The Furnished Room

by Laura Del-Rivo

  ‘You’re right; it is none of your business.’

  ‘I saw you leave his house.’

  He realized, with distaste, that her previous questions had been moves in a complicated plan to get him to talk about Gash. He said: ‘Since you’ve obviously been watching me from behind your net curtains you must have known that the quarrel was about Gash. Why didn’t you come straight to the point, instead of twisting and turning?’

  ‘Yes, well, no need to take that tone.’ She hesitated, then said: ‘Come in for a few minutes, Mr Beckett.’

  Her room smelled of furniture polish and soup. The table was covered by a green chenille cloth with a fringe. The centrepiece was a cut-glass bowl containing wax fruit and a half-darned stocking. She said: ‘I’ll tell you something about your friend Mr Gash. He was in a mental home.’

  He said indifferently: ‘Was he?’

  ‘A mental home!’

  ‘Yes, I heard you.’

  ‘They came and took him away. And he should never have been allowed back, in my opinion. In fact I shouldn’t be surprised if he escaped or something. After all, these lunatics are supposed to be ten times more cunning than normal people, aren’t they? Anyway, he was certainly in no state to mix with ordinary decent people. And they say he’s even worse now.’

  ‘Whom do you mean by They?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know exactly who. Everybody. Everybody says it. They say he had to be put away because... well... because he interfered with little girls.’

  ‘Have you proof?’

  ‘Well, not proof exactly, but that’s what they say he did.’

  ‘You keep referring to the mysterious They. Can’t you be more specific?’

  ‘Well, they, everybody. Anyway, it stands to reason he was one of those nasty old men like you read about in the papers. All those men who have to be taken away, it’s because they’re nasty and dirty. That’s what that Freud said, isn’t it? Not that I’ve ever read his books myself, of course. I don’t want to read a lot of gloomy books about those nasty twisted people, thanks all the same. And I don’t want them roaming the streets, either.’ She flicked a minute speck of dust from the tablecloth; a gesture of finality.

  Beckett left her room, seething with rage. The argument had been pointless because his liking for Gash, or for any of his acquaintances, would not have been diminished by learning that the acquaintance in question was a rapist.

  On the stairs he met the Irish tenant, who was returning from the bathroom in a towelling robe and black socks.

  Beckett’s anger overcame his habitual aloofness. He exclaimed: ‘She’s an insect, a petty-minded insect! Crawling behind net curtains and up noses and over the Sunday scandal papers.’

  ‘Could it be Ma Ackley to whom you’re referring?’

  ‘Yes, her. The worst thing about her is that she’s petty. She expends my time and temper with her constant petty nagging.’

  ‘Ah,’ the Irishman said. ‘Join me in some Guinness.’ He led the way into his room. Beside the door were three paper carrier-bags, filled with empty bottles. On the chest of drawers were clothes brushes, shoe polish, a pound of sausages, and a New Testament. The bed had ex-army blankets, like Beckett’s bed. The Irishman poured out two glasses of Guinness.

  ‘I detest landladies.’ Beckett assumed a squeaky voice in imitation: ‘You walk up and down, you’ve blocked the toilet, you’re running your radio from the light, your bedsprings creaked, your visitors stay after ten, well it just isn’t good enough, this is a respectable house.’ He reverted to his normal voice. ‘They cover the walls with their illiterate little notices, forbidding you to do practically everything except breathe. And they probably grudge you even that privilege. If only they would keep the thing as a business transaction, whereby you pay the rent and they let you alone. But no; they can’t let you alone. They must be perpetually prying and nagging.’

  The Irishman’s dark marsh eyes beamed. ‘Now that was an interesting point you made; that she wastes your time and temper. Now I myself consider all human beings to be worthy of consideration, and all human activities too. And if you refuse to acknowledge certain people; if you say they are nothing to do with you, it means that you are cutting yourself off from life.’

  ‘Most of my activities, such as my job, and most of the people I know, I refuse to acknowledge as being anything to do with me.’

  ‘Then you’re not living properly,’ the Irishman said. The vee neck of his robe revealed the black hairs on his chest, and the vest worn back-to-front with the maker’s label showing. He smelled of sweat and soap.

  ‘You’re probably right.’

  The Irishman grinned. ‘Anyway, as for Ma Ackley, do you know how her late lamented husband passed away, RIP?’

  ‘No?’

  ‘She mistook him for a speck of dust, and swept him into the ashpan.’ Beckett laughed. He suddenly liked the Irishman, which made him feel happy.

  ‘I’m going to Henekeys later,’ the Irishman said. ‘Why don’t you come too?’

  ‘Thanks, I’d like to, but I’m busy this evening.’

  Later, he wondered why he had refused the invitation. He understood why he was disliked by his fellow tenants and Mrs Ackley. They resented his aloof manner with its assumption of superiority. Remembering the priggish, assertive way in which he had stated that the neighbours never thought at all, he understood the landlady’s dislike.

  He thought: I’m a priggish and thoroughly unbearable young man.

  He went to the lavatory, and opened his mother’s letter, sitting on the lavatory seat. He disliked receiving letters from her because he felt guilty about not loving her or anyone, and about his failure to be a credit to her.

  He read swiftly, skipping words:

  Joe dear … so worried… you hardly ever write and your letters are so short and not at all ‘newsy’ ... don’t go short of food, my darling, or have too many late nights… it’s bad to keep food in your room in this hot weather. Has your landlady got a frig? I’m sure she would let you keep your meat and milk and butter there, if you asked her… I haven’t been at all well lately. I’ve had to stay in bed which was a nuisance as I hate being a burden to Dad and Granny Dolan, who were splendid need I say! Anyway I think I am ‘on my feet’ again now…. Father Hogan came round some time ago, he stayed to supper and I gave him some apple pie made from our own apples from the tree in the garden, which was nice … he asked about you, and told some funny stories about when you children used to serve at Mass. I think he is really ‘Mad Irish’! He’s been transferred to St Elizabeth’s in London, which is a new church that has just been built, which is very exciting! So why don’t you go and see him? I told him I was sure you’d like to, I didn’t tell him you had left the Faith, and I hope and pray constantly that you will return to it... my darling, be good… must end now and catch the post.… I had a letter from Aunty Ann, she has a cold but is otherwise alright. ... Dad and Granny send love.… Ever your own Mum, xxxx.

  He replaced the letter in his pocket. On the windowledge was a bent safety-pin and the newspaper that served as toilet paper. He sat on, idly reading the newspaper which was several days old. The front page had a picture of a man wearing a rosette, descending the steps of an aeroplane. His smile and suit were successful; one hand was raised in a civilian salute.

  Farther down the page, Beckett read that a little girl had been found, raped and murdered, in the cellar of an empty house.

  He wondered about the murderer. What had been wrong with his life, that he had taken such an extreme remedy? There must have been a wolf inside him, that had been roused by the sight of a little girl playing in a street.

  The same society had produced the man with the rosette and the unknown murderer. He was suddenly conscious of millions of lives, millions of reactions to the age of sceptics.

  Before leaving, he dropped the envelope of his mother’s letter into the lavatory pan. He pulled the chain, but the envelope did not go down. It floated in the pan, with
the graceful writing blurred by the flush of water.

  In his room there was nothing to do. He tore a page from his notebook, and wrote: Dear Mum, Thank you for your letter. I’m sorry I haven’t written for so long, but…

  Here his inspiration failed. He opened the washstand cupboard and found two biscuits in a paper bag. He was not hungry, but ate them for something to do. Then he ironed the paper bag with his palm, and read the advertising matter on it. Then he yawned like a Sunday afternoon.

  He sat for a while looking at the unlit gas fire, and listened to the cars passing in the street below. After a while he got up and closed the window. The sound of the cars was fainter now.

  Chapter 4

  Mick's Café was a basement dive. It was crowded, and smelled of frying oil, cats, and dead cigarette smoke. Over the counter NO CREDIT was written in coloured bottle-caps.

  The Greek assistant, who wore trousers and a vest, rang the till and shouted up the service hatch: ‘Three Vienna, one Bolognese...’ He slapped the counter with a damp cloth.

  The mirror advertised cigarettes; Beckett caught sight of his distorted image with WOODBINES printed across the forehead. He found a table and sat down.

  The other customers were Soho characters; bums and layabouts dressed like artists. They were different from the smartly dressed teenage set who frequented the coffee bars.

  When Beckett had lived at home, in the subtopia of semi-detached houses with net curtains, he had thought that the neighbours wore respectability like an extra suit of clothes. He had come to London and found places, like this café, where at first he had thought that the people were more honest because they did not wear this extra covering. But he had found another sort of dishonesty instead. He had found writers who did not write, painters who did not paint, petty thieves who were so unsuccessful that they were always scrounging the price of a cup of tea, and pretty girls who turned out to be art-school tarts with dirty faces.

  He had continued to frequent the cafés because the oddly assorted clientele had one thing in common: they were all misfits of one sort or another. Because of this fact, Baroness Tania, who drank methylated spirit, could share a table with Tom, who was a porter and wore British Railways uniform, with Dutchie, whose face bore the scar of a razor slash, and with an ageing young man named Flora who wore make-up and had tinted hair. And because they were all misfits they had not questioned Beckett.

  He had first met Ilsa in one of the cafés. She had gone the rounds of cafés, coffee bars, pubs, and clubs in her student days, and presumably still did. This place, Mick’s, was one of her regular haunts. The thought brought disgust like a bad taste in his mouth. He looked at his watch and saw that she was late.

  An old man pushed past carrying a cup of tea. The pockets of his tattered raincoat were stuffed with bits of paper: newspaper-cuttings, cigarette-cartons, and paper bags. He sat down and started to count them into piles on the table.

  Beckett shifted in his chair. The basement was claustrophobic. The crammed ashtray had overflowed on to the table, which depressed him.

  The old man was joined by a younger man in seedy pinstripe. The younger man leaned forward to talk, emphasizing his points by jabbing the table with his forefinger. ‘… so I told him all he had to do was to be outside Cinerama at seven-thirty…..’

  The old man nodded, not listening, slowly sorting his papers.

  Beckett thought with a sudden sense of freedom that Ilsa was not coming. Then he went through the loose change in his pockets to see whether he had coins to phone her.

  ‘Who’s the three Viennas?’ The Greek assistant banged plates on to the counter and wiped his hands down his sides.

  A student carried a tea with a bun balanced on the saucer. Trying to shove through the crowd, he knocked the old man’s papers off the table.

  The old man stooped, patiently retrieving them one by one.

  The Baroness Tania entered. She was a shrivelled old crone, wearing a black satin dress hung with fringes and crystal beads. Her feet shuffled in unlaced plimsolls. She clutched a wool-embroidered bag filled with scavengings from dustbins.

  Someone shouted: ‘A tea for Tania … Come and have a tea, ducks.’

  Beckett caught a scrap of conversation from the next table. The girl: ‘Tell me what you are looking for.’

  The boy, in beard and duffel coat: ‘I don’t know. Perhaps I am looking for something to look for.’

  ‘... outside Cinerama, I told him. Just be there, I told him, that’s all.…’

  ‘… Tania wants a tea….’

  The man in the pin-stripe gave up talking of his appointment outside Cinerama. He swivelled his chair round, and tried to sell a camera to Silent.

  Silent had a skull-shaped face. His eyes were unmatching, one being set higher than the other. His manner was generally rude and offensive. The other man accepted this because Silent was a cripple. They accepted his rudeness as a peculiarity of speech, like a foreign accent. He was now examining the camera closely, without speaking.

  The pin-stripe man said: ‘It’s a good one...’

  Silent took the camera to pieces, putting the component parts on the table with the precision of a surgeon or a jeweller laying out instruments.

  ‘... made in Germany....’

  Silent reassembled the camera with the same unhurried precision. He handed it back, and shook his head.

  Beckett wondered whether it was true that Silent was a police informer. Everybody said he was. Not that this worried the customers of Mick’s café, for they were too small to be worth shopping, and Silent was useful to them as a buyer of pilfered goods.

  Silent beckoned him over, and asked in his hoarse voice: ‘You got your portable chess?’

  ‘Yes, but I haven’t got time for a game now. I’m waiting for someone.’

  ‘Lend me the set, I want to work something out.’

  Beckett’s chess was in a cardboard box, much battered, and mended with Sellotape. The lid was held on by an elastic band. He lent it to Silent, who gave an ungracious grunt of thanks.

  At nearly seven Ilsa arrived. She was wearing dark glasses, and a smart dress that contrasted sharply with the shabby clothes of the other customers. She posed for a moment in front of the Woodbine mirror, then immediately started to greet people. ‘Jimmy! How marvellous! It’s been simply ages!’ Then she went on to three girls in trousers and long, witch hair. ‘Hello, you three. Turning Les?’

  ‘Oh, Ilsa!’ they chorused in shocked admiration, ‘you know we’re not! You are awful!’

  She passed on to beautiful Michael, who was viciously stabbing the air in the stomach with his flickknife.

  ‘Hello, Michael, how are you?’

  ‘Fab, dear, but dying for a cigarette. Oh, thanks. I suppose you can’t introduce me to a rich Daddy who’s a TV producer, can you? I’ve decided to become a teenage idol.’

  ‘I’ll do my best to find one for you,’ Ilsa said.

  ‘Or of course I might decide to be a ponce, and get some girl to work for me. Think, dear, I read in the paper about a ponce who made six hundred pounds a week, and lived in a Mayfair luxury flat. I mean, it’s a well-known fact they make that amount of money. Would you like to work for me? You could have the flat, and I’d have one room in it. I’d have one wall painted black and the others white. Do you think that would look dramatic?’

  ‘Terribly. But why should I work to support you, you lazy little bastard?’

  ‘Well, someone’s got to support me, dear. I mean, I don’t want to work, or anything depressing like that, do I?’

  A man called out: ‘Don’t listen to him, Ilsa. Come and talk to me instead.’

  Jealous, Beckett watched her extravagant gestures, her orange mouth laughing, and the admiration she caused. She had no interests, he thought. Only stimulants. Without excitement and attention she would be lifeless.

  When she joined him, she said: ‘Sorry I’m late.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘I looked in
at the Cellar Club on the way here, and honestly, you’ve no idea! Bob and George were dancing together, pretending to be queers. God, they were funny. Then we all raved off to the Prince of Wales for a drink.’

  He said: ‘I don’t know your friends.’

  ‘Well, I’ll take you to the Cellar Club one evening and introduce you. You’ll love them. They’re the craziest people.’

  ‘Why are you wearing dark glasses?’

  ‘Because I’ve got a simply bloody hangover from last night.’ She removed the glasses, dangling them by one stem. Without them she was unmasked, pale and ill.

  He went to the counter to order. When he returned, she said: ‘The other evening a man took me out, and every café we entered I said I didn’t like it and demanded to leave. After about the fifth café he was getting terribly embarrassed, and hungry of course. And finally I dragged him all round town to find the one café where I said I’d consider eating, and when we got to the door I said: “What are we doing here?” He said: “Well, we’re going to have dinner.” “You may be going to have dinner,” I said, “but I’m going home. Goodbye.” And off I marched.’

  ‘Why do you do things like that?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. I can’t help being nasty to people if they’re stupid and take it.’ There was an empty American cigarette packet on the table. She pointed to it and said: ‘Yanks.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I like Yank cigarettes.’

  ‘So do I.’

  Beckett became aware that Silent was croaking angrily to him. He called to Silent: ‘What’s the matter?’

  The unmatching eyes glared. ‘The white bishop’s broken.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Why don’t you get a new set? How can you play with a broken piece?’

  Beckett said goodhumouredly: ‘Yes, I must get a new set.’

  Ilsa asked him without interest: ‘What was Silent talking about?’

  ‘He borrowed my peg-chess.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’

  He asked her: ‘What have you been doing since we last met?’