To Room Nineteen

The narrator states that the story is about a “failure of intelligence” and that Susan and Matthew Rawlings had a marriage based in intelligence. They married in their late 20s, later than many of their friends. To them, this seemed like a sign that they were sensible people: not only were they rational enough to wait to be sure of each other, they also didn’t wait so long that both of them were desperate to marry in spite of any incompatibilities. Additionally, they are well-matched, as both are steady, reliable people. Their marriage makes sense to all of their friends, although no one considered the possibility of them marrying prior to this. But when they do marry, it is a happy occasion: it seems that they’ll have the good sense to build a solid, respectable marriage and household together.

Both Susan Rawlings and Matthew Rawlings have well-paying, sensible jobs prior to their marriage. Matthew is an editor for a London newspaper, and Susan works for an ad company. Although neither is passionate about the work they do, they both are content with their jobs: Matthew’s work helps others shine in the spotlight, and Susan is talented at commercial drawing, although she does not take it seriously. Their stable jobs have allowed both to have their own separate places to live, but they decide to get a new place together to avoid anyone feeling like they had to integrate into the other’s space. They move into a new flat, knowing that they will eventually buy a home together and start a family.

Susan and Matthew live in the new flat together for two years: they go to their friends’ parties and host their own as a popular and generally beloved young couple. When Susan becomes pregnant, however, she quits her job at the advertisement agency, and the couple buys a house in Richmond. The Rawlings even have children in a conventional manner: they first have a son, then a daughter, then twins. Those around them feel that this is a manifestation of the couple’s good sense, believing this birth order has befallen them simply because they are a couple that always chooses right. The family of six lives a happy, prosperous life in Richmond. On paper, it is what Matthew and Susan dreamed of, and both devote their steadiness towards this life and their family. 

However, neither Susan nor Matthew has a central purpose. They care for their children, but they don’t depend on them for purpose. Matthew’s job is something he is proud of doing well, but he isn’t proud of the work. Susan and Matthew’s love comes closest: it is, after all, for the sake of this love they have this life. Although neither are certain that it (although extraordinary) is strong enough to be their driving purpose, neither blames the other. Instead, they both view it as inevitable: an expected consequence of their marriage. They preserve themselves as a family unit and stay in Richmond, meaning that Matthew can stay present in his family’s life even if he must work—he isn’t like other husbands who keep flats of their own in the city and end up having affairs.

Susan does not take on a new job, even though it would afford her more independence. She and Matthew agree that the children need her to be fully present now, and once they are grown, she can go back to her work. In this rational manner, the couple deals with many of the conflicts that break apart other couples they know. However, neither of them feels wholly fulfilled by their marriage. As intelligent, well-read people, they both understand that this lacking nature of their relationship is to be expected, and they accept it with a sort of equanimity. 

When Matthew confesses to Susan that he went to a party and slept with a woman he met there, Susan understands him, even if she doesn’t forgive him. Both Susan and Matthew struggle to fit this new conflict into their view of the marriage, although both believe that their marriage will survive it. Susan in particular wrestles with trying to dismiss her knowledge of her husband’s infidelity: to call it unimportant seems to her that it would also render her own relationship with her husband unimportant. However, she tries to make a conscious effort to put the affair behind them.

It was always inevitable, Susan knows, that Matthew would meet pretty girls at parties and think of going home with them. It was also inevitable that Susan would feel bitterness over his infidelity. She tries to console herself with the knowledge that these one-night affairs do not compare to and could never threaten her marriage. However, she is increasingly met with the feeling that nothing in her life matters, even her children.

Still, Susan attempts to be rational. In spite of the affairs, which are all fleeting things, Susan and Matthew have a happy life together. Susan wonders if she herself might long for the adventure and forbidden nature of an affair, but her various caretaking responsibilities mean she does not have the same freedom Matthew does. For Matthew’s part, whenever he does have another affair, he comes home in a worse mood than normal. However, they still proceed with rationality above all else, refusing to quarrel or shed tears. Both Susan and Matthew believe that this is the necessary cost of their otherwise enviable life.

By the time Susan and Matthew are around 40, their two older children are at school and their younger two are at home. Susan has raised them thus far without any outside help: a decision she does not regret, in spite of her boredom. In another decade, she tells herself, she will be back to her own fully independent life. The twins are on the cusp of going to school, which means that Susan will have the house to herself during the morning and afternoon. She views these periods as a time for preparing for her own move back towards her own independence.

Matthew himself even comments on this: he has often explicitly praised Susan for the sacrifices she has made for their children. Susan views herself as not having changed since she was 28 and unmarried. The real Susan, the Susan she was before she married and had children, has not changed or developed since she married Matthew, with whom Susan has had discussions about her pause in growth since they started their family. Then, the twins go off to school for the first time and Susan is left alone in the house every day of the school year, other than the woman who comes in to clean.

On the first day the twins are at school, Susan returns home from drop-off excited for the full day of freedom ahead of her. At first, she finds herself restless: she worries about the twins and their first day of school. On the second day, Susan drops them off and returns, only to find herself reluctant to enter her own home. However, she continues to behave rationally: she enters against her own instinct, speaking to Mrs. Parkes (the woman who cleans the house), doing her household chores, and going upstairs. However, she finds herself restless: she moves back downstairs only to find herself unneeded in the kitchen, moving outside to the garden in an attempt to relax.

When Susan fails to relieve her own tension, she attempts to rationalize it: she believes she simply must relearn to be herself again, after 12 years of being a wife and mother before anything else. She begins to attempt to combat her own tension by keeping herself occupied. In fact, she takes up so many housekeeping tasks that she finds herself busier than she is when the children are home. As the days go by and the first school holiday approaches, Susan finds herself filled with resentment—she hates that her children will soon be home and her freedom will be taken away. However, when she truly considers it, she realizes she still has no freedom even when the children are in school: Mrs. Parkes is still in the house, and ultimately the entire place feels as if some unknown enemy is haunting her.

Despite her tumultuous emotions, Susan does not tell Matthew about them. She knows her emotions are not rational and does not understand the part of herself that is having them. Instead, she attempts to enjoy the holidays: having her four children in the house means that she never has a moment on her own. This means, Susan reasons, that she will have much to do and will not have to worry about finding things to occupy herself. However, only a few days into the holiday, she finds herself very much on edge and shouts at her two youngest over nothing. Horrified at her own behavior, she excuses herself to go lie down, although she hears her oldest son consoling her two youngest. 

When she tells Matthew of the incident that night, he does not understand the gravity with which she regards it: he attempts to make her laugh it off, and then, when that fails, comforts her with physical intimacy. Susan later realizes that this moment was the last time they were physically and emotionally intimate—and the moment wasn’t even true intimacy, as Susan was not able to fully convey the depths of her fears and feelings about the incident to him. Still, the holiday passes, and Susan once again drops the children off at school and returns home, determined to fight off her irrational impulses.

Back at home, Susan is so restless that she tries to help Mrs. Parkes, who insists that she stop. Susan forces herself to be quiet, attempting to sit in emptiness. However, every attempt she makes to think only about herself inevitably turns to her thinking about other people. Being in her house and so near to other people makes her anxious because she knows she’ll be called for. Instead, she leaves her house to go sit in the garden and waits for the demon she fears to come get her. She makes her own plans to be truly alone, where no one will come in to bother her about anything and she doesn’t need to think of anyone. She wants a place to be truly free, not just the seven hours where she’s filled with dread at the thought of her children returning to her house. 

Susan realizes that her own resentment is poisoning her: she feels like a prisoner, even though rationally she knows that this isn’t true. She thinks about telling Matthew but knows she can’t because she isn’t being logical. The next time the school holidays come around, she attempts to control herself so tightly that she feels insane. She hides herself in the bathroom or the spare room, taking as much time as she can to be alone before returning to her family, acting as a model wife and mother. Although she doesn’t snap once over the course of the holidays, she feels like she’s a prisoner more keenly than ever.

Susan attempts to tell Matthew about her feelings, but he doesn’t understand: by his reckoning, since the children are away, she should have more alone time than ever. Susan can’t explain her yearning for freedom to him: when she tries, he points out to her that none of them are truly free, and that he, too, is beholden to his duties as a husband and a father. This makes Susan feel guilty: she knows that Matthew is also trapped by their marriage and family, but wonders at his lack of resentment towards it. Still, her conversation with him pushes her to once again try and accept her feelings as something she can’t change and instead try to be grateful for her beautiful life.

Because of this conversation, however, Matthew puts a PRIVATE sign up on the spare room. Everyone in the household knows this is Susan’s room and that when she is in it, they shouldn’t disturb her. Matthew talks to the children about not taking their mother for granted: however, instead of having the intended effect, Susan finds herself annoyed by this. She doesn’t understand why such a large production must be made of this—she wants time to herself and doesn’t understand why it warrants such a fuss. Even when in the room, Susan finds it to be more constrictive than her own. While in the room one day, she sees and hears her children outside shushing each other so as not to disturb her. Instead of an oasis, the room becomes a lesson for their children about respecting privacy: eventually, the room loses its purpose to Susan and becomes another family room.

Susan is outwardly good-natured, but on the inside she finds herself seething with anger. The emotions inside her frighten her: she finds herself turning to prayer for the anger she feels, which in her mind she refers to as a kind of demon. She imagines this demon as a young man: one day, standing in the garden, she sees a physical manifestation of him toying with a snake. The instant she recognizes him, he vanishes. Susan takes this incident as proof that he’s real and that there really is a demon trying to take over her. She dreams of a place she can run to, a room where she can be totally alone and where no one knows where she is. Although it’s logistically infeasible, since she has no source of income, she desperately needs one.

 One day in the middle of the school year, Susan makes all the appropriate excuses and takes the train to Victoria, where she asks for a hotel room for the day. Susan lies about having a fictitious illness that means she needs the room to rest on her day trips: sympathetic, the hotel staff allows her to have the room for the day. Although nondescript, the room is exactly what Susan wants: she finds herself totally, completely alone. However, as she begins to luxuriate in it, Miss Townsend, the manager, brings her a cup of tea, worried about Susan’s health.

Miss Townsend, who is herself lonely, stays to chat with Susan, and the latter finds herself making up an elaborate web of lies to keep up the tale she’s spun about her own illness. She knows, however, that Miss Townsend would not understand her if she were to come clean. To Miss Townsend, Susan’s life is everything she would want. Ultimately, she settles her bill and leaves without fully achieving the aloneness she craves. Back at home, Mrs. Parkes says she does not enjoy it when Susan leaves for so long: the teacher phoned to ask about something related to one of her daughters, and Mrs. Parkes didn’t know how to respond. Susan knows Mrs. Parkes simply does not want the burden of the house entirely on her shoulders. Despite this, she knows she needs to try to leave again.

Susan does not know how she can gain the solitude she craves. She thinks about going back to her old employer to ask them to lie on her behalf, but she knows they would not understand. There are no part-time jobs she might be able to complete efficiently that would leave her with spare time. She also knows that Mrs. Parkes will not let her slip away unnoticed: Mrs. Parkes, Susan believes, is a natural-born “server”—someone who needs to serve others or at least be acknowledged by them. As Susan thinks, she finds herself prowling throughout the house, resenting her obligations and dreaming of solitude, and she realizes that she is insane.

Susan tells Matthew that she needs a holiday. He agrees, although she knows he is troubled and that he has come to feel that she is a stranger. She goes off on a holiday in Wales, but she’s tethered to her home by daily calls to check in with her husband and children. She feels that the mountains themselves are imprisoned by her obligation to her family and home. When she goes home, she tells Matthew she wants an au pair. He’s confused by this: it feels strange to him that they would hire one now, since the children are now mostly off at school, and Mrs. Parkes takes care of most of the household work. When he asks if she is going back to work, Susan says no.

Although Matthew continues to prod at what’s wrong with her, Susan pretends to be oblivious: she knows that by asking for an au pair, she is violating the foundations of their marriage and forsaking her duty as a mother. Matthew himself is only doing his duty perfunctorily, and the contract of their marriage seems to be crumbling. Even as he keeps asking if she is sure that they need one, Susan simply keeps repeating that she’s sure. None of his appeals reach her, and she sleeps next to him that night feeling like a stranger. They get the au pair, a young German girl named Sophie Traub who understands immediately that Susan is asking her to act as the head of the household in Susan’s own absence. Sophie is immediately well-liked by everyone in the household, even by Matthew, who has now given up on his own position as a husband and father.

Having hired Sophie, Susan takes herself to Paddington, where she finds a seedy hotel called Fred’s Hotel. Here, she meets the man she assumes is Fred: under the false name of Mrs. Jones, she proposes a deal where she pays him for three days a week in the hotel. Although he worries about the possibility that Susan is using the room for more nefarious purposes, she pays him more to secure the room. Although the room she is taken to (Room 19) is hideous and the man who takes her there seems to regard her presence there as unnatural, Susan has a full day of freedom, of being alone with no one knowing where she is. When, at five o’clock, Fred comes to notify her, Susan goes home in time to attend to all her usual household chores. Even as she goes through the motions, however, she dreams of that hotel room.

Susan begins to go to the hotel regularly, three times per week. Even though Fred disapproves of her presence there, he continues to let her into Room 19. Once in the room, Susan doesn’t do anything: she simply looks out the window onto a world where she is no longer a mother and a wife—instead, she is no one and has no past and no future. Susan imagines how her life might have looked if she had never had a family: she sees the world as if she were alone and finds herself loving it all the more dearly. Susan is able to use the time in the hotel room to simply think, to belong to herself and be beholden to no one else.

Susan even becomes possessive and refuses to take any other room besides Room 19, even if it means she has to wait for it to be available. She ultimately finds that her time spent in Room 19 makes her time back at her house both easier and harder: she feels as though she is playing a part, even though she gets along better than before with her family and staff. During the night, when she has sex with Matthew, she feels like an imposter: the real Susan is in Fred’s Hotel, waiting to be alone again. Susan increases her number of days to five days a week and asks Matthew for the money for the extra days, which he gives without asking her any questions, although he does not meet her eyes whenever he gives her the money. Sophie Traub becomes the de facto head of the house during the week.

Matthew is uneasy and asks Susan one night if she is certain that she is well. Although she says she’s sure, he’s not assured. He asks gently if the two of them are to go on like this. Susan, playing oblivious, says she doesn’t see why not. Matthew asks if she wants a divorce, but Susan nearly laughs out loud at the question, as she first thinks that he suspects she has a lover in London. However, she then realizes that he hopes that she will say that she does have a lover, because that would provide him with a rational explanation for her behavior. Instead, she turns the question on Matthew, asking if he wants a divorce. He demurs, even though he initially brought the topic up.

The next day, Susan asks Fred if anyone has come asking after her. Although he initially hesitates, he tells her that a man has come along asking about her, and that Fred provided him with a description. Although he attempts to lighten the situation with humor, Susan doesn’t laugh: eventually, when he has taken her up to her room, she finds that Room 19 is not the same, now that her husband has discovered her here. Since Matthew knows that Sophie is here, she is only here with his consent. At any moment, he might appear to take her back home. Matthew has put an end to everything, no matter how much Susan tries to shelter in the room. On every attempt to recapture what she once had, she finds that she cannot rediscover her solitude.

Susan tells Fred that she won’t be needing the room for a while, as she’ll be going on holiday. Upon her return home, she looks into her own house through the kitchen window. She sees Sophie, Mrs. Parkes, and her own children as if looking at strangers: she feels shut off from them. She imagines herself going inside and taking up her role, but then Sophie does exactly this, picking up her youngest child and singing to her. Seeing the scene, Susan is struck by a sense of farewell that moves her to tears. She goes inside without letting anyone know, sitting in her bedroom and looking at the trees. Susan feels at peace, but only because she knows that she has nothing to do with this house anymore: she has already departed from it.

Later, Susan goes down and has lunch with Sophie and her children, although she feels more like a guest than anything else. Then, a few days later, when Matthew gives Susan her weekly money, Susan refuses it. She tells Matthew there’s no point anymore, now that he knows where she’s been. He tells her that he was simply worried: she accepts this, and the fact that he had hoped she’d had a lover, with equanimity. Susan doesn’t know how to explain to him why she is so happy in the hotel room. Instead, she chooses to let him believe that she has been having an affair. This is an enormous relief to Matthew, who confesses that he’s been having an affair with Phil Hunt, a woman Susan knew in their unmarried days. Susan believes they’re not a good fit, and that Sophie would be a better one.

However, Susan now must create a story to support her lie. She tells Matthew that her fictitious lover’s name is Michael Plant, who has a wife and two children. When Matthew asks if they’re thinking of marrying, she vehemently denies it. He’s relieved, saying that they’ve been married for so long that he can’t imagine marrying anyone else. They sit together, and Susan is struck by the realization that she is wholly alone. The next day, Matthew proposes they make a foursome: Susan, cornered, agrees. She delays the lunch meeting by saying Michael is away. She is struck by how far she and Matthew have fallen from the honesty that once characterized their relationship. She pictures the four of them, Matthew and his lover and Susan and her imaginary partner, and realizes how her lie is absurd and unsustainable.

Susan lies in bed after Matthew goes to work, repulsed by her lie and the distance she feels from the life she used to lead. She thinks about the steps she might take to continue her ruse—finding a man to play her fictitious lover—but realizes that she cannot and will not continue this way. Instead, Susan finds her way back to her old hotel, where Fred tells her she must wait an hour for the use of Room 19. She waits out the time in a restaurant, watching people flow in and out. At her exit, she mentally dedicates the teahouse to Sophie, just as she had the big house she and Matthew had bought together. Susan returns to the hotel and enters Room 19. The room is exactly how she remembers it, only her old demons are not here.

Susan knows that in her decision to commit suicide, she’s buying herself freedom from her demons. She feels herself slipping away already. She thinks about writing a letter to Matthew but realizes she wouldn’t know what to say—she wants to leave him well, and with an explanation for her suicide that he will understand. Ultimately, she gives up on this. Matthew, she believes, will spin the story of her death in a way that fits into his worldview. She hopes that Matthew will marry Sophie, not the woman with whom he’s currently having an affair, since Sophie is already acting as their children’s mother, but she realizes the hypocrisy of worrying about her children when she is already leaving them.

Susan spends the four hours she has left in Room 19 relaxing in her solitude. Then, she turns on the gas stove. She seals the room by pushing the rug against the crack in the bottom of the door and making sure the windows are tightly sealed. Then, she lies down on the room’s bed for the first time. A little cold, she gets up and carefully covers her legs with a blanket she finds, then lies down again. Susan finds herself utterly content as she lies there, listening to the sound of the gas pouring into the room, imagining it pouring into her lungs and brain as she drifts away.