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.’
Selina was extremely slim. The question of weight and measurement was very important on the top floor. The ability or otherwise to wriggle sideways through the lavatory window would be one of those tests that only went to prove the club’s food policy to be unnecessarily fattening.
‘Suicidal,’ said Jane Wright who was miserable about her fatness and spent much of her time in eager dread of the next meal, and in making resolutions what to eat of it and what to leave, and in making counter-resolutions in view of the fact that her work at the publishers’ was essentially mental, which meant that her brain had to be fed more than most people’s.
Among the five top-floor members only Selina Redwood and Anne Baberton could manage to wriggle through the lavatory window, and Anne only managed it naked, having made her body slippery with margarine. After the first attempt, when she had twisted her ankle on the downward leap and grazed her skin on the return clamber, Anne said she would in future use her soap ration to facilitate the exit. Soap was as tightly rationed as margarine but more precious, for margarine was fattening, anyway. Face cream was too expensive to waste on the window venture.
Jane Wright could not see why Anne was so concerned about her one inch and a half on the hips more than Selina’s, since Anne was already slender and already fixed up for marriage. She stood on the lavatory seat and threw out Anne’s faded green dressing-gown for her to drape round her slippery body and asked what it was like out there. The two other girls on the floor were away for the week-end on this occasion.
Anne and Selina were peeping over the edge of the flat roof at a point where Jane could not see them. They returned to report that they had looked down on the back garden where Greggie was holding her conducted tour of the premises for ‘the benefit of two new members. She had been showing them the spot where the bomb had fallen and failed to go off, and had been removed by a bomb-squad, during which operation everyone had been obliged to leave the house. Greggie had also been showing them the spot where, in her opinion, an unexploded bomb still lay.
The girls got themselves back into the house.
‘Greggie and her sensations’: Jane felt she could scream. She added, ‘Cheese pie for supper tonight, guess how many calories?’
The answer, when they looked up the chart, was roughly 350 calories. ‘Followed by stewed cherries,’ said Jane, ‘94 calories normal helping unless sweetened by saccharine, in which case 64 calories. We’ve had over a thousand calories today already. It’s always the same on Sundays. The bread-and-butter pudding alone was—’
‘I didn’t eat the bread-and-butter pudding,’ said Anne. ‘Bread-and-butter pudding is suicidal.’
‘I only eat a little bit of everything,’ Selina said. ‘I feel starved all the time, actually.’
‘Well, I’m doing brain-work,’ said Jane.
Anne was walking about the landing sponging off all the margarine. She said, ‘I’ve had to use up soap and margarine as well.’
‘I can’t lend you any soap this month,’ Selina said. Selina had a regular supply of soap from an American Army officer who got it from a source of many desirable things, called the P.X. But she was accumulating a hoard of it, and had stopped lending.
Anne said, ‘I don’t want your bloody soap. Just don’t ask for the taffeta, that’s all.’
By this she meant a Schiaparelli taffeta evening dress which had been given to her by a fabulously rich aunt, after one wearing. This marvellous dress, which caused a stir wherever it went, was shared by all the top floor on special occasions, excluding Jane whom it did not fit. For lending it out Anne got various returns, such as free clothing coupons or a half-used piece of soap.
Jane went back to her brain-work and shut the door with a definite click. She was rather tyrannous about her brain-work, and made a fuss about other people’s wirelesses on the landing, and about the petty-mindedness of these haggling bouts that took place with Anne when the taffeta dress was wanted to support the rising wave of long-dress parties.
‘You can’t wear it to the Milroy. It’s been twice to the Milroy … it’s been to Quaglino’s, Selina wore it to Quags, it’s getting known all over London.