Collected Short Stories Page 6

  Della was very happy with her flat. It was utterly quiet, a little sanctum tucked at the back of the house. She never heard a sound from her neighbours in the other parts of the house and they, of course, never heard a sound from her. She encountered them occasionally when crossing from her own front door to the front door of the house. They were mouselike people who scuttled off to their holes with no more than a nod and a ‘good evening.’ This was as it should be. The flat, too, was entirely as it should be.

  The bed-sitter looked just like a living-room by day, for the bed was let down from a curtained recess in the wall only at night. Its window overlooked the yard which Della never used. She never unbolted the side gate or the back door or, needless to say, attempted to undo the screws and open the window more than six inches.

  Every evening, when she had washed the dishes and wiped down every surface in the immaculate well-fitted kitchen, had her bath, made her bedtime drink, and let the bed down from the wall, she went on her security rounds just as her father did at home. First she unlocked and unbolted the back door and crossed the yard to check that the side gate was securely fastened. It always was as no one ever touched it, but Della liked to make absolutely sure, and sometimes went back several times in case her eyes had deceived her. Then she bolted and locked the back door, the garden door and the bathroom door. All these doors opened out of a small room, about ten feet square – Mrs Swanson called it the garden room – which in its turn could be locked off by yet another door from the kitchen. Della locked it. She rather regretted she couldn’t lock the door that led from the kitchen into the bed-sitting room but, owing to some oversight on Mrs Swanson’s part, there was no lock on it. However, her own front door in the bed-sitter itself was locked, of course, on the Yale. Finally, before getting into bed, she bolted the front door.

  Then she was safe. Though she sometimes got up once or twice more to make assurance trebly sure, she generally settled down at this point into blissful sleep, certain that even the most accomplished of burglars couldn’t break in.

  There was only one drawback – the rent.

  ‘That flat,’ said Mrs Swanson, ‘is really intended for two people. A married couple had it before you, and before that two ladies shared it.’

  ‘I couldn’t share my bed,’ said Della with a shudder, ‘or, come to that, my room.’

  ‘If you found a nice friend to share I wouldn’t object to putting up a single bed in the garden room. Then your friend could come and go by the side gate, provided you were prepared to promise me it would always be bolted at night.’

  Della wasn’t going to advertise for a flatmate. You couldn’t be too careful. Yet she had to find someone if she was going to afford any new winter clothes, not to mention heating the place. It would have to be the right person, someone to fill all her own exacting requirements as well as satisfy Mrs Swanson . . .

  ‘Ooh, it’s lovely!’ said Rosamund Vine. ‘It’s so quiet and clean. And you’ve got a garden! You should see the dump I’ve been living in. It was over-run with mice.’

  ‘You don’t get mice,’ said Della repressively, ‘unless you leave food about.’

  ‘I won’t do that. I’ll be ever so careful. I’ll go halves with the rent and I’ll have the key to the back door, shall I? That way I won’t disturb you if I come in late at night.’

  ‘I hope you won’t come in late at night,’ said Della. ‘Mrs Swanson’s very particular about that sort of thing.’

  ‘Don’t worry.’ Rosamund sounded rather bitter. ‘I’ve nothing and no one to keep me out late. Anyway, the last bus passes the end of the road at a quarter to twelve.’

  Della pushed aside her misgivings, and Mrs Swanson, interviewing Rosamund, appeared to have none. She made a point of explaining the safety precautions, to which Rosamund listened meekly and with earnest nods of her head. Della was glad this duty hadn’t fallen to her, as she didn’t want Rosamund to tell exaggerated tales about her at work. So much the better if she could put it all on Mrs Swanson.

  Rosamund Vine had been chosen with the care Della devoted to every choice she made. It had taken three weeks of observation and keeping her ears open to select her. It wouldn’t do to find someone on too low a salary or, on the other hand, someone with too lofty a position in the company. She didn’t like the idea of a spectacularly good-looking girl, for such led hectic lives, or too clever a girl, for such might involve her in tiresome arguments. An elegant girl would fill the cupboards with clothes and the bathroom with cosmetics. A gifted girl would bring in musical instruments or looms or paints or trunks full of books. Only Rosamund, of all the candidates, qualified. She was small and quiet and prettyish, a secretary (though not Della’s secretary), the daughter of a clergyman who, by coincidence, had been at the same university at the same time as Della’s father. Della, who had much the same attitude as Victorian employers had to their maids’ ‘followers’, noted that she had never heard her speak of a boy friend or overheard any cloakroom gossip as to Rosamund’s love life.

  The two girls settled down happily together. They seldom went out in the evenings. Della always went to bed at eleven sharp and would have relegated Rosamund to her own room at this point but for one small difficulty. With Rosamund in the garden room – necessarily sitting on her bed as there was nowhere else to sit – it wasn’t possible for Della to make her security rounds. Only once had she tried doing it with Rosamund looking on.

  ‘Goodness,’ Rosamund had said, ‘this place is like Fort Knox. All those keys and bolts! What are you so scared of?’

  ‘Mrs Swanson likes to have the place locked up,’ said Della, but the next night she made hot drinks for the two of them and sent Rosamund to wait for her in the bed-sitter before creeping out into the yard for a secret check-up.

  When she came back Rosamund was examining her bedside table. ‘Why do you put everything in order like that, Della? Your book at right angles to the table and your cigarette packet at right angles to your book, and, look, your ashtray’s exactly an inch from the lamp as if you’d measured it out.’

  ‘Because I’m a naturally tidy person.’

  ‘I do think it’s funny your smoking. I never would have guessed you smoked till I came to live here. It doesn’t sort of seem in character. And your glass of water. Do you want to drink water in the night?’

  ‘Not always,’ Della said patiently. ‘But I might want to, and I shouldn’t want to have to get up and fetch it, should I?’

  Rosamund’s questions didn’t displease her. It showed that the girl wanted to learn the right way to do things. Della taught her that a room must be dusted every day, the fridge de-frosted once a week, the table laid for breakfast before they went to bed, all the windows closed and the catches fastened. She drew Rosamund out as to the places she had previously lived in with a view to contrasting past squalor with present comfort, and she received a shock when Rosamund made it plain that in some of those rooms, attics, converted garages, she had lived with a man. Della made no comment but froze slightly. And Rosamund, thank goodness, seemed to understand her disapproval and didn’t go into details. But soon after that she began going out in the evenings.

  Della didn’t want to know where she was going or with whom. She had plenty to occupy her own evenings, what with the work she brought home, her housework, washing and ironing, her twice-weekly letter to her mother and father, anti the commercial Spanish she was teaching herself from gramophone records. It was rather a relief not to have Rosamund fluttering about. Besides, she could do her security rounds in peace. Not, of course, that she could check up on the side gate till Rosamund came in. Necessarily, it had to remain unbolted, and the back door to which Rosamund had the key, unlocked. But always by ten to twelve at the latest she’d hear the side gate open and close and hear Rosamund pause to draw the bolts. Then her feet tip-toeing across the yard, then the back door unlocked, shut, locked. After that, Della could sleep in peace.

  The first problem arose when Rosamund came in one ni
ght and didn’t bolt the gate after her. Della listened carefully in the dark, but she was positive those bolts had not been drawn. Even if the back door was locked, it was unthinkable to leave that side gate on nothing all night but its flimsy latch. She put on her dressing gown and went through the kitchen into the garden room. Rosamund was already in bed, her clothes flung about on the coverlet. Della picked them up and folded them. She was coming back from the yard, having fastened those bolts, when Rosamund sat up and said:

  ‘What’s the matter? Can’t you sleep?’

  ‘Mrs Swanson,’ said Della with a light indulgent laugh, ‘wouldn’t be able to sleep if she knew you’d left that side gate unbolted.’

  ‘Did I? Honestly, Della, I don’t know what I’m doing half the time. I can’t think of anyone but Chris. He’s the most marvellous person and I do think he’s just as mad about me as I am about him. I feel as if he’s changed my whole life.’

  Della let her spend nearly all the following evening describing the marvellous Chris, how brilliant he was – though at present unable to get a job fitting his talents – how amusing, how highly educated – though so poor as to be reduced to borrowing a friend’s room while that friend was away. She listened and smiled and made appropriate remarks, but she wondered when she had last been so bored. Every time she got up to try and play one of her Spanish records, Rosamund was off again on another facet of Chris’s dazzling personality, until at last Della had to say she had a headache and would Rosamund mind leaving her on her own for a bit?

  ‘Anyway, you’ll see him tomorrow. I’ve asked him for a meal.’

  Unluckily, this happened to be the evening Della was going to supper with her aunt on the other side of London. They had evidently enjoyed themselves, judging by the mess in the kitchen, Della thought when she got home. There were few things she disliked more than wet dishes left to drain. Rosamund was asleep. Della crept out into the yard and checked that the bolts were fastened.

  ‘I heard you wandering about ever so late,’ said Rosamund in the morning. ‘Were you upset about anything?’

  ‘Certainly not. I simply found it rather hard to get to sleep because it was past my normal time.’

  ‘Aren’t you funny?’ said Rosamund, and she giggled.

  The next night she missed the last bus.

  Della had passed a pleasant evening, studying firstly the firm’s annual report, then doing a Spanish exercise. By eleven she was in bed, reading the memoirs of a woman company chairman. Her bedside light went off at half-past and she lay in the dark waiting for the sound of the side gate.

  Her clock had luminous hands, and when they passed ten to twelve she began to feel a nasty tingly jumping sensation all over her body. She put on the light, switched it off immediately. She didn’t want Rosamund bursting in with all her silly questions and comments. But Rosamund didn’t burst in, and the hands of the clock closed together on midnight. There was no doubt about it. The last bus had gone and Rosamund hadn’t been on it.

  Well, the silly girl needn’t think she was going to stand this sort of thing. She’d bolt that side gate herself and Rosamund could stay out in the street all night. Of course she might ring the front door bell, she was silly and inconsiderate enough to do that, but it couldn’t be helped. Della would far rather be awakened at one or two o’clock than lie there knowing that side gate was open for anyone to come in. She put on her dressing gown and made her way through the spotless kitchen to the garden room. Rosamund had hung a silly sort of curtain over the back door, not a curtain really but a rather dirty Indian bedspread. Della lifted it distastefully – and then she realized. She couldn’t bolt the side gate because the back door into the yard was locked and Rosamund had the key.

  A practical person like herself wasn’t going to be done that way. She’d go out by the front door, walk round to the side entrance and – but, no, that wouldn’t work either. If she opened the gate and bolted it on the inside, she’d simply find herself bolted inside the yard. The only thing was to climb out of the window. She tried desperately to undo the window screws, but they had seized up from years of disuse and she couldn’t shift them. Trembling now, she sat down on the edge of her bed and lit a cigarette. For the first time in her life she was in an insecure place by night, alone in a London flat, with nothing to separate her from hordes of rapacious burglars but a feeble back door lock which any type of a thief could pick open in five minutes.

  How criminally careless of Mrs Swanson not to have provided the door between the bed-sitter and the kitchen with a lock! There was no heavy piece of furniture she could place against the door. The phone was by her bed, of course. But if she heard a sound and dialled for the police was there a chance of their getting there before she was murdered and the place ransacked?

  What Mrs Swanson had provided was one of the most fearsome-looking breadknives Della had ever seen. She fetched it from the kitchen and put it under her pillow. Its presence made her feel slightly safer, but suppose she didn’t wake up when the man came in, suppose . . . ? That was ridiculous, she wouldn’t sleep at all. Exhausted, shaken, feeling physically sick, she crawled under the bedclothes and, after concentrated thought, put the light out. Perhaps, if there was no light on, he would go past her, not know she was there, make his way into the main part of the house, and if by then she hadn’t actually died of fright . . .

  At twenty minutes past one, when she had reached the point of deciding to phone for a car to take her to an hotel, the side gate clicked and Rosamund entered the yard. Della fell back against the pillows with a relief so tremendous that she couldn’t even bother to go out and check the bolts. So what if it wasn’t bolted? The man would have to pass Rosamund first, kill her first. Della found she didn’t care at all about what might happen to Rosamund, only about her own safety.

  She sneaked out at half-past six to put the knife back, and she was sullenly eating her breakfast, the flat immaculate, when Rosamund appeared at eight.

  ‘I missed the last bus. I had to get a taxi.’

  ‘You could have phoned.’

  ‘Goodness, you sound just like my mother. It was bad enough having to get up and . . .’ Rosamund blushed and put her hand over her mouth. ‘I mean, go out and get that taxi and . . . Well, I wasn’t all that late,’ she muttered.

  Her little slip of the tongue hadn’t been lost on Della. But she was too tired to make any rejoinder beyond saying that Mrs Swanson would be very annoyed if she knew, and would Rosamund give her fair warning next time she intended to be late? Rosamund said when they met again that evening that she couldn’t give her fair warning, as she could never be sure herself. Della said no more. What, anyway, would be the use of knowing what time Rosamund was coming in when she couldn’t bolt the gate?

  Three mornings later her temper flared.

  On two of the intervening nights Rosamund had missed the last bus. The funny thing was that she didn’t look at all tired or jaded, while Della was worn-out. For three hours on the previous night she had lain stiffly clutching the breadknife while the old house creaked about her and the side gate rattled in the wind.

  ‘I don’t know why you bother to come home at all.’

  ‘Won’t you mind if I don’t?’

  ‘Not a bit. Do as you like.’

  Stealthily, before Rosamund left the flat by the front door, Della slipped out and bolted the gate. Rosamund, of course (being utterly imprudent), didn’t check the gate before she locked the back door. Della fell into a heavy sleep at ten o’clock to be awakened just after two by a thudding on the side gate followed by a frenzied ringing of the front door bell.

  ‘You locked me out!’ Rosamund sobbed. ‘Even my mother never did that. I was locked out in the street and I’m frozen. What have I done to you that you treat me like that?’

  ‘You said you weren’t coming home.’

  ‘I wasn’t going to, but we went out and Chris forgot his key. He’s had to sleep at a friend’s place. I wish I’d gone there too!’

&nb
sp; They were evidently two of a kind. Well-suited, Della thought. Although it was nearly half-past two in the morning, this seemed the best moment to have things out. She addressed Rosamund in her precise schoolmistressy voice.

  ‘I think we’ll have to make other arrangements, Rosamund. Your ways aren’t my ways, and we don’t really get on, do we? You can stay here till you find somewhere else, but I’d like you to start looking round straightaway.’

  ‘But what have I done? I haven’t made a noise or had my friends here. I haven’t even used your phone, not once. Honestly, Della, I’ve done my best to keep the place clean and tidy, and it’s nearly killed me.’

  ‘I’ve explained what I mean. We’re not the same kind of people.’

  ‘I’ll go on Saturday. I’ll go to my mother – it won’t be any worse. God knows – and then maybe Chris and I . . .’