I TOOK a taxi back to the house in Fulham. Father had insisted I should take taxis from now on.
He had wanted to come back with me immediately and help me move, but I told him I wanted to do it myself, in my own time. It would be difficult for any man, and more especially a man like Father, to understand my irrational feeling for places. It wouldn’t be possible to say good-bye properly to the L-shaped room if he were there.
I let the taxi go, and stood looking up at the house in the twilight. The heatwave had passed; the sky was cloudy and the air was heavy with coming rain. The house looked just as I had first seen it, that wet afternoon in October, except that now it didn’t seem ugly.
I saw a curtain stir on the ground floor, and Doris beckoned. I went up the shabby steps past the overflowing dustbins. Charlie had been doing something to the hedge; it was not exactly trimmed, but its disorder was now angular instead of bunchy. Looking down into the area as I felt for my keys, I noticed that he’d been putting a touch of paint on the basement window-frames, too. I smiled as I remembered the late Fred’s happy relations with the other Jane, and wondered if history would repeat itself.
Doris met me in the hall. ‘How are you, dear? Have you made your mind up yet?’ I hadn’t had the heart to tell Doris before that I was leaving.
‘I’m going home, Doris,’ I said. ‘My father’s asked me.’ They were wonderful words. I listened to their echoes with warm pleasure.
But they gave no pleasure to Doris.
She drew her mouth in at the corners and folded her arms. ‘Oh. Well, that’s nice, I’m sure,’ she said sourly. ‘When are you going, then?’
‘Right away.’ Then, as she opened her mouth to protest, ‘Of course I’ll give you a fortnight’s rent in lieu of notice.’
Her mouth softened a little. ‘I suppose it’s quite right, your father takin’ you in,’ she said, her hand twitching as I opened my wallet. ‘Often wondered whether you had no people or what. Just as well in a way, what with the noise and nappies and everything,’ she added in one of her classic non sequiturs. ‘Funny, someone come after a room today – couldn’t afford the first-floor. Young lad he was, bit of a Ted, Charlie thought, but I don’t know … Ta, dear.’ With the money in her hand she became all affability once more. ‘Anything we can do to help? Bags down the stairs or that? Charlie’ll come up in a few minutes and see how you’re gettin’ on. Tata for now, dear.’
Just as I was starting slowly up the long flights, she called after me, ‘Oh, there – I almost forgot! There’s someone waiting for you up there. Told him I didn’t know when you’d be back, but he would wait – I let him have my key, dear, I didn’t think you’d mind.’
It was Terry. He rose from the arm-chair as I came in, panting from the climb which seemed suddenly to have doubled in height.
‘Hullo, Jane,’ he said, keeping his eyes resolutely fixed on my face in a way which would have made me laugh if I’d had the breath to spare. He took a step forward awkwardly, not knowing what to do with his hands. Odd how Englishmen always want to shake hands. To me it would have seemed more natural to kiss him. I sat down on the bed, trying not to puff too obviously.
‘Waiting long?’ I asked.
‘About an hour.’ He stood in the middle of the room, his lean height looking stooped and crane-like under the sloping ceiling. ‘I’m sorry I haven’t kept you posted on the search for your friend. I wanted to wait until I had something definite.’
My breathing stopped for a moment and then went on raggedly. ‘Have you something definite now?’
‘Well, yes. I put everyone I knew on to it at once; there were a couple of publishing houses where I didn’t know anybody, but I passed the word round through friends. Surprising what a little world within a world publishing is – its own grapevine and everything. Cigarette? Oh no, you don’t, of course.’ He lit his own. ‘Well, I phoned most of them every day, but nothing happened for a month. Then a chum of mine in Hutchinson’s got on to me – day before yesterday, this was. Said a script had come in of a first novel by someone called Cohen. First name Tobias. Sounded right. I had a bit of trouble getting his address out of my friend – ethics or something – anyhow, I persuaded him I wasn’t going to steal a potential source of revenue. Which it seems your young author may be, by the way – the first novel appears to have something, even if it is mostly in longhand.’
My backache was nagging. My hand moved of its own accord to rub and ease.
Terry was pacing. Now he stopped and looked at me. ‘Listen, Jane, before I go any further, just how important is this chap to you? I know I’ve no business to ask, but apart from the tentative promise of the manuscript, he didn’t strike me as a particularly – well, what I mean is, there’s not much security for you there. Sorry if I’m talking out of turn.’
‘Go on with the story.’
‘He’s living in Holland Park – a little cellar, you couldn’t call it a flat. First sight of him gave me a jolt – looked like a scarecrow, hair wild, unshaven. Room’s like a monk’s cell. Bed, chair, table, suitcase. Stacks of paper. Nothing else … I shouldn’t think he’s been out of it for weeks from the look of him.’ He stopped.
‘Did you tell him you’d come from me?’
‘I asked him if he knew you – to make sure it was the right person. He said yes. Pretty guarded about you; I couldn’t get him to say much. Asked how you were. When I said you were back here again he seemed very surprised – well, upset, almost. He said he thought you were with an aunt in the country.’
For a second the mention of the aunt brought Addy into the room; sitting beside me, saying, ‘Would you like to come and stay with me for a while?’ … My glance went automatically to the place she had sat as she said that. My eyes were stopped by the hunched bulk of Toby’s typewriter, covered by its black hood.
Terry went on: ‘I said you were looking for him – wanted to see him. He didn’t say much – just stood still and stared at me through all that hair like something peering out of a jungle. By God,’ he said, unable, I saw, to help himself, ‘he is a Jew, and no mistake – that beak! Wonder why he changed his name – and then changed it back again?’
I thought, He changed it because of people who feel like you, and he changed it back because – but there was no sure answer to that yet. Until I saw him, it was nothing but a hopeful symptom.
‘Couldn’t tell you. It’s up to him, isn’t it? He knows where you are – he knows you want to see him …’ He spoke almost sulkily.
We sat in silence for a while. My backache was worse. I kept curving and straightening my spine to ease it.
‘Well, thanks,’ I said at last, lamely.
Terry took this as a dismissal. He got to his feet with an air of relief and yet reluctance, as if he hadn’t completed his business and didn’t look forward to doing so. ‘Is there anything else I can do?’
‘No, bless you, I’m very grateful to you.’ I realized this was a little ironic, and glanced at him to see if he’d noticed. He was looking at me oddly, a frown between his eyes. ‘What are you thinking?’ I asked curiously.
‘I was wondering what that Cohen bloke would have done if I’d suddenly said, “I’m the father of Jane’s baby.” ’
I said nothing. It was an intriguing thought.
‘I’ve been thinking a lot about you, and everything,’ he went on, stumblingly, as if driving himself. ‘God knows I haven’t enjoyed thinking about it, but I felt I had to. Even though it couldn’t do any good. Perhaps because it was unnecessary – I felt I ought to share a bit of what you’ve been through.’
He had such an unconscious air of self-conscious virtue that I almost laughed, but one couldn’t very well laugh in the face of such solemn earnestness.
‘I’ve always thought it pretty lousy, the way a lot of men divide women into two groups – you know, the good and the bad, the wills and the won’ts, marriage or the mantelpiece. I’ve argued against it a hundred times with chaps I know who despise the girls they’ve been to bed with. But you can’t imagine how frightful it is to come up against the unexpected realization that underneath, one’s exactly the bloody same oneself.’ He glanced at me from under his eyebrows and looked quickly back at his hands. ‘After that night in Collioure I despised you. There was no earthly reason for it – I mean if one looked at the thing rationally – except that I knew I hadn’t been any good for you and I felt rotten so I told myself that it was you who hadn’t been any good. And during the week after you left, that idea somehow got changed a bit until you were just no good, full stop. You were that sort of girl. I kind of dismissed you in my mind because I didn’t want you any more. I simply never thought about the possibility of this happening. Funny how one thinks of sex as if it were just a thing by itself, without any build-up or results …
There was a long embarrassed silence. I took up in my thoughts from where he left off. You don’t think, at least not when you’re pursuing love greedily and selfishly, that your goal may be the start of something. The night which started this was suddenly vivid in my mind again as the beginning of what would be a man or a woman, who would some day beget more children, who would never have existed except for one moment when Terry decided that he couldn’t hold on for another second and that it would be safe enough – not really either knowing or caring. I wondered, and I think he did too, now, whether either of us had descended from some moment like that – self-indulgent, shallow and meaningless …
Terry suddenly said, ‘I suppose there’s not a chance you’d marry me?’
It came out in a mumbled, apologetic rush. I caught a glimpse of his eyes before he turned them away; I almost said yes to see the desperate appeal for a refusal in them turn to panic. But he hadn’t really deserved that, so I shook my head.
‘Can’t really wonder,’ he said, concealing his relief admirably. He rubbed a hand hard all over his face, as if the skin literally itched with embarrassment, ending by pulling at his nose. It was a gesture of his that fitted into a years-old memory groove. I wondered if that sort of personal idiosyncrasy could be inherited. It would bring a special pain, in the future, if your child suddenly rubbed his face like that, and pulled his nose; to have nobody to rush to and say, ‘He did that thing of yours, you know, that you do when you’re embarrassed …’
‘What’s the matter?’
‘My back hurts.’
‘I’ll rub it –’
‘No!’ That was what husbands did. There must be none of that.
‘Well –’ he stood awkwardly. ‘I don’t like to leave you.’
I told him about Father, and he immediately became gay with relief. ‘I’ll help you pack!’
I meant to say no, but I was lying down now, my hands under me holding the ache, and I wasn’t at all sure how I was ever going to get up again, so I said, ‘Thanks, darling.’
Half an hour later, when the rug was rolled, the curtains down and folded, the breakables wrapped in newspaper, and my suitcase lying open on the pock-marked floor, somebody came up the stairs and knocked on the door.
‘That’ll be Charlie,’ I said, ‘come to help down with the cases.’ Terry said, ‘I’ll let him in,’ and disappeared round the angle. I heard the door open and a long, unaccountable silence. Then Terry’s voice said shortly, ‘Wait there, will you?’ He came round the angle; his face was set. ‘It’s Cohen.’
I closed my eyes for a moment and pretended it was only Charlie. I was too tired; I couldn’t cope with all I should be feeling. Then I put my feet on the floor. My back gave a mighty stab that made me grimace with surprise, because the pain had stopped ten minutes before.
‘Do you want me to go?’ Terry asked.
‘Yes – no, wait. I don’t know.’ I tried to pull myself together but everything kept sparkling in front of my eyes. My hands were shaking.
‘You’re white as a sheet.’
‘Toby!’ I called unsteadily. ‘Come in, will you?’
He came in hesitantly. Despite Terry’s description I was expecting him to look as I’d last seen him, but he was quite changed and it gave me a shock. To begin with he had a beard. It made him look ten years older, and completely did away with his vulnerable, baby-blackbird look. The reddish shadows on his face were more marked than ever; his hair was too long, and his jacket – the same green corduroy one – was now worn almost transparent. He had on a clean shirt and tie, but even across the room I could see the frayed cuffs and collar.
We looked at each other. I don’t know how it would have been if Terry had not been watching. As it was, there seemed nothing we could safely say.
‘How are you?’ Toby asked at last. He didn’t so much as glance at Terry, but kept his eyes gravely fixed on me.
‘Fine,’ I said inanely.
‘You don’t look it. You look frightful.’
‘Really, I’m all right.’
‘You wanted to see me.’
‘Yes.’
Again there was silence. This time Toby did look over at Terry – a sharp, dismissive glance. When Terry didn’t move, he said: ‘It’d be easier to talk if we were alone.’
Terry said, ‘Is that what you want, Jane?’ Before I could say anything, he went on, ‘Because I can’t say I like leaving you alone with–’
Toby said to me, ‘Is this a friend of yours?’
‘Yes, I am,’ Terry said. He sounded suddenly aggressive, and when Toby turned to him his expression answered the note in Terry’s voice.
‘If you are,’ Toby said slowly, ‘you’ll clear out for a while and let me talk to her. You came to fetch me, after all; you can’t be very surprised to see me.’
‘I’m just surprised by Jane’s desire to locate you,’ said Terry.
‘Oh? Why?’
‘If I’d lost you, I’d let you stay lost.’
I was dazed by the abruptness of the antipathy between them. They stood glaring at each other across the narrow room, their eyes full of cold, masculine fury. An unreasonable panic took hold of me – the panic one feels when two dogs stand facing each other, their hackles up, growling low in their chests. The pointless, primitive fighting instinct of the male … I watched Toby’s knuckles whiten and sensed my own helplessness.
‘Don’t,’ I said. Intended as a command, it came out weakly as a plea.
But to my surprise, Toby paid attention. I saw him forcing himself to relax. He was turning away towards me when Terry suddenly said, ‘I know what you’re thinking, and you’re right. I did it to her. So what do you say to that, Jew-boy?’
I saw Toby’s face sag in astonishment and then tauten in blind anger. He turned back to Terry and swung his fist at him in the same movement. Terry didn’t even put his arm up to defend himself, though Toby didn’t take very careful aim and he must have seen it coming. The blow landed badly, on Terry’s cheek, and he lurched sideways, then straightened up again.
I said something sharp and meaningless which neither of them noticed. Toby hit Terry again, this time more carefully, and still Terry didn’t resist. He went backwards and fell over the suitcase, and I felt a hysterical desire to laugh because it looked so unreal – a comic stage-fight in which every move is planned. Toby stood waiting while Terry got up. This time as he moved forward he did bring up his fists in a defensive attitude, but half-heartedly, without intention. Toby kicked the suitcase aside and it skidded against the wall. This time he struck out with his left fist, and I stopped wanting to laugh, because this blow landed squarely and made a shocking sound – I heard Terry’s teeth grind together with a horrible squeak as his head went back and he staggered and fell hard against the stove. I could almost feel the sharpness of the gas-taps in a stabbing pain in my own back. One of them must have caught in his jacket because there was a tearing noise as he slumped on to the floor.
There was a moment’s dead silence, making me realize for the first time what a series of loud sounds the fight had made. Then I heard footsteps pounding up from below, and Doris’s shrill, querulous voice.
Toby stood looking down at Terry. He was breathing hard and his face was white under the shadows.
‘Why didn’t he fight back?’ he said numbly. ‘He asked for it. Why didn’t he fight back?’
We crouched beside Terry. Doris and Charlie were banging on the door. Just as we rolled him over they burst in.
‘Nah then, nah then, what’s going on ’ere?’ said Charlie, looking and sounding like a ponderous policeman in civvies. Doris was more practical. ‘Help us get him on the bed,’ she said briskly, pushing past me to pick up Terry’s feet. ‘I should’ve thought any fool could see what’s been goin’ on, even you.’
Terry was groaning and his face was starting to swell. I stood looking down at him, trying to analyse the searing confusion of feelings within me. The pain in my back returned deafeningly. I closed my eyes but that shut me into a dark roaring world of pain.
I groped through the shouting blackness for Toby’s hand, as I had once before, but there was no answer. I opened my eyes. A number of people I knew were standing round the bed. It took me a moment to recognize them. As well as Charlie and Doris, Mavis was there, and John; Toby stood to one side rubbing his knuckles dazedly. I wondered why they all seemed so far away – tiny, insect figures, distant in importance. The important thing was the pain. It was gone for a moment, but it would be back. I knew because it had all happened before.
I tried to call out, but the microscopic little people couldn’t hear me across the vistas that separated us. For a second I knew what it might feel like to be alone in the world.
Then the pain came back. When it had gone the crowd round the bed was vast and close. There seemed to be hundreds of huge figures moving cumbersomely in slow motion. This time if I spoke they couldn’t help hearing, but now my teeth seemed locked together and I couldn’t utter a sound. I was afraid of the next pain, and I was afraid of this sense of being alone. The nearness of this crowd of lumbering, mumbling giants, did nothing to help it. They were all strangers, unaware of me, and obviously uncaring – for it now seemed to me that all the people in the world were packed into the L-shaped room, and that every one had his back turned towards me.