Jack, Rose and I remained. Now Roses attitude became brisk and maternal, encouraging no nonsense. She whisked through the washing and drying, while I helped her, and the boy sat despondently at the table, caressing a puppy, smiling at us, hoping for Rose to soften. He even made a sad little attempt to restore the sexy atmosphere by saying: You do look seven months gone. Rose, like Flo said. But she said calmy: And what do you know about it? When we left him, she patted his shoulder with triumphant patronage, and said: Sleep tight. And keep your dreams clean.
He slept in the kitchen on a stretcher, beside a box full of puppies. He was like a puppy himself sleek, eager, and wistful.
I thought Rose treated him badly. When I said so, she gave me her heavy-lidded look, half-triumphant, half-sardonic, and said: And whys that? Hes a kid.
Then dont tease him.
She was indignant. She did not understand me. I did not understand her. She was shocked because Jack, later, wandered in and out of my room, to talk about a film hed just seen, or about his boxing. She was shocked when Bobby Brent dropped in at midnight with a business proposition before going upstairs to Miss Powell. No man was ever allowed inside her room. But she would go down to the basement in a waist slip and brassière, and if either Dan or lack looked at her she would say scathingly: Nothing better to polish your eyes on? in precisely the same way a fashionable woman might pointedly draw a cloak over her naked arms and shoulders at an over-direct stare from a man. I remember once Jack knocked on my door when I had a petticoat on, and I put on a dressing-gown before answering the door and letting him in. Rose said, amused: You think hes never seen a woman in a slip before? and teased me about being prudish. One night she was sitting in front of my fireplace in her nightgown, and Jack was lying on the floor turning over the physical culture magazines he read, when she unconcernedly lifted a bare arm to scratch where her brassière had left a red mark under her breast. Jack said bitterly: Oh, dont mind me, please. Im nothing but a bit of furniture.
Whats biting you? she enquired, and when he blundered to his feet and slammed out of my room, swearing, she said to me, with perfect sincerity; Hes a funny boy, isnt he, all full of moods.
But Rose, how can you tantalize him like that?
Well. I dont know, dear. I dont really, the things you say, theyd make me blush if I didnt know you. I can see Im going to have to tell you about life.
She had now taken my education over. It had begun over money, and when I got a job with a small engineering firm as secretary. I was earning seven pounds a week, I said something to Rose about living on seven pounds a week; and she gave me her heavy-lidded smile. You make me laugh, she said.
She had now taken my education over. It had begun over money, and when I got a job with a small engineering firm as secretary. I was earning seven pounds a week, I said something to Rose about living on seven pounds a week; and she gave me her heavy-lidded smile. You make me laugh, she said.
But I do, I said. I was paying the fees for the council nursery, the rent, and the food out of that money. I found it hard, but it gave me pleasure to be able to do it.
For one thing, said Rose, settling down to the task of instructing me. For one thing, theres clothes. You and the kid, you have all the clothes you brought with you. Now suppose there was a fire tomorrow, whatd you use for money for clothes?
But there isnt going to be a fire.
Why not? Look how you live. Its enough to make a cat laugh. You say to yourself, well Im having some bad luck just now, so you pull your belt a bit tighter, while it lasts. Thats not being poor. You always go on as if youll win the pools tomorrow.
Well, I hate having to worry all the time about what might happen.
Yes? said Rose, silencing me.
All right, then, you show me.
Yes, Im going to. Because you worry me, you do really. Suppose you dont get married, suppose that book of yours isnt any good?
I was ready to listen, because this was one of the times when I believed I might not write again. I found I was too tired at night to write. My day, for some weeks, went like this. My son woke early, and I dressed and fed him and took him to the nursery before going to work. At lunchtime I went to the shops, took food home and cleaned the place out. I picked him up from the nursery at five; and by the time he was fed and bathed and read to, and he was ready for sleep, it was about nine. Then, in theory, was my time for writing. But not only could I not write. I could not even imagine myself writing. The personality writer was so far removed from me, it was like thinking about another person, not myself. As it turned out, after two months or so, I got an advance from a publisher on a previously-written book, and my troubles were over. But during that time. I was ready to listen to Roses strictures.
No, she would say patiently, as she took the match from my fingers and replaced it carefully in the box. Not like that. Why, when theres a fire binning? She tore a strip of newspaper, made a spill, and lit her cigarette and mine.
She would say: I have a friend, you dont know her. She went into the chemist at the corner for a lipstick. But she could have got the same lipstick along the road for tuppence less. Theres no sense in that. Shes got no sense at all. She dropped some tea on her skirt. Well, round the corner theres a cleaner wouldve done it for one-and-nine. But she just goes into the nearest and pays two-and-six. Wheres the sense in it? Can you tell me?
Rose earned four pounds a week. She was underpaid, and knew it. The managers of shops in the neighbourhood were always offering her better-paid jobs; but she wanted to stay where she was because Dickie, Dans brother, worked in a cigarette shop across the street. Nor would she ask her employer for a rise. I do alt the work in that place, she said. She just runs off to shop and carry-on, leaving me there alone. That husband of hers, at) he knows about is the inside of watches. If a customer comes in, he diddles about, and loses everything and then shouts Rose, Rose. And I know how much money they make because I see the books. Well, if they dont know the right way to behave, the way I look at it, its their funeral. Let them enjoy their guilty consciences. They know Im worth twice that money to them. Well, if they think Im going down on my knees to ask for it, Im not going to give them that pleasure, they neednt think it.
Rose lived well inside her four pounds a week. What it cost her to do it were time and leisure, commodities she knew the value of, but which she did not consider to be her right. Half an hours skilled calculations might go into working out whether it was worth taking a bus to another part of London where she knew there was a nail varnish at sixpence less than where we lived. She would muse aloud, like this: If I go by bus, thats three-halfpence. Threepence altogether. Id save threepence on the varnish. If I walk theres shoe-leather, and what repairs cost these days, its not worth it. I know, she concluded, triumphant. II! wear those shoes of mine that pinch me, and then it wont cost nothing at all. We would walk together to the shop where the nail varnish was sixpence cheaper, and she would snatch up her prize from the rich market of London, saying: There, see, what did I tell you? Now Im sixpence to the good. But walking back she would stop on an impulse to buy half a pound of cherries from one of the despised barrow-boys, against whom she was continually warning me, so that the saved sixpence was thrown to the winds; but that was different, that was pleasure. Ill have to go easy on cigarettes tomorrow, she would say, smiling delightedly. But its worth it.
All her carefuly handling of money was to this end that she might buy pleasure: that once in six months she could take a taxi instead of walking, and tip the taxi driver threepence more than was necessary; that she could buy a pair of good nylons once a week; that she could throw money away on fruit when the fancy took her, instead of walking down to the street markets and getting it cheap.
Inside this terrible, frightening city. Rose had created for herself a sort of tunnel, shored against danger by habit, known buildings, and trusted people. Roses London was the half-mile of streets where she had been born and brought up, populated by people she trusted; the house where she now lived, surrounded by them mostly hostile people; and the West End. She knew every face we saw in the area we lived in, and if she did not, made it her business to find out. She knew every policeman and plain-clothes man who might pounce on her if she did not do right; she would nudge me and point out some man on a pavement, saying: See im? Hes a copper in civvies, Makes me sick. Well. I wonder who hes after this time. She spoke with a melancholoy respect, almost pride.
Roses West End was a fixed journey, on a certain bus route, to a certain Corner House and one of half a dozen cinemas. It was walking back up Regent Street for window shopping.
Flos London did not even include the West End, since she had left the restaurant in Holborn. It was the basement she lived in; the shops she was registered at; and the cinema five minutes walk away. She had never been inside a picture gallery, a theatre or a concert hall. Flo would say: Lets go to the River one fine afternoon and take Oar. She had not seen the Thames, she said, since before the war. Rose had never been on the other side of the river. Once, when I took my son on a trip by river bus. Rose played with the idea of coming too for a whole week. Finally she said: I dont think Id like those parts, not really. I like what Im used to. But you go and tell me about it after.
On the evenings when Rose decided life owed her some fun, she would say to me: Youre coming with me to the West End tonight, whether you like it or not. She began to dress a good hour before it was time to start. I could hear her bath running downstairs, and the smell of her bath powder drifted up through the house. Soon afterwards she came in, without make-up, looking young and excited. I never found out how old she was. She used to say, with a laugh, she was twenty-three, but I think she was about thirty.