Russ

Russ is a flamboyant, demonstrative housemate whose pursuit of Mary Lamb / Amy Hide unsettles the already painful attachment Alan has formed to her. He moves through their shared life with comic bravado and apparent physical confidence, but his attentions are not merely a counterpoint to Alan’s quiet longing: they create a triangle in which Mary is unsure what she wants, Alan watches from the margins, and Russ’s humor can turn abruptly into jealousy and accusation.

Identity and Manner

Russ announces himself in the kitchen with a loose-shouldered, sidling manner, a glamorous black T-shirt, chunky blue jeans, and shoes Mary sees as resembling squashed rats. The description gives him an instantly theatrical outline: even his clothes and shoes seem to carry an attitude. He is also capable of turning an ordinary room into a stage, striking poses and acting out encounters with imagined women in front of a dusty mirror. His performance is expansive, but its comedy depends on how seriously he can play at being desired, pursued, and admired.

His teasing is similarly theatrical. He repeatedly calls attention to Alan’s hair, a subject Alan is frightened to discuss, and treats Mary to extravagant, contradictory assessments of her attractiveness. He even uses mock-violent talk about women as a warped scale of female worth, leaving Mary to infer that being singled out is preferable to being dismissed. The joke does not give her a clear measure of Russ’s intentions; it instead shows how easily his casual performance can make an unsettling subject seem like banter. His humor invites others to follow its rules even when its meaning is uncertain.

Russ is also illiterate, a fact that becomes important when he compares himself with Alan. Alan’s ability to read and write impresses him, though he keeps this admiration concealed. The gap between Russ’s swagger and his private awareness of what he lacks complicates the figure he presents to the household. He can dominate a room socially, yet privately imagines that Alan may possess advantages he cannot match.

Pursuit of Mary

Russ’s attention to Mary is persistent and physical. At work, he comes close behind her, knocks a stack of plates into the sink, and kisses her neck; at other times he touches and kisses her and talks at length about possible plans for the two of them. His talk moves between apparent invitation and teasing qualification, so that Mary is left to work out whether he is making a promise, making fun, or simply enjoying the performance. On one occasion he asks whether she is still taking him for a drink on Saturday and insists that she promise not to try to get him drunk. The request presents him as alert to the possibility of being manipulated even as he himself is difficult to read.

Mary does not respond to Russ in the same way she responds to Alan. She can find the physical ease of sitting on Russ’s lap comfortable, and at one point she puts an arm around him; she also accepts a kiss when he initiates one. But she is often uncertain what she is supposed to do, and she recognizes that Russ seems able to behave familiarly with her in public without much forethought or restraint. When Alan attempts to join her, she expects him to do so partly because he loves her and partly because Russ may act first. The contrast is not simply between a bold suitor and a shy one: Russ’s ease can make Mary feel at home in the moment while also leaving her uneasy about the situation she has entered.

Their intimacy is visible to the other people in the house. After Mary and Alan are seen holding hands, Russ looks at her with disgusted incredulity. Later, in the communal sitting room, she is again on Russ’s lap while Alan sits nearby. Russ disparages Alan to her and questions why she bothers with him; Mary has no answer, and the recurring arrangement makes her uneasy even as both men appear to accept it. Russ’s casual closeness therefore becomes part of a public contest whose terms Mary has not chosen or clearly understood.

Jealousy and Rivalry with Alan

Russ’s anger at Alan has a background of its own. Until recently, he had been spending several nights a week with Vera, who lives in the basement. He discovers Paris occupying Vera’s bed on a night when he has gone there as usual; soon afterward, Alan and Mary arrive at breakfast holding hands. The sequence confronts Russ with two changes in his intimate circumstances at once. The narrative presents his response as a crisis of comparison as well as jealousy: he admires Alan’s literacy, wonders whether Alan may have an advantage he does not, and broods on betrayal and revenge.

Alan’s attachment becomes more visible through his behavior: he stares at Mary at close quarters and repeatedly holds her hand, while the other residents register the change in their own ways. Russ, by contrast, watches Mary with open disbelief. When Mary says she is going to see a man, Alan reacts anxiously; Russ then approaches her and kisses her. Alan witnesses the encounter, pulls at his hair, and runs off down the road. The episode makes Russ an active participant in the emotional injury that follows. He does not simply challenge Alan in words; his spontaneous gesture occurs in front of him, and Alan’s response is immediate and extreme.

Russ’s conduct is not presented as a calculated plan to harm Alan. Rather, the novel places his impulsive familiarity beside Alan’s painstaking, vulnerable pursuit, exposing how differently the men inhabit the same household. Russ can approach Mary openly, while Alan hovers, waits, and tries to make himself acceptable. Yet Russ’s confidence is not secure: the narration links his jealousy to admiration for Alan and to doubts about his own standing. His comic swagger and private insecurity belong to the same character.

Grief and Accusation

After Alan’s suicide, Russ is present while the policeman asks the household to give accounts. Mary sits across from him without knowing what to say, and Russ is visibly distraught. When the group is asked to write, he says that he cannot do it, then points the blame at Mary, insisting that Alan was only twenty-one and accusing her of not caring. His words make her the target of his grief, but they do not establish that she caused Alan’s death. The scene records Russ’s accusation as an emotional response, not as a reliable account of responsibility.

This aftermath changes the weight of his earlier behavior. The man who has filled the kitchen and sitting room with teasing, physical familiarity, and extravagant talk now cannot write the statement expected of him. His inability to put his account on paper directly recalls the literacy that made him admire Alan, while his grief spills into a blunt accusation he can express aloud. The scene does not resolve Russ’s jealousy or explain what becomes of him afterward; it leaves him at the point where loss has broken through his performance.

Narrative Role

Russ helps expose the uneven forms of intimacy in the squat. Alan’s devotion is largely expressed through waiting and watching; Russ makes himself difficult to ignore through movement, touch, and talk. Mary’s differing responses to the two men prevent either style from becoming a simple solution to her uncertainty. She may find comfort in Russ’s physical ease, yet she does not know what to make of his assumptions, and she recognizes how little restraint governs his approach.

The novel’s comic treatment of Russ does not erase the consequences of his actions. His teasing can make threatening language seem absurd, his self-display can turn flirtation into a performance, and his apparent confidence can hide a sharp awareness of rivalry. After Alan’s death, his grief is not made dignified or composed: it becomes an accusation directed at Mary. Russ’s role is therefore to make the gap between outward bravado and inward vulnerability visible without closing it. At the end of the evidence concerning him, he remains at once a source of disorder in Mary and Alan’s relationship and one of the mourners confronting Alan’s absence.