AFTER he’d gone, I sat quietly on the bed. I could hear John’s record-player through the wall; he had on his favourite, the cracked old 78 version of St Louis Woman. I closed my eyes and let its harsh melancholy notes spin over me. After a while, I opened them again. The late evening light was gentle with the shabbiness of the room, giving it a look, almost of elegance – if you didn’t look at the stove, whose bared tap-teeth snarled unconcealably. I looked round with pride and affection. The pain in my back had gone; the relief was wonderful.
The baby stirred. I had often thought I could detect his mood from the way he moved; now he seemed to me petulant, reproachful. I put my hand down and felt the blurred outline of his head.
‘What’s your trouble, my lad?’ I asked aloud. ‘Should I have taken the money he wanted to give us? Why not, you ask. A good question.’
Well, why not? He hadn’t offered it out of a sense of duty. Or had he? I didn’t much care. What mattered was that I hadn’t wanted it, from him any more than from James. ‘It would have given him some claim on you,’ I said to the bump under my hand, ‘and such claims can’t be bought with money.’ But I knew that wasn’t the only reason. I looked at the stove, snarling like the part of me that had wanted Terry to see all this – the five long flights, the darkness, the smells, the landing taps; I had wanted to punish him. But that feeling had gone – so quickly. I drew back my lips and snapped my teeth happily at the stove. I felt pleased with myself. It would have been so easy to hate Terry, to take advantage of his vulnerable position; it would have been so easy to take the money, and to justify taking it. I wasn’t pleased because I’d resisted the temptation to take it. I was pleased because I hadn’t wanted it.
Now, if it had been Toby …
The happy feeling went. The light was fading and the Satchmo trumpet-notes seemed to stain the air like streams of ink. Desolation laid its hand on me. I wanted him with a pain like cold steel.
Terry’s words came back. ‘If there’s anything I can do …’ It had been a plea. He needed to help, somehow. When you break something irreplaceable in someone else’s house you want to pay something. The hostess is cruel if she doesn’t let you. Well, paying was out of the question. But perhaps –
I rested for half an hour, stifling a growing feeling of impatience. It was good relaxing practice. Then I got up and went down to the phone.
He answered at once. His voice still sounded strained.
‘Terry, it’s Jane.’
‘Jane!’ His voice went light and high. He sounded very glad, not discomforted. ‘You rang! I’m so pleased – did you change your mind about –’
‘No, darling. But I thought of something you could do for me.’
‘Of course! Oh, bless you for thinking of something – I’ll do anything –’
‘It won’t be easy – you may not be able to do it at all.’
‘I want to try,’ he said eagerly.
I couldn’t help being warmed. He had a kind of fundamental sweetness. I began to remember what I had loved about him.
‘You remember I mentioned a man I’d met who lived in the house here?’
‘No – I mean, you probably did, but –’
‘Well, his name’s Toby Coleman. Actually I think it may be Cohen.’
‘Jewish?’ Terry’s tone chilled perceptibly. I’d forgotten this about him.
‘Yes. He’s left here and I’ve no idea where to start looking for him, but I want to find him. He’s a writer. By this time he may well be trying to interest publishers in his first novel. Do you think you could ask round for me?’
There was a silence. I thought he might say, ‘Hell, I’m not a detective,’ or ‘There must be about a hundred thousand writers trying to flog first books,’ or even ‘What do you want with some little Kyke?’ I could sense all those thoughts going through his mind while the silence dragged on.
‘All right,’ he said at last. ‘I’ll do my best. Just a tick while I write the name down.’
A letter came from Billie Lee. ‘… Not at all what 1’d expected, and not the sort of thing one can be certain of selling. But personally I like it so much that I am prepared to push it. It’s written as if the author had never read a book in her life, but in some mysterious way it’s none the worse for that … I’ll let you know as soon as there’s any news, but it may be months, so be patient. I believe it will be a winner.’
This seemed enough to start getting excited about and I rushed to phone Addy. I was childishly disappointed when I couldn’t get a reply. I felt almost irritated with her for not being there to be told. I tried several more times that day to phone her, but she was never in. Eventually, feeling rather cheated, I wrote to her, enclosing Miss Lee’s letter. She was a terrible correspondent and I hadn’t heard a word since our last phone call, but I was sure this would get a rise out of her. But days passed, and not even one of her scrawled postcards came.
A week went by, and another. I knitted. I walked, I typed terrible plays for television. I had a little money, my body was healthy and responsive, my baby seemed to think he was in a gymnasium. I stayed fairly quiet; my mind was alert, but peaceful. I knew only now how the bitterness against Terry had been undermining me. It must have been mainly subconscious, but it was as if an abscess had been lanced; the poison had drained out, the strange internal pressure relieved.
There were suddenly only seven weeks left, and I woke up to the fact that I had nowhere for the baby to live. It was Doris who brought it home to me. She came shuffling up one evening, breathing hard and crossly with a noise like snoring.
‘Are you there, dear?’
I asked her in and offered her tea. She didn’t answer. She was staring round the room, her mouth ajar.
‘Gawd save us,’ she breathed at last.
‘I’d forgotten you hadn’t seen it,’ I said, waiting for an explosion of wrath.
She groped for a chair and sat down heavily, her eyes never ceasing to dart hither and yon, sharp with disbelief.
‘Well!’ she got out. ‘Well, I never. I wouldn’t have known it!’
I decided to brazen it out, though I didn’t really hope this would prevent a frightful row. I was only thankful that my-sister-made-that-rug was still in the place of honour before the fire.
‘It’s nice, isn’t it?’
I expected an outburst of protest as soon as Doris had mustered sufficient words of withering scorn. To my utter amazement a slow smile spread over her large (and, since her marriage to Charlie, placid) features. ‘Takes a bit of gettin’ used to – all that white – fair dazzled me eyes at first. But – well, I don’t know. I just don’t know.’
I hastily made the tea before this mood wore off.
Doris looked round again, and now her eyes narrowed. One could almost see the £ signs ring up in them like a cash-register.
‘Nice-looking room, this,’ she said speculatively. ‘Best in the house, in some ways. Away from the traffic noises, nice and bright – tasteful. That’s what Mrs Williams always said. A nice, tasteful little room.’ I could see that she was already getting used to the transformation. Quite soon, as far as she was concerned, the room would always have looked like this. ‘You have to own it’s good value for thirty bob,’ she said, looking me straight in the eye.
I tried not to laugh. ‘Oh, certainly,’ I agreed solemnly, not seeing the trap I was heading for.
‘Of course, I let Mrs W. have it for that; but then, she was living on her widow’s pension.’
‘I thought she had it for nothing.’
‘At first, that was,’ Doris said quickly. ‘In the end, she insisted. Such a lovely, bright room, she said to me. I must pay something. So I let her have it for thirty bob. Just, like, a token rent.’ I saw the trap yawning, and tried to dodge, but it was too late.
‘I haven’t even got a widow’s pension,’ I pointed out.
‘Ah, but you’re young, dear, now aren’t you?’ She smiled blandly. ‘You can work. You do, of course, I’ve heard you typing away up here, ever so industrious. She’s a worker, whatever else she’s not, I’ve said to Charlie. Besides …’ And now she allowed her eyes to drop. ‘Quite soon there’ll be two of you – won’t there?’ She smiled archly to show that her mind was broad. ‘Make no mistake, dear, I’m not saying anything. You’re welcome to stay, but really what I come up here to say was, well it doesn’t make it easier to find tenants, having a baby in the house, crying and that. So, I was wondering …’ She stopped to think. It was obvious the look of the room had made some quick reassessments necessary. ‘I was wondering if you’d like the bigger room downstairs, the empty one on the first floor. Fewer stairs for you to climb,’ she coaxed, ‘it’s only three-ten a week.’
‘Thank you, but I’m fond of this room. I’ll manage somehow.’
‘Ah well, but that’s the thing. I’ve had rooms empty so long, I’ll have to raise the rent on this one – well, bring it back to what it was, like, before Mrs Williams. Two-ten I used to charge for it then, plenty of people glad to pay it for a nice cheerful little place like this.’
‘I see,’ I said. All desire to laugh had left me.
‘Well, you think it over, dear,’ she said comfortably, heaving herself out of her chair. ‘Two-ten for this room, or three-ten for the nice big one on the first.’ At the door, she stopped to say, ‘I dare say you’ll want to fix it up a little, according to your own taste. I don’t mind, dear, not a bit. You just do what you like.’ And when I’ve done what I like, I thought, I’ll get kicked out of that one into another, in the hope that in due course I’ll transform the whole bloody house.
When she’d gone I sat still. My heart was pounding and my hands were sticky. I looked round my room. I wondered why it hadn’t struck me before that I would have to leave it. I’d grown to love it and depend on it so much that perhaps I’d worked on the basis that it would magically stretch to accommodate the baby. Now I saw that it was only a little room, really; it had just seemed adequate to all contingencies because of its importance to me.
I got up heavily and walked the few steps needed to traverse my kingdom. I touched the table whose scars had been decently hidden by a tablecloth ever since I arrived. I patted the walls in their proud new whiteness; I stood on my-sister-made-that-rug and stroked the friendly afghan. I thought that Doris would get a shock when she saw it without the trimmings which were mine – the flowers, the chair-cover, the curtains, the picture. Despite the walls and the wardrobe shelf, it would be a scant thirty bob’s worth again. I would have thought this funny if it hadn’t been for the sudden clarity with which I could picture the denuded room, as it would look when I left it.
I went to an estate agent and obtained a long, deceitful list of flats. I walked my feet off. I told my first real lies, the lies implied by the situation, the lies made necessary by the innocent recurring questions.
‘What does your husband do, madam?’
‘Where’s your husband, dear? He shouldn’t let you do all the walking, should he?’
‘Oh, it won’t be big enough for three, madam.’
I told them I was a widow. I got overwhelming sympathy which was worse than being despised. But I justified it to myself in a hundred ways until one day I went to look at a flat in a private house. It was far better than anything I had seen until then – it was lovely, in fact, but rather too expensive. The lady who owned the house was gracious and charming. She didn’t ask questions, just took it for granted that I had a husband; she spoke about him without a suspicion in her mind. I told her what I’d told the others. She didn’t doubt it for a second; but she became much more gentle and kind –even offering me the place at a ludicrously reduced rent, offering to look after me and the baby. She was making all sorts of plans in her kindness and sympathy, while I just stood there, facing my lie in growing agony.
At last she noticed my unresponsive silence; she was too sensitive not to notice.
‘My dear, I’m so sorry,’ she said, ‘I’m making you unhappy with my fussing. Frankly, I don’t know how you can bear the situation at all; you’re the bravest person I’ve ever met. You must come here, that’s all I’ll say now. You will come, won’t you, and let us look after things, just at first?’
She looked at me with her calm honest eyes, seeking so sincerely to help me, and I think she guessed the truth before I told it, because her face changed a little just before I began to speak.
When I’d finished, she still looked at me, and not all the sympathy had gone. She thought for a little while, and then said: ‘You’re still welcome to come here.’
I wanted to cry, but she was so dignified and so ready with sympathy that I felt it would be like begging. I told her it would be impossible now. ‘Perhaps if I’d told you the truth at first …’
‘Yes,’ she said sadly. She even understood that.
At the door she shook hands with me and wished me luck. ‘May I give you a piece of advice?’ she asked gently. ‘I know how difficult it must be to tell people the truth. But do try. I’m sure it’s better.’
I’d known all the time that it would be. But one always has to try the easy way, to prove that in the long run it’s harder than the other.
I came home that day rather more tired than usual. It was two weeks since Billie Lee’s letter came – a month since I’d met Terry. I had been expecting to hear from Addy or Terry from day to day, but there’d been no word. I had been counting on finding a letter from Addy today. I was so sure there would be one that I’d let myself look forward to it. I hurried eagerly to the hall table before I had even closed the front door. There was nothing for me. I felt preposterously disappointed and hurt, as if Addy had let me down on purpose.
The toil up the stairs was really a burden now, especially at the end of the day. I sat down several times and had trouble getting started again. I had a silly weak feeling that there was no point in going any further. Suddenly I was unbearably depressed. How could Addy not write? Now I stopped to think about it, why hadn’t she written ages ago, or come up to see me? Perhaps she’d been up, but hadn’t come by. Nobody ever came. You couldn’t blame them, but the fact remained – I hadn’t a single friend in the world, not one.
I was sitting in despair half-way between the fourth and fifth landings when John started down the stairs and nearly fell over me.
‘Hullo, Janie,’ he said. ‘What you doin’ sittin’ there?’
‘Just sitting here,’ I said in a muffled voice.
He bent closer. ‘You been cryin’?’
‘Yes.’
‘What for?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said drearily.
He sat down on the narrow stairs beside me. ‘You feelin’ lonesome?’
‘Yes,’ I gulped.
He put his big arm round me. ‘Why you don’t come in to me when you feelin’ on your own? I play you my records, you see, cheer you up.’
‘I thought you didn’t like me any more,’ I said childishly.
‘Who say I don’ like you?’
‘You never come to see me – nobody ever comes –’ I caught my breath in huge self-pity and began to weep afresh.
He squeezed me in a brotherly way. ‘You silly. Someone come today.’
I stopped crying and blinked. ‘What? Who? When?’
He grinned at me. ‘You have a guess who.’
I stared at him, Toby’s name forming in my mouth. But any mention of Toby always seemed to upset him, so I said instead, ‘A man or a woman?’
‘A man.’
Could it be? ‘Toby?’ I asked tremulously.
‘No,’ he said, his face going sad. ‘Toby don’t come back to us no more.’
‘Then who?’
‘Your father.’
It was the utter unexpectedness of it that knocked me endways. I couldn’t speak. I sat staring at John blankly, trying to take it in.
‘My father?’ I echoed at last, unbelievingly. ‘He came here?’
‘He come up the stairs, knock on your door. I come out of my room. Boy, was he surprise to see me! If he sees a elephant behind him, he couldn’t be more surprise!’ John evidently was not offended. He choked with laughter at the memory.
‘What did he want? What did he say?’
‘He say he want to see you. Say he’s your father.’ He stopped.
‘Well? What else?’
‘Nothin’ else. I tell him you out, be in later. He go off again.’
‘Didn’t he say anything? That he’d be back?’
‘Didn’ say nothin’ else, just went.’
‘How did he – did he look –’ I realized the futility of asking John that sort of question. I got to my feet, with him helping me solicitously. I still couldn’t quite get used to the idea.
‘I wonder if I should phone him.’
‘Why not?’
Why not indeed? But I didn’t. I sat around all evening waiting for him to come back, or telephone me, or something. Nothing happened. I couldn’t really believe it, without the evidence of my own eyes. Suppose John had made a mistake somehow, or invented it out of a wish to cheer me up – if I phoned, what a fool I should look! Father would think I was crazy. On the other hand, if it were true – if he really had made the first move …
I slept at last, but uneasily, waking up every now and then, half-thinking I’d dreamed what John had said. In the morning I thought of something.
I knocked on John’s door. He appeared, baggy-eyed and in his underwear, still half-asleep.
‘The man who came yesterday – what did he look like?’
‘You don’ know what your own father look like?’
‘I’m not sure it really was my father.’
‘I don’t remember much – he was just a ordinary-type man.’ He rubbed his hand hard over his thick frizzy hair. ‘Nothin’ special about him. Oh –’ceptin’ his ears. Real big stickin’-out ears he had. It was that made me reminded of a elephant.’