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 pried 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 subdivided 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 byproduct 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 re-letting.
It's damned difficult to find anywhere.'
Ward nodded, relaxing back around the circular redwood table. He played with-the tassel of the arsenic-green lamp shade, for a moment felt like a victorian man of letters, leading a spacious, leisurely life among overstuffed furnishings.
I'm all for it,' he agreed, indicating the empty corners.
'There's plenty of room here. But we'll have to make Sure they don't gossip about it.'
After due precautions, they let the two girls into the secret, enjoying their astonishment at finding this private universe.
'We'll put a partition across the middle,' Rossiter explained, 'then take it down each morning. You'll be able to move in within a couple of days. How do you feel?'
'Wonderful I' They goggled at the wardrobe, squinting at the endless reflections in the mirrors.
There was no difficulty getting them in and out of the house. The turnover of tenants was continuous and bills were' placed in the mail rack. No one eared who the girls were or noticed their regular calls at the cubicle.
However, half an hour after they arrived neither of them had unpacked her suitcase.
'What's up, Judith?' Ward asked, edging past the girls'
beds into the narrow interval between the table and wardrobe.
Judith hesitated, looking from Ward to Rossiter, who sat on the bed, finishing off the plywood partition. 'John, it's just that…'
Helen Waring, more matter-of-fact, took over, her fingers straightening the bed-spread. 'What Judith's trying to say is that our position here is a little embarrassing. The partition Rossiter stood up. 'For heaven's sake, don't worry, Helen,' he assured her, speaking in the loud whisper they had all involuntarily cultivated. 'No funny business, you can trust us. This partition is as solid as a rock.'
The two girls nodded. 'It's not that,' Helen explained, 'but it isn't up all the time. We thought that if an older person were here, say Judith's aunt - she wouldn't take up much room and be no trouble, she's really awfully sweet - we wouldn't need to bother about the partition - except at night,' she added quickly.
Ward glanced at Rossiter, who shrugged and began to scan the floor.
'Well, it's an idea,' Rossiter said. 'John and I know how you feel. Why not?'
'Sure,' Ward agreed. He printed to the space between the girls' beds and the table. 'One more won't make any difference.'
The girls broke into whoops. Judith went over to Rossiter and kissed him on the cheek. 'Sorry to be a nuisance, Henry.'
She smiled at him. 'That's a wonderful partition you've made. You couldn't do another one for Auntie -just a little one? She's very sweet but she is getting on.'
'Of course,' Rossiter said. 'I understand. I've got plenty of wood left over.'
Ward looked at his watch. 'It's seven-thirty, Judith.
You'd better get in touch with your aunt. She may not be able to make it tonight.'
Judith buttoned her coat. 'Oh she will,' she assured Ward.
'I'll be back in a jiffy.'
The aunt arrived within five minutes, three heavy suitcases soundly packed.
'It's amazing,' Ward remarked to Rossiter three months later. 'The size of this room still staggers me. It almost gets larger every day.'
Rossiter agreed readily, averting his eyes from one of the girls changing behind the central partition. This they now left in place as dismantling it daily had become tiresome.
Besides, the aunt's subsidiary partition was attached to it and she resented the continuous upsets. Ensuring she followed the entrance and exit drills through the camouflaged door and cubicle was difficult enough.
Despite this, detection seemed unlikely. The room had obviously been built as an afterthought into the central well of the house and any noise was masked by the luggage stacked in the surrounding corridor. Directly below was a small dormitory occupied by several elderly women, and Judith's aunt, who visited them socially, swore that no sounds came through the heavy ceiling. Above, the fanlight let out through a dormer window, its lights indistinguishable from the hundred other bulbs in the windows of the house. Rossiter finished off the new partition he was building and held it upright, fitting it into the slots nailed to the wall between his bed and Ward's. They had agreed that this would provide a little extra privacy. 'No doubt I'll have to do one for Judith and Helen,' he confided to Ward.
Ward adjusted his pillow. They had smuggled the two armchairs back to the furniture shop as they took up too much space. The bed, anyway, was more comfortable. He had never become completely used to the soft upholstery. 'Not a bad idea. What about some shelving around the wall? I've got nowhere to put anything.'
The shelving tidied the room considerably, freeing large areas of the floor. Divided by their partitions, the five beds were in line along the rear wall, facing the mahogany wardrobe.