David Nobbs - The Itinerant Lodger

Soon it was all over, and he went to the window. It was dark, and the lights of the houses were patterned all over the hills. His thoughts were settling down now, and as he stood there, gazing into the darkness, he thought of his life to date. An education, that was all it had been. Cambridge and Winchester. Fine names. The Pay Corps. A fine regiment. And then, after Cambridge, the hard school of life. A brief spell on the newspaper, serving the interests of Droitwich and its environs. A short while detecting earthquakes. A stint in the kitchens, specialising in savouries and nougat. A variety of little jobs, of odds and ends of one kind and another, all performed with varying degrees of utter incompetence. It had all been nothing but a preparation. Now, in this great city, Barnes, thirty-nine, of no fixed abode, would discover the purpose of existence. Here, in this bed-sitting room, the humiliations and trials of the past would serve their purpose. He knew it. Already much of his nervousness had passed away, for the arrival had been smoother than he had dared to hope.

He was still by the window when Mrs Pollard returned with the silver casserole—a prize for lupins. Proudly she placed it on the table, and then she removed the lid, with its valued inscription in the best Latin that money could buy.

“I’ve brought you your dinner,” she said, and he came over from the window and took his position behind it. He felt suddenly hungry, and he ate, as always, with frenzied, uncritical zeal. He was well liked wherever he ate. Mrs Pollard sat opposite, presiding over him intently, and the long, heavy silence was broken only by the steady munch of his eating. As the meal drew to a close, and the eating ceased to occupy all his attention, he began to wish that she was not in the room with him. He felt that it was not the done thing, in the early stages of a landlady-lodger relationship, and he felt doubly glad that he had not chosen to eat in her room.

His nervousness had returned, and he felt a shock when Mrs Pollard asked him how he had found the stew.

“Very good,” he said hastily.

“Say if it’s not,” she said. “We may as well get things straight from the start.”

“No,” he assured her. “I meant it.”

Silence fell again, heavier even than before. This time there was no eating to disturb it, and at length, with a great effort, Mrs Pollard spoke.

“Would you like some coffee?” she inquired. “Or some tea?”

“Coffee would be very nice, thank you.”

“I’ll fetch you some coffee.”

Over coffee they talked a little.

“You’re familiar with these parts?” she asked.

“I’ve not been here before, no.”

“We were new to it too.”

“We?”

“Pollard. He was Birmingham and I’m Hornchurch.”

Why didn’t she go, now, back to Hornchurch, or at least to her kitchen, where a landlady belongs? He longed for her to go.

“What part do you come from?” she asked at length.

“London and Margate and Evesham and Barnstaple and the Isle of Wight.”

“Well, I never. And it’s the Isle of Wight you’ve come from now, is it? Quite a change for you, this must be.”

“No. I’ve come from Birmingham.”

“Oh. Like Pollard.” There was another pause, broken once more by Mrs Pollard. “You had a good job in Birmingham, I suppose?”

“I was a teacher.”

“Oh. Very nice.”

“I taught scripture and games.”

“And now you’re going to be a teacher here too.”

“No. No, I’m starting afresh. I’m going to be a writer.”

“Oh. Very nice. What sort of thing will you write, if it isn’t a rude question?”

It wasn’t a rude question, and so he felt that he ought to reply. “Poems,” he said, somewhat surlily.

“A poem is a lovely thing.”

“Yes.”

An impasse! Mrs Pollard made no attempt to get round it. She sensed that further inquiries might not be welcome yet, and for this he was grateful. He was also grateful to her for making no reference to the rent.

“I’ll go and put the kettle on for your bottle,” she said. “You want to feel well-aired after a long journey.”

While she was gone Barnes fetched from his suitcase a sheet of blank quarto writing paper. On it he wrote: “Poem, by Barnes,” and then he placed it in the middle of his table, where it would await him in the morning.

“I’ll show you how to make your bed,” Mrs Pollard said on her return, and he followed her to the sofa. She lifted the back of the sofa to its full extent, and then she brought the seat forward and at the same time lowered it, to reveal, where previously there had been only a sofa, a bed. She then pursued the reverse process, taking care to lift the under-bar so that the springs wouldn’t catch and be torn to ribbons. She then asked Barnes to demonstrate, just for her peace of mind. He proved a most unresponsive pupil, and it was several minutes before she felt that she could safely leave him. To him these minutes were as charged with the torture of practical anguish as those dreadful hours that he had spent making and remaking his bed pack, in the Pay Corps, long ago, during his formative years. He was in no doubt, at moments like these—and there were many such—that one of the primary causes of his arrested development had been the diversity and complexity of the sleeping arrangements that he had been required to master. There was a certain hammock, in particular, that he would never quite forget.

“Well,” said Mrs Pollard at last, “there it is. That’s the best I can do for you.”

“Thank you.”

“It’s not a bad bed, really. Pollard won it in a newspaper. He arranged ten hardy annuals in the order in which he would like to be given them for Christmas. We used to sleep in it. I suppose it has a sentimental value for me. It’s really quite a good bed. Big, too. Big enough for two, wouldn’t you say?”

But Barnes did not tell her what he would have said. He was polite enough to wait until she had returned with his stone hot water bottle, and then, when she had finally left the room, he fainted.

THE MORNING WAS CRISP AND WHITE, IDEAL FOR shaving. Barnes had slept well, as he always did after fainting, and as he shaved he felt in excellent form. The quarto sheets were waiting for him, the water was hot, and soon his work would begin. He could hear Mrs Pollard going about her morning tasks in another part of the house, and for a moment he felt uneasy. He hoped that she wasn’t going to make demands on him. Then he dismissed the thought and turned to more important things.

When he had shaved he dressed and when he had dressed he raised the main part of his bed and slid it back towards the head, to reveal, where previously there had been only a bed, a sofa. Then Mrs Pollard brought him his breakfast. She asked him how he was, how he had slept, what were his plans, but they had little conversation, and he hardly minded her presence. He ate fast, for he was intoxicated by the infinite possibilities that were whirring about in his head. He had never before felt as strong as he did at this moment.

At last the breakfast things were cleared, and he was alone. He seated himself at the table and gazed proudly round the room. There was the sofa, the piano, the table, the easy chair and the hard chair. He noted with delight the Scottish glen above the piano, the Dresden hyenas on the mantelpiece, the tapestried axioms above the sofa, the two ivory ospreys, between which there were as yet no books, and the old polished range in the middle of which, like a neon cat, his absurdly small gas fire sat hissing. During the night there had been virtually no vacant floor space even to put his shoes and socks in, and even now, when the bed had become a sofa, the room was small. And although there was a window behind the sofa, affording a pleasant vista over Mrs Pollard’s cosy little garden, it afforded very little light, the cosiness being caused by high walls and surrounding houses. Yet despite all this he looked around him with joy. Here was the haven that he had sought, in which he could distil the experience of a long and lonely life. Here was something that was his, and yet did not belong to him, and would not clutter him up.