THERE followed a period of physical well-being in which I learned what pleasure can be gained from absolutely negative sources. Getting up in the mornings, something I had loathed and dreaded all my life, now became a positively jolly part of the day’s routine. I used to sing about my toilet out of sheer relief, and sometimes John would join in next door and we would produce a creditable duet. If I’d applied myself during this patch, I think I could have had moments of real happiness about the impending event; I felt well and strong and my heart tended to be light; but instead of using this sound bodily basis as the jumping-off point for a little constructive thinking, I used it as the foundation for straight escapism.
In other words, just as often as possible I pushed the thought of ‘it’ completely aside. ‘It’ had stopped being anything as concrete as a baby I was due to have in roughly seven months, and become an almost unidentified problem that I would think about some time in the future when it became more pressing. My figure, so far as I could judge – which wasn’t far as I had no long mirror in my room, but I occasionally gave it a passing glance in the hotel ladies’ room – was exactly as always. The whole thing was surprisingly easy just not to fret about any more. I slept soundly; my brain was clear and full of ideas; my step was light, and James looked as if he’d recently exchanged a hair-shirt for a rather expensive silk one from Simpsons.
I did more to the room. While I was being ill, I not only hadn’t felt any interest in improving my surroundings, but the perpetual consciousness of the need to save money had prevented me from buying anything non-essential. Now with my new to-hell-with-it outlook, every shop window with a relevance to house interiors drew me like a magnet, and I began to bring little parcels back to the house – or rather, sneak them back; I didn’t feel like trying my luck with Doris too far. I started moderately with small, necessary items like a potato peeler and a kettle; then I branched out a little and acquired a small casserole dish and three coffee mugs; and finally I got really reckless and bought material for recovering the chair, a three-layer vegetable rack, two cushions, a burgeoning pot of ivy and a totally unessential object called a sink-tidy which I fell for in a bargain basement.
John and Toby were the worst possible influence. They rejoiced at everything, exclaiming like children over each purchase and generally encouraging my improvidence.
‘The next thing you must get,’ Toby egged me on, ‘is a table-lamp. You can’t imagine what a difference it would make.’
I could, all too well, but I did make a feeble protest. ‘I can’t afford it,’ I said weakly.
‘All right then, if you can’t afford a new one – why don’t you get this thing turned into one?’– indicating a sea-blue vase of singular shape which I had brought back from a holiday in Italy. ‘It looks like a blue urinal at the moment.’
‘It does not!’
‘It’d soon stop if you put a lampshade on top of it.’
So I had the blue urinal-vase turned into a lamp, which in the end cost a lot more than a lamp would have done, but it looked lovely and imparted a much more friendly, cosy aspect to the room in the evenings.
‘When you goin’ to do the walls?’ John would ask.
‘I’ll get around to it sometime – it means such an upheaval.’
But John did make me a wardrobe. One day I left the Yale on the latch accidentally, and when I came back I found a brand-new shelf, with a brass rod below it, high up in the shallow recess beside the fireplace. It was solid as a rock, and just the right height to hang my things on; all it needed was a curtain, and I felt nothing but the best was good enough to grace John’s generous handiwork; so during the following day’s lunch-hour I went to Debenham’s and bought a length of beautiful yellow curtaining, with some red in it to pick up the colours in the rug which John loved. I made it up myself, with Mavis’s help – she was doing the chair-cover for me, and I spent quite a few evenings sitting in front of her fire chatting away and trying to master the eccentricities of her ancient sewing-machine.
‘You have to love it, like,’ she explained as she tenderly coaxed the contrary brute into operation. The net result was she had to do most of the work; the finished products were, as one might expect, completely professional, but she flatly refused a fee, though I did everything except stuff the money into one of the daisy-vases.
‘If you want to do something for me, dear,’ she said, ‘just thread me up a few needles in different colours – can’t see the blooming eyes any more.’ I did this, of course, and after careful thought I also bought her a splendid pink cineraria in a pot. Round the rim of this I got one of the sign-painters at the hotel, who did our notices and door-names and things, to write ‘A present from Park Lane’. I was a bit doubtful about this last touch; I was afraid she might think I was making fun of her. But she was thrilled to pieces, and nearly watered the poor thing to death until I managed to convince her it didn’t need it.
I was settling into a routine of nest-making which was as much of an opiate as a new toy is to a child. I understood for the first time how Father felt about his garden. I wondered how often and how obviously I’d shown my lack of sympathy at his enthusiasm for it. Oddly enough, I was thinking this one morning when I was leaving the house, and there on the hall table was a letter from him.
I went all the way back upstairs so that I could shut myself up in my room and read it.
‘Dear Jane,’ it began. ‘As you can imagine, I find this letter hard to write. We haven’t been very close these last years, which may have been my fault, I suppose, though I don’t quite see where we went wrong; I’ve always done my best, but that seldom seems to be enough in this world. This isn’t an apology, however, as I think any parent would have felt as I did, being told a thing like that without any preparation. You almost seemed to enjoy telling me, or that’s how it seemed to me. But I am still your Father and I don’t enjoy thinking about you alone somewhere. Your home is here and if you want to come back to it you should feel free to. It’s not right for you to be among strangers. You are still my reponsibility in a way, though legally you’re old enough to live your own life.’
He’d signed it just ‘Father’. There was a P.S.: ‘I’m telling anyone who telephones that you’ve gone abroad. You didn’t say what you wanted done and that seemed the best thing.’
I felt cold shiver after cold shiver pass through me as I read this letter. It wasn’t until it came that I realized how badly I had wanted him to try and make contact with me; and now he had, my disappointment was so acute at the cold formality of his manner that all my past dislike of him, my resentment of his patronage, returned full-force. ‘My responsibility.’ Yes, that was just what he would say. Not a word of warmth or welcome or affection, or even forgiveness. Anger would have been easier to bear than this stiffly-extended hand of duty, held out grudgingly under the banner of ‘Blood is Thicker than Water’.
I screwed the letter up and shed hot, angry tears on it. Go back! I would see him in hell first. But my bitterly-phrased thoughts brought no relief, only renewed tears of guilt for which I refused to seek a cause. I threw the letter into the waste-paper basket. But that night when I came home from work I recovered it. I smoothed it out, and without re-reading it put it into my suitcase with the Alsatians and told myself to forget it.
It hurt for a while, then stopped. I thought how quickly and easily all the ties of one life could be broken and those of a new one built up … It was sad to reflect that the new friends were probably just as transitory, and the links with them just as fragile. This thought was, at that time, the nearest I let myself get to the monstrous pit of insecurity which I could sense lurking just under the surface of the fool’s paradise of respite I was letting myself bask in.
Stupendous days – turning-point days – come without warning, and start as innocently as if butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths.
One Saturday when Toby and John were having tea in my room John suddenly said: ‘Why you and Toby don’t come hear us playin’ at the club some night?’
Toby said nothing, but looked at me inquiringly. Feeling rather at a loss, I said, ‘I don’t know, why don’t we?’
‘Because you’ve never asked us,’ said Toby.
‘I ask you now.’
‘Would you like to?’ Toby asked me, and added tactlessly, ‘You never seem to have an evening out,’ which made me suddenly suspect that he and John might have cooked this up between them.
‘Yes, I would,’ I said, without giving myself time to think. It was true, I hadn’t been anywhere in the evening for weeks; in moments of self-pity I’d wept for that, as well as for other things. It’s funny what petty things can push you over the border of tears when something enormous keeps you perpetually at the brink.
Toby, in one of his lightning spasms of enthusiasm, jumped to his feet, kicking his tea all over my-sister-made-that-rug. ‘Oh sod it,’ he said happily. ‘Look, let’s go tonight! Why not? It’s Saturday, we’ll see all the fun. Is it nice and noisy and sordid, Johnny?’
John grinned right across his wide black face. Do negroes have more teeth than other people? I’ll swear they do.
‘Sure, it good and sordid, you’ll like it. All the time police comin’ in, we is all runnin’ like the bugs.’ He held his feet, which were crossed beneath his thighs, and rocked backwards, laughing his stupendous black laugh.
‘Really, police, Johnny?’
‘No, I jokin’. Only when girls strip-tease and do dance under the bar, like in Jamaica. Then police-come. Not strip-tease for a long time now – very good club, nothing wicked, you see. You come tonight, you’ll like it.’
So we went.
I felt strange, getting ready. It was the first time I’d gone out with a man since – Stop. My mind obeyed me perfectly now. But just the same, it was strange. More particularly because it was Toby; somehow I’d never foreseen going out with Toby. He was just a nice boy to have around, but not one to get dressed up to go out with. For one thing, he was so small – I’ve always liked tall men, and Toby was shorter than I was. Still, what did that matter? It wasn’t an evening of mystery and romance, for heaven’s sake. I put on flat heels and a short-sleeved sweater, in case the place should be very hot, and then I dug out a straight skirt I sometimes used to wear for dancing. It was a bit creased and I pressed it carefully through a damp cloth on the table, and then tried to get into it. I struggled with the zip for about two minutes before I realized why it wouldn’t do up.
I went quite cold, and had to sit down on the bed. It seems silly to say I’d forgotten, it was just that I hadn’t let myself think about it for so long I’d stopped looking for symptoms. This one came as a frightful shock. My mouth was dry. I just sat there with the skirt open round my hips and my heart thumping away in my throat, seeing all that I’d pushed on ahead of me now irrevocably piled up and waiting, too big to be pushed any further.
After a long time, Toby knocked on my door.
‘Are you ready, Janie?’
He sounded gay and excited. I remembered, idiotically, that he’d done today’s two thousand words this morning, so he could go out with a clear conscience.
The old trapped feeling came racing back. I can’t, I thought, I can’t face it! Then I thought, If I don’t go, what will I do? Sit here all the evening, with It – and It suddenly once more personal, explicit and terrifying. ‘Just a minute,’ I called back, my voice croaking out of a dry throat. I put the tight skirt back in my drawer with a sense of burying an enemy, and put on another, a full one. Even this didn’t button comfortably, but it was too late to start changing my whole outfit now.
When I opened the door, there was a strange new Toby I scarcely recognized. He did, it seemed, have one decent suit, one clean white shirt, and one rather smart tie, all of which, together with polished shoes and a neatly-shaved face, transformed him utterly. Absurdly, I wasn’t sure I altogether liked the result; I think it was the hair that worried me most; all those wild shaggy locks were slicked back behind his ears and off his forehead. It made him look like a baby seal emerging from the sea.
‘Good heavens,’ I exclaimed with tempered admiration.
His face fell a little. ‘What don’t you like?’
‘It’s marvellous – you look so different –’
‘Yes, but what don’t you like? Do you think it looks too dressed-up?’
‘No, no! It’s terribly smart – it’s just –’ My fingers itched.
‘What? Well, say it, will you?’
‘The hair,’ I said tentatively. ‘It’s a bit – well, it’s just not you, that’s all.’
‘Let’s face it, none of it’s exactly the me we all know and love.’
He came past me and stared at himself in the mirror. ‘I do look a bit of a spiv,’ he admitted. He turned to me. ‘Go on, do whatever you’re dying to do to it – I’ll submit myself.’ He closed his eyes tightly as if waiting for a blow, and I felt an unexplained pang as I reached up very diffidently and ruffled it gently free of its watery bonds. His head bent and pushed up under my hand a like a cat being stroked. He purred.
I took my hand away, but he said, ‘No, go on,’ still with his eyes closed, and put his forehead unexpectedly against my shoulder so that his hair was tickling my cheek. The back of his neck had a shallow channel down it, lined with commas of dark hair. I put my hand on the big bump that was the back of his head and ran it lightly down to his collar. While it was still resting there he raised his head and looked at me. He had a little pleased grin on his face. His eyes, which were very bright and dark, were only slightly lower than mine.
There was a moment during which my hand stayed on his neck. His grin suddenly widened and he said impishly, ‘So, what would you do if I did?’
Then it was quite easy to reply in the same tone, ‘You’ll never know. Come on, we’d better be off.’
The club was called The Rum Punch, and was situated, incongruously enough, in the crypt of a church. Actually the church had been bombed almost out of existence so it wasn’t hallowed ground or anything, but it seemed odd, trooping through the remains of a cemetery and across the quiet paving-stones under the ruined arch, which all retained an air of desolated sanctity, and then going down the steps and instantly finding oneself in the heat and frenzy of a jazz-club. The change from the holy to the hell-like was too abrupt to be anything but faintly shocking.
It was such a crazy jumble of noise and colour and smoke and bodies that for a moment I held back instinctively from launching myself into the midst of that mindless crush; but Toby took my hand and said, ‘Keep behind me – I’ll fight a way through,’ and then I was in the thick of it and it was too late to back out.
It was a long time since I’d been to a place like this, and it seemed to be a lot wilder than anything I’d remembered. When one was pushing through the crowd it was impossible to get bearings or even be sure what direction one was heading in – whether towards the small bar with its bamboo and fishing-net, or towards the dance-floor. This was just a small circular piece of the floor somewhere lost in the welter, whose demarcation lines seemed to be a matter of indifference to the dozens of dancing couples, most of whom couldn’t possibly have heard a note the band was playing for the roar of voices, and who went right on dancing even when there was no music. If you could call it dancing; many of the couples just leaned against each other and went to sleep, as far as I could see.
Toby found the band, and John, by the simple expedient of heading into the deepest concentration of people and noise. It was an amiable crowd and nobody seemed to mind how much you pushed, and eventually, sweating and exhausted, we forced our way to the front of the mob standing and jiving round the band. There were five of them, all coloured, though four seemed to be West Indian and their relatively lighter skins made John look blacker than ever.
When he saw us he grinned broadly and waved. They were having a break between numbers and he motioned us to go and have a drink at the bar, mouthing ‘On the house!’ As we struggled through I saw him catch the eye of the bartender.
There were no seats at the bar; we just about managed to get a place against one end of it, near the coffee machine. Toby stood behind me to ward off inadvertent pushers, and when the barman came up he ordered two glasses of wine.
‘Yes –’
‘He said to give you rum punches.’
‘No, thank you –’ I began.
‘He paid already. Speciality of the house.’
When they came they were enormous, hot and spicy, with slices of lemon floating among the bubbles of melted butter. We sipped them cautiously at first, but they were delicious and went down as innocently as hot milk, so we raised our mugs to John and then downed them.
‘What a drink!’ said Toby. ‘Boy! Let’s have another.’
‘I couldn’t.’
‘I could – but okay, let’s dance first and then have one.’
The band had struck up again, something fairly lively from the look of them though we couldn’t hear much. Beginning three inches away from us, the whole cavernous room was a jigging, hopping, seething mass of dancers. The problem was, how to get oneself absorbed into a space which had already reached saturation-point.
I felt strangely reluctant anyway. The same feeling of unease which had assailed me as we first entered now returned. I didn’t feel like getting jostled and bumped and pushed. But Toby had his arm round me and was firmly backing into the mass to establish a small beach-head for us away from the bar. Quite suddenly we were a part of that bouncing, pulsating entity; like single cells in a living organism, we seemed to be no longer individuals in the sense of having a separate identity; on every side we were hemmed in by other cells, as helplessly conformist as we were.
Like many small men, Toby was a good dancer, or he could have been under more favourable circumstances. As it was we did what the others did – stayed more or less on our own little spot and moved to a rhythm we could sense in the movements of the others round us, rather than hear. Toby started off by holding me in the conventional way, with only one arm round me, but before long it was obvious that our other arms, stuck out as they were, were in imminent danger of being torn away; so he put both arms round my waist and I tucked my elbows in and rested my hands on his chest. In this position I felt in some way protected from the buffetings of the crowd. Before long our cheeks came together, but it was too hot to be comfortable; they stuck, and when the number ended they came apart with a peeling sound.
‘The heat in here’s frightful,’ I gasped as the coagulation broke up a little round us, restoring our right of individual movement.
‘You need another of those rum things.’
‘You must be mad! I want something iced.’
‘You just think you do. A hot drink’s much better for you. Like curry in India,’ he explained seriously.
We were back at the bar. My eyes were smarting from the smoke and the top of my head felt as if someone were gently unscrewing it. ‘Anyway, you can’t afford it,’ I said, which was fatal, of course.
‘Who says I can’t? I sold an article a week ago, didn’t I?’ He ordered the rums, and when they came we fought our way into one of the dark corners of the room where there were a few tables and benches. There we sat down in the shadows, feeling aloof from the whirlpool centre of activity; from here we could stand aside, observe, and comment. We drank our drinks and watched curiously the goings-on in nearby shadows.
‘That one looks about thirteen,’ whispered Toby, indicating a girl in a cheap cottony sweater which showed her under-developed pointy little figure. A gangly boy of about the same age was leaning over her, touching the points with what appeared to be simple fascination. The girl wasn’t paying much attention; she was smoking a cigarette and occasionally brushed his hand away like a bothersome fly.
‘God, that’s terrible,’ said Toby under his breath.
‘Well, don’t keep looking at them, then,’ I said rather irritably. Something about the pair made me want to cry, and the sight of them gave me a physical pain too, in my breasts, a sort of sympathetic sensitiveness. I finished my drink and stood up. ‘Let’s go and see if John’s ready for a drink,’ I said, rather too loudly. Toby followed me willingly enough, but he seemed subdued.
‘A couple of babies like that,’ he said. ‘That girl – just bored with the whole thing, long before she knows what it’s supposed to be about.’ He was really shocked. He nodded his head towards another, much older, couple running their hands all over each other and laughing without pleasure into each other’s faces. ‘That sort of thing doesn’t bother me, somehow,’ he said. ‘It’s disgusting, but then so are lots of things; those two’d be pretty disgusting even if they weren’t touching each other. But that back there – that’s not disgusting – it’s sad. It’s tragic. She just doesn’t know what it’s about,’ he said again. He shook his head, frowning, as if bewildered.
I had a frightened feeling that he mustn’t go on talking about them. In some oblique way, without knowing it, he was talking about me, he was telling me something about myself that I’d never allowed myself to know. There was a direct parallel somewhere; I wasn’t quite clear about it yet, but it was close; one step further in his thoughts, and he’d put it into words, words I didn’t want to hear …
‘Do let’s find John, he’ll think we’ve run out on him,’ I said urgently; but it was too late.
‘One of these days,’ Toby said, ‘that poor half-baked little bitch is going to have a baby, without ever having understood what love really means.’
There it was; he’d said it, and I’d heard it, and it couldn’t be unsaid. It was true, and it was my truth; I understood it for the first time.
I must have stopped moving, because he turned and came back to me and his face showed a sudden anxiety. ‘Jane, what is it? Aren’t you well, love? You’ve gone awfully pale …’ I couldn’t speak, nothing seemed worth saying or doing. I was right in the middle of a moment of truth, and it was still and quiet and empty in there, as it is supposed to be in the heart of a tornado.
Then John came forcing his big flame-coloured chest through the crowd and said, ‘Hallo, there! I thought I never find you!’ And I came out at the other side of the moment; the truth was still there, and still just as terrible, but after all it was something I’d known before, really, only I’d never let myself look at it. The trouble was that now I’d been made to look at it I couldn’t seem to stop, the enormity of it kept shoving everything else out of my mind until I thought if I didn’t get rid of it for a while I’d start shouting and banging my head against a wall to drive it away. So I drank the new drink someone had given me and asked for another. After that I started to feel better in one way, but not altogether, because now I was getting drunk and I knew I was, and for the first time in my life I made myself go on drinking when I reached the stage of wanting to stop.
I danced with Toby again and this time I didn’t notice the crowds; I seemed to be cushioned against everything around me, and in Toby’s arms I felt safely insulated. I rocked and floated gently and the pain was like the crowd, near and all round but unable to touch me.
I don’t remember leaving the club, but I remember being in a taxi and saying to Toby, ‘I’ll pay for this,’ and him saying ‘This is my party, and I’m not sure this isn’t the best part of it.’ He put his arm round my shoulder and feeling it behind my neck I relaxed against it and I think I went to sleep, because the next thing was he was helping me up the stairs at the house; there were hundreds of flights, we kept finding more and more, and I kept going to sleep, and then the lights would come on again, and I was giggling because there were so many stairs and it kept being black and then light and then black again, like a checker board. Then at last we reached the top, and while Toby was fiddling with the key I thought I wouldn’t wait for him to open the door but would just lie down there and go to sleep, because I’d never in my whole life felt so tired.
At last we got safely inside. Toby lit the table-lamp and the gas-fire, while I stood at the angle of the room looking at it. It looked better than it had ever looked, and I said to Toby, ‘It’s pleased to see us.’
‘What do you mean? What is?’
‘The room,’ I said. ‘It’s happy we’re home. It’s saying “Shalom”.’
He stared at me. ‘How do you know that word?’
I shook my head. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘But it means “peace”.’
‘I know what it means,’ he said.
Then I started to cry. It was because the little room was wishing me peace, and there wasn’t any peace, any more, ever. And because of the truth, too, the ugly truth about the sin I’d committed, the blasphemy of creating a life by accident, without understanding the true pleasure and beauty of love. Toby sat me on the bed and held my hands and said to me, ‘What is it, darling? Don’t cry, love, please, don’t, what is it, can’t you tell me?’– wiping my face with his handkerchief. And then he was taking the tears with his lips, he was kissing them away; he was kissing my eyes and my mouth and our arms were round each other, and somehow my crying changed, I wasn’t crying in despair and wretchedness any more, but with a kind of luxury. My tears weren’t coming out of pain now, but out of a new feeling, a feeling his lips were rousing, and his hands, and there was no part of my mind or body that wished to resist it, or had the strength to: without reasoning or doubting, all of me wanted what he wanted. But apart from that, there was a reason, a dark reason somewhere at the back of my mind that was urging me, that came from something I’d once heard or read that had lodged itself in my memory and rose up now and said that this might solve everything. But whatever wickedness in me added that vile motive to the other clean ones, was foiled and deluded; because if he had been my husband, and known I had his child in me, he couldn’t have been more gentle. And the thought that wasn’t really a thought fled before the pleasure I didn’t deserve, but which came anyway, swelling and overtaking, in a generous wild exploding splendour that I had thought I would never know.
I hardly knew when it was over because that part was so wonderful too that I thought the magic would last forever. And when at last it began to fade, when I could begin to think again, his lips were still against my face and his arms warmly round me, and his voice murmuring to keep the frightened thoughts away.
After a long time he lifted his face and it was a new face to me, as if I’d never seen it before. Then he grinned, and that was the same, a left-over from before, and said, ‘These idiotic beds aren’t big enough for one person, let alone two,’ and he rolled off and stood up. I clung on to his hand, in terror lest it should all become ordinary and awful with our physical separation; but he understood and bent towards me, whispering, ‘Don’t worry, darling, I’m not going. We can’t both sleep on that bed, but I’m going to pull up this chair and sit beside you all night.’ He reached out and caught the chair by the arm, and dragged it over one-handed so that he need not let my hand go. Then he sat down in it as close to me as he could get. He helped me to get between the sheets, and turned out the light, and I could still see him beside me in the half-darkness, and feel his hand holding mine.
‘You’ll be so tired …’ I began.
‘I’ll sleep, don’t you worry. And so will you. Go to sleep and don’t be unhappy about anything, and in the morning the first thing you’ll hear will be me telling you that I love you.’
I slept because he had told me to. I dreamt no dreams, and in the morning the first thing I knew about was his hand, still in mine; I opened my eyes and there was his face, with the shadows deep on it, but awake and smiling; and before I had even moved he leaned over me and said, ‘Jane, I love you.’
I closed my eyes and said to myself, Oh God, now what have I done?