To Room Nineteen (18 page)

‘I didn’t mean that – could I have a kid – no listen, I’d be wanting to adopt a kid if I came to you. If I lived with you I’d be a fit and proper person and those nosy parkers would let me have her.’

‘You want to adopt a kid?’ said Mrs Pearson, rather put out. She glanced at Jimmie, who said: ‘You say things about me – but look at her. She was engaged to a man, and he was killed and all she thinks about is his kid.’

‘Jimmie …’ began Rose, in protest. But Mrs Pearson asked: ‘Hasn’t the kid got a mother?’

‘The blitz,’ said Rose, simply.

After a pause Mrs Pearson said thoughtfully: ‘I suppose there’s no reason why not.’

Rose’s face was illuminated. ‘Mrs Pearson,’ she prayed, ‘Mrs Pearson – If I could have Jill, if only I could have Jill …’

Mrs Pearson said dryly: ‘I can’t see me cluttering myself up with
kids if I didn’t have to. You wouldn’t catch me marrying and getting kids if I had my chance over again, but it takes all sorts to make a world.’

‘Then it’d be all right?’

Mrs Pearson hesitated: ‘Yes, why not?’

Jimmie gave a short laugh. ‘Women,’ he said. ‘Women.’

‘You can talk,’ said his wife.

Rose looked shyly at him. ‘What are you going to do now?’ she asked.

‘He’s going to marry Pearl, I don’t think,’ commented his wife.

Rose said slowly: ‘You ought to marry Pearl, you know, Jimmie. You did really ought to marry her. It’s not right. You shouldn’t make her unhappy, like me.’

Jimmie stood before them, hands in pockets, trying to look nonchalant. He was slowly nodding his head as if his worst suspicions were being confirmed. ‘So now you’ve decided to marry me off,’ he said, savagely.

‘Well, Jimmie,’ said Rose, ‘she loves you, everyone knows that, and you’ve been taking her out and giving her ideas – and – and – you could have this flat now, I don’t want it. You better have it, anyway, you can’t get flats now the war’s finished. And you and Pearl could live here.’ She sounded as if she were pleading for herself.

‘For crying out aloud,’ said Jimmie, astonished, gazing at her.

Mrs Pearson was looking shrewdly at him. ‘You know, Jimmie, it’s not a bad idea, Rose is quite right.’

‘What-a-at? You too?’

‘It’s about time you stopped messing around. You messed around with Rose here, and I told you time and time again, you should either marry her or not, I said.’

‘You
knew
about me?’ said Rose, dazedly.

‘Well, no harm in that,’ said Mrs Pearson, impatiently. ‘Be your age, Rose. Of course, I knew. When he came home I used to say to him: You do right by that poor girl. You can’t expect her to go hanging about, missing her chances, just to give you an easy life
and somewhere to play nicely at nights.’

‘I told Rose,’ he said, abruptly. ‘I told her often enough I wasn’t good enough for her, I said.’

‘I bet you did,’ said his wife, shortly. ‘Didn’t I, Rose?’ he asked her.

Rose was silent. Then she shrugged. ‘I just don’t understand,’ she said at last. And then, after a pause: ‘I suppose you’re just made that way.’ And then, after a longer pause: ‘But you ought to marry Pearl now.’

‘Just to please you, I suppose!’ He turned challengingly to his wife: ‘And you, too, I suppose. You want to see me safely tied up to someone, don’t you?’

‘No one’s going to marry me, stuck with two kids,’ said his wife. ‘I don’t see why you shouldn’t be tied too, if we’re going to look at it that way.’

‘And you can’t see why I shouldn’t marry Pearl when I’ve got to pay you two pounds a week?’

Mrs Pearson said on an impulse: ‘If you marry Pearl, I’ll let you off the two pounds. I’m going to make a good thing out of my cake shop, I expect, and I won’t need your bit.’

‘And if I don’t marry her, then I must go on paying you the two pounds?’

‘Fair enough,’ she said, calmly.

‘Blackmail,’ he said, bitterly. ‘Blackmail, that’s what it is.’

‘Call it what you like.’ She got up and lifted her handbag from the table. ‘Well, Rose,’ she said. ‘All this has been sudden, spur of the moment sort of thing. Perhaps you’d like to think about it. I’m not one for rushing into things myself, in the usual way. I wouldn’t like you to come and then be sorry after.’

Rose had unconsciously risen and was standing by her. ‘I’ll come with you now, if it’s all right. I’ll get my things tomorrow. I wouldn’t want to stay here tonight.’ She glanced at Jimmie, then averted her face.

‘She’s afraid of staying here with me,’ said Jimmie with bitter triumph.

‘Quite right. I know you.’ She mimicked his voice:
‘Don’t go back on me, Rose, don’t you trust me?’

Rose winced and muttered: ‘Don’t do that.’

‘Oh, I know him, I know him. And you’d have to put chains on him and drag him to the registry. It’s not that he doesn’t want to marry you. I expect he does, when all’s said. But it just kills him to make up his mind.’

‘Staying with me, Rosie?’ asked Jimmie, suddenly – the gambler playing his last card. He watched her with bright eyes, waiting, almost sure of his power to make her stay.

Rose looked unhappily from him to Mrs Pearson.

Mrs Pearson watched her with a half-smile; that smile seemed to say: I’m not implicated, settle it for yourself, it makes no difference to me. But aloud she said: ‘You’re a fool if you stay, Rosie.’

‘Let her decide,’ said Jimmie, quietly. He was thinking: If she cares anything she’ll stay with me, she’ll stand by me. Rose gazed pitifully at him and wavered. It flashed across her mind: He’s just trying to prove something to his wife, he doesn’t really want me at all. But she could not take her eyes away. There he sat, upright but easy, his hair ruffled lightly on his forehead, his handsome grey eyes watching her. She thought, wildly: Why does he just sit there waiting? If he loved me he’d come across and put his arms around me and ask me nicely to stay with him, and I would – if he’d only do that …

But he remained quiet, challenging her to move; and slowly the tension shifted and Rose drooped away from him with a sigh. She turned to Mrs Pearson. He couldn’t really love her or he wouldn’t have just sat there – that’s what she felt.

‘I’ll come with you,’ she said, heavily.

‘That’s a sensible girl, Rose.’

Rose followed the older woman with dragging feet.

‘You won’t regret it,’ said Mrs Pearson. ‘Men – they’re more trouble than they’re worth, when all is said. Women have to look after themselves these days, because if they don’t, no one will.’

‘I suppose so,’ said Rose, reluctantly. She stood hesitating at the
door, looking hopefully at Jimmie. Even now – she thought – even now, if he said one word she’d run back to him and stay with him.

But he remained motionless, with that bitter little smile about his mouth.

‘Come on, Rose,’ said Mrs Pearson. ‘Come, if you’re coming. We’ll miss the Underground.’

And Rose followed her. She was thinking: ‘I’ll have Jill, that’s something. And by the time she grows up perhaps there won’t be wars and bombs and things, and people won’t act silly any more.’

O— in the Bavarian Alps is a charming little village. It is no more charming, however, than ten thousand others; although it is known to an astonishing number of people, some of whom have actually been there, while others have savoured its attractions in imagination only. Pleasure resorts are like film stars and royalty who – or so one hopes – must be embarrassed by the figures they cut in the fantasies of people who have never met them. This history of O— is fascinating; for this is true of every village. Its location has every advantage, not least that of being so near to the frontier that when finally located on the map it seems to the exbuberant holiday-making fancy that one might toss a stone from it into Austria. This is, of course, not the case, since a high wall of mountains forms a natural barrier to any such adventure, besides making it essential that all supplies for O— and the ten or a dozen villages in the valley above it must come from Germany. This wall of mountains is in fact the reason why O— is German, and has always been German; although its inhabitants, or so it would seem from the songs and stories they offer the summer and winter visitors on every possible occasion, take comfort from the belief that Austria is at least their spiritual home. And so those holiday-makers who travel there in the hope of finding the attractions of two countries combined are not so far wrong. And there are those who go there because of the name, which is a homely, simple, gentle name, with none of the associations of, let us say, Berchtesgaden, a place in which one may also take one’s ease, if one feels so inclined. O— has never been famous; never has the spotlight of history touched it. It has not been one of those places that no one ever heard of until woken into painful memory, like Seoul, or Bikini, or, for that matter, this same
Berchtesgaden, although that is quite close enough for discomfort.

Two holiday-makers who had chosen O— out of the several hundred winter resorts that clamoured for their patronage were standing in one of the upper streets on the evening of their arrival there. The charming little wooden houses weighted with snow, the delightful little streets so narrow and yet so dignified as to make the great glittering cars seem pretentious and out of place, the older inhabitants in their long dark woollen skirts and heavy clogs, even a sleigh drawn by ribboned horses and full of holiday-makers – all this was attractive, and undeniably what they had come for; particularly as slopes suitable for skiing stretched away on every side. Yet there was no denying that something weighed on them; they were uneasy. And what this thing was does not need to be guessed at, since they had not ceased to express it, and very volubly, since their arrival.

This was a pleasure resort; it existed solely for its visitors. In winter, heavy with snow, and ringing with the shouts of swooping skiers; in summer, garlanded with flowers and filled with the sounds of cowbells – it was all the same: summer and winter dress were nothing but masks concealing the fact that this village had no existence apart from its flux of visitors, which it fed and supplied by means of the single rickety little train that came up from the lowlands of Bavaria, and which in turn it drained of money spent freely on wooden shoes, carved and painted wooden bottles, ironwork, embroidered aprons, ski trousers and sweaters, and those slender curved skis themselves that enabled a thousand earth-plodders to wing over the slopes all through the snow months.

The fact is that for real pleasure a pleasure resort should have no one in it but its legitimate inhabitants, oneself, and perhaps one’s friends. Everyone knows it, everyone feels it; and this is the insoluble contradiction of tourism; and perhaps the whole edifice will collapse at that moment when there is not one little town, not one village in the whole of Europe that has not been, as the term is, exploited. No longer will it be possible to drive one’s car away into the mountains in search of that unspoiled village, that Old-World inn by the stream; for when one arrives most certainly a professional
host will hasten out, offering professional hospitality. What then? Will everyone stay at home?

But what of poor, war-denuded Europe whose inhabitants continue to live, a little sullenly perhaps, under the summer and winter eyes of their visitors, eyes that presumably are searching for some quality, some good, that they do not possess themselves, since otherwise why have they travelled so far from themselves in order to examine the lives of other people?

These were the sort of reflections – which it must be confessed, could scarcely be more banal – that were being exchanged by our two travellers.

There they stood, outside a little wayside booth, or open shop, that sold, not carved bottles or leather aprons, but real vegetables and butter and cheese. These goods were being bought by a group of American wives who were stationed here with their husbands as part of the army of occupation. Or rather, their husbands were part of the machinery which saw to it that American soldiers stationed all over the American zone of occupation could have pleasant holidays in the more attractive parts of Europe.

Between small, green-painted houses, the snow was pitted and rutted in the narrow street, glazed with the newly frozen heat of tramping feet. In places it was stained yellow and mounded with dark horse droppings, and there was a strong smell of urine mingling with the fresh tang of winter cabbage, giving rise to further reflections about the superiority of automobiles over horses – and even, perhaps, of wide streets over narrow ones, for at every moment the two travellers had to step down off the small pavement into the strong-smelling snow to allow happy groups of skiers to pass by; had to stand back again to make room for the cars that were trying to force a passage up to the big hotels where the American soldiers were holidaying with their wives or girls.

There were so many of the great powerful cars, rocking fast and dangerously up over the slippery snow, that it was hard to preserve the illusion of an unspoiled mountain village. And so the two lifted their eyes to the surrounding forests and peaks. The sun had slipped behind the mountains, but had left their snowfields tinted pink and
gold, sentinelled by pine groves which, now that the light had gone from them, loomed black and rather sinister, inevitably suggesting wolves, witches, and other creatures from a vanished time – a suggestion, however, tinged with bathos, since it was obvious that wolves or witches would have got short shrift from the mighty creators of those powerful machines. The tinted glitter of the smooth slopes and the black stillness of the woods did their best to set the village in a timelessness not disturbed by the gear and machinery of the travelling cages that lifted clear over intervening valleys to the ledge of a mountain where there was yet another hotel and the amenities of civilization. And perhaps it was a relief, despite all the intrusions of the machinery of domesticity and comfort, to rest one’s eyes on those forests, those mountains, whose savagery seemed so innocent. The year was 1951; and, while the inhabitants of the village seemed almost feverishly concerned to present a scene of carefree charm, despite all their efforts the fact which must immediately strike everyone was that most of the people in the streets wore the uniform of the war which was six years past, and that the language most often overheard was American. But it was not possible to stand there, continually being edged this way and that on and off the pavement, with one’s eyes fixed determinedly on natural beauty, particularly as the light was going fast and now the houses, shops, and hotels were taking their nocturnal shape and spilling the white pallor of electricity from every door and window, promising warmth, promising certain pleasure. The mountains had massed themselves, black against a luminous sky. Life had left them and was concentrating down in the village. Everywhere came groups of skiers hastening home for the night, and everywhere among them those men and women who proclaimed themselves immediately and at first glance as American. Why? Our two stood there, looking into first one face and then the next, trying to define what it was that set them apart. A good-looking lot, these new policemen of Europe. And well-fed, well-dressed … They were distinguished above all, perhaps, by their assurance! Or was this noisy cheerfulness nothing more than the expression of an inner guilt because the task of policing and preserving order earned such attractive holidays? In
which case, it was rather to their credit than not.

But when the four army wives had finished their bargaining at the vegetable and dairy stall and went up the steep street, walking heavily because of their crammed baskets, they so dominated the scene in their well-cut trousers and their bright jackets that the women selling produce and the locals who had been waiting patiently for the four to conclude their shopping seemed almost unimportant, almost like willing extras in a crowd-scene from a film called perhaps
Love in the Alps,
or
They Met in the Snow.

And six years had been enough to still in the hearts of these Germans – for Germans they were, although Austria was no more than a giant’s stone-throw away – all the bitterness of defeat? They were quite happy to provide a homely and picturesque background for whatever nationalities might choose to visit them, even if most were American and many British – as our two conscientiously added, trying not to dissociate themselves from their responsibilities, even though they felt very strongly that the representatives of
their
country were much too naturally modest and tactful to appropriate a scene simply by the fact that they were in it.

It was hard to believe; and the knowledge of the secret angers, or at the very best, an ironical patience, that must be burning in the breasts of their hosts, the good people of the village of O—, deepened an uneasiness which was almost (and this was certainly irrational) a guilt which should surely have no place in the emotions of a well-deserved holiday.

Guilt about what? It was absurd.

Yet, from the moment they had arrived on the frontier – the word still came naturally to them both – and had seen the signs in German; had heard the language spoken all around them; had passed through towns whose names were associated with the savage hate and terror of headlines a decade old – from that moment had begun in both the complicated uneasiness of which they were so ashamed. Neither had admitted it to the other; both were regretting they had come. Why – they were both thinking – why submit ourselves when we are on holiday and won’t be able to afford another one for goodness knows how long, to something that must be
unpleasant? Why not say simply and be done with it that, for us, Germany is poisoned? We never want to set foot in it again or hear the language spoken or see a sign in German. We simply do not want to think about it; and if we are unjust and lacking in humanity and reason and good sense then – why not? One cannot be expected to be reasonable about everything.

Yet here they were.

The man remarked, after a long silence: ‘Last time I was here there was nothing of
that.’

Down the other side of the street, pressed close to the wall to avoid a big car that was going by, came a group of five girls in local peasant costume. All day these girls had been serving behind the counters, or in the restaurants, wearing clothes such as girls anywhere in Europe might wear. Now their individual faces had dwindled behind great white starched headdresses. Their bodies were nothing more than supports for the long-sleeved, long-skirted, extinguishing black dresses. The whole costume had something reminiscent of the prim fantasy of the habits of certain orders of nuns. They were plodding resignedly enough – since after all they were being well paid for doing this – down over the snow towards one of the big hotels where they would regale the tourists with folk songs before slipping home to change into their own clothes in time to spend an hour or so with their young men.

‘Well, never mind, I suppose one does like to see it?’ The woman slipped her arm through his.

‘Oh, I suppose so, why not?’

They began to walk down the street, leaning on each other because of the slipperiness of the rutted snow.

It hung in the balance whether one or other of them might have said something like: Suppose we all stopped coming? Suppose there were no tourists at all; perhaps they would simply cease to exist? Like actors who devote so much of themselves to acting they have no emotions over their own lives but continue to exist in whatever part they are playing …

But neither of them spoke. They turned into the main street of
the village, where there were several large hotels and restaurants.

Very easily one of them might have remarked to the other, with a kind of grumbling good humour: It’s all very well, all these things we’re saying about tourists, but we are tourists ourselves.

Come, come, the other would have replied. Clearly we are tourists on a much higher level than most!

Then they would have both laughed.

But at the same moment they stopped dead, looking at some queer hopping figure that was coming along the pavement over the badly lighted snow. For a moment it was impossible to make out what this great black jumping object could be that was coming fast towards them along the ground. Then they saw it was a man whose legs had been amputated and who was hopping over the snow like a frog, his body swinging and jerking between his heavy arms like the body of some kind of insect.

The two saw the eyes of this man stare up at them as he went hopping past.

At the station that day, when they arrived, two men hacked and amputated by war almost out of humanity, one without arms, his legs cut off at the knee, one whose face was a great scarred eyeless hollow, were begging from the alighting holiday-makers.

‘For God’s sake,’ said the man suddenly, as if this were nothing but a continuation of what they had been saying, ‘for God’s sake, let’s get out of here.’

‘Oh,
yes,’
she agreed instantly. They looked at each other, smiling, acknowledging in that smile all that they had not said that day.

‘Let’s go back. Let’s find somewhere in France.’