Room at the Top

11

Alice took hold of me by my hair. "You've a nice body, do you know that? Hairy but not too hairy. I never could bear animated hearthrugs."

I felt as if I were choking. "God, you're lovely. You - I don't know what to say, you're so beautiful."

"What, an old woman like me?"

"You're not old."

"Oh yes I am, honey. Much older than you."

"I wish you wouldn't talk as if I were a minor," I said with some irritation. "I'm twenty-five and I've had a lot of experience.

"I'm sure you have." Her dark blue eyes were tender and amused. She pulled my head down to her breasts. "There now, my sweet baby, there now. You're very old and very mature and you're going to be a great man."

I could see nothing but her body, breathe nothing but that peppery odour of lavender and the indescribable, infinitely good smell of woman's flesh. I pressed my face tighter; the thin hands on my head tightened convulsively.

"Oh God," she said, "you're so good. You're so good to me. You're so kind. There was never anyone so good to me before. I'm alive now, all of me's alive. I'm feeling things I'd forgotten, the nerve's regenerating. It hurts sometimes ... I don't care." She covered my face with kisses.

The kisses did more to me than the longest kiss on the mouth could have done. They weren't preliminaries; they were complete in themselves. She kissed me as moistly as a little girl; and I was glad of this; I was discovering that I never had really made love to a woman before or truly enjoyed a woman's body. The sort of sex I was used to was sex as it would be if human beings were like screen characters - hygenic, perfumed, with no normal odours or tastes - as if flesh were silk stretched over rubber, as if lips were the only sensitive part, as if the natural secretions were shameful.

Alice was no more greedy of actual sex than the others; but she was shameless in love, with no repugnances, no inhibitions. In her arms I was learning quickly; so that now I actually found myself drinking the moisture from her lips. I didn't want to wash it off, I wanted it to stay, for her to become part of me.

"You beautiful brute," she said, and drew the bedclothes aside. "You beautiful uncomplicated brute."

"No," I said. "As they say in the films, I'm just a crazy mixed-up kid."

She ran her hand delicately over my chest. "You should have been a navvy. I hate to think of you ever wearing clothes."

"Navvies don't go about naked. If anything they wear far more than accountants."

"I wish you were one just the same. I'd let you beat me every Saturday night ... Joe, will you tell me something?"

"What, darling?"

She pulled a hair from my chest. "There, I'll keep that as a souvenir." She put her face against my chest and lay silent.

"That wasn't what you wanted to ask me about," I said. "Besides, you took it without asking."

"It's a funny question. All ifs. Look, supposing you'd met me before I married, supposing I were ten years younger - how would you have felt about me?"

"That's simple. Like now."

"That's not what I meant. Would you have taken me seriously?" Her voice was muffled against my chest.

"Yes. You know that I would. But what's the use?"

"Don't be practical, Joe. Please don't be sensible. Just imagine me as I was ten years ago. And you as you are now."

I looked into her eyes. I could see my face in her pupils, flushed, with my hair tousled. "You're looking babies," she said, almost coyly. "If you look long enough, you'll see a baby."

I had the same sensation that I had when as a child of ten I'd seen my Aunt Emily with her son at her breast. And it was, too, like the sensation I'd had when I'd intercepted looks and actions of my parents - the secret, bold look before bedtime, the hand on the knee - it was as if I'd stumbled upon something bigger than myself. Something which was uncompromisingly real, something which I couldn't avoid but which, I felt ashamedly, I was trying to avoid. There was happiness at its centre but it was a frightening kind of happiness.

"There were no lines then," she said. "And I was firm here - " she put my hands on her breasts. "Everything was ahead of me. I couldn't sleep sometimes, wondering what would happen to me - I knew that it would be wonderful, whatever it was ... No, that would be when I was nineteen. Yes, imagine me nineteen. That's the best age. I used to feel happy, terribly happy, all of a sudden, and there'd be no reason for it. And I'd cry easily but I'd enjoy it and it never made my eyes red. Would you have taken me seriously?"

"You probably wouldn't have taken me seriously."

"I'd have been silly enough for that ... I had a career then. I'd just graduated from the drama school - a broken-down place with a broken-down old ham in charge of it - the best Mummy could afford. It was a cheap finishing school, you see. Mummy hoped that I'd learn to speak and move properly there and acquire a sort of polish and a little glamour - and then hook a rich young man and retrieve the family fortunes."

"That I couldn't have done at any time. What about Alice at twenty-five?"

"Oh, I was awfully smooth. Worn smooth, I think. I'd been in London three years. It's a hellish place when you're poor - I had to keep up appearance too. I took some awful jobs when I was resting. Cinema usherette, snack-bar attendant - everything but a life of shame. But I was still young. I'd lots and lots of bounce left in me."

"You have now."

"Yes, but I have to live to a regime to possess it. I just had it then, whatever I did. Would you have liked me then, would you have been romantic about me?"

"You might still have broken my heart. How could I have helped an ambitious young actress? I'll take you as you are now."

She got out of bed. "I'll make some coffee."

"Tea would be nicer.

"Poor Elspeth," she said. "She lends us her flat and we pinch all her precious tea."

"I'll get her some more."

She wrinkled her nose and put her hands palm upward; as I watched her, her face seemed to grow male and vulpine and her nose to lengthen. "Vat, are you in the racket too?" She started to dress.

"I hate you to put any clothes on," I said.

"That's sweet of you, but I'm too old to walk about in the nude." She wriggled into her girdle.

"I like watching you dress, though." She came over in her slip and kissed me. I stroked her back; she was already a different person in the blue silk garment, smaller but already less vulnerable, more controlled. It was a little hard to imagine her as being the same person who, scarcely half an hour since, had been moaning in my arms in the last extremity of a pleasure almost indistinguishable from pain.

She moved gently out of my embrace and picked up her dress. She went into the kitchen; I heard the flare of a match and the hiss of a gas ring. I dressed quickly; by myself I felt an obscure uneasiness at being naked. I lit a cigarette, the first for two hours, and inhaled deeply.

It wasn't a big flat; the block was one of the mansions in which the wool lords of Leddersford had once lived; this room had probably belonged to one of the servants. It was furnished in a middle-class, démodé, vaguely theatrical kind of way. The big bed was covered with a mauve quilt; there were pouffes, a satin-walnut table, and a great many photographs of actors and actresses. The white carpet was very thick, and the chairs gilt and spindly-legged. There was a profusion of dolls on the dressing table; it was a boudoir, faintly naughty, rather too feminine. I felt not quite in place there, as if I'd got into the wrong room by mistake.

I went into the tiny box of a kitchen. Alice was watching the kettle and tapping her foot impatiently. "It won't ever boil if you do that," I said, and took hold of her waist. She leaned back in my arms; I put my face against hers, breathing in her scent. It was if we shared the same lungs. We were breathing deeply and slowly; I was utterly secure and warm. The kettle whistled; at that moment it had the effect of a mill hooter at six in the morning. I let her go reluctantly.

"Note," she said. "Teapot to kettle, water mustn't be left to boil. Teapot is warm but dry. Now leave for three minutes. Synchronise your watches, men; 2020. Roger?"

"Roger," I said.

Her watch was a thin gold wafer with jewels for numerals. "At least, I think it's 2020," she said. "This is very pretty but difficult to tell the time by."

"I'd like to buy you something like that." I would have liked to stamp on it. Then I reflected that, through taking Alice, I had in a sense, taken away the value of the watch; but even that thought didn't console me very much. She didn't seem to have heard what I said. "Honey, take this stuff in the kitchen. You're hungry, aren't you?"

"I'll eat anything. Iron Guts they used to call me."

"That's lovely, I'll always call you Iron Guts. Take these sandwiches in there too, Iron Guts. And the pickles. We'll have a proper do." She giggled like a schoolgirl, her face suddenly losing its harsh lines.

The bread was fresh and well buttered and the sandwiches were fried chicken, crisp and golden brown. We sat beside each other in comfortable silence; now and again she'd smile at me. When we'd finished eating she went into the kitchen to cut some more bread. I sat with my eyes half closed, sipping the strong tea. Suddenly I heard her call my name. She was standing at the bread-board with her right forefinger dripping blood.

"It's nothing," she said, but her face was white. I took her to the sink and washed her finger with hot water. I noticed the first-aid cabinet over the sink and after a little rummaging (Elspeth seemed to have been using the cabinet as a make-up box) found some T.C.P. and a bandage. I poured out a cup of tea and held it to her lips.

"I want a cigarette," she said.

"Drink that first."

She drank it obediently. The colour returned to her cheeks. I lit a cigarette for her and she leaned back against my shoulder.

"Silly of me to carry on like that. It was the shock, I think. I hate blood ... You're very competent, aren't you, Joe?"

"I've bound up worse than that."

"Joe, have you seen a lot of horrid things? In the RAF, I mean."

"Just the average amount. You soon forget."

"You look so young. Except for your mouth. Are you sure you've forgotten?"

"Sometimes something happens to bring them out. They poke out their heads and growl and then you shove them back in the cage. Why are you asking? Afraid I'm neurotic?"

She kissed me on the cheek. "You're the least neurotic person I know. It's just something I've been curious about for a long time but I haven't really known anyone whom I could ask. George wasn't in any of the Services. He has a perforated eardrum and they wouldn't look at him." She looked at me a little angrily. "It wasn't his fault."

"I haven't said a word."

"It's all so safe and civilised and cosy," she went on, half dreamily. "All these men, so well mannered and mild and agreeable - but what's behind it all? Violence and death. They've seen things which you think would drive anyone mad. And yet there's no trace. There's blood on everyone's hands, that's what it amounts to ... everything so damned insecure - " I felt her shiver.

"Don't think about it, love," I said. "The world's full of violence. But it always has been. There's probably someone being killed not ten miles away from here at this very moment - "

"Don't remind me," she said.

"It's different in wartime, too. You didn't have time to be sickened. There was too much to do. Anyway, you can't help anyone by being sensitive."

"I know, I know," she said impatiently. "Oh God, everything's going so fast. There's no way to stop the merry-go-round. You never feel safe. When I was young I used to feel safe. Even if Father and Mother quarreled, they were kind to me. The house was solid too. That bloody concrete barracks I live in now - it's so clean and streamlined that I wouldn't be at all surprised if it took to flight."

"You talk too much," I said, and drew her upon my knees. "Quiet now, not another word." I stroked the smooth skin of her forearm; she closed her eyes and went limp in my arms.

"You can do that all night," she said. "I won't stop you."She sighed. "You make a lovely seat. I could purr like a cat."

The smoothness of her arm, the warm weight of her upon my lap; I too could have done it all night. And I could have taken her again; but the act of love was becoming not distasteful, not unnecessary, but only one of a series of pleasures; of pleasures which were solely dependent upon her.

The doorbell rang; three shorts, one long, three shorts. "Elspeth," I said. I was going to rise, but Alice pulled me back.

"Don't be so bourgeois," she said. I put my arms more tightly round her.

Elspeth's head came round the door with a roguish smile on it which would have suited her better in the days when she was touring in A Little Bit of Fluff . She danced rather than walked into the room, her skirt flaring up round her. A heavy smell of Phul-Nana came in with her. "Hello, dears," she said in her husky fruity voice. "Do hope I haven't disturbed you. I try to be discreet, but I had to come in. It's cold outside."

"I'll make you some tea," Alice said, and went into the kitchen.

Elspeth threw herself down into an armchair. "Me oh my, what an evening I've had. You not only produce, you teach 'em how to act. Honestly, ducks, they can't understand the simplest thing. I don't know why I went in for the stage, I don't really." She pirouetted to the piano and started to sing "Don't put your daughter on the stage, Mrs. Worthington," her husky voice still clear and full.

She whirled the piano stool round when she'd finished and sat facing me, her hands held outward. "Not that it's anything else but cabaret stuff," she said. "No body in It somehow ..."

"If you're not going to give us a concert, you'd better have some food," Alice said from the kitchen.

"Lovely, dear," Elspeth said. She lowered her voice. "You're a very lucky young man, Joe. Alice is an angel, a real angel. A heart of gold." Her black button eyes were looking at me intently. In the old painted face they were shockingly youthful. She was sitting with her legs slightly apart and her skirt had ridden up above her knee; I turned my eyes away, feeling a little disgusted. Her legs too were the legs of a much younger woman: cut off from the waist, sheer pornography. However full her skirt, Elspeth always gave the impression that it was inadequate.

She pulled it down over her knees. "I always forget," she said. She smiled at me, her head a little on one side. "If you'd seen that much of me once, you wouldn't have stayed in that chair for very long."

"I'm sure I wouldn't."

She blew me a kiss. "Ah, I don't blame Alice. You're the sort of man I like, big and beefy. There's too many pansies about these days. I knew a lot of big men once; they're all dead now and a little skinny thing like me lives on ..." Her picture-postcard face with the dyed red bubble-curls and the Lillle Langtry nose and chin was sad as a sick monkey's. "It's as if the bigger and stronger they are, the more the illnesses have to feed upon. I remember the night Laird died. I can't breathe, he said, and he started tearing at his collar. Then he just fell, straight forward. My God, the dressing room shook. We picked him up and he was dead. Thirty-five, with his whole life before him. It makes you wonder, don't it?" She lit one of her Turkish cigarettes; the sweet, pungently archaic odour - The Bing Boys and Romano's and Drury Lane - filled the room like incense. "He was mad for me to go away with him," she said. "Sometimes I wish I had. My husband wasn't much good even then. I was too independent and he wanted to own me. He was a devil when he was drunk. A big strong man too - I never could resist big strong men ... Do you love Alice?"

"Yes," I said without thinking; the question was so abruptly put that it caught me off balance.

"I thought you did," she said calmly. "I saw the way she was sitting with you. She doesn't know it yet - " she put her hand on mine - "Don't hurt her. Don't hurt her."

I had a sensation of black water closing over my head; the room seemed airless, too heavily scented, somehow decadent; the raddled, intent face before me was an old witch's, I'd suddenly awaken and find myself turned into an old man and see her laughing at me, a girl again, rosy and plump with my stolen youth.

She started talking about the old days at Daly's Theatre; I hardly listened because suddenly I wanted to be out of the room, to walk over the moors, to have the wind and the rain in my face.

When Alice came in with the supper tray, I saw her for a moment as the same kind of person as Elspeth, an inhabitant of a shut-in musty world, tatty as running greasepaint, and the tenderness I had felt evaporated; it seemed impossible that I'd embraced her naked body, that the whole evening hadn't been a rehearsal for some naughty bedroom farce, a bored routine the colour of a provincial theatre's faded gilt and plush.