The Furnished Room (6 page)

‘Stay a little longer.'

Gash began to eat, and Beckett answered his earlier question. ‘Yes, I live alone. Pretty much in isolation, shut up in my room most of the time.'

‘That is good. It's only when a man is alone that he can experience the moments of assent. When he understands such experiences, he will know them to be timeless moments of union with God, imminent and transcendent. And, understanding, he will centre his whole life round the experience. His sole desire will be to contain such energy as would cause an ordinary man to explode.'

Beckett shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He didn't understand Gash. He noticed that Gash's trouser leg was ripped from the knee down, showing the skin that was discoloured in patches. The flesh was hairless as a baby's; an old man's flesh.

Gash said: ‘I know what you want, Joe.'

‘What is that?'

‘You want freedom.'

Surprised at the accuracy, Beckett admitted: ‘Yes, that's true. But I'm a disbeliever, and disbelief is the opposite of freedom, because it paralyses action at the root.'

‘Nevertheless, in spite of your disbelief, you seek freedom. You have a religious temperament and seek God.'

‘No,' Beckett said. ‘You're wrong. I've rejected religion and there is no God.'

‘Perhaps I understand you better than you understand yourself.'

Beckett felt a spasm of disgust at the old man with his milky, unfocused eyes. The stale smell of mania in the room also disgusted him. He resented Gash's claim to understand him.

Before leaving, he gave Gash's landlady some money for the repair of the window. She thanked him profusely and told him that he was very kind.

He knew that he was not really kind. He performed various acts of kindness more as a duty to himself than as genuine liking for others.

As he left the house, he could hear Gash coughing. It was worse than ordinary coughing.

He returned to his lodging. On the hall table were a Vernons Pools envelope, a religious tract headed AWAKE!, and a letter addressed to him. It was in his mother's writing. He had a sinking feeling of guilt. He pocketed the letter, unread.

He was starting up the stairs when his landlady's door opened. ‘Oh, Mr Beckett…'

He said in the tired, polite voice he used for keeping her at a distance: ‘Good evening, Mrs Ackley.'

‘That shouting in the street. What was the meaning of it?'

‘Oh, nothing. Just a couple of our local bright lads trying to make trouble.'

‘Indeed. Well, I won't have any dirty words shouted outside this house. It makes the house seem like a common place. What would the neighbours think if they heard those disgusting words you use so freely?'

She wore a skirt with a broken zipper. The brooch that skewered the neck of her blouse was made in the shape of a vase of flowers.

He said coldly: ‘I neither know nor care what the neighbours think. Most of them are incapable of thinking at all.'

‘Oh, very high and mighty, aren't you? Well, let me tell you, I don't want any bad habits here. It gives the house a bad name, that sort of thing. Shouting words like that! Next thing is, I suppose, you'll be starting a brawl on the doorstep.'

His temper rose. He was infuriated by her pettiness, and by the knowledge that, if he gave way to his temper, he would have all the bother of finding another lodging. He started to mount the stairs again, but she followed him, asking: ‘And what were they trying to make trouble about?'

‘The lads? Oh, just some harmless old man.'

‘What old man?'

‘His name is Gash. Is that all you want to know? If so, if you'll excuse me, I'm busy.'

‘One minute. If that old man Gash is a friend of yours, well, I know it's none of my business, but I should advise you to keep away from him.'

‘You're right; it is none of your business.'

‘I saw you leave his house.'

He realized, with distaste, that her previous questions had been moves in a complicated plan to get him to talk about Gash. He said: ‘Since you've obviously been watching me from behind your net curtains you must have known that the quarrel was about Gash. Why didn't you come straight to the point, instead of twisting and turning?'

‘Yes, well, no need to take that tone.' She hesitated, then said: ‘Come in for a few minutes, Mr Beckett.'

Her room smelled of furniture polish and soup. The table was covered by a green chenille cloth with a fringe. The centrepiece was a cut-glass bowl containing wax fruit and a half-darned stocking. She said: ‘I'll tell you something about your friend Mr Gash. He was in a mental home.'

He said indifferently: ‘Was he?'

‘A mental home!'

‘Yes, I heard you.'

‘They came and took him away. And he should never have been allowed back, in my opinion. In fact I shouldn't be surprised if he escaped or something. After all, these lunatics are supposed to be ten times more cunning than normal people, aren't they? Anyway, he was certainly in no state to mix with ordinary decent people. And they say he's even worse now.'

‘Whom do you mean by They?'

‘Well, I don't know exactly who. Everybody. Everybody says it. They say he had to be put away because... well... because he interfered with little girls.'

‘Have you proof?'

‘Well, not proof exactly, but that's what they say he did.'

‘You keep referring to the mysterious They. Can't you be more specific?'

‘Well, they, everybody. Anyway, it stands to reason he was one of those nasty old men like you read about in the papers. All those men who have to be taken away, it's because they're nasty and dirty. That's what that Freud said, isn't it? Not that I've ever read his books myself, of course. I don't want to read a lot of gloomy books about those nasty twisted people, thanks all the same. And I don't want them roaming the streets, either.' She flicked a minute speck of dust from the tablecloth; a gesture of finality.

Beckett left her room, seething with rage. The argument had been pointless because his liking for Gash, or for any of his acquaintances, would not have been diminished by learning that the acquaintance in question was a rapist.

On the stairs he met the Irish tenant, who was returning from the bathroom in a towelling robe and black socks.

Beckett's anger overcame his habitual aloofness. He exclaimed: ‘She's an insect, a petty-minded insect! Crawling behind net curtains and up noses and over the Sunday scandal papers.'

‘Could it be Ma Ackley to whom you're referring?'

‘Yes, her. The worst thing about her is that she's petty. She expends my time and temper with her constant petty nagging.'

‘Ah,' the Irishman said. ‘Join me in some Guinness.' He led the way into his room. Beside the door were three paper carrier-bags, filled with empty bottles. On the chest of drawers were clothes brushes, shoe polish, a pound of sausages, and a
New Testament
. The bed had ex-army blankets, like Beckett's bed. The Irishman poured out two glasses of Guinness.

‘I detest landladies.' Beckett assumed a squeaky voice in imitation: ‘You walk up and down, you've blocked the toilet, you're running your radio from the light, your bedsprings creaked, your visitors stay after ten, well it just isn't good enough, this is a respectable house.' He reverted to his normal voice. ‘They cover the walls with their illiterate little notices, forbidding you to do practically everything except breathe. And they probably grudge you even that privilege. If only they would keep the thing as a business transaction, whereby you pay the rent and they let you alone. But no; they can't let you alone. They must be perpetually prying and nagging.'

The Irishman's dark marsh eyes beamed. ‘Now that was an interesting point you made; that she wastes your time and temper. Now I myself consider all human beings to be worthy of consideration, and all human activities too. And if you refuse to acknowledge certain people; if you say they are nothing to do with you, it means that you are cutting yourself off from life.'

‘Most of my activities, such as my job, and most of the people I know, I refuse to acknowledge as being anything to do with me.'

‘Then you're not living properly,' the Irishman said. The vee neck of his robe revealed the black hairs on his chest, and the vest worn back-to-front with the maker's label showing. He smelled of sweat and soap.

‘You're probably right.'

The Irishman grinned. ‘Anyway, as for Ma Ackley, do you know how her late lamented husband passed away, RIP?'

‘No?'

‘She mistook him for a speck of dust, and swept him into the ashpan.' Beckett laughed. He suddenly liked the Irishman, which made him feel happy.

‘I'm going to Henekeys later,' the Irishman said. ‘Why don't you come too?'

‘Thanks, I'd like to, but I'm busy this evening.'

Later, he wondered why he had refused the invitation. He understood why he was disliked by his fellow tenants and Mrs Ackley. They resented his aloof manner with its assumption of superiority. Remembering the priggish, assertive way in which he had stated that the neighbours never thought at all, he understood the landlady's dislike.

He thought: I'm a priggish and thoroughly unbearable young man.

He went to the lavatory, and opened his mother's letter, sitting on the lavatory seat. He disliked receiving letters from her because he felt guilty about not loving her or anyone, and about his failure to be a credit to her.

He read swiftly, skipping words:

Joe dear … so worried… you hardly ever write and your letters are so short and not at all ‘newsy' ... don't go short of food, my darling, or have too many late nights… it's bad to keep food in your room in this hot weather. Has your landlady got a frig? I'm sure she would let you keep your meat and milk and butter there, if you asked her… I haven't been at all well lately. I've had to stay in bed which was a nuisance as I hate being a burden to Dad and Granny Dolan, who were splendid need I say! Anyway I think I am ‘on my feet' again now…. Father Hogan came round some time ago, he stayed to supper and I gave him some apple pie made from our own apples from the tree in the garden, which was nice … he asked about you, and told some funny stories about when you children used to serve at Mass. I think he is really ‘Mad Irish'! He's been transferred to St Elizabeth's in London, which is a new church that has just been built, which is very exciting! So why don't you go and see him? I told him I was sure you'd like to, I didn't tell him you had left the Faith, and I hope and pray constantly that you will return to it... my darling, be good… must end now and catch the post.… I had a letter from Aunty Ann, she has a cold but is otherwise alright. ... Dad and Granny send love.… Ever your own Mum, xxxx.

He replaced the letter in his pocket. On the windowledge was a bent safety-pin and the newspaper that served as toilet paper. He sat on, idly reading the newspaper which was several days old. The front page had a picture of a man wearing a rosette, descending the steps of an aeroplane. His smile and suit were successful; one hand was raised in a civilian salute.

Farther down the page, Beckett read that a little girl had been found, raped and murdered, in the cellar of an empty house.

He wondered about the murderer. What had been wrong with his life, that he had taken such an extreme remedy? There must have been a wolf inside him, that had been roused by the sight of a little girl playing in a street.

The same society had produced the man with the rosette and the unknown murderer. He was suddenly conscious of millions of lives, millions of reactions to the age of sceptics.

Before leaving, he dropped the envelope of his mother's letter into the lavatory pan. He pulled the chain, but the envelope did not go down. It floated in the pan, with the graceful writing blurred by the flush of water.

In his room there was nothing to do. He tore a page from his notebook, and wrote:
Dear Mum, Thank you for your letter. I'm sorry I haven't written for so long, but…

Here his inspiration failed. He opened the washstand cupboard and found two biscuits in a paper bag. He was not hungry, but ate them for something to do. Then he ironed the paper bag with his palm, and read the advertising matter on it. Then he yawned like a Sunday afternoon.

He sat for a while looking at the unlit gas fire, and listened to the cars passing in the street below. After a while he got up and closed the window. The sound of the cars was fainter now.

Mick's Café was a basement dive. It was crowded, and smelled of frying oil, cats, and dead cigarette smoke. Over the counter NO CREDIT was written in coloured bottle-caps.

The Greek assistant, who wore trousers and a vest, rang the till and shouted up the service hatch: ‘Three Vienna, one Bolognese...' He slapped the counter with a damp cloth.

The mirror advertised cigarettes; Beckett caught sight of his distorted image with WOODBINES printed across the forehead. He found a table and sat down.

The other customers were Soho characters; bums and layabouts dressed like artists. They were different from the smartly dressed teenage set who frequented the coffee bars.

When Beckett had lived at home, in the subtopia of semi-detached houses with net curtains, he had thought that the neighbours wore respectability like an extra suit of clothes. He had come to London and found places, like this café, where at first he had thought that the people were more honest because they did not wear this extra covering. But he had found another sort of dishonesty instead. He had found writers who did not write, painters who did not paint, petty thieves who were so unsuccessful that they were always scrounging the price of a cup of tea, and pretty girls who turned out to be art-school tarts with dirty faces.