The Complete Short Stories

The nearest cubicle, a single, was built into the banks of cases half a dozen steps along the corridor, but the occupant, a man of seventy, was deaf and bed-ridden.

‘It’s not bad,’ Ward echoed reluctantly. ‘Now tell me what the latest growth figures are. They might console me.’

Rossiter paused, lowering his voice. ‘Four per cent. Eight hundred million extra people in one year — just less than half the earth’s total population in 1950.’

Ward whistled slowly. ‘So they will revalue. What to? Three and a half?’

‘Three. From the first of next year.’

‘Three square metres!’ Ward sat up and looked around him. ‘It’s unbelievable! The world’s going insane, Rossiter. For God’s sake, when are they going to do something about it? Do you realize there soon won’t be room enough to sit down, let alone lie down?’

Exasperated, he punched the wall beside him, on the second blow knocked in one of the small wooden panels that had been lightly papered over.

‘Hey!’ Rossiter yelled. ‘You’re breaking the place down.’ He dived across the bed to retrieve the panel, which hung downwards supported by a strip of paper. Ward slipped his hand into the dark interval, carefully drew the panel back on to the bed.

‘Who’s on the other side?’ Rossiter whispered. ‘Did they hear?’

Ward peered through the interval, eyes searching the dim light. Suddenly he dropped the panel and seized Rossiter’s shoulder, pulled him down on to the bed.

‘Henry! Look!’

Directly in front of them, faintly illuminated by a grimy skylight, was a medium-sized room some fifteen feet square, empty except for the dust silted up against the skirting boards. The floor was bare, a few strips of frayed linoleum running across it, the walls covered with a drab floral design. Here and there patches of the paper peeled off and segments of the picture rail had rotted away, but otherwise the room was in habitable condition.

Breathing slowly, Ward closed the open door of the cubicle with his foot, then turned to Rossiter.

‘Henry, do you realize what we’ve found? Do you realize it, man?’

‘Shut up. For Pete’s sake keep your voice down.’ Rossiter examined the room carefully. ‘It’s fantastic. I’m trying to see whether anyone’s used it recently.’

‘Of course they haven’t,’ Ward pointed out. ‘It’s obvious. There’s no door into the room. We’re looking through it now. They must have panelled over this door years ago and forgotten about it. Look at that filth everywhere.’

Rossiter was staring into the room, his mind staggered by its vastness.

‘You’re right,’ he murmured. ‘Now, when do we move in?’

Panel, by panel, they prised away the lower half of the door and nailed it on to a wooden frame, so that the dummy section could be replaced instantly.

Then, picking an afternoon when the house was half empty and the manager asleep in his basement office, they made their first foray into the room, Ward going in alone while Rossiter kept guard in the cubicle.

For an hour they exchanged places, wandering silently around the dusty room, stretching their arms out to feel its unconfined emptiness, grasping at the sensation of absolute spatial freedom. Although smaller than many of the sub-divided rooms in which they had lived, this room seemed infinitely larger, its walls huge cliffs that soared upward to the skylight.

Finally, two or three days later, they moved in.

For the first week Rossiter slept alone in the room, Ward in the cubicle outside, both there together during the day. Gradually they smuggled in a few items of furniture: two armchairs, a table, a lamp fed from the socket in the cubicle. The furniture was heavy and Victorian; the cheapest available, its size emphasized the emptiness of the room. Pride of place was taken by an enormous mahogany wardrobe, fitted with carved angels and castellated mirrors, which they were forced to dismantle and carry into the house in their suitcases. Towering over them, it reminded Ward of the micro-films of gothic cathedrals, with their massive organ lofts crossing vast naves.

After three weeks they both slept in the room, finding the cubicle unbearably cramped. An imitation Japanese screen divided the room adequately and did nothing to diminish its size. Sitting there in the evenings, surrounded by his books and albums, Ward steadily forgot the city outside. Luckily he reached the library by a back alley and avoided the crowded streets. Rossiter and himself began to seem the only real inhabitants of the world, everyone else a meaningless by-product of their own existence, a random replication of identity which had run out of control.

It was Rossiter who suggested that they ask the two girls to share the room with them.

‘They’ve been kicked out again and may have to split up,’ he told Ward, obviously worried that Judith might fall into bad company. ‘There’s always a rent freeze after a revaluation but all the landlords know about it so they’re not reletting. It’s damned difficult to find anywhere.’