Above this, on the first floor, where, in the former days of private wealth, an enormous ballroom had existed, an enormous dormitory now existed. This was curtained off into numerous cubicles. Here lived the very youngest members, girls between the ages of eighteen and twenty who had not long moved out of the cubicles of school dormitories throughout the English countryside, and who understood dormitory life from start to finish. The girls on this floor were not yet experienced in discussing men. Everything turned on whether the man in question was a good dancer and had a sense of humour. The Air Force was mostly favoured, and a D.F.C. was an asset. A Battle of Britain record aged a man in the eyes of the first-floor dormitory, in the year 1945. Dunkirk, too, was largely something that their fathers had done. It was the air heroes of the Normandy landing who were popular, lounging among the cushions in the drawing-room. They gave full entertainment value:
‘Do you know the story of the two cats that went to Wimbledon? — Well, one cat persuaded another to go to Wimbledon to watch the tennis. After a few sets one cat said to the other, “I must say, I’m bloody bored. I honestly can’t see why you’re so interested in this game of tennis.” And the other cat replied, “Well, my father’s in the racquet! “‘
‘No!’ shrieked the girls, and duly doubled up.
‘But that’s not the end of the story. There was a colonel sitting behind these two cats. He was watching the tennis because the war was on and so there wasn’t anything for him to do. Well, this colonel had his dog with him. So when the cats started talking to each other the dog turned to the colonel and said, “Do you hear those two cats in front of us?” “No, shut up,” said the colonel, “I’m concentrating on the game.” “All right,” said the dog — very happy this dog, you know — “I only thought you might be interested in a couple of cats that can talk.”’
‘Really,’ said the voice of the dormitory later on, a twittering outburst, ‘what a wizard sense ‘of humour!’ They were like birds waking up instead of girls going to bed, since ‘Really, what a wizard sense of humour’ would be the approximate collective euphony of the birds in the park five hours later, if anyone was listening.
On the floor above the dormitory were the rooms of the staff and the shared bedrooms of those who could afford shared bedrooms rather than a cubicle. Those who shared, four or two to a room, tended to be young women in transit, or temporary members looking for flats and bed-sitting rooms. Here, on the second floor, two of the elder spinsters, Collie and Jarvie. shared a room as they had done for eight years, since they were saving money now for their old age.
But on the floor above that, there seemed to have congregated, by instinctive consent, most of the celibates, the old maids of settled character and various ages, those who had decided on a spinster’s life, and those who would one day do so but had not yet discerned the fact for themselves.
This third-floor landing had contained five large bedrooms, now partitioned by builders into ten small ones. The occupants ranged from prim and pretty young virgins who would never become fully-wakened women, to bossy ones in their late twenties who were too wide-awake ever to surrender to any man. Greggie, the third of the elder spinsters, had her room on this floor. She was the least prim and the kindest of the women there.
On this floor was the room of a mad girl, Pauline Fox, who was wont to dress carefully on certain evenings in the long dresses which were swiftly and temporarily reverted to in the years immediately following the war. She also wore long white gloves, and her hair was long, curling over her shoulders. On these evenings she said she was going to dine with the famous actor, Jack Buchanan. No one disbelieved her outright, and her madness was undetected.
Here, too, was Joanna Childe’s room from which she could be heard practising her elocution at times when the recreation room was occupied.
All the flowers of the spring
Meet to perfume our burying;
At the top of the house, on the fourth floor, the most attractive, sophisticated and lively girls had their rooms. They were filled with deeper and deeper social longings of various kinds, as peace-time crept over everyone. Five girls occupied the five top rooms. Three of them had lovers in addition to menfriends with whom they did not sleep but whom they cultivated with a view to marriage. Of the remaining two, one was almost engaged to be married, and the other was Jane Wright, fat but intellectually glamorous by virtue of the fact that she worked for a publisher She was on the look-out for a husband, meanwhile being mixed up with young intellectuals.
Nothing but the roof-tops lay above this floor, now inaccessible by the trap-door in the bathroom ceiling — a mere useless square since it had been bricked up long ago before the war after a girl had been attacked by a burglar or a lover who had entered by it — attacked or merely confronted unexpectedly, or found in bed with him as some said; as the case might be, he left behind him a legend of many screams in the night and the skylight had been henceforth closed to the public. Workmen who, from time to time, were called in to do something up above the house had to approach the roof from the attic of a neighbouring hotel. Greggie claimed to know all about the story, she knew everything about the club. Indeed it was Greggie who, inspired by a shaft of remembrance, had directed the warden to the hoard of mud-coloured wall-paper in the cupboard which now defiled the walls of the drawing-room and leered in the sunlight at everyone. The top-floor girls had often thought it might be a good idea to sunbathe on the flat portion of the roof and had climbed up on chairs to see about the opening of the trap-door. But it would not budge, and Greggie had once more told them why. Greggie produced a better version of the story every time.
‘If there was a fire, we’d be stuck,’ said Selina Redwood who was exceedingly beautiful..
‘You’ve obviously been taking no notice of the emergency instructions,’ Greggie said. This was true. Selina was seldom in to dinner and so she had never heard them. Four times a year the emergency instructions were read out by the warden after dinner, on which nights no guests were allowed. The top floor was served for emergency purposes by a hack staircase leading down two flights to the perfectly sound fire-escape, and by the fire-equipment which lay around everywhere in the club. On these evenings of no guests the members were also reminded about putting things down lavatories, and the difficulties of plumbing systems in old houses, and of obtaining plumbers these days. They were reminded that they were expected to put everything back in place after a dance had been held in the club. Why some members unfortunately just went off to night clubs with their men-friends and left everything to others, said the warden, she simply did not know.
Selina had missed all this, never having been in to dinner on the warden’s nights. From her window she could see, level with the top floor of the house, and set back behind the chimney pots, the portion of flat roof, shared by the club with the hotel next door, which would have been ideal for sunbathing. There was no access to any part of the roof from the bedroom windows, but one day she noticed that it was accessible from the lavatory window, a narrow slit made narrower by the fact that the wall in which it was set had been sub-divided at some point in the house’s history when the wash-rooms had been put in. One had to climb upon the lavatory seat to see the roof. Selina measured the window. The aperture was seven inches wide by fourteen inches long. It opened casement- wise.
‘I believe I could get through the lavatory window,’ she said to Anne Baberton who occupied the room opposite hers.
‘Why do you want to get through the lavatory window?’ said Anne.
‘It leads out to the roof. There’s only a short jump from the window.’
