In Pursuit of the English

by Doris Lessing

  War Damage had now finished the two top floors. Dan left his work on the ground-floor flat and was painting them. The workmen wanted to come into my room and Rose’s.

  The following conversation took place between me and Flo.

  ‘Well, dear, isn’t it nice, they’re going to pull down one wall of your room and make it all nice, I don’t know what you’re going to do, I’m sure.’

  ‘What do you suggest?’

  ‘Pardon, dear?’

  ‘Am I going to sleep with a wall down?’

  ‘You can’t sleep in Rose’s room, because she’s moving downstairs to us, it’s no trouble to her, now she and Dickie’s cooled off, she doesn’t need a room to herself. They’re pulling down her wall, too.’

  ‘Well, and where am I going to work?’

  ‘You could lake your typewriter to the bathroom, couldn’t you, sweetheart?’

  ‘I could, but I won’t.’

  ‘Ah, my Lord, I knew you’d say that.’

  ‘Tell me, Flo, do you think it’s fair for me to pay you full rent when I can’t even use my room to work in?’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Why should I pay you for something I don’t get?’

  ‘But the blitz wasn’t my fault, dear. Tell me now, is it true you’re looking out for somewhere to live?’

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘There’s that flat downstairs, it’s going to be ever so nice.’

  ‘But not for me.’

  ‘Because you don’t want to pay what we’ll have to ask when this room is all done up and nice, do you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’ll talk to Dan,’ she said, distressed.

  Eventually the builders decided not to rebuild the wall but only to patch it up a little.

  ‘It’ll be ever so nice for you,’ said Flo, ‘They’re nice men and you won’t be so lonely working away by yourself all day.’

  This turned out to be true.

  At nine o’clock every morning the men knocked on my door and enquired: ‘Ready, miss? Any dirty work before we start?’

  They would then descend to the cellar and carry up coal for me. During that time I had my fire roaring all day and night; I hated so much the thought of going down into the black damp cellar down half a dozen flights of stairs that often I would let it go out and get into bed to read instead.

  I had them in my room, three of them, for a month. Two were small, pale, underfed little men who should by rights have been plump and applefaced and amiable, but who were too cautious to do anything but smile, tentatively, and then instantly restore their defensive masks; and their foreman, an offhand, good-humouredly arrogant young man who talked for them all. His name was Wally James, and after he had fetched my coal, we all had a cigarette and many cups of tea. About nine-thirty, he would stretch and say: ‘Well, this won’t keep the home fires burning,’ and in the most leisurely way in the world he set out his tools and began to work.

  I gave up all attempts at working, for he would say: ‘That’s right, miss, don’t take any notice of me,’ and start to chat about his wife, his children, the state of the world, and the Government; but most particularly the last two, for he had them on his mind. Eventually I pushed my typewriter away, and we brewed tea and talked.

  When this foreman was not there, even if he were out of the room for a few minutes, I would find myself thinking of him as a tall and well-built man, even handsome, for this was how nature had intended him to be. The frame of his body, the cage of his skull, were large, generously defined; but at some time in his life he must have been underfed; for the flesh was too light on gaunt bones, his face was haggard, the eyes deep and dark in their sockets. He had a mop of black hair, rough with bits of dust and plaster; his hands were fine and nervous, but calloused; and the great head was supported on a thin, corded neck.

  It took him and his mates four days to remove two panes of glass from my french windows and insert new ones. He assessed the work to last that long; it was what he thought he could get away with. I used to watch him and feel homesick; for I come from a country of accomplished idling.

  The memory, perhaps, of a black labourer, hoe in hand, commanded to dig over a flower bed … He saunters out, hoe over his shoulder. He lets the hoe fall of its own weight into the soil and rest there, till, with a lazy lift of the shoulders, the hoe rises again, falls … the man stands, thinking. He straightens himself, spits on his hand and fits it lovingly around the sweat-smoothed wood handle. He gazes around him for a long while. A shout of rage comes from the house. He does not shrug, move, make any sign: he is attacked by deafness. Slowly, the hoe rises, falls, rises, falls. No sign from the house. Leaning on the handle he gazes into the distance, thinking of that lost paradise, the tribal village where he might be lounging at that moment, under a tree, watching his women work in the vegetable garden while he drinks beer. Another shout of rage from the house. Again he stiffens, without actually hearing. The hoe seems to rise of its own accord, and lazily falls, rises and falls, so slowly it seems that some invisible force fights against gravity itself, restraining the hoe in its incredibly lazy down-curve to the soil. ‘Can’t you go any faster than that?’ demands the white mistress from the verandah of the house. ‘What do you think I pay your wages for?’ Why? Well, of course, so that I can pay that stupid tax and get back home to my family … this thought is expressed in the sullen set of the shoulders. By the end of the day he has achieved the minimum amount of work.

  Wally James, lazily allowing his chisel to slide over the cracked putty that held the cracked glass in place, remarked: ‘When we put the Labour Government in, we thought things would be better for the working people. But the way things would out, what’s the difference?’

  ‘According to the newspapers …’

  ‘Now, miss, you won’t hold it against me, but you don’t want to go reading those newspapers now.’ Scrape, scrape, scrape, scrape. ‘This is a real nice window, say what you like.’

  ‘It will be, when it’s mended. Been cracked ever since I came in.’

  ‘You don’t say. Well, next time you just let me know. You don’t want to go wasting time with those forms. Takes it out of a person, those forms do.’ He stood back and looked musingly down into the street. ‘Who’d have thought a working man’s Government would get itself all messed up with forms and such.’

  ‘I don’t see it’s much worse than the last, do you?’

  ‘I didn’t say worse, couldn’t be worse, could it? But when we put them in, we meant them to be better.’

  ‘Surely it’s better.’

  ‘We-ll,’ he grudgingly admitted, ‘you could say it’s better. But take me. I’ve got a wife and two kids. Two kids isn’t a big family. And my wife works mornings. And I earn eight quid a week. We earn eleven quid between us. Sounds a lot, don’t it? And I can’t afford to take the kids for a holiday, not a proper one. What do you think of that now?’ He scraped a little more, and stood back. ‘Working since I was fourteen. I’m thirty-four. And all the real holiday I ever got was the Army. Join the Army and have a nice rest. My old woman gets mad with me when I say that.’ He lit a cigarette and said: ‘How about a nice cup of char? Can you spare it? If not, I’ll bring you a bit of my ration tomorrow.’

  Drinking tea, he remarked: ‘We could do that job in half a morning.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Easy.’ He smoked peaceably. ‘Don’t see any point in slaving my guts out and getting nothing back. I’m fed up. What’s the sense in everything?’

  ‘Don’t ask me.’

  ‘I’m not asking, I’m telling. When I think of what those boys said before we put them in and what they do now. All the same, once they get in, that’s right, isn’t it, mate?’

  ‘That’s right,’ assented the other two. They listened to their foreman speaking with detached interest, I got the feeling that if he had made a passionate speech about raising production, they would have assented, with equal indifference: ‘That’s right.’


  ‘Listen to them,’ he said scornfully. ‘That’s right, they say, that’s right. Not an idea in their bloody heads. Do you know what they are? Slaves, that’s what. And like it. Let me tell you. Last week all the men were complaining about the tea in the canteen. It came cold every time, and the food was muck. There they were, grumbling their heads off. I said, All right then, who’s coming with me to complain to the boss. Oh, yes, they were all coming. The whole bleeding lot. So I walked out of the canteen and went to the office, and when I turned around, where were they? Yes, where were you?’ The two men continued to strip paper off the walls, without turning around. ‘Scared. Can’t talk up for themselves. I said to the boss. We’re sick of the food and the tea isn’t fit to drink. He said: Where’s the men, then? Why don’t they complain. Well, the tea’s better, but no thanks to them. No thanks to you two either.’

  At five o’clock, they knocked off. Wally refilled my coal-box, swept out my room, dusted it, asked for another cup of tea. We talked until it was time for me to go to the nursery to fetch my son.

  ‘You might not know it,’ I said, ‘hut outside this country I know newspapers which say the working people here are getting big wages and are better off than the middle class.’

  ‘Is that so? Well you know better now, don’t you? Yes. I know your sort – no harm meant. I’ve seen the books on your shelves. You’re an intellectual, you are. You mean well. But what this country needs is a strong-man government. Oh, not that Hitler stuff and all that about the Jews. I don’t hold with it. But we’ve got all these blacks coming in, taking the bread out of our mouths. And what the Government gives with one hand and it takes back with the other. Before we know it, we’ll have unemployment again. Oh. I know. Well, I’ve enjoyed our little talk. See you tomorrow, miss, and if you greet us with a cuppa we’ll not say no. And none of your lugging coal up behind my back. Don’t hold with women on that kind of caper. Wouldn’t let my wife carry coal and lug furniture about. No, any dirty work about, you let me know, and I’ll fix it.’

  When the paper was stripped off, if could be seen that bombing had loosened the walls so that they stood apart at the angles from half-way up to the ceiling, between a quarter and a half inch. They pasted strips of paper over the cracks, and wallpapered over the whole. The great crack across the ceiling was filled in with putty and papered over. ‘It’s a crying shame,’ said Wally. ‘Such a nice house it must have been once. Well, these swine I’m working for, if they could use old newspapers for building materials and get away with it, they would. Don’t you hold it against me, miss. I know what’s good work and what’s not. Well, it’ll hold together. Hundreds of these houses, you’d be surprised – you’d think they’d fall down if someone gave a shout in the street. But they keep on standing out of sheer force of habit, as far as I can see.’

  Chapter Seven

  Soon the rooms on the ground floor were done. Because Dan was pressed for time and money, none of Flo’s ideas for decorating were put into effect: she had wanted dadoes, hiezes and tinted mouldings. The walls and ceilings were white; and the floors black. The conservatory end, now a place of shining glass and polished stone, had potted plants from Flo’s backyard. No money for fine curtains: they had to use the cheapest thing they could find, government silk, in dull white. No money for the heavy varnished furniture Flo had planned. Neither Rose nor I would give up our furniture, as of course Dan expected us to do; they had to take down stuff from Miss Powell’s and the Skeffingtons’ flats, which they had picked up at sales and which was mostly unobtrusive and even at times pleasant. Flo mourned over the flat, which was large, light, and pretty. ‘We’ll never be able to let it for what we wanted,’ she said. Rose had a student in her shop asking for a place, and brought her home; she was so enthusiastic over the rooms that Flo raised the rent from five pounds to eight pounds a week and got it. Four Australian drama students moved in, and at once the ground floor, which had been the unspeakable hidden sore of the house, became its pride. The girls were pretty and self-possessed; had insisted on a proper lease; paid their rent; and merely looked impatient when Flo and Dan tried to play them up.

  ‘You’ll have to behave yourselves now,’ Rose commented, when Flo complained the girls had no sense of humour: they had not been amused at her heavy hints about their boy-friends. ‘You can’t carry on the way you do, not with decent people, or they’ll leave.’

  Flo and Dan realized at last that this was true; and left all negotiations with the girls to Rose, who, when approaching them, used a manner of ingratiating propriety. She copied it, as she explained to me, from her favourite television announcer. ‘After all,’ she said, ‘it stands to reason it must be the right way the upper-class people carry on, or he wouldn’t be paid all that money for smirking and smiling and minding his manners, would he now?’

  On the strength of the eight pounds a week, Dan hired labour. Mick, a building apprentice, and Len, Rose’s brother, moved into the Skeffingtons’ flat, for their food, a bed, and pocket money. They soon finished the top flat; Rose was negotiating to let it to a woman who had come into her shop; when Flo announced, with a mixture of guilt and furtive delight – that she had let it to ‘an ever so nice lady who’s French.’ Rose noted Flo’s expression, made her own enquiries, and told Flo she should be ashamed. ‘And who’s talking? Little miss prim-and-proper? And what was you doing with Dickie not a month back, may I ask you?’ This shaft hit Rose so hard that even Flo was ashamed. ‘I didn’t mean it, sweetheart, I didn’t really,’ she kept shouting, as Rose stood silent, trembling; and finally crept upstairs to cry in her room.

  Rose said to me: ‘Do you know what? Flo’s let the top flat lo one of them dirty beasts. And why? Because she gets twice the rent from her. And just now when I’ve got my little brother here who needs a good example set.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘How can you ask? Through my old boy-friend who’s a policeman. He came into my shop to pass the time of day and he knew about her. And now there’ll be men in and out day and night, and what about my Len?’

  Flo said, licking her lips: ‘I’ve put a nice chair beside her bed, and she can entertain her friends ever so nice when they come.’

  In the event, when Miss Privet – pronounced by Flo as Preevay – arrived, she was just out of hospital after a bout of pneumonia and she went straight to bed and stayed there. Once or twice she called the lads working in the rooms below to go out and buy her food; but Rose went straight up to her and said that if she ever so much as looked at Len she. Rose, would call the police.

  ‘My God, Rose.’ I said, ‘the poor woman’s hungry.’

  ‘Poor woman, you say? With all the money them beasts earn she could pay for a restaurant to send it in.’ She gave me a shrewd, hard, sorrowful look, nodded and said: ‘Yes. I know. So you’re going up. Curiosity killed the cat.’

  Miss Privet’s brief stay in the house was to cost me Rose’s friendship; I did not understand how deep her feeling was.

  I went upstairs, knocked, and saw a plain middle-aged woman sitting up in bed reading. I asked if she needed anything. She replied coldly: ‘I have no need of anything, thank you,’ and returned to her book.

  For a week she stayed in bed, brought food and drink by Mick. Then I passed her on the stairs on her way out. She wore a fur coat, a small black hat with a veil, and a hard make-up. Her handbag was enormous, of shiny black. I could not keep my eyes off her shoes. They were black patent, with wide black ankle-straps. The soles were platforms two inches deep, the toes were thick and square; but the instep was displayed in a deep curve, giving an effect of brutal intimacy. She saw me looking, remarked coolly: ‘Interesting, aren’t I?’ and walked out, pulling on her gloves.

  She came back an hour later with flowers, food, and some library books.

  I wrote her a letter as follows, drawing upon past experience: ‘Dear Miss Privet. I shall be very happy to have the pleasure of your company to coffee this evening at nine o’clock,’ and pushed it un
der her door.

  Rose saw me. ‘You’re not going to have her down in your room?’

  ‘I’ve invited her to coffee.’

  ‘Then you’ll never have me in your room again.’

  ‘Oh. Rose, don’t be silly. Why not?’

  ‘She’s filthy, a filthy beast.’

  ‘But what she does doesn’t affect you or me.’

  ‘I’ll tell you something, if she drinks out of your cups, you’ll have to sterilize them before I use them.’

  A note came down by Micky, saying: ‘I shall be very happy to join you. Yours sincerely, Emily Privet.’

  At five to nine Rose came in to say she was going out to the pictures by herself. She went, with a look of sorrowful reproach.

  At nine Miss Privet arrived, wearing slacks and a sweater and without make-up. The first thing she said was: ‘I see your friend has gone out to avoid the contagion.’

  ‘She’s just gone to the pictures.’

  ‘Yes?’ she said, in exactly the way Rose did. Then she shrugged and said: ‘But I’m glad of a bit of company, I’m getting the pip up there in that box.’

  ‘I was there for a bit myself.’

  ‘Your kid, too? How much?’

  I told her, and she put her head back and laughed. ‘Yes, we have to pay for our sins,’ she said. ‘I’m paying that old tart downstairs four quid a week.’

  ‘You’re mad,’ I said.

  ‘Is that so?’ she said. ‘And why did you pay? If you’ve got a kid, or you’re on the wrong side of the Law you’ve got to pay. But I’m not staying. That old floozie downstairs’ll see my back before the week’s out.’

  ‘You don’t seem to like Flo.’

  ‘She’s sex-mad,’ said Miss Privet. ‘Makes me sick.’

  ‘She told me you were French.’

  Miss Privet got out of the big chair, and hippily walked about the room, saying in a throaty voice: ‘Cheri, I love you, le t’aime. Ça va? Ah, cheri, cheri, come – for – a little – walk avec moi …’