To Room Nineteen (13 page)

She turned her eyes vaguely towards him; it seemed as if she had not heard at all. But he had to go on now. ‘Your Dad’s had it,’ he said brightly. ‘He’s copped it. He’s dead as a doornail, and it’s no use staying here.’

‘How do you know?’ she asked faintly. ‘Sometimes there are mistakes. Sometimes people come back, don’t they?’

This was much worse than he had thought. ‘He won’t come back, I saw him myself.’

‘No,’ she protested, sharply drawing breath.

‘Oh, yes I did. He was lying on the pavement, smashed to smithereens.’ He was waiting for her face to change. So far, it was obstinate, but her eyes were fixed on him like a scared rabbit’s. ‘Nothing left,’ he announced, jauntily, ‘his legs were gone – nothing there at all, and he didn’t have a head left either …’

And now Rose got to her feet with a sudden angry movement, and her eyes were small and black. ‘You …’ she began. Her lips
shook. Jimmie remained seated. He was trying to look casual, even jaunty. He was forcing himself to smile. Underneath he was very frightened. Supposing this was the wrong thing? Supposing she went clean off her rocker … supposing … He passed his tongue quickly over his lips and glanced at her to see how she was. She was still staring at him. But now she seemed to hate him. He wanted to laugh from fright. But he stood up and, with an appearance of deliberate brutality, said: ‘Yes, Rosie girl, that’s how it is, your Dad’s nothing but a bleeding corpse – that’s good, bleeding!’ And now, he thought, I’ve done it properly! ‘You –’ began Rose again, her face contracted with hatred. ‘You –’ And such a stream of foul language came from her mouth that it took him by surprise. He had expected her to cry, to break down. She shouted and raved at him, lifting her fists to batter at his chest. Gently holding her off he said silently to himself, giving himself courage: ‘Ho, ho, Rosie my girl, what language, naughty, naughty!’ Out loud he said, with uneasy jocularity: ‘Hey take it easy, it’s not my fault now …’ He was surprised at her strength. The quiet, composed, neat little Rose was changed into a screaming hag, who scratched and kicked and clawed. ‘Get out of here you –’ and she picked up a candlestick and threw it at him. Holding his arm across his face, he retreated backwards to the door, gave it a kick with his heel, and went out. There he stood, waiting, with a half-rueful, half-worried smile on his face, listening. He was rubbing the scratches on his face with his handkerchief. At first there was silence, then loud sobbing. He straightened himself slowly. I might have hurt her bad, talking like that, he thought; perhaps she’ll never get over it. But he felt reassured; instinctively he knew he had done the right thing. He listened to the persistent crying for a while, and then wondered: Yes, but what do I do now? Should I go back again now, or wait a little? And more persistent than these worries was another: And what then? If I go back now, I’ll let myself in for something and no mistake. He slowly retreated from Rose’s door, down the damaged street, to a pub at the corner, which had not been hit. Must have a drink and a bit of a think … Inside the pub he leaned quietly by the counter, glass in hand, his grey eyes dark with worry. He heard
someone say: ‘Well handsome, and what’s been biting you?’ He looked up, smiling, and saw Pearl. He had known her for some time – nothing serious; they exchanged greetings and bits of talk over the counter when he dropped in. He liked Pearl, but now he wanted to be left alone. She lingered and said again: ‘How’s your wife?’ He frowned quickly, and did not reply. She made a grimace as if to say: Well, if you don’t want to be sociable I’m not going to force you! But she remained where she was, looking at him closely. He was thinking: I shouldn’t have started it, I shouldn’t have taken her on. No business of mine what happened to her … And then, unconsciously straightening himself, with a small, desperate smile that was also triumphant: ‘You’re in trouble again, my lad, you’re in for it now!’ Pearl remarked in an offhand way: ‘You’d better get your face fixed up – been in a fight?’ He lifted his hand to his face and it came away covered with blood. ‘Yes,’ he said, grinning, ‘with a spitfire.’ She laughed, and he laughed with her. The words presented Rose to him in a new way. Proper little spitfire, he said to himself, caressing his cheek. Who would have thought Rose had all that fire in her? Then he set down the glass, straightened his tie, wiped his cheek with his handkerchief, nodded to Pearl with his debonair smile, and went out. Now he did not hesitate. He went straight back to the basement.

Rose was washing clothes in the sink. Her face was swollen and damp with crying, but she had combed her hair. When she saw him she went red, trying to meet his eyes, but could not. He went straight over to her and put his arms around her. ‘Here, Rosie, don’t get worked up now.’ ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, with prim nervousness, trying to smile. Her eyes appealed to him. ‘I don’t know what came over me, I don’t really.’

‘It’s all right, I’m telling you.’

But now she was crying from shame. ‘I never use them words. Never. I didn’t know I knew them. I’m not like that. And now you’ll think …’ He gathered her to him and felt her shoulders shaking. ‘Now don’t you waste any more time thinking about it. You were upset – well, I wanted you to be upset, I did it on purpose, don’t you see, Rosie? You couldn’t go on like that,
pretending to yourself.’ He kissed the part of her cheek that was not hidden in his shoulder. ‘I’m sorry, I’m ever so sorry,’ she wept, but she sounded much better.

He held her tight and made soothing noises. At the same time he had the feeling of a man sliding over the edge of a dangerous mountain. But he could not stop himself now. It was much too late. She said, in a small voice: ‘You were quite right, I know you were. But it was just that I couldn’t bear to think. I didn’t have anybody but Dad. It’s been him and me together for ever so long. I haven’t got anybody at all …’ The thought came into her mind and vanished: Only George’s little girl. She belongs to me by rights.

Jimmie said indignantly: ‘Your Dad – I’m not saying anything against him, but it wasn’t right to keep you here looking after him. You should have got out and found yourself a nice husband and had kids.’ He did not understand why, though only for a moment, her body hardened and rejected him. Then she relaxed and said submissively: ‘You mustn’t say anything against my Dad.’

‘No,’ he agreed, mildly. ‘I won’t.’ She seemed to be waiting. ‘I haven’t got anything now,’ she said, and lifted her face to him. ‘You’ve got me,’ he said at last, and he was grinning a little from sheer nervousness. Her face softened, her eyes searched his, and she still waited. There was a silence, while he struggled with common sense. It was far too long a silence, and she was already reproachful when he said: ‘You come with me, Rosie, I’ll look after you.’

And now she collapsed against him again and wept: ‘You do love me, don’t you, you do love me?’ He held her and said: ‘Yes, of course, I love you.’ Well that was true enough. He did. He didn’t know why, there wasn’t any sense in it, she wasn’t even pretty, but he loved her. Later she said: ‘I’ll get my things together and come to where you live.’

He temporized, with an anxious glance at the ominous ceiling: ‘You stay here for a bit. I’ll get things fixed first.’

‘Why can’t I come now?’ She looked in a horrified, caged way around the basement as if she couldn’t wait to get out of it – she who had clung so obstinately to its shelter.

‘You just trust me now, Rosie. You pack your things, like a
good girl. I’ll come back and fetch you later.’ She clutched his shoulders and looked into his face and pleaded: ‘Don’t leave me here long – that ceiling – it might fall.’ It was as if she had only just noticed it. He comforted her, put her persuasively away from him, and repeated he would be back in half an hour. He left her sorting out her belongings in worried haste, her eyes fixed on the ceiling.

And now what was he going to do? He had no idea. Flats – they weren’t hard to find, with so many people evacuated; yes, but here it was after eleven at night, and he couldn’t even lay hands on the first week’s rent. Besides, he had to give his wife some money tomorrow. He walked slowly through the damaged street, in the thick dark, his hands in his pockets, thinking: Now you’re in a fix, Jimmie boy, you’re properly in a fix.

About an hour later his feet took him back. Rose was seated at the table, and on it were two cardboard boxes and a small suitcase – her clothes. Her hands were folded together in front of her.

‘It’s all right?’ she inquired, already on her feet.

‘Well, Rosie, it’s like this –’ he sat down and tried for the right words. ‘I should’ve told you. I haven’t got a place really.’

‘You’ve got no place to sleep?’ she inquired incredulously. He avoided her eyes and muttered: ‘Well, there’s complications.’ He caught a glimpse of her face and saw there – pity! It made him want to swear. Hell, this was a mess, and what was he to do? But the sorrowful warmth of her face touched him and, hardly knowing what he was doing, he let her put her arms around him, while he said: ‘I was bombed out last week.’

‘And you were looking after me, and you had no place yourself?’ she accused him, tenderly. ‘We’ll be all right. We’ll find a place in the morning.’

‘That’s right, we’ll have our own place and – can we get married soon?’ she inquired shyly, going pink.

At this, he laid his face against hers, so that she could not look at him, and said: ‘Let’s get a place first, and we can fix everything afterwards.’

She was thinking. ‘Haven’t you got no money?’ she inquired, diffidently at last. ‘Yes, but not the cash. I’ll have it later.’ He was
telling himself again: You’re properly in the soup, Jimmie, in – the – soup!

‘I’ve got two hundred pounds in the post office,’ she offered, smiling with shy pride, as she fondled his hair. ‘And there’s the furniture from here – it’s not hurt by the bomb a bit. We can furnish nicely.’

‘I’ll give you back the money later,’ he said desperately.

‘When you’ve got it. Besides, my money is yours now,’ she said, smiling tenderly at him. ‘
Ours
.’ She tasted the word delicately, inviting him to share her pleasure in it.

Jimmie was essentially a man who knew people, got around, had irons in the fire and strings to pull; and by next afternoon he had found a flat. Two rooms and a kitchen, a cupboard for the coal, hot and cold water, and a share of the bathroom downstairs. Cheap, too. It was the top of an old house, and he was pleased that one could see trees from Battersea Park over the tops of the buildings opposite. Rose’ll like it, he thought. He was happy now. All last night he had lain on the floor beside her in the ruinous basement, under the bulging ceiling, consumed by dubious thoughts; now these had vanished, and he was optimistic. But when Rose came up the stairs with her packages she went straight to the window and seemed to shrink back. ‘Don’t you like it, Rosie?’ ‘Yes, I like it, but …’ Soon she laughed and said, apologetically: ‘I’ve always lived underneath – I mean, I’m not used to being so high up.’ He kissed her and teased her and she laughed too. But several times he noticed that she looked unhappily down from the window and quickly came away, with a swift, uncertain glance around at the empty rooms. All her life she had lived underground, with buses and cars rumbling past above eye-level, the weight of the big old house heavy over her, like the promise of protection. Now she was high above streets and houses, and she felt unsafe. Don’t be silly, she told herself. You’ll get used to it. And she gave herself to the pleasure of arranging furniture, putting things away. She took a hundred pounds of her money out of the post office and bought – but what she bought was chiefly for him. A chest for his clothes:
she teased him because he had so many; a small wireless set; and finally a desk for him to work on, for he had said he was studying for an engineering degree of some kind. He asked her why she bought nothing for herself, and she said, defensively, that she had plenty. She had arranged the new flat to look like her old home. The table stood the same way, the calendar with yellow roses hung on the wall, and she worked happily beside her stove, making the same movements she had used for years; for the cupboard, the drying-line and the draining-board had been fixed exactly as they had been ‘at home’. Unconsciously, she still used that phrase. ‘Here,’ he protested, ‘isn’t this home now?’ She said seriously: ‘Yes, but I can’t get used to it.’ ‘Then you’d better get used to it,’ he complained, and then kissed her to make amends for his resentment. When this had happened several times he let out: ‘Anyway, the basement’s fallen in, I passed today, and it’s filled with bricks and stuff.’ He had intended not to tell her. She shrank away from him and went quite white. ‘Well, you knew it wasn’t going to stay for long,’ he said. She was badly shaken. She could not bear to think of her old home gone; she could imagine it, the great beams slanting into it, filled with dirty water – she imagined it and shut out the vision for ever. She was quiet and listless all that day, until he grew angry with her. He was quite often angry. He would protest when she bought things for him. ‘Don’t you like it?’ she would inquire, looking puzzled. ‘Yes, I like it fine, but …’ And later she was hurt because he seemed reluctant to use the chest, or the desk.

There were other points where they did not understand each other. About four weeks after they moved in she said: ‘You aren’t much of a one for home, are you?’ He said, in genuine astonishment: ‘What do you mean? I’m stuck here like …’ He stopped, and put a cigarette in his mouth to take the place of speech. From his point of view he had turned over a new leaf; he was a man who hated to be bound, to spend every evening the same way; and now he came to Rose most evenings straight from work, ate supper with her, paid her sincere compliments on her cooking, and then – well, there was every reason why he should come, he would be a fool not to! He was consumed by secret pride in her. Fancy Rose, a girl like
her, living with her old man all these years, like a girl shut into a convent, or not much better – you’d think there was something wrong with a girl who got to be thirty before having a man in her bed! But there was nothing wrong with Rose. And at work he’d think of their nights and laugh with deep satisfaction. She was all right, Rose was. And then, slowly, a doubt began to eat into the pride. It wasn’t natural that she’d been alone all those years. Besides, she was a good-looker. He laughed when he remembered that he had thought her quite ugly at first. Now that she was happy, and in a place of her own, and warmed through with love, she was really pretty. Her face had softened, she had a delicate colour in her thin cheeks, and her eyes were deep and welcoming. It was like coming home to a little cat, all purring and pliable. And when he took her to the pictures he walked proudly by her, conscious of the other men’s glances at her. And yet he was the first man who had had the sense to see what she could be? – hmm, not likely, it didn’t make sense.