Room at the Top

by John Braine

"My darling," I said, "I'm sorry. I do love you, I'm just idiotically jealous." I took her hand and pulled her down beside me. "Don't cry, love, you'll make your eyes red. Cuddle up and stop crying, just to please Joe." I kissed her gently and felt her relax in my arms.

  "It's horrid at home sometimes," she said between sobs. "They don't talk about you, but I know they don't think we should go about together. They say I'm too young to go about regularly with anyone, but I know that isn't the reason."

  "Why don't you tell them?"

  "Joe," she said, "I'm only nineteen. I'm not trained for anything. They always said there was no need."

  "I can keep you."

  "What if we can't get permission to marry?"

  I thought of the blue budgerigar we once kept at home. I let it out of its cage and it flew into the grimy back yard; within five minutes the cat had got it. I suddenly realised that I couldn't ask her to leave home for some cheap lodgings and a soul-killing routine job in a shop or factory until she was twenty-one. Susan standing all day behind a shop counter, her face frozen into a selling smile and her feet aching, Susan in a factory taking orders from a forewoman who would hate her fiercely because of her youth, her beauty, her accent, her obvious superiority, and who would find a thousand petty ways to make her life miserable: it would make me experience again that moment twenty years ago when I'd seen the mangled body of the budgerigar and had known, without the shadow of a doubt, that the guilt was mine.

  "Don't worry, sweetheart," I said. "We'll find a way to get married."

  "They generally give me what I want," she said. "At least, Daddy does. "They're not unkind, Joe, truly they're not." Suddenly she threw herself on me, covering my face with kisses. "Oh God, I do love you so much, you've no idea -- "

  She made love strenuously; I was put in mind of a hard set of mixed tennis. When I put my hand under her blouse she moaned and shuddered convulsively. "Joe Joe Joe." She was somewhere away from me, I couldn't follow her but I knew that I should be with her. "I love you, Joe. I love you so much that I'd let you walk over me if you wanted, I'd let you tear me into bits and I wouldn't mind." She pressed my hand deep into her breast. "I want you to hurt me there. Oh God, you're so beautiful. You've lovely eyes, like Christ's -- "

  I felt the desire ebb out of me. The words were echoing in my ears, I wouldn't ever be able to rid myself of them. They were romantic, but what was behind them was a passion frightening in its intensity.

  "I love you," I said. "I'd like to kiss you all over, every inch of you."

  "You mightn't like every inch of me," she said.

  "I would." I put my hand under her skirt.

  "No. Please ~

  "Don't you love me?"

  "I'd do anything for you. But I'm scared."

  I rolled away from her. This was how it always ended, and I didn't know whether to be sorry or glad. I lit a cigarette with trembling hands.

  "Don't you love me any more?" she asked in a small voice.

  "My God, Susan, don't you know the facts of life yet? I love you too much, that's the trouble. Can't you see?" I held out my hand. "What do you think I'm made of, darling?"

  "Snips and snails and puppy-dogs' tails," she said. "So there!"

  "And you're sugar and spice and all that's nice," I said. It was futile to explain to her that it plays hell with the nerves to stop at the crucial moment; besides, I wanted to keep her within the framework of the fairy story. "Perhaps it's best to wait," I said. "But I want you properly -- you know what I mean?"

  "Are you sure, Joe? Quite sure."

  "I love you and I want to marry you and give you children," I said. The wind blew her hair across my face, soft and black and smelling of orange water; I wanted it to be longer, I wanted it to cover me and bury me, I wanted to sleep and not to argue, not to lie, not to promise, not to plot my future like a raid over the Ruhr.

  "I want you to," she said. "I dreamt we had a baby last night. He was fair like you, and he was laughing all the time and we were very proud of him. But -- oh, never mind." She stroked my hair gently.

  "But what?"

  "You'll think I'm silly."

  "I promise I won't. Cross my heart."

  "That's not a heart, Lampton," she said. "It's a swinging brick."

  "It's the only one I've got." I tickled her in the ribs and she struggled squealing in my arms. "I'll tickle you until you do tell me."

  "You're cruel," she said. "You're very cruel to poor Susan."

  "Tell me."

  "I was thinking," she said in a whisper, "that you wouldn't like me when I -- when I was having the baby."

  I rocked her in my arms gently. "Silly Susie. A pregnant woman is pleasing unto the Lord. I'd love you all the more, I'd be proud because it was my child."

  "Oh, you are good to me," she said, half crying. "You're so kind, I love you so much."

  That was what I wanted; I applauded my own skill impersonally. The strange thing was that I meant every word of what I said; and it was easy enough to speak them with her firm young body touching mine. But the words were meant for someone else, along with the night, and the new look of Warley under the moon, and the wind, faint again now, as if the grass and the trees and the river down in the valley were breathing in my face: Susan was welcome to all of it, but I had reserved it for someone else a long time ago.

  20

  I hired an evening suit for the Civic Ball. It didn't fit very well, and neither did the shirt I bought to go with it. But as I stood at the open door of the Albert Institute, I couldn't help feeling happy. Light and music spilled out into the road, glistening on the dark leaves of the laurels in the drive; the tune was the tune which all dance bands seemed to play just before one enters the dancehall, a sad, refined, rather sexy little foxtrot of no particular period. The hall was hung with balloons and festooned with coloured paper and there were flowers and ferns everywhere: the Civic Ball was the event of the year at Warley, good for two full pages in the Courier . There was a blue haze of tobacco smoke and a smell of perfume and powder and clean linen and women's sweat; the voices of the guests seemed to rise and fall together as if everyone were one person who'd just been assured on good authority that life on this segment of the globe was going to make sense for the next few hours -- there's no doubt about it, the voice was saying calmly and vigorously, I'm going to enjoy myself.

  Most of the councillors were there, and practically all the Town Hall staff, unfamiliar in the black-and-white of evening suits and with bosoms and arms revealed which were in most instances, I thought, looking with fascination at the tremendous mottled shelf of flesh which the Clerk's secretary carried in front of her, better hidden.

  I saw June at the edge of the dance floor, talking with Teddy Soames. She was wearing an off-the-shoulder green taffeta gown; Teddy, as might be expected, wasn't looking at her face. I went towards her, but just as I was going to speak, they moved off into a waltz. I tried my luck with some of the other girls but only succeeded in getting the promise of some dances later on; the Civic Ball was a program dance, the first of its kind I'd been to. The advice which Hoylake had given me wasn't very good; it was pre-eminently a function to which one had to take a partner. Otherwise, I reflected gloomily as I made a stiff-legged circuit of the floor with a mousy-haired and bespectacled girl from the Library, one was landed with the Grade Tens. I'd have done better to have gone to some dive in Leddersford and picked up a nice broadminded millgirl.

  I went into the bar. That, I thought, as I tried to catch the waiter's eye, was another drawback to these evening-dress functions. You either paid the earth for shorts or you blew yourself up on bottled beer. As I gestured in the direction of the waiter, my shirt front bulged out; I felt a slow flush mottling my neck. It was at that moment that I saw Susan. Jack was with her in a tailored evening suit -- white tie and tails, no less. His cuff links were of gold, naturally, and the white handkerchief in his breast pocket was of silk. He was laughing, showing his white teeth. I would have liked to smash th
em for him; except that he would have smashed mine first. Susan was wearing a silver dress which was a compromise between demureness and sophistication, showing just enough of her thin but rounded shoulders and the shape of those firm young breasts which, I remembered with rather a nasty gloating, I'd seen much more of than that rich oaf beside her.

  She and Jack were part of a little circle of which Brown, his face red and beaming, was the centre. Hoylake was in it too; he was looking straight at me but gave only a brief flicker of a smile. They were at the far side of the room; I turned away from them and got my drink. There was a bad taste in my mouth, the indigestion which always attacks me when I'm angry.

  I drank my beer quickly and ordered a whisky. I stood there with my back to the little circle, wondering whether to join it. I took out a cigarette, fumbled in my pockets, and asked the man next to me for a light. I caught Susan's eye; she smiled dazzlingly and, riding on its crest, I went over to the little group which, as I made the terribly long journey across the room, looked more and more impregnable and dangerous, like one of those circular ironclads with revolving turrets which they used in the American Civil War.

  "Good evening, Susan," I said.

  "Hello, Joe." She hesitated perceptibly. "Have you met my mother and father?"

  "How do you do, Mr. Lampton." There was real warmth in Mrs. Brown's voice. Seen at close quarters she looked even more formidable; she had a face which I felt could set like stone with the pride of caste.

  "Ah've met you at t'Town Hall lad," Brown said. He gave me a quick appraising look from brown eyes the colour of Susan's. He looked as sure of himself as Jack, but in a different way; the Yorkshire accent, which I suspected him of overdoing a bit, was one of the marks of that self-assurance. "Well, what are you drinking?"

  "Scotch, please."

  He snapped his fingers and a waiter came up apparently out of thin air. I glanced at Hoylake. There was for a second a sort of dry glow on his face. He made his excuses and moved off quickly; the room was crowded but he made his way through it without brushing anyone. He wasn't looking where he was going either; I remembered the old story of Queen Victoria, who always sat down immediately she felt the desire to, never for an instant bothering whether or not a chair might be there. The light winked on his black spectacles and bald head, his evening suit was the uniform of some complicated and cruel Byzantine hierarchy; the King and Queen were looking at me thoughtfully and coolly now the servant was handing me a glass of hot amber, which the thought of drinking made my stomach twist away from in fear, as if it were some potion which would force me to divulge the whole unforgivable truth, the Princess was whispering something polite and giving me a social smile as if we'd only that moment met, and the Prince from his superior height was preparing to say something gracious to the poor vulgar ex-sergeant who might perhaps be ill at ease among his betters.

  "By the way, weren't you at Compton Bassett?" he asked.

  "The Fifty-first," I said.

  "A very great friend of mine was with that squadron. Darrow, Chick Darrow. Thoroughly decent chap, went to school with him. Went for a Burton over the Ruhr."

  We noncoms used to say got the chopper . Going for a Burton was journalist's talk. It sickened me a bit; though I suppose that he was merely making an attempt to talk what he thought was my language. "I don't remember him."

  "Oh, you must have met him. You couldn't miss old Chick. Bright red hair and a terrific baritone. Could've been professional."

  "I never met him," I said, and kept saying for the next fifteen minutes during which he, assisted from time to time by Brown and his wife, played the Do You Know So and So game hard and fast from all angles, social, political, and even religious -- they were astounded that I didn't know Canon Jones at Leddersford, he was very High of course but he was the only clergyman of any intellectual distinction whatever in the North of England . . . It's a well-known game, its object being the humiliation of those with less money than yourself; I wouldn't exactly say that they were successful in this, but I certainly paid dearly for Brown's whisky and the whisky which Jack also bought me. The extra refinement, the grace note, was Jack's waving away of my offer to buy the drinks. ("No, old boy, frightfully dear stuff this.")

  I've never in all my life felt so completely friendless; I was at bay among the glasses of sherry and whisky, with the vicious little darts laden with the pride-paralysing curare of Do you know -- ? and Surely you've met -- ? and You must have come across -- ? thrown at me unceasingly. Susan said very little but I could see that she knew what was going on. She would have helped me if she could but didn't possess the necessary experience or strength of character to do so.

  I'd had two pints of old at the St. Clair before I went to the dance; combined with four whiskies and my increasing irritation they made me forget my usual caution. I wasn't drunk; but I wasn't fully in control of myself. Jack asked me if I knew the Smiling Zombie's son.

  "Amazing chap," he said. "Mind you, he'll kill himself in that old Alfa. Drives like a maniac. You must know him, he's always around Dufton."

  "I don't know any tallymen," I said.

  There was a silence.

  "I don't follow you, old man."

  "A tallyman sells clothes on credit," I said. "In effect it's moneylending. You buy direct from the manufacturer and sell at a retail price about fifty per cent above what I, or any other person with eyes in his head, would pay. Then you charge interest -- "

  "It's business," Jack cut in. "You wouldn't refuse the profits, would you?"

  "It's a dirty business," I said.

  Mrs. Brown's face had up to then been quite blank. It was a well-shaped face with large eyes and a pale clear skin which accentuated the soft blackness of her hair. As I spoke, she admitted an expression of faint disgust to her face; she wasn't, the expression said, a friend of this vulgar person with the bulging shirt front and the chromium cuff links, nor did she wish to be after being a witness of the crude and ill-balanced way in which he had answered a perfectly civil remark of dear Jack's; Jack had been remarkably kind, speaking to him almost as if he were a human being, and naturally it had gone to the creature's head. She took Brown's arm.

  "This is our dance, dear. Goodbye for the present, Mr. Lampton."

  Brown grinned at me. "Don't worry about the way the world's run, lad. Enjoy yourself when you're young." He gave me a pat on the shoulder and moved off into the crowd. He had the same way of talking and the same Edwardian solidity as my father; I found myself wishing that I wasn't, for the sake of my self-esteem, compelled to hate him.

  2

  "I must see you, Alice," I said.

  "Must you really?"

  "I'm sorry. I'm sorry about it all."

  "It's taken you a long time to find it out."

  "I can't explain over the phone," I said. "I wouldn't have made all that fuss but -- "

  "But what?"

  "You meant so much to me. I was so happy with you . . ." The words wouldn't come out of the stable from which they'd pranced so readily to take Susan into a world of fantasy; I knew they were there, they were the groomed and saddled horses waiting to take us away from lies and loneliness, from the humiliation of the hired evening suit and the whiskies flung at me like hot pennies. But it wasn't the time yet.

  "I might have found someone else," she said.

  "Oh God, no." But I wasn't really frightened; I was sure she'd sensed the unspoken words too.

  "I haven't. I love the cool way you assume that I've just been sitting here waiting for you to crook your little finger. You take too much for granted."

  "All right then. I suppose I was a fool to expect you to forgive me -- "

  "Wait. I'll be at the St. Clair. About nine. I must go now. George is coming down."

  "But it's past ten," I said stupidly.

  She laughed. "You're incredible, darling. Goodbye."

  She hung up before I had the chance to answer and I went back to the Town Hall, nearly walking under a bus; everything w
as tickety-boo again and I was so happy that I moved in a trance; simply to hear her slightly husky voice again had lifted all the worries from my shoulders, made what had happened at the Civic Ball trivial.

  I bumped into June when I was running along the long corridor into the Treasurer's. Unthinkingly I put my hands out to her waist and kissed her soft cheek with its lovely golden down. I didn't kiss her but all women; I know they're stupid and unaccountable, ruled by the moon one and all, poor bitches, but there's a physical goodness about them as sacred as milk -- there's no such thing as a bad woman, because their soft complexities are what give us life.

  She put her hand to her cheek. "Summer is here," she said.

  "It's always summer wherever you are," I said.

  I saw her lips tremble and her face go dreamy. For a second I saw the truth. She was a good girl, a virgin -- you can always tell -- and I'd seen her mother once, a decent plump woman with a cheerful face who, June had once told me, had taught her everything about housekeeping from baking to brewing. In a healthier kind of society she'd have worn a special headdress or hair style or a flower behind her ear to indicate that she was looking for a husband; and in a heathier kind of society all the young men would have been pursuing her -- hotly and fiercely but with honourable intentions. There was an honest nourishing happiness emanating from her; if women were like food she'd be like good dripping with its mixture of salty richness and almost sweet blandness; if the image seems ludicrous, put your nose near a bowl of fresh beef dripping; it has a smell which is homely and warm as a clean kitchen but is also as exciting and poetic as the flowers and grass the beasts feed upon.