The Lodger: A Novel (11 page)

“I’m worried about the international situation,” he said. He was wearing a soft collared shirt, a blue-grey bow tie, and a flannel blazer of the same shade. Its color made his eyes intensely blue and bright. “I’m convinced we are closer than ever to conflict with Germany. What’s more, India is in a state of flux. It’s only a matter of time before something blows up there, with desperate consequences for our empire.” His eyes roved from person to person, capturing and holding theirs as he kept command of the conversation.

The colonel nodded gravely, sucking at his mustache. “The fact is, half the government are asleep.”

“Exactly! Snoring comfortably in their beds beside their pampered wives…”

Dorothy tried in vain to fasten her attention to the problems of the outside world. Her body felt like a weighted sack on the chair, too warm, jittery with desire. She shifted her weight, recoiling from the lamb cutlet on her plate. She wasn’t hungry for food.

She thought,
I know what he looks like when he wakes up in the morning; I know the texture and smell of his skin and the firm muscles of his back, the touch of his lips on mine.
She hoped none of her thoughts or feelings were visible to the others.

Glancing across the condemned dinner table, she met the watchful eyes of Jane.

Afterward, Dorothy found herself briefly alone with Bertie in the sitting room. The delicate scent of Jane’s bunches of flowers mingled with the pungent odor of the large wood fire burning in the hearth. It was heady, intoxicating.

Bertie took her in his arms at once. “God, I missed you,” he muttered into her hair. “You look absurdly pretty tonight. I shan’t sleep knowing you’re only down the passage. Shall I creep into your room when Jane’s asleep?”

He kissed her hard.

She pushed him away, glancing nervously at the door. “Don’t be stupid. We can’t, not under Jane’s nose.”

Bertie’s face was flushed; his eyes gleamed in the dimness. Dorothy wondered if she looked as heedlessly lascivious.

“Do you think she suspects anything?” she asked in a low voice.

He shook his head. “She’s given no sign of anything being wrong, but don’t withdraw from her, it would only hurt and confuse her. Go and find her in her study tomorrow, spend time with her.”

“I feel horribly uncomfortable. What would we talk about?”

He caught her hand, stroking her palm softly with his thumb. He was breathing rapidly. “What do women talk about when we’re not around? I’ve often wondered…”

*   *   *

AFTER BREAKFAST THE
next morning, Dorothy knocked on the door of Jane’s study. Hearing no reply, she tentatively pushed it open. The room was empty.

It was a pretty, feminine space, decorated with softly tied bunches of flowers and a prodigious collection of cut and colored cut glass ornaments. Dorothy sat down at her friend’s desk, taking in the large brass inkstand, the blotting pad and solid-looking brass clock. She picked up the red-handled fountain pen and set it down again. She ran her hands over a tidy pile of household accounts.
So this was what it felt like to be in Jane’s shoes
.

Her eye fell on the wastepaper basket, which held a single crumpled piece of paper. Overcome with curiosity, she fished it out, opening and smoothing it on the desk’s well-worn surface. It was closely written, in Jane’s small, neat hand.

She hesitated. What right had she to invade her friend’s inmost thoughts? What if Jane came in and found her? Jumpy and guilty, soaked through and sick with it, yet unable to stop herself, Dorothy began to read.

I feel tonight, so tired of playing wiv’ making the place comfy, and as if there was only one dear rest place in the world, and that were in the arms of you.

There is the only place I shall ever find in this world where one has sometimes peace from the silly wasteful muddle of one’s life. Think! I am thinking continually of the disappointing news of it. The high bright ambitions one begins with, the dismal concessions, the growth, like a clogging hard crust over one of home and furniture and a lot of clothes and books and gardens, a load dragging me down. If I set out to make a comfortable home for you to live in and do work in, I merely succeed in continuing a place where you are bored to death. I make love to you and have you as my friend to the exclusion of plenty of people who would be infinitely more satisfying to you. Well, dear, I don’t think I ought to send such a letter. It’s only a mood you know … I have been letting myself go in a foolish fashion. It’s alright you know, really, only I’ve had so much of my own society now, I am naturally sick of such a person as I am. How you can ever stand it.

Dorothy could not go on. She crunched the letter up in her hands, sickened by her own culpability. If she gave Bertie up right now, an entire lifetime of devoutness and self-control would not atone for the injury she had inflicted on her oldest friend. Beneath the buoyancy and competence, Jane carried a toxic weight of self-doubt and bitterness and secret pain. And whether she knew it or not, Dorothy was adding to her suffering. (And how could she not know, in the deepest fibers of her being?)

What agonies Jane must have endured when she realized that the luminous mercurial man, who had wanted her enough to abandon his first wife, was falling out of love with her. That his heart no longer belonged to hers, that she had failed to capture and keep it …

Dorothy had a sudden vivid vision of Jane walking alone in her garden, unable to stop listening for the sound of Bertie’s footsteps, yet knowing it would not come.

She let the ball of crushed paper fall back into the wastepaper basket.

Nine

Benjamin reached the end of his story and buried his face in his hands. He had a particular way of inhabiting a chair: his head sinking toward his chest, his legs stretched out across the shabby carpet and crossed at the ankles, his half-empty cup of tea on the floor next to him. The sight was so familiar, yet it was as though he belonged to another world. Her life with him seemed flimsy and indistinct; perhaps it was a dream she’d woken from? Only her time with Bertie was real—real and vibrant.

When he moved out, Dorothy had told Benjamin he must call on her if he needed help: she had a foreboding he would get entangled in something of this sort. She’d heard him out in silence. As he talked, she watched the muscles of his face contracting to form the painful words. She listened to the rise and fall of his voice—so well-known and so alien—a curious meshing of argument and melody, as if he was holding a negotiation with himself. And she was able to see the images he conjured with perfect clarity, as vividly as if she’d been an actual witness to the wrecked romance.

“She was pretty,” he said wistfully. “She had the most extraordinary hair; it glowed with red-gold lights, like fire … and the softest skin I’ve ever seen or touched. And she was full of life; everything else seemed colorless and dull next to her. She flattered me, made me feel capable of amazing feats. Fool that I was, I believed every word … I was gripped by desire, completely taken over by it. The only place in the world I wanted to be was in her arms.” He paused, gazing at Dorothy, as though seeing her for the first time. “Have you ever wanted someone like that?”

“Yes, I have,” she answered truthfully. For a fleeting moment, the shared experience made her feel closer to him.

“I think it was a type of madness, from which I am thankfully recovering … oh God, how is it possible to be so stupid?”

“Don’t blame yourself. She showed you only what she wanted you to see. Nearly all men would have been taken in.”

Dorothy understood only too well Benjamin’s utter helplessness when confronted with this devastating combination of charm and looks. The girl sounded like the epitome of ambitious artificial femininity, playing to his vanity; he hadn’t stood a chance. After Dorothy, the blatant flattery must have been sweet balm.

“There’s another thing…” Benjamin cleared his throat, looking sheepish. “We thought she was with child.”

Dorothy stared at him in horror. “Benjamin, no!”

“A false alarm, thank God.” Shielding his eyes with his hands, Benjamin described the ugly insults and reproaches, the broken engagement.

Dorothy squirmed with guilt: she had failed him by sending him out into the world, innocent and defenseless. She had as good as pushed him into the arms of a monster. She looked at the green silk tie showing beneath his beard; the gold watch chain decorating his waistcoat; the gleam of his ring, pale old gold clasping a circlet of seed pearls. With his fine opulent looks and the generous allowance sent by his father from St. Petersburg, he was a catch for anyone. Any adventuress. He was like a child, open and trusting, oblivious to the guile of women. Swift anger blazed in her because of his naivety; it mingled uncomfortably with her guilt, making her feel physically sick. In the end, she harmed all the people she loved best.

He sat upright, flexing his hands until the joints cracked. The profound melancholy in his eyes reminded her of a puppy who needs to be picked up and stroked. Yet his beard and his formal manners and serious expression might have belonged to a far older man. What a strange combination of childishness and middle age he was. As he stared into space, he seemed to be confronting the barren stretches of his future, alone … Dorothy wavered, tugged by the knot of feelings that still bound her to him. Poor needy Benjamin; how isolated and heartsick he was, stranded in this cold damp country he would never belong to.

He sighed noisily. “What shall I do?”

“Find new lodgings at once. Make a clean break, get as far away from her as you can.”

“Again? I am always moving.”

“I know. I’m sorry … I don’t know what else to say. Look, how about another cup of tea? It might make you feel better.”

As she poured, he stopped her forgetfully putting milk in his tea. Taking a glistening lump of sugar from the bowl, he popped it between his lips and proceeded to suck his tea through it with quiet practiced sips. When all the sugar had dissolved, he took another lump and carried on drinking in the same way.

Dorothy watched this ritual, filled with an achingly familiar disgust. Certainly, the girl wouldn’t have cared how Benjamin drank his tea. She wouldn’t have been repulsed by his habits, like Dorothy was. Dorothy cursed her own fastidiousness.

She tore her gaze away from his mouth and looked instead at the pallid black-fringed eyelids shuttering his face when he blinked; the earnestness of his gaze as he raised his eyes to hers. His eyes held an enduring fascination. He would always be dear to her. She looked at him fondly.

He caught the look and plucked a fold of her skirt, putting it to his lips “I know now why men kneel to women.”

“Benjamin. Don’t.”

“I miss reading with you. Do you remember
Anna Karenina
?”

Dorothy nodded.
Anna Karenina
was the first book he had introduced her to, on a visit to the British Library. She remembered her opening encounter with Tolstoy beneath the gorgeously domed ceiling, accompanied by Benjamin’s penetratingly whispered commentary and the angry glances of the readers around them.
Anna Karenina
had seemed alive in a way English novels were not. She could hear the characters’ voices, feel the currents and shifts in the gaps between their conversations. The aliveness wove a strange beauty that was stronger than the anguish … Dorothy missed her shared reading with Benjamin, too: the dark-haired form sitting near her, contentedly absorbed.

“Is it even now too late for us?” he asked. “Nothing has been right, before or since.”

Briefly, she cupped his cheek with the palm of her hand. He closed his eyes. She wondered if he could sense the heat that Bertie had aroused in her. She crushed a sudden shocking urge to kiss him full on the lips.

“Sweet boy,” she said. “You don’t give up, do you?”

As Dorothy walked Benjamin to the front door, Mrs. Baker was crossing the hall with Mr. Cundy. Mrs. Baker looked more dingy and depleted than ever. Beside her, Mr. Cundy gleamed with youth.

The landlady greeted Benjamin warmly, but with barely held-in curiosity. Mr. Cundy shook his hand heartily, not quite meeting his eyes.

When they had disappeared into the drawing room, Benjamin said, “I am surprised that man is still here.”

“He’s very much here. He seems to be perpetually closeted with Mrs. Baker these days. I think he’s helping her straighten out her affairs.”

“There is something evasive about him … nothing I can put my finger on, nothing evil, but I do not like him.”

“I know what you mean. I hope he doesn’t try to take advantage of her in some mean way, like the others. She’s had an awful time, you know.”

“I do not know anything about it.”

“She was left penniless when her husband died, with two infant girls to bring up. His family behaved terribly. They disowned her, cutting her off without a farthing. She scraped and saved for years to get this house, but she’ll never make it profitable. She doesn’t have the first idea about running it; she thinks her failure is just inexplicable bad luck. Half the boarders don’t pay their bills.”

“That is terrible.”

“I know. I worry about what will happen to the Bakers.”

*   *   *

DOROTHY’S CONVERSATION WITH
Benjamin crystallized her unease about Mr. Cundy. He was secretive and sly. He had ingratiated himself with Mrs. Baker, winning her confidence, making himself indispensible to her.

Dorothy wondered how she might broach her anxieties to Mrs. Baker without causing offense. She went down to dinner that evening, hoping there would be a chance to talk to her alone.

The room was nearly full; the other diners were already at their places. Mr. Cundy was sitting—at the head of the table! Mrs. Baker had given him her chair! He sat surveying the room with quiet assurance.

“Here you are, young lady,” Mrs. Baker said, with the sweetly serene smile Dorothy loved. “Come and sit over here.”

Mrs. Baker was wearing a new blue ribbon in her hair, incongruous against the badly dyed blonde and grey. She steered Dorothy to a chair beside a girl Dorothy had never seen before.