In Pursuit of the English

by Doris Lessing

  ‘Oh, come on, what fun is there in life?’

  ‘Fun for who?’ Then she screamed out: ‘You’ve bitten me.’ Rosemary and her mother wailed together.

  Rose got up, her lips narrowed into a vindictive line.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘You’ll see.’

  ‘Leave them alone.’

  ‘They don’t leave us alone, do they?’

  Rose went up and hammered on the door, ‘Let me in,’ she shouted.

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Let me in.’ The door opened. ‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself,’ said Rose. ‘Have you got to bite your wife just because she won’t sleep with you fifty times a night? You dirty beast. And what about Rosemary? What’s it like for her hearing all this nonsense. Give her to me.’

  ‘We’ll keep her quiet, we will really.’

  ‘Give her to me,’ said Rose again.

  Rosemary began sobbing, as a child does when it finds a refuge.

  ‘Now you go to bed,’ said Rose. ‘You leave your wife alone. Anyway, why do you have to make love tonight? Friday and Saturday’s for making love. Everyone has to work tomorrow, and you just go on and on.’

  Husband and wife crept into their bed. Rose took the child into the other room and covered her up on the sofa. She was upstairs a long time. When she came down her eyes were red.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘lf I had a kid I’d know what to do. But who gets them? Dirty beasts like them Skeffingtons.’

  ‘You’re hard on them.’

  ‘Now don’t you start on your talk. Just don’t talk. I don’t want to think about nothing at all. Because when I start thinking I begin to think about what might happen. Suppose I don’t marry Dickie, what then?’

  ‘You’ll marry someone else.’

  ‘Yes? They’re all the same, when you get down to it.’

  ‘Things are different from they used to be. You don’t have to get married.’

  ‘They might be different for you, but they’re not for me.’

  This was how she always put an end to our discussions about socialism. ‘You’re different,’ she had concluded, listening to me exhort about the system. ‘You’re middle-class – you don’t mind me saying it, I’ve got nothing against you personally, see? So if you want to talk about socialism, you’re welcome.’

  ‘Rose, socialism is for the working people, not for us.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Yes. You won’t get it until you fight for it.’

  ‘Yes? I’m not going to waste my time getting excited. Things will last out my time. In the newspapers they’re always talking about a new this and new that. Well, there’s one thing I know, my mother worked all her life, and I’m no better off than she was.’

  ‘Yes, you are. You won’t starve, for one thing.’

  ‘Starve? Who’s talking about starving? She never starved either. There’s always someone to help you out if you’re in trouble. You would, if I was in trouble. But I know her life and I know mine. And I know the difference, not much.’

  ‘It’s your fault, because you won’t fight.’

  ‘Yes? Well you talk, if you enjoy it, I’ll think my own thoughts.’

  ‘We’re supposed to have a new society.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Do you get angry because there are still rich and powerful people when all that is supposed to be finished?’

  ‘Who said it was?’

  ‘A lot of people.’

  ‘Well, if you want to believe all them lies, who’s stopping you?’

  ‘I didn’t say I believed it.’

  ‘Then you’re talking sense for once.’

  ‘All the same. The reason they are saying it is they want to put something over on you.’

  ‘Yes? Well, they’re not. As for them with their parties and their good times and their money here and their money here, I say, good luck to them. They’ve either got brains, which I haven’t, or they’ve done something dirty to get it. Well. I don’t envy their consciences. Would you like to be Bobby Brent or Dan or Flo?’

  ‘Much rather, than being virtuous and poor.’

  ‘Then you’re not my friend. Excuse me for saying so. I don’t like you talking like that. Then why don’t you put money into their dirty deals?’

  ‘Because I haven’t any.’

  ‘Don’t give me that talk. I don’t believe it, for one. And for another, I don’t like to hear it. And I’ll tell you something else. Sometimes I’m sorry you’re my friend, because you make me think about things.’

  ‘Good. That’s what friends are for.’

  ‘Yes? But not if it makes you unhappy. I’ve told you before, there’s one thing wrong with you. You think it’s enough to say things are wrong to change them. Well, it isn’t. I’ll tell you something else. My stepfather was Labour. Well, it stands to reason, he had unemployment and all that. And who’s Labour Party in this house? The Skeffingtons upstairs.’

  ‘Good for them,’ I said.

  ‘Yes? That pair of no-goods? They have everything bad, and so they vote Labour.’ Suddenly she giggled. ‘It made me laugh. When we had that election. Flo and Dan, they had Tory posters all over. Well, that makes sense, they’re doing all right. And the Skeffingtons stuck a Labour in their window. Flo went up and tore it down. So the Skeffingtons made a fuss about their rights. They make me laugh. Lucky they pay the rent regular. He said to Flo: All right, then we’ll leave. And she said: All right, then leave. Then she thought about the rent, and her heart broke. So for weeks, you can imagine how it was, all the house plastered up and down with Vote for Churchill, and just one window, Vote for Labour.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘You have the vote.’

  ‘Don’t make me laugh, I know what’s what. I just watch them at it and laugh to myself.’

  ‘Well, you make me angry.’

  ‘Yes I know I do, and I don’t care.’

  ‘For one thing, you make me cross because you hang about waiting for Churchill to speak. What has he ever done for you?’

  ‘Whoever said he had?’

  Rose would listen to Churchill talk with a look of devotion I entirely misunderstood. She would emerge at the end of half an hour’s fiery peroration with a dreamy and reminiscent smile, and say: ‘He makes me laugh. He’s just a jealous fat man, I don’t take any notice of him. Just like a girl he is, saying to a friend: No dear, you don’t look nice in that dress, and the next thing is, he’s wearing it himself.’

  ‘Then why do you listen to him?’

  ‘Why should I care? He makes me remember the war, for one thing. I don’t care what he says about Labour. I don’t care who gets in, I’ll get a smack in the eye either way. When they come in saying Vote for Me. Vote for Me. I just laugh. But I like to hear Churchill speak, with his dirty V-sign and everything, he enjoys himself, say what you like.’

  Similarly she would listen to programmes about the war and say: ‘Well, to think all those exciting things were going on all the time. They didn’t happen to us. Did I ever tell you about the bomb we had on the factory?’

  But there were programmes she refused to listen to at all. Or she would return from the cinema sometimes in a mood of sullen rage, saying; ‘They make me sick, they do.’

  ‘Who?’

  To begin with she was vague, saying, ‘I don’t know.’

  But later on, when she knew me, and we had begun to fight about what we thought, she would say: ‘Oh, I know what I say’ll be grist to your mill, but I don’t care. Those films. They make fun of us.’

  There was a certain wireless programme that I thought was funny, but if Rose came in when I was listening she would say politely: ‘You think that’s funny, do you? Well, I don’t,’ and go out until it was over.

  ‘I don’t think it’s funny people talk in different ways,’ she said to me at last. ‘That’s what that programme is, isn’t it? Just to make people feel above themselves because they talk well and peop
le like me don’t. Listen to them laughing, just because someone uses the wrong grammar. I’m surprised at you, dear, I am really.’

  I have seen her return from a film so angry she would smoke several cigarettes before she could bring herself to speak about it.

  ‘They make me sick. It was a British film, see. I don’t know why I ever go to them sometimes. If it’s an American film, well, they make us up all wrong, but it’s what you’d expect from them. You don’t take it serious. But the British films make me mad. Take the one tonight. It had what they call a cockney in it. I hate seeing cockneys in films. Anyway, what is a cockney? There aren’t any, except around Bow Bells, so they say, and I’ve never been there. And then the barrow-boys, or down in Petticoat Lane. They just put it on to be clever, and sell things if they see an American or a foreigner coming. “Watcher, cock,” and all that talk all over the place. They never say Watcher, cock! unless there’s someone stupid around to laugh. Them film people just put it in to be clever, like the barrow-boys, it makes the upper-class people laugh. They think of the working-class as dragged up. Dragged up and ignorant and talking vulgarugly. I’ve never met anyone who spoke cockney. I don’t and no one I know does, not even Flo, and God knows she stupid enough and on the make to say anything. Well, that’s what I think and I’ll stick to it. And the bloody British can keep their films. I don’t mind when they have a film about rich people. You can go and have a nice sit-down and take the weight off your feet and think: I wish that was me. But when they make pictures for people to laugh at, then they’ve had me and my money. I’ll keep my money for the Americans, You don’t take them serious, and anyway they don’t laugh at people with different voices in America. That’s because America is all foreigners, the way I look at it, and they can’t all laugh at each other, can they? Sometimes when I’ve got the ’ump I think I’ll go to America and to hell with England, that’s what I think, anyway.’

  ‘You’d hate it in America.’ I said.

  ‘How do I know? Well, the way I look at it is. America must be like England was during the war.’

  Rose, now she was depressed, talked about the war all the time. At this distance – it was 1950 now – those six years of hardship meant to her warmth, comradeship, a feeling of belonging and being wanted, a feeling she had never been given before or since. She could talk about the war for hours and never mention death, fear, food shortages or danger.

  ‘Eight hundred people we were, in the factory. We got to know each other, by face, anyway. It was funny, everyone not knowing what’d happen next day, if their house was still standing or not, by the time they got home at nights, but at least we were all together, if you know what I mean, I used to be sorry for myself, with all the night work and everything. I used to say: When will the war be over – and not think it’d ever be over. But now I wish it was back. I don’t mean the killing part of it, but I didn’t know anyone who was killed, much, not much more than in peacetime – I mean, I know they were killed, but I didn’t know them. But then people liked each other. You could talk to people, if you felt like it, even upper-class people, and no one would think the worse. You got to know people. You’d think about some lardyda person, they’re not so bad, when you gel to know them, they can’t help it, poor sods, it’s the way they’re brought up. I remember when I got scared and raids were bad, I used to go down to the shelters and the air was foul, and I couldn’t sleep and the ground was shaking all around, and I wished it would all end. But it was nice, too. You could talk to the man sitting next to you in the Underground at night, and share your blanket with him if he hadn’t got one, and he never thought the worse. You’d say good-bye in the morning and you’d know you’d never see him again, but you’d feel nice all day, because he was friendly, and you was friendly too. See? And if I got real shook-up and frightened and I couldn’t take the shelters, I used to go home to my mother. My stepfather was giving her hell, because he was dying of tuberculosis, only he was keeping it quiet, and we didn’t know he was so ill, otherwise we’d have had more patience with the old so-and-so, but he wouldn’t have me in the house, he said I was a bad girl, because of being out at nights after ten o’clock – he just made me laugh with his dirty mind. So I’d creep all quiet into mother’s room and she’d lock the door and say she had a headache and we’d get under the bed on a mattress because of the bombs and we’d talk. It was company, see, with the Germans overhead and the bombs. And I’d hear that old so-and-so crying for my mother, and I’d think, sod him. Of course if I’d known his lungs were rotting on him with TB, I’d not have grabbed my mother when I had the chance, but I didn’t know. If someone had told me I’d be glad to have the war back, I’d have laughed in their face. Now I think: That was a good time, say what you like. I earned eight pounds a week. Where am I going to earn eight pounds a week now? Lucky I had the sense to put some in the post office for my old age. Not that it’ll be worth anything by then, the way money’s melting to nothing week by week as we live. But I like to think I have something there. Without the war, I wouldn’t. Yes. I know, dear, it’s funny you can only get something nice these days when there’s a war, but that’s how things seem to me. People liked each other. Well, they don’t now, do they? And so don’t talk to me about your socialism, it just makes me sick and tired, and that’s the truth.’

  Chapter Four

  I had come to England with pounds of tinned food in my trunk as to a starving country, prepared to tighten my belt and to suffer, as the newspapers back home continually assured us the British people were suffering. But I will always think of that house in terms of good eating. Not only was the whole place perfumed with the smells of feasting every evening. On Sundays there was a real feast, the emotional climax of the week.

  On Sundays Mrs Skeffington cooked a roast and two veg for Mr Skeffington, On the floor above the Skeffingtons Miss Powell cooked a roast and two veg for Bobby Brent.

  But in the basement preparations for Sunday dinne; began on Saturday afternoon when Flo went to the market, assisted by Jack, and came back with baskets laden with food. By now she had appropriated my meat coupons and Rose’s. It was understood we should all share Sunday’s food. ‘It’s only right.’ Flo said, ‘All them cigarettes, and I’ll never get round to paying you back, sweetheart. I don’t know why it is, but there’s something about cigarettes that’s too much for me. Well, you just give me your meat ration, and you’ll not be sorry, I swear it.’

  On Sundays we all slept late. About twelve Flo knocked on my door and on Rose’s, and said, smiling with pleasure: ‘We’re starting now. Come on down.’

  In the basement, the children played on the floor among the puppies and the kittens, the men sat in their white singlets over the Sunday newspapers, and Flo and I and Rose began work.

  ‘That Mrs Skeffington, that Miss Powell, they’re cooking their roasts again,’ Flo said. ‘That’s their week’s ration gone and Where’s the sense. I’ve told them. I’ve told them over and over. But Mrs Skeffington, she says her husband kills her without he gets his roast Sundays. And Miss Powell’s the same. Ah, my Lord, it’s enough to make you cry, the waste of it.’

  Meanwhile, Rose and I were preparing vegetables and beating butter and sugar.

  ‘Ah, my Lord, but say what you like, I talk and I talk, but what can you do with this Government, no eggs, no meat, no fat, nothing but flour and water, and you expect me to cook with that?’ Rose winked at me; Dan smiled over the edges of his paper.

  ‘Yes, and look—’ Here Flo flung open the doors of her food cupboard. ‘See that? See that butter, for a whole week? The grocer couldn’t give me extra, well, it’s not my fault, is it now, if the food tastes of nothing at all.’

  Flo had ‘cooked English’ until the year her Italian grandmother came on a visit. It so happened that her mother had to go off unexpectedly to visit a relation in hospital. Flo and her grandmother were alone in the house together.

  ‘And no sooner had she set foot on our soil, the old cow broke her leg.
There she was, propped up stiff as a dead rabbit with her bum on one chair and her heels on another, groaning and carrying on, and saying: “I’m going to die.” Die, my fanny. She’d the energy for a fifty-year-old, though she was seventy-nine and she’d lived out two husbands and one or two men on the side. She said: You look after me, my girl, or I won’t give you permission to marry. I said: I’m married already, you old witch – that was my first husband, what died all those years ago – but I’ll look after you. I wouldn’t see ray worst enemy die of starvation. We liked each other, see?’ Flo interrupted herself in an explanatory way. ‘Well. I put on my apron and cleaned up for her and cooked her dinner and she began to wail like a baby with a pin stuck in it. She said: I don’t mind dying of a broken leg, if that’s God’s will – she was a Catholic, see? You mustn’t mind that, everyone is in Italy, so she said, it’s just a habit with them, like we have a Labour Government in with us. But I’m not going to die of your English cooking, she said. You must learn to cook or your husband will die of it.’

  ‘And what had you cooked?’ asked Rose, playing her part in the tale.

  ‘Fish and chips, like always.’

  ‘What’s wrong with fish and chips?’ asked Dan, obediently, as Flo looked at him, waiting for him to contribute.

  ‘What’s wrong? Why, that’s all I knew.’

  ‘Best food in the world,’ said Dan grinning.

  ‘Yes, but you know better now, don’t you, sweetheart?’

  ‘You’ve just broken me in,’ he said.

  ‘My God, the ingratitude.’ Flo said to me, ‘Do you hear? When we started courting, he knew nothing but fish and chips. And when I cooked real food, like my granny taught me, he’d grumble, grumble, grumble, grumble. He’d come to the back of my kitchen in Holborn, and I’d feed him all the best bits, and he’d carry on like he was being poisoned.’

  Dan nodded, and went on with the News of the World.

  ‘But now he knows.’