In Pursuit of the English

by Doris Lessing

  She crept to the window and looked over. ‘There he is,’ she said. ‘Come and see.’ A very tall spindly youth with a sad frog’s face stared up at the house. ‘You mustn’t laugh,’ she said accusingly, stuffing a fist against her mouth and giggling. ‘I know he’s nothing to look at, but he’s sweet.’ She took another look and reeled back, laughing. ‘When I compare him with Dickie … but I mustn’t say that. At least, he’s a proper gentleman. That’s what I like. When I first met Dickie and Dan I decided to go for Dan – that was before Flo. But Dan messed me about, and Dickie kept his hands to himself, for the first evening, any rate. So I decided to like Dickie instead.’ She began whirling around on her toes singing: ‘Kiss me sweet, kiss me simple,’ and dropped laughing on to a chair.

  ‘He’s waiting,’ I said.

  ‘Let him wait. I told you, I’m not going to treat any of them right from now on. I’ll wait until 7.15. I said seven. He’s a fool, like they all are, so he’ll think the more of me.’ At a quarter past seven she went downstairs, adjusting her face to languid boredom.

  As soon as she had gone, Flo darted up the stairs to ask: ‘Is he good-looking?’

  ‘But I didn’t see.’

  ‘He’d better be, or Dickie won’t be jealous. Rose came down to me and said if I was a friend I’d got to go up to the shop tomorrow morning and tell Dickie, all casual, that Rose had another man. She’s coming on, isn’t she?’

  When Rose came in that night, she was thoughtful. ‘I’ve got used to Dickie, that’s what it is,’ she said. She handed me five cigarettes. ‘Might as well take what’s going. He gave me twenty cigarettes. When a man starts giving you things it’s time to watch out. Except with the Americans and Canadians, they’re in the habit of giving girls presents, it’s different with them. This one says he’ll take me to the Pally tomorrow, but I’m not so sure.’

  After work next day she was singing. ‘Dickie was standing at his door tonight giving me dagger looks, so I suppose Flo did her stuff the way I said. He said: Have a good time last night, and I said: What’s it to you? Believe it or not, he’s started liking me again. Can you beat it? Lot of kids they are, they make me laugh, imagine me crying over a stupid like that.’

  She put on her only dance dress, pink with frills and artificial flowers. It did not suit her at alt. She kept glancing at herself in a dissatisfied way, and at the last moment took it off and flung it in a crumpled heap into the corner of my room. ‘Time marches on,’ she said grimly; and in a few moments appeared in her suit. She watched the clock until she was exactly fifteen minutes late, and then went downstairs, swinging her hips.

  At three that morning I was awakened by a dim white shape creeping across my room to the window. ‘Hush,’ said Flo, ‘it’s me, dear. I didn’t mean to wake you,’ She craned out of the window. ‘Quick, come here,’ she said. Below, under the plane tree on the edge of the pavement, in a patch of moonlight, stood Rose and the policeman, closely embraced. ‘Look at that,’ said Flo, delighted. ‘I tried to see out of the basement, but all I could see was their feet all mixed up and wriggling like they was doing a dance, Shhhh.’ She fell back from the window, laughing, ‘They look so funny. He’s about four feet taller than she is, and look he’s got to bend right over to kiss her like a man who’s had it too often.’ She looked again, then, unable to stand it, said abruptly, ‘I’m cold,’ and rushed off downstairs to her husband.

  Next day Rose was uneasy. She had begun by wanting to make Dickie jealous, but now she was half in love with love. ‘We was cuddling for hours last night,’ she said. ‘Nothing like cuddling, say what you like. It was ever so nice. He kisses nice, too. But not as nice as Dickie. There’s something about the way Dickie kisses that gets me. But there, I’m just silly. A kiss is a kiss, when all’s said and done, the beasts, all tongue and slobber … I’m getting upset, dear. After all that, believe it or not. I’m worried about Dickie being unhappy. Can you beat it? Men don’t understand, do they? It’s no good telling a man that something doesn’t mean anything, the way I look at it, it must always mean something for them, but it doesn’t for us, not unless we love a man. If I told Dickie that I kissed my policeman last night just because of him he wouldn’t see it that way at all. Well, I’m going out with him again tonight. He’s a bit soft, just like my Canadian boy that was killed, but he’s not bad. I suppose.’

  Rose went out with her policeman for several weeks. Flo pestered me, almost in tears, for details of this affair, but even if I had been willing I couldn’t have obliged her, for Rose had withdrawn into silence. The trouble was, the policeman had one almost overwhelming attraction: his parents owned the house they lived in, and had promised half of it to him on his marriage. He wanted to marry Rose at once, and she longed for a home almost as much as she longed for a husband. But the more she tried to persuade herself she cared for the policeman and had forgotten Dickie, the sadder she became. She returned from the nightly embraces under the plane tree looking embarrassed and guilty, and sat staring into my fire until I told her she must go to bed. When I tried to talk to her she said: ‘It’s no good, dear. I know you mean well, but you’re here with us just because you’re hard-up for a time and because you like living here and living there. But it’s the rest of my life I’m thinking of Yes, all right, I know I’m getting you down, well, I get myself down, but I don’t care about nothing at ail, except to decide what’s the right thing to do.’

  She was getting Flo down, too. This conscience-ridden romance was too much for her. ‘For the Lord’s sake,’ she said. ‘If you are going to have some fun with a man then have it, but Rose’d cry at her own wedding.’

  ‘From what I’ve seen of people married. I’d cry with good reason,’ said Rose.

  ‘But if Dickie said, come to church, you’d go.’

  ‘More fool me.’

  ‘But long faces don’t get the marriage bells ringing.’

  ‘Some people like my face long or short, if others don’t.’

  ‘Then make your bed and lie in it,’ said Flo, finally getting bored. She was now spending time with her enemy Mrs Skeffington. For two reasons. One, she needed her as a witness in the famous court case about which at last I was managing to get some details in the face of the apparent determination of everyone in the building that I should be kept in the dark. The other I understood when Flo came to my door, vivid with excitement, to ask in a hoarse whisper: ‘Have you any pills, dear?’

  ‘Don’t tell me she’s pregnant.’

  ‘Ah, my Lord, yes, poor thing. And now we must all be good to her.’

  ‘But she keeps herself to herself so much.’

  ‘She’ll be different now she’s in trouble.’

  ‘How far has she gone?’

  ‘Three months.’

  ‘Why did she leave it so long?’

  ‘I expect she was hoping the Lord would provide, but He doesn’t, does He? And Rosemary was a mistake, too. She says she can’t have children, not with her husband still supporting his first wife and her kids.’

  I knew Rosemary was a mistake because I had heard Mrs Skeffington say so, in front of the child herself, not once, but again and again, and with each repetition Rosemary appeared more fragile, more hesitant, her eyes growing wide and anxious, as if she doubted her own right to live.

  That night we heard Mrs Skeffington and her husband:

  ‘What the hell are you complaining about? You send Rosemary to a crèche, don’t you?’

  ‘Oh, but I’m that way, how can you, now?’

  ‘Why not, you did before?’

  ‘But I’m so tired, and those pills I took. And I was awake all night with Rosemary.’

  ‘She keeps me awake as well as you, doesn’t she?’

  ‘Who gets out of bed to her? You’ve never got out of bed to Rosemary once in your whole life.’

  ‘Oh, shut up.’

  ‘Yes, Rosemary starts crying and then you wake up and you can only think of one thing.’

  ‘Don’t you love me,
then? Well, if it’s like that I know where to go.’

  Silence. Then the woman’s tired anxious voice: ‘I didn’t say I didn’t love you. But I get so tired. Surely you can see that.’

  ‘Then show me you love me.’

  Next day Mr Skeffington went on a business trip and we never saw him again. One morning I heard a crash outside my door. Mrs Skeffington had thrown herself down one flight of stairs, was on the point of flinging herself down a second. ‘Leave me atone,’ she muttered, and before I could stop her, she launched herself into space again. On the landing below she picked herself up, slowly, slowly, gasping and pale. ‘That ought to shift it,’ she said, with an attempt at a smile, and dragged herself, breathing heavily, up the stairs to Rosemary.

  Flo and I went on a delegation to insist she should try a doctor.

  ‘Goodness gracious me,’ said Mrs Skeffington, ‘those doctors don’t care at all for us.’

  ‘Not all doctors are silly,’ said Flo. ‘Some are nice and kind.’

  ‘Show me one, then. I tried before, over Rosemary. He didn’t care. Besides, it’s too late for doctors. And I think I’m all right, because I’ve got a bad pain.’

  She went to bed, and Rose and I took Rosemary for the night. That was the one time Mrs Skeffington permitted anyone to help her. Before and after that day, when we offered to take the child, she would say: ‘Goodness gracious, whatever for. I can manage quite well.’

  Next day she looked very ill, but she went to work as usual. She was sent back at midday by her employer. I fetched Rosemary from the nursery, and when her mother saw her she opened her arms, and the two lay cuddled together on the pillow. They both looked extraordinarily frail, defenceless, pathetic. ‘And now how about a doctor?’ I asked.

  ‘You’re very kind,’ she said formally, ‘but Rosemary and I’ll manage.’

  Flo said: ‘My God, what if she’s still sick for the case?’

  ‘That’s all you think of,’ said Rose.

  ‘But it’ll be to her advantage, too, to get rid of those filthy old people.’

  ‘Yes? They don’t bother nobody but you and Dan. I never hear them.’

  ‘Oh, my Lord, you’re not going to say that at the case?’

  ‘I’I! say the truth. I always told you. I’ll tell the truth and that’s all.’

  ‘The truth is bad enough, sweetheart, darling, isn’t it?’

  ‘And that’s a fact.’

  ‘I’ll tell you, darling,’ said Flo to me ‘I’ll tell you all about it. I swear.’

  ‘I’ll tell her,’ said Rose. ‘But just now I’ve got something she must do for me.’

  ‘But, sweetheart, the case, and time’s so short, and poor Mrs Skeffington so ill.’

  ‘Yes? Time enough. Come along,’ said Rose to me. ‘We’ll go into your room and you can make me a nice cup of tea.’

  In my room she said: ‘Dickie and I have made it up. He was hanging around when I came out of the shop tonight. He said. Have you got a date tomorrow, and I said all casual. Yes, why?’ Rose thrust forward one hip and began patting at her hair, staring with studied indifference at a wall. ‘Why, yes. I said, not looking at him at all. He was so upset. You know I’ve told you. I can’t bear to see him unhappy. But I hardened my heart, because it was for his good, really, and I teased him, and then he said, would I break my date with my policeman? So I said No, I wouldn’t do a thing like that!’ Rose acted virtuous indignation for a moment, but it dissolved into simple good-heartedness: ‘I didn’t care to tease him any longer, so I said I’d go out with him.’

  ‘And how about the policeman?’

  ‘Oh, him?’ She let out an unscrupulous chuckle. ‘They can all go and pickle themselves for all I care, except for Dickie. And you can tell my policeman a nice little lie for me.’

  ‘I can?’

  ‘Yes, It won’t hurt you. You can type out what I write on your typewriter. It makes it look more official, doesn’t it, and besides, my spelling’s awful.’

  ‘So are you.’ I said.

  ‘Yes? But I don’t believe you think that because you’re laughing. All the last times you’ve been yawning and fed-up with me. Well, I don’t blame you, I was fed-up with myself. And now here’s the letter.’

  She handed me a piece of paper on which she had written: ‘Dear Froggie, I’m sorry you had a spot of inconvenience over last night, but the truth was, I was engaged with my mother. Now I have to tell you something and I hope you won’t be disappointed. I’m afraid I will have to cancel all our dates, owing to a personal nature concerning my mother, and she has asked me to come with her. Of course, I don’t really want to go, but you can see she asked me to do her a favour and U can’t really refuse her, can I? I didn’t want to make you come all the way up here for nothing so I thought I would write. Come and tell me you don’t mind some time when you are passing the shop, because I will never be seeing you again.’

  ‘How should I end that? Yours sincerely sounds silly after all that kissing and cuddling, and when he’s bought the ring and everything. And Love won’t do, because he might think I meant it. You type that out for me nice. I don’t want him to think I’m ignorant.’

  ‘You could say, I’m breaking this off because I’m in love with another man,’ I said.

  ‘You could say it,’ she said. ‘I’m not. It’s nicer this way, because then his pride’s not hurt, see? And I’ve thought of another sentence. Put in: I know you will understand. That always sounds nice. It doesn’t mean anything either. I think you’d better end it just – Rose. No faithfully, that’d be silly, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘And there’s the ring, too.’

  She looked guilty and then laughed. ‘You can’t be nice to two men at once. I’m doing it all for Dickie, aren’t I? Well, I’m stark mad. It’s not I don’t know what Dickie is, and there goes my last chance of a home I can call my own, and I don’t even care, and that proves I’m mad.’

  She sighed the letter: Rose, Alexandra, Jane. Camellia. ‘My mother wanted girls, but all she got was boys, except for me. So I got all the fancy names she liked. A waste, isn’t it? Like wearing your fancy panties when there isn’t a man about?’ She giggled and went to post the letter. She came back singing, ‘And so tonight I’m going out with my Dickie again.’ Before she could even sit down, Flo came in to say Mrs Skeffington had procured an abortion for herself with an enema syringe. ‘I saw the baby,’ said Flo dramatically. ‘It was as big as this!’ She held out her fist. ‘Eyes, too. Like a fish it looked, Funny to think it’d grow up to be like us. But there, it’s down the drain now.’ She laughed. ‘Down the drain, that’s good. Well, it is. She pulled the plug and said: That’s the end of you.’

  Rose got up and said: ‘You make me sick, Flo,’ She went into her room, slamming my door and hers.

  ‘Foolish virgin, that’s what Rose is,’ said Flo.

  In the year I lived in that house Flo believed herself to be pregnant five times. Twice the scare came to nothing; but three times she dressed herself appropriately in her shabbiest clothes, and staggered to a chemist’s shop she had marked down for this purpose. There she copiously wept and talked about her family of seven and her drinking husband. She returned with pills, given her good-heartedly by ‘the manager himself.’ Instead of taking them as prescribed, she swallowed half a bottle at a time. I would find her rolling in agony on the floor of the kitchen exclaiming between groans: ‘Well, I’ve fixed that one, at any rate.’ Meanwhile, Aurora wandered about, sucking at her bottle, which she now wore tied around her neck like a St Bernard dog’s brandy flask, with bright pink ribbon.

  As the doors slammed Flo shrugged and said: ‘Oh, well, she’ll think different when she’s got kids herself and no room to move and she can’t ever go out or nothing.’

  ‘How about a doctor for Mrs Skeffington?’

  ‘My Lord, are you crazy, do you want her to go to prison?’

  ‘She might die.’

  ‘She won’t die. There’s a time for doctors. Mrs
Skeffington’s managed without, and good luck to her, and I didn’t think she had that much fight in her, she’s such a lady and all. I’ll give her that. But you call a doctor now, sweetheart, and you’ll do for her, you will really. I’ll go up again and see what I can do for help. You stay here and if I need you I’ll call.’

  When Flo went. Rose came in. ‘I’m going out now,’ she said. ‘This would happen, just when I want to be happy and not think about anything. Can you hear?’

  From above us came the sound of moaning.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Yes. I know you can. But I don’t want to. I’ll 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 couldn’t 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 weren’t 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 that’s 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?’