The Lodger

by Louisa Treger

  Dorothy glanced down at her hands. Jane had changed since their school days; she’d been swallowed up into the life of household women, losing the intellectual daring that Dorothy used to admire. They were not entirely at ease with one another; it was a struggle to find things to talk about. She was sure Jane felt the strain, too. What if all they had left in common were their feelings for Bertie?

  “How is your mother?” she asked.

  Jane rolled her eyes. “She was devastated when I went off with Bertie, you know, because he was still married. In fact, she swore she’d kill herself. I ignored all her pleas and threats, so she sent a posse of uncles and cousins round to our lodgings to make us see sense, but that didn’t have the desired effect either.” Jane hesitated and laid her hand on Dorothy’s arm. “Oh Dora, I wish you’d been around to confide in. I loved Bertie and believed in him utterly, but at times I felt so isolated and demoralized. I was defying not only my family, but the whole world.”

  “It must have been difficult,” Dorothy murmured, heavy with secret growing shame.

  “Yes, it was for a long while, though things improved once Bertie’s divorce came through and he married me. Mother began to accept him grudgingly. She comes to stay fairly regularly, and she and Bertie are almost civil to one another these days…”

  The door opened and Bertie came in. “Here you are,” he said impatiently. “The fire in my study has gone out. I can’t get it started again; the wood must be damp. There’s smoke billowing everywhere…”

  “I’ll see to it,” Jane said, rising swiftly to her feet. “Back in two ticks, Dora.”

  They both went out.

  Dorothy stayed on the sofa, listening to the sounds of the maids going about their daily chores in other parts of the house. She was thinking how skillfully Jane managed Bertie’s house and his moods. Jane provided a perfectly stable background for his writing and responded tactfully to his every whim. She was there when wanted by him, never underfoot when not. Bertie admitted to Dorothy, with rueful humor, that every writer should have a Jane.

  Yet Dorothy noticed a trace of fear in Jane’s dealings with him, an almost desperate wish to assuage his irritability. Beneath the cheerful surface of life in their house, there was tension. Bertie was frequently away. There was an artificiality about Jane; a careful watchfulness. This was present in everything from the eagerness of her smile to her concern with current affairs; she was utterly devoid of spontaneity.

  Dorothy was dimly beginning to realize that Jane protected herself by freezing many of her own emotions and needs. “Jane” was a persona created jointly by her and Bertie, someone who was able to cope with the demands of their joint life. Amy Catherine was more real; real and vulnerable. But she was all but buried beneath the construct that was Jane.

  Jane came back and sat down next to Dorothy on the sofa. She took Dorothy’s hand. “I’m glad you’re here, old thing,” she said, giving it a squeeze.

  A panicked sense of her own treachery swept through Dorothy. She fought down a sudden overwhelming urge to confess everything. Why couldn’t Jane see the attraction that burned like fire between her and Bertie? She wanted to tell Jane to send her away before it was too late; never to invite her again.

  She glanced remorsefully across at Jane and saw, with a sharp pang of pity, that Jane was losing her looks. Her skin seemed drier and less dewy. The fine lines which had begun to appear around her eyes had deepened. To save trouble, she did her hair in a tight bun on the top of her head, which didn’t suit her.

  “You know your old hairstyle?” Dorothy asked, suddenly. “You wore most of it down, and it flowed around your shoulders.”

  “Yes, what about it?”

  “Well, I preferred it. It flattered you better.”

  Jane responded with a swift hurt look. There was an unmistakable flash of dislike in her large brown eyes, which vanished almost immediately. It made Dorothy wonder how much Jane guessed.

  * * *

  BERTIE OPENED HIS study door as Dorothy was walking down the passage. “Come and talk to me.”

  “Shouldn’t you be working?”

  “I can’t work,” Bertie admitted. “My mind and my thoughts—are just swirling about … I’m distracted by wanting you. It’s like someone murmuring continuously in a room while I try to write.”

  He saw the doubt in Dorothy’s eyes, and he answered her gently, without her having to put anything into words. “Jane is the anchor of my existence. You are the zest.”

  Dorothy stepped into the room and he shut the door behind her. There was silence.

  “Damn you!” he burst out. “Not having you is interfering with my work, my mission…” He flung a hand at the untidy heap of pages on his desk.

  “May I look?” she asked cautiously.

  He nodded moodily. “It’s in its infancy still. It’s an essay called ‘The Contemporary Novel.’”

  Filled with curiosity, Dorothy picked up sheets covered with small, densely written prose. He had never let her see his work in progress before.

  We are going to write about it all. We are going to write about business and finance, and politics and precedence, and decorum and indecorum, until a thousand pretenses and a thousand impostures shrivel in the cold, clean air of our elucidations. We are going to write of waste of opportunities and latent beauties until a thousand new ways of living open to man and woman. We are going to appeal to the young and the hopeful and the curious against the established, the dignified and defensive. Before we have done, we will have all life within the novel.

  When she’d finished, there was silence.

  “Don’t you like it?” Bertie asked, at last.

  “I more than like it … it’s brilliant. You are almost the only writer who can cut loose from the old ways of thinking, and you aren’t afraid to tell the truth. You’re going to change lives and make a real difference to the world.”

  He smiled broadly; Dorothy could feel his enormous pride in his mental agility. He was like a ringmaster entering the circus tent with a spring in his step, knowing he was going to tame wild animals and bend them to his will.

  “I want to describe the contemporary social and political system in England,” he said. “With all its flaws and corruption and its terrible disregard for the poor … through writing about it, I want to raise the status of the novel to the level of political debate … I’m fired by a vision of a world still decades in front of us. I can see its truth and urgency, yet I can’t seem to bring it into being. It’s my work and duty, my set of rules for life and the only religion I have—”

  “You know the huge difference between you and me?”

  He shook his head, smiling. “Tell me.”

  “To me, literature is an end in itself, a thing of beauty and wonder. To you, it’s a vehicle, a tool. It has a purpose.”

  “Of course it does. A book without a purpose is simply the writer’s impertinence.”

  He got to his feet and moved closer to Dorothy. The exasperation in his voice belied the warmth in his eyes. “But it’s absurd to think that having a purpose rids a work of beauty…”

  They were standing very close now, eye to eye. Dorothy started to say something, but Bertie placed one finger lightly on her lips. He took her hot face between his unsteady hands and kissed her half-open mouth. When he kissed her, she trembled and he held her closer, wanting to kiss her again. But she pulled away and left the room, overwhelmed by the softness of his mouth beneath the scrape of his mustache and the web of tangled emotion it produced.

  * * *

  BEFORE SHE WENT down for dinner, Dorothy examined herself in the long bedroom mirror. She was revitalized; no longer the ground-down Londoner who had arrived on the Wellses’ doorstep. The removal of tension and fatigue made her face look fresher, emphasizing the softness of its lines. A brisk walk along the beach in the afternoon had brought a healthy flush to her cheeks. The gaslight showed up the gold tints in the coiled mass of her hair and the warm brown depths of her ey
es.

  She made her way unhurriedly down the wide green staircase. There were raised voices coming from the drawing room. Faintly shocked, she hesitated on the landing, which was lined with bookshelves and decorated by stuffed birds. She didn’t know whether to interrupt or to tiptoe back upstairs.

  She could clearly hear Jane saying, “You seek each other’s gaze. You meet her eye, she looks away. You make her feel … desirable.”

  Dorothy’s breath caught in her throat.

  Bertie sounded strident, cross. “This is beneath you, Jane. You know that while you stand over my life, no dalliance of this sort will ever wreck what we share. You are my fastness, my safe place. You are wedded to me—beyond jealousy.”

  Jane answered in a low voice. As hard as Dorothy strained, she couldn’t make out her words.

  There was silence. Then the sound of muffled sobbing.

  When Bertie spoke again, his tone had changed. There was a tenderness in the high voice that made it almost husky. Dorothy was intruding on something so intimate she could hardly bear it. But she couldn’t tear herself away.

  “I know I’ve been restless and peevish for the past few months,” he admitted. “When I’m at home for more than a few days at a time, I get into an impatient and claustrophobic state, I can’t help myself. I know how ugly this sounds, forgive me … the crude fact is that I have bodily appetites you are too fragile to meet. I truly love you, but I have this basic need for the thing itself. I must have it when the craving takes me, to release tension and leave my mind clear for work. You and my work are my true obsessions. The sex thing is merely refreshment. Believe me, I have no satisfaction in being enslaved to its tiresome insatiability.” He paused. “I have loved you profoundly from the first moment I met you, and I always shall. You’re my little helper and my dearest mate. You are part of me and you’ve been the making of me. Hush, my dearest love, hush. I can’t bear it when you cry like this.”

  There was silence. The stuffed pheasant next to Dorothy stared at her with glassy, accusing eyes. She imagined Bertie had taken Jane into his arms … perhaps he was kissing Jane, as he’d kissed Dorothy two short hours ago—she couldn’t stand it. She was simply “the sex thing,” a passing “refreshment.” He was using her to slake a simple hunger and facilitate his work.

  Dorothy’s face was flaming. Nausea and bile rose in her chest so powerfully, she was afraid she might be sick. She crept tremulously upstairs.

  She sent a message through the housemaid that she had a headache, and wouldn’t be joining them for dinner. Then she slipped on a coat and quietly left the house.

  It was a cool evening. A fine rain was falling, and the rich scent of damp earth rose from the ground. As Dorothy crossed the lawn, she lifted her burning face to receive the rain. Waves of anguish and shame were pouring out of her body, like a smell; the air was thick with it. This pain could not be endured. It would fade with time; it had to. She wished she could wind time forward, or go to sleep and wake up when it had stopped hurting.

  She could hear the roar of the sea below her, and wet trees sighing and rustling in the wind. It was almost dark, and the tips of their silhouettes were visible against the sky, but only just. Heavy clouds covered the moon, swallowing everything down into shadow.

  She made her way through the rose garden. The red roses were like dark shadows; the white ones resembled pale faces in the dimness, watching her. She passed the vegetable garden and the terraced square, and took the uneven track that led down to the sea. It was getting darker; she had to strain to see where she was going. The path was treacherous, and once or twice she stumbled. The rain soaked through her clothes and hair. She was starting to feel cold and afraid, but she didn’t want to return to the house.

  Her foot caught on a twisted root lying across the path. She lost her balance and the ground came rushing up to meet her …

  Dorothy lay convulsed against the cold slimy stone. There was searing pain in her left knee. A sticky ooze of blood was spreading beneath her stockings.

  She was freezing, but she didn’t want to move. She was maddened by shame and pain; tormented by the hurt she’d caused Jane. Without Bertie’s interest illuminating her life, she was nothing.

  She couldn’t stand being alone with the stabbing needles of her thoughts. There was no reprieve from them, except in madness; a swiftly enfolding, redeeming madness that would obliterate awareness. She welcomed the idea. The line between sanity and madness seemed pitifully puny: both states harboring the same impulses; the difference lying merely in the mind’s power to exert a restraining signal … She couldn’t struggle any longer. If she could only see her mother again, if she could spend a few minutes with her, she would willingly sacrifice the rest of her life …

  Tears came. She wept for a long time, silently, there on the path.

  After she’d cried herself out completely, she felt calmer. A strange, icy numbness descended on her, as though she was on another planet and the air was lighter. She stumbled to her feet. Her clothes were wet and muddy, with sodden bits of grass and leaves sticking to them. Clumsily, she brushed herself down. Her knee was still bleeding. She shambled slowly back toward the house.

  Seven

  Her taste of bliss was over before she’d even had a chance to grow accustomed to it. An annihilating torpor threatened to engulf Dorothy; a strange, frightening state. She lay on her bed, rigid. All the good things, all the hope seemed to have drained from the world. It was terrifying to feel the meaning seeping out of everything, leaving only blankness in its wake. It was like dying; like being buried alive.

  Her face was contorted with the effort of holding back tears. She raised her throbbing head from the pillow and glanced around her attic room. It had lost its charm; become nothing but a confined space in which she waited for the next visit to the Wellses. And now there would be no more visits.

  A bout of weeping seized her then: hard, dry sobs. She was surprised by how much crying hurt. She wondered wretchedly who she could talk to, whose company might ease this withering pain.

  Benjamin had finally found other lodgings and moved out, leaving her relieved, but with a gaping sense of loss. She thought about the other boarders and her various London friends. No one was quite right.

  Mrs. Baker. She pictured the landlady’s kind weary face; she seemed at that moment very like Dorothy’s mother. I’ll go and find her, Dorothy thought. I couldn’t possibly confide in her. Bertie is a married man; she would be shocked to the core; her good opinion of me smashed. But she is real; just being in her presence is a comfort. She knows that everyone is alone, and the hustle and noise people make is just a front to try to hide their loneliness and fear.

  * * *

  DOROTHY OPENED THE drawing room door. At first sight, the room seemed deserted; the gas was turned frugally low. But in the dimness, she could just make out two figures: a man balanced on the arm of the sofa, and someone sitting close beside him. They remained silent and motionless as she approached; they must be newly arrived boarders, shy of introducing themselves, perhaps. She walked over to the table next to the fireplace and poured a glass of water from the jug standing on it. The jug was almost empty; a thin trickle leaked into her glass, petering out before it was an inch full.

  “Would you like a drink, Miss Richardson?”

  It was Mr. Cundy.

  “Oh yes, I would,” she answered awkwardly, glancing at the woman on the sofa. She found herself gazing into the eyes of Mrs. Baker. Mrs. Baker wearing a low cut silk blouse and a blue velvet choker around her neck!

  Mrs. Baker was neither annoyed nor pleased to see her. She seemed caught up in some private reverie and Mr. Cundy carried on the conversation, telling Dorothy about the benefits of keeping well hydrated. Dorothy thanked him absentmindedly, still focused on Mrs. Baker’s uncharacteristic indifference to her surroundings; her strange air of being utterly absorbed by some internal preoccupation.

  Mr. Cundy fell silent. Dorothy studied them both, surprised by h
ow similar their expressions were as they gazed back at her. They looked benevolent, tolerant, almost patronizing. Flickering behind their eyes was some kind of shared joke, from which she was excluded.

  She had been a bumbling idiot, crashing in, oblivious. They had probably been discussing Mrs. Baker’s struggles with the house. Mrs. Baker had confided in him, and he was advising her on how to make it more profitable. Dorothy had rushed in interrupting them; entirely wrapped up in her own problems. Mrs. Baker had been right not to welcome her. Yet without Mr. Cundy there, Dorothy was sure she would have been her usual warm receptive self.

  Goaded by her thwarted desire for comfort, she hurled herself against the barrier of their unstated alliance. “I see I’ve barged in on a private conversation.”

  “Not at all, young lady,” said Mrs. Baker tartly, sitting very upright on the sofa. “We weren’t talking about anything in particular.”

  “It looks to me like you’re in the middle of something,” insisted Dorothy mulishly.

  Mr. Cundy regarded her with calm satisfaction. There was something different about him, a quiet assurance. “Not at all,” he said mildly. “I was only explaining to Mrs. Baker the theory of natural selection.”

  They wanted her to go away. They wanted to be left alone to continue their discussion without interruption. She lingered for a short while, making graceless small talk. When she couldn’t think of anything else to say, she excused herself and left the room.

  * * *

  AFTER THE FIRST shock passed, Dorothy found she couldn’t stand being alone with the shameful echoes of her aborted love affair. As a result, she worked late at the dental practice whenever she could. She welcomed busy days: long sittings, where appointments overran and she had to stay in Mr. Badcock’s room, clearing and cleansing instruments with the patient in the chair, knowing that her other duties were piling up elsewhere.

  She liked the brief moments of forgetfulness that came with throwing herself into her work. She did her best to assist Mr. Badcock as quietly and as expertly as possible, trying to make the patient forget there was a third person in the room.