The room was advertised as a sun-filled, spacious double with inbuilt wardrobes and the listing included photos of a bed frame with sagging timber slats, an off-kilter hills hoist in a concrete back yard, and a narrow linoleum kitchen. No couples, pets or smoking. Available immediately and no references required.
I arrived for the viewing early and waited beside a pile of rubbish presumably dumped by a previous tenant. They had left their mattress with its corner edged into the drain, absorbing the damp. An upended cardboard box spilling old clothes, takeaway coffee cups and paperback books onto the footpath. A broken sandwich press with its wiring disembowelled. A dusty pedestal fan, a bookcase with collapsing shelves, a terracotta pot filled with dried dirt and dead leaves, and a plastic shower mat with its suction caps ringed in mould.
“Here for the viewing?” A woman squinted at me from behind the screen door. I nodded and she waved me inside. “I’m the house manager”, she said. She was wearing a tracksuit set and a coral lipstick that bled into the corners of her mouth. “Let’s head upstairs”. She gestured for me to go first and followed too closely behind me. The staircase was eerie, lit up in pink from the red stained-glass panel above the landing. “There’s Wi-Fi, a washing machine and dryer, and a kitchen downstairs. Bin night is Tuesday and rent day is Thursday. No pets, no overnight visitors, no smoking in the house, no parties, no drugs, and no noise after 10 pm. The train is five minutes away, very convenient”.
I continued slowly up a dark hallway of closed bedrooms, unsure which was mine. “There’s two bathrooms and nine bedrooms with a few still vacant. It’s not a party house, but if you have quiet friends, they’re welcome to apply. Alright this is the one”. I stopped at the end of the hall and tried the handle, but the door was locked.
“For security”, explained the manager. I stepped aside and she pulled a chain of keyrings from her tracksuit pocket, each identified by different coloured tags. “You’re working?” She asked while she searched for my colour in the weak light.
“Studying”.
“We don’t accept rent late”, she looked at me severely. “We have a no tolerance policy, understood?”
“Yeah”.
She unlocked the door and turned on the ceiling light, revealing a carpet patched with dark stains and the empty bedframe from the online ad. The room smelled damp and the air was still, as though it had been left shuttered up for weeks.
“Excuse me a minute”, said the manager. “I just have to make a quick call. Feel free to take a look around”.
I edged past the bed and pulled open the heavy curtains, releasing a light showering of dust into the air. I held my breath and cranked the window handle, the hinges squealing as it inched open. Across the road, I had a view of the plastic chairs and glass table on the neighbours’ back veranda, surrounded by overgrown thickets of wisteria and climbing weeds. A grey cat slinked along the edge of the fence, moving quickly with her ears down flat.
I turned back to the room and opened the mirrored sliding door to examine the inbuilt cupboard. Musty but spacious, with a pressed flower left behind on a shelf, its petals browned and paper-thin.
“Plenty of room for storage”. The manager leaned against the door frame, texting on her phone. “Any questions?”
“Not really”.
“Great. If you transfer the bond now, you can move in right away”. She handed me the keyring attached to the dark red tag and I noticed her nails were sharpened and lacquered in coral polish to match her lipstick. “I’ll email you the lease, just have it signed by this time tomorrow and leave it in the mailbox”.
I agreed and she left me alone to settle in. I perched on the edge of the empty bedframe for a moment, watching particles of dust dance in the weak light and trying to convince myself that the room would be homey once I moved in.
I signed the lease that afternoon, agreeing not to blue-tack or sticky-tape the walls, move the furniture or use the Internet for piracy. My ex-boyfriend dropped off the boxes I’d stored in the cavity under his stairs and offered to help carry them upstairs, but I didn’t want him to see my room. Between the two of us, we had managed to afford a ground floor apartment that filled with morning light and overlooked a quiet tree-lined street. I missed our second-hand corduroy couch and espresso machine gifted from his mother, our linen handtowels and matching cutlery set. I missed the woody smell of our bookshelves and the sweet jasmine I’d planted in our small front garden.
I set about preparing my new room by purchasing a mattress online, which arrived jockey-strapped to the seller’s car the following day. I checked out of the hostel I’d been staying in temporarily and heaved my suitcase up the red-tinted staircase. I found a cheap set of sheets, duvet and pillow at IKEA and carried them home in oversized blue bags on the train.
I balanced on my bedpost to reach the curtain rod and removed the oppressive curtains to allow some light into the room. I enjoyed the bare look of my walls for an afternoon, but quickly replaced the curtains when I realised the neighbours could see me easily from their back garden, where they spent their evenings smoking and playing backgammon. I scrubbed at the carpet without success and purchased a mandala-patterned rug to cover the worst of the stains. I piled my books under the windowsill and used a small square of illicit sticky tape to fix a Paul Cezanne print to the wall. I liked the look of the painted skull and overripe pears perched on their tablecloth of crisp white linen.
There wasn’t any space for my toiletries in the bathroom. Mould latticed the tiles, and the floor was slicked wet and littered with soggy toilet rolls. To make room in the fridge, I disposed of an expired tub of yoghurt and a bowl of something discoloured and slimy. The kitchen benches were cluttered with piles of unwashed dishes, sticky cockroach traps, smears of dried sauce and ossified crumbs.
I never managed to cross paths with my new housemates, though I sometimes heard the toilet flush, or the creak of a footstep on the staircase. Doors shut and locked, and letters were collected from where I left them on the kitchen bench. One morning, I found a knife freshly coated in jam balanced on the edge of the kitchen sink. A mildewy bath towel hung out to dry on the hills hoist. Food burned to the bottom of a skillet left to soak on the stove. A new box of peppermint tea beside the kettle. Bin overfilled with sweet potato peels, avocado shells and coffee grounds. The bedroom next to mine was so quiet I assumed it was vacant until I heard a phone ringing out through the wall.
I became accustomed to the eeriness of this house of locked bedrooms and spent most of my time on my bedroom floor with a pillow at my back, typing out seminar notes until my computer overheated in my lap. Cezanne’s skull watched over me with a painted stare as I read novels and made myself cups of instant coffee with the kettle I kept on my bedside table. I eavesdropped on the neighbours at night when they complained about their office jobs and planned weekend trips to the beach. Sometimes I looked at advertisements for apartments I couldn’t afford with high ceilings, tasteful furnishings and floor-to-ceiling windows.
I was lying on my bed watching reflected sunlight streak across my ceiling from passing cars, when I heard the front door open and the house manager entered, explaining her policy on guests, pets and cigarettes as she led a prospective tenant up the stairs.
“What about my boyfriend?”
“Not permitted, sorry. The walls are too thin. Here’s your room”. Jangle of keys and click of the latch.
“No window?”
“Up there, in the ceiling”.
Silence while she considered her options. Maybe she visualised the room decorated with a houseplant or a string of fairy-lights. Maybe she thought about the musty smell and whether it would dissipate if she kept her bedroom door open for a few days. Maybe she wondered whether she would lose her mind in a room without windows.
“I guess I’ll take it”, she said. “At least for now”.
*****
Photography Credit: Jason Rice
Amanda Jayne is an emerging writer based in Sydney, Australia and has a short story forthcoming in a print anthology with Spineless Wonders. She’s published essays in on memory in intergenerational fiction and on the East German writer Christa Wolf and she holds an MPhil in Comparative Literature from Oxford University.
