The L-Shaped Room

  ‘I didn’t,’ Toby said, with despair.

  I’d been so preoccupied with the physical results of my condition for the last hour that I’d forgotten its other effects. Something tightened in my chest as I remembered the two days since I saw Toby last. ‘Where did you go?’ I asked.

  ‘To Mike’s. He’s a friend of mine. I stay there sometimes.’

  ‘Did you tell him?’

  ‘No. It’s your thing.’

  ‘But he doesn’t know me. It would have helped you to tell him.’

  ‘Well … anyway, I didn’t.’

  I love you.

  ‘Thank you.’

  He held on to me through another pain, and wiped my face. Then he said, ‘He should be arriving soon – the doctor. I’ll go down and wait for him, so he won’t have to ring.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said again, inadequately. At the door I stopped him. ‘Toby.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The other part isn’t true – about James.’

  He hesitated and frowned. ‘Oh,’ he said non-committally. ‘I won’t be long.’

  I closed my eyes while he was gone. In the dark it was easier not to think.

  Quite soon I heard them coming up the stairs. Toby had evidently asked the doctor to be quiet. He stayed outside and Dr Maxwell came tramping and booming in alone. A subdued boom is almost more formidable than a boom that’s allowed full bent.

  ‘Now then, what’s all this?’ he boomed in a hearty whisper.

  ‘Please –’ I tried to formulate some plea in the middle of a pain, but it came out as a whimper.

  He examined me and then straightened up, shaking his head.

  ‘You naughty girl,’ he said severely.

  ‘Doctor, I didn’t!’ I exclaimed, looking, sounding, and in fact feeling as if the idea had never crossed my mind.

  ‘Come, come,’ he said sceptically. ‘Then what brought this on? A normal, healthy young woman like you –’

  ‘I ate some hot curry and then got lost in the fog and fell down …’

  ‘And I suppose your conscience is perfectly clear?’ he said, good-humouredly. ‘There are more ways than one of ending an unwanted pregnancy, you know. Indigestion, for one. Or am I meant to believe you didn’t realize that?’

  ‘I didn’t think – I wanted –’

  ‘Is that young man the father?’ he asked unexpectedly.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Not? Pity. Well now, look here, I think we’d better pop you into hospital for a few days, where we can keep an eye on you.’

  ‘Am I going to lose the baby?’

  ‘Possibly. I don’t know. You’ve done your best to see that you do – now we’ll have to do ours to see that you don’t.’

  ‘I don’t want to lose it.’

  He looked at me for a moment, halted in the act of folding his stethoscope. ‘Well,’ he said equably, ‘if that’s true, it’ll help. Is there a phone here that I can use to call an ambulance?’

  ‘Two floors down,’ I said. ‘You’ll need fourpence.’

  ‘I’ll charge it to the National Health,’ he said.

  Chapter 13

  THEY kept me in hospital for a week, even though after the first day they were able to tell me that my violent indigestion following my curry debauch had not dislodged – or even seriously inconvenienced – my small passenger. But they decided to keep me under observation until I was safely out of the third month.

  I was in a large ward full of ailing women, many of them, so far as I could judge, suffering from senile decay. I’d never been in hospital before, and after the first day I felt well enough to notice things like the faint smell, which I thought was of death, but which was disinfectant, and to be mildly infuriated by hospital routine. But it was pleasant to feel safe and looked-after, and another nice thing was that nobody remarked on, or even appeared to notice my absence of rings – except the Matron, who was inclined to toss her head a bit as she passed me, but perhaps she just had a tic.

  I didn’t know whether it was fair to expect Toby to come and visit me. When he didn’t come, I told myself I’d been foolish even to hope. Stupidly, I kept on hoping, day after day. But he didn’t come. In fact, nobody did, which was only to be expected since nobody except Toby (and possibly John) knew where I was. Nevertheless, visiting hours were an ordeal far more to be dreaded than the occasional unattractive things the doctors or nurses came and did to me. I longed for company and felt unreasonably deserted. When the appointed hour approached and we could see the visitors massing outside the glass doors at the end of the ward, waiting for opening-time, I would bury myself in a book to hide my pink eyes; but they would none the less be drawn irresistibly to watch the passage of each visitor along the aisle while I thought babyishly, ‘Somebody might think to come.’ I wished I could have screens put round my bed like the really sick people had, so that instead of giving me sidelong glances of pity because I had no visitors, people would drop their voices and whisper sepulchrally to interested outsiders, ‘Poor little thing – she’s dying, you know.’

  All in all it was with a feeling of indescribable joy that on the sixth day I saw a familiar figure coming towards me among the prompt arrivals. It was Dottie, looking very smart in a new scarlet coat and a little matching hat, fairly exuding personality and with a huge bunch of daffodils in one hand and a bulging hold-all in the other. She was a being apart from the visitors belonging to everybody else, and there were admiring stares and not a few tut-tuts of disapproval from some of the senile-decays for her vivid make-up and briskly clacking high heels, all of which sent my morale skyrocketing.

  ‘Well, rat-girl,’ she greeted me, pulling off her hat and throwing down the flowers on the bed. ‘You’ve led me a merry dance, I must say.’ She kissed me and then glared into my face. ‘How are you? You look marvellous. I expected to find a tiny shrunken corpse. I brought some bits for you that I thought would probably be redundant, but they’re obviously not. What a ghastly place! Like a morgue. Here, I brought some American magazines–trash, but gorgeous – and some blissful eau-de-Cologne to bathe your pallid brow and drown out the Dettol – some grapes – corny, I know, but if you turn your nose up at them, I’ll eat them, in fact I probably will anyway. And look!’ From the depths of the hold-all she lifted a heavenly blue bed-jacket, all loops and fronds and frivolity. She wrapped it round my shoulders at once, ignoring my protests, splashed the nice smell around, propped up a couple of magazines to combat the gloom, and divided the grapes into two bunches. Then she sat down beside me and said, ‘Now.’

  ‘How did you find me?’ I said, not caring a damn so long as she was here.

  ‘It wasn’t easy,’ she said grimly. ‘First I waited patiently for you to contact me. Then I waited impatiently, etcetera. Then I phoned your office, and spoke to that nice James man, and he said you’d left there too! But he had an address for you, and he gave it to me …’

  ‘Oh no!’ I groaned

  ‘Oh but oh yes. You may well hang your head. If you had to give a phoney address, couldn’t you at least have picked something that didn’t have a remote basis in reality? There are about fourteen roads, streets, crescents, avenues, walks, and squares all called whatever it was you told James, and I visited number fifteen in all of them before I realized I’d been had. Then I got on to James again.’

  ‘You didn’t tell him –’

  ‘Well, no, I didn’t. I was utterly baffled, but I gave you the benefit of every doubt, which by this time added up to a couple of thousand. I pretended to be another friend, and asked for your phone number.’

  ‘Clever girl.’

  ‘Yes, I thought so. Well, you can guess the rest. I found out the matching address from Directory Inquiry and went round there.’ She was silent for a moment and just looked at me. ‘What have you got to say to explain that place, I should like to know? Well, never mind. Egalitarianism’s never been my strong suit, but I overcame my natural snobbery and banged on the door. Some fat old hag in a dirty apr
on came and said so far as she knew you were in hospital. You can imagine how that brightened my day. I croaked out, which hospital, but she hadn’t a clue and sent me up to ask somebody called Coleman.’ She ate a grape and looked at me shrewdly. ‘Who is he? He’s interesting. First of all I thought he was just some little fledgling that had fallen out of its nest, but I very soon realized there was more to him than that.’

  I wasn’t able to hide my eagerness as I asked, ‘What did he say?’

  She grinned malevolently. ‘Ah ha!’ she cackled, witch-like. ‘Oh-ho! I thought as much! Goings-on! He had exactly the same expression on his face when I mentioned your name as you’ve got now. Then he covered it up quickly with a look of studied indifference (very unconvincing) and mumbled some nonsense about you being in hospital for a few days for a check-up. Naturally I didn’t take much notice of that. But I couldn’t shake him on it, so then I concentrated on finding out which hospital you were in. He hummed and hawed for quite a while about it, but in the end I asked him if you were getting any visitors, and if not, I said, mustn’t you be feeling pretty lonely, and that did it. He told me – and here I am. At last, and no thanks to you.’

  ‘But many thanks from me, Dottie. I am glad you came – really – and bless you for the things – I so needed to see you. I didn’t realize how much, or I’d have written to you. Honestly.’

  ‘Great. Well, now that I’ve tracked you down, perhaps you wouldn’t mind letting me in on the key to all this mystery. Mind you, I have my own theories, but I think I’ve earned the right to know if they’re correct.’

  ‘I expect they are,’ I said.

  She sat quite still and her eyes were fixed on me with a curious, dark look of sympathy mixed with something else. Wryness? Envy? Could it be envy? I wasn’t sure.

  ‘A baby?’

  I nodded, and she closed her eyes and I saw her shoulders slump a little. ‘A baby,’ she repeated softly, to herself. Then she opened her eyes. ‘Well love, that’s no joke for you, is it? Poor honey, has it been awful?’

  ‘Fairly, at times.’

  She held my hand tightly. ‘I wish I’d known – surely I could have helped somehow – you didn’t think I’d be shocked or anything, did you?’

  ‘No, I didn’t think that I just couldn’t seem to tell anyone.’

  ‘But your father knows?’

  ‘Oh, yes – that’s why –’

  ‘You can’t mean he threw you out! But that’s incredible! It’s like a Victorian melodrama –’

  ‘He doesn’t like me very much,’ I explained, and it was the first time I’d ever realized that. It was a very sad thing not to be liked by your own father, and obviously it must be just as sad not to like your only daughter. So I must have failed him in some way, to make him not like me, as well as him failing me.

  Dottie couldn’t think of anything to say to that. She pretty well knew how things had stood between Father and me in the last few years.

  ‘But why move into a dump like that?’

  I tried to explain, and she was more understanding than I had expected. ‘Oh, I see! You felt you weren’t good enough to be anywhere nice! Well, do you know, I’ve felt just like that. When I flopped at my first job, I was so fed up with myself I thought I wasn’t worth any decent firm’s money, so I went off and got a frightful job working in a dirty old canteen, just to punish myself, sort of. Then when I’d proved I could do that really well, horrible and moronic as it was, I let myself off and got a better job nearer my heart’s desire.’ I could have burst into tears when she said that. It meant I didn’t have any kind of mental kink or a leper-complex or anything strange. I squeezed her hand gratefully. It was such a tonic to see her. I’d forgotten what a joy it is to have a girl-friend.

  Almost before we’d begun to really talk, visiting time was over and they were ringing the bell for everyone to leave.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be hot-footing back tomorrow for the next instalment – that is, if you want me to.’

  ‘Oh, please! Do come!’

  ‘Is there anything you need? Anything I can do?’

  ‘No, nothing. At least –’

  ‘What? Say the word!’

  ‘Do you think – is there any way of – of letting Toby know that I’m all right?’

  ‘Is Toby the fledgling? Because if so, there’s no need to tell him. He knows exactly how you are.’

  ‘How? How could he?’

  ‘Who’s that other old girl, the common-prim one with the cat?’

  ‘Mavis?’

  ‘Well, she waylaid me as I was leaving after seeing your Toby, and asked me to give you a message. I forgot it till now, to tell you the truth. She said to tell you she was glad it worked all right, and not to worry about paying her back until you were quite better. What are you smirking at?’

  ‘Nothing. Go on, what else did she say?’

  ‘That was all there was to the message, but then she got chatting. She’s quite a chatterer, isn’t she? She told me she takes an interest in everything that goes on in the house, and that the party line was a great help to her. I rather liked her unabashed frankness. Anyway, she cited as an example the fact that it warmed her heart to hear the fledgling ringing the hospital every day to find out how you were.’ She smiled at the look on my face. ‘I needn’t ask if that’s what you wanted to hear. Well, I’m off. Take care of yourself.’ Before I could reply, she’d whisked off, running up the aisle after the last leaver, waving her little red hat at me from the doorway like a rallying signal.

  Despite the fact that so many people seemed to have so many wrong impressions, I slept very soundly that night. When Dottie came again the next day, bearing chocolates and, of all things, a pomegranate, the first thing she said to me was: ‘You know it’s Christmas in a week, God forbid? Where are you going to spend it?’

  ‘At home, if they let me out of here in time,’ I said.

  ‘What do you call home?’

  I realized I was calling the L-shaped room home for the first time, and thinking of it as such. I was longing to get back to it, or perhaps its associations with Toby were what lent it this sudden magnetism.

  ‘The dump,’ I answered sheepishly.

  ‘You can’t be serious?’

  ‘I think I am –’

  ‘Christmas – in that place? Have you thought?’

  I hadn’t, but it would do no good to think, since everything depended on Toby. If he were not there, it would be terrible. But then, so would anywhere else.

  ‘Because I’ve been thinking,’ said Dottie, ‘what a good idea it would be for you to spend Christmas at my place.’ Dottie had a very nice flat in Earls Court.

  ‘It’s sweet of you to ask me,’ I said, ‘but I’d better not.’

  ‘But why? You’ll die of depression in that bug-run …’

  That hit home. I felt an unwonted defensiveness rising. ‘It’s not all that bad,’ I protested.

  Dottie stopped short, frowning. ‘Do you love it?’

  ‘Well, I do in a way. It’s seen me through a lot.’

  ‘You and your places!’ she said, mildly exasperated. ‘But it’ll still be there waiting for you after the Christmas festivities are over. It’s not a time to be on your own, truly … Please come.’

  I nearly said, ‘You don’t want a pregnant woman on your hands, even during the season of good will,’ but something prevented me. A new set of feelings about the baby had begun to emerge since I had nearly lost it, and I wanted to be sure that they were going to take root before I risked dispersing them with talk.

  I got out of it anyway. Dottie’s feelings were seldom bruised by honesty – I simply said I’d rather not and she said that in her opinion I was crazy, and that was that. We talked about other things, and I told for the first time the story of how I lost the job at Drummonds, which made us both laugh so much the nurses came running with shocked looks to shut us up.

  When time was up Dottie said, ‘You seem indecently healthy to me – I bet they?
??ll send you home tomorrow. I’ll ring here and check before I come. And if you do go back there, at least phone me occasionally and ask me over for a meal – I’ll bring a bottle of vino. I’ll force a bit of Christmas spirit on you, whether you like it or not.’

  She didn’t ask what my plans were, or press me for details of any other potentially embarrassing subject. It’s odd how wrongly you can judge people’s reactions.

  She was right about them letting me out. They came and prodded me and conferred, and then Dr Maxwell said I could go home. But he was evidently even less happy than Dottie about my going back to what he referred to with thinly veiled distaste as ‘that place’.

  ‘Haven’t you any family?’ he boomed.

  I explained the position very briefly and in a pointed undertone.

  ‘Well, I’d like a word with your father,’ he shouted, louder than ever. ‘Damn it, we’re not living in the Middle Ages. And there are one or two other things, while we’re on the subject.’

  ‘Doctor, please don’t shout,’ I importuned vainly.

  ‘What? Who’s shouting?’

  ‘Couldn’t we talk about it another time?’

  He seemed to realize what I was getting at at last, and glanced round the ward at all the aged but fascinated faces turned in our direction. ‘Oh. I see what you mean. Nosy old harpies, eh? Well, let ’em look. If a few more of them had had children, legitimate or otherwise, they wouldn’t look like a lot of dried-up old lemons. I’ll send you home in an ambulance, and come and see you tomorrow. You don’t have to stay in bed all the time, but take it easy – and, er … watch your diet.’ He pulled a fierce face at me.

  I was due to leave at five-thirty in the afternoon. At five o’clock I was dressed and ready. I’d put on weight while I’d been in bed, and the zip on my slacks wouldn’t do up more than half-way. I felt a tremor that was partly apprehension and partly excitement. Still in there, safe and growing! I wrapped my trenchcoat over the bulge and asked if I could telephone.

  Doris answered. ‘It’s Jane Graham,’ I said, very uncertain how much she knew and what sort of reception I could expect.