An Experiment in Love: A Novel

ten

I woke to the sound of a shattering scream. God has turned out hell, I thought, the devils have been evicted; they are loose on the streets, they have climbed up to C Floor, they are bellowing for beds for the night.

The light snapped on, and I threw my arm up to protect my eyes; the brightness intensified the shrieking, so that I thought I would vomit or die or fall apart from the horror of it.

‘Come on!’ Julia shouted. ‘Get up! Fire practice! Bloody hell, what a night to choose.’ She was knotting the belt of her dressing-gown. ‘Come on, Carmel.’ She flung a pair of shoes at me. ‘If we don’t do this right they’ll make us do it again next week.’

I moved; too slowly for Julia’s taste. She crossed the room, yanked back the covers, gripped me by my upper arms and hauled me out of bed. Vaguely, I was upright. The devils were howling; they went on howling, and a thin stream of bile rose in my throat.

I clung to the edge of my desk. I trembled; I was ineffectual, elderly, one hand across my mouth. ‘Put on your SHOES,’ Julia yelled. ‘Come on, you idiot, put on your SHOES.’

She threw open the door. The corridor was swarming with evacuees. Claire was standing square across it, her arms wide: ‘Back,’ she said. ‘No. Stop. Back. That way. That way.’

‘Oh, let us through, Claire . . .’ somebody wailed, above the wailing of the siren. Claire shook her head.

I saw her face, her set jaw, and I pulled at Julia’s arm. ‘It’s real?’ I said.

We tramped as Claire directed us: our possessions abandoned, empty-handed, some barefooted, a couple of lucky souls in their boots: some shivering already in thin nightdresses, some stout in quilted housecoats. ‘Close your doors, close your doors,’ Claire bellowed. ‘Now move, move, MOVE.’ Some girls had their hair done up in elaborate rollers and scarves and pins, and two of the glamorous engaged girls from the third year proved to have identical tartan dressing-gowns and sheepskin slippers. Out into the London night we scattered, like a company of pink and blue bunny rabbits let loose from a nursery tale.

The air was cold and raw, its relief indescribable. I doubled up and retched, felt Julia’s hand warm and protect the nape of my neck as milk dribbled painfully into the gutter. Muted now, its job done, the siren sobbed within our walls. The fire brigade was already on hand, and some girls gave little practice screams when they realized, for the first time, that this was an emergency. Someone said, ‘I hope Nigel had the sense to bolt.’

Jacqueline, the receptionist, was sharp-nosed in a pink satin wrap; did she possibly, I wondered, have a sex-life of her own? Flapping her hands, she urged a bunch of us across the street. ‘Keep back, girls, keep back, a minor incident, soon be tucked up in our beds again . . . ’ But just then another fire-engine bounced down the street. The roads were being sealed off to stop anyone coming into the area; cones and tapes stopped the traffic from the British Museum direction. ‘Where is it, where did it start?’ Julia demanded. ‘I am sure we are entitled to know.’ Half the girls from B Floor had been forced to come down a fire-escape, shocked, half-asleep, a freezing metal spiral tumbling them into the dark. ‘It was horrible,’ one of them sobbed, ‘horrible.’ Her friend put an arm around her and looked embarrassed. Girls bleated about their crushed heels, and limped across the road looking for steps to sit on.

The bursar was moving among us with a list. A plume of icy breath issued from her mouth. ‘Floor wardens, floor wardens, where are you?’ she called.

I became conscious of a presence beside me: white, palely glowing. It was Sophy who moved among the displaced and dismayed, like a column of ectoplasm, like some eighteenth-century ghost. She was wearing her full fencing gear; only her head was exposed, and her face was grey under the street lamps. I turned – and Sue turned – just in time to see Sophy’s Roger legging it – bursting from a group of shivering inmates and sprinting away, away towards the safety of Bedford Square: towards the world, green leaves and taxis and safety. Never look back: never look back.

Sue turned to me, her jaw dropping, her eyes alight with a growing glee. ‘What – ?’ she said. ‘Why – ?’

‘Some unusual perversion,’ Julia said thoughtfully. ‘An unusual sexual perversion. On our very corridor. How intriguing.’

The bursar did not see Roger go. She glowered at Sophy and said, ‘Really, Miss Pattison, I hope you haven’t been clumping about in your room, ruining the parquet. Really! And in the middle of the night, too!’

It was two o’clock. We were forced down the street by a cordon of staff and firemen, but like a wave we surged back. It was clear, by now, that this was no minor incident; the fire had taken a hold. ‘Soon have you somewhere warm, girls,’ the warden called out. Her face was bleak. A rumour spread that some girls had panicked and lost their bearings, run down to the basement and had climbed out through the dining-room windows; they were caged in the building’s inner courtyard, with the withered shrubs and the smoke and the crackling timbers. ‘Oh no, oh please . . .’ someone was saying; Claire and the other wardens buzzed from group to group, saying not true, absolutely false, no girls trapped, everyone accounted for.

I don’t know if you’ve ever been at the site of a disaster. I seem to have avoided them, except for this one. What my memory retains is a series of snapshots, with some sound-effects: the fountains and jets, the steam, the crump and crash, the mouthing of men and the gleam of their helmets, the false planets of street lamps fixed and brooding over all: once, a distant screaming, and a huge flash of white light. We had forgotten we were cold; we jostled for a view, craned our necks, barged against each other in the crowd. The situation – and what we were told of it was at variance with what we could see – was changing from second to second. And naturally we were fascinated to see all our possessions go up in smoke – our clothes, our textbooks, next week’s essay in note form. Some girls held hands and sniffled; others – how odd people are – were smiling broadly, though perhaps they did not know it. ‘That’s our room,’ others said, pointing. They were picking them out, tracking fingers through the smoke. ‘That’s ours, C20.’

In front of me, in the quaking, hysterical press, an unknown voice whimpered, whimpered on and on. ‘My teddy bears,’ she said. ‘My Afghan coat.’

‘Good riddance,’ said her room-mate. ‘That coat stinks anyway. And now you’ll have to grow up, won’t you?’ She turned, and slapped the whimperer smartly across the face.

There were gasps of shock; someone said, Tor heaven’s sake, Linda, get a grip!’

The firemen said, ‘Come on, girls, we’ll soon get you taken care of, be good girls and move back now, no use crying over spilt milk.’

I thought, do they go to cliché school? Is it part of their training? Then someone screamed. It was Eva, our near neighbour: the poor sap who shared a room with Sophy. ‘Look, oh look! Up there, on our floor!’

I looked. Outlined against a window, I saw a single figure; a silhouette, a blackness against red. It was Lynette. I knew her at once: I would have known her anywhere. I saw her put up her arms, like an angel about to fly. Then flames leapt from her head.

As it happened, no one else died. Tonbridge Hall was gutted, the cause of the blaze never established, not completely; but the lists had worked, the regulations and drills and fire-wardens, the shouted commands and the hurry, hurry, the pitching out into the shivering dark.

At the inquest, it was easily established that Karina was the last person to see Lynette alive. She took the witness-stand, looking monstrous, huge; which was understandable, as we were now coming into March. Her face was grim and set as she told of the moment when the siren went off.

Woken from deep sleep, her first thought had been that the kitchen was opposite, with its fire-extinguisher; she had dived across the corridor to get it. It was not what we had been told to do; but it was natural, and even mildly heroic. But when she was properly awake – ‘I’m always a heavy sleeper,’ she said – she realized that at this point the fire was not to be seen, not actually there to be fought. Then she did as she had been drilled and directed; she moved as fast as she could to the nearest safe exit. She assumed, of course, that Lynette was ahead of her; yes, the door of their room was closed, there was no reason why she should open it, she knew she must not go back for anything. ‘We were told that at the practice,’ she said. ‘Claire was the fire-warden for our floor, and I remember the rehearsal. Even on that night I heard her shouting, Leave it, save yourself, leave it all, don’t go back. And so, of course, I didn’t.’

Then once out in the street, in the press and confusion, with the groups of drifting girls, some crying, most distraught; in the cold, under the streetlamps . . . there was no reason to miss Lynette. Why look for Lynette, among so many others? There was no chance of looking for her really . . . When she thought to search, when she’d thought to call out for her, a fire officer had come along and ordered her down the street . . .

Eva was screaming: she was screaming so hard her body doubled up and she convulsed. Someone in uniform threw a blanket around her. An ambulance rumbled up. We were distracted; so we did not see the very moment when Claire began to run. ‘Lynette, don’t die,’ she yelled: ‘I’m coming.’

Our heads and bodies swivelled. We forgot Eva the faintee; we gaped as Claire charged back towards the burning building, her big fleecy slippers slapping the ground at every stride. She meant it; she was going for Lynette. She would die in there, if that was what it took. But what was the point? I would have run in there myself; I valued my life so little. But I knew Lynette was beyond rescue now; I had seen her head on fire, and then a blaze burst out between her ribs.

The firemen caught Claire easily, and turned her back. The warden and an ambulance man supported her as they walked her away, each holding an elbow, hustling her down the street as if she were the last recalcitrant drinker in a closing bar. I saw her eyes, which were empty; her mouth moved.

There was a breath at my shoulder. I felt it. It was familiar. I wanted to hug the breather. ‘Karina,’ I said. ‘Thank God.’

‘All right, Carmel?’ Karina was wearing a vast flannel nightdress, a marquee: the kind of nightdress grandmother is wearing in her cottage, when the wolf comes calling. She was holding something over her arm; it was a strange draping softness, something limp and slaughtered. My hand crept out to it: Lynette’s fox fur. In this light, you could not see its colours; it could have been the corpse of a dog. I glanced down. From its pocket there drooped, there depended, a key fob. C21 was written on it. It was the key to the door of their room.

‘Why don’t you put it on? Put the coat on, since you’ve saved it?’

My voice was choked and frail, far away; I hardly recognized it as mine. Karina turned her head, looking where I looked. Her eyes fell on the key fob. She reached to retrieve it. It slithered from its pocket. It clattered to the ground. It lay in the road. I stooped to pick it up. Karina put her foot on it. Crouching, I looked up into her face.

Then a gust of wind came bowling along the street. It rippled the nightdresses of shivering girls, slapped at bare blue legs. It raised the hairs, the short hairs on my neck. It took Karina’s vast nightgown and pasted it against her body. I looked up, along her bulk. My head was in the shadow of her great belly. She must be five months, six months gone. She must have been pregnant before ever we saw London.

I squatted at Karina’s feet. I saw the classroom, our first classroom; smelt coal and milk and baby-skin. There was the fat smell of wax crayons, the aroma of pencils, the forbidden coldness of a pencil point against the tongue. Tens and units on the blackboard: a blue worm of Plasticine curled on the floor. I saw Karina with her doll, the baby doll in the back of the lorry. Her tongue between her teeth; mother and baby, out for a tow.

I saw my foot swing. I saw it catch the lorry’s underside and hurtle it into the air. I saw the rubber trajectory of the pink pseudo-flesh, and the baby face smashed down on to the hard floor.

Now, I stared up at Karina. She was huge, womanly, brooding. The cold of the night had struck into my bones. Karina’s expression was hooded, complacent. She knew I would not give her away. After all, I said to myself, I don’t know that she is a murderer. Just because she has the key, it doesn’t mean she turned it in the lock.

Behind us, someone else fainted. It was a girl from B Floor, one of the fire-escape mob. I moved to take the fox fur from Karina’s hands, to throw over the casualty; but I thought better of it. ‘Put it on. Hide yourself.’

Something which will not be possible for much longer, I thought. Well, that’s your problem. If I speak out, you’ll give birth in Holloway. I saw, in my mind’s eye, Lynette at the window; her flying arms, the flickering of her melting flesh. It will always be in my mind’s eye, of course. I never for a moment doubted that she would die, knew – unlike Claire – that she was ablaze from inside, and that we had caught her in the act of dying, roasted in the wreck of the third floor. I saw Claire’s mad fleecy slippers slapping towards the blaze. Claire did not come back, next term; I did not inquire after her. I remembered what Sue had said once: she’s really, really a Christian. Always doing good unto you. I’d have liked to keep in contact, but, in my situation, it didn’t seem appropriate. Knowing what I did.

Two men jogged up with a stretcher. Stone-faced, they swept up the fallen girl from the ground; swept her up as if they were sweeping the streets. ‘Back, girls, back,’ called the warden. The street seemed full of swirling smoke. A siren was wailing, getting closer; lights were on in the buildings around, and a forced, yellow day was beginning, a floodlit day, where all motives and deeds would be exposed. There was a tune in my head, at the back of my mind, and then it was in my mouth: before I could stop myself I sang out. I was back in my grandad’s yard, the Catherine wheel fizzing damply, the sparklers swirling our names in the air, Carmel and Karina, Karina and Carmel:

‘Pepper box, pepper box,

Morning till night . . .’

‘Let’s run,’ Karina said. ‘Come on, Carmel! Run! Something might blow up.’

She flung out her hand. I seized it. When the windows blew the noise had knocked us back but when that was over we’d crept forward again; the crowd was eddying, uncertain, confused, unwilling to dramatize, each member of it dreading to appear foolish by a break for safety. But Karina had me by the wrist; she towed me past the barriers, pulling strongly, knowing I was weak. ‘Steady, girl!’ someone said, but she lashed out at him: with her fist I mean, not her tongue. I gasped and begged as we flew along the street; she didn’t hear me.

We halted at last, under trees, under a deep roof of green. I was half-dead. My chest sobbed, my heart was bursting. I folded up and retched again, producing only stained saliva; my knees gave, but Karina caught me, so I fell not on to scarring pavement but on to London turf. My head dipped towards the pigeon droppings; Karina saved it in her palm. ‘Sit up, lovie,’ she said. We raised our faces; I thought that dew dripped on to them, and into our hair.

A good many things went up, in the blaze at Tonbridge Hall. My love affair, and my anorexia, and my hopes of being the first woman prime minister: my cousin’s duffle coat, and my notes on the Carbolic Smoke Ball. Julia lost her medal, but has no doubt won another since; the Segals lost their daughter. At the inquest Mr Segal wore a stiff, expensive dark suit; he was dark himself, a squat, vehement man who knocked away one tear with a violent back-of-the-hand. Lynette’s mother did not disappoint us; tall, frail, veiled, she had sharp shins in pale, expensive stockings, and high-heeled shoes and a bag that might have been made of some rare lizard. Her face was chalky, her lips painted red: she said, ‘She was our only, you see. One child only I might have.’ They pressed Karina’s hands, as if some imprint of their daughter might be left there. To me they just nodded, puzzled and bemused by so many young faces without names.

I would have liked to touch their elbows and say, at least the fox fur got out. Lynette would have liked that; she really would, you know.

I wake up, these days, some time after my husband has left for the train and the city. My house, my street, is eerily quiet; even when the schoolchildren are on holiday, they make a muffled festival of it, and the cries from their bicycles and skateboards are muted by the expensive distance between the houses and the landscaping of the far-sighted architects who have planted us out here among the pines.

And so, sitting by myself with my newspaper, nine o’clock in the morning, I become conscious of all the small noises of the house: the purr of the well-stocked freezer, the expansive tick of the long-case clock. Sometimes it occurs to me that I am hungry. I might boil an egg; I believe in protein now. I make some toast, and butter it thickly with the same type of Danish butter that I ate when I was a child, and which, when I was a student, I was ashamed to be unable to afford.

I put my meal on to a tray – with my small silver teapot, my china cup, my lemon slice – and carry it through to the dining-room, where I sit down with it in great state. The ‘dining-room’, I am aware, is a bourgeois invention; the upper classes (historically) and the lower classes (now, for all I know) preferred and prefer to do everything in an all-purpose room. Sleep, cry, write letters, make love . . . but that reminds me too much of the era of the Slimmer’s Disease.

I pluck out, as I go, a fresh pale linen table napkin, just for me; I am the one who will wash and iron it, but I have reached the stage in life when I am willing to serve myself.

My breakfast table is as far as a table can be from the french-polished object at which I toiled at my homework in my parents’ house, on those winter nights when it was too cold for me to be kept upstairs. It is a blond table, a bland table, a table which shows the great beauty of its natural wood, and my touch glides over it with a sensual assurance that I can never feel in the presence of another human being. I trace with my nail the lovely line of the wood’s exposed heart, its graceful curves like the fingerprints of those giants on whose shoulders we stand. I place my forefinger on the knots in the wood, those knots that, though they run against the grain, seem more satin-like, more glassy than the wood itself: I think of my life, and the lives of the women I knew, and I say, tapping softly, tapping decisively on the dark and swirling node, that is where we went wrong, just there, that is the very place.

But then in the dappled sunlight, filtered through conifers, the wood seems to dissolve beneath my fingers. The angles of the white room soften and melt around me; and the past runs like water through my hands.