Room at the Top

by John Braine

  Everyone had been very kind and there'd been a constant stream of callers at Aunt Emily's. A shower of gifts had been pressed upon me by every organisation in the town and there was even talk of some kind of fund being opened for me. The truth was that the whole elaborate machinery for the relief of blitz victims had been unemployed until Father and Mother were killed, so it had set enthusiastically to work on me, like an elephant picking up a peanut. In a way, though, I'd rather enjoyed being the centre of attention, warm between the cosy breasts of sympathy.

  A sluggish wind crept down from the Pennines, cold and damp and spiteful, trying to find a gap in my defences. It retired, defeated by alcohol and meat and the thick wool of my overcoat and the soft cashmere of my scarf; it had no power over me now, it was a killer only of the poor and the weak. I looked at the small space which had once been my home; I'd come a long way since 1941.

  Too far perhaps; I thought of my father. He was a good workman; too good a workman to be sacked and too outspoken about his Labour convictions to be promoted. He told me this entirely without bitterness; in fact, I'd detected a note of pride in his deep, slow voice. "If Ah'd joned t'Con Club, lad, Ah'd be riding to work in mi own car . . ."

  I didn't, at the age of fifteen, share my father's pride, because the hypothetical car which he'd so high-mindedly rejected was all too real to me. So instead of the look of approval which he expected he received merely a sullen glare.

  My mother knew what was in my mind. " You've never gone short, Joseph," she said. She always called me by my full name when she wanted to read the Riot Act. "Your father would starve before he'd sell himself for a handful of silver" -- this was one of her favourite quotations and her use of it, I don't know why, always embarrassed me intensely -- "but he'd never see his own in want. I knew that when I married him. I could have had a common, fat man with a motorcar, but I wanted something better than that."

  She smiled at Father; intercepting that smile, I felt shut-out, bewildered, childish. My father was sitting in the armchair to the left of the fireplace, smoking his pipe and listening to, of all things, Noel Coward's "The Stately Homes of England." He was as completely relaxed as the grey tomcat asleep by the fire with its head on my feet. That, I might say, was as far as the image extended; there was nothing even remotely feline about my father. He had a face like the statue of some Victorian industrialist, heavy and firm and deeply lined, giving an impression of stern willingness. He was, in fact, a very handsome man; his features were regular, his hair thick and bright, and his teeth -- this was rare in Dufton -- were white and even. It was an obsolete handsomeness, a Charles Hawtrey, bay-rum, Sweet Adeline kind, solid and male and wholesome. Mother had a thin lively face which only just missed horsiness. She was never still and rarely silent. She had a fresh, rosy complexion and clear blue eyes; at thirty-eight, her hair was already greying but the effect, paradoxically, was to make her look younger, as if she were only pretending to be old.

  Father rose. He rose very quickly and smoothly. He was a big man (six feet and over one hundred and ninety pounds) but he hadn't the ponderous clumsiness of most big men. He moved rather as a young bull moves, but without its blind menace.

  "Ah'm bahn for a gill, lass," he said. He ruffled my hair as he passed. "Mind what Ah say, Joe. There's some things that can be bought too dear."

  Then I remembered the bomb, and the whole scene dissolved. It was as if my mind were in watertight compartments. Behind the doors of this particular compartment, even six years after, were things I couldn't face. It was bad enough when these things happened to strangers; I remembered the WAAF messroom at my first station after a direct hit. I'd stood that better than I'd expected, thinking of it simply as a mess to be cleared up, even after I'd seen that fair-haired girl from Doncaster with both eyes running down her cheeks. But what made me really sick was treading on a piece of flesh which squirmed from under my foot like a mouse. The invasion of the abbatoir, the raw physical horror suddenly becoming undisputed master -- I couldn't connect it with Father and Mother, I refused to accept it.

  I turned away from the house and walked quickly away. It had been a mistake to go there. The watertight compartments were out of order; images of pain and distress, more memories of things I'd seen during the war and would rather have forgotten, rose to the surface of my mind. As long as I kept on walking they'd remain mixed and chaotic, like imperfectly recollected books and films; once I stopped they'd become unbearably organised; if I walked quickly I could cram my mind with the speed of my own movement, with the grocer's shop and its frosted window and the Christmas tree, with the men's outfitters and the awful American ties, with the Board School and its murderous asphalt playground -- and then I stopped trying. It was futile; here on the left stood the huge bulk of Torver's Mills where Father had worked for twenty years; here was the Wellington, his local, and here was the greengrocer's where he bought muscatel raisins for our Sunday walks -- wherever I looked there was a memory, an italicising of death.

  Why hadn't I noticed it before? Because Warley had shown me a new way of living; for the first time I'd lived in a place without memories. And for the first time lived in a place; in the three months I'd been there I was already more a part of the town, more involved in its life, than ever I had been in my birthplace. And even for three days only, I couldn't endure the chilly bedroom with its hideous wallpaper and view of mill chimneys and middens, the bath with its peeling enamel, the scratchy blankets -- my aunt and uncle were unselfish and generous and gentle, they spoke only the language of giving, but no virtue was substitute for the cool smoothness of linen, the glittering cleanliness of a real bathroom, the view of Warley Moor at dawn, and the saunter along St. Clair Road past the expensive houses.

  "Dead Dufton," I muttered to myself. "Dirty Dufton, Dreary Dufton, Despicable Dufton -- " then stopped. It was too quiet. There were lights in the windows but they seemed as if put there to deceive -- follow them and you were over the precipice, crashing into the witch's cave to labour in the mills forever. There were cigarette ends and orange peel and sweet wrappers in the gutter but no one living had smoked those cigarettes or eaten those sweets; the town reminded me of those detective stories in dossier form which used to be sold complete with clues -- cigarette ends, poisoned lozenges, hairpins . . . I walked over the suspension bridge at the top of the town; the river was running faster than usual, swollen with melted snow and harried by the northeast wind; the bridge was swaying and creaking beneath my feet, and I suddenly was afraid that it might deliberately throw me into the water like a vicious horse; I forced myself to walk slowly, but the sweat was dripping off my brow.

  11

  Alice took hold of me by my hair. "You've a nice body, do you know that? Hairy but not too hairy. I never could bear animated hearthrugs."

  I felt as if I were choking. "God, you're lovely. You -- I don't know what to say, you're so beautiful."

  "What, an old woman like me?"

  "You're not old."

  "Oh yes I am, honey. Much older than you."

  "I wish you wouldn't talk as if I were a minor," I said with some irritation. "I'm twenty-five and I've had a lot of experience.

  "I'm sure you have." Her dark blue eyes were tender and amused. She pulled my head down to her breasts. "There now, my sweet baby, there now. You're very old and very mature and you're going to be a great man."

  I could see nothing but her body, breathe nothing but that peppery odour of lavender and the indescribable, infinitely good smell of woman's flesh. I pressed my face tighter; the thin hands on my head tightened convulsively.

  "Oh God," she said, "you're so good. You're so good to me. You're so kind. There was never anyone so good to me before. I'm alive now, all of me's alive. I'm feeling things I'd forgotten, the nerve's regenerating. It hurts sometimes . . . I don't care." She covered my face with kisses.

  The kisses did more to me than the longest kiss on the mouth could have done. They weren't preliminaries; they were complete in thems
elves. She kissed me as moistly as a little girl; and I was glad of this; I was discovering that I never had really made love to a woman before or truly enjoyed a woman's body. The sort of sex I was used to was sex as it would be if human beings were like screen characters -- hygenic, perfumed, with no normal odours or tastes -- as if flesh were silk stretched over rubber, as if lips were the only sensitive part, as if the natural secretions were shameful.

  Alice was no more greedy of actual sex than the others; but she was shameless in love, with no repugnances, no inhibitions. In her arms I was learning quickly; so that now I actually found myself drinking the moisture from her lips. I didn't want to wash it off, I wanted it to stay, for her to become part of me.

  "You beautiful brute," she said, and drew the bedclothes aside. "You beautiful uncomplicated brute."

  "No," I said. "As they say in the films, I'm just a crazy mixed-up kid."

  She ran her hand delicately over my chest. "You should have been a navvy. I hate to think of you ever wearing clothes."

  "Navvies don't go about naked. If anything they wear far more than accountants."

  "I wish you were one just the same. I'd let you beat me every Saturday night . . . Joe, will you tell me something?"

  "What, darling?"

  She pulled a hair from my chest. "There, I'll keep that as a souvenir." She put her face against my chest and lay silent.

  "That wasn't what you wanted to ask me about," I said. "Besides, you took it without asking."

  "It's a funny question. All ifs. Look, supposing you'd met me before I married, supposing I were ten years younger -- how would you have felt about me?"

  "That's simple. Like now."

  "That's not what I meant. Would you have taken me seriously?" Her voice was muffled against my chest.

  "Yes. You know that I would. But what's the use?"

  "Don't be practical, Joe. Please don't be sensible. Just imagine me as I was ten years ago. And you as you are now."

  I looked into her eyes. I could see my face in her pupils, flushed, with my hair tousled. "You're looking babies," she said, almost coyly. "If you look long enough, you'll see a baby."

  I had the same sensation that I had when as a child of ten I'd seen my Aunt Emily with her son at her breast. And it was, too, like the sensation I'd had when I'd intercepted looks and actions of my parents -- the secret, bold look before bedtime, the hand on the knee -- it was as if I'd stumbled upon something bigger than myself. Something which was uncompromisingly real, something which I couldn't avoid but which, I felt ashamedly, I was trying to avoid. There was happiness at its centre but it was a frightening kind of happiness.

  "There were no lines then," she said. "And I was firm here -- " she put my hands on her breasts. "Everything was ahead of me. I couldn't sleep sometimes, wondering what would happen to me -- I knew that it would be wonderful, whatever it was . . . No, that would be when I was nineteen. Yes, imagine me nineteen. That's the best age. I used to feel happy, terribly happy, all of a sudden, and there'd be no reason for it. And I'd cry easily but I'd enjoy it and it never made my eyes red. Would you have taken me seriously?"

  "You probably wouldn't have taken me seriously."

  "I'd have been silly enough for that . . . I had a career then. I'd just graduated from the drama school -- a broken-down place with a broken-down old ham in charge of it -- the best Mummy could afford. It was a cheap finishing school, you see. Mummy hoped that I'd learn to speak and move properly there and acquire a sort of polish and a little glamour -- and then hook a rich young man and retrieve the family fortunes."

  "That I couldn't have done at any time. What about Alice at twenty-five?"

  "Oh, I was awfully smooth. Worn smooth, I think. I'd been in London three years. It's a hellish place when you're poor -- I had to keep up appearance too. I took some awful jobs when I was resting. Cinema usherette, snack-bar attendant -- everything but a life of shame. But I was still young. I'd lots and lots of bounce left in me."

  "You have now."

  "Yes, but I have to live to a regime to possess it. I just had it then, whatever I did. Would you have liked me then, would you have been romantic about me?"

  "You might still have broken my heart. How could I have helped an ambitious young actress? I'll take you as you are now."

  She got out of bed. "I'll make some coffee."

  "Tea would be nicer.

  "Poor Elspeth," she said. "She lends us her flat and we pinch all her precious tea."

  "I'll get her some more."

  She wrinkled her nose and put her hands palm upward; as I watched her, her face seemed to grow male and vulpine and her nose to lengthen. "Vat, are you in the racket too?" She started to dress.

  "I hate you to put any clothes on," I said.

  "That's sweet of you, but I'm too old to walk about in the nude." She wriggled into her girdle.

  "I like watching you dress, though." She came over in her slip and kissed me. I stroked her back; she was already a different person in the blue silk garment, smaller but already less vulnerable, more controlled. It was a little hard to imagine her as being the same person who, scarcely half an hour since, had been moaning in my arms in the last extremity of a pleasure almost indistinguishable from pain.

  She moved gently out of my embrace and picked up her dress. She went into the kitchen; I heard the flare of a match and the hiss of a gas ring. I dressed quickly; by myself I felt an obscure uneasiness at being naked. I lit a cigarette, the first for two hours, and inhaled deeply.

  It wasn't a big flat; the block was one of the mansions in which the wool lords of Leddersford had once lived; this room had probably belonged to one of the servants. It was furnished in a middle-class, démodé, vaguely theatrical kind of way. The big bed was covered with a mauve quilt; there were pouffes, a satin-walnut table, and a great many photographs of actors and actresses. The white carpet was very thick, and the chairs gilt and spindly-legged. There was a profusion of dolls on the dressing table; it was a boudoir, faintly naughty, rather too feminine. I felt not quite in place there, as if I'd got into the wrong room by mistake.

  I went into the tiny box of a kitchen. Alice was watching the kettle and tapping her foot impatiently. "It won't ever boil if you do that," I said, and took hold of her waist. She leaned back in my arms; I put my face against hers, breathing in her scent. It was if we shared the same lungs. We were breathing deeply and slowly; I was utterly secure and warm. The kettle whistled; at that moment it had the effect of a mill hooter at six in the morning. I let her go reluctantly.

  "Note," she said. "Teapot to kettle, water mustn't be left to boil. Teapot is warm but dry. Now leave for three minutes. Synchronise your watches, men; 2020. Roger?"

  "Roger," I said.

  Her watch was a thin gold wafer with jewels for numerals. "At least, I think it's 2020," she said. "This is very pretty but difficult to tell the time by."

  "I'd like to buy you something like that." I would have liked to stamp on it. Then I reflected that, through taking Alice, I had in a sense, taken away the value of the watch; but even that thought didn't console me very much. She didn't seem to have heard what I said. "Honey, take this stuff in the kitchen. You're hungry, aren't you?"

  "I'll eat anything. Iron Guts they used to call me."

  "That's lovely, I'll always call you Iron Guts. Take these sandwiches in there too, Iron Guts. And the pickles. We'll have a proper do." She giggled like a schoolgirl, her face suddenly losing its harsh lines.

  The bread was fresh and well buttered and the sandwiches were fried chicken, crisp and golden brown. We sat beside each other in comfortable silence; now and again she'd smile at me. When we'd finished eating she went into the kitchen to cut some more bread. I sat with my eyes half closed, sipping the strong tea. Suddenly I heard her call my name. She was standing at the bread-board with her right forefinger dripping blood.

  "It's nothing," she said, but her face was white. I took her to the sink and washed her finger with hot water.
I noticed the first-aid cabinet over the sink and after a little rummaging (Elspeth seemed to have been using the cabinet as a make-up box) found some T.C.P. and a bandage. I poured out a cup of tea and held it to her lips.

  "I want a cigarette," she said.

  "Drink that first."

  She drank it obediently. The colour returned to her cheeks. I lit a cigarette for her and she leaned back against my shoulder.

  "Silly of me to carry on like that. It was the shock, I think. I hate blood . . . You're very competent, aren't you, Joe?"

  "I've bound up worse than that."

  "Joe, have you seen a lot of horrid things? In the RAF, I mean."