In Pursuit of the English

The Colonel fell back, astonished, and we were in the hall. The Colonel looked at me, and said blankly: ‘Well, come inside, now you’re here. How on earth – I haven’t even sent it to an agent – ’ He pulled himself together. ‘Well, I don’t know, these days you can’t even think of moving without getting in hordes of … however, I’m very glad. Come in.’

He showed us into a living-room. It was charming. This was the England I had read about in novels.

‘As a matter of interest,’ said the Colonel to me, ‘how did you hear about this flat?’

Mr Ponsonby strode forward and announced: ‘My cousin from Africa asked me to find her a flat.’ I tried to catch the Colonel’s eye, but Mr Ponsonby was in the way. ‘I’m in the business, as my card shows. There would be no fee to either lessor or lessee.’

‘A question of philanthropy,’ said the Colonel gravely; and Mr Ponsonby fell back, spelling out the word to himself. ‘Blood is blood,’ he offered at last.

‘Oh, quite,’ said Colonel Bartowers. He sighed and said: ‘Well, I suppose I might as well show you the flat, in case I decide to go abroad. You mentioned Africa?’ he said to me.

‘My cousin has just come,’ said Mr Ponsonby, trying to get between the Colonel and me, but he was brushed aside, and the Colonel took my arm.

‘I was myself in Southern Rhodesia for ten years. A little before your time, I expect. I left in 1905. Do you remember …’ And he began reciting names which are part of the history of the Empire. ‘This is the kitchen,’ he said, waving his hand at it. It was equipped like an American kitchen. ‘All the things one needs in a kitchen, I believe. So my wife said. She ran off with someone else last year. No loss. Not really. But I don’t use the kitchen. I eat out. Now, tell me, did you ever meet Jameson? I suppose not.’

In the bedroom he absently opened one cupboard after another, all filled with lush blankets and tinted linen of all kinds, shutting the doors before I could properly savour them. ‘All the usual things for bedrooms – hot bottles, electric bottles and so on. Never use the things myself. Now, tell me, did you ever go shooting down Gwelo way?’ He told a story of how he had shot a lion in the chicken-run, in the good old days. ‘But perhaps things have changed,’ he remarked at last.

‘I think they have, rather.’

‘Yes, so I hear.’ He threw open another door. ‘The bathroom,’ he announced, before shutting it. I caught a glimpse of a very large room with a black and white tiled floor, and a pale pink bath. ‘A bit cramped,’ he said, ‘but in these days.’

‘Well, I think that’s all,’ he said at last. ‘Shall we have a drink on it?’ He produced a bottle of Armagnac; then he looked at Mr Ponsonby, for the first time in minutes, and frowned. ‘There’s a pub round the corner,’ he said putting back the bottle. In the pub he ordered two drinks for me and for him, added a third as a calculated afterthought, and turned his back on Mr Ponsonby. ‘Now,’ he said, his fat red face relaxing. ‘We can talk.’ For the space of several drinks I said yes and no; and in the intervals of his monologue, the Colonel ordered, with brusque dislike, another for Mr Ponsonby, who was reacting to this situation in a way which disconcerted me. I expected him to be angry; but his eyes were focused on some plan. He watched the Colonel’s face for some time while he pretended to be listening to his talk. Then he turned away and got into conversation with a man sitting next to him. I heard phrases like ‘a good investment’ and ‘thirty per cent’ spoken in a discreet, almost winning voice.

‘That Bulawayo campaign. The best days of my life. I remember lying on the kopje behind my house and taking pot-shots at the nigs as they came to the river for water. I was a damned good shot, though I say it myself. Of course, I still shoot a bit, grouse chiefly, but it’s not the same. It was a good life, say what you like.’ He shot a pugnacious blue glance at me and demanded: ‘From what I hear they’ll be taking pot-shots at us soon, getting their own back, hey? This idea seemed to cause him a detached and almost kindly amusement, for he guffawed and said: ‘I used to get good fun with those nigs. Damn good fellows some of them. Sportsmen. Good fighters. Ah, well.’ He sighed and put down his glass. ‘Two more of the same.’

‘Closing time, sir.’

‘Blast. This damned country. Can’t stand it. It’s a nation of old women these days. It’s the Labour Government. Petticoat government, that’s what I call it. That’s why I’m thinking of getting out again. To Kenya, I thought. I’ve got a cousin. I’d go back to Rhodesia, but my wife, blast her, is there with her new husband. Not big enough for both of us. The trouble is, though, once you’ve lived out of England, you can’t really settle in it. Too small. I expect you’ll find that, too. I remember I came back on leave after that Bulawayo campaign and asking myself, How the hell did I stick England all those years. I still ask myself.’

I heard Mr Ponsonby say: ‘A nice little sideline for a man with a few hundred to spare.’

The Colonel, peevishly fiddling with his empty glass, listened.

‘Needs doing up. But it’s in good repair. All it really needs is some paint and a bar.’

‘Your cousin …’

‘He’s not my cousin.’

‘Of course not. Ah, well, these people have their uses, I suppose! He appears to have irons in the fire.’

‘Dozens. He’s a man of enterprise.’

‘That’s what this country lacks, these days.’

‘He was in the Commandos, too.’

But the Colonel’s face expressed nothing but distaste. ‘Was he? I like clean fighting myself. Still, I suppose those fellows were necessary.’

‘My principal needs a quick decision,’ said Mr Ponsonby. ‘You can give me a ring in the morning.’ He got off his stool and turned to us, not immediately recognizing us, so great was his preoccupation. ‘Well,’ he asked. ‘Everything fixed?’ He spoke as if this little matter could only be kept in the forefront of his attention by the greatest concentration.

‘About the rent,’ I asked.

‘Well, my dear,’ said the Colonel, ‘I know one can get anything one asks these days, but I don’t like to take advantage. For you I’d make it ten guineas.’

‘You could easily get fifteen or twenty,’ I said.

‘Yes, I know. Those Yanks’d pay that. But I don’t like ’em.’

‘But I haven’t got the money to pay that, anyway.’

‘Well, it doesn’t matter, because I don’t really want to let it. It’s an idea that came into my head last week. But I suppose I’ll have to end my days here. In the old country. The trouble is, it isn’t the old country any longer. I used to be proud to call myself English. I’m damned if I am these days.’

Mr Ponsonby was examining his watch.

‘This proposition you were discussing with that fellow,’ said the Colonel.

‘A night-club. Perhaps you might be interested?’

‘A night-club?’ said the Colonel, livening up. ‘Well, I might be interested to have some details.’

Mr Ponsonby had by now replaced me beside the Colonel. His manner with him was quite different than with me. He looked, perhaps, like a sergeant-major in mufti, rather bluff and responsible. ‘My principal,’ he said, ‘is very concerned about the hands it might get into. Needs decent people, you know.’

‘Ah,’ said the Colonel, a trifle suspiciously.

‘Shall I ring you in the morning, sir?’

‘Yes, you could do that.’

We parted, the Colonel wishing me well, but without much confidence, because, as he said, I should have come to England before the First World War, it had never been the same since.

Walking home, I was offered a share in the night-club. He also said that if I had four hundred he would double it for me in a month. There was a house for sale for one thousand five hundred; and he knew a man he could sell it to for two thousand three hundred. ‘And what would you get out of it?’ I asked.

‘Your confidence in me,’ he said. ‘Of course, I’d charge a small commission. There’s nothing in it. I can’t understand it, people slaving away, when it’s so easy to make money. All you have to do, is use your intelligence.’

‘All I want at the moment is a flat.’

‘You’ll never find another flat like the Colonel’s, at that price.’

‘But he didn’t want to let it.’

‘That’s not my fault.’ We were now at the house, and he said: ‘I’ll tell you what. I’ll drop around tomorrow and take you to another little place I know about.’

‘Goodnight,’ I said.

‘I like a person like you, who thinks twice about risking their money. I’ll be in touch,’ he said.

Chapter Three

Next day I began to look for a job, and the attitude of the household changed. Rose said: ‘Now you’re going to be a working girl like me. I’m glad.’ But Flo was disappointed in me, even offended. ‘You should have told us, shouldn’t you,’ she said. ‘Told you what?’ ‘Now you’re nice and comfortable up in that little flat that’s so nice.’ ‘Flo, I’m looking for a real flat, I told you.’ ‘Ah, my God!’ I heard her complain, as she descended the stairs. ‘Ah, my Lord, she’ll be the death of me yet, they all will.’

‘You just stick it out,’ said Rose ‘And I’ve told Flo, I’m not having that dirty Miss Powell in the room next to me. Either her or me, I said to Flo.’

Next day negotiations began. Flo took me into the big room and said I wouldn’t like it, not really, not with all those cracks in the walls. I said I would like it. There was a small room on the landing below, with a concealed cooker in it. My son could sleep in that. The two rooms would suit me very well.

‘And what,’ asked Flo, ‘were you thinking of paying?’

‘But it’s the landlord’s business to fix the rent,’ I said.

‘Oh dear,’ said Flo. ‘Oh dear, oh dear! Drat it. Oh, my Lord, and Dan’s at work, too, and I’m on my own.’

‘Well, you could discuss it with him.’

‘Poor Miss Powell, she needs a big room for herself.’

‘If a single woman wants a big room, then a woman with a child surely does?’

‘But you wouldn’t call her single,’ said Flo. She began to laugh. ‘Oh, that Bobby, he’s a case. And those great big eyes of his. When he looks at me, I go all funny where Dan would kill me if he knew.’

‘Well, I’m quite sure his beautiful eyes make it easy for him to get a room for Miss Powell.’

‘Ah, that poor Miss Powell. The landlord where she is is being ever so nasty. I’m not nasty, am I, dear? And look how nice my Oar and your Peter play.’

‘Yes, I know. He loves being here.’

And you do, too, I can tell. Ah, my Lord, what shall I do, I shall have to talk to Dan.’

‘That would be a good idea.’

For a week I stayed at the top of the house, hoping for the room next to Rose, waiting for my job to start. Under the roof I was cut off from the rest of the house. The two rooms under me were empty. They were still full of rubble and mess from the bombing. The plan now was that Dan should clean them out and distemper them, and then either I or Miss Powell would take them. I said I didn’t like them. Flo said that was because I couldn’t imagine them cleaned up and painted. Dan was going to start work, in his evenings. Then I would see. I said, either the big room or nothing. It was a war of nerves.

Under the roof it was like sitting on top of an anthill, a tall sharp peak of baked earth, that seems abandoned, but which sounds, when one puts one’s ear to it, with a continuous vibrant humming. Even when the door shut, it was not long before the silence grew into an orchestra of sound. Beneath my floor a tap dripped softly all day, in a blithe duet with the dripping of the tap on the landing. Two floors down, where the Skeffingtons lived, was a radio. Sometimes she forgot it when she went to work, and, as the hours passed, the wavelength slipped, so that melodies and voices flowed upwards, blurring and mingling. This sound had for accompaniment the splashing water, like conversation heard through music and dripping rain. In the darkening afternoons I was taken back to a time when I lay alone at night and listened to people talking through several walls, while the rain streamed from the eves. Sometimes it was as if the walls had dissolved, and I was left sitting under a tree, listening to birds talking from branch to branch while the last fat drops of a shower spattered on the leaves, and a ploughman yelled encouragement to his beasts in the field over the hill. Sometimes I put my ear to the wall and heard how, as the trains went past and the buses rocked their weight along the street, shock after shock came up through brick and plaster, so that the solid wall had the fluidity of dancing atoms, and I felt the house, the street, the pavement, and all the miles and miles of houses and streets as a pattern of magical balances, a weightless structure, as if this city hung on water, or on sound. Being alone in that little box of ceiling board and laths frightened me.

At last Flo came up and said that the two rooms beneath me were ready, and I could move down when I liked. I examined them and said no. They were very small. She said: ‘You can have the big room for five pounds a week.’ She sounded offhand, because of her fright at my probable reaction.

‘Don’t be silly,’ I said.

She laughed and said, ‘Then you say.’

‘Two pounds,’ I said.

‘Ah, my Lord, are you laughing at me?’

‘You say,’ I said.

‘Four pounds fifteen.’

‘Two pounds ten.’

‘Darling, sweetheart, you’re laughing at your poor Flo.’

‘You say, then.’

At last we settled for three-ten, a sum which caused Rose to be angry with me. ‘You could have got it for three-five,’ she said. ‘You make me cross, you really do.’

‘Well, I shall be next to you, and Peter will be very happy that we’re staying.’

‘All the same, why throw five bob a week into the dustcan? Well, you make Flo clean your room for you, then.’

‘Is it likely?’

‘Well, I’m not going to, and someone must – where was you dragged up, I’d like to know, you don’t even know how to clean a floor?’

‘We were spoiled. We had servants.’

‘You had something. Because to watch you sweeping is enough to make a cat laugh.’

Flo and Dan and Rose and I stood in the empty big room that evening. ‘It’s such a lovely room,’ said Flo. ‘And you can hardly notice them cracks.’

‘What we’re here for, is furniture,’ said Rose.

‘You can have that lovely bed from upstairs.’

‘She’ll want somewhere for her clothes,’ said Rose.

‘You can have that lovely cupboard from the landing.’

Rose said: ‘You make me sick.’

‘But we want to furnish her nice, dear.’

‘You do, do you? Then I’ll show you how.’ With which Rose ran all over the house, marking out pieces to be put in my room. Dan did her bidding, silently; while Flo stood, unconsciously wringing her hands as one bit of furniture after another came to rest in my room, and the little room downstairs. Rose told me afterwards that she had said in the basement that if they didn’t treat me right, she’d be so ashamed she’d leave. Since Rose did half of Flo’s work for her, this was effective. When the rooms were ready, Rose said: ‘That’s a bit more like.’ Dan gave her a grudging look of admiration. By this time we were all in good humour. Flo saw Dan looking, and said sharply, but laughing: ‘And you keep your eyes off poor Rose. I know what you’re thinking. Can’t look at a woman without thinking of it!’ Dan gave her his bared-teeth grin. Rose said: ‘Oh, shut up. And now I’ll help you get the supper, Flo.’

‘I should think so,’ said Flo. ‘Dear me, oh, dear me, life is so hard these days.’

Rose gave me a wink as she went out, and whispered, ‘Now you settle yourself, and don’t you let Flo take any of this stuff back tomorrow. I’m telling you for your own good. I’ll be in after supper for a nice chat.’

Now I was in the heart of the house. Immediately above me, in two large rooms, were the Skeffingtons. I had not yet seen them. He was away most of the time. She left for work before I did, and once she was in her rooms, seldom came out. I knew about them from Flo, through a succession of nods, winks, and hoarse whispers. Her: ‘She’s ever such a sweet woman’ – made, as these remarks always were, as if a sweet tenant were something I was getting extra, thrown in, for the rent, was sometimes: ‘Poor thing, she’s brave, and she pays her rent so regular.’ And sometimes: ‘What she has to put up with, no one would believe. Men are all the same, beasts, every one.’ On the other hand, she often observed with lip-licking smile that Mr Skeffington was just like a film star, and Mrs Skeffington didn’t appreciate him. These two states of mind were determined by whether we got a good night’s sleep or not. Usually not. There were few nights I was not woken by the persistent frightened crying of a child in nightmare. The words ‘I’m not naughty, I’m not naughty’, were wailed over and over again. I heard the sharp release of bedsprings, bare feet sliding on the floor, then several loud slaps. ‘You’re naughty. You’re a naughty girl.’ The voice was high and hysterical. This duet might keep up for an hour or more. At last the child would fall asleep; soon afterwards an alarm clock vibrated; and I would hear Mrs Skeffington’s voice: ‘Oh, my God, my God,’ and the tired release of a weighted bed. The kettle shrieked, cups clattered, and her voice: ‘Crying half the night and now I can’t wake you. Oh, goodness, gracious me, what shall I do with you, Rosemary?’

I knew all the tones of her voice before I ever saw her; but I found it impossible to form a picture of her. As soon as she had the child inside the door, the tussle began: the high, exasperated weary voice, and the child nagging back. Or sometimes there was exhausted sobbing – first the woman, and then the child. I would hear: ‘Oh, darling, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Rosemary. I can’t help it.’

Once I heard her on the stairs, coming home from work in conversation with Flo. Her voice was now formal and bright: ‘Really I don’t know what I shall do with Rosemary, she’s so naughty.’ She gave a fond, light laugh.

From the child, sullenly: ‘I’m not naughty.’

‘Yes, you are naughty, Rosemary. How dare you answer me back.’ Although the voice was still social, sharpness had come into it.

From Flo, a histrionically resigned: ‘Yes, I know, dear. Mine’s the death of me, she drives me mad all day.’

From Aurora: ‘I don’t drive you mad.’

‘Yes, you do. Don’t answer your mother like that.’ There was the sound of a sharp slap.

Flo’s exchange with Aurora was an echo of Mrs Skeffington’s with her child, because Flo could not help copying the behaviour of whoever she was with. But the burst of wild sobs from Aurora was quite unconvincing; her tears were displays of drama adapted to the occasion. From one second to the next she would stop crying and her face beamed with smiles. Her crying was never the miserable frightened wailing of the other little girl.

One morning I met a woman on the landing who I thought must be new to the house. She said brightly: ‘Gracious me, I’m in your way, I’m so sorry,’ and skipped sideways. It was Mrs Skeffington – that ‘gracious me’ could be no one else. Under her arm she balanced a tiny child. She was a tall slight creature, with carefully fluffed out fair hair arranged in girlish wisps on her forehead and neck. Her large clear brown eyes were anxiously friendly; and her smile was tired. There were dark shadows around her eyes and at the corners of her nose. The baby who sounded so forlorn and defiant at night was about fifteen months old. She was a fragile child, with her mother’s wispy pretty hair and enormous brown eyes.

‘Get out of the lady’s way,’ said Mrs Skeffington to the baby, which she had set down – apparently for the purpose of being able to scold her. ‘Get out of the lady’s way, you naughty, naughty girl.’

‘But she’s not in my way.’

‘I do so hope Rosemary doesn’t keep you awake at nights,’ she said politely, just as if I did not hear every movement of her life, and she of mine.

‘Not at all,’ I said.

‘I’m so glad, she’s a real pickle,’ said Mrs Skeffington, injecting the teasing fondness into her voice that went with the words. She tripped upstairs, and as her door shut her voice rose into hysteria: ‘Don’t dawdle so, Rosemary, how many times must I tell you.’

‘I’m not doddling,’ said the baby, whose vocabulary was sharpened by need into terrifying precocity.

Mr Skeffington was an engineer and he went on business trips for his firm. He was nearly always away during the week. According to Rose: ‘He’s just as bad as she is, and that’s saying something. Their tempers fit each other, hand and glove. You wait till he comes back and you’ll hear something. He reminds me of my stepfather – pots and kettles flying and both of them screaming and the kid yelling its head off. It’s good as the pictures, if you don’t want to get some sleep.’

Rose’s stepfather haunted her conversations. She would sit moodily on my bed, listening to Mrs Skeffington nagging at the child overhead, saying from time to time: ‘You wait till he comes, you haven’t heard nothing yet.’ And, inevitably, the next phrase would be – My stepfather.

‘Wasn’t he good to you?’

‘Good?’ A word as direct as that always made her uncomfortable. ‘I wouldn’t like to say anything against him, see.’ Then, after a moment: ‘He was a bad-tempered, lying, cheating swine of a bully – God rest his soul, I wouldn’t say bad things of the dead,’ she would conclude, apologetically.

She had no pity for Mrs Skeffington at all. I could never understand why Rose, who was so tender-hearted, shut her sympathy off from the threesome upstairs. Once I suggested we should tell the NSPCC, and she was so shocked that she could scarcely bring herself to speak to me for days. At last I went to her room and asked her why she was so angry. ‘I didn’t know you was one of them nosey-parkers,’ she said.

‘But, Rose, what’s going to happen to that poor baby?’

‘They’ll take it away from her, most like, and send her to prison. Not that it’s not a good place for her.’

‘Perhaps they might help her.’

‘How? Tell me? What she needs help for, is against her husband and what are they going to do about him? Not that she doesn’t deserve what she gets.’

‘All that’s wrong with her is she’s overworked and tired.’

‘Yes? Well, let me tell you, my mother brought up six of us, and she had no sense for men, real sods they were, but she never carried on like my lady upstairs.’

Meanwhile Miss Powell had moved into the two small rooms above the Skeffingtons. She came down to see me about the child. She wore a red silk gown, trimmed with dark fur, and looked like a film star strayed on to the wrong set. She was very sensible. She suggested we should talk to Mr Skeffington when he came home and tell him his wife needed a holiday.

As soon as she had gone, Rose came in to demand what I though I was doing, talking to that whore.

I said we had agreed to tax Mr Skeffington, and Rose said: ‘You make me laugh, you do. At least the Skeffingtons are decently married, they aren’t a whore and Mr Bobby Brent.’

Flo said to me, her eyes dancing. ‘Mr Skeffington’s coming back tomorrow. You wait till you see him,’ she urged – for it was one of the days she did not like Mrs Skeffington. ‘You just lean over the banisters and have a look. Like a film star, he is. He’s got eyes that make me feel funny, just like Bobby Brent.’ For some days Mrs Skeffington was saying to the child: ‘Your daddy will beat you if you aren’t a good girl.’

‘I am a good girl.’

‘You’ll see, he’ll beat you. For God’s sake, keep quiet now, Rosemary.’

When he did come, I heard the following dialogue through the floor: ‘It’s always the same. As soon as I come home, you start complaining.’

‘But I can’t keep a home going on what I earn.’

‘I told you before I married you, I’ve got to pay alimony. Sometimes I’m sorry I ever did. Can’t you keep that kid quiet?’

‘I can’t help it if Rosemary’s a naughty girl.’

‘I’m not a naughty girl,’ wailed Rosemary.