Room at the Top

26

It was a good holiday that we had, though. We started each day with strong tea and rum, bathed before breakfast - they discovered our cove for themselves the second day - and ate huge meals. We saw all the sights - the Cerne Giant, Corfe Castle, Cloudshill, and the rest. We also drank a lot of beer; but I suppose that the food and sunshine and fresh air kept us sober. At any rate, the one day that it rained was the day that we got really stinkingly sozzled, starting at the village pub at lunchtime, carrying on in the cottage with bottled beer in the afternoon, and driving out to a roadhouse near Bournemouth in the evening. I don't believe that I've ever drunk so much before: one always tends to exaggerate the amount, but totting it up afterwards we all agreed that it couldn't have been less than twenty pints and half a bottle of gin apiece.

I don't quite know how I drove the car back. Normally we'd have left it and taken a taxi, but Roy hit a Territorial officer in the Gents' and it seemed best to remove ourselves quickly. Roy, a quiet type normally, seemed to become, as Charles said, all Id when he'd had one over the eight. Charles had a rough time with him in the back seat; he was trying for some reason to take off his clothes and he only stopped the attempt when Charles hit him on the jaw. Then he became normal, if you can call alternate fits of weeping and blasphemy normal. I was in that final stage where the mind grasps fully the fact of being drunk, orders the limbs and senses to behave themselves, and finds them obeying seconds too late. The night was steaming with heat like a great animal; you could see it rising from the ground. And the roads were slippery; twice the car shimmied into a long skid, the worst part of which was that though I knew I ought to care whether or not I came out of it alive, I didn't give a damn. I was, in a crazy way, enjoying it.

When we came into Cumley the rain had stopped. There was a smell of wet grass and night-scented stock, and the moon was out, cold and faraway as an owl's hoot.

"God is dead!" Roy suddenly yelled. Then he started blubbering again. "There were two officers. I've just remembered. I hit the wrong one. God forgive me."

"The final stage," Charles said. "Maudlin remorse."

"I wouldn't want to appear inquisitive," I said, "but why did you sock him?"

"He had the M.C.," Roy said.

"You've got the D.T's," I said. "That's no reason to bash the poor devil. They won't give you a medal just because you bust his nose."

"Isn't he a card?" Charles said. "A genuine schizo once he's tiddly. He's brooding because he thinks he deserved a medal and they passed him over. Why, damn it all, I'm the one who ought to have done the bashing. I've killed forty Japs at least, not to mention that Wog I ran over in Calcutta. What thanks have I received for it, what recognition of my devotion to duty and disregard for danger? None at all. Am I bitter? No. Only glad that forty Japs are dead instead of me."

"You don't understand," Roy said. "I was a sergeant. If I'd done whatever it was that that captain had done, they wouldn't have given me an M.C. It would have been an M.M."

"Different brands of courage," Charles said. "Serge and barathea. Don't let it bother you, Sergeant."

"He worries too much," I said.

"That's better than not worrying at all," Charles said, and hiccuped. "What is worrying our friend is unimportant, and his action was childish and futile, even if he'd hit the right person. What matters is that he felt something was wrong and he did something about it."

The car skidded again turning into the lane to the cottage and I was too busy wrenching it into control to answer him. Roy had passed out cold by the time we reached the cottage; when we'd unloosened his collar and put him to bed on the sofa downstairs, Charles returned to the attack.

"You want some supper?" he asked.

"I'm going to bed. The floor won't keep still."

"You'd better eat something, then you won't get alcoholic poisoning."

He went into the kitchen, tripping up twice over his own feet, and came back in a surprisingly short time with a pot of tea and a plate of corned beef sandwiches.

He pulled up a chair opposite me, sitting astride it. "You're not going to marry Alice," he said. He took a huge bite from his sandwich. "Though I'm grateful to her for leaving all this lovely grub behind."

"Who says I'm not going to marry her?"

"I do." He took off his spectacles. Deprived of them, his eyes seemed paler and larger and colder; his round red face wasn't jolly any longer.

"Get this straight," I said. "I love Alice. She loves me. I'm happy with her. Not just in bed either."

"Love? That's a funny word to use. What would your Aunt Emily say if you went to her and said that you loved a married woman ten years older than yourself?" He took a gulp of tea. "She'd vomit, she really would."

"You can't possibly understand. Her husband doesn't come into it. He doesn't love her and she doesn't love him."

"No," Charles said. "Of course not. But he keeps her. You said that she had no money of her own. All that tinned stuff in the larder, that bottle of whisky, that silver cigarette case she gave you - it all came from him."

"My God," I said disgustedly, "don't turn moral on me. He can well afford it."

"That's not the point, you fool. If she'd do it to him, she'd do it to you."

I rose quickly. "I ought to hit you." I felt sick and murderous; the blood was drumming in my ears and there was a nasty sugary taste in my mouth.

Charles smiled. "Don't, Joe. It wouldn't help, believe me. Besides, you know perfectly well that it's true."

I didn't answer him, but walked round the room as if taking an inventory for the bailiffs: Windsor chairs, horsehair sofa, scrubbed deal table, a radio with a separate receiver and amplifier, a big Gramophone cabinet, a glass-fronted bookcase.

"Who owns the place?" I asked.

"An actor. Friend of Roy's. He's working for once, so he thought he might as well sublet the place. Why do you ask?"

"I wondered. It has an odd feeling at times. Cold."

"It's supposed to be haunted. This is the Black Magic area. Not that you'll have noticed. You'll have been too much under her spell."

I poured myself a cup of tea and lifted it to my lips with both hands. Roy began to snore, his snortings and rumblings competing with the steady hiss of the Aladdin lamp.

"A man of twenty-six can marry a girl of sixteen," Charles said. "The only reaction will be one of envy. Look at all these society weddings: grooms of thirty and thirty-five and brides of nineteen and under. And all these elderly film stars buy dewy-eyed young brides, too. Sometimes a man marries an older woman for her money - people call him nasty names but as long as he's got the money why should he care? In our class we marry women of our own age, which I suppose is the most decent arrangement. But you want to make the worst of both worlds. You want to marry an older woman who hasn't any money. It would be bad enough if she were unmarried; but in addition to everything else you'll be dragged through the midden of the divorce courts."

"He has a mistress," I said. "They only live together for the sake of appearances."

"God give me patience! He has a lot more money than you, chum, and he's a lot brighter. He won't be caught out whatever he does. Did you enjoy your nude bathing with her, by the way?"

"I never told you that."

"You haven't told me much at all. That's why I know that you're serious about her. I was given a full report of your activities on the beach, right down to the last sigh. In the village pub yesterday. Such an ancient gaffer he was too. Her only had a red bathing cap on , he said. Her even took that off . You certainly cheered his declining years; he went blue in the face with excitement when he remembered it."

"Apart from making me feel mucky all over," I said slowly, "what does all this add up to?"

"You're very dense tonight. If Mr. Aisgill wanted a divorce, he could afford detectives to trace you here. That would be enough in itself, but for good measure they'd ferret out the old boy too. Can't you imagine it? Can't you imagine the story in the Sunday papers? Face facts, Joe. You couldn't bear to be shown up like that. You don't belong to the class that thrives on scandal. You'd have your heart broken." He looked away from me and said in a low voice, "And you'd break the hearts of a lot of other people. People who don't wish you anything but good."

I tried to think of Alice just as the person I loved, the one with whom I could be kind and tender and silly, the one whom I was certain of to the last breath, the one who'd tear her heart out for me to eat if I wanted it; but all I could remember was the lifted skirt on the sofa where Roy now lay snoring, the soft naked body on the beach where we'd bathed that morning; I could only remember pleasure, easy pleasure, and that wasn't enough to set against his words.

"And what about Susan?" he asked.

"That's all over. You know perfectly well that it's all over."

"I don't. You've made no attempt to get her back."

"It wouldn't be any use." I yawned. "I'm tired." I got up and stretched myself. "The floor's steady. We've drunk ourselves sober."

"Never mind that. Look. Joe, I don't often ask you a favour. This isn't for me, either. It's for you. Promise me to write to Susan."