The Lodger: A Novel (17 page)

“As I got older, I became more and more aware of how differently boys and girls are educated. My parents thought about my brothers’ schooling far more seriously than mine; I remember them discussing it for hours. But my education was scarcely considered. They seemed to feel the main purpose of sending me to school at all was so I’d learn how to make a pleasant and comfortable home for the men … I felt choked by the unfairness of it. I adored my father and brothers, but nobody ever suggested they make the house nice for me. I couldn’t understand why there was one set of rules for boys and another for girls. When I asked my mother about it, I was instantly sent to bed for insolence. I never got a satisfactory answer.”

The lamplight danced in Veronica’s eyes while she spoke; it accentuated the liquid sheen of her hair. She cupped the flowerlike curve of her cheek in a slender hand. Bertie encouraged her with thoughtful comments and questions, and she answered him with patient smiling veneration.

Dorothy wondered, with a pang, if Bertie was as acutely conscious of Veronica’s beauty as Dorothy was. How could he fail to be moved by it? A memory of the lunch with Anne entered her mind: Anne with sunlight streaming through her hair; Bertie transfixed, staring wordlessly. She had heard no more about the girl. But would she ever feel sure of Bertie? Could she, for that matter, feel sure of Veronica?

When Veronica fell silent, Bertie turned to Dorothy. “You haven’t been persuaded to join the campaign?”

Dorothy shook her head. “I can see how important it is for women to have a political voice, because they have such utterly different views and needs to men. It’s outrageous we are denied the vote, but I don’t want one myself. No, I want to have a vote and not use it. Taking sides simply wipes me out.”

Bertie clicked his tongue gently at this continuing evidence of her inability to take a stand. “Women are good reformers,” he said. “They are admirably suited to keeping the peace and making the world a decent place. And it’s better for men if their mates are equal. Being yoked to an inferior is like dragging a lame leg after you.”

He yawned and looked at his watch; his amiability was flagging. “You ladies may have the energy to sit around talking until all hours, but I need my rest. And it would be good for you, too, Dorothy, to sleep, whether you want to admit it or not. Are you coming with me?”

Dorothy said yes, reluctantly, for she’d discovered that the desire to stay behind and discuss him with Veronica was stronger than the desire for his company. Veronica at once rose to her feet and excused herself gracefully.

“Your Veronica is quite a beauty,” Bertie said, when the door had closed behind her. “You never told me how pretty she is. I like her reforming zeal, too.”

*   *   *

THE FOLLOWING DAY,
Veronica was waiting in Dorothy’s room when she got back from work. She held Dorothy’s small wooden chest in both hands. Looking remorseful, she explained in a rushing torrent of words that did not allow Dorothy space to interject, that she had dropped and broken it.

Dorothy took it from her without saying anything, wondering how the accident had happened. What if Veronica had come into her room last night while she was with Bertie, or today during work? Perhaps, overwhelmed by curiosity, she had taken the chest from where it stood on top of her cupboard. But how could she have been clumsy enough to drop it? It was old and solid; it could hardly have slipped through her fingers. Dorothy had inherited it from her grandmother; she used it to keep Bertie’s letters in.

Dorothy looked at the break. It was a smooth clean line. A suspicion was kindling in her mind. Since the contents were so light, a straight fall would not have caused any damage. Had it been hurled to the ground from a height? Had it been determinedly and violently smashed down?

She put the chest on her bed, trying to forget about it.

“I’m sorry,” Veronica said again. “I’ll buy you another one.”

Dorothy shook her head. “It can be fixed,” she said. “The break won’t even show.”

A new thought was emerging. Had Veronica read Bertie’s letters? Knowing what the chest contained, had she deliberately set out to plunder it? Dorothy didn’t know if Veronica’s urge to demolish barriers and taboos was valiant or delinquent. But the chest itself reproached her, displaying its damage from where it sat on the bed. It had been in her family for as long as she could remember.

It wasn’t the first time something like this had happened. A few weeks before, Veronica had begged to borrow Dorothy’s seed pearl bracelet, luminous and delicate: Benjamin’s first gift. She’d returned it with the clasp half ripped off. Veronica seemed to have an unerring instinct for destroying only treasured things. She was like a hurricane, sweeping into Dorothy’s life, tearing her possessions from their places.

“Let’s make some tea and forget about the casket. I’m longing to hear what you thought of Bertie,” Dorothy said.

Veronica sighed. “He was exactly as I suspected. Charming and articulate, yes. But he is just like his preachy books, he tries to take you over.” She mimicked: “It would be good for you to sleep, Dorothy, whether you like it or not.” She captured the high husky voice perfectly. Her petulance surprised Dorothy.

*   *   *

THE TURBULENCE IN
Dorothy’s life was making it impossible for her to concentrate on a new and compelling activity. She had begun to write, and was amassing a growing pile of penciled half-sheets. She worked in the evenings, at a rickety wicker table pulled up close to the window of her room.

Her theme was herself, her early life, for she felt this was the only subject she could hope to know or express. Also, her story seemed representative. There must be countless other strong-minded women out there, born to a world that was discouraging if not flatly antagonistic to their sex, who were struggling for independence and identity, like she was. It was a struggle worth setting down on paper; she hoped it might succor all the women whose experience paralleled hers.

So far, she had produced a collection of formless jottings; experiments really, nothing that approximated a narrative. She was more engaged with the process than the result. It was like mining, tunneling down through layers of self to a region far inside, to where the unsullied precious ore lay. It was a painful and unpredictable unfolding; her ability to tap into it was intermittent. But when she was successful, her pen flew across the page as though of its own accord, propelled by some mysterious essence from within. Writing made her feel deeply and serenely alive; anchored to a profound sense of self that was definite and constant.

Once words started flowing, the rest of the world fell away and she only wanted to keep going. The paper-strewn lamplit circle became her world; even Bertie’s hold loosened. The whole of life was there, inside her mind, a boundless fount of experience. She could summon any part of it and hold it up for examination. It amazed her how much space was within her. Writing brought an energy her work at the dental practice had never awakened, from the depths of her being. Hours were consumed without her noticing; she wrote through much of the night.

How should she put it down, the soft exclamation the little girl made as she carefully carried the heavy dish of fruit? Knowing she was entrusted with an important task, walking with such attention, her whole being concentrated on the hands that carried the dish.

How could she catch that moment; how to make the words come alive on paper, exactly as they were lived, directly from the center of consciousness? How to record the very process of consciousness as it experienced life at firsthand; life’s minute to minute quality.

None of the writers she knew had done it to her satisfaction, not even Bertie. Especially not Bertie. There was always some narrator barging in, getting in the way, describing events from the outside and silting up the arteries of the story with an inert mass of detail. Yet leaving out something essential at the same time, so that life was distorted. One couldn’t get away from the author in the background—a master puppeteer yanking strings—and either admiring, or hating, his orchestration.

She would have to smash the old way of writing and make something new. The part of her nature that flailed out and destroyed things would have no problem smashing the novel. But could she successfully remake it? Did she have the courage and the talent?

She hadn’t told Bertie about her writing. He would want to see it, or at the very least have it described to him, and she was afraid that his forceful reaction would destroy it. Her work was like a frail young seed germinating deep within the earth; it would disintegrate if it was exposed to daylight too early.

She was struck by the contrast between her writing, snatched in nooks and gaps of the day, and Bertie’s. He had a whole household attending to his comfort and well-being; everything in it geared toward catering to his needs and nurturing his talent. Dorothy envied and half-resented the single-minded concentration this allowed him.

The reason women didn’t produce much “art” was because they were pulled in different directions; torn and scattered by the unending multiplicity of their preoccupations and tasks; unable to do any one thing properly. It was a state of being unknown to men. Art demands what present-day society won’t give to women, she decided.

*   *   *

THERE WAS STILL
a feeling of peace and freedom that came every time she was out in London. The evenings were growing shorter; it was already dark when Dorothy left work. She strolled home slowly, feeling the tedium and fatigue of her day at work coiling up and vanishing into the familiar dearly loved city atmosphere.

Could one girl’s consciousness be the subject matter of an entire book, she wondered. Was it enough?

The opening words of the novel she wanted to write were fixed in her head:
Miriam left the gaslit hall and went slowly upstairs
. But what then? It was impossible to go on “telling” about her. To let reality filter through, she had to keep her own voice out of it—no explaining, summing up, depicting characters and incidents in hard immutable lines. There had to be another way of writing convincingly—what was it? She didn’t want to instruct her reader what to think and feel. Reading should be a process of collaboration between reader and author, a path of discovery. It should be an adventure.

It had rained recently, and lamplight glistened on puddles and spread a bright sheen over the moist pavements. Traffic slurred through wet roads. The air still smelt of rain: washed and earthy. It was a relief to stride through benevolent streets that seemed both intimate and spacious, lined by quiet grey stone buildings. There was hardly anyone else out walking, and the few people she passed did not know what she was really like.

Presently, she became aware of an uncomfortable prickling sensation at her back, as though someone’s eyes were on her. She glanced behind, but the lamp-haloed street was empty.

Her thoughts returned to her book. She didn’t want some arbitrary plot imposed on it, distorting the truth. There was anyhow such a dearth of narrative endings for women in existing novels: getting married or dying, or becoming a governess, which was a sort of living death. She was starting to believe that narrative conventions were simply an expression of the vision, fantasies, and experiences of men, and as such were dependent on a whole set of dubious agreements and assumptions between reader and writer. She’d had it with all of that. If a novel managed to catch hold of the essence of lived reality, then that should be more compelling than any manufactured plot.

She carried on her way, but the uneasy prickling feeling was still with her. She looked behind again and saw a pale shriveled girl hunched deep inside her coat—she looked like an office worker hurrying home—and the respectable figure of a man in a raincoat and bowler hat.

There was no cause for concern. Yet she was not comfortable; the sense of being watched would not leave her. She told herself she was being silly and overanxious. She turned a corner and glanced furtively over her shoulder. The man in the raincoat was a short distance behind her.

She quickened her pace. There was a small lane ahead. She turned into it and leant against a wall, trying to catch her breath, feeling the chill of damp bricks through her thin coat. She forced herself to count slowly to sixty, hoping this would give the man time to pass. He looked harmless enough; perhaps her imagination was getting the better of her. But cold shocks of fear were pulsing through her body, sharpening all her senses. Her thoughts flew helplessly to garrotting and worse. This was the seedy underbelly that poisoned the deep brightness of London nights, coming inevitably to meet her.

When she emerged, he was looking into a shop window farther down the street. Dorothy could feel the small hairs rise on the back of her neck. She resumed her walk, conscious of his tapping footsteps behind her.

She reached the point where Endsleigh Gardens opened out of Gower Place, beside the shadowy bulk of St. Pancras Church. Plane trees lined the road, their rain-soaked autumn leaves bringing the fresh smell of country lanes to the midst of the city.

This could not go on. The man could not be allowed to carry on polluting her most treasured spaces. Gathering all her courage, she forced herself to come to a halt. His footsteps stopped also. The blood was roaring in her ears. The moment of turning around to face him seemed to stretch out endlessly, sickeningly …

He raised his hat and lamplight fell onto his face; he was smiling foolishly. He had moist brown eyes and plump crumpled features, which looked as though they were made of melting wax. His teeth were horribly blackened; one or two were nothing but rotted stumps.

Fear jolted through Dorothy again, but his attitude was self-abasing. There was something almost cringing about him; he was like a dog expecting a whipping.

“Why, you’re a beauty … my dear girl…” His voice was a sibilant whisper; the words whistling and slithering together. “Shall we walk a little way together?”

Boiling anger ripped through her. How dare he? What did he take her for? What in her appearance or bearing made him think it was acceptable to behave so improperly? “Certainly not,” she snapped irately.