Open Writing

One night the landlady, Mrs Bream, young but a widow, came up to my room.

'How many wives have you had?' she asked, sitting down opposite me at the table where I was reading.

'None,' I said.

'And how many widows?'

'Ha, ha, that's very funny,' I said.

Leaning forward, she said, 'You and I get on well, don't we?'

She touched the top of the tall green vase on the table.

'We certainly do,' I said, trembling.

'You think about me a lot, don't you?'

I watched her fingers moving slowly on the vase and she smiled at me but then she said, 'No ... you're too young.'

*

A smart-suited middle-aged man, calling himself Lenny de Glader, came to live in the room below mine. He had slicked-back black hair.

I heard Mrs Bream laughing and talking to him on the stairs.

The first time I met him he said, 'Cheer up, mate.'

In my opinion he had an aura of gangland about him - but perhaps I'd been reading too many crime stories.

I asked Mrs Bream about him. 'Oh, Lenny is different,' she said, coyly.

*
She knocked at my door. Her face was bruised and she was in tears.

'I am so sorry to trouble you,' she said. 'It's just that I -'

'It's no trouble,' I said. 'Come in ... Would you like a cup of tea?'

'Well,' she said, 'I'd prefer a whisky but a cup of tea will do nicely.'

Ah, so that was it, I thought. She liked whisky, did she? Next time I would make sure that I had a bottle to hand.

'You don't know the first thing about women, do you?' she said.