From above us came the sound of moaning.
Of course.
Yes. I know you can. But I dont want to. Ill see you later.
Soon afterwards Flo came to say Mrs Skeffington was asleep for the night. And Rosemary had been given a tablespoon of whisky to keep her quiet. We both made trips upstairs to listen outside the door; and Miss Powell made trips down. We couldnt hear anything. Miss Powell said she had arranged to call a friend of hers who was a nurse, if anything went wrong. Flo approved of this; nurses werent doctors: they were friendly, they were women, they understood.
When Rose came back at midnight, soft-faced and smiling and happy, she seemed a visitor from another country. Well, she said, so thats all fixed. She sat down in my big chair, and began to make herself comfortable. In five minutes she had changed herself from a pretty girl into a plain woman. First, straddled in the chair, she stripped the corset-belt from under her petticoat. Then she undid her brassière, and removed the carefully-bunched cotton-woo! with which it was stuffed. She stuck a cigarette in the corner of her mouth a thing she would rather die than do in public so that, with her eyes screwed up against the smoke she looked like a wise old sardonic woman. Finally she took a comb from her black packed hair, and reflectively scratched her scalp with it. No man present: she could be herself.
Have a good time?
What do you think?
Where did you go?
The pictures. I didnt care where we went, so long as I was with him. He wouldnt talk to me at first, not a cheep out of him. I didnt take any notice; I talked nice about whatever came past, so to speak. Then, after the pictures he look my hand and squeezed it ever so hard. She showed me, with satisfaction, and creased red flesh on her wrist. And he said, look if youre going out with me, youre not going out with other men, see? I said; Going out with you, am I? Havent noticed it recently. He said. As far as Im concerned, youre coming out with me. So I smiled, secret-like, and played I didnt care either way. Then, when he got mad, I looked at him straight and said; No fooling now. Youre not playing me up again, understand? Then I patted his cheek, like that Rose patted the chair in a brisk maternal way. I said; Im telling you straight. If you dont want me, there are those who do. You can take it or leave it. When we got to the gate, he kissed me proper She smiled, and immediately her face dimmed to worry. He said he wanted to come in. But I wouldnt let him, I dont know what I ought to do. If I let him come in
Oh God, oh God! said a terrible voice from upstairs.
Serves her right, said Rose.
Youre a hard-hearted little beast, I said.
Yes? You listen to me. My mother had eight children. Well, some of them died early. Shes only fifty now. And if shed done away with one or two before they was born, she didnt start when shed only one. She liked kids. It wouldnt hurt my lady upstairs to have another kid. Whats she complaining about? My mother went out to work, cleaning places for people like you, excuse me saying it, people who didnt know how to keep a place clean, and she brought us up, and she had two no-good men, one after the other, aggravating her all the time, Ive no patience.
Your mother had a house to put the children in.
Is that so? My mother had us in two rooms until she married that bastard my step. She had us all in two rooms. And we were always clean and nice. She only got a house if you can call it a house. I know you wouldnt, when she married and then it was four rooms for ten people.
Yes, well Ive heard you say you wouldnt have kids until you had a proper house to put them in.
Anxiety gripped her face. Yes. I know. Why do you have to remind me? Dickies not going to give me Buckingham Palace, if he ever gives me anything. Oh, why did all this happen tonight when Im trying to be happy?
Oh, my God, my God! came from upstairs.
Oh, drat her, said Rose, almost in tears. Why does she have to go on, I dont want to think about everything. Theyre always talking about new houses and new this and new that, I always used to think of myself living in a nice place of my own. But when I left school, all I did was go into a shop, just like my mother did before she had kids. Whats new about that? And there was the war. All through the war, they kept saying, everythings going to be different. Whos it different for Flo and Dan, not me. Half the girls I was at school with are in one room and two rooms with kids. And now theyre cooking up another war. I know what that means. I dont care about Russia or Timbuctoo. All I know is, I want to start getting married before they begin again and kill all the men off in their bloody wars while we sing God Save the King.
Oh, my God, God. God! came from upstairs.
Rose got up and said: Ill take her up a cup of tea.
She came down and said: Shes got a bleeding, all over the sheets. Lucky Rosemarys lost to the world. And that Miss Powells getting a friend of hers thats a nurse. So she wont die this time. Miss Powell says, will you go upstairs and lend a hand. Thats because she doesnt like me, and I dont care, Ive no patience. Ill see you in the morning.
Chapter Five
During the next few days, while Rose was occupied by her worry about whether she should go to bed with Dickie or not. I think she would have been pleased to have some of Flos crude advice, but the family downstairs was occupied plotting for the court case. She was aggrieved about it. My lifes hanging on a thread, shed say; and no one cares except about their dirty money.
I do.
Yes, but youre different.
I dont see why.
Yes? Well, if you havent learned by now my worries about life are different from yours then I havent taught you much.
Then tell me whats going on about the case.
Whats the use? What I tell you will be different from what Flo and Dan tell you.
Thats why I want to hear it from you.
Yes, but theyve made me promise. And, anyway, the whole thing makes me so sick money, money, money; well, I didnt have to tell you that, you know Flo and Dan.
You know youre going to tell me sometime.
Then Ill be careful what I say, just facts, and not what I think, and then I wont be breaking my promise to Flo.
The facts were these. Two very old people lived in two rooms on the ground floor. They had been there for years before the war. When the house was bombed, they stayed in it, although the basement was filled with water, and the floors over their heads filled with debris. There was no running water, electricity, no sanitation. They fetched in water from a house down the street; used the backyard as a lavatory at night; burned candles; went to the public bathhouse once a week. Flo and Dan had bought the half-ruined house without even knowing the old couple were in it. They paid eighteen shillings a week rent, and could not be got out.
You dont know about the Rent Act, said Rose. That keeps them safe. Flo and Dan didnt understand it either, at first, and they tried to throw the old people out. Then they barricaded themselves in. Thats all Im going to tell you. Whats eating Dan and Flo, I dont have to tell you, is that eighteen shillings. They could get four or five pounds for that flat if it was done up. Dont worry, I heard Flo and Dan talking. Theyre coming up to tell you, all crocodile tears, about what they suffer, so youll know.
Whos right and whos wrong?
Who can say now? Im sorry for the old people, theyre on the old age pension, and when theyre kicked out theyll have to go to a Home. But if Dan and Flo go on like a pair of wild beasts, then so does the old lady. The old mans neither here nor there, hes too old for anything but being silly in the head. Now if you keep your eyes open along the streets youll catch sight of her, lurking and hiding behind her curtains. And thats all I shall say.
The street was full of old ladies. Sometimes it seemed as if the cliff of grey wall opposite, jutting with balconies and irregularly hung with greenery and flowers, was the haunt of some species of gaunt and spectral bird. As soon as pale sunlight came creeping along the street, each window, each balcony, was settled with its old lady, reading newspapers, knitting, or peering over the barriers of sill and railing down at the pavements where the children played among the screeching wheels and protesting horns of cars and lorries. No child was hurt while I lived there; but every time I looked out of the window I was terrified: the old ladies were considerably tougher than I. They sat immobile, the light glancing from their spectacles and their working needles; and between them and the children was a bond that appeared like pure hatred. From time to time, like a flock of birds propelled into space by some impulse, the old ladies would rise and screech warnings and imprecations into the street. Brakes screamed, horns wailed, and the children set up a chorus of angry Yahs and Boos. Slowly the grey crones settled into their nooks, slowly the traffic flowed on, and the children continued to play, ignoring their guardians above. Sometimes an old lady would descend from her perch and stalk cautiously down the street, laden with shopping bags, baskets, handbags, purses, umbrellas, ration books. She would stop at the edge of a group of children and hold out a bag of sweets. The children, cheeky and affectionate, approached as cautiously as small birds to an apparently harmless old hawk. They darted forward, grabbed the sweets, and ran off laughing; while the old lady grumbled and scolded and smiled: Youll get yourself run over, youll get yourselves killed, youll be the death of me yet. Immediately forgetting her, they resumed their play and she her progress to the shops or the market, smiling gently to herself because of the children.
From time to time, the anxiety boiled over into a shower of angry protesting notes carried across from the old ladies to the harassed mothers of the children, by the children themselves. The whole street fomented spite and resentment; fathers, back from work, were pressed into battle; and for a day or two the children, who had acquired a sense which enabled them to evade lorries and cars, had their attention continually distracted by their mothers who would appear in the windows and balconies beside the old ladies, in order to call out: Do look out there! or Goodness gracious me! Futilely wringing their hands, or waving dishcloths, they agitatedly peered into the street where their offspring flirted so lightly with danger, gave the old ladies a glare of frustrated irritation, and finally returned to their housework hoping to be allowed to forget an anxiety which was useless, since irremediable.