded these as semi-luxuries, and made amends by cutting down on essentials – a nightie here, a dozen nappies there. (Why should any baby need four dozen nappies, for heaven’s sake?) I enjoyed the shopping very much. Everything I bought added to my growing sense of the reality, the exciting imminence of the baby’s arrival. When he kicked me now, I would say, ‘All right, all right – what the hell more do you want?’ and feel a surge of physical joy go over me that was like being bowled over by a warm wave on a summer beach.
Perhaps I would have enjoyed the shopping even more if I had bought a ring to wear. But I didn’t; somehow it seemed too big a lie. I let people give me looks, and returned them with interest.
The woman at the clinic was surprised and rather annoyed by the progress I made in learning to relax. I did work hard at it, but I think my success was partly due to having learned to breathe properly for the stage. My diaphragm and various other muscles seemed to be well under my control, whereas a lot of the other girls couldn’t seem to locate theirs mentally – it was like trying to wiggle their ears. I felt so bursting with confidence from this small triumph that I asked Mavis to teach me smocking, and I learned it in a week.
I felt transformed. It was like having lain frowsting in bed, unable to summon the energy or enthusiasm to get up, and then at last rousing oneself, having a refreshing bath, making up one’s face and getting cracking. One invariably wonders why the sleazy, rumpled bed seemed too attractive to leave.
I put an advertisement in the newsagent’s frame to say that I would type manuscripts, letters or anything else anyone wanted typed. The old man I had talked to on my first day in the house shook his head when he read it. ‘No one round here writes,’ he said. ‘They can’t, poor ignorant bleeders.’ Still, he put it up, and about two days later telephoned me. ‘Well – shows how wrong you can be,’ he said. ‘I got something for you. I’ll bring it round on me way home.’ I knew he lived behind the shop, and felt grateful as well as excited about having some work to do.
It turned out to be a television play. It was pretty appalling, but who was I to worry? Before I’d finished with that one, there came another. The little newsagent waxed cynical as usual. ‘You make what you can out of ’em,’ he advised me, sucking his teeth. ‘They watch the thing a few weeks, think they know all about it. Television plays! Most of ’em couldn’t write a laundry list.’ But I’d have typed even laundry lists for money, and my new customers didn’t seem to be short of that. The newsagent fought my corner and insisted on cash in advance.
I still had spare time on my hands. I spent a lot of it walking. The doctor had told me this would be good for me, providing I got on a bus the minute I felt tired. I could usually walk several miles before this happened.
One day I walked to Drummonds; or rather, most of the way. I took a bus the last few miles. I stood looking up at the corner window of what had been my office. A rather smart young man in a bow-tie kept peering impatiently out into the street as if expecting someone. He had dark hair and a thin black moustache and small, discontented eyes. He looked Jewish. He was the first Jewish person I’d ever disliked on sight.
Several times I found myself walking towards home – my father’s house. I always turned back before reaching the river. I had a superstition that the magnetic field would be too strong for me once I set foot on the bridge.
Days began to pass more slowly, to lose their individuality. Events like the arrival of James with the promised armful of nappies and some flowers – plus the welcome gift of a year with a nappy-washing service – stood out like bas-relief on the uniform flatness of the days. Also, we were having a spring heatwave. I moved slowly through long soporific days of sweet drenching sunshine, filled with an unreasoning contentment. Sometimes it seemed too hot to move. But I did my exercises every day. If I tried to skip them, the baby’s kicks seemed to accuse me.
One evening when I was idling slowly along the eight-o’clock-quiet street, my back began to ache a little and I turned into a small public garden where there were some benches and a show of tulips and wallflowers in the litter-patterned flower-beds. I eased myself down on a bench and closed my eyes. The litter, the dusty flowers, the ugly rearing walls surrounding the tiny ineffectual oasis in the concrete, vanished. The sounds and scents remained. The wallflowers’ perfume was untarnished by their coating of soot. There were birds somewhere, closer to my ear than the traffic. My tired muscles relaxed; the baby was asleep inside me, and peace wrapped me round, as uncomplicated as it must be for animals, resting their tired bodies and conscious only of the elementary pleasures of warm air and safety and no loud, sudden sounds. I drifted off to sleep.
I barely seemed to touch the bottom before starting to rise towards wakefulness again; but it must have been longer than it seemed, because when I opened my eyes it was almost dark. My earlier light sweat made me damp and chilly now. The walls of surrounding buildings climbed unlit into the gloom; there was a feeling of being down a well. I shivered a little and stood up stiffly.
As I left the garden to get back on to the road, I thought I saw a figure detach itself from the shadow on one of the other benches. A little way along the street, I turned to look back. A man had come out of the garden and was walking along after me. He was tall and lanky and wore a pulled-down hat. He had his hands in his pockets, and looked so much like a traditional film stalker that I felt no more than a trivial, fictional alarm. But just to amuse myself I pretended that he was following me. Every now and then I looked back and when he was still there, I felt almost pleased. I began to plan how I would snub him if he spoke to me. But of course he wouldn’t; I was so very obviously ‘married’. I nearly giggled at the idea of anyone trying to pick up a girl as pregnant as I was.
However, when I’d been walking slowly for ten minutes and he was still behind me, I began to get rather tired of it. I turned into a crowded coffee-house seeking warmth and the security of numbers. Not that the numbers were very comforting except in their quantity … they were nearly all Teddy-boys. One of them looked me up and down and remarked with a snigger, ‘You can see she’s got the right stuff in her,’ and another one called to me, ‘Carry yer luggage, lady?’ at which they all tittered idiotically. One of them stood up and said, ‘’Ere, ma, ’ave my seat, you got more to c
arry round than wot I got.’ His girl-friend kicked him and went off into shrieks.
The L-Shaped Room Page 28
