Room at the Top

27

"Gosh, isn't it hot?" Susan said.

We were lying in a clearing in the bracken above the Folly; the afternoon sun beat down upon us like a pleasurable peine forte et dure .

" You shouldn't feel hot," I said, looking at her off-the-shoulder blouse and cotton skirt. "You've nothing on."

" Wicked!" she said, and pulled up the blouse till it covered her shoulders. "Happy now? Joety happy now his Susan back?"

I pulled her blouse off her shoulders again. I kissed each shoulder gently. "Happy now. Only happy now I'm with you."

Women over thirty look younger at dusk or by candlelight; a girl nineteen looks younger, childish almost, in the hard glare of the midday sun: at that moment Susan looked no more than fourteen. Her lipstick had been kissed away, her powder had disappeared; her lips were still red, her skin flawless.

"It was a lovely letter," she said. "Oh Joe, I was so miserable until I got it. It was the best surprise I've ever had in my whole life."

Charles had helped me to write it, after a long argument, in the course of which he'd called me, among other things, a sex-besotted moron and an unsuccessful gigolo. "There now," he'd said when I signed it, "that should bring the silly bitch running back with the lovelight in her eyes. You can always depend upon your Uncle Charles."

Indeed I could; and there was Susan to prove it. I'd been back from Dorset a week and she'd only just returned from Cannes; she'd phoned me the minute she'd read the letter. The sour smoky smell of the bracken caught at my throat; I raised myself on my elbow and looked down at Warley in the valley below. I could see it all: the Town Hall with the baskets of flowers above the entrance, the boats on the river at Snow Park, the yellow buses crawling out of the station, the big black finger of Tebbut's Mills in Sebastopol Street, the pulse of traffic in Market Street with its shops whose names I could recite in a litany - Wintrip the jeweller with the beautiful gold and silver watches that made my own seem cheap, Finlay the tailor with the Daks and the Vanteila shirts and the Jaeger dressing gowns, Priestly the grocer with its smell of cheese and roasting coffee, Robbins the chemist with the bottles of Lenthéric after-shave lotion and the beaver shaving brushes - I loved it all, right down to the red-brick front of the Christadelphian reading room and the posters outside the Coliseum and Royal cinemas, I couldn't leave it. And if I married Alice I'd be forced to leave it. You can only love a town if it loves you, and Warley would never love a co-respondent. I had to love Warley properly too, I had to take all she could give me; it was too late to enjoy merely her warm friendship, a life with a Grade Six girl perhaps, a life spent in, if I were lucky, one of the concrete boxes of houses on the new Council estate. People could be happy in those little houses with their tiny gardens and one bathroom and no garage. They could be happy on my present income, even on a lot less. But it wasn't for me; if the worst came to the worst, I would accept it sooner than not live in Warley at all, but I had to force the town into granting me the ultimate intimacy, the power and privilege and luxury which emanated from T'Top.

"Joe," said Susan. "You're very naughty. You're not listening."

"I am, honey," I said. "It wasn't a lovely letter, though. I was too agitated when I wrote it. I was frightened that you'd recognise the writing and throw it away. I haven't had a happy moment since you told me it was all over between us."

"You promised me never to see Alice again. Have you told her?"

"You know she's in the hospital. She's very ill too."

Susan's face was set very hard; she didn't look like a schoolgirl now, but more like one of those female magistrates who are always sending someone to jail without the option so that no one will be able to accuse them of womanly softheartedness.

"You must tell her now." She looked like her mother: the soft curves of her face seemed to change to straight lines and her mouth became tight and disciplined - not exactly cruel, but set in an expression of judgement.

Alice had come home the day before me and had been taken to the hospital in the middle of the night. I never did find out what the illness was; it wasn't cancer but it was some kind of internal swelling that was quite serious - serious enough for an operation - but not serious enough for the doctors to give her the dope necessary to keep away the pain. She was waiting for the operation now, and wasn't allowed any visitors except for family. I hadn't written her because she'd sent me a note saying that it was wisest not to; but my conscience troubled me about it because I knew that she didn't really expect me to take her at her word.

"Do you hear me, Joe?" Susan's voice had a shrill note. "Tell her now. She's not going to die. If you don't write to her straightaway I really have finished with you this time. I mean it."

"Shut up. I'll do what I promised - I'll finish the affair once and for all. When she comes out of hospital. And face to face. Not by letter. That's cowardly."

Susan stood up. "You're absolutely hateful and despicable. You won't do anything I ask you to, and now you're going back to this - this old woman just because she's supposed to be ill. I wish I'd never met you. You've spoilt France for me and now that I'm happy again you're doing this . I hate you, I hate you, I hate you - " She burst into tears. "I'm going. I don't want to see you again. You never loved me - "

I took hold of her roughly, then slapped her hard on the face. She gave a little cry of surprise, then flew at me with her nails. I held her off easily.

"You're not going," I said. "And I'm not going to do what you asked me either. I love you, you silly bitch, and I'm the one who says what's to be done. Now and in the future."

"Let me go," she said. "I'll scream for help. You can't make me stay against my will." She started to struggle. Her black hair was dishevelled and her brown eyes were gleaming with anger, changed into a tigerish topaz. I shook her as hard as I could. I'd done it in play before, when she'd asked me to hurt her, please hurt her; but this time I was in brutal earnest, and when I'd finished she was breathless and half fainting. Then I kissed her, biting her lips till I tasted blood. Her arms tightened round my neck and she let herself fall to the ground. This time she did not play the frightened virgin; this time I had no scruples, no horizon but the hot lunacy of my own instincts.

"You hurt me," she said when I came to my senses afterwards, my whole body empty and exhausted. "You hurt me and you took all my clothes - look, I'm bleeding here - and here - and here. Oh Joe I love you with all of me now, every little bit of me is yours. You won't need her any more, will you?"

She laughed. It was a low gurgling laugh. It was full of physical contentment. "Tell her when she comes out of hospital if you like, darling. You won't need her any more, I know that." She smiled at me; the smile radiated an almost savage well-being.

"I won't need her any more," I repeated dully. There was a taste of blood in my mouth and my hand was bleeding where she'd scratched it. The sun was hurting my eyes now, and the bracken round the clearing seemed actually to be growing taller and closing in on me.