The Furnished Room

by Laura Del-Rivo

  ‘Oh dear,’ Georgia said, ‘she’s too busy to talk to us. Nobody loves us. Still, never mind, we love each other.’

  ‘That’s right, we love each other.’

  She pushed against him. ‘Do you know, all this drink has gone to my head rather.’

  ‘Mine too.’

  ‘Drink takes away all my powers of resistance, which aren’t very strong at the best of times.’ Suggestive giggle. ‘You could do anything with me now, Joe. Anything at all, if you wanted to.’

  He stared at her. Then kissed her mouth hard and unlovingly and forced her down on to the divan.

  The room was not there. There was only Georgia’s body, lying half across him, as heavy and inevitable as a sandbag. Her mouth was glued to his; the curtain of her hair was rung down against escape.

  Then, inevitably, he was saying that the room was too noisy, too crowded, that the party was a bore anyway, and that it would be a good idea if they left and went back to his place.

  She sat up. Her lipstick was smudged; her face was sensual with surrender. ‘All right, Joe.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Yes, now if you like.’

  They were both embarrassed by the mechanics of seduction. He said: ‘Well, let’s go, then.’

  ‘I must just get my jacket. I left it in the other room. Will you wait?’

  ‘Yes, of course. Don’t be long.’

  As she got up, her dress brushed his knees. He felt quick surprise that she was now a stranger, and tonight he was going to sleep with her. Already the element of disappointment was there.

  He knew he must be drunk, because when he put his glass down on the table the table was not there and the glass fell to the floor. He watched the wetness darkening the carpet; and then he was not there but in another corner of the room, talking to strangers. He did not know how he came to be talking to them.

  Discomfort made him lurch off in search of the lavatory. Going down the stairs, he thought: Tonight I shall sleep with an auburn-haired tart... Soon he and Georgia would be on the Tube, sitting with their thighs touching, and he would be thinking to the rattle of the train: I’m going to sleep with an auburn-haired tart; I’m going to sleep with an auburn-haired tart...

  His mouth was thick with the metallic taste of wine. He could hear the noise of the party. The flat was full of drunken extroverts. He had only to let go to be as drunk as they were. But he could not let go. He remained unbending, thinking of Georgia with adult loveless lust. He felt immeasurably older than the others.

  When he returned to the room Ilsa and a young man were giving an exhibition of jiving. It was the sort of situation Ilsa adored; she loved being the centre of attention. Her skirt flame-swirled as she danced.

  Suddenly she stopped, and shouted in her rude voice to one of the watching men: ‘Go on, stare! I’ve got nice legs, haven’t I?’

  Everybody was silent. Ilsa’s partner stood with his arm extended, like a statue.

  The man whom she had insulted backed, embarrassed. ‘I wasn’t staring at you... I wasn’t doing any harm... I was only watching.’

  ‘Oh yes, I know the way you watch. Would you like me to take my dress off, so that you can watch better?’

  ‘No, no, really…’

  Ilsa had worked herself up into a pitch of insolence. ‘Go on, tell me to and I will. That’s what you want, isn’t it?’ Beckett felt jealousy because of her showing-off, and because none of the people here knew that Ilsa had belonged to him.

  Then the incident was over. More couples took the floor, and the dancing began again.

  Beckett went and stood by the window. He drew back the curtain and looked down at the garden. The noise of the party seemed distant, as if he was shut off from it. That was a relief. He didn’t want anything to do with the party or with that bloody little bitch Ilsa Barnes.

  After a while she came and stood beside him. ‘I say, give me a fag, will you?’

  He offered her the packet and then took one himself.

  She bent her head for the match, her blonde hair falling in separate strands to her shoulders. She smiled at him. Then she looked out of the window. ‘Joe-Joe.’

  ‘Ilse-Ilse.’

  ‘I’m glad to see you.’

  ‘I’m glad to see you.’

  She said: ‘You keeping all right?’

  ‘Not bad. And you?’

  ‘Oh, marvellous. On the whole.’ She switched to her hard bright voice. ‘Have you been to Tony’s Club? They’ve got a new guitarist.’

  ‘No, I haven’t.’

  ‘To the Jazz Cellar?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘To the Saturday-night parties at Cliff and Una’s, then?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Christ,’ she said, ‘you don’t go anywhere, do you? No wonder I’ve looked out for you in vain.’

  ‘Have you?’

  ‘Well of course I have, hon. You don’t think I’m so unfriendly, do you?’

  He said: ‘I’ve always tended to spend most of my time in my room, reading. As if it was a monastic cell. By the way, I’ve moved from the Paddington room. I’m in Notting Hill now.’

  ‘Nice room?’

  ‘No, hideous. You know, the typical bedsitter.’

  They were silent for a while. He watched her as she smoked. Her bare arms were thin, like the broken stalks of flowers. Suddenly she exclaimed: ‘I say, wasn’t it funny when I went for that chap! He was staring at me with his eyes popping out of his head, the fool. He was scared stiff I’d really take my dress off.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have let you do that.’

  ‘Oh, really? And what would you have done to stop me?’

  ‘Hit you or something, probably.’

  She said rudely: ‘How caveman.’

  ‘Oh, shut up.’ Then he asked: ‘Who was the man, anyway?’

  ‘Just somebody I went out with once or twice. He’s in love with me, I think. But I got sick of him.’ She crushed out her unfinished cigarette. ‘You know how it is.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘I enjoy making a man fall in love with me. Especially if he doesn’t want to; if he doesn’t like me or if he belongs to somebody else. I make him fall in love with me but when he does I lose interest. And the more of a devoted spaniel he becomes the more he irritates me. And finally I ditch him, and the girl I took him off can have him back. Only generally he doesn’t want her. He still wants me.’

  ‘I see.’

  She regarded him with her anxious, untrustworthy eyes. ‘I suppose I was an awful bitch to you, wasn’t I?’

  ‘No, not really, love.’

  ‘I bet I was. I always am. But you were just as unpleasant in your way as I was in mine. You always despised me, didn’t you, Joe? You didn’t really love me; you only gave an imitation of it. You wanted my body, and tolerated my company for the sake of that. The other men I’ve had were spaniels, and I always ended by kicking them, but you and I parted just about quits. And I am honest with you, Joe, aren’t I?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘Even if it’s only to tell you that it’s no good.’ She strummed her fingers on the window-ledge. ‘I say, give me another cigarette, will you?’

  He gave her one.

  ‘Thanks. Do you think they’ve got any Bugs Bugloss records here?’

  ‘I don’t know. Who is he?’

  ‘Haven’t you heard of him? He’s my latest craze. Vocal and clarinet. He was guest artiste at the Cellar Club last week, and I spent the last of my wages on entrance money. Here, I’ve got the photographs...’

  The first three showed a band playing, and people jiving in a dimly lit club. Ilsa was in the foreground in all of them; a thin girl with a hard, young face, showing off for the cameras. The other photographs were an assortment of snaps, nearly all signed with some sentimental message. To Ilsa, with tons of love; Ilsa, always a pal; To Ilsa, with fond remembrance.

  ‘I collect snaps,’ she said, taking them back and returning them to her handbag.

  ‘And
friends, it would seem.’

  ‘Oh yes, I like lots of people, lots of excitement. Otherwise I get bored. By the way, why were you in such a huddle with Georgia? She’s years older than you, and she’s fat.’

  ‘Don’t you like her? She seemed to like you.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Ilsa jeered, ‘I can just imagine her saying it. “Poor Ilsa, she is so sweet, what a pity she had to leave the art school.” Bloody fool! Everybody seems to think I must be upset at leaving St Martin’s. Well, as a matter of fact I never gave a damn about painting. I only went there to escape from home, and because I thought there would be lots of attractive male students. And I left because I was sick of dressing like a student, and never having any money, and because I wanted to buy some smart clothes. Does that shock you? Too bad.’ She pushed her hair abruptly back from her forehead. ‘Well, I must go and talk to somebody. Bye-bye, see you later.’

  Alone, Beckett looked at the cigarette-ends, smeared with lipstick, that she had trodden into the carpet. She chucked everything away like that, like unfinished cigarettes. She chucked away her smart social manner, her trite remarks: ‘Bye-bye.’ ‘Marvellous to see you.’ ‘Like to buy me a drink?’ ‘Christ, how I hate rain.’ And men scrambled for these chuck-outs as if they were pearls.

  There was another drink in his hand. He could not remember how he had got it, and he had lost count of the number he had drunk.

  ‘... but, I mean, Cornwall is terribly bogus, isn’t it?...’

  ‘... so this American goes into this chemist shop, you see, and asks for ...’

  ‘... surely all the white wine hasn’t gone...’

  ‘... and her husband put a tape-recorder under the bed...’

  A boy called Michael, who at seventeen was a cross between a juvenile delinquent and a poet, was dancing in an ecstatic frenzy. The jazz was in demonic possession of him; he yipped and screamed.

  ‘Joe!’ Georgia slipped her hand through Beckett’s arm. ‘Are we going?’ She was wearing a jacket of pale blue nylon fur, which cast a soft shadow on her powdered cheek.

  ‘Of course. Right away. I was waiting for you.’

  ‘I’m sorry I was such a long time, but I was talking to a man who hasn’t got anywhere to stay the night. Oh, here he is…’

  ‘Dyce,’ the man said, gripping Beckett’s hand. ‘Captain Dick Dyce.’

  He was in a garden, talking to the dark, well-dressed man with the decisive features who had introduced himself as Dyce. He felt his drunkenness recede. A shape floated beside him; he concentrated on the shape, and it became static and turned into a rose bush. He thought it strange that there should be a rose bush in the middle of a party night.

  Dyce said: ‘Well, I’m glad we’ve got out of that dreary gathering upstairs. Who’s giving the party, anyway? You got any idea?’

  Beckett frowned, trying to collect his thoughts. ‘Where’s Georgia?’

  ‘Oh, she’s all right. She said she’d wait.’

  ‘Wait. She’d wait.’ He rubbed his brow, and the drunkenness receded further. He was almost sober. He answered Dyce: ‘I think the hostess is the woman in leopard-skin trousers. Not sure, though.’

  ‘The leopard-skin female, by God. It’s always as well to know who one’s hostess is. Otherwise I might have told her what a bloody hideous flat she’s got. Although I suspect she would have taken it as a compliment. Most women like being insulted. Well, tell me, what brought you here tonight?’

  ‘I wanted to pick up a girl.’

  Dyce grinned, showing the good teeth. ‘Quite, old boy. But none of the girls here are worth picking up.’

  ‘Not even the little blonde one, Ilsa?’

  ‘Ah yes. Now she has something. A natural style. But she’s too rowdy, with that strident voice of hers, and the way she has to call attention to herself all the time. But spend some time and money training that girl and she could be made into quite a stunner. Unfortunately, life’s too short. I don’t have that much time to spend on one woman; there are too many other apples waiting to be picked.’

  Annoyed, Beckett said nothing.

  ‘How old is the Ilsa girl?’ Dyce asked. ‘Twenty-two or something?’

  ‘Nineteen.’

  ‘Oh well, I’ll have another look at her in a few years’ time, when she’s had the corners knocked off her.’

  ‘What makes you think she’ll like you?’

  ‘When I’m drunk, old boy, everything happens right,’ Dyce said. He added: ‘I’m drunk now.’

  ‘You don’t seem it.’

  ‘I know; I never do. Strange, isn’t it?’

  ‘I’m much the same.’

  ‘By the way, are you and Georgia fixed up?’

  Beckett said: ‘She’s coming home with me, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘Well, look, I wonder if you could do me a favour. I don’t particularly care for Georgia. The good-hearted barmaid type, not my style at all. But I’m out of a place to stay the night, and I wondered if Georgia could put me up. Unless it means a lot to you, of course.’

  Beckett felt slightly disgusted by his own conduct and by the false heartiness in Dyce’s voice. Dyce evoked the fake major in the Tudor roadhouse who slaps you on the back and asks you to cash his cheque. He said: ‘I’m not particularly interested in her. If you think you can get her to put you up for the night, go ahead. It’s all right by me.’

  ‘Oh, I can get her all right. She’s a nympho, that girl. Go with any man who snapped his fingers for her.’

  ‘Go ahead, then.’

  ‘I like you,’ Dyce said. ‘You’re a decent type. Know what my philosophy is? Like people but never trust them. What do you do for a living?’

  ‘I’m a clerk in an office.’

  ‘An office? That’s death from suffocation. I tried it once. Hopeless lot of old fuddy-duddies. Terrified of change, progress, the new man with bright ideas. Try to speed things up a bit, and they gasp and flounder like landed fish. Miserable until they get back into their safe tank again.’ Dyce offered his cigarette-case, then flicked the lighter. When he smoked he slit his eyes as if he were mapping out a plan of campaign. ‘We’ll have to get you out of that office, my lad.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I never keep any job for long. I generally get sacked for lateness. In the mornings the thought of the office depresses me so much that I stay in bed instead. Sometimes I’m so late that I decide to take the whole day off. One day stretches to three, and by the time I’ve been away for a week I know I shall never return. I’ve left innumerable jobs that way.’

  Dyce nodded, blowing out smoke. ‘Offices are the end. My God, what a life. End up at fifty living in some hideous semi-detached villa in the suburbs, which you can’t leave because of the mortgage. Sleeping with some fat, ugly woman because you were stupid enough to marry her when she was young and pretty. That’s no life for anyone with any guts.’

  ‘I get lousy jobs deliberately. I prefer to have a lousy job, and keep sight of the fact that I detest it and regard it as a stupid waste of time, rather than have a better job and the risk of compromising with it.’

  ‘I don’t agree with you there. You’ve got to compromise if you’re going to succeed in life. But always make sure that you get the best side of the compromise. Only make treaties when they’re in your favour. That’s the way to get on in life, to get money and the other things you want.’

  Beckett said: ‘You’re an ambitious man, then?’

  ‘Ambitious? If wanting to get my share of the good things is ambitious, yes, I am.’ Dyce pointed to the lit windows of the party flat. ‘That flat up there, for instance. It’s ugly, it’s depressing, it’s cheap. And I’ll lay a fiver that you live in a place practically identical to it.’

  ‘Worse. I only have a room, not a flat.’

  ‘Of course you do. And millions like you do. A poky, furnished room, or a house in some dull suburb. And do you know why? It’s because they haven’t the guts to seize life by the throat and take what they want from it.’

&n
bsp; Beckett felt angry, not only at Dyce’s last remark but at his whole patronizing attitude, his irritating ‘old boys’. Dyce could not be more than twenty years older than he. He said: ‘It’s easy to talk, but if you’ve got so much money why do you need Georgia to put you up for the night? Why can’t you afford a hotel?’

  ‘I admit it, I admit it freely. I’m skint at the moment. But, by Christ, I don’t intend to stay skint for long. I’ve got plenty of possibilities lined up, and I guarantee that within a few days some of them will have materialized, and I’ll have plenty of loot. Listen, I’ve been around all over the world, and I’ve seen life. Life in high society and life in the gutter. If it suits me to live like a tramp for a bit I can sleep in ditches and it won’t affect me. But if I’ve got money it’s got to be big money. I’ll have the best hotel, and the best service, and a genuine highclass haughty girl to hang on my arm. And when I’ve spent the money I’ll change again. Either I’ll return to being a tramp for a bit or else I’ll pit all my wits into getting some more money.’ Dyce spun his cigarette into the roses. ‘You’ve got to adapt in this world, old boy. Adapt and compromise. But do it when it suits you, not when it suits other people.’

  ‘If you make money so fast, you must have a racket, not a job.’

  ‘So what if I have? Any disapproval?’

  ‘No, not at all,’ Beckett said. ‘It’s no concern of mine how you get your money.’

  Dyce grinned. ‘I like you. I like you more and more.’ He pointed to the sky. ‘Look at that. All those stars. Sky looks like a suspended snowstorm. Hey, not bad, that. I should be a poet.’ He turned to Beckett again. ‘My life has taught me a bit, anyway. Taught me that I’ve got to make my body as efficient and controlled as a machine. A machine which is always ready, which only has to be triggered off to react correctly, automatically, at a moment’s notice. I’ve trained myself to do the right thing automatically in situations when I don’t have time to think but only to act. Reflex action, like pressing a switch.and the red light comes on. And I’ll tell you, I can take care of myself anywhere, in an East End pub or a Riviera casino, and I’ll win out no matter how much bigger and stronger the other guy is.’ Dyce rubbed his right fist on his left palm. ‘How old would you say I was?’