The Lodger: A Novel (6 page)

Dorothy turned her attention back to her. “Tell me what?”

“I went out late last night and cycled around Bloomsbury—in nothing but a petticoat.”

“Really? How brave you are! It must have been blissful.”

“It was. I could have wept with frustration, afterward, at not being able to shed my deadly layers of clothing once and for all. It would transform life.”

“That magnificent feeling of freedom.”

“Yes, and not only that; think of never having to clean the mud off your skirt again.”

“I know. It would be heaven.”

A smile irradiated Miss Boyd’s face, making it nearly beautiful. She hadn’t exchanged more than a few words with Dorothy until now, but their spontaneous last-minute affinity, cemented by a shared love of bicycles, seemed very sweet. It was like one of those sudden mysterious friendships that flower between schoolgirls.

“I spend hours trying to keep my skirts clean,” Miss Boyd said. “It makes me furious to think of all the other things I could be doing with the time. Life is unfair, for women.”

“Don’t tell me you’d rather be a man, Miss Boyd.”

“Oh, sometimes I would.” She sighed gustily. “The world belongs to men. They hold everything in their hands.”

“
I
wouldn’t, ever. I’d simply hate to have a man’s mind.”

“Why?”

There was a pause, while Dorothy struggled to explain herself. The mind of a woman was deeper, more instinctive and less articulate than that of a man. Women were able to see many things simultaneously; they were more profoundly, richly alive … Men saw life in terms of externals, and only one thing at a time. Their sense of superiority was born of being free to be out in the world, but they did not understand what went on below the surface with people.

Miss Boyd gave up waiting for an answer. “Aren’t you glad you are alive today, with all these things going on?” she asked.

“What things?”

“Well, cycling and things. Aren’t you going to have any pudding?”

There was a loud hammering on the front door; a peremptory noise, not in the least sociable. Mrs. Baker looked up sharply. Carrie was already on her way out of the room to answer it.

“That was a fine dinner, Mrs. Baker. Thank you,” Dr. Weber said.

“Well, you wouldn’t have me starve my boarders.”

“I certainly wouldn’t. Fortunately, the reverse is true.”

“Another helping of pudding, Mr. Cundy?”

Mr. Cundy was sitting at Mrs. Baker’s right hand, looking about for the dish of apple pie. His black hair was brilliant with grease.

“I don’t mind if I do. It seems a crime to let it go to waste.” He smiled sideways down the table, his eyes not quite meeting anyone’s full-on. “Your dinners are miniature masterpieces, Mrs. B, a bright spot at the end of a hard day’s work. Something a chap looks forward to…” He helped himself to pie as he carried on; his obsequious mouth feeling clumsily for compliments.

Carrie hurried in. Something in her face caused a hush to fall over the assembled group.

“What’s wrong?” her mother asked.

“A dreadful thing,” she said, in low stunned tones. “It’s Mary-Lou Jones—”

“Who?” the new gentleman asked, cupping one hand against his ear.

“Mary-Lou Jones. A typist; she rents a room down the road…” Carrie seemed unable to go on.

“What happened?” Dr. Weber prompted gently.

Carrie turned her large watery blue eyes on him. “She threw herself out the bedroom window because she owes her landlady thirty shillings, and the landlady asked her for it outright.”

A buzz of consternation rose from the shocked table. Something had entered the room—a naked despair—and many were only too familiar with it.

“That is
terrible
,” Dr. Weber exclaimed. “Is she still alive?”

“I don’t know; I don’t think so. She fell from the top floor. There’s a policeman with her and a crowd of people … I saw grey stuff coming out of her head. Oh, it was horrible.”

“I’ll go and see if I can help.” Dr. Weber picked up his hat and went out hurriedly.

Dorothy couldn’t face the roomful of people and their excited revulsion. Asking Mrs. Baker to excuse her as well, she went upstairs to her bedroom. She sat down on the greyish-white counterpane and hugged her knees, feeling rattled and queasy.

She tried to imagine Mary-Lou Jones opening her bedroom window and clambering onto the sill; she would have been hampered by her skirt. She saw her balancing precariously on the edge like a voluminous bird; looking vertiginously down at the ground.

What did the moment of unalterably pushing herself off feel like; had her skirt billowed out around her as she plummeted through the unresisting air, like a sail or a parachute? What could have been in her mind? Did she, even then, wish it undone; did she wish herself safely back in her room, with the window fastened? Or was life so bad, she couldn’t wait to die and put an end to her pain. Had she welcomed the hard pavement as it rushed up to meet her?

Dorothy shivered as she contemplated the richness of a consciousness being snuffed out in an instant on a grimy London street, to the uncaring accompaniment of cab whistles and hansom cabs rattling and jingling past.

St. Pancras clock struck ten. Mary-Lou was part of a growing army of outwardly confident young female office workers in the city. But their independence came at a price. Dorothy understood very well the precipice edge the girl had walked, the constant pressure of keeping everything going.

At least I’ve got my freedom—I’m managing—I’m not dependent on anyone,
Dorothy thought, gazing into the empty grate, torn between fear and exhilaration.

Five

Dorothy began to store up her impressions of London for Bertie: little sketches and anecdotes that she hoped would ignite his interested attention and bring that precious creak of appreciation into his voice. “You’re a good raconteur, Dorothy,” he would say, with a glint of amusement in his eyes. “You have a certain style, you really do. You’re coming on no end.”

She described her life to him, making him laugh with her descriptions of the endless procession of boarders and their eccentricities.

“There’s an alcoholic Portuguese waiter sharing my top floor at the moment. Has the room next door to mine. He comes bumbling up the stairs in the early hours.”

“Watch yourself, Dorothy. I hope you lock your door at night.”

“Actually, I don’t. He staggers about and swears a bit. He has difficulty getting into his room, and sometimes, poor thing, he is sick on the landing.”

“It appears to be a most colorful establishment. But I do think you should lock your door. You’ve no idea how desirable a girl like you is to an old reprobate. You’re a golden girl. You’re like … like a ripe juicy peach.”

“Am I?… Funnily enough, I feel perfectly safe with Mr. Abella. Mind you, he owes weeks of rent…”

“Another one of your disreputables, Dorothy. Your Mrs. Baker houses an extraordinary gallery of them. Seems to attract ’em.”

“I suppose she does … the exception, of course, being Dr. Weber. They don’t come any more respectable than him. Did I tell you he’s been rather attentive to me lately?”

Bertie’s eyes darkened. “No, you didn’t.”

“He’s taken to intercepting me in the hall in the mornings, on my way to work. Helps me on with my coat, tries to keep me talking until I’m almost late. He says his day hasn’t started well unless he sees me first thing.”

She wanted Bertie to know what it felt like being inside her skin. Waking up to the clear bright chiming of St. Pancras bells, in her first room of her own. Resting in bed, watching the grey morning light lying in pools on the faded carpet, falling onto the dark yellow grainy wallpaper, the battered yellow chest of drawers and tiny wardrobe. She knew this room intimately, better than any place she had known in her wanderings.

She wanted him to live her excitement as she left work, the long monotonous day scrolling shut behind her. Stepping out into the dusky light and the clamor and spectacle of London hurtling past. Feeling the pavement under her feet, the lamplit evening expanding around her. Watching the endless file of hansoms and horse omnibuses rattling along, bearing hordes of unknown people to unknown destinations. Being shoved and elbowed by home-going workers, as she took in the profusion of colorfully decorated shop fronts and posters that seemed to promise immeasurable delights. The thickening darkness mingled with the gold of city lights. The sound of a barrel organ was all but drowned out by evening-paper boys shouting their headlines stridently, reminding her that the great capital was but the foreground of a worldwide drama …

She wanted him to experience with her the adventure of simply taking a bus across town without being accountable to anyone. The sense of being easefully carried along, drawn by the momentum of the traffic. Watching the city unfurl from the bus windows, the glory of the silhouettes of buildings outlined against the sky. Joyously in love with life and with her freedom, giddy with the feeling. Thinking,
Until you’ve been alone in London, you aren’t entirely alive.

*   *   *

BERTIE SAID, “I
see London has taken hold of you, as it took hold of me.” His eyes gleamed as he looked at Dorothy standing in front of the mantelpiece. Summer light poured through the wide open windows of the drawing room. They were waiting for Jane to come downstairs for lunch.

He began to pace up and down. “You should write up your impressions. You have a gift for words. You’ve had enough experience to provide material; you’ve won your independence in the face of staggering difficulties. You ought to set it all down.” He stopped walking. “Hang on a minute, perhaps
I
should write a book about
you
…”

Dorothy laughed.

Bertie sat down in an armchair, motioning her to join him. “Seriously though, it’s only by drawing on his or her own life and emotions that a writer animates fiction. In a small way it’s like being God: you create characters in your own image, and you breathe energy and warmth into them as best you can.”

His words reverberated inside Dorothy, reinforcing something in herself; scarcely articulated, but there. She had always wanted to write; probably, everyone secretly wanted to write.

“A few years ago, I went to a garden party where they had a palmist telling fortunes,” she said. “An extraordinary dark wrinkled creature, like an elderly monkey in a head scarf and earrings. She looked at my hands and asked if I’d done any writing. I said no. She said, ‘Start straight away, you were born to write. Don’t let anything put you off. Start writing, and make sure you keep going’ … She also told me I’d marry late in life…”

“So, have you written anything?”

“I can’t. I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

“Sit down with an empty sheet of paper and a pen. I find that if you take almost any idea as an opener and let your mind run with it, there comes out of blankness, in a way I find impossible to explain, some small embryo of a story. If I could turn myself into a writer, you can, too … Why don’t you write something and send it to me.”

*   *   *

SHE NEVER TOLD
Bertie that London held a dark side, too. At times, she was afraid that the strain of keeping everything together on her meager salary would break her. By the time the rent was paid, there was hardly enough for food, and no chance of saving for old age. She was chronically hungry and cold during the winter months as well (by no means the least attraction of staying with the Wellses was their well-stocked pantry). Work was increasingly monotonous and the hours were gruelingly long. She was plagued by terrible tiredness, which seemed to gather force inside her, like a malignant and threatening tumor. She was losing weight. The cheap black dresses she wore for work were hanging off her, making her look like a shabby malnourished crow. What if she fell ill and was unable to earn a living? She couldn’t be a dentist’s secretary for ever.

Sometimes, there seemed nothing ahead but a bleakness that would deepen as the years crawled by. A future utterly lacking in prospects … thinking about it was so frightening, it made her want to curl up and cease to exist. At least that way, there would be no more struggle. It was easy to see how the young typist down the street had lost her reason and thrown herself from the top floor …

In this mood, the city seemed uncaring, indifferent. Bertie was right when he said London had got her. London was taking her health and devouring her youth. It was London that killed you, in the end.

There was a particular narrow and gaslit lane off Regent Street. Dorothy always seemed to drift into it unknowingly … the rusted sign hanging above the cramped shop for Browns Teas reminded her of a visit with her mother, just before she became ill. She’d sat opposite Dorothy, not saying much, small hard lines of tension about her mouth. Refusing to eat, despite Dorothy’s best efforts to persuade her …

Dorothy couldn’t stay the flood of memory and guilt. Why did she keep forgetting the tea shop was here? What drew her so irresistibly to it?… Some malevolent force brought her here … it would tear her mind apart … it was nudging her into madness because she was herself and nothing could change the shattering event that had wrenched her world in two and plunged her into a darkness that still threatened to destroy sanity and life.

*   *   *

“I LIKE HAVING
you around,” Bertie admitted.

Lunch was finished, and Jane had gone outside to speak to the gardener. Dorothy and Bertie were alone in his study; the rest of the house suddenly seemed far away.

“I like the way you use your hands when you talk,” he continued, “it’s very musical. And the way your hair falls in pale gold curtains, your laugh … you don’t know how attractive you are.”

His words brought pleasure, yet a jagged fork of alarm pushed through Dorothy’s stomach, like lightning. For some time, Bertie had been hovering near an invisible line—now, he had crossed it irrevocably. The boundaries had shifted: perhaps, they no longer existed.

She stammered, “Most of the time, I feel like a hopeless misfit. I’m so awkward with people…”