To Room Nineteen: Collected Stories Volume One

Day after day the Rogerses descended the steep path to the beach, after having eaten a hearty English breakfast of ham and eggs, and stayed there all morning. All morning they lay, and then all afternoon, but at a good distance from a colony of English, which kept itself to itself some hundreds of yards away.

They watched the children screaming and laughing in the unvarying blue waves. They watched the groups of French adolescents flirt and roll each other over on the sand in a way that Mary, at least, thought appallingly free. Thank heavens her daughter had married young and was safely out of harm’s way! Nothing could have persuaded Mary Rogers of the extreme respectability of these youngsters. She suspected them all of shocking and complicated vices. Incredible that, in so few years, they would be sorted by some powerful and comforting social process into these decent, well-fed French couples, each so anxiously absorbed in the welfare of one, or perhaps two small children.

They watched also, with admiration, the more hardened swimmers cleave out through the small waves into the sea beyond the breakwater with their masks, their airtubes, their frog’s feet.

They were content.

This is what they had come for. This is what all these hundreds of thousands of people along the coast had come for – to lie on the sand and receive the sun on their heating bodies; to receive, too, in small doses, the hot blue water which dried so stickily on them. The sea was very salty and warm-smelling – smelling of a little more than salt and weed, for beyond the breakwater the town’s sewers spilled into the sea, washing back into the inner bay rich deposits which dried on the perfumed oiled bodies of the happy bathers.

This is what they had come for.

Yet, there was no doubt that in the Plaza things had been quite different. There, one rose late; lingered over coffee and rolls; descended, or did not descend, to the beach for a couple of hours’ sun worship; returned to a lengthy lunch; slept, bathed again, enjoyed an even more lengthy dinner. That, too, was called a seaside vacation. Now, the beach was really the only place to go. From nine until one, from two until seven, the Rogerses were on it. It was a seaside holiday with a vengeance.

About the tenth day, they realized that half of their time had gone; and Tommy showed his restlessness, his feeling that there should be more to it than this, by diving into one of the new and so terribly expensive shops and emerging with a mask, frog’s feet, and airtube. With an apology to Mary for leaving her, he plunged out into the bay, looking like – or so she rather tartly remarked – a spaceman in a children’s comic. He did not return for some hours.

‘This is better than anything, old girl, you should try it,’ he said, wading out of the sea with an absorbed excited look. That afternoon she spent on the beach alone, straining her eyes to make out which of the bobbing periscopes in the water was his.

Thus engaged, she heard herself addressed in English: ‘I always say I am an undersea widow, too.’ She turned to see a slight girl, clearly English, with pretty fair curls, a neat blue bathing suit, pretty blue eyes, good legs stretched out in the warm sand. An English girl. But her voice was, so Mary decided, passable, in spite of a rather irritating giggle. She relented and, though it was her principle that one did not go to France to consort with the English, said: ‘Is your husband out there?’

‘Oh, I never see him between meals,’ said the girl cheerfully and lay back on the sand.

Mary thought that this girl was very similar to herself at that age – only, of course, she had known how to make the best of herself. They talked, in voices drugged by sea and sun, until first Tommy Rogers, and then the girl’s husband, rose out of the sea. The young man was carrying a large fish speared through the back by a sort of trident. The excitement of this led the four of them to share a square yard of sand for a few minutes, making cautious overtures.

The next day, Tommy Rogers insisted that his wife should don mask and flippers and try the new sport. She was taken out into the bay, like a ship under escort, by the two men and young Betty Clarke. Mary Rogers did not like the suffocating feeling of the mask pressing against her nose. The speed the frog feet lent her made her nervous, for she was not a strong swimmer. But she was not going to appear a coward with that young girl sporting along so easily just in front.

Out in the bay a small island, a mere cluster of warm, red-brown rock, rose from a surf of frisking white. Around the island, a couple of feet below the surface, submerged rocks lay; and all over them floated the new race of frog-people, face down, tridents poised, observing the fish that darted there. As Mary looked back through her goggles to the shore, it seemed very far, and rather commonplace, with the striped umbrellas, the lolling browned bodies, the paddling children. That was the other sea. This was something different indeed. Here were the adventurers and explorers of the sea, who disdained the safe beaches.

Mary lay loose on the surface of the water and looked down. Enormous, this undersea world, with great valleys and boulders, all wavering green in the sun-dappled water. On a dazzling patch of white sand – twenty feet down, it seemed – sprouted green grass as fresh and bright as if it grew on the shore in sunlight. By reaching down her hand she could almost touch it. Farther away, long fronds of weed rocked and swayed, a forest of them. Mary floated over them, feeling with repugnance how they reached up to her knees and shoulders with their soft, dragging touch. Underneath her, now, a floor of rock, covered with thick growth. Pale grey-green shapes, swelling like balloons, or waving like streamers; delicate whitey-brown flowers and stars, bubbled silver with air; soft swelling udders or bladders of fine white film, all rocking and drifting in the slow undersea movement. Mary was fascinated – a new world, this was. But also repelled. In her ears there was nothing but a splash and crash of surf, and, through it, voices that sounded a long way off. The rocks were now very close below. Suddenly, immediately below her, a thin brown arm reached down, groped in a dark gulf of rock, and pulled out a writhing tangle of grey-dappled flesh. Mary floundered up, slipping painfully on the rocks. She had drifted unknowingly close to the islet; and on the rocks above her stood a group of half-naked bronzed boys, yelling and screaming with excitement as they killed the octopus they had caught by smashing it repeatedly against a great boulder. They would eat it – so Mary heard – for supper. No, it was too much. She was in a panic. The loathsome thing must have been six inches below her – she might have touched it! She climbed on to a rock and looked for Tommy, who was lying on a rock fifty feet off, pointing down at something under it, while Francis Clarke dived for it, and then again. She saw him emerge with a small striped fish, while Tommy and Betty Clarke yelled their excitement.

But she looked at the octopus, which was now lying draped over a rock like a limp, fringed, grey rag; she called her husband, handed over the goggles, the flippers and the tube, and swam slowly back to shore.

There she stayed. Nothing would tempt her out again.

That day Tommy bought an underwater fish gun. Mary found herself thinking, first, that it was all very well to spend over five pounds on this bizarre equipment; and then, that they weren’t going to have much fun at Christmas if they went on like this.

A couple of days passed. Mary was alone all day. Betty Clarke, apparently, was only a beach widow when it suited her, for she much preferred the red-rock island to staying with Mary. Nevertheless, she did sometimes spend half an hour making conversation, and then, with a flurry of apology, darted off through the blue waves to rejoin the men.

Quite soon, Mary was able to say casually to Tommy, ‘Only three days to go.’

‘If only I’d tried this equipment earlier,’ he said. ‘Next year I’ll know better.’

But for some reason the thought of next year did not enchant Mary. ‘I don’t think we ought to come here again,’ she said. ‘It’s quite spoiled now it’s so fashionable.’

‘Oh, well – anywhere, provided there’s rocks and fish.’

On that next day, the two men and Betty Clarke were on the rock island from seven in the morning until lunchtime, to which meal they grudgingly allowed ten minutes, because it was dangerous to swim on a full stomach. Then they departed again until the darkness fell across the sea. All this time Mary Rogers lay on her towel on the beach, turning over and over in the sun. She was now a warm red-gold all over. She imagined how Mrs Baxter would say: ‘You’ve got yourself a fine tan!’ And then, inevitably, ‘You won’t keep it long here, will you?’ Mary found herself unaccountably close to tears. What did Tommy see in these people? she asked herself. As for that young man, Francis – she had never heard him make any remark that was not connected with the weights, the varieties, or the vagaries of fish!

That night, Tommy said he had asked the young couple to dinner at the Plaza.

‘A bit rash, aren’t you?’

‘Oh, well, let’s have a proper meal, for once. Only another two days.’

Mary let that ‘proper meal’ pass. But she said, ‘I shouldn’t have thought they were the sort of people to make friends of.’

A cloud of irritation dulled his face. ‘What’s the matter with them?’

‘In England, I don’t think …’

‘Oh, come off it, Mary!’

In the big garden of the Plaza, where four years ago they had eaten three times a day by right, they found themselves around a small table just over the sea. There was an orchestra and more waiters than guests, or so it seemed. Betty Clarke, seen for the first time out of a bathing suit, was revealed to be a remarkably pretty girl. Her thin brown shoulders emerged from a full white frock, which Mary Rogers conceded to be not bad at all and her wide blue eyes were bright in her brown face. Again Mary thought: If I were twenty – well, twenty-five years younger, they’d take us for sisters.

As for Tommy, he looked as young as the young couple – it simply wasn’t fair, thought Mary. She sat and listened while they talked of judging distances underwater and the advantages of various types of equipment.

They tried to draw her in but there she sat, silent and dignified. Francis Clarke, she had decided, looked stiff and commonplace in his suit, not at all the handsome young sea god of the beaches. As for the girl, her giggle was irritating Mary.

They began to feel uncomfortable. Betty mentioned London, and the three conscientiously talked about London, while Mary said yes and no.

The young couple lived in Clapham, apparently; and they went into town for a show once a month.

‘There’s ever such a nice show running now,’ said Betty. ‘The one at the Princess.’

‘We never get to a show these days,’ said Tommy. ‘It’s five hours by train. Anyway, it’s not in my line.’

‘Speak for yourself,’ said Mary.

‘Oh, I know you work in a matinée when you can.’

At the irritation in the look she gave him, the Clarkes involuntarily exchanged a glance; and Betty said tactfully, ‘I like going to the theatre; it gives you something to talk about.’

Mary remained silent.

‘My wife,’ said Tommy, ‘knows a lot about the theatre. She used to be in a theatre set – all that sort of thing.’

‘Oh, how interesting!’ said Betty eagerly.

Mary struggled with temptation, then fell. ‘The man who did the décor for the show at the Princess used to have a villa here. We visited him quite a bit.’

Tommy gave his wife an alarmed and warning look, and said, ‘I wish to God they wouldn’t use so much garlic.’

‘It’s not much use coming to France,’ said Mary, ‘if you’re going to be insular about food.’

‘You never cook French at home,’ said Tommy suddenly. ‘Why not, if you like it so much?’

‘How can I? If I do, you say you don’t like your food messed up.’

‘I don’t like garlic either,’ said Betty, with the air of one confessing a crime. ‘I must say I’m pleased to be back home where you can get a bit of good plain food.’

Tommy now looked in anxious appeal at his wife, but she inquired, ‘Why don’t you go to Brighton or somewhere like that?’

‘Give me Brighton any time,’ said Francis Clarke. ‘Or Cornwall. You can get damned good fishing off Cornwall. But Betty drags me here. France is overrated, that’s what I say.’

‘It would really seem to be better if you stayed at home.’

But he was not going to be snubbed by Mary Rogers. ‘As for the French,’ he said aggressively, ‘they think of nothing but their stomachs. If they’re not eating, they’re talking about it. If they spent half the time they spend on eating on something worthwhile, they could make something of themselves, that’s what I say.’

‘Such as – catching fish?’

‘Well, what’s wrong with that? Or … for instance …’ Here he gave the matter his earnest consideration. ‘Well, there’s that government of theirs for instance. They could do something about that.’

Betty, who was by now flushed under her tan, rolled her eyes, and let out a high, confused laugh. ‘Oh well, you’ve got to consider what people say. France is so much the rage.’

A silence. It was to be hoped the awkward moment was over. But no; for Francis Clarke seemed to think matters needed clarifying. He said, with a sort of rallying gallantry towards his wife, ‘She’s got a bee in her bonnet about getting on.’

‘Well,’ cried Betty, ‘it makes a good impression, you must admit that. And when Mr Beaker – Mr Beaker is his boss,’ she explained to Mary, ‘when you said to Mr Beaker at the whist drive you were going to the south of France, he was impressed, you can say what you like.’

Tommy offered his wife an entirely disloyal, sarcastic grin.

‘A woman should think of her husband’s career,’ said Betty. ‘It’s true, isn’t? And I know I’ve helped Francie a lot. I’m sure he wouldn’t have got that raise if it weren’t for making a good impression. Besides you meet such nice people. Last year, we made friends well, acquaintance, if you like – with some people who live at Ealing. We wouldn’t have, otherwise. He’s in the films.’

‘He’s a cameraman,’ said Francis, being accurate.

‘Well, that’s films, isn’t it? And they asked us to a party. And who do you think was there?’

‘Mr Beaker?’ inquired Mary finely.

‘How did you guess? Well, they could see, couldn’t they? And I wouldn’t be surprised if Francis couldn’t be buyer, now they know he’s used to foreigners. He should learn French, I tell him.’

‘Can’t speak a word,’ said Francis. ‘Can’t stand it anyway – gabble, gabble, gabble.’

‘Oh, but Mrs Rogers speaks it so beautifully,’ cried Betty.

‘She’s cracked,’ said Francis, good-humouredly, nodding to indicate his wife. ‘She spends half the year making clothes for three weeks’ holiday at the sea. Then the other half making Christmas presents out of bits and pieces. That’s all she ever does.’

‘Oh, but it’s so nice to give people presents with that individual touch,’ said Betty.

‘If you want to waste your time I’m not stopping you,’ said Francis. ‘I’m not stopping you. It’s your funeral.’

‘They’re not grateful for what we do for them,’ said Betty, wrestling with tears, trying to claim the older woman as an ally. ‘If I didn’t work hard, we couldn’t afford the friends we got …’

But Mary Rogers had risen from her place. ‘I think I’m ready for bed,’ she said. ‘Good night, Mrs Clarke. Good night, Mr Clarke.’ Without looking at her husband, she walked away.

Tommy Rogers hastily got up, paid the bill, bade the young couple an embarrassed good night, and hurried after his wife. He caught her up at the turning of the steep road up to the villa. The stars were brilliant overhead; the palms waved seductively in the soft breeze. ‘I say,’ he said angrily, ‘that wasn’t very nice of you.’

‘I haven’t any patience with that sort of thing,’ said Mary. Her voice was high and full of tears. He looked at her in astonishment and held his peace.

But next day he went off fishing. For Mary, the holiday was over. She was packing and did not go to the beach.

That evening he said, ‘They’ve asked us back for dinner.’

‘You go. I’m tired.’

‘I shall go,’ he said defiantly, and went. He did not return until very late.

They had to catch the train early next morning. At the little station, they stood with their suitcases in a crowd of people who regretted the holiday was over. But Mary was regretting nothing. As soon as the train came, she got in and left Tommy shaking hands with crowds of English people whom, apparently, he had met the night before. At the last minute, the young Clarkes came running up in bathing suits to say goodbye. She nodded stiffly out of the train window and went on arranging the baggage. Then the train started and her husband came in.

The compartment was full and there was an excuse not to talk. The silence persisted, however. Soon Tommy was watching her anxiously and making remarks about the weather, which worsened steadily as they went north.

In Paris there were five hours to fill in.

They were walking beside the river, by the open-air market, when she stopped before a stall selling earthenware.

‘That big bowl,’ she exclaimed, her voice newly alive, ‘that big red one, there – it would be just right for the Christmas tree.’

‘So it would. Go ahead and buy it, old girl,’ he agreed at once, with infinite relief.

The Day Stalin Died

That day began badly for me with a letter from my aunt in Bournemouth. She reminded me that I had promised to take my cousin Jessie to be photographed at four that afternoon. So I had; and had forgotten all about it. Having arranged to meet Bill at four, I had to telephone him to put it off. Bill was a film writer from the United States who, having had some trouble with an un-American Activities Committee, was blacklisted, could no longer earn his living, and was trying to get a permit to live in Britain. He was looking for someone to be a secretary to him. His wife had always been his secretary but he was divorcing her after twenty years of marriage on the grounds that they had nothing in common. I planned to introduce him to Beatrice.

Beatrice was an old friend from South Africa whose passport had expired. Having been named as a communist, she knew that once she went back she would not get out again, and she wanted to stay another six months in Britain. But she had no money. She needed a job. I imagined that Bill and Beatrice might have a good deal in common but later it turned out that they disapproved of each other. Beatrice said that Bill was corrupt, because he wrote sexy comedies for TV under another name and acted in bad films. She did not think his justification, namely, that a guy has to eat, had anything in its favour. Bill, for his part, had never been able to stand political women. But I was not to know about the incompatibility of my two dear friends and I spent an hour following Bill through one switchboard after another, until at last I got him in some studio where he was rehearsing for a film about Lady Hamilton. He said it was quite all right, because he had forgotten about the appointment in any case. Beatrice did not have a telephone, so I sent her a telegram.

That left the afternoon free for Cousin Jessie. I was just settling down to work when comrade Jean rang up to say she wanted to see me during lunch hour. Jean was for many years my self-appointed guide or mentor towards a correct political viewpoint. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say she was one of several self-appointed guides. It was Jean who, the day after I had my first volume of short stories published, took the morning off work to come and see me, in order to explain that one of the stories, I forget which, gave an incorrect analysis of the class struggle. I remember thinking at the time that there was a good deal in what she said.

When she arrived that day at lunchtime, she had her sandwiches with her in a paper bag, but she accepted some coffee, and said she hoped I didn’t mind her disturbing me, but she had been very upset by something she had been told I had said.

It appeared that a week before, at a meeting, I had remarked that there seemed to be evidence for supposing that a certain amount of dirty work must be going on in the Soviet Union. I would be the first to admit that this remark savoured of flippancy.

Jean was a small brisk woman with glasses, the daughter of a Bishop, whose devotion to the working class was proved by thirty years of work in the Party. Her manner towards me was always patient and kindly. ‘Comrade,’ she said, ‘intellectuals like yourself are under greater pressure from the forces of capitalist corruption than any other type of Party cadre. It is not your fault. But you must be on your guard.’

I said I thought I had been on my guard; but nevertheless I could not help feeling that there were times when the capitalist press, no doubt inadvertently, spoke the truth.

Jean tidily finished the sandwich she had begun, adjusted her spectacles, and gave me a short lecture about the necessity for unremitting vigilance on the part of the working class. She then said she must go, because she had to be at her office at two. She said that the only way an intellectual with my background could hope to attain to a correct working-class viewpoint was to work harder in the Party; to mix continually with the working class; and in this way my writing would gradually become a real weapon in the class struggle. She said, further, that she would send me the verbatim record of the Trials in the thirties, and if I read this, I would find my present vacillating attitude towards Soviet justice much improved. I said I had read the verbatim records a long time ago; and I always did think they sounded unconvincing. She said that I wasn’t to worry; a really sound working-class attitude would develop with time.

With this she left me. I remember that, for one reason and another, I was rather depressed.

I was just settling down to work again when the telephone rang. It was Cousin Jessie, to say she could not come to my flat as arranged, because she was buying a dress to be photographed in. Could I meet her outside the dress shop in twenty minutes? I therefore abandoned work for the afternoon and took a taxi.

On the way the taxi man and I discussed the cost of living, the conduct of the government, and discovered we had everything in common. Then he began telling me about his only daughter, aged eighteen, who wanted to marry his best friend, aged forty-five. He did not hold with this; had said so; and thereby lost daughter and friend at one blow. What made it worse was that he had just read an article on psychology in the woman’s magazine his wife took, from which he had suddenly gathered that his daughter was father-fixated. ‘I felt real bad when I read that,’ he said. ‘It’s a terrible thing to come on suddenlike, a thing like that.’ He drew up smartly outside the dress shop and I got out.

‘I don’t see why you should take it to heart,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we weren’t all father-fixated.’

‘That’s not the way to talk,’ he said, holding out his hand for the fare. He was a small, bitter-looking man, with a head like a lemon or like a peanut, and his small blue eyes were brooding and bitter. ‘My old woman’s been saying to me for years that I favoured our Hazel too much. What gets me is, she might have been in the right of it.’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘look at it this way. It’s better to love a child too much than too little.’

‘Love?’ he said. ‘Love, is it? Precious little love or anything else these days if you ask me, and Hazel left home three months ago with my mate George and not so much as a postcard to say where or how.’

‘Life’s pretty difficult for everyone,’ I said, ‘what with one thing and another.’

‘You can say that,’ he said.

This conversation might have gone on for some time, but I saw my cousin Jessie standing on the pavement watching us. I said goodbye to the taxi man and turned, with some apprehension, to face her.