For a time I thought of our side of the street, as opposed to the cliff of elderly ladies, as one of ordinary family life; but one sunny day I came up the other pavement and saw that every house, almost every layer of windows, held its vigilant spectator, peering sharply down over the knitting needles. When I came to our house there, sure enough, half-obscured by a dirty lace curtain, was a very old, yellowing, papery lady.
I waited some days for Flo and Dan, but it was Rose again who approached me. She told me what had happened downstairs.
I really dont know what shell say about the old people, Flo had said, with resignation, its not nice for a nice girl, is it, but someone has to tell her.
Thats right, said Rose.
I dont like telling her, said Flo with a shrinking and fastidious air. I dont even like talking about it, its so horrible.
Yes?
Its all right for you, but its me whos unhappy, you are out all day. Its me what has to put up with their noise and their smells and their banging on the floor and all.
Yes?
Sometimes I think Ill never bear it out, and Ill have to go and live with my grandmother in Italy.
At this Rose had laughed, in spite of herself, and Dan, who was still black-tempered, said: If you do Ill know where to find myself another woman.
There, Flo said. You see? Now you just go upstairs and tell her.
And so here I am telling you, said Rose. And what do I care? Because last night I let Dickie in.
Yes, I know.
How? We was ever so quiet.
Because you look so happy.
Well, I am. Why didnt you tell me how nice it was?
But we did.
Well, I suppose no one can properly tell in words about it, but if Id known what I was missing I wouldnt have held out so long. But dont you tell Flo. I cant stand all her winks and nods.
She was up this morning to try and find out.
No! How does she smell these things, Id like to know?
Flo had come toiling up that morning with Aurora and the puppies at her heels, the moment Rose left for work, to remark in an offhand voice: Friends should tell their friends the nice things that happen, shouldnt they?
During the course of the visit, a prolonged one, she said that you could see Rose was learning sense at last, but that if she wanted to hook Dickie, there was only one way to do it, and if I was a friend of Rose Id tell her to let an accident happen. You dont think Id have got Dan except by being sensible, do you? And Rose doesnt listen to me these days.
With the puppies and Aurora cavorting around my room, I tried to preserve my belongings from destruction, and Roses privacy, while from time to time Flo shrieked for effect: Drat those dogs. Drat that child! and kept her anxious eyes fixed on my face. She was suffering torments of curiosity. And I knew it was no use, because it was always useless to lie to Flo. Being a purely instinctual creature she knew what most of us have to learn by experience, if ever, that in order to judge whether people are telling the truth, one doesnt listen to the words they use.
I kept repeating that I slept like a log and never woke at night. I said no. I hadnt seen Roses face that morning. Flo kept nodding lugubriously; she had sensed the truth. Now she was wondering whether to ask me straight out if Rose had had Dickie in her room. But I said No, I would be committed to the lie, and she might later lose the advantage of my being in a better mood. With Flo, everything was a question of mood.
Well, dear, she had remarked, finally departing, I like to believe you are a friend of mine, but how can I think it when youre like this?
My God, said Rose, when I told her all this. We call Flo stupid and she is, we know she is. But for all that she knows whats true through her skin from what I can see.
And now tell me what they said downstairs.
First she laughed, irrepressibly. The trouble is, with Flo and Dan, you always have to laugh, even when theyre up to no good Wait. Ill get my face straight.
She put on a prim and sorrowful face and said: Life is hard, things is not easy. Its hard for poor Flo. What she goes through is enough to make a queen cry. Those dirty old people, nothing but criminals.
Yes? I said.
Dont make me laugh, dear. Wait. No, its no use. I cant take an interest. Theyll come up tomorrow themselves.
Tomorrow I had Flo and Dan, separately, and together, all through the day. They had decided the time was now ripe for my initiation, and they never did anything by halves, whereas previously I could find out nothing at all, now I couldnt get to speak of anything else.
It seemed that the feud had begun good-naturedly. When Flo first entered the house, she was confronted by an ancient, black-garbed, white-faced crone with burning angry eyes. What are you bloody foreigners doing in my house? she demanded. Flo laughed, and said they had bought the house, and anyway, she had been born and bred not half a mile away. The door slammed in her face when she asked to see the flat. She had to call a policeman to make them open the door. Afterwards the policeman had said: Crazy as they come. Youd better get them out before they do damage. This pronouncement from the Law itself, or so Dan and Flo saw it, had confused them; for a time they had believed all they would have to do was to call a policeman and get the couple turned into the street. Meanwhile, they could not go anywhere near the first floor without shouts and imprecations being hurled at them from behind the locked door. Dan went to a lawyer and was told he could not turn them out so easily. It had been decided between them to go to Court and complain the flat was kept in a disgusting condition. Rose, who had actually been inside it, said this was true. It contained a single bed, with stained bedding; a cupboard made of boxes, and a couple of gas rings. Rose said the filth and the smell was so she was nearly sick. But a week before the Court case, Dan lost his temper and threw a flat-iron at the door with all the strength of his enormous arms and shoulders. The door splintered inwards, the old lady brought a counter-claim, and both parties had been bound over to good behaviour in Court.
From that time, they behaved as if they regarded each other as a species of wild animal.
When I said to Flo that such and such an action might have killed the old lady, she replied: Yes, but she threw a saucepan full of boiling potatoes at me the week before. That might have killed me, mightnt it? Or: Well, dear, if I had, she wouldnt be much loss to the world, would she? She might just as welt be dead for all the good it does her.
From that time, they behaved as if they regarded each other as a species of wild animal.
When I said to Flo that such and such an action might have killed the old lady, she replied: Yes, but she threw a saucepan full of boiling potatoes at me the week before. That might have killed me, mightnt it? Or: Well, dear, if I had, she wouldnt be much loss to the world, would she? She might just as welt be dead for all the good it does her.
But there had been long spells of comparative peace. Flo would make a point of raising her voice in insulting remarks as she passed their door; the old lady inside would retaliate by shrieking like a parrot. And before Dan went to bed every night he had made a point of climbing up to the room I was now in where he stamped up and down for a good ten minutes. The old lady, if she got the chance, emptied her dustpan or shook her duster down Flos stairs. Or she would summon a policeman to say: That bitch is trying to kill me. The policeman knew her; and would take down her tale in the book, and then drop down for a cup of tea with Flo. This stale of affairs might continue for weeks. And then everything flared up into open war.
A few months after the binding over, Dan applied to have the couple removed to a lunatic asylum. The old lady had screamed that her tap was broken and it was the landlords responsibility, Dan at once went to mend it; he was longing to get his capable hands on to the disorder inside that flat. But he was met with a locked door and silence. Soon there came a lawyers letter demanding that he should mend the tap at once, Dan attempted to enter the flat in the presence of the police and failed. He pointed out that no one but a crazy woman would behave like that. At once the old lady attempted to prove he was mad because he would not let them use the lavatory or bathroom, but complained because they emptied their slops into the wash-basin in their room.
The rent collecting was a weekly drama. Every Friday at about six. Dan looked meaningfully at the clock, set his teeth and climbed the stairs, followed by Flo, Aurora and jack, Dan banged on their door and shouted. Silence, He banged again, threatening lawyers, asylums, court cases. Unpredictably, perhaps after five minutes, perhaps after fifty, the door opened an inch, and a handful of silver scattered into the hall, followed by a scream of rage. The door slammed, and continued to shake and vibrate as the old lady hammered on it with both fists and shouted that he must take himself off her premises. Sometimes Dan grinned, shrugged and pointed an ominous forefinger to his head. Sometimes his face swelled purple with anger, and he pounded on the door till he was sobbing with exertion.
Worse than stews and flat-irons was to come, One day Dan was in the yard with Aurora. A heavy ladder rested against the wall near the old couples back window, where he had been mending a drainpipe. The old lady leaned out and pushed down the ladder, which missed Aurora by a couple of inches. Dan went mad with rage; he replaced the ladder, bounded up it, and in the space of a few seconds was in the flat, shaking the old lady like a pillow and threatening to kill her. He was checked by the realization that the old man, supposed to be a co-villain with his wife, was seated all this time on the bed reading the newspaper. He did not even raise his eyes at the scuffle. Dan was so astounded that he dropped the old lady on the floor, gazed in a hypnotized way at the old man, and withdrew, shrugging and scratching his head. In the basement he said to Flo: Hes madder than she is. He doesnt even fight. He just sits there.
The case went to Court, both sides claiming damages for assault, both being bound over for the second time.
Next, the old lady climbed down the ladder in full view of Flo and shook red pepper over a bed of Flos tulips.
Flo said: I told the Judge she put pepper on my tulips once before and he bound us over. It isnt fair. Dan shouted: Is this British Justice? and the Judge got mad. And the old lady said: Well get our rights in a British Court against the dirty foreigners. She meant me, because of my Italian grandmother. You should have seen her face when the Judge told her she was an old nuisance.
He said you were a nuisance, too, commented Rose.
That was because he didnt know about the potatoes on the stairs. Do you know she rolls potatoes down the stairs hoping Ill slip on them and break my neck. Well, I just pick them up and use them. But its not right, dear, is it? Youll come and be witness for us, wont you, sweetheart?