In Pursuit of the English

‘Who’s he?’ I asked.

‘An optimist,’ said Rose grimly. ‘Thinks he’s going to be rebuilt, I shouldn’t be surprised. Well, it takes all sorts, that’s what I say.’

We turned finally into a street of tall narrow grey houses. I understood, from our quickening steps, that we were going downhill. I was almost running. Rose was moving along the street without seeing it, her feet quick and practised on the pavement. I asked: ‘Have you always lived in London?’

There was a short pause before she answered; and I understood it was because she found it difficult to adapt herself to the idea of London as a place on the map and not as a setting for her life. There was a small grudging note in her voice when she said: ‘Yes, dear, since I was born.’ I was to hear that reserved, non-judging voice often in the future – the most delicate of snubs, as if she were saying: It’s all very well for you . . .

Rose stopped in front of a wooden gate slung loosely between pillars where the plaster was flaking, and said: ‘Here we are.’ The wood of the gate was damp, and in the cracks were traces of green that I thought at first were remains of paint. Looking closer I saw it was that fine spongy fur that one finds, in the veld, cushioning the inside of a rotting tree trunk where the sun never reaches. Rose led the way down steps, along the side of the house, into a narrow gulf of thick damp brick with water underfoot. She let herself in at the door, and we were at once in darkness that smelt strongly of ammonia. A stairway led up, through darkness, to a closed door. In front was another door outlined in yellow light. There was a blare of noise. The door opened violently and out spilled puppies which scrambled and snapped around our feet. Rose said: ‘Come in.’ She went forward into the room, abandoning me, indicating why I was there to the other with a brief meaningful nod of the head.

It was a long, narrow room with a tall window at one end. Towards the top of the window one could see a frieze of dustbins and watering cans. A single very strong electric bulb filled the room with a hard shadowless light. The place was divided into two by curtains – or rather, curtains looped back high against the walls indicated a division. One half was the kitchen, the other a living-room, which seemed crammed with people, puppies, children, kittens. At a table under the light bulb sat two men reading newspapers, and they lifted their heads together, and stared with the same open, frank curiosity at me. They both wore very white cotton singlets, hanging loose. One was a man of about forty, forty-five, who gave an immediate impression of a smouldering but controlled violence. His body was lean and long, swelling up into powerful shoulders and neck, a strong, sleek, close-cropped head. His hair was yellowish, his eyes flat and yellowish, like a goat’s, and the smooth heavy flesh of his shoulders rather yellow against the white singlet. But he was going soft; he paunched under his singlet. The other was very young, eighteen, twenty, a dark, glossy, sleek young animal with very black eyes. A woman came forward from the kitchen end. She was short and plump, with a small pointed face in a girlish mass of greying black curls. Her mouth was opening and shutting and she was gesticulating angrily at the puppies under her feet and at a small child who was grabbing at her apron. The radio was blaring and she was trying to shout through the music: the noise was so great that my eardrums were receiving it as a dull crashing roar, like a great silence. The older man reached out a hand, turned a knob, and at once a shrill voice assailed me, rising through the snapping and yapping of the dogs and the whining of the child. ‘Shut up,’ she screeched. ‘Shut up, I tell you.’ The older man rose and pushed the puppies outside into the passage with his foot. There was a sudden startling quiet. The room seemed empty because of the absence of sound and of dogs.

Rose said: ‘Flo, this lady here wants to see your flat.’

‘Does she, dear?’ screeched Flo, who had grown so used to shouting through noise that she was unable to lower her voice. ‘Drat you!’ This was to the child, as she slapped down its hands. There was, in fact, only one child there, a little girl who seemed at first glance to be a dwarfed seven or eight, because of her sharp old face, but was three years old. ‘Drat you,’ shouted Flo again. ‘Can’t you shut up when I’m talking?’ The husband got up and lifted the child on to his lap with the patient forbearance of a man married to a termagant. ‘So you want to see our nice flat, dear?’ She smiled ingratiatingly; her eyes were calculating. ‘You’ll be very happy with us, dear. We’re just a big happy family, aren’t we, Rose?’

‘That’s right,’ said Rose, flatly.

‘Dan will show you the way,’ screeched Flo. ‘My name’s Flo. You must call him Dan. You needn’t stand on ceremony with us, dear.’

‘She hasn’t taken it yet,’ commented Rose, in her flat expressionless voice.

‘She’ll like the flat,’ shouted Flo persuasively. ‘The rooms are ever so nice, aren’t they, dear?’

‘That’s right,’ said Rose. She began smoothing down her eyebrows in front of a small wall mirror, with a forefinger wetted with spit, exactly as she had turned herself away to make up her face in the shop: she was saying: ‘Leave me alone.’

‘Let’s all go up,’ shouted Flo. But although she had conducted the interview until this point, she now gave her husband an uncertain, almost girlish look, and waited for him. He rose. ‘That’s right, dear,’ she said to him, her voice softening, and she offered an arch, intimate, merry smile. He responded with a direct, equally intimate flash of his eyes, and a baring of very white, prominent teeth. Even at that early stage I was struck by the boy’s sullen look at the couple. He was Jack, Flo’s son by her first marriage. But they had already adjusted their faces, and returned to the harsh business of life. Dan picked up the little girl and dropped her into Jack’s arms. At once she began to wail. Her mother grabbed her, exclaiming: ‘Oh, you’ll be the death of me.’ She yelled even louder. Automatically the father reached for her, and set her on his shoulders where she sat smiling, triumphant. He did not do this in a way which was critical of his wife; it was an habitual thing.

All of us, the son included, filed into the dark well at the foot of the stairs. The smell of ammonia was so strong it took the breath. We began to ascend the stairs, which were narrow, of bare wood. I was at the head of the procession, and could see nothing. Flo shouted: ‘Mind the door.’ I came into collision with it, a hand reached under my arm, and we all moved backwards down the steep incline as the door swung in over our heads, letting in a shaft of dull light. We were now in the hall. There was a puddle near the stairs. ‘Drat these dogs,’ shouted Flo.

‘Last time it was Aurora,’ commented Rose.

At once Flo slapped the child where she sat on her father’s shoulders. Aurora let out a single bellow and immediately became silent, and watched us all with her black sharp eyes. ‘Don’t you do that again,’ shouted Flo. The child’s mouth opened and she let out another loud roar as if a button had been pushed. Again she fell to watching us. Nobody took the slightest notice of this scene; and indeed Flo beamed encouragingly at me as if to say: Look at the trouble I’m taking on your behalf.

‘Oh dear, oh dear me,’ she grumbled, smiling, ‘that child will be the death of me yet.’

‘Perhaps it was the old people,’ said Jack, regarding the puddle.

‘Oh,’ said Flo, ‘so it must be. Dirty, filthy old swine …’ She caught a glance from her husband and smiled guiltily. ‘But they won’t bother you, dear. They sit by themselves in there, getting up to their mischief and their tricks …’ Again Dan glared at her, and she smiled. ‘They won’t bother you at all, dear,’ she said, and hastily went upstairs. We followed her, flight after flight, past shut doors. Nearing the top of the house was a shallow grey cement sink, with a tap which was making a happy tinkling noise, like a celesta. ‘This tap,’ said Flo in an offhand voice to her husband. Dan frowned. He heaved violently on the tap, his great shoulder muscles bulging, and a steady splash-splashing resulted. ‘Look,’ said Dan to me. ‘If you turn it round like this it’s quite all right.’ Once again he heaved with all his strength. We stood at varying heights on the stairs above and below the obstinate tap, gazing at it in suspense. Dan slowly, warily, straightened himself. A single heavy drop of water gathered weight on the lip of the tap and hung, trembling. It flew downwards to the puddle in the sink with a defiant tinkle, and at once another followed.

Flo decided to shrug. ‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘there’s the bathroom downstairs for real washing, it only costs fourpence for a real good deep bath, and you can use this just for washing up. If you turn it good and tight, it will be quite all right, you’ll see.’

‘She’ll need some strength,’ said Rose. ‘It runs all over the landing some days, when Mrs Skeffington doesn’t turn it hard enough. It needs a man.’

Flo nudged her to be quiet, and Rose shrugged. ‘We’ve only just moved in,’ said Flo, ‘and we haven’t got everything fixed right yet.’ We started climbing again.

‘Two years,’ said Rose’s voice from the flight below. ‘Oh, you shut up,’ said Flo in a loud whisper down past my head; as if the act of lowering her voice and directing it to Rose made it inaudible to everyone else. Then she screeched gaily to me: ‘We’re nearly there now.’

We climbed two more flights in silence. Flo was ascending in front of me with the phlegmatic calm of a mountaineer who has only an hour to the summit; her fat flanks moved regularly up and down; her feet were planted wide for balance; and her hands pushed down on each knee in turn, for greater propulsion.

We came to another door, which Flo opened saying: ‘You’ll be nice and private in here, see?’ There was one more short, sharp flight, very steep, ending in an abrupt twist that brought us to a handkerchief-sized landing. ‘Here we are,’ said Flo, with an anxious glance at me. It was a small room under the roof, with double skylights slanting inwards for illumination. A vast double bed took up most of the floor space, with a glossy toffee-coloured wardrobe. There was a minute kitchen that held a gas cooker, and a set of food canisters ranged on the floor. They all stood around me, smiling encouragingly, even Rose, whose desire for accuracy and fairness was momentarily quenched by the necessities of the occasion. She said: ‘It’s ever so private up here.’ She thought, and added: ‘There’s a lot of room, really.’ She was tiny, as I’ve said, and as she spoke she moved in from the wall, straightening herself painfully, for she had been bent in a curve, because the roof slanted down almost to the floor. Then, having done what was expected of her, she said: ‘Excuse me,’ and escaped downstairs, looking embarrassed.

Flo said: ‘We don’t know what we’d do without Rose, and that’s a fact. We get all our people through her. They come into the shop and ask if she knows, when they’re stuck for a flat – like you did.’ She offered me this information as if Rose’s compliance was an additional attraction of the house.

‘I have a small boy,’ I said, with dread.

‘That’s right,’ said Flo instantly. ‘Rose said so, when she phoned us. That’s nice, dear. He can play with Oar. We like kids. Don’t we, Dan?’

Dan said, ‘That’s right,’ and meant it.

‘And Rose likes kids, too. We all do.’

‘Is Rose a relation?’

‘Oh no. She lives here, see, because she’s going to marry Dan’s brother.’ But here Dan frowned; glances were exchanged and Dan said: ‘Well, how do you like it?’

‘How much?’ I said. Three pairs of eyes exchanged glances. At last Flo asked: ‘How much did you think of paying?’

Dan was calculating, his yellow eyes on my clothes. ‘Have you got a lot of cases?’ he enquired.

‘Far too many.’ At this, the three faces became extremely businesslike, and Flo said: ‘You wouldn’t think four pounds too much, would you, dear?’ At once she grinned in an abashed way, when Dan glared at her.

‘Yes, I would,’ I said, and picked up my handbag from the bed.

‘She’s made a mistake,’ said Dan scowling. He was furious with Flo, and she instinctively wrung her hands and appealed to him with her eyes for forgiveness like a small girl. ‘The price is thirty-five shillings,’ he said.

‘Of course it is,’ said Flo apologetically. ‘I was thinking of the rooms downstairs.’

‘One pound fifteen,’ I said.

‘Thirty-five shillings,’ corrected Flo. They waited again, their eyes fixed anxiously on my face.

‘I’ll get my things over,’ I said. ‘And I’ll fetch my son.’

For the next few minutes I was the passive victim of their exclamations of delight and welcome. They showed me how to use the gas-stove. And Flo kept saying: ‘Look, it’s ever so easy, dear,’ as she pulled the shoelace that had been suspended from the electric light, ‘look, it just goes on and off as you pull it, see?’

Finally they went downstairs, smiling at each other.

I heard Flo say in an offended offhand voice to Dan: ‘Oh, shut up, she’s taken it, hasn’t she?’

I got over my luggage and stacked it in the slant under the roof. By climbing on to a trunk in the middle of the room I could see over through the skylights into a brick channel between the outer wall and the roof which was filled with damp and blackened refuse – fragments of brick, bits of paper, scraps of rag. From this channel were propped some planks which shored up the roof. Flo, who had come up with the luggage, sat on the bed watching me anxiously, and anticipating any criticism I might have been tempted to make with defensive or encouraging remarks. ‘We had the blitz, dear,’ she kept saying. ‘We had it ever so bad. It was right through this part, because of that station, see? The Government’s going to mend everything for us, when they get around to it. I don’t know what they’re doing, we’ve filled in the forms and all, over and over again.’

I fetched my son, and at once he vanished into the basement with Aurora. Later, exhausted with the warmth and the welcome of the family downstairs, he fell asleep, saying he liked this house and he wanted to stay in it.

This upset me, because in the meantime I had decided it was impossible; in spite of my having suddenly understood that this was indubitably a garret, and that I had fulfilled the myth to its limit, and without any conscious intention on my part. There was no room in this garret to put a typewriter, let alone to unpack my things. I would have to start again.

Then I remembered Flo had said something about rooms downstairs. I went down to see Rose about it.

When she opened her door to me I at first did not recognize her; she looked like her own daughter. She had just taken a bath, and wore a white wool dressing-gown. Her black hair was combed loose, and her face was pale, soft and young, with dark smudges of happiness under the eyes. Her mouth, revealed, was small and sad. She said, with formality, ‘Come in, dear. I’m sorry the room is untidy.’ The room was very small and neat; it had a look of intense privacy, as a room does when every article means a great deal to the person living in it. Rose had brought her bed and her small easy chair and her linen from her own home. The curtains and bedcover had pink and blue flowers; and there was a cherry-pink rug on the black-painted floor. That everything she touched or wore should be perfectly clean and tidy was important to her; she was one of the most instinctively fastidious people I have ever known. Now she pushed forward her little blue-covered armchair, waited until I had sat down, and said, smiling with pleasure: ‘I’m glad you came. I like some company.’

‘I came to ask about the room Flo mentioned – is there another one free in the house?’

At once she looked sorrowful and guilty; and by now I knew her well enough to understand why. Her loyalties were in conflict. She said: ‘I don’t rightly know. You’d better ask Flo.’ She blushed and said hastily: ‘Of course that place upstairs isn’t fit for a pet cat, let alone a woman with a kid.’ She added: ‘But Flo and Dan’ll be good to that kid of yours. They really like kids.’ ‘Yes, I know,’ I said. ‘That’s the trouble.’ ‘I see your trouble,’ she said. She hesitated. ‘If there was a room going, and I’m not saying because I don’t know – it’s like this, see – Flo and Dan are new in this house business, they have fancy ideas about the rent they’re going to get. And they never thought they’d let that dump upstairs at all – see, at least, not for so much. Of course, you’re a foreigner, and don’t know yet.’

‘I see,’ I said. ‘I’ll ask Flo, then.’

‘Yes, that would be better for me. I’m a friend of hers, see?’

‘Of course.’

‘About that other place you saw – did you see it?’

‘Yes.’ I began to tell her, but she knew about the house. ‘I know because I get to know all sorts of things, working in that shop. But was there anything about someone kicked out?’

‘A Mr MacNamara,’ I said. Her face changed with rich suddenness into a delighted appreciation.

‘Mr MacNamara, is he? The son of a rich lord from Ireland?’

‘I don’t know about the lord.’

She sat on the bed, and regarded me patiently.

‘There’s a lot you don’t,’ she said. ‘If he’s Mr MacNamara to you, then watch out. You didn’t give him money, did you?’

I admitted it. To my surprise, she was not scornful, but worried for me. ‘Then watch out. He’ll be after some more. Didn’t you see what he was like?’

‘Yes, I did. It’s hard to explain …’ I began, but she nodded and said: ‘I know what you mean. Well, don’t you feel too bad. He’s got a real gift for it. You’d be surprised the people he diddles. He did my boss out of twenty quid once, and to this day she wonders what came over her. And now you take my advice and have nothing to do with him. Mr MacNamara. Well I remember when he was a barrow-boy, and he knows I remember it, selling snaps and snails and puppy-dogs’ tails for what he could get. But even then he had his head on the right way, for the next thing was, he had his own car and it was paid for. That’s the trouble with him – it’s not what you call a spiv; at least, not all the time. One minute he’s got his hand in the gas-meter and the next he’s doing real business.’

‘Well, thank you for telling me.’

She hesitated. Then she said in a rush: ‘I like you, see. We can be friends. And not everyone’s like Flo – I don’t want you to be thinking that.’ She added guiltily – ‘It’s because she’s a foreigner, it’s not her fault.’

‘What kind of a foreigner?’

‘I’m not saying anything against her; don’t think it. She’s English really. She was born here. But her grandmother was Italian, see? She comes from a restaurant family. So she behaves different. And then the trouble is, Dan, isn’t a good influence – not that I’m saying a word against him.’

‘Isn’t he English?’

‘Not really, he’s from Newcastle. They’re different from us, up in places like that. Oh no, he’s not English, not properly speaking.’

‘And you?’

She was confused at once. ‘Me, dear? But I’ve lived in London all my life. Oh, I see what you mean – I wouldn’t say I was English so much as a Londoner, see? It’s different.’

‘I see,’ I said.

‘You going out?’ she asked, offhand.

‘I thought of wandering about and having a look.’

‘I understand.’

I did not know she wanted to come with me. Coming to a new country, you don’t think of people being lonely, but having full lives into which you intrude. But she was looking forlorn, and I said: ‘Don’t you go out in the evenings?’

‘Not much. Well, not these days I don’t. It gives me the ’ump, sitting around.’

‘Flo said you were engaged to Dan’s brother.’

She was very shocked. ‘Engaged!’ She blushed. ‘Oh no, dear. You mustn’t say things like that, you’ll put ideas into my head.’

‘I’m sorry. Flo said you might be marrying him.’

‘Yes, that’s so. I might be, you could say that.’ She sighed. Then she giggled, and gave me a playful nudge with her elbow. ‘Engaged! The things you say, you make me laugh.’

Flo’s voice sounded up the stairs: ‘There’s a gentleman to see you. Rose, tell her there’s a gentleman.’

‘How does she know I’m with you?’

She said: ‘It’s easy to think Flo’s stupid. Because she is. But not about knowing what goes on.’

‘But I don’t know anyone,’ I said.

‘Oh, go on. Don’t you know who it is?’

‘How should I?’

‘It’s Mr Bobby Brent, Mr MacNamara to you. Silly.’

‘Oh!’ I got up from the chair.

‘You’re not going,’ she said, shocked. ‘Tell Flo to send him off.’

‘But I think I’m interested, after what you’ve said.’

‘Interested?’

‘I mean, I’ve never met anyone like him before.’

She was puzzled. Then, unmistakably hurt. I did not understand why. ‘Yes?’ was all she said. She turned back to her dressing-table and began brushing her hair out.

Rose’s yes was the most expressive of monsyllables. It could be sceptical, give you the lie direct, accuse you, reject you. This time it meant: Interested, are you? Well, I can’t afford to be interested in scoundrels. Fancy yourself, don’t you?

Whenever, in the future, I was interested in a person or a situation which did not have her moral approval, she would repudiate me with precisely that – Yes?

But her good heart overcame her disapproval, for she said as I left the room: ‘If you must you must. But don’t let him get his hands on to your money.’

Flo was in the hall with Mr MacNamara. As I came down the stairs he was saying: ‘It’s a little matter. A hundred nicker. And it’d double itself in a year.’ He had the full force of his hard brown stare on her. She was bashfully languishing, like a peasant girl. She tore her gaze away from his face, to say almost absently: ‘I told your friend. I told him for you. You’ve got a flat with us.’

‘Yes, I have,’ I said. Flo was again looking up into his face. ‘Dan’d know best,’ she said. ‘You must talk to Dan.’

‘I’ll talk it over with him. But I want you to talk it over with him first, Mrs Bolt. You’ve got a real head for business, I can see at a glance.’

‘Well, dear, I ran a restaurant over in Holborn right through the war, dear. I ought to know my way about. A real big restaurant. I had three girls working for me. Dan was in the navy. But I did all right, I can tell you.’

‘I’m sure you did, Mrs Bolt. Ah yes, the war was a difficult time.’

‘We carried on and did our best.’

‘Excuse me,’ I said, and began to go upstairs. Instantly Mr MacNamara came after me.

‘There’s a little matter we should discuss,’ he said.

‘But she’s fixed up, dear. Ever so nice, with us.’

‘Four rooms, kitchen and bath and a telephone, three and a half a week.’ I came downstairs again. ‘And there’s another matter.’

‘Can we see it now?’

‘I’ll take you.’

I said to Flo: ‘If I can get it, I will. I really do need more room, you know.’

She nodded, her eyes, now thoughtful, on Mr MacNamara.

We two went to the door, and I heard her shrieking as we went out: Rose. Dan. Rose. Dan . . .

‘You know Miss Jennings?’

‘No, I don’t think so.’

‘You’ll meet her,’ he said darkly. ‘You mustn’t believe all you hear.’

‘Rose Jennings?’

‘People are not to be trusted. Not since the war.’

Now he had me on the pavement, he was thinking out his tactics, while making a pretence at examining his watch. ‘My man won’t be in for fifteen minutes. I’ll take you to a pub near here. The best pub in London. They have nothing but vintage beers.’

‘That would be nice.’

He began walking me fast down the street, into an area that had been laid flat. About five acres of earth had been cleared of rubble, and was waiting for the builders. ‘Nice job, that,’ said Mr MacNamara, nodding at it. ‘One bomb – did the lot. All that damage. Nice work.’

We walked past it. Mr MacNamara began sending me furtive glances, sideways.