To Room Nineteen: Collected Stories Volume One

by Doris Lessing

  For instance one of the typists wept with rage all of one morning because Mr Jones sent back a letter to be retyped. Such a thing had never been known. Such was his manner, as a rule, that a reprimand was almost as warming as praise.

  As for Marnie herself, she was like a small child who does not know why it has been slapped. She wandered about the office miserably, sniffing a little, until by chance Mr Jones saw her and asked what was wrong. She began to cry, and he took her into his room. The door was shut for over an hour while clients waited. When she came out, subdued but cheerful, the typists cold-shouldered her. Then she rushed in to Miss Ives and asked if she could move her desk in to the main office, because the other girls were ‘nasty to her’. Very naturally Miss Ives was unsympathetic, and she cried again, with her head among the papers on Mr Brooke’s desk. It happened to be the nearest.

  It was lunch time. Everyone left but Marnie and Mr Brooke. The repugnance she felt for this elderly man with the greasy faded hair, the creased white hands, the intimate unpleasant eyes, melted in the violence of her misery. She allowed him to stroke her hair. She cried on his shoulder as she had cried on Mr Jones’ shoulder that morning.

  ‘No one likes me,’ she sobbed.

  ‘Of course everyone likes you.’

  ‘Only Mr Jones likes me.’

  ‘But Mr Jones is the boss …’ stammered Mr Brooke, appalled at her incredible ingenuousness. His heart ached for her. He caressed the damp bundle huddled over his desk gently, paternally, wanting only to console her. ‘If you could just remember this is an office, Marnie.’

  ‘I don’t want to work in an office. I want to go home. I want my mother. I want Mr Jones to send me home. He says I can’t. He says he will look after me …’

  When they heard steps on the stairs Mr Brooke guiltily slipped back to his corner, and Marnie stood up, sullen and defiant, to face Miss Ives, who ignored her. Marnie dragged her feet across the floor to the typists’ room.

  ‘I suppose you have been encouraging her,’ said Miss Ives. ‘She needs a good spanking. I’ll give it to her myself soon.’

  ‘She’s homesick,’ he said.

  ‘What about her step-father in there?’ snapped Miss Ives, jerking her head at Mr Jones’ door.

  ‘He’s sorry for her,’ said Mr Brooke, defending his own new feeling of protectiveness for the girl.

  ‘Some people have no eyes in their heads,’ she said unpleasantly. ‘Taking her to the pictures. Taking her to dinner every night. I suppose that is being sorry for her too?’

  ‘Yes, it is,’ said Mr Brooke hotly. But he was sick with dismay and anger. He wanted to hit Miss Ives, wanted to run into Mr Jones’ room and hit him, wanted to do something desperate. But he sat himself down at his desk and began adding figures. He was behindhand as usual. ‘Slow but sure, that’s what I am,’ he said to himself, as always, when he saw how the work piled up and he never was level with it. But that afternoon Miss Ives returned him three sheets of calculations and said, ‘Try to be more accurate, Mr Brooke, if you please.’

  At four, when Mr Jones came through the front office on his way home, Marnie was waiting to catch his eye. He stopped, smiling; then realized the entire staff were watching, and went on, reddening.

  Marnie’s lips quivered again.

  ‘More rain coming,’ said Miss Ives acidly.

  ‘Can I take you to your bus-stop?’ asked Mr Brooke, defying Miss Ives. There was laughter from the open door of the typists’ room. Mr Brooke had heard that kind of laugh too often, after he had left a room, to care about it now. Marnie tossed her head at Miss Ives. ‘I should be pleased,’ she said daintily.

  They walked down the stairs, she racing in front, he trying to keep up. She seemed to dance down the street; the sun was shining; it dazzled in her bright hair. Mr Brooke was panting, smiling, trying to find breath to talk. He knew that above their heads Miss Ives and the others leant over the sill watching them with scornful disgusted faces. He did not care; but when he saw Mr Jones come out of a shop, as if he had been waiting for Marnie, he stopped guiltily and said, ‘Good night, Sir.’

  Mr Jones nodded, not looking at him. To Marnie he said, smiling gently, ‘Feeling happier? Don’t worry, you won’t be in an office for long. Some lucky man will marry you soon.’ It was the sort of thing he said to his typists. But not as he said it now.

  Marnie laughed, ran up to him, kissed his cheek.

  ‘Well!’ said Mr Jones, looking fatuously pleased. He glared over Marnie’s head at Mr Brooke, who hurried off down the street as if he had been given an order, without looking around. Soon he heard Marnie pattering up behind him.

  ‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ he spoke reproachfully.

  Her face was happy, guileless. ‘He’s like my dad,’ she said.

  At the bus-stop Mr Brooke suddenly could not bear to see her go. He caught her arm and said, ‘Come to my place and see my dog Twister. You would like him.’

  She said, ‘You know, I didn’t like you at first. I do now.’

  ‘My dog can fetch the newspaper in the morning,’ he said. ‘He never tears it.’

  ‘I like dogs,’ she said confidingly, as if it were the most surprising news in the world.

  When they reached his room he was so proud, so flustered, that he could only look at her and smile. He unlocked it with shaking hands and dropped the key when he saw the landlady peering through her window. Marnie picked it up, and went before him into his room as if taking possession of it.

  ‘What a nice room,’ she said. ‘But it’s too small. If you moved your bed …’

  She darted over to the divan he slept on and pushed it across a corner. Then she patted cushions, moved a chair, and turned to him. ‘That’s much better,’ she said. ‘I’m good at this sort of thing. I’m a home girl. That’s what my mum says. She didn’t want me to come to an office. Dad and Mr Jones fixed it up.’

  ‘Your mother is quite right,’ said Mr Brooke devotedly.

  It was then she paused to look about her, and it was then her face changed and Mr Brooke slowly went cold. He saw the room with her eyes, and saw himself, too, as she would see him henceforth.

  It was a small room, with patterned wall-paper, all roses and ribbons. The canary hung in the window, the dog’s basket was under the bed. There was nothing else of Mr Brooke in the room that had been inhabited by so many people before him. Except the pictures, which covered most of the wall-paper.

  Marnie moved forward slowly, with a queer hunching of her shoulders, as if a draught blew on them, and Mr Brooke went after her, unconsciously holding out his hands behind her back in appeal.

  ‘I must buy some pictures,’ he said, trying to sound casual.

  There were film stars, bathing beauties, half-nude women all over his walls, dozens of them.

  He knew, instinctively, that he should ask for her pity, as she had asked for his. He said, ‘I can’t afford to buy pictures.’

  But when she turned towards him at last, he knew his expression must be wrong, for she searched his face, and looked as if she had trodden on something unpleasant.

  ‘I had forgotten about them,’ he cried, truthfully and desperately. Then: ‘I’m not like that, Marnie, not really.’

  Her hand swung out and stung his cheek. ‘You dirty old man,’ she said. ‘You dirty, dirty old man.’

  She ran out of his room, and as she went the landlady came in.

  ‘Baby-snatching?’ she said. ‘You can’t have women here, I told you.’

  ‘She’s my daughter,’ said Mr Brooke.

  The door slammed. He sat on his bed and looked at the walls, and felt, for just a few moments, old and mean and small. Then he recovered himself and said aloud: ‘Well, and what do you expect, making me live alone?’ He was addressing, not only Marnie and the landlady, but all the women he had seen in the street, or on the screen, or eating at the next table.

  ‘You wouldn’t have stayed, anyway,’ he muttered at last. He began tearing the pictures off the w
alls. Then he slowly put them back again. He even cut out a new one from a paper called Parisian Fancies which he had sent for because of an advertisement, and hung it immediately over his bed. ‘That will give you something to think about,’ he said to the landlady, whom he could hear stomping about in the next room. Then he went out and got very drunk indeed.

  Next morning the landlady saw the picture while he was in his bath, and told him he must go or she would fetch the police. ‘Indecent exposure, that’s what it is,’ she said.

  ‘Do you think I care?’ said Mr Brooke.

  He was still a little drunk when he reached the office. He walked in aggressively, and at once Miss Ives sniffed and stared at him. She got up immediately and went in to Mr Jones’ room. Mr Jones came out with her and said, ‘If you do this again, Brooke, you must go. There’s a limit to everything.’

  Through the open door, Mr Brooke could see Marnie swinging herself round and round in Mr Jones’ big chair, eating sweets.

  Towards the middle of the morning Miss Jenkins started to cry and said, ‘Either she goes or I do.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Miss Ives. She nodded her head up and down significantly. ‘It won’t last. Something will happen, one way or the other. Things can’t go on like this.’ Miss Jenkins went home, saying she had a headache. Richards went in to Mr Jones’ office for something and came out, too angry to speak. The typewriters were silent next door. No one did any work except Miss Ives. It seemed everyone was waiting.

  At lunchtime they all left early. Mr Brooke stayed in the office. His head ached, his limbs were stiff, and he couldn’t face the two flights of stairs. He ate sandwiches, and then went to sleep with his head on his desk. When he woke he was still alone. He could not think clearly, and wondered for a moment where he was. Then he saw flies gathering over the crumbs on his papers, and got up stiffly to fetch a duster. The door into the typists’ room was closed. He opened it a few inches and peered cautiously through. He thought for a moment he was still asleep, for there were Marnie and Mr Jones. His face was buried in her hair, and he was saying, ‘Please Marnie, please, please, please …’ as if he were drunk.

  Mr Brooke stared, his eyes focusing with difficulty. Then Marnie gave a little scream and Mr Jones jumped up and came across. ‘Spying!’ he said angrily.

  Mr Brooke had lost his breath. His mouth fell open, his hands spread out helplessly. Finally, he said to Marnie, ‘Why didn’t you slap his face?’

  She ran across the room shouting, ‘You dirty old man, you dirty old man!’

  ‘He’s older than I am.’

  ‘You shut up, Brooke,’ said Mr Jones.

  ‘He has grown-up children. He has grandchildren, Marnie.’

  Mr Jones lifted his fist; but at that moment Marnie said triumphantly, ‘I’m going to marry him. I’m going to get married. So there!’ Mr Jones dropped his arm, and his angry red face became slowly complacent, grateful, adoring.

  Mr Brooke saw that she had said that for the first time; that if he had not entered perhaps she would never have said it.

  He looked at Mr Jones, and out of his knowledge of himself hated him, but with a small feeling of envious admiration. The confused thought in his mind was: ‘If he had pictures he would be careful to keep them hidden.’

  After a while, he said half-pityingly, half-spitefully to Marnie, ‘You are a silly little girl. You’ll be sorry.’ Then he turned and groped his way out, holding on to the walls.

  Later in the afternoon Miss Ives brought him a cheque. He was dismissed with a bonus of ten pounds. Ten pounds for thirty years’ work! He was too numbed to notice it.

  ‘Did you know she was marrying him?’ he asked Miss Ives, wanting to see her made angry.

  But she sounded pleased. ‘He told us just now.’

  ‘He’s older than I am …

  ‘Serves her right,’ snapped Miss Ives. ‘Little fool like that. It’s all she’s good for. Getting married. That’s all these girls think of. She’ll learn what men are.’

  And then she handed him his hat, and began gently pushing him to the door. ‘You’d better go,’ she said, but not unkindly. ‘He doesn’t want to see you again. He said so. And you look after yourself. You can’t go drinking like that, at your age.’

  Then she shut the door behind him. When he saw he was quite alone in the passage he began to laugh. He laughed hysterically for some time. Then he went slowly and carefully down the stairs, holding his hat in one hand and his fountain pen in the other. He began to walk down the street, but at the corner he came back, and waited at the foot of the stairs. He wanted to say goodbye to the people he had worked with so long. He could imagine them saying in the typists’ room: ‘What! old Brooke has gone, has he? I am sorry I didn’t have a chance to see him before he left.’

  Twenty Years

  A large room – no, more of a small hall … decorated with too much plaster pressed into shapes reminiscent of moulded puddings touched with gold … far too many people standing upright, each holding a glass while fitting ‘bite-sized’ canapés into their mouths and making conversation … what is this? A cocktail party, and no one here had not said earlier, Oh God, I’ll have to drop in for at least half an hour. Now they glanced about over their interlocutors’ heads, to see who else was there who should be spoken to or at least noticed. They tried not to look at their watches for they were off to restaurants or – much too late – to homes in suburbs or even other towns. An office party, and it was to celebrate half a century’s existence of a firm, an occasion important enough to merit this illustrious hotel.

  There were a couple of chairs in a corner and in these people sank for a few moments to rest their feet and gather their forces.

  One woman had settled there for rather longer, perhaps fifteen minutes, and she was staring in at the crowd. Not easy to keep one person in view, heads kept intervening, shoulders; and sometimes for a whole minute or two the person she seemed to be concentrating on was hidden from her. But she sat on, sure of her intention.

  She was different from most of them there, not only because she was older. She was fifty? A young sixty? She wore – well, she was elegant enough, and fresh, for she had not spent all day working in an office.

  The man she intermittently kept in view was middle-aged, handsome in a well-worn way, and was probably something in a design department. His clothes insisted on individuality – dark green jacket, a black silk polo neck.

  The crowd was thinning a bit, people slipping away, hoping to be unnoticed. Now she could see him and she looked steadily at him, and with a frown. Had he noticed her? He had glanced at her once, twice, but went on talking to the man in front of him, and again looked past him, in her direction. His thoughtful look was not unlike hers, but it had in it something of affront or even grievance. He turned himself about deliberately so he stood four-square to her, and their eyes met, and while they looked long at each other neither tried to conceal it. She remained where she was, not frowning now, but not smiling either. After a few moments when he might easily – it seemed – simply walk away, he took some large strides through a by now sparse crowd and stood over her.

  ‘Well,’ said he, ‘this is certainly not where I’d expect to see you.’

  ‘I don’t see why not?’

  Again, he might easily have taken off, but he sat down in the other chair. A waitress was circulating with wine, garnet and yellow, and she took a white wine, he a red.

  ‘Twenty years?’ she enquired finely, but with something like a grimace.

  ‘I suppose it can’t be far off twenty years.’

  The way they were looking at each other now denied the twenty years.

  Yet they were wary, he more than her. On guard. Noting this she smiled. Deliberately.

  ‘What are you expecting? Surely not that I am going to throw my wine in your face?’ And she laughed.

  ‘You throw …’ He was genuinely astonished. And accusing.

  ‘I’ve often enough wanted to – well, somethin
g of the kind. Much worse, if you must know … like killing you, for instance.’

  But now, as if for the benefit of an imaginary spectator, he demonstrated male reaction to female irrationality, with a dropped jaw, raised brows, an, as it were, detached quizzicality.

  ‘You kill me,’ he merely let drop, with a cold smile.

  ‘Well, it did wear off, but there’s quite a residue of … I don’t think time does soften all that much, not really.’

  And now his face lost its deliberate theatricality. He was serious. He examined her. Then he drank half his wine, shook his head in a way that might have meant, sour wine this! – put the glass back on a passing tray.

  ‘Anyone would think,’ said he, ‘that there was something you have to forgive me.’

  At this it was her turn to direct at him a derisive laugh that matched his earlier theatricality.

  There was something here that didn’t fit, and both could see it, and were prepared to show they could see it.

  ‘I waited for you all day,’ he said at last, deliberate. ‘I was sitting in the garden of that bloody hotel all day. And then I came back after dinner and stayed till midnight. Waiting. It was raining.’

  She shifted her legs about, seemed to reject what he said, might have got up and walked away, on an impulse that definitely was as much from the past as from present discordance. She sighed … ‘And I waited for you. I didn’t go away at all. I stayed until midnight. Then I took a room in the hotel and woke up at five in the morning. I waited. In the garden, where we said. It was not raining.’

  He laughed, short and angry.

  She laughed: the same.

  ‘You haven’t changed,’ said she, irritable.

  ‘You are suggesting I didn’t wait all day and half the night for you?’

  ‘As it happens yes, that is what I am suggesting.’

  ‘Oh for God’s sake,’ he exploded, and she smiled, lips compressed, in a way he recognized, for in a crescendo of anger he said, ‘You certainly haven’t changed. You never gave me credit for anything.’