“Momentous question,” I said. “Grave repercussions for the future. Do you mainly prefer to wash or dry?”
“No, I’ll see to that. To tell you the truth I’m getting a little worried. That you mayn’t be able to find a room, even in a hotel. I mean, of course, the smaller, cheaper sort of hotel.”
My face wouldn’t have done too well for the diplomatic corps.
“Sammy, I really need to have a chance to think! I’m not going to let you spend the night here.”
Which wasn’t (I supposed) wholly unreasonable.
“And anyway,” she said, “Zach’s coming back at nine.”
“Will he be spending the night here?”
Oh, how to win friends and influence history…without even thinking about it!
“No, he will not! Certainly he won’t! All we do is talk. He phones me when he’s feeling down…and when I sent him away I couldn’t say I wouldn’t see him at all tonight. Especially since at the time of his phone call this afternoon…”
“What?”
“Well, it was me who needed cheering up. He did everything he could to help.”
Oh, yes, and I could easily imagine how! No doubt by telling her she would very soon get over me and that I really wasn’t worth feeling all depressed about. How much detail would she have given him?
“Then he obviously hasn’t remarried?”
“No.”
“But do you still fancy him?”
“Sam, I would advise you to leave it right there.”
“After all, you said he looked a lot like me.”
I wasn’t being aggressive. I was being rational. Pulling at the skin through my open collar with a thoughtful, almost academic air. It would be interesting to hear the answer.
She wouldn’t give me any answer.
“Then I’ve a good mind to stay and…”
“And what?”
“Tell Mr Zach-Whatever-His-Bloody-Name-Is exactly where he gets off!” I agree that didn’t sound, perhaps, so entirely academic. Or rational.
“Oh God,” she said.
“Because when he says he’s feeling down how can you be sure that’s really what he is feeling? How can you be sure he isn’t feeling randy?”
“Oh, how can I be sure of anything?”
Mercifully, her exasperation was the very corrective I needed. I gave myself some hard knocks on the temple with the heel of one palm.
“I’m not normally like this. I swear I’m not. It’s been a really tough couple of days.”
She smiled, albeit thinly.
“Forgive me?”
She nodded.
“No. I want to hear you say it.”
“Sammy, I forgive you.”
I still looked deep into her eyes, searching for that absolution, that state of grace which I would so much need if I were going to have any real sleep that night, whether in bedsit or small hotel. Despite her gentle words—her tired but gentle words—I wasn’t totally convinced that absolution had been conferred. Not unequivocally conferred.
What was conferred, beyond question, was painstaking advice on how to get to Kilburn.
“May I leave one of my suitcases?”
She had to consider this.
“Yes, you may. But when do you suppose you’ll be wanting it?”
“Why? Does it matter?”
“Not really. It’s just that…”
“What?”
“I’d rather we didn’t see each other for a while. Let’s say—a week.”
“A week!”
“You see, I want to be as certain as I can be of the way I feel.”
“Then…not until next Monday?”
“Don’t sound like that! It really isn’t so long! And you’ll have plenty to be getting on with.”
“Oh, yes? Like what?”
“Like finding your bearings. Making arrangements. Looking for work.” She paused. “Like getting things sorted inside your own head.”
“Thank you but I don’t think I have to get things sorted out inside my own head. I know what’s good for me. I know what I want. Unlike some,” I added—but only in a mutter, as I went downstairs to fetch the suitcase which I wasn’t going to take.
“Obviously, you’ve got all your wash things in the one you’ll be keeping? Socks? Shirts? Underwear?”
“It sounds like the end of the school holidays. When I was about five.”
“Well, don’t forget to wash behind your ears!” She smiled. “Soap? Towel?”
I hadn’t thought of bringing either. She supplied me with both.
“Pocket money?”
“Piss off.”
She laughed.
“But I will take the cake,” I decided. Guard against night starvation; give me succour through the long dark hours. Make bloody sure that bloody Zach—Zachary?—Zachariah?—what sort of poncy name was that: him in his yellow jacket and green corduroys!—that bloody Zach wasn’t going to be comfortably tucking into it five minutes after I had finished, less comfortably, doing the same. Junie hadn’t made that cake for any cheap philandering fantasist.
“Sensible,” she said.
I wondered also about asking for the meat pie and the soup; partly for purposes of economy.
But for some reason I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Neither cars in driveways nor meat pies in refrigerators. (Possibly.)
Moira left the cake in her own tin; added a couple of plates, a mug and some cutlery. A tea towel, Jiffy Cloth, screws of coffee, Coffee-Mate and sugar. A few tea bags. She tied the tin with the same hairy string which Junie had put around the box but neither the knot nor the loop was nearly as secure as the original. Inevitably this raised a point: how well was she going to make out, then, stationed at the entrance to a maze?
“You should’ve used that golden thread,” I told her. “So long as you meant to keep a firm hold on it while it unravelled. I’m journeying this night into the darkest reaches of the heart of Kilburn.”
“But you led me to infer,” she commented, drily, “that you had in mind something a little more interesting around which to tie that.”
I smiled. We were back in the Abbey Road. We were once more on track for happiness. Safely on track.
“I do believe you’re teasing me, Pandora.”
“Pandora again? I thought my name was Ariadne.”
“Tonight I’m all at sea. Ariadne is the land girl, Pandora’s the self-sacrificing angel who swims out to the ship. Two sides of the same coin. You’re both beautiful. Both bringers of release and of salvation.”
“Oh, good,” she observed. “Almost the perfect setup you’ve got there. Almost—dare one say it?—a Captain’s paradise.”
But before I’d had much opportunity to react, either clumsily or with grace (and I’d always wanted life to imitate the movies), she went on, “Now, go and bring up your other case, so we can pack the mug and plates, etc. I don’t want you and Zach first meeting on the stairs.”
“Why not?” I wondered if she’d told him I was there. “Afraid he’ll think he’s seen his doppelganger and imagine only death can follow as a consequence?”
“Idiot!” As she said it she reached up and briefly kissed my lips. But twisted away the moment I tried to hold her with my free hand. “Sammy?”
I’d already started down the stairs.
“Just in case,” she said, “you find yourself starting to slip into the doldrums and feel you must either talk to somebody or bust… Well, I’m usually here from around six and our embargo needn’t stretch to the telephone.”
“Right, then.”
“And Sammy?”
“What?”
“Oh, nothing!”
“Go on. Say it.”
“No, it isn’t unpleasant. Could maybe sound a tad sentimental, that’s all.”
“Well, you know me! A sucker for sentiment.”
“I was only going to mention that…however this turns out… whatever we decide…”
“Yes?”
&nbs
p; “Well, that we’re always going to remain good friends, aren’t we? We’re always going to have a bit of a thing for one another—right? That’s all. I wanted to make sure you understood that.”
Then she blew me a last kiss, withdrew into her flat, and quickly closed the door.
29
Despite the continuing drizzle, I stood on a corner out of sight of Moira’s window and kept cave. Finally I saw him. His umbrella partly screened his face but there wasn’t any doubt that it was him. He all but cannoned into me. “Sorry,” he said. “Sorry,” I said. Ships that pass in the night, exchanging a brief toot. Golden boys that pass in the rain, smiling an apology. Little trace of tarnishing. After a moment I saw him glance back. Something of sympathy flashed between us. Something containing a charge that was almost—!
Christ, no! Not true!
But the closer I got to Kilburn the greyer everything became. Scarcely to be wondered at: the time was now approaching ten. As I stood near the underground station and scanned the notices on a newsagent’s board—to which some passers-by had drawn my attention—it occurred to me she hadn’t said, Come back if you can’t find anywhere; or Give me a ring to let me know you’ve got something.
It occurred to me she hadn’t asked what was likely to happen to Treasure Island. Nor had she refloated—or, for all I knew, even remembered—that bolstering notion of my applying to university.
There was a private hotel advertised in Admiral Road. There was also a scrappy piece of paper offering in red crayon a single room, not large but clean, in a quiet house in the same street.
Any nationality. Thirty-five pounds a week. Three spelling mistakes in just four lines.
The woman who came to the door was small and wizened. Lumpy, too, because she had on several layers of clothing, including a jumper, cardigan and overcoat. The overcoat was only partially buttoned. There was a grey woollen scarf—long, like a student’s—wrapped around her head and tied beneath her chin. She wore fingerless grey mittens.
But I didn’t see those mittens, nor the broken nails nearby, until I’d told her why I was there, twice apologized for having come so late (this had been my day for apologizing to everyone for everything) and until she’d at last decided to remove the chain. A welcome contrast: the hall was pleasantly heated. Well-carpeted and furnished, too—although the light was pretty dim. The landlady was Polish. She’d lived in this country for seventeen years and said she had the toothache and had been just about to go to bed. Also that her husband lived in the basement; her own bedroom was the coldest room in the house; and the summer wasn’t going to get here till July. Her English was as weird as her apparel but she was amiable enough. While I waited in the doorway of her fuggy, cluttered, cat-infested room she collected a key and a rent book and an After Eight, which she pulled out of its envelope and held hospitably towards my mouth, appearing like a slightly unconventional representation of Eve. I couldn’t really fancy the offering but didn’t have the heart to shake my head.
She led me slowly up three flights of stairs, breathing heavily and pausing on each landing. During our initial stop she asked about my home. Home? She hadn’t heard of Deal but when I told her it was on the sea, and was the spot where Julius Caesar had first landed in Britain, she puzzlingly supposed it was also the place from which Sir Walter Raleigh had set off for El Dorado. I felt vaguely surprised she should have known the English appellations for either the man or the destination but she then informed me—and with an air of clearing up any mystification on this or any other topic—that she had a daughter married to a drunken docker in Limehouse.
On the next landing she pointed out the bathroom—with its enormous, maybe prehistoric geyser—and the separate lavatory, which, even from a distance, smelled as though the drunken docker might recently have used it to be a drunken docker in.
It brought back certain memories.
The vacant room was one of two on the top floor. My prospective neighbour was playing glee songs at a volume that belied the advertised kwiet (glee songs, I ask you!) and on this landing the yet dimmer bulb had no shade and the paintwork and carpet looked grubbily neglected. But certainly the room itself, after the old woman had fumbled with its heavy key, appeared relatively clean. Nor was it as small as I’d imagined, although the crude wallpaper, repeatedly emblazoned with three plucky galleons proudly conveying their master towards his glorious discovery of the New World, did nothing to open things up. It seemed instead to make a mockery of the gimcrack wardrobe, table, bed, chair—cooker, fridge, sink: a mockery of everything. But in fact the room was about the right size. A refuge. Sanctuary. The proper place to lick one’s wounds.
I gave the woman forty pounds. Told her I’d collect the change tomorrow; also the rent book, which she’d been going to fill in then and there. But all I wanted was to close my door. Close my door upon the world. A world still irredeemably flat, despite the reminder—so frequently repeated—of my illustrious, pioneering roommate.
She showed me where the meters were and showed me the little trick required to light the gas fire. My bed was made up but she explained about the laundering of the sheets and pillowcases. Hoover and dustpan, she said, were kept in a cupboard in the hall—I must remember to look into it, explore, when I came down in the morning. I didn’t mention I’d be staying for only one week: The Passing of the Third Floor Back: at last, you see, I get to play the title role.
But I didn’t mention that, either.
The moment she’d gone I took off my raincoat—and discovered there weren’t any hangers, nor any coat hook on the door. I was about to call after her; then found I couldn’t face it. I removed my splattered shoes. Remembered I hadn’t brought my shoetrees, nor even my shoe-cleaning materials, and felt the instant rush of tears.
Crybaby! Crybaby!
I set my suitcase on the bed; but as soon as I’d done so decided I couldn’t face that either—the unpacking.
Oh, God! What was I meant to do? What was I meant to do?
No polish; no shoetrees; probably a score of other things I had forgotten. All equally essential. And I couldn’t afford to replace them.
I was missing my wife and family. That’s what it all came down to.
Missing them like hell.
But I knew I couldn’t go back. I knew this with a certainty that underlay the ache, the emptiness, the gnawing sense of loss: underlay my feeling of impending doom, my conviction that nothing would ever work for me again. Underlay and overlay and wrapped it all around.
I was going to be on my own. Forever.
Unloved. Uncherished.
Ill-equipped to deal with even the ordinary details of everyday existence. Afraid of them, almost. Crybabily afraid.
And it stuck like a sickness in my throat and a pressure on my stomach: the ever-present yet recurring knowledge that I had truly burned my boats.
Just bits of debris scattered on the water. With nothing useful I could salvage.
Nothing
I’d left the cake tin on the table. Listlessly I started to untie the string. Caught sight of my reflection in the window. Was distracted; even startled—for one split second imagined I had seen a stranger. Recalled my reference to a doppelganger.
Yet this man couldn’t be that. Not sinister enough. As I moved towards him I had the laughable illusion he looked much nicer than I did. Somehow kinder, more compassionate. More trustworthy.
Wiser. More humorous.
More everything, in fact, that you would ever wish to be.
I saw him as the Ghost of Potential Unfulfilled. But not a frightening ghost—far friendlier than any who’d appeared to Scrooge. I didn’t feel that he was there to judge me…rather, to welcome me, take me in his arms, encourage me to bond, show me how to proceed.
Therefore I remained by the window. It was now so dark I wouldn’t normally have seen much, apart from that welcoming newcomer. But someone on the ground floor had their light on: probably my landlady: her room was at the back and I retained an
impression of its having tall windows and of the curtains being undrawn. Even so, I really couldn’t make out much: merely a patch of scrubby grass with a birdbath at its centre… which instantly made me think of my grandmother’s garden; made me think, as well, of the night I had climbed out on the windowsill that overlooked it.
This window, too, had sash cords.
This window, too, had a bottom half which proved intractable.
But, just as before, I finally managed—having moved the table well out of the way—to jerk down the top half. To jerk it down completely.
And, just as before, I was then able to straddle it.
At my grandmother’s house there had been concrete where I would have fallen. It was the same here.
I was soon fully on the outside. For support I hooked my elbows over the double thickness of wood and glass. The sill creaked; but in spite of its deteriorating paintwork—and, no doubt, galloping dry rot—seemed firm enough to bear my weight.
Presently the light went off downstairs; the grass and birdbath disappeared. The forty watts from my own room scarcely supplied illumination. No moon; no stars. Now left with all but nothing.
Nothing.
I braced myself. Sought to reinforce my dissipating courage.
In just three seconds—five?—everything could be done with. Splat! Like being caught in the full force of an explosion. Nothing.
I really didn’t mind.
Nothing?
And if I myself didn’t mind—then who on earth should?
I thought about the landlady, my funny little Polish landlady, who had presumably just settled down to sleep.
I thought about the effect of a body falling right outside her room. The ground-shaking thud, or squelch; the shock it must produce; the mess and horror left behind.
Remembered she was suffering from the toothache.
Wondered if it were possible she might already—doped—be drifting off towards oblivion.
Then how could I do this to her?
Could I do this to her?
Yes. Yes, I could. I felt deeply sorry for her—her in the coldest room in the house, with a toothache, and a husband who lived in the basement—but, yes, yes, I could. Had to. I had passed the point of no return.
New World in the Morning Page 22
