The L-Shaped Room

  Chapter 16

  CHRISTMAS DAY started badly. To begin with, I’d spent part of the night dreaming about Father – one of those long, tangled dreams with occasional moments of such lucid clarity that you can remember them in detail for years afterwards.

  We seemed to be running against each other in some complex obstacle race. It was terribly important that I should beat him, and I struggled desperately against the invisible forces that always prevent one running in dreams. Every now and then we’d have to climb a huge wall, or jump a ditch, or crawl through a barrel. As I battled my way over or through each obstacle I’d think: I’ll be ahead of him after this – he’ll never manage this one. But when we came into the straight again he was always beside me, running, panting, straining to get ahead just as I was. Then in the end we came to a river so wide I couldn’t see the other bank; I felt frightened and thought this must be the end of the race, and I wanted to stop, but Father plunged straight in without looking at me so I had to plunge in too. The water seemed almost solid, and it was a heart-breaking effort to keep afloat, let alone swim; the heavy dark mass kept closing over my head. I was so sure I was drowning that I forgot about the race and screamed out, ‘Father! Father!’ Each time I stopped to catch my breath I could hear his voice in the distance shouting, ‘Jane! Help! Jane!’ – despairingly, getting fainter and fainter. At the same time I could see Terry standing close by, on firm ground. He had his back to me. I longed to call out to him to help me, but his name stuck in my throat. This part of the dream was like many others I’d had about him. I always woke up hating him for not turning round of his own accord.

  This time John woke me. I was in tears and my stomach felt painful, as if I’d fallen and twisted a muscle.

  ‘You don’t sleep well,’ said John gently. ‘You best wake up, have some tea. Happy Christmas.’

  I held his big black hand gratefully until my heart stopped hammering. Then we had tea together with me sitting up in bed in my dressing-gown. I often did this. It was odd, but I had no feeling of shyness or modesty in front of John; he never seemed to pay the slightest attention to how undressed I was. Recalling my dream, I thought it strange that, having gone to sleep wretched and fretting about Toby, I’d completely forgotten him as soon as I lost consciousness.

  Now I was awake, though, he became all-important again. I could hardly wait to see him. Below, I could hear the spasmodic tap-tapping of Minnie, his typewriter. I listened anxiously. He would type about a sentence, slowly and painfully; then would come a swift, angry machine-gun rattle of repeated x’s, followed by a long, long pause during which I found myself holding my breath, my mind forming wordless prayers. Then at last, when I was beginning to think he’d left his desk or gone out, the tapping would begin again. Several times I went to the head of the stairs, my longing to go to him was so strong. But each time I turned back. I knew I must leave him alone.

  It just didn’t feel like Christmas Day. Trying to awaken my slumbering festive spirit, I invited John to come in and open his present. As soon as he started to tear the paper off I had a wild desire to snatch it back, rush out and buy him a record-player; it seemed such a ludicrously inadequate present after all he’d done for me. Instead I had to sit and watch him produce the belt, and although he seemed pleased enough with it the incident left me even more empty of joy than before.

  ‘I got a present for you, too,’ John said, grinning mysteriously. ‘Not ready yet. I give you tomorrow.’

  When he’d gone I went back to bed. There didn’t seem to be much to get up for. I just sat there, thinking about Christmases past.

  When I was little, my two cousins and I used to spend the holidays with each other’s families in rotation. Before we reached an age at which it was considered improper, the three of us used to sleep in one big bed and keep each other awake most of the night, giggling and speculating on the mysteries and wonders of Christmas morning. Our stockings were always huge – not real stockings, but big ones made of net stitched with tinsel ribbon. In the morning when we woke, the first awareness was always of their new and sumptuous heaviness lying across our feet.

  One Christmas Eve I woke at the critical moment, and saw, not Santa Claus, but three familiar figures indulging in heavy horseplay at the foot of the bed. There were two more familiar figures (female) hovering in the doorway hissing ‘Hurry up – don’t wake them!’ and ‘Michael, stop breathing gin-fumes in the boy’s face!’ I lay as still as death. Next morning, with ghoulish relish, I shattered the already somewhat shaky illusions of my two cousins. We told no one what we knew, and kept our secret for a year, while we plotted revenge. The following Christmas Eve, we enlisted the aid of Addy, our friend and ally, and laid an ingenious Santa-trap. This consisted of a collection of kitchen equipment – saucepans laid in strategic positions on the floor, a roasting tin filled with cutlery balanced on the top of the door, kettles hung at face-level from the ceiling. The grown ups having gone out for the evening we then kept awake alternately for half-hour shifts by one of the boy’s watches until at long last we were rewarded by the sound of creaking and thumps from the stairs, accompanied by slurry avuncular curses and ‘shushes’ from the aunts. The trap worked like a charm. The uncles and my father, jolly and unsuspecting after an evening’s celebrations, blundered in with their sacks of bounty; the tins and cutlery crashed round their ears as they pushed the door open. Propelled forward by the shrieking aunts, who were bringing up the rear, they stumbled in, falling over the pots and pans and bumping into the dangling kettles, dropping their sacks and shouting and generally making the most satisfactory uproar imaginable. The lights went on; we leapt up and pounced on them, adding our howls of ingrate triumph to the general confusion – ending the happy myth not with a whimper but a bang, while Addy, the fellow-conspirator, leant against the wall and laughed herself to helplessness …

  I got out of bed suddenly and fumbled for some money. I went downstairs to the phone in my dressing-gown, pausing only for a second outside Toby’s door to listen for the typewriter, which was silent, and for another moment outside Mavis’s to leave her snuff-box. At the phone I rang the operator and asked for Addy’s number.

  I wondered why I hadn’t thought of this before. Perhaps I had thought of it, but just hadn’t wanted to do it. Now it seemed like the only thing that would make Christmas tolerable. I waited happily for them to get through. There was no need to plan what to say; it would all be easy, as soon as I heard her voice.

  ‘No reply, caller.’

  Slowly I put back the receiver and climbed upstairs. It was a moment of despair.

  Mavis came to her door. If I could have avoided her, I would, but it was impossible. She had my present in her hand and was smiling a merry Christmas-morning smile. To my eyes this made her look like a strip-dancer at a funeral.

  ‘Who forgot to press button B?’ she asked archly.

  ‘Oh …’ At any other time I’d have laughed at this innocent self-betrayal; just now it didn’t seem funny, only irritating.

  ‘Thank you for the lovely box, dear! Wherever did you find it?’

  ‘Do you like it?’

  ‘Like it? Of course I like it, I love it! Now come and see what I’ve got for you.’

  Her room was an Aladdin’s-cave of coloured balls and jack-frost. She had more Christmas cards than I’d ever seen for one person; every surface was a forest of them.

  ‘How pretty,’ was the best I could manage in my present mood.

  ‘Yes, isn’t it,’ she agreed complacently. ‘Here you are, then, dear, and a merry Christmas, in spite of everything.’

  I couldn’t help smiling at that; she still hadn’t quite forgiven me for the fact that her remedy hadn’t been effective. I unwrapped her gift.

  It was a small book called Baby and You.

  Good Old Mavis, I thought, suppressing a giggle; she takes her defeats like a lady. I said ‘Thank you’ in a choked voice and kissed her. She sighed.

  ‘Well, dear, I’m only sorry
it didn’t work. I really can’t understand it. You did do exactly what I told you, didn’t you?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter now, Mavis.’

  ‘But I don’t like to feel I let you down, Jane.’

  ‘You didn’t let me down. Please don’t give it another thought.’

  She sighed again, but dismissively, a no-good-crying-over-spilt-milk sigh. ‘Well now,’ she said in a brisk voice, ‘we must think of the future. What are you going to do?’

  This is the sort of question people in my position come to dread. I think those under thirty find it difficult to accept the fact that some actions may have results which are final and inescapable. When you’re young, everything seems reversible, remediable. Time will put everything right. Unkind words, ill-judged behaviour – stupidity, cruelty, it can all be made up for, cancelled out later. But now I’d done something which was forever. I still couldn’t quite believe that nothing would ever be the same again.

  ‘I don’t know yet,’ I said.

  ‘If only Toby had a little money – or a proper job – he’s a sweet boy, but –’

  ‘Mavis, if you really want to help me –’

  ‘Oh, I do, dear!’

  ‘– you’ll stop talking as if Toby’s the father. You must know he isn’t.’

  Mavis’s eager expression went blank, then turned hurt. ‘I’m sure I’ve never dreamed of saying –’

  ‘Mavis, dear, I don’t blame you. Just, please, don’t talk about me any more.’

  Oddly enough, she wasn’t offended. ‘Well, I always was a gossip, always will be, it’s in my nature. One has to come to terms with one’s little weaknesses,’ she said tolerantly, as if speaking of someone else’s. Then she appeared to think of something else. She frowned for a moment, then picked up my hand and led me to the window.

  ‘Yes, I thought so,’ she said after a moment’s scrutiny. ‘This tall fair man I spotted last night –’

  ‘Oh Mavis, for heaven’s sake!’

  ‘No, now you’re very naughty to scoff.’ She dropped my hand and looked at me. ‘He’s overseas, isn’t he?’

  It was probably just a lucky guess, but it shook me, and she saw it. Pressing her advantage, she hurried on: ‘Why not write to him? Oh, I know, you don’t like to ask him for anything – my dear, you don’t have to tell me, I’ve seen it all before. But you’ve not only got yourself to think of …’ She talked and talked. It was minutes before I could get a word in. The word I finally got in was ‘No’.

  She sighed resignedly. ‘Well, we’ll just have to think of something else, won’t we?’

  ‘It’s not your worry, Mavis,’ I said, I hope not rudely.

  ‘No, but it’s so much more interesting than any of mine,’ she replied …

  Cheerful crashes and bangs floated up from Doris’s kitchen as I went back upstairs, and I could hear outbursts of raucous male laughter and pinch-induced shrieks. Charlie had evidently been forgiven, and was about to be fed. Somebody, at least, was feeling Christmasy.

  Toby’s typewriter was still silent. I stood outside his door listening for a long time; there wasn’t a sound. I was well aware I should wait until he came to me. I let myself knock.

  ‘Who is it?’

  I went in. Toby was lying on his back on the bed, smoking. My eyes went to the desk. It was neat and bare. The typewriter was covered. A cold feeling ran over me. It was like seeing a room that’s been tidied up after a death.

  ‘I thought you were working,’ I said.

  ‘I was. I had to stop.’ There was a curious note of finality in his voice.

  I walked slowly to the bed and sat down beside him. The edge felt unfriendly and insufficient under me, and he didn’t move to make room.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He didn’t look at me, but stared at the ceiling, frowning against the smoke.

  I felt as if he felt I was a stranger. After a long time I said, ‘Do you want me to leave you alone?’

  He shrugged and shook his head helplessly.

  My hands and feet were like ice. ‘It’s Christmas Day,’ I said stupidly.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, and now his voice sounded desolate. ‘I know. I’ve nothing to give you.’

  ‘It’s not important –’

  He jerked with pain and anger as if I’d laid a whip on him. ‘It is!’ he shouted. The shout startled me to my feet. I felt suddenly afraid of him, afraid to be too close to his pain, knowing I’d caused it. I walked to the door.

  ‘Jane.’

  I dared not turn and let him see my face. I stood facing the door and said, ‘Yes.’

  There was a long moment and then he said in a stifled voice, ‘It’s gone.’

  My first thought was that he meant his feeling for me. Trust a woman to think of that first. I said nothing. My skin crawled, and I shivered a bit as I stood there, desolate as a child in a corner.

  He went on talking. ‘I know why, I think. It’s because now there’s a reason why I must. It’s not just me any more, me doing what I want to do when I feel like it. Now it’s me doing the only thing I can do because I have to make some money.’

  I turned and we looked at each other.

  ‘Not for me,’ I said loudly. I was very frightened. This was what one person’s needs could do, if inflicted on another person. ‘You don’t have to make money for me. I’m not your responsibility – I’m not anybody’s but mine. And you’re not anybody’s but yours. I won’t take the responsibility for you losing the will to write, or for shackling your motives, or anything else. We’ve no right to wish our problems on each other. That’s the difference between being married and single – and we’re single.’

  I went quickly out and up to my room. I was shaking. I sat for a while holding the baby under my hands. Then I got up and took the two rugs by their corners and dragged them outside the door. After that I swept the pock-marked linoleum, and then washed it, working from the far corner under the bed right round the angle to the door, backing along on my knees. That took an hour, and made me so tired that I was able to lie down and go to sleep. I was numb, but it was a numbness that promised to give way to an agonizing pain quite soon.

  I woke to knocking. In my warm, sleepy contentment I expected it to be Toby, the Toby of before. But it wasn’t; it was Addy.

  She stood in the angle, shapeless and erect in her aged but once-good suit with the fox-head-and-riding-crop brooch on the lapel; the well-pressed faded blouse; the sensible heels planted apart; the leather gloves softly slapping the palm of the hand – and of course, a new hat. She always bought new hats. This time she’d outdone herself. It was as ultra-fashionable as the suit was dated. It bestrode her severely-parted hair like a sequined circus girl, riding backwards on the solid rump of a matronly old mare.

  ‘Merry Christmas,’ she said with false heartiness. ‘Or does the mere suggestion make you want to heave?’

  I flung myself out of bed and into her arms. The fox-head pin scratched my cheek. The hat was so new it gave off a faint, expensive smell.

  ‘Here! That’ll do. No need, to knock me for six. Let’s have a bit of light on the subject.’ She switched on the blue urinal and looked at it. ‘What a curious shape! It reminds me of a hospital, for some reason … Well, let’s look at you. Yes, you’ve got quite an interesting shape, too. Do you like my hat?’ She adjusted it at a still more ludicrous angle in the mirror.

  ‘I’m crazy about it,’ I said fervently.

  ‘Like to try it on?’

  ‘Yes, please!’

  I tried it on. Addy adjusted it fastidiously above my hollow-eyed, pasty face. My cropped hair stuck out bleakly. On me, it looked like the fairy on a Christmas tree which has shed all its needles.

  ‘You need a bit of make-up to set it off properly,’ Addy said thoughtfully. She opened her handbag and brought out an astonishing assortment of cosmetics, with which she daubed my face. They were all the wrong shades for me (for her too) and I looked like a tired clown by the time she
’d finished, but on my previous appearance anything would have been an improvement. She didn’t ask what I’d done to my hair. She sat back and said, ‘There! That’s more like it,’ with a rich air of satisfaction, as if I were her master-work. ‘No, don’t take it off just yet. It brightens the room.’

  I sat curled on the bed in my shabby dressing-gown and Addy’s spectacular circus hat, while Addy inspected the room.

  ‘I like it,’ she said at last. ‘The rest of the house is unforgivable, but this room’s fine. The white walls make all the difference.’

  ‘John did those. He’s the man next door.’

  ‘The black one with all the teeth? Like a young Robeson, with that tremendously wide face, yes, I saw him as I came up. Fascinating. What about some tea? No, don’t move, I’ll do it.’

  While she made tea with her usual haphazard efficiency, she put me into the picture. In casual, chatty tones, she told me that ‘my news’ hadn’t penetrated to her Surrey retreat, and in fact hadn’t reached her until an hour ago when she’d arrived, having heard nothing to the contrary since last year, to keep the traditional family tryst at my father’s house. There she’d found him alone – ‘pretending to have forgotten it was Christmas’ – all the rest of the family having tactfully cried off.

  ‘Your father thought one of the others would have blown the gaff to me – presumably they thought he had – the net result, as always when you leave it to George, being that nobody told me a thing. Not even you,’ she added, with the first hint of reproach she’d used.

  I opened my mouth to utter some as yet unthought-up excuse, but she stopped me. ‘Don’t bother,’ she said, ‘I can imagine – the old hide-your-head urge – well known to me. Well now, tell me why you’re not living at home. On second thoughts, don’t. I can imagine that, too. Silly old sod.’

  Somehow this surprised me – not the word sod (I’d learned most of my swear-words at Addy’s knee) but the word silly. It seemed out of place.

  ‘Why silly?’

  ‘Well, the old fool! Always bleating and moaning because he hasn’t got a son – no one to carry on the Great Name of Graham –’ She gave a short guffaw. ‘So now you’re going to have what might well prove to be a boy, very likely is from the way you’re growing. Presumably you’ll adopt it yourself?’