The L-Shaped Room Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Copyright

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  Pregnant by accident, kicked out of home by her father, 27-year-old Jane Graham goes to ground in the sort of place she feels she deserves – a bug-ridden boarding-house attic in Fulham. She thinks she wants to hide from the world, but finds out that even at the bottom of the heap, friends and love can still be found, and self-respect is still worth fighting for.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Lynne Reid Banks has written a number of books for children and young adults. Her children’s books include The Adventures of King Midas; The Farthest-Away Mountain; Maura’s Angel; The Indian in the Cupboard, recently made into a major Hollywood film; Return of the Indian; The Fairy Rebel; and The Magic Hare. Her books for teenagers include One More River, Sarah and After, My Darling Villain, The Writing on the Wall, Melusine: A Mystery and Broken Bridge. In addition, she has written two historical books about Israel: Letters to My Israeli Sons and Torn Country.

  Lynne Reid Banks

  THE L-SHAPED

  ROOM

  FOR PAT

  WHETHER SHE LIKES IT OR NOT

  AND IN MEMORY OF

  JAMIE

  Chapter 1

  THERE wasn’t much to be said for the place, really, but it had a roof over it and a door which locked from the inside, which was all I cared about just then. I didn’t even bother to take in the details – they were pretty sordid, but I didn’t notice them so they didn’t depress me; perhaps because I was already at rock-bottom. I just threw my one suitcase on to the bed, took my few belongings out of it and shut them all into one drawer of the three-legged chest of drawers. Then there didn’t seem to be anything else I ought to do so I sat in the arm-chair and stared out of the window.

  It was a greyish sort of day, which suited the way I was feeling, and it looked greyer because the window needed cleaning. I registered this vaguely and thought I’d buy some Windolene tomorrow and give it a going-over; then I thought, what the hell, no one’s going to see it. I had an empty sort of feeling and wondered if I was hungry. If so it would be the first time for a week I’d felt like eating. I thought about various sorts of food, but they all struck me as quite unattractive until I came to coffee. Almost all I’d had for a week was coffee. I got up and felt in my trenchcoat pocket to make sure I had my wallet and keys, and then went out, carefully locking the door.

  My room was five flights up in one of those gone-to-seed houses in Fulham, all dark brown wallpaper inside and peeling paint outside. On every second landing was a chipped sink with one tap and an old ink-written notice which said ‘Don’t Leave Tap Driping’. The landing lights were the sort that go out before you can reach the next one. There were a couple of prostitutes in the basement; the landlady had been quite open about them. She’d pointed out that there was even an advantage to having them there, namely that nobody asked questions about anybody. She dropped her eyes as she said that. Not out of modesty. She was looking to see if I were pregnant. Just because you don’t ask questions, her look said, it doesn’t mean you’re not curious. But I had only been pregnant a month, so of course there was nothing to see.

  I was curious, in a remote sort of way, about the prostitutes. I’d never met one; I’d never wanted to. They’d seemed like strange animals from another part of the forest with whom I had nothing in common. Now, since my own father evidently considered me one, I had to think again. After all, they were people. It might be rather interesting to talk to one.

  However, they weren’t around now. It was mid-afternoon and I supposed they were sleeping. As I left the house and walked past the area railings I looked at the basement windows, but the curtains were drawn.

  The neighbourhood was completely strange to me. If I’d been in any mood to make judgements I’d have judged it to be pretty grim. The shabby houses fronted almost right on to the pavement, though some of them had front yards stuck with a few sooty bushes. Most of the windows lacked curtains and that gave the houses a blind look, or rather a dead look, like open-eyed corpses. They were decaying like corpses, too. Some of the front yards had dustbins instead of bushes, which would have smelt if it hadn’t been drizzling. But the drizzle didn’t do anything to reduce the dog-smell, which was foul. You had to watch where you walked. It hadn’t been raining long and the pavement had that sweaty look.

  I walked automatically in the direction of the only landmark I knew in the district – the paper-shop where I’d seen the advertisement for the room. The advertisement was still there, behind the cracked glass among the other cards advertising second-hand prams, as new, and French girl gives lessons, phone after 6 p.m. Some rain had leaked into the frame and there was a yellow stain on the corner of the card; it looked as if it had been there for a long time.

  The proprietor of the shop came out to put a new card into the frame. He was bare-headed and after a minute his scalp shone with rain through his thin unwashed hair.

  ‘That room’s taken,’ I said, pointing to the card. It was the first time I’d spoken since I made the arrangement with the landlady at noon. My father and I hadn’t said a word to each other when I went home for my things. He’d told me to go and I was going; he didn’t care where and so why should I tell him?

  The old paper-shop man looked at the card, and then at me. He wasn’t very interested in either. ‘I expect it is,’ he said. ‘It could be. They come and go,’ he said indifferently.

  He stuck the new advertisement up with two tarnished thumb-tacks. It said: ‘Photographer’s Model free evenings. Special poses.’ And a phone number. I looked at the phone number to see if it was the same as mine; perhaps one of the tarts in the basement had decided to invest sixpence a week in the hope of attracting new custom. But I couldn’t remember what my new number was; I could only remember my old one. I’d had the same telephone number for the whole of my life; twenty-seven years with the same telephone number. I said to the old man: ‘Have you got a telephone?’

  ‘Not a public. You could use it, though. Cost you sixpence. It’s in the back.’

  Sixpence was what it cost to telephone from the big hotel in the West End where I worked. But still, it was too cheap for this call. Because I was wondering what would happen if I called my father and said to him, ‘I’ve found a place to live, Father. It’s one room in the worst part of Fulham. There’s one bathroom for the whole house, and two tarts live in the basement. Is that what you wanted? Is that where you think I belong?’

  The old man stopped in the doorway and looked back at me. ‘Well, do you want to phone, or don’t you?’

  ‘No, I don’t think I will after all.’

  He turned to go in and I said, ‘Aren’t you going to take the card down?’

  ‘Which?’

  ‘About the room. I told you, it’s taken.’

  ‘How do you know it’s taken?’

  ‘Because I’ve taken it.’

  He came back to where I was standing in the
rain, and put his face close to mine. ‘You didn’t put that card in, did you?’

  ‘No,’ I said, puzzled. ‘I just saw the card and went about the room, and I took it. I live there now,’ I said, the funny, unlikely truth of it coming real for the first time, ‘so it’s not vacant any more.’

  ‘Who’s paying for that card to be up there?’ he asked me, jabbing at it angrily. ‘You or somebody else?’

  ‘Not me,’ I said.

  ‘Well then,’ he said triumphantly, ‘who are you to tell me to take it down? When you have a card up there, then you’ll have the right to tell me to take it down. And when you come to tell me to take it down,’ he went on, angrier than ever, ‘maybe you’ll pay me the twelve-and-six you owe me for having it up there twenty-five weeks since your deposit ran out. I’m not a bleeding charity, you know,’ he said almost snarling through his little grey teeth, ‘even the chippies pay up more regular than the bloody landladies. Those chippies, they know what it means to have a living to make. You can say what you like about ’em, that much they do know. These old faggots letting off rooms to God knows what riff-raff, black riff-raff too, doesn’t matter so long as the rent’s the right colour – they think their lousy dirty houses are the whole world, they don’t stop to wonder if there’s other people outside trying to keep alive. ‘You want to use the phone?’ he asked in the same aggressive voice. ‘Cost you sixpence, it’s in the back.’

  I shook my head and he looked at me curiously. I doubt if he’d really noticed me properly before. ‘You can shut the door,’ he said more kindly. ‘No one can hear you.’

  ‘No thank you,’ I said. ‘Can I get some coffee near here?’

  His face closed again. ‘I ain’t running a cafe,’ he said, but grumbling this time, not snarling.

  ‘I meant –’

  ‘Nor a bleeding information desk, neither.’ He looked at me again in the same sharp way. ‘You say you’re living in that room?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He stared at me a bit longer, sucking his teeth. ‘Bloody Commies,’ he said suddenly. ‘Why couldn’t they leave the middle classes alone? Never did no real harm as I could see. Live and let live, I say, all except the bobos, you have to keep them in their place. And the old faggots with their bleeding houses. Sorry, miss.’

  I realized with surprise that he was apologizing for saying bleeding. It was as if he were in the presence of a corpse – the corpse of the middle classes. He was looking at me as if I were its last twitch.

  ‘Don’t you go on paying your rent on the dot, miss,’ he went on in a very kindly, confidential tone. ‘You keep the old cow waiting, like she does me. And wait she will, don’t you worry. It’s not as easy as it used to be to find people so down on their luck they’d live in one of her rat-holes …’ He went on staring at me. I clenched my hands in my pockets. I felt like a piece of flotsam.

  ‘I must go,’ I said awkwardly.

  ‘That’s right, miss. You go and have a nice cup of something hot. There’s a place about five minutes’ walk from here. Round to the left at the lights. Not the first place you come to, don’t go in there, the stuff she calls tea’s nothing but dust, and the milk’s tinned. The second place. Frank’s, he’s a pal of mine; give you a good cuppa, Frank will, and you don’t get the rough types there like you do some places. Frank won’t have bobos in, and you won’t find none of the girls there this time of day. Shouldn’t go in there late at night, though. He does his best, Frank does, but you can’t put a sieve on the door, can you? You have to take what comes, same as the pubs. Pity they don’t divide cafes off into saloon and public, if you ask me. People like to be with their own sort. Not as how you’d find many of your sort around here …’ He went on staring at me and sucking his teeth. We stood there for a moment waiting for the conversation to start again, and then I nodded and turned away.

  I found Frank’s. It wasn’t a bad place. The tables had yellow Formica tops which Frank wiped after each customer. The lights were yellow too, warm in the drab afternoon, not like the cold white neon ones. I was the only person there, except Frank, who was the same age as the old man. At first glance, he could have been the old man. I sat down at the table furthest from the door and Frank came and wiped my table. He didn’t ask what I wanted.

  ‘Could I have some coffee, please?’

  He said nothing and didn’t nod, but finished wiping the table and then went behind the counter and drew off a cup of milk-coffee, turning the tap off very suddenly at just the right moment. He carried it over without spilling any, and brought a bowl of sugar to the table.

  ‘Didn’t want it black,’ he said, without a question-mark.

  ‘No, that’s fine.’

  ‘Sixpence.’

  Everything seemed to be sixpence. Again I heard myself asking:

  ‘Have you got a telephone?’

  ‘No. Two kiosks in the main road by the cinema.’ He went away and started wiping tables again.

  I sat stirring my coffee. So far as I was capable of liking any place, I liked Frank’s. It reminded me of a similar place where I worked once.

  It was years ago, when I was trying to be an actress. In spite of what my father thought, and said, I’d got my first job, in a repertory company up North – what they used to call a commonwealth rep before Actors’ Equity got teeth in its jaws and forbade such things. ‘Ever so common and no wealth,’ we used to tell each other. Commonwealth meant no one got a salary but at the end of each week we divided the profits equally. That was a very democratic idea, except that there never were any profits. We didn’t care. We got parcels from home and shared them, and money too if we had the right sort of parents, which I didn’t, but I made up for it by not smoking. Kind people in the town who believed we were starving thought we’d be insulted by offers of food (they were wrong) but were always pressing cigarettes on us. I used to say, ‘Thank you, I’ll take it for later.’ Then, when we all met at the theatre, I’d empty out my pockets and hand round my loot, bent at odd angles and leaking tobacco. In exchange I would get a share of the tinned soup or spaghetti somebody’s sympathetic mother had sent.

  Of course my father didn’t know about that side of it. I wrote to him during the weeks when I was stage managing, sitting in the wings waiting to strain my insides winding down the curtain which had a faulty counterweight. I told him I was acting big parts and that the producer was pleased with me, which was true some of the time, and I sent him cuttings from the local paper when I was mentioned there. I was extremely happy.

  Then, one night, there was a terrible scene.

  A man who was in the company, a queer called Malcolm, was in love with another of the actors. This actor wasn’t a bit queer; he was in love with me. Malcolm rather pathetically thought nobody knew he was queer, and was very ashamed of it; actually, of course, you only had to look at him to know. I liked him otherwise, and he liked me; but he loved this actor, and that I found disgusting. So did the actor, and one evening we let Malcolm catch us kissing in one of the dressing-rooms after the performance.

  We didn’t think how he might feel. We just thought he would stop mooning about the actor when he saw how normal he was. It wasn’t until I looked up from the kiss and saw him standing in the doorway that I suddenly got frightened.

  I’ve always played a game in which I decide what kind of animal or bird or insect people look like. Malcolm always reminded me of a cat. A female cat, soft and affectionate but with something hidden deep that you couldn’t get to know. As he stood in the doorway with his snub-nosed cat’s face gone white, I knew suddenly that that hidden something was the savagery all cats have, even the very tame ones.

  He came flying at me with his nails clawing and his mouth snarling. I was too scared to move, and the actor didn’t move either. I still have two faint long marks on my cheek where his nails went. They don’t show under make-up but when I’m upset or angry they come up red and nothing hides them. I was lucky, really, because of course he was after my eyes, but he miss
ed them through being too crazy to watch what he was doing.

  When I felt the pain on my face I screamed and caught hold of his wrists, and then the actor gave a sort of jerk like someone waking up and threw himself against Malcolm, who fell over, and we lay on top of him until he stopped struggling and lay still.

  It was very quiet then, all except the sounds of our breathing; I felt uncomfortable, lying half on the dressing-room floor and half on Malcolm’s body with my face pressed against his chest. He smelled of paint and dust from the theatre, and of the talcum powder he put under his arms. I lifted my face away and left two streaks of blood on his woollen shirt.

  He was lying on his back with his eyes open and his mouth panting and there was a little froth on his lips. Suddenly his face screwed up like a little girl’s and he began to cry and say, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry …’ The actor and I got off him very quickly and awkwardly and stood up, as if we were children caught by grown-ups doing something indecent.

  I went quickly out of that dressing-room and up the stairs to the one all the girls used. I washed my face in cold water; then I was sick into the basin. Afterwards I washed my face again and put some peroxide on the scratches out of a bottle one of the girls used to bleach her hair. The scratches looked very bad because my face was so white; it looked frighteningly ugly, like someone else’s face. I was crying and the tears kept running into the scratches and making them sting; but the peroxide stung so much worse that I couldn’t feel anything from the tears after that. But I kept on crying while I was packing my clothes and stage tat into my big trunk. I didn’t do it very carefully, but one spreads around a lot in three months so it took a long time to sort all my things out. I wasn’t finished when Malcolm knocked on the door.

  He came in and his face still looked like a cat’s, a cat that’s caught in a trap and wants you to let it out. I didn’t say anything and he leaned back against the door and watched me packing.