To Room Nineteen: Collected Stories Volume One

Next evening Rose was despondent. ‘Did you see the officials?’ he asked at last.

‘Yes.’ She would not look at him. She was staring helpless down from the window.

‘Wasn’t it any good?’

‘They said I must prove myself a fit and proper person. So I said that I was. I told them I’d known Jill since she was born. I said I knew her mother and father.’

‘That’s true enough,’ he could not help interjecting, jealously. She gave him a cold look and said: ‘Don’t start that now. I told them her Granny was too old, and I could easily look after Jill.’

‘Well then?’

She was silent, then, wringing her hands unconsciously, she cried out: ‘They wasn’t nice, they wasn’t nice to me at all. There were two of them, a woman and a man. They said: How could I support Jill? I said I could get money. They said I must show them papers and things …’ She was silently crying now, but she did not come to him. She stayed at the window, her back turned, shutting him out of her sorrow. ‘They asked me, how could a working girl look after a child, and I said I’d do it easy, and they said, did I have a husband …’ Here she leaned her head against the wall and sobbed bitterly. After a time he said: ‘Well, Rosie, it looks as if I’m not good for you. Perhaps you’d better give me up and get yourself a proper husband.’ At this she jerked her head up, looked incredulously at him and cried: ‘Jimmie! How could I give you up …’ He went to her, thinking, in relief: ‘She loves me better after all.’ He meant: better than the child.

It seemed that Rose had accepted her defeat. For some days she talked sorrowfully about ‘those nosy parkers’ at the Council. She was even humorous, though in the way that made him uneasy. ‘I’ll go to them,’ she said, smiling grimly, ‘I’ll go and I’ll say: I can’t help being a surplus woman. Don’t blame me, blame the war, it’s not my fault that they keep killing all the men off in their silly wars …’

And then his jealousy grew unbearable and he said: ‘You love Jill better than me.’ She laughed in amazement, and said, ‘Don’t be a baby, Jimmie.’ ‘Well, you must. Look how you go on and on about that kid. It’s all you think about.’

‘There isn’t no sense in you being jealous of Jill.’

‘Jealous,’ he said, roughly. ‘Who says I’m jealous?’

‘Well, if you’re not, what are you then?’

‘Oh, go to hell, go to hell,’ he muttered to himself, as he put his arms around her. Aloud he said: ‘Come on, Rosie girl, come on, stop being like this, be like you used to be, can’t you?’

‘I’m not any different,’ she said patiently, submitting to his caresses with a sigh.

‘So you’re not any different,’ he said, exasperatedly. Then, controlling himself with difficulty he coaxed: ‘Rosie, Rosie, don’t you love me a little …’

For the truth was he was becoming obsessed with the difference in Rose. He thought of her continuously as she had been. It was like dreaming of another woman, she was so changed now. At work, busy with some job that needed all his attention, he would start as if stung, and mutter: ‘Rose – oh, to hell with her!’ He was remembering, with anguish, how she had run across the room to welcome him, how responsive she had been, how affectionate. He thought of her patient kindliness now, and wanted to swear. After work he would go straight to the flat, reaching it even before she did. The lights would be out, the rooms cold, like a reminder of how Rose had changed. She would come in, tired, laden with string-bags, to find him seated at the table staring at her, his eyes black with jealousy. ‘This place is as cold as a street-corner,’ he would say, angrily. She looked at him, sighed, then said, reasonably: ‘But Jimmie, look, here’s where I keep the sixpences for the gas – why don’t you light the fire?’ Then he would go to her, holding down her arms as he kissed her, and she would say: ‘Just leave me a minute, Jimmie. I must get the potatoes on or there’ll be no supper.’

‘Can’t the potatoes wait a minute?’

‘Let me get my arms free, Jimmie.’ He held them, so she would carefully reach them out from under the pressure of his grip, and put the string-bags on the table. Then she would turn to kiss him. He noticed that she would be glancing worriedly at the curtains, which had not been drawn, or at the rubbish-pail, which had not been emptied. ‘You can’t even kiss me until you’ve done all the housework,’ he cried, sullenly. ‘All right then, you tip me the wink when you’ve got a moment to spare and you don’t mind being kissed.’

To this she replied, listlessly but patiently: ‘Jimmie, I come straight home from work and there’s nothing ready, and before you didn’t come so early.’

‘So now you’re complaining because I come straight here. Before, you complained because I dropped in for a drink somewhere first.’

‘I never complained.’

‘You sulked, even if you didn’t complain.’

‘Well, Jimmie,’ she said, after a sorrowful pause, as she peeled the potatoes. ‘If I went to drink with a boy-friend you wouldn’t like it either.’

‘That means Pearl, I suppose. Anyway, it’s quite different.’

‘Why is it different?’ she asked, reasonably. ‘I don’t like to go to pubs by myself, but if I did I don’t see why not, I don’t see why men should do one thing and women another.’

These sudden lapses into feminism always baffled him. They seemed so inconsistent with her character. He left that point and said: ‘You’re jealous of Pearl, that’s what it is.’

He wanted her, of course, to laugh, or even quarrel a little, so the thing could be healed by kisses, but she considered it, thoughtfully, and said: ‘You can’t help being jealous if you love someone.’

‘Pearl!’ he snorted. ‘I’ve known her for years. Besides, who told you?’

‘You always think that nobody ever notices things,’ she said, sadly. ‘You’re always so surprised.’

‘Well, how did you know?’

‘People always tell you things.’

‘And you believe people.’

A pause, Then: ‘Oh, Jimmie, I don’t want to quarrel all the time, there isn’t any sense in it.’ This sad helplessness satisfied him, and he was able to take her warmly in his arms. ‘I don’t mean to quarrel either,’ he murmured.

But they quarrelled continuously. Every conversation was bound to end, it seemed, either in Pearl or in George. Or their tenderness would lapse into tired silence, and he would see her staring quietly away from him, thinking. ‘What are you getting so serious about now, Rosie?’ ‘I was thinking about Jill. Her Granny’s too old. Jill’s shut up in that kitchen all day – just think, those old nosy parkers say I’m not a fit and proper person for Jill, but at least I’d take her for walks on Sunday …’

‘You want Jill because of George,’ he would grind out, gripping her so tight she had to ease her arms free. ‘Oh, stop it, Jimmie, stop it.’

‘Well, it’s true.’

‘If you want to think it, I can’t stop you.’ Then the silence of complete estrangement.

After some weeks of this he went back to the pub one evening. ‘Hullo, stranger,’ said Pearl. Her eyes shone welcomingly over at him.

‘I’ve been busy, one way or another,’ he said.

‘I bet,’ she said, satirically, challenging him with her look.

He could not resist it. ‘Women,’ he said, ‘women.’ And he took a long drain from his glass.

‘Don’t you talk that way to me,’ she said, with a short laugh. ‘My boy-friend’s just got himself married. Didn’t so much as send me an invite to the wedding.’

‘He doesn’t know what’s good for him.’

Her wide, blue eyes swung around and rested obliquely on him before she lowered them to the glasses she was rinsing. ‘Perhaps there are others who don’t neither.’

He hesitated and said: ‘Maybe, maybe not.’ Caution held him back. Yet they had been flirting cheerfully for so long, out of sheer good-nature. The new hesitation was dangerous in itself, and gave depth to their casual exchanges. He thought to himself: Careful, Jimmie, boy, you’re off again if you’re not careful. He decided he should go to another pub. Yet he came back, every evening, for he looked forward to the moment when he stood in the doorway, and then she saw him, and her eyes warmed to him as she said lightly: ‘Hullo, handsome, what trouble have you been getting yourself into today?’ He got into the way of staying for an hour or more, instead of the usual half hour. He leaned quietly against the counter, his coat collar turned up around his face, while his grey eyes rested appreciatively on Pearl. Sometimes she grew self-conscious and said: ‘Your eyes need a rest,’ and he replied, coolly: ‘If you don’t want people to look at you, better buy yourself another jumper.’ He would think, with a sense of disloyalty: Why doesn’t Rosie buy herself one like that? But Rose always wore her plain, dark skirts and her neat blouses, pinned at the throat with a brooch.

Afterwards he climbed the stairs to the flat thinking, anxiously: Perhaps today she’ll be like she used to be? He would expectantly open the door, thinking: Perhaps she’ll smile when she sees me and come running over …

But she would be at the stove, or seated at the table waiting, and she gave him that tired, patient smile before beginning to dish up the supper. His disappointment dragged down his spirits, but he forced himself to say: ‘Sorry, I’m late, Rosie.’ He braced himself for a reproach, but it never came, though her eyes searched him anxiously, then lowered as if afraid he might see a reproach in them.

‘That’s all right,’ she replied, carefully, setting the dishes down and pulling out the chair for him.

Always, he could not help looking to see if she was still ‘fussing’ about the food. But she was taking trouble to hide the precautions she took to feed him sensibly. Sometimes he would probe sarcastically: ‘I suppose your friend the chemist said that peas were good for ulcers – how about a bit of fried onions, Rosie?’

‘I’ll make you some tomorrow,’ she would reply. And she averted her eyes, as if she were wincing, when he pulled the pickle bottle towards him and heaped mustard pickle over his fish. ‘You only live once,’ he remarked, jocularly.