To Room Nineteen (9 page)

I ran through the drizzle to the umbrella. ‘Stalin’s dying,’ I said.

‘How do you know?’ said Aunt Emma suspiciously.

‘It says so in the newspaper.’

‘They said he was sick this morning, but I expect it’s just propaganda. I won’t believe it till I see it.’

‘Oh don’t be silly, Mummy. How can you
see
it?’ said Jessie.

We went on up the street. Aunt Emma said: ‘What do you think, would it have been better if Jessie had bought a nice pretty afternoon dress?’

‘Oh, Mummy,’ said Jessie, ‘can’t you see she’s upset? It’s the same for her as it would be for us if Churchill was dead.’

‘Oh, my
dear
!’ said Aunt Emma, shocked, stopping dead. An umbrella spoke scraped across Jessie’s scalp, and she squeaked. ‘Do put that umbrella down now. Can’t you see it’s stopped raining?’ she said, irritably, rubbing her head.

Aunt Emma pushed and bundled at the umbrella until it collapsed, and Jessie took it and rolled it up. Aunt Emma, flushed and frowning, looked dubiously at me. ‘Would you like a nice cup of tea?’ she said.

‘Jessie’s going to be late,’ I said. The photographer’s door was just ahead.

‘I do hope this man’s going to get Jessie’s expression,’ said Aunt Emma. ‘There’s never been one yet that got her
look.’

Jessie went crossly ahead of us up some rather plushy stairs in a hallway with mauve and gold striped wallpaper. At the top there was a burst of Stravinsky as Jessie masterfully opened a door and strode in. We followed her into what seemed to be a drawing room, all white and grey and gold. The
Rites of Spring
tinkled a baby chandelier overhead; and there was no point in speaking until our host, a charming young man in a black velvet jacket, switched off the machine, which he did with an apologetic smile.

‘I do hope this is the right place,’ said Aunt Emma. ‘I have brought my daughter to be photographed.’

‘Of course it’s the right place,’ said the young man. ‘How delightful of you to come!’ He took my Aunt Emma’s white-gloved hands in his own and seemed to press her down on to a large sofa; a
pressure to which she responded with a confused blush. Then he looked at me. I sat down quickly on another divan, a long way from Aunt Emma. He looked professionally at Jessie, smiling. She was standing on the carpet, hands linked behind her back, like an admiral on the job, frowning at him.

‘You don’t look at all relaxed,’ he said to her gently. ‘It’s really no use at all, you know, unless you are really relaxed all over.’

‘I’m perfectly relaxed,’ said Jessie. ‘It’s my cousin here who isn’t relaxed.’

I said, ‘I don’t see that it matters whether I’m relaxed or not, because it’s not me who is going to be photographed.’ A book fell off the divan beside me on the floor. It was
Prancing Nigger
by Ronald Firbank. Our host dived for it, anxiously.

‘Do you read our Ron?’ he asked.

‘From time to time,’ I said.

‘Personally I never read anything else,’ he said. ‘As far as I am concerned he said the last word. When I’ve read him all through, I begin again at the beginning and read him through again. I don’t see that there’s any point in anyone ever writing another word after Firbank.’

This remark discouraged me, and I did not feel inclined to say anything.

‘I think we could all do with a nice cup of tea,’ he said. ‘While I’m making it, would you like the gramophone on again?’

‘I can’t stand modern music,’ said Jessie.

‘We can’t all have the same tastes,’ he said. He was on his way to a door at the back, when it opened and another young man came in with a tea tray. He was as light and lithe as the first, with the same friendly ease of manner. He was wearing black jeans and a purple sweater, and his hair looked like two irregular glossy black wings on his head.

‘Ah, bless you, dear!’ said our host to him. Then to us: ‘Let me introduce my friend and assistant, Jackie Smith. My name you know. Now if we all have a nice cup of tea, I feel that our vibrations might become just a
little
more harmonious.’

All this time Jessie was standing-at-ease on the carpet. He handed
her a cup of tea. She nodded towards me, saying, ‘Give it to her.’ He took it back and gave it to me. ‘What’s the matter, dear?’ he asked. ‘Aren’t you feeling well?’

‘I am perfectly well,’ I said, reading the newspaper.

‘Stalin is dying,’ said Aunt Emma. ‘Or so they would like us to believe.’

‘Stalin?’ said our host.

‘That man in Russia,’ said Aunt Emma.

‘Oh, you mean old Uncle Joe. Bless him.’

Aunt Emma started. Jessie looked gruffly incredulous.

Jackie Smith came and sat down beside me and read the newspaper over my shoulder. ‘Well, well,’ he said. ‘Well, well, well, well.’ Then he giggled and said: ‘Nine doctors. If there were fifty doctors I still wouldn’t feel very safe, would you?’

‘No, not really,’ I said.

‘Silly old nuisance,’ said Jackie Smith. ‘Should have bumped him off years ago. Obviously outlived his usefulness at the end of the war, wouldn’t you think?’

‘It seems rather hard to say,’ I said.

Our host, a teacup in one hand, raised the other in a peremptory gesture. ‘I don’t like to hear that kind of thing,’ he said. ‘I really don’t. God knows, if there’s one thing I make a point of never knowing a thing about, it’s politics, but during the war Uncle Joe and Roosevelt were absolutely my pin-up boys. But absolutely!’

Here Cousin Jessie, who had neither sat down nor taken a cup of tea, took a stride forward and said angrily: ‘Look, do you think we could get this
damned
business over with?’ Her virginal pink cheeks shone with emotion, and her eyes were brightly unhappy.

‘But, my
dear
!’ said our host, putting down his cup. ‘But of course. If you feel like that, of course.’

He looked at his assistant, Jackie, who reluctantly laid down the newspaper and pulled the cords of a curtain, revealing an alcove full of cameras and equipment. Then they both thoughtfully examined Jessie. ‘Perhaps it would help,’ said our host, ‘if you could give me an idea what you want it for? Publicity? Dust jackets? Or just for your lucky friends?’

‘I don’t know and I don’t care,’ said Cousin Jessie.

Aunt Emma stood up sand said: ‘I would like you to catch her expression. It’s just a little
look
of hers …’

Jessie clenched her fists at her.

‘Aunt Emma,’ I said, ‘don’t you think it would be a good idea if you and I went out for a little?’

‘But my
dear
 …’

But our host had put his arm around her and was easing her to the door. ‘There’s a duck,’ he was saying. ‘You do want me to make a good job of it, don’t you? And I never could really do my best, even with the most sympathetic lookers-on.’

Again Aunt Emma went limp, blushing. I took his place at her side and led her to the door. As we shut it, I heard Jackie Smith saying: ‘Music, do you think?’ And Jessie: ‘I
loathe
music.’ And Jackie again: ‘We do rather find music helps, you know …’

The door shut and Aunt Emma and I stood at the landing window, looking into the street.

‘Has that young man done
you?’
she asked.

‘He was recommended to me,’ I said.

Music started up from the room behind us. Aunt Emma’s foot tapped on the floor. ‘Gilbert and Sullivan,’ she said. ‘Well, she can’t say she loathes that. But I suppose she would, just to be difficult.’

I lit a cigarette.
The Pirates of Penzance
abruptly stopped.

‘Tell me, dear,’ said Aunt Emma, suddenly rougish, ‘about all the exciting things you are doing.’

Aunt Emma always says this; and always I try hard to think of portions of my life suitable for presentation to Aunt Emma. ‘What have you been doing today, for instance?’ I considered Bill; I considered Beatrice; I considered comrade Jean.

‘I had lunch,’ I said, ‘with the daughter of a Bishop.’

‘Did you, dear?’ she said doubtfully.

Music again: Cole Porter. ‘That doesn’t sound right to me,’ said Aunt Emma. ‘It’s modern, isn’t it?’ The music stopped. The door opened. Cousin Jessie stood there, shining with determination. ‘It’s no good,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry, Mummy, but I’m not in the mood.’

‘But we won’t be coming up to London again for another four months.’

Our host and his assistant appeared behind Cousin Jessie. Both were smiling rather bravely. ‘Perhaps we had better all forget about it,’ said Jackie Smith.

Our host said, ‘Yes, we’ll try again later, when everyone is really themselves.’

Jessie turned to the two young men and thrust out her hand at them. ‘I’m very sorry,’ she said, with her fierce virgin sincerity. ‘I am really terribly sorry.’

Aunt Emma went forward, pushed aside Jessie, and shook their hands. ‘I must thank you both,’ she said, ‘for the tea.’

Jackie Smith waved my newspaper over the three heads. ‘You’ve forgotten this,’ he said.

‘Never mind, you can keep it,’ I said.

‘Oh, bless you, now I can read all the gory details.’ The door shut on their friendly smiles.

‘Well,’ said Aunt Emma, ‘I’ve never been more ashamed.’

‘I don’t care,’ said Jessie fiercely. ‘I really couldn’t care less.’

We descended into the street. We shook each other’s hands. We kissed each other’s cheeks. We thanked each other. Aunt Emma and Cousin Jessie waved at a taxi. I got on a bus.

When I got home, the telephone was ringing. It was Beatrice. She said she had got my telegram, but she wanted to see me in any case. ‘Did you know Stalin was dying?’ I said.

‘Yes, of course. Look, it’s absolutely essential to discuss this business on the Copper Belt.’

‘Why is it?’

‘If we don’t tell people the truth about it, who is going to?’

‘Oh, well, I suppose so,’ I said.

She said she would be over in an hour. I set out my typewriter and began to work. The telephone rang. It was comrade Jean. ‘Have you heard the news?’ she said. She was crying.

Comrade Jean had left her husband when he became a member of the Labour Party at the time of the Stalin-Hitler Pact, and ever since then had been living in bed-sitting rooms on bread,
butter and tea, with a portrait of Stalin over her bed.

‘Yes, I have,’ I said.

‘It’s awful,’ she said sobbing. ‘Terrible. They’ve murdered him.’

‘Who has? How do you know?’ I said.

‘He’s been murdered by capitalist agents,’ she said. ‘It’s perfectly obvious.’

‘He was seventy-three,’ I said.

‘People don’t die just like
that
,’ she said.

‘They do at seventy-three,’ I said.

‘We will have to pledge ourselves to be worthy of him,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I suppose we will.’

A man and woman walked towards the boulevard from a little hotel in a side street.

The trees were still leafless, black, cold; but the fine twigs were swelling towards spring, so that looking upward it was with an expectation of the first glimmering greenness. Yet everything was calm, and the sky was a calm, classic blue.

The couple drifted slowly along. Effort, after days of laziness, seemed impossible; and almost at once they turned into a café and sank down, as if exhausted, in the glass-walled space that was thrust forward into the street.

The place was empty. People were seeking the midday meal in the restaurants. Not all: that morning crowds had been demonstrating, a procession had just passed, and its straggling end could still be seen. The sounds of violence, shouted slogans and singing, no longer absorbed the din of Paris traffic; but it was these sounds that had roused the couple from sleep.

A waiter leaned at the door, looking after the crowds, and he reluctantly took an order for coffee.

The man yawned; the woman caught the infection; and they laughed with an affectation of guilt and exchanged glances before their eyes, without regret, parted. When the coffee came, it remained untouched. Neither spoke. After some time the woman yawned again; and this time the man turned and looked at her critically, and she looked back. Desire asleep, they looked. This remained: that while everything which drove them slept, they accepted from each other a sad irony; they could look at each other without illusion, steady-eyed.

And then, inevitably, the sadness deepened in her till she
consciously resisted it; and into him came the flicker of cruelty.

‘Your nose needs powdering,’ he said.

‘You need a whipping boy.’

But always he refused to feel sad. She shrugged, and, leaving him to it, turned to look out. So did he. At the far end of the boulevard there was a faint agitation, like stirred ants, and she heard him mutter, ‘Yes, and it still goes on …’

Mocking, she said, ‘Nothing changes, everything always the same …’

But he had flushed. ‘I remember,’ he began, in a different voice. He stopped, and she did not press him, for he was gazing at the distant demonstrators with a bitterly nostalgic face.

Outside drifted the lovers, the married couples, the students, the old people. There the stark trees; there the blue, quiet sky. In a month the trees would be vivid green; the sun would pour down heat; the people would be brown, laughing, bare-limbed. No, no, she said to herself, at this vision of activity. Better the static sadness. And, all at once, unhappiness welled up in her, catching her throat, and she was back fifteen years in another country. She stood in blazing tropical moonlight, stretching her arms to a landscape that offered her nothing but silence and then she was running down a path where small stones glinted sharp underfoot, till at last she fell spent in a swathe of glistening grass. Fifteen years.

It was at this moment that the man turned abruptly and called the waiter and ordered wine.

‘What,’ she said humorously, ‘already?’

‘Why not?’

For the moment she loved him completely and maternally, till she suppressed the counterfeit and watched him wait, fidgeting, for the wine, pour it, and then set the two glasses before them beside the still-brimming coffee cups. But she was again remembering that night, envying the girl ecstatic with moonlight, who ran crazily through the trees in an unsharable desire for – but that was the point.

‘What are you thinking of?’ he asked, still a little cruel.

‘Ohhh,’ she protested humorously.

‘That’s the trouble, that’s the trouble.’ He lifted his glass, glanced at her, and set it down. ‘Don’t you want a drink?’

‘Not yet.’

He left his glass untouched and began to smoke.

These moments demanded some kind of gesture – something slight, even casual, but still an acknowledgement of the separateness of these two people in each of them; the one seen, perhaps, as a soft-staring never-closing eye, observing, always observing, with a tired compassion; the other, a shape of violence that struggled on in the cycle of desire and rest, creation and achievement.

He gave it her. Again their eyes met in the grave irony, before he turned away, flicking his fingers irritably against the table; and she turned also, to note the black branches where the sap was tingling.

‘I remember,’ he began; and again she said, in protest, ‘Ohhh!’

He checked himself. ‘Darling,’ he said dryly, ‘you’re the only woman I’ve ever loved.’ They laughed.

‘It must have been this street. Perhaps this café – only they change so. When I went back yesterday to see the place where I came every summer, it was a
pâtisserie
, and the woman had forgotten me. There was a whole crowd of us – we used to go around together – and I met a girl here, I think, for the first time. There were recognized places for contacts; people coming from Vienna or Prague, or wherever it was, knew the places – it couldn’t be this café, unless they’ve smartened it up. We didn’t have the money for all this leather and chromium.’

‘Well, go on.’

‘I keep remembering her, for some reason. Haven’t thought of her for years. She was about sixteen, I suppose. Very pretty – no, you’re quite wrong. We used to study together. She used to bring her books to my room. I liked her, but I had my own girl, only she was studying something else, I forget what.’ He paused again, and again his face was twisted with nostalgia, and involuntarily she glanced over her shoulder down the street. The procession had completely disappeared, not even the sound of singing and shouting remained.

‘I remember her because …’ And, after a preoccupied silence: ‘Perhaps it is always the fate of the virgin who comes and offers herself, naked, to be refused.’

‘What!’ she exclaimed, startled. Also, anger stirred in her. She noted it, and sighed. ‘Go on.’

‘I never made love to her. We studied together all that summer. Then, one weekend, we all went off in a bunch. None of us had any money, of course, and we used to stand on the pavements and beg lifts, and meet up again in some village. I was with my own girl, but that night we were helping the farmer get his fruit, in payment for using his barn to sleep in, and I found this girl Marie was beside me. It was moonlight, a lovely night, and we were all singing and making love. I kissed her, but that was all. That night she came to me. I was sleeping up in the loft with another lad. He was asleep. I sent her back down to the others. They were all together down in the hay. I told her she was too young. But she was no younger than my own girl.’ He stopped; and after all these years his face was rueful and puzzled. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I don’t know why I sent her back.’ Then he laughed. ‘Not that it matters, I suppose.’

‘Shameless hussy,’ she said. The anger was strong now. ‘You had kissed her, hadn’t you?’

He shrugged. ‘But we were all playing the fool. It was a glorious night – gathering apples, the farmer shouting and swearing at us because we were making love more than working, and singing and drinking wine. Besides, it was that time: the youth movement. We regarded faithfulness and jealousy and all that sort of thing as remnants of bourgeois morality.’ He laughed again, rather painfully. ‘I kissed her. There she was, beside me, and she knew my girl was with me that weekend.’

‘You kissed her,’ she said accusingly.

He fingered the stem of his wineglass, looking over at her and grinning. ‘Yes, darling,’ he almost crooned at her. ‘I kissed her.’

She snapped over into anger. ‘There’s a girl all ready for love. You make use of her for working. Then you kiss her. You know quite well …’

‘What do I know quite well?’

‘It was a cruel thing to do.’

‘I was a kid myself …’

‘Doesn’t matter.’ She noted, with discomfort, that she was almost crying. ‘Working with her! Working with a girl of sixteen, all summer!’

‘But we all studied very seriously. She was a doctor afterwards, in Vienna. She managed to get out when the Nazis came in, but …’

She said impatiently, ‘Then you kissed her, on
that
night. Imagine her, waiting till the others were asleep, then she climbed up the ladder to the loft, terrified the other man might wake up, then she stood watching you sleep, and she slowly took off her dress and …’

‘Oh, I wasn’t asleep. I pretended to be. She came up dressed. Shorts and sweater – our girls didn’t wear dresses and lipstick – more bourgeois morality. I watched her strip. The loft was full of moonlight. She put her hand over my mouth and came down beside me.’ Again, his face was filled with rueful amazement. ‘God knows, I can’t understand it myself. She was a beautiful creature. I don’t know why I remember it. It’s been coming into my mind the last few days.’ After a pause, slowly twirling the wineglass: ‘I’ve been a failure in many things, but not with …’ He quickly lifted her hand, kissed it, and said sincerely: ‘I don’t know why I remember it now, when …’ Their eyes met, and they sighed.

She said slowly, her hand lying in his: ‘And so you turned her away.’

He laughed. ‘Next morning she wouldn’t speak to me. She started a love affair with my best friend – the man who’d been beside me that night in the loft, as a matter of fact. She hated my guts, and I suppose she was right.’

‘Think of her. Think of her at that moment. She picked up her clothes, hardly daring to look at you …’

‘As a matter of fact, she was furious. She called me all the names she could think of; I had to keep telling her to shut up, she’d wake the whole crowd.’

‘She climbed down the ladder and dressed again, in the dark. Then she went out of the barn, unable to go back to the others. She
went into the orchard. It was still brilliant moonlight. Everything was silent and deserted, and she remembered how you’d all been singing and laughing and making love. She went to the tree where you’d kissed her. The moon was shining on the apples. She’ll never forget it, never, never!’

He looked at her curiously. The tears were pouring down her face.

‘It’s terrible,’ she said. ‘Terrible. Nothing could ever make up to her for that. Nothing, as long as she lived. Just when everything was most perfect, all her life, she’d suddenly remember that night, standing alone, not a soul anywhere, miles of damned empty moonlight …’

He looked at her shrewdly. Then, with a sort of humorous, deprecating grimace, he bent over and kissed her and said: ‘Darling, it’s not my fault; it just isn’t my fault.’

‘No,’ she said.

He put the wineglass into her hands; and she lifted it up, looked at the small crimson globule of warming liquid, and drank with him.