Some days, on reading her work, she felt it was good. Segments were more than good. The great joy and great suffering she had known gave her writing richness and depth, while her curious position on the edge of society sharpened her insights. But on bad days, it still seemed that she was not a writer at all: she was just a freak with a facility for words. Her task was quite simply to capture the essence of a woman’s life as it was lived; its minute to minute quality. To bridge the gulf between life and the expression of it. Yet she always fell just short; she feared her writing would never match the perfectly expressive novel she carried inside her head.
A low ray of sunlight coming through the window distracted her, bringing back everything she had loved in Veronica and taken from her and ecstatically given in return: a life lived by someone who was not quite Dorothy, in a past that seemed as distant as her former self.
Veronica’s presence was everywhere, catching Dorothy unawares. It was in the light pouring over the breakfast table; it lingered over the fine white sand and spilled out across the glistening billows of the sea. It spread across the deserted sandy pathway that ran down to the beach, hummocky and rambling and scented with gorse. At night, it sang in the roar of the darkened sea.
Sometimes the memory of their time together was a golden glow, and sometimes, especially during the dead hours of the night, it was a terrible unhealed wound. Dorothy would roll onto her stomach in bed, feeling her pulse hammering against the mattress. The mattress was hard against her breasts and thighs, yet it gave back no echo of a heartbeat, and she was filled with longing for it to be Veronica’s pliant body beneath her. At these times, the deprivation was almost unbearable.
Often, it seemed as though a part of her still existed continuously in the past. Lived with Veronica; the two of them lying eternally in each other’s arms, belonging together, as in the early days of their association. And this bit of her—a pure essence, a brightly burning flame—was somehow fused with the part of her that wrote. It was also one with the child who had stood in a garden in bright sunlight long ago, and watched in wonder as bees swayed from one blazing flower bank to another.
It was far more vivid than the grey present. She thought she would probably die with these feelings.
* * *
AS FAR AS she knew, Veronica had remained with her parents the whole time, but she was a fitful correspondent, and long silences elapsed between letters.
When Dorothy returned to London, there was a note from her waiting on the hall stand. Dorothy tore open the envelope at once. It was a hurried scrawl, a mere couple of lines, saying she was back in London and longing to see Dorothy.
* * *
THE DOMINO ROOM at the Café Royal was a carnival of color and noise. The tobacco fumes and hum of voices, the jingle of coins and the clatter of dominoes being shuffled on marble tables hit Dorothy and broke over her head like a wave. Briefly, she took in the gilded walls, crimson velvet benches, and huge ornamental pillars; the crowd of cheerful drinkers reflected in several large mirrors arranged about the room. But these sights were uninteresting compared to Veronica, who was waiting for her just inside the door.
In real life, Veronica was smaller than the space she occupied in Dorothy’s imagination. She looked radiant in a clinging violet gown, which clearly showed the shape of her body beneath it. Hugging Dorothy, she exclaimed, “I can’t quite believe it’s you, after all this time! I think I must have dreamed you up.”
“I think I’m dreaming, too.” Dorothy’s voice shook slightly. The feel of Veronica’s body against hers was overwhelming; it brought a heady rush of memory and rendered her almost tongue-tied.
“What do you think of the place?” Veronica asked.
Dorothy took a deep breath. “It’s so alive!”
Veronica nodded, her eyes glinting.
She led her past the clusters of patrons to an empty table at the rear, near the back door, which bordered on the white-clothed tables laid for dinner. They sat down facing the room, and Veronica ordered a bottle of champagne from a waiter. “This is a celebration. We’re going to toast the success of your book!” she declared.
Snatches of a song, rendered in an off-key but penetrating voice to the tune of “Greensleeves,” floated over to them:
Jove be with us as we sit
On the crimson soft settees;
Drinking beer and liking it,
Most peculiarly at ease.
Dorothy craned her neck to try and identify the singer, but he was hidden by the crowd.
That for life, and this for love,
“B” for Bliss and “P” for Pain
Not till midnight will we move—
Waiter, fill ’em up again!
When their champagne arrived, the waiter made a great show of opening the bottle and pouring the pale gold liquid into two tall glasses.
“To you!” Veronica said, raising her glass and clinking it against Dorothy’s.
The champagne was very dry, with a delicately nutty taste. Dorothy savored the sensation of bubbles exploding at the back of her nose. “My word, this feels decadent,” she said. “Champagne at the Café Royal!”
“But you deserve it! Everyone is talking about your novel; it’s a sensation.” Veronica began to quote: “‘A completely new and original voice, unlike any before heard in literature’; ‘Feminine impressionism carried to new limits’; ‘A finely tuned method of registering perception and experience.’ People are comparing you to Proust.”
Dorothy held out her hand, laughing. “Stop, please. This is too much for me!”
“It’s the truth,” Veronica protested. “And I admire your courage. It isn’t easy smashing convention and creating a new way of writing. You’re like an explorer in a new world—a true pioneer.”
“Am I a pioneer or an oddity? Whichever, it feels like pushing boulders up a mountain. I seem incapable of taking the easy path in my writing or my life.”
“You’re a brave woman. And funnily enough, you’ve struck a more successful blow for our sex than I ever did trying to get a vote. I always knew you could do it.”
Veronica’s admiration, her near warm presence and achingly familiar scent were causing a hot sweet stirring at the base of Dorothy’s stomach. It was intoxicating; she was like a bud, helplessly opening out beneath the warm sun. She gazed at Veronica, waiting for her words; mesmerized by the fall of the long lashes onto the softly rounded cheeks, the sweet full lips flowering for speech.
“See the bearded man in the corner, with golden earrings and a black hat and cloak?” Veronica asked. “I think it’s Augustus John.”
Dorothy cleared her throat. “Yes, you’re absolutely right. He probably comes here all the time. And look at that beautiful girl dressed as a nun, sipping her absinthe like a professional.”
“The nun is nothing compared to some of the eccentrics I’ve seen here.”
“Have you been here before? I know so little about your life these days.”
“Yes, once or twice,” Veronica said, vaguely. “The first time, two beautiful Indian women in jewel-colored saris floated in wearing live snakes around their necks, like necklaces. They sat down and ordered dinner as though there was nothing unusual about it … There was also a South American diplomat, who ate his meal with his hands—until a screen was put up around him.”
A good-looking man in officer’s uniform sat down at an empty table next to them. He had a fine head of wavy, light brown hair. He was decidedly drunk, Dorothy noticed, but he managed to keep himself under control.
“Tell me about your life, Dorothy.”
“Oh, there isn’t much to tell.”
“Surely that’s not true. I imagine you being feted from one end of London to the other.”
“Actually, I live very quietly. I don’t see many people. Most of my friends and family are dispersed, or busy with their own separate lives. I’ve taken a room in a house in St. John’s Wood. It’s something of a leafy backwater, but at least it gives me privacy a
nd peace for my writing.”
“How is Bertie? Do you ever see him?
“No, it would be too difficult. Though I did hear he’s in love again, in his way.”
“His poor wife! What a lot she has to bear.” There was an edge in Veronica’s voice. “Who’s the lucky girl?”
“Her name is Amber Reeves. I don’t know much about her, other than she graduated from Cambridge with a starred first, and she’s beautiful as well as brilliant. Bertie is greatly taken with her.”
Dorothy wasn’t surprised he had replaced her with such ease. Knowing him as she did, it seemed inevitable. Yet the thought of them together—Bertie looking at Amber with that focused gleam in his grey-blue eyes, saying the things he had said to Dorothy—caused an unexpected pang of jealousy.
At times, she missed Bertie. Perhaps, one never quite let go of past loves. She still had moments of wondering if it could have worked. Could they have reached a compromise, a way of existing side by side with his marriage, more or less satisfactorily?
The officer’s meal was being served. With slow, precise movements, he picked up his table napkin, rose to his feet, and came across to spread it on the cloth in front of Dorothy, over the blots of red wine and cigarette stubs left by the previous clients.
“Why, thank you,” Dorothy said. She could feel hot color spreading from her neck to her hairline.
The officer bowed stiffly, and returned to his table without a word.
“An act of chivalry, don’t you think?” she said uneasily to Veronica.
“You’ve lost none of your allure, my dear.”
Veronica’s eyes looked huge, like lamps or mirrors. In their clear surfaces, a myriad of tiny Dorothys danced. Dorothy felt herself flush again; she looked away, trembling with hope and trepidation.
Her gaze fell on the officer, who sat ignoring his food, staring back at Dorothy with a dogged tenacity that soon became embarrassing.
To her astonishment, Dorothy noticed Benjamin making his way through the crowded room toward them, looking uncomfortable and out of place. He was a little heavier, his beard was longer and bushier, but the determined plunging walk, the thickly waving black hair and brilliant deprecating eyes were the same.
“You didn’t tell me he was coming,” she said in a low tone to Veronica.
“I wanted to surprise you.”
They rose to their feet to greet him. His habitual expression of soulful melancholy sat oddly with the eagerness of his manner; he was like a small boy joining a party. Grasping both of Dorothy’s hands, his well-remembered rich deep voice rang out: “Ah, I am glad to see you, after all this time. How well you look. I must tell you, I enjoyed reading your wonderful book immensely.”
Dorothy smiled at him warmly. “My reading sessions with you were the foundation stones for my writing. What a wealth of literature you introduced me to: Turgenev, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky…”
Out of the corner of her eye, Dorothy saw Veronica shoot them a jealous look. “Let’s sit down,” she said brightly. “Dorothy, why don’t you go there, in the middle of us.”
When Benjamin had a drink in front of him, Veronica raised her glass again. “Tonight is a double celebration,” she announced. “We have some wonderful news. Benjamin asked me to marry him, and I said yes.”
A broiling wave of jealousy tore through Dorothy; the room swayed around her. It was so hot and crowded, she could not breathe. She gulped down her champagne, scarcely aware of what she was doing.
Mustering all her strength, she forced herself to composure. And found herself rewarded by a tiny glimmer of relief. At least she knew where she stood now. She no longer hung in limbo, twisting. She had been cut free, once and for all.
Benjamin’s mouth smiled, but his eyes looked uneasy and would not meet Dorothy’s. Veronica kept the conversation going; she seemed to feel no pain at parting from Dorothy. She was plunging ahead into her new life with only the slightest of backward glances. “Respectability, security, all the things I thumbed my nose at before,” she said. “Well, they don’t seem so unattractive anymore. Ben is wonderful, and not like other men … in a way, he is my gift from you.”
There was one shadow, she admitted. Her family refused to countenance her marrying a man who was not only a foreigner, but a Jew. The wedding would take place at a small registry office. Only one of Veronica’s brothers, the youngest, had relented far enough to agree to be present. Veronica was refusing to allow her joy to be dampened by her family’s disapproval. She described the dress she was designing: pale grey crepe, with little ruffles of cream lace at the neck and sleeves. Dorothy could picture her in it; her glowing face framed by smooth tumbling ringlets.
“Are you still involved with the suffrage?” Dorothy asked, when Veronica had finished.
Veronica shook her head. “Actually, planning my wedding has driven all thoughts of it from my mind.”
Dorothy, feeling quite disproportionately indignant for the suffragettes, bit back the retort that the suffrage movement was full of married women. She was not the only casualty of Veronica’s capriciousness, she realized.
Prudently, she changed the subject: “Have you set a wedding date?”
“Yes; the twenty-eighth of October.”
“Why, that’s a few days before Mrs. Baker’s marriage to Mr. Cundy!”
“Mrs. Baker! I haven’t thought about her for ages. Do you ever see her?”
“I went to visit them a few days ago. For a couple who seem so mismatched, they are incredibly happ—”
Dorothy broke off, noticing Benjamin gazing with horrified astonishment toward a point above her left shoulder. Turning, she saw the officer standing just behind them. In his right hand, he brandished a fish knife.
“Leave her alone!” he said to Benjamin in an impeccable, but slurred accent. “I don’t like your face.”
Without thinking about what she was doing, Dorothy leapt up and seized him by the arm that bore the knife, holding on as hard as she could.
Benjamin half rose to his feet. Waiters hurried up to them.
Protectively, the officer swayed toward Dorothy. “Let me save you from that foreigner,” he implored.
She begged him to go back to his table.
To her surprise, he relinquished the knife and shuffled off quite meekly, murmuring “I’ll do anything for you. Anything.”
Dorothy sat down and reached for her glass. Her hand was trembling.
For a while, they sat in shocked silence.
“What a drunken fool,” Benjamin said, at last.
“He was harmless, poor lamb,” Dorothy protested. “Drunk enough to see me as girlish and interesting, that’s all.”
She gazed at Benjamin lounging in his chair. He was wearing a harsh shiny suit and a black-banded grey felt hat: he looked like a waiter in a seedy cafe. Examining him with the eyes of the drunken officer, she saw only a shabby foreigner. He looked simply disreputable.
Veronica excused herself to go to the powder room. As soon as they were alone, Benjamin turned to Dorothy, reaching for her hand. “Dorothy, is it too late for us, even now?” he asked hoarsely. “Half an hour in your company means more to me than a whole lifetime with your enchanting friend…”
Blood surged into Dorothy’s cheeks; she shook her head wordlessly, pulling her hand from his grasp. Benjamin’s face was pale and ravaged. The heavy white eyelids came down; when he raised them, his eyes burned with weariness and conflict.
Knowing him so well, Dorothy understood exactly what divided him. Part of him—call it the Russian part—believed she was essential and irreplaceable, and suffered acutely in losing her. Yet the Jew in him desired to fulfill what he saw as the wider aspect: the continuation of his race. “The race is greater than its single parts,” he’d said, a long time ago, and his view of life as an endless uniform pattern of humanity was one of the things that had put her off him. He was also lonely; he wanted to share his life with someone. Veronica delightfully assuaged several needs.
W
hat a terrible mistake they were making! They were completely mismatched; they should never get married. In order to gain her freedom, Dorothy had not only introduced them, she had half-willed their union, sentencing them both to a lifetime of unhappiness.
She tried to bury the dark thoughts that crowded into her mind. You are guilty. Guilty! shrieked her conscience.
She told herself her friends were adults; they were quite capable of making their own decisions. In order to survive, she must drive the knowledge of her own complicity from her mind.
The officer was back at their table, fists raised against Benjamin. “I told you … I don’t like your fa—aace.”
Two waiters appeared, seized him by the arms, and bundled him without ceremony out the back door. A guard was placed next to it. When the officer tried to walk in again a few minutes later, the police were called.
“It’s my fault,” Dorothy said sadly, when the little drama was over. “If I had a grain of sense, I should have joined him for a short time, coaxed some food into him, and made an appointment to meet him again, which he would have forgotten by the next day. Then none of this would have happened.”
“Don’t blame yourself,” Benjamin told her. “The man was a lunatic.”
Dorothy felt tears scalding her eyes. She bit her lip to stop them falling. What an upside-down world it was; everybody wanting the wrong person. “I won’t forget my thoughtlessness that caused a gentleman to be locked up,” she said tartly.
* * *
WHEN SHE REACHED home, an avalanche of grief knocked her off her feet, leaving her wretched. She lay down on her bed and started to cry. Hard, painful sobs that tore her chest.
She was devoured by intolerable longing. She wanted to be in Veronica’s arms, making ravenous abandoned love, their clothes a tangled heap on the floor. She gave herself up to memories. She thought about the sensation of Veronica’s body moving beneath hers, the texture and taste of her. What was she going to do with the torrents of unfulfilled longing? How to quell them, when they were as much a part of her as breathing?
The Lodger Page 20