The back bedroom was small, chilly, damp and lonely.
It was crammed up in the eaves of a dilapidated boarding house at the far end of an unfashionable promenade in a run down seaside town. No one used it now, rarely visited, never tenanted, shut up and left alone at the top of a narrow staircase. A forgotten room for forgotten things. Left out of the life of the house, unwarmed and silent. And lonely.
You had to try, didn’t you? One last sale before Christmas and you didn’t get it if you didn’t try. He had been explaining the security benefits of shutters to the young couple when the first fat flakes of snow began to fall and had been measuring up the windows when he saw the drifts starting to collect. He had wondered aloud about the roads being closed as they looked at samples and watched their faces shut against him and known in that moment that he was not going to make the sale and that he was going to be snowed in.
But you had to try. It was trying had got him this room. The last room. The back bedroom that no one wanted.
Everywhere else had been closed up, and he was beginning to think he would have to sleep in the car when he had seen one last light on at the end of the street.
It was off season, the woman had said, everything was shut up, being renovated. He wasn’t sure the town had an on-season. Driving in he had noticed that part of the pebbled beach had been tarmac’d over and an old woman was parked on it in her mobility scooter, feebly throwing chips out at the gulls that whirled around her.
But he had tried. He was a salesman. It’s what he did. Perhaps, she said, perhaps there was a room. The back bedroom at the top of the house. Don’t expect much and mind the stairs.
She had even made him a toasted sandwich in the Breville, sat in the dining room full of empty tables for bed and breakfast guests long gone and not yet come and watched him eat it as the silent snow fell outside.
Did he like children? She had asked and he had told her about his son. How he would see him on Boxing Day, maybe take the boy to see his grandmother: she’d like that. Not that the boy would see him, his face bent over the blue glow of his phone, headphones on. But you had to try, didn’t you?
And so he had the room. He pulled the curtains aside. Snow still fell pointlessly on a sea the colour of the shore, the colour of the road, the colour of the sky. Shades of grey lit orange by street lights.
It was only for one night.
He sat down on the bed and it complained of his weight. You had to look on the bright side, didn’t you? The sheets were cold and damp, the pillow threadbare. You had to try.
At the end of the bed, which was exactly as long as the room (how had they got it in?), there was a narrow shelf, hanging over his feet. The last resting place of unwanted ornaments. This was the room that forgotten things ended up in. A worn out carpet, a faded print of a landscape on the wall: a path through a dark wood to a distant cottage, a broken shaded lamp on a rickety bedside table. And on the shelf, a china house, meant to be lit from inside by a candle, the windows now dark, a sepia picture of an old fashioned child, the frame damaged, a dusty ship in a bottle, and a stuffed owl, a tiny one, under a dome, one glass eye a milky star where it had been shattered.
One night, that was all. Surely by tomorrow the roads would be cleared and he could be away. The whole town was muffled by snow. Nothing came and went on the street outside, just the uninterrupted dim fiery glow of the sodium lights. The house was still. Someone somewhere must be doing something. That young couple drinking somewhere, or dancing, or having sex. Or just curled up on their sofa, watching TV. Just that.
He looked at his phone. Still no signal. And turned out the light.
The room wasn’t dark. Street light reflecting off snow leeched through the thin curtains. Something in the corner of his eye glowed. He started round: a face. There, down by the skirting board, a tiny face looking up at him, shining a baleful green.
He switched the light back on. A sticker. Right down in the corner at the bottom of the wall. A child’s sticker, some kind of monster or something. A little hairy creature with a glow in the dark face. He switched the light off and rolled on groaning springs so he couldn’t see it any more.
And he woke suddenly, sweating. He had been dreaming of the ship in the bottle. He had been on it, pitching on heaving seas. Waves that swelled and broke back from the glass walls around them, groaning thunder echoing in the tiny space, while outside, beyond the bottle, he had been able to see the still, empty, lonely room.
He lay staring at the blank black windows of the china house on the shelf. The faint street light kindled a yellow glimmer in the owl’s one good eye. A sudden gust rattled the windows and the curtains twitched, the dim light shifted and something in the house seemed to move. For a brief moment a tiny white face showed in the shadows behind the dark holes of windows, flitting through the cold porcelain rooms. He looked away instinctively and then back. It was gone.
Wait. The picture of the boy. Had the child been sitting forward like that? The face pressed up towards the glass? He was sure the boy had been sat back, his arms folded over his sailor suit, his face the solemn mask of old photographs. Now he was leaning out, hands on his knees, his stare intent.
He must be wrong. So many pictures like that in so many boarding houses. So many bored child sitting still for the camera. He’d just assumed.
The child’s stare felt accusatory. All alone up here in the back bedroom. What had he done to deserve that? Who had the child been, he wondered? A member of the owner’s family? Just some photograph bought in a flea market to decorate a room? People did that, he knew. It felt odd to him, buying someone else’s memories, drafting in some other family’s ghosts.
He flinched away from the photograph’s unwavering stare. Down by the floor the monster sticker still glowed, dimmer now, fading, a ghostly little face still glaring up at him.
This must have been a child’s room once, he supposed. And what had become of that child, he wondered? Grown up and moved away. A child’s room was their world, their life. They discovered who they were and wrote it on the room, filled it with their dreams and plans and fantasies. His room as a child had been full of drawings: drawings of houses, drawings and Lego models. He had wanted to be an architect. God knows what had given him that idea.
What had this child wanted to be? What had been dreamt in this room? And what had that child wanted to be, the one in the photograph?
Had the expression changed? It seemed more antagonistic now, fervent, angry.
He wasn’t an architect, of course. He had tried. You had to try. But it was expensive, the training, and hard. And he had failed. He had tried interior design, oh how he had tried. Tried to make people see their houses full of life and joy, tried to make them believe he knew what he was doing. Tried to make his wife believe he knew what we was doing. Tried to pretend that everything was alright, tried to give his boy the life he wanted to give him, tried to make everything work. But he had failed. And so the marriage had failed too.
The child in the photograph stared at him. A middle-aged man who tried. Who had tried and who had failed. He looked away from the photograph. This room. All he had wanted to do was make houses, make rooms that people would fill with life, with their plans and dreams. Not rooms like this, lonely rooms full of forgotten things. Forgotten people.
The picture on the wall was of a wood. A bare path through winter trees. Snow on the ground and a watery moon behind bare branches. In the distance, the path lead to a small cottage. Once perhaps it had been a heart warming scene, a kind light at the end of a cold journey, but age had faded it and in the faint light filtering through the curtains it was shadowy. The cottage had grown more distant, mistier, the glow in the window was not welcoming. It was the pale light of bad news, a sick room, an unhappy task.
And here he was, at the far end of that path, a man in middle age, in the middle of a wood, lost in the snow. He had tried, he had ventured, and for what? A smart, happy couple who had looked at his samples without interest, who taken in with disgust his worn shoes, the damp cuffs of his trousers, the shiny elbows, who had wanted nothing more than him out of their house, out in the storm.
What was this journey for? What was this trying for? A wife who had left him the moment she knew the money was gone? A son who wouldn’t even look him in the eye? A mother who wondered what had happened to her promising child?
What were those dreams for? Dreams that could only be disappointments. A constant uphill slog through a wet and shivering wood where each turn in the road was a new upset, each destination the wrong one. And where did it get you? A cold and empty cottage, a lonely room at the end, a bare patch of ground in a municipal cemetery, a name on a stone that weathered away to insignificance. What had you brought to the world but the weight of your own failure? A weight that would be swallowed by the earth and be forgotten?
What was trying for? Why keep trying? Why keep putting a brave face on it, keep smiling? The end was the same, whatever road you took. So why not take the shortcut? Why not just stop?
Just one more try. Your belt or that bloody tie, the same bloody present every year because no one could think of anything else you might like, because none of them could even think of what your dreams might be, what your wants, your fantasies - just buy him a tie, its what he had last year, he’s happy with it. The same bloody tie, the noose you wear every day to the endless sacrifice of yourself. One last effort.
And he found himself standing in the gap between the bed and the wall, tie in hand, wondering if the light flex could take his weight.
And stopped.
What was this? What was going on? Killing himself? Him, who had picked himself up so many times, who kept on trying? What was he thinking?
It was this damn room - it was the room. This cold and lonely room. The small hours of the morning, silent and empty; a dark night of the soul. If a room could be a life, be home, be a welcome and a sanctuary, what happened if you left them alone? If you took the life out of them, left them uncared for, what did they become then?
He had to get out.
There was a sudden tap, like a spoon on a cup. A scratch. He looked up. And the stuffed owl turned it’s crazed, blank eye at him, spread it wings and beat them against its dome in a fluttering rush, its claws scrabbling against the glass.
He broke and jumped for the door, the tie in his hand slipping against the handle. The wings beat furiously. The handle turned at last. He wrenched the door open. And forgot the stairs.
The room was at the very top of the house and the landlady must not have heard him fall. She did not find him until the next morning when it was too late and he was cold.
The back bedroom was small, chilly, damp; a room for forgotten furniture, for rugs too worn for best, for threadbare sheets and broken lamps. A room for forgotten objects, a stuffed owl with a blinded eye, a faded picture, an old photograph that no one recognised anymore. A room for forgotten people, a failing salesman who had died there and had left not much more behind him than a story of a terrible accident. Things that hadn’t wanted to go there and now would never leave.
The back bedroom was small, chilly, damp, but not so lonely anymore. Someone stayed there now.