However, just as I was ready to take the doctor’s advice, the sickness stopped. I was all right all over the week-end, most of which, it’s fair to say, I spent in bed; but when on Monday morning I crawled gingerly up, taking it slowly and keeping my head well down so that I must have looked like a giant turtle scrabbling about, nothing happened. Nothing felt as if it might be going to happen. I hurried to the hotel, fearing a repetition of the ghastly episode in the train, but all was well. When I strode, bright-eyed with relief, into James’s office, he gave himself completely away by breaking into a great soppy grin and saying, ‘Gosh, you look marvellous! Hell, I’m glad to see you looking so much better, I thought you were going to croak on me!’
Chapter 7
THERE followed a period of physical well-being in which I learned what pleasure can be gained from absolutely negative sources. Getting up in the mornings, something I had loathed and dreaded all my life, now became a positively jolly part of the day’s routine. I used to sing about my toilet out of sheer relief, and sometimes John would join in next door and we would produce a creditable duet. If I’d applied myself during this patch, I think I could have had moments of real happiness about the impending event; I felt well and strong and my heart tended to be light; but instead of using this sound bodily basis as the jumping-off point for a little constructive thinking, I used it as the foundation for straight escapism.
In other words, just as often as possible I pushed the thought of ‘it’ completely aside. ‘It’ had stopped being anything as concrete as a baby I was due to have in roughly seven months, and become an almost unidentified problem that I would think about some time in the future when it became more pressing. My figure, so far as I could judge – which wasn’t far as I had no long mirror in my room, but I occasionally gave it a passing glance in the hotel ladies’ room – was exactly as always. The whole thing was surprisingly easy just not to fret about any more. I slept soundly; my brain was clear and full of ideas; my step was light, and James looked as if he’d recently exchanged a hair-shirt for a rather expensive silk one from Simpsons.
I did more to the room. While I was being ill, I not only hadn’t felt any interest in improving my surroundings, but the perpetual consciousness of the need to save money had prevented me from buying anything non-essential. Now with my new to-hell-with-it outlook, every shop window with a relevance to house interiors drew me like a magnet, and I began to bring little parcels back to the house – or rather, sneak them back; I didn’t feel like trying my luck with Doris too far. I started moderately with small, necessary items like a potato peeler and a kettle; then I branched out a little and acquired a small casserole dish and three coffee mugs; and finally I got really reckless and bought material for recovering the chair, a three-layer vegetable rack, two cushions, a burgeoning pot of ivy and a totally unessential object called a sink-tidy which I fell for in a bargain basement.
John and Toby were the worst possible influence. They rejoiced at everything, exclaiming like children over each purchase and generally encouraging my improvidence.
‘The next thing you must get,’ Toby egged me on, ‘is a table-lamp. You can’t imagine what a difference it would make.’
I could, all too well, but I did make a feeble protest. ‘I can’t afford it,’ I said weakly.
‘All right then, if you can’t afford a new one – why don’t you get this thing turned into one?’– indicating a sea-blue vase of singular shape which I had brought back from a holiday in Italy. ‘It looks like a blue urinal at the moment.’
‘It does not!’
‘It’d soon stop if you put a lampshade on top of it.’
So I had the blue urinal-vase turned into a lamp, which in the end cost a lot more than a lamp would have done, but it looked lovely and imparted a much more friendly, cosy aspect to the room in the evenings.
‘When you goin’ to do the walls?’ John would ask.
‘I’ll get around to it sometime – it means such an upheaval.’
But John did make me a wardrobe. One day I left the Yale on the latch accidentally, and when I came back I found a brand-new shelf, with a brass rod below it, high up in the shallow recess beside the fireplace. It was solid as a rock, and just the right height to hang my things on; all it needed was a curtain, and I felt nothing but the best was good enough to grace John’s generous handiwork; so during the following day’s lunch-hour I went to Debenham’s and bought a length of beautiful yellow curtaining, with some red in it to pick up the colours in the rug which John loved. I made it up myself, with Mavis’s help – she was doing the chair-cover for me, and I spent quite a few evenings sitting in front of her fire chatting away and trying to master the eccentricities of her ancient sewing-machine.
‘You have to love it, like,’ she explained as she tenderly coaxed the contrary brute into operation. The net result was she had to do most of the work; the finished products were, as one might expect, completely professional, but she flatly refused a fee, though I did everything except stuff the money into one of the daisy-vases.
‘If you want to do something for me, dear,’ she said, ‘just thread me up a few needles in different colours – can’t see the blooming eyes any more.’ I did this, of course, and after careful thought I also bought her a splendid pink cineraria in a pot. Round the rim of this I got one of the sign-painters at the hotel, who did our notices and door-names and things, to write ‘A present from Park Lane’. I was a bit doubtful about this last touch; I was afraid she might think I was making fun of her. But she was thrilled to pieces, and nearly watered the poor thing to death until I managed to convince her it didn’t need it.
I was settling into a routine of nest-making which was as much of an opiate as a new toy is to a child. I understood for the first time how Father felt about his garden. I wondered how often and how obviously I’d shown my lack of sympathy at his enthusiasm for it. Oddly enough, I was thinking this one morning when I was leaving the house, and there on the hall table was a letter from him.
I went all the way back upstairs so that I could shut myself up in my room and read it.
‘Dear Jane,’ it began. ‘As you can imagine, I find this letter hard to write. We haven’t been very close these last years, which may have been my fault, I suppose, though I don’t quite see where we went wrong; I’ve always done my best, but that seldom seems to be enough in this world. This isn’t an apology, however, as I think any parent would have felt as I did, being told a thing like that without any preparation. You almost seemed to enjoy telling me, or that’s how it seemed to me. But I am still your Father and I don’t enjoy thinking about you alone somewhere. Your home is here and if you want to come back to it you should feel free to. It’s not right for you to be among strangers. You are still my reponsibility in a way, though legally you’re old enough to live your own life.’
He’d signed it just ‘Father’. There was a P.S.: ‘I’m telling anyone who telephones that you’ve gone abroad. You didn’t say what you wanted done and that seemed the best thing.’
I felt cold shiver after cold shiver pass through me as I read this letter. It wasn’t until it came that I realized how badly I had wanted him to try and make contact with me; and now he had, my disappointment was so acute at the cold formality of his manner that all my past dislike of him, my resentment of his patronage, returned full-force. ‘My responsibility.’ Yes, that was just what he would say. Not a word of warmth or welcome or affection, or even forgiveness. Anger would have been easier to bear than this stiffly-extended hand of duty, held out grudgingly under the banner of ‘Blood is Thicker than Water’.
I screwed the letter up and shed hot, angry tears on it. Go back! I would see him in hell first. But my bitterly-phrased thoughts brought no relief, only renewed tears of guilt for which I refused to seek a cause. I threw the letter into the waste-paper basket. But that night when I came home from work I recovered it. I smoothed it out, and without re-reading it put it into my suitcase with the Alsatians an
d told myself to forget it.
It hurt for a while, then stopped. I thought how quickly and easily all the ties of one life could be broken and those of a new one built up … It was sad to reflect that the new friends were probably just as transitory, and the links with them just as fragile. This thought was, at that time, the nearest I let myself get to the monstrous pit of insecurity which I could sense lurking just under the surface of the fool’s paradise of respite I was letting myself bask in.
Stupendous days – turning-point days – come without warning, and start as innocently as if butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths.
One Saturday when Toby and John were having tea in my room John suddenly said: ‘Why you and Toby don’t come hear us playin’ at the club some night?’
Toby said nothing, but looked at me inquiringly. Feeling rather at a loss, I said, ‘I don’t know, why don’t we?’
‘Because you’ve never asked us,’ said Toby.
‘I ask you now.’
‘Would you like to?’ Toby asked me, and added tactlessly, ‘You never seem to have an evening out,’ which made me suddenly suspect that he and John might have cooked this up between them.
‘Yes, I would,’ I said, without giving myself time to think. It was true, I hadn’t been anywhere in the evening for weeks; in moments of self-pity I’d wept for that, as well as for other things. It’s funny what petty things can push you over the border of tears when something enormous keeps you perpetually at the brink.
Toby, in one of his lightning spasms of enthusiasm, jumped to his feet, kicking his tea all over my-sister-made-that-rug. ‘Oh sod it,’ he said happily. ‘Look, let’s go tonight! Why not? It’s Saturday, we’ll see all the fun. Is it nice and noisy and sordid, Johnny?’
John grinned right across his wide black face. Do negroes have more teeth than other people? I’ll swear they do.
‘Sure, it good and sordid, you’ll like it. All the time police comin’ in, we is all runnin’ like the bugs.’ He held his feet, which were crossed beneath his thighs, and rocked backwards, laughing his stupendous black laugh.
‘Really, police, Johnny?’
‘No, I jokin’. Only when girls strip-tease and do dance under the bar, like in Jamaica. Then police-come. Not strip-tease for a long time now – very good club, nothing wicked, you see. You come tonight, you’ll like it.’
So we went.
I felt strange, getting ready. It was the first time I’d gone out with a man since – Stop. My mind obeyed me perfectly now. But just the same, it was strange. More particularly because it was Toby; somehow I’d never foreseen going out with Toby. He was just a nice boy to have around, but not one to get dressed up to go out with. For one thing, he was so small – I’ve always liked tall men, and Toby was shorter than I was. Still, what did that matter? It wasn’t an evening of mystery and romance, for heaven’s sake. I put on flat heels and a short-sleeved sweater, in case the place should be very hot, and then I dug out a straight skirt I sometimes used to wear for dancing. It was a bit creased and I pressed it carefully through a damp cloth on the table, and then tried to get into it. I struggled with the zip for about two minutes before I realized why it wouldn’t do up.
I went quite cold, and had to sit down on the bed. It seems silly to say I’d forgotten, it was just that I hadn’t let myself think about it for so long I’d stopped looking for symptoms. This one came as a frightful shock. My mouth was dry. I just sat there with the skirt open round my hips and my heart thumping away in my throat, seeing all that I’d pushed on ahead of me now irrevocably piled up and waiting, too big to be pushed any further.
After a long time, Toby knocked on my door.
‘Are you ready, Janie?’
He sounded gay and excited. I remembered, idiotically, that he’d done today’s two thousand words this morning, so he could go out with a clear conscience.
The old trapped feeling came racing back. I can’t, I thought, I can’t face it! Then I thought, If I don’t go, what will I do? Sit here all the evening, with It – and It suddenly once more personal, explicit and terrifying. ‘Just a minute,’ I called back, my voice croaking out of a dry throat. I put the tight skirt back in my drawer with a sense of burying an enemy, and put on another, a full one. Even this didn’t button comfortably, but it was too late to start changing my whole outfit now.
When I opened the door, there was a strange new Toby I scarcely recognized. He did, it seemed, have one decent suit, one clean white shirt, and one rather smart tie, all of which, together with polished shoes and a neatly-shaved face, transformed him utterly. Absurdly, I wasn’t sure I altogether liked the result; I think it was the hair that worried me most; all those wild shaggy locks were slicked back behind his ears and off his forehead. It made him look like a baby seal emerging from the sea.
‘Good heavens,’ I exclaimed with tempered admiration.
His face fell a little. ‘What don’t you like?’
‘It’s marvellous – you look so different –’
‘Yes, but what don’t you like? Do you think it looks too dressed-up?’
‘No, no! It’s terribly smart – it’s just –’ My fingers itched.
‘What? Well, say it, will you?’
‘The hair,’ I said tentatively. ‘It’s a bit – well, it’s just not you, that’s all.’
‘Let’s face it, none of it’s exactly the me we all know and love.’
He came past me and stared at himself in the mirror. ‘I do look a bit of a spiv,’ he admitted. He turned to me. ‘Go on, do whatever you’re dying to do to it – I’ll submit myself.’ He closed his eyes tightly as if waiting for a blow, and I felt an unexplained pang as I reached up very diffidently and ruffled it gently free of its watery bonds. His head bent and pushed up under my hand a like a cat being stroked. He purred.
I took my hand away, but he said, ‘No, go on,’ still with his eyes closed, and put his forehead unexpectedly against my shoulder so that his hair was tickling my cheek. The back of his neck had a shallow channel down it, lined with commas of dark hair. I put my hand on the big bump that was the back of his head and ran it lightly down to his collar. While it was still resting there he raised his head and looked at me. He had a little pleased grin on his face. His eyes, which were very bright and dark, were only slightly lower than mine.
There was a moment during which my hand stayed on his neck. His grin suddenly widened and he said impishly, ‘So, what would you do if I did?’
Then it was quite easy to reply in the same tone, ‘You’ll never know. Come on, we’d better be off.’
The club was called The Rum Punch, and was situated, incongruously enough, in the crypt of a church. Actually the church had been bombed almost out of existence so it wasn’t hallowed ground or anything, but it seemed odd, trooping through the remains of a cemetery and across the quiet paving-stones under the ruined arch, which all retained an air of desolated sanctity, and then going down the steps and instantly finding oneself in the heat and frenzy of a jazz-club. The change from the holy to the hell-like was too abrupt to be anything but faintly shocking.
It was such a crazy jumble of noise and colour and smoke and bodies that for a moment I held back instinctively from launching myself into the midst of that mindless crush; but Toby took my hand and said, ‘Keep behind me – I’ll fight a way through,’ and then I was in the thick of it and it was too late to back out.
It was a long time since I’d been to a place like this, and it seemed to be a lot wilder than anything I’d remembered. When one was pushing through the crowd it was impossible to get bearings or even be sure what direction one was heading in – whether towards the small bar with its bamboo and fishing-net, or towards the dance-floor. This was just a small circular piece of the floor somewhere lost in the welter, whose demarcation lines seemed to be a matter of indifference to the dozens of dancing couples, most of whom couldn’t possibly have heard a note the band was playing for the roar of voices, and who went right on dancing e
ven when there was no music. If you could call it dancing; many of the couples just leaned against each other and went to sleep, as far as I could see.
Toby found the band, and John, by the simple expedient of heading into the deepest concentration of people and noise. It was an amiable crowd and nobody seemed to mind how much you pushed, and eventually, sweating and exhausted, we forced our way to the front of the mob standing and jiving round the band. There were five of them, all coloured, though four seemed to be West Indian and their relatively lighter skins made John look blacker than ever.
When he saw us he grinned broadly and waved. They were having a break between numbers and he motioned us to go and have a drink at the bar, mouthing ‘On the house!’ As we struggled through I saw him catch the eye of the bartender.
There were no seats at the bar; we just about managed to get a place against one end of it, near the coffee machine. Toby stood behind me to ward off inadvertent pushers, and when the barman came up he ordered two glasses of wine.
‘You Johnny’s guests?’
‘Yes –’
‘He said to give you rum punches.’
‘No, thank you –’ I began.
‘He paid already. Speciality of the house.’
When they came they were enormous, hot and spicy, with slices of lemon floating among the bubbles of melted butter. We sipped them cautiously at first, but they were delicious and went down as innocently as hot milk, so we raised our mugs to John and then downed them.
‘What a drink!’ said Toby. ‘Boy! Let’s have another.’
‘I couldn’t.’
‘I could – but okay, let’s dance first and then have one.’
The band had struck up again, something fairly lively from the look of them though we couldn’t hear much. Beginning three inches away from us, the whole cavernous room was a jigging, hopping, seething mass of dancers. The problem was, how to get oneself absorbed into a space which had already reached saturation-point.
The L-Shaped Room Page 11