The L-Shaped Room

  I found the uncles and their wives, and the cousins, too, who were respectively scruffy and stuffy, trying and used to dread the annual get-together – though now I thought back to it it seemed I’d always enjoyed it in the event. I had to laugh at myself for thinking rather longingly now that I should miss it this year, and especially I would miss Addy, whom I loved. Would they all meet at Father’s as usual? Would Father tell them about me, or had he already circulated the news? Probably they all knew by now; my uncle Michael was a great gossip, and he and my father often met for lunch at week-ends. I felt a little ashamed that I had never cared enough for any of my father’s relatives to give even a thought to their reactions to the prospect of an irregular addition to the family. I could predict them with reasonable assurance in each case, except Addy. You could never be sure what she was going to feel, do or say about anything.

  The day after we’d decorated the tree and stood it in my window, I left Toby writing and went out alone. I had a vague idea of sounding the newsagent boards for a job, but it was a fine, bright day and I found myself walking, just walking, enjoying the feeling of not being afraid any more. I stopped at a stationer’s and ordered two reams of Devon Valley Thin, two black ribbons to fit Toby’s portable, and a box of the best carbon papers. I looked at the Christmas cards. Normally I bought fifty, this year I bought six though basically I only needed one. But there was Dottie and James and Addy and I’d be sure to think of some others. I thought, I really must stop spending money. Anyone would think this was just any Christmas. But being happy always makes me want to buy things.

  I told the stationer I’d be back for my parcel, and wandered on through the cold sunny streets. When I realized I was walking towards my father’s house I quickly changed my direction. It gave me quite a shock. It was as if I were a mindless pin, being drawn through a magnetic field. To distract myself, I went into a draper’s and bought a pair of knitting needles, a large supply of soft yellow wool and some nice simple patterns. While I was looking through them, the woman, who was a friendly, cosy old body, noticed my bare hand and laughed at herself.

  ‘I thought for a while it was for a baby of your own,’ she said.

  I wanted to say ‘It is’, but something stopped me. When I got out of the shop I felt angry with myself, and a little alarmed. If I wasn’t able to admit it to some old woman I’d never see again and who didn’t matter a scrap to me, how was I going to face it out for the rest of my life? I decided it was just because she hadn’t mattered that it hadn’t been worth shocking her. It didn’t exactly lend weight to my decision to realize, when I’d finished making it, that I was standing outside a second-hand jeweller’s looking at a selection of gold rings.

  At a junk-shop a little further along I saw a china snuff-box painted with ribbons in lover’s-knots, and an M on the lid, which I bought for Mavis. It was only 2s. 6d. and rather her sort of thing, I thought. The problem of John remained. How I wished I could buy him a record-player for all those useless records, but there was no point in thinking along those lines, so in the end I got him a belt, made of different coloured woven leathers, very gay and rather spivvy, only of course it wouldn’t look spivvy on him. Then I picked up my things at the stationer’s and walked home, ignoring the distressing tugs of the magnetic field, which made me feel I’d wasted my morning by not doing the thing I’d set out to do. I couldn’t understand why I should want to leave the relative safety of the house in Fulham to walk into a hornets’ nest of horrified disapproval and rejection.

  The first thing Toby said to me when I got in was, ‘Somebody’s been here to see you.’

  My heart froze for a second, as if I had put on an elaborate disguise and suddenly been addressed by name – I didn’t feel safe any more. I’d been discovered.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘A man. Big, tough-looking character. Wouldn’t give his name.’

  James, I thought dully.

  ‘Is he coming back?’

  ‘Yes, this evening, he said.’ Toby looked at me inquiringly.

  ‘It’s my old boss. You know, the one John said was my lover,’ I said. ‘Oh, damn, I never thought he’d look for me.’

  ‘He seemed in an awful state about something.’

  ‘The house, probably,’ I said. ‘I didn’t exactly describe it accurately. Also, he may have had quite a job finding it.’

  I felt very tired suddenly, and Toby saw it.

  ‘You’ve overdone it rather, haven’t you?’ he asked. ‘Why don’t you pop upstairs and lie down for a bit? I’ll fix you some tea later.’

  ‘No, that’s my job,’ I said. I looked at the sheet of paper in the typewriter. ‘How have you been getting on?’

  ‘Not too well,’ he said shortly, and then added an odd thing: ‘I hope being happy isn’t going to stop me writing.’

  ‘Why should it?’

  ‘I don’t know. I can’t seem to concentrate. I keep floating about in the thought of you, like wallowing in a hot bath and not wanting to get out.’

  He was sitting at his desk and I went and put my arms round him from behind, and nuzzled his ear. ‘I’ve got a confession to make,’ I said. ‘When you went away I came down here and read –’

  ‘What!’ He jerked away from me.

  ‘Only one page,’ I said soothingly. ‘I thought it was terribly good.’

  He stared at me for a moment, and I thought he was going to be angry. Then he said, ‘If you thought it was so bloody good, why did you only read one page?’ We laughed, and then he grew serious again and said, ‘But don’t praise me. It dries things up somehow.’

  ‘A lot of things seem to dry you up,’ I teased.

  ‘It’s the truth,’ he said gloomily.

  I went away and made tea and then sent off my Christmas cards, only not James’s. I dreaded seeing him, and thought I’d go out for the evening, but then I realized there was no point in that, it was only putting off the inevitable. Perhaps he won’t come, I thought. But I knew he would. Then I began to wonder whether, by wearing a loose jacket and sitting down all the time, I could keep him from noticing. Men aren’t very observant about these things. What on earth had prompted him to come hunting for me? I sighed uneasily and began to cast on stitches for the back of a matinee jacket …

  Knitting was a painful business for me, but it was absorbing, and I’d lost track of the time when I heard crashing footsteps approaching and a determined bang on the door. I hid the inch of yellow knitting, which represented two hours’ work, under my chair, tipped the lampshade to a more discreet angle, and called, ‘Come in.’

  The door was flung open, and there was a baffled pause, like that of a charging bull who’s lost sight of its target. ‘Well, where the hell are you? Oh, here!’ he exclaimed, bursting into sight round the corner. ‘Ah, so I’ve found you at last!’

  He sounded exactly like an outraged father, but the expression on his face was contradictory. He had the anxious, wary look he always wore around women who were indulging in any essentially feminine pursuit – like crying, being coy, spending money on fripperies, or gossiping. Or being in some way fragile and in need of protection. I knew that look too well to mistake or ignore it. With a sigh of resignation I untipped the lampshade and raked out my knitting from beneath the chair.

  ‘Sit down, James,’ I said wearily, and when he had done so, his big hands dangling between his knees, I asked, ‘How did you find out?’

  ‘How did you know I knew?’ he mumbled, incoherent with surprise.

  ‘That look,’ I said grimly.

  ‘Look? But I didn’t – not at – I mean –’

  ‘Never mind James. How are you?’

  ‘How are you?’ he asked accusingly.

  ‘As you see me.’

  ‘God, if I’d known! If only you’d told me! Living here – in this place –’

  ‘Now, James, it’s quite all right. Keep calm. I like it here.’

  ‘I admit this room’s like a daffodil in a crap-heap,’ he conceded. r />
  ‘How did you find out?’ I asked again.

  ‘Well, you’ll never guess,’ he said. ‘The Old Man told me.’

  ‘WHAT!’

  ‘He’s known all along. He knew when he fired you.’

  I sat with my mouth open.

  ‘Well, you can imagine, I felt the way you look. The bloody old hawk, talk about X-ray eyes! Heard about you being sick and put two and two together – though what the other two was, I’m damned if I know. These old Jews, they’ve got such a feeling for kids, they can spot ’em almost before they’re conceived. It floored me.’

  It had floored me too. I’d dropped three stitches. But it explained a few things – the kindness I’d thought I’d detected, his seemingly unreasonable act of firing me …

  ‘So – why on earth did he tell you now?’

  ‘Got the wind up about you. Christmas and all that. Those Yids, they set far more stock by this Christmas nonsense than most of us – damn’ nuisance – God, I’ve missed having you to do my shopping for me this year. What do you think Audrey’d like, damned if I know – and Joan’s getting to the stage where she looks at toys and says politely, “Yes, but what does it do?” Anyway, the Old Man – well, he called me into the Sanctum this morning and said, had I heard anything from you, and I said no, and he said silly bitch, or words to that effect – with which I agree – said he’d told you you should keep in touch with me. Then he said, he’d heard you’d moved away from home. Is there anything he doesn’t hear, I ask myself? I said, yes you had. Did I know where you were living now? Yes, I said, you had a nice place in Chelsea. Check on it, said he. Why? I asked. Never mind why, he said, just do it. So I rang here, didn’t ask for you, just asked the address. When we found out you’d pulled a fast one, the Old Man said I was to get round and find out if you were all right. Why shouldn’t she be all right? I asked him. I was beginning to think he’d gone off his chump. He gave me a sort of world-weary look – and then he told me. Seemed to think I should have known it for myself. Jesus, Jane,’ he finished peevishly, ‘why didn’t you tell me, dear? When I think I kept you working …’

  ‘Thank God you did, or I’d have cracked up and had even less money saved than I have now.’

  James coughed. ‘That’s really what the Old Man wanted me to find out – how are you off for money?’

  ‘I’ve got about £87 10s.,’ I said.

  James ran his fingers through his hair distractedly.

  ‘Jane – I don’t want to interfere – I mean it’s none of my business, but –’

  ‘Who’s the father?’

  ‘Well – yes – no –’

  ‘He’s an ex-actor. I’ve known him for seven years. We went to bed once. He’s in Paris. He doesn’t know anything about the baby, and I never want to see him again. Okay?’

  ‘Sorry, dear,’ James muttered, rigid with embarrassment.

  ‘I’m sorry, too,’ I said penitently. ‘It’s just that it’s all very well to talk about his responsibility and all that – nobody thinks how awful it would be for me to go crawling to him wailing, “I’m in trou-uble? I’m going to have a ba-aby?” I couldn’t, James. I’d rather manage alone. If I can.’

  ‘Ah, but that’s the whole point. Can you?’

  ‘Well, that remains to be seen.’

  James watched me prodding away at the knitting for a while, and I sensed his helplessness.

  ‘The Old Man said – if fifty quid’d help –’

  I stopped knitting again and stared at him.

  ‘Are you telling me that – he wants to give me –’

  ‘Well, not really give. A sort of advance on salary.’

  I took this in.

  ‘You mean, he’d be willing to take me back, afterwards?’

  ‘It’s fair to say I’ve never stopped griping since you left. And you know how I can gripe.’

  ‘Thank you, James,’ I said, feeling humble.

  ‘So what about the fifty?’

  I sat and thought about it.

  ‘I can’t get over him doing this for me – a shiksa.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A non-Jew.’

  ‘Well, you’ve worked for him. That practically gives you a hook-nose in his eyes. He mentally circumcised me the day he signed my first pay-cheque.’

  ‘What do you think? Ought I to take it?’

  James sat back on the bed and shouted, ‘Take it! Of course you should take it! Good God, are you crazy? You might just as well say to a publisher, should you take his advance royalties!’

  ‘Yes, but I might not be able to come back – it’s all so uncertain …’

  He grimaced in exasperation. ‘You flaming women, you’re so stuffed with bloody honesty it’s a wonder you don’t choke on it. So you don’t come back. So the book doesn’t sell a single copy. So what? You can pay it back sometime –’

  ‘Oh, sure!’

  ‘Well, or if you don’t, he can afford it. Better you than some club for Jewish juvenile delinquents. Take it and buy a pram, and if your conscience bothers you, paint “Down with the Arabs” on one side and “I like Kykes” on the other. That way you’ll be doing him a favour.’

  I laughed and said, ‘All right. I could do with it.’

  He got out a cheque-book and wrote a cheque.

  ‘I suppose you wouldn’t accept an extra bit from me?’ he asked.

  ‘You’re damn’ right I wouldn’t.’

  ‘Never mind, Audrey and I will give you a pile of disposable nappies or something when the time comes.’ He gave me the cheque.

  ‘I must write and thank him,’ I said, gloating over it.

  ‘No,’ said James quickly, ‘don’t do that. I’ll thank him for you. Hell, it’s chicken-feed to him.’

  ‘Shiksa-feed,’ I corrected. ‘But I must write, all the same. It really is darling of him.’

  ‘Well –’ he said, ‘I tell you what, write the letter now and I’ll take it in. Why waste a stamp?’ Then I looked at him and he looked quickly away, James who was incapable of telling the simplest lie without making a hash of it. Silently, I handed the cheque back.

  ‘Well tried,’ was all I said, but very tenderly.

  He blustered and turned scarlet as if caught out in a crime, and tried to bluff it out, but I knew him too well.

  Then he tried to force me to take the damn’ thing, and I had to call attention to my delicate condition. At last he sat back, tousled and infuriated, crumpled the cheque and hurled it across the room.

  ‘I won’t cash it,’ I warned him.

  ‘I know you won’t, blast you.’ We sat in stubborn silence for a minute. Then he said, ‘In fairness to the Old Man, all the rest of it’s true; I mean he did say you could come back to Drummonds later, and it was through him that I found out … he’d probably be glad for you to have fifty out of petty cash – which was where I was going to get it from to pay myself back –’

  ‘A likely story.’

  He sat quiet for another moment, and then began raging. ‘Bloody, stupid, stubborn, neurotic –’

  ‘Yes, James. I love you.’

  He stood up, shaking his head, and picked up his coat.

  ‘I’ll be back,’ he threatened. ‘Oh – here. You can’t bloody well refuse this.’ He took a half-bottle of Glen Mist out of his pocket. ‘Shut your trap,’ he said, as I opened it to protest. He plonked the bottle on the table, and shambled muttering round the corner. Then he put his head back into sight.

  ‘And I still think you should write to Paris!’ he yelled as a parting shot.

  Toby came up when James had gone. I told him what had happened and we sipped the Glen Mist out of egg-cups.

  ‘This is one bottle we won’t be taking to Doris’s come-all-ye,’ he said.

  I said nothing. I was thinking of all I could have bought for the baby with fifty pounds. I picked up the crumpled cheque and spread it out, looking at it with the sort of hopeless hunger with which one admires things in the window of Fortnum & Mason. Toby watc
hed me.

  ‘I think I’ll have a cigarette,’ I said suddenly.

  He looked as if he were going to object, then didn’t. He gave me one, and I folded the cheque carefully into a spill and lit the cigarette with the flame I had obtained from the gas-fire.

  ‘God,’ said Toby violently, ‘I wish to Christ –’

  ‘What, darling?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he said miserably, staring at the charred remains of the cheque, burning away in the Cinzano ashtray.

  Chapter 15

  WE were late getting to Doris’s party on Christmas Eve, because Toby and I had a sort of row.

  I hadn’t been feeling too well all day, but after opening-time when Toby’d gone out to get the wine I started to feel better and began to dress. But nothing I had looked right on me. My skirts wouldn’t fasten and my loose-fitting dresses weren’t loose any more. I thought it wasn’t fair that I should begin to show when I was barely into my fourth month, and I got angry with my clothes, as if it were their fault that I pulled them out of shape. Also, my hair wouldn’t go right. For no apparent reason it was hanging on my head like lank seaweed; I couldn’t make it puff out in a way that hid my ears properly. It was just that bit too long. I got hot and sticky trying to fix it, and my arms ached with holding them up. I thought, I must get it cut – and then I remembered that I had no money to waste on that sort of thing any more; it would just have to grow, or I’d have to cut it myself. In the end I completely lost my temper with it. I got a pair of rather blunt scissors out of my sewing-kit and, swearing out loud, began to chop.

  Of course, after I’d cut off one bit, my temper cooled down like a hot poker dipped in a rain barrel. I stood in front of the mirror, aghast at what I’d done. There was one raw edge, straight from my left cheek to my ear-lobe, then a drop of about two inches, and all the rest hung down unhappily, like a dropped skirt-hem.

  At that moment, Toby knocked. He was a bit subdued that day anyway; the work wasn’t coming right. He’d got about half-way through the book, and stuck. He’d added nothing since the night James came. I knew well enough what the trouble was. He wanted to be able to give me fifty pounds, and he was suffering from a deep sense of inadequacy because he couldn’t have given me five. As I knew this, there was no excuse for the way I behaved. I think I’d have been more sensitive, but for my hair, and my clothes not fitting.