In Pursuit of the English

‘You say, then.’

At last we settled for three-ten, a sum which caused Rose to be angry with me. ‘You could have got it for three-five,’ she said. ‘You make me cross, you really do.’

‘Well, I shall be next to you, and Peter will be very happy that we’re staying.’

‘All the same, why throw five bob a week into the dustcan? Well, you make Flo clean your room for you, then.’

‘Is it likely?’

‘Well, I’m not going to, and someone must – where was you dragged up, I’d like to know, you don’t even know how to clean a floor?’

‘We were spoiled. We had servants.’

‘You had something. Because to watch you sweeping is enough to make a cat laugh.’

Flo and Dan and Rose and I stood in the empty big room that evening. ‘It’s such a lovely room,’ said Flo. ‘And you can hardly notice them cracks.’

‘What we’re here for, is furniture,’ said Rose.

‘You can have that lovely bed from upstairs.’

‘She’ll want somewhere for her clothes,’ said Rose.

‘You can have that lovely cupboard from the landing.’

Rose said: ‘You make me sick.’

‘But we want to furnish her nice, dear.’

‘You do, do you? Then I’ll show you how.’ With which Rose ran all over the house, marking out pieces to be put in my room. Dan did her bidding, silently; while Flo stood, unconsciously wringing her hands as one bit of furniture after another came to rest in my room, and the little room downstairs. Rose told me afterwards that she had said in the basement that if they didn’t treat me right, she’d be so ashamed she’d leave. Since Rose did half of Flo’s work for her, this was effective. When the rooms were ready, Rose said: ‘That’s a bit more like.’ Dan gave her a grudging look of admiration. By this time we were all in good humour. Flo saw Dan looking, and said sharply, but laughing: ‘And you keep your eyes off poor Rose. I know what you’re thinking. Can’t look at a woman without thinking of it!’ Dan gave her his bared-teeth grin. Rose said: ‘Oh, shut up. And now I’ll help you get the supper, Flo.’

‘I should think so,’ said Flo. ‘Dear me, oh, dear me, life is so hard these days.’

Rose gave me a wink as she went out, and whispered, ‘Now you settle yourself, and don’t you let Flo take any of this stuff back tomorrow. I’m telling you for your own good. I’ll be in after supper for a nice chat.’

Now I was in the heart of the house. Immediately above me, in two large rooms, were the Skeffingtons. I had not yet seen them. He was away most of the time. She left for work before I did, and once she was in her rooms, seldom came out. I knew about them from Flo, through a succession of nods, winks, and hoarse whispers. Her: ‘She’s ever such a sweet woman’ – made, as these remarks always were, as if a sweet tenant were something I was getting extra, thrown in, for the rent, was sometimes: ‘Poor thing, she’s brave, and she pays her rent so regular.’ And sometimes: ‘What she has to put up with, no one would believe. Men are all the same, beasts, every one.’ On the other hand, she often observed with lip-licking smile that Mr Skeffington was just like a film star, and Mrs Skeffington didn’t appreciate him. These two states of mind were determined by whether we got a good night’s sleep or not. Usually not. There were few nights I was not woken by the persistent frightened crying of a child in nightmare. The words ‘I’m not naughty, I’m not naughty’, were wailed over and over again. I heard the sharp release of bedsprings, bare feet sliding on the floor, then several loud slaps. ‘You’re naughty. You’re a naughty girl.’ The voice was high and hysterical. This duet might keep up for an hour or more. At last the child would fall asleep; soon afterwards an alarm clock vibrated; and I would hear Mrs Skeffington’s voice: ‘Oh, my God, my God,’ and the tired release of a weighted bed. The kettle shrieked, cups clattered, and her voice: ‘Crying half the night and now I can’t wake you. Oh, goodness, gracious me, what shall I do with you, Rosemary?’

I knew all the tones of her voice before I ever saw her; but I found it impossible to form a picture of her. As soon as she had the child inside the door, the tussle began: the high, exasperated weary voice, and the child nagging back. Or sometimes there was exhausted sobbing – first the woman, and then the child. I would hear: ‘Oh, darling, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Rosemary. I can’t help it.’

Once I heard her on the stairs, coming home from work in conversation with Flo. Her voice was now formal and bright: ‘Really I don’t know what I shall do with Rosemary, she’s so naughty.’ She gave a fond, light laugh.

From the child, sullenly: ‘I’m not naughty.’

‘Yes, you are naughty, Rosemary. How dare you answer me back.’ Although the voice was still social, sharpness had come into it.

From Flo, a histrionically resigned: ‘Yes, I know, dear. Mine’s the death of me, she drives me mad all day.’

From Aurora: ‘I don’t drive you mad.’

‘Yes, you do. Don’t answer your mother like that.’ There was the sound of a sharp slap.

Flo’s exchange with Aurora was an echo of Mrs Skeffington’s with her child, because Flo could not help copying the behaviour of whoever she was with. But the burst of wild sobs from Aurora was quite unconvincing; her tears were displays of drama adapted to the occasion. From one second to the next she would stop crying and her face beamed with smiles. Her crying was never the miserable frightened wailing of the other little girl.

One morning I met a woman on the landing who I thought must be new to the house. She said brightly: ‘Gracious me, I’m in your way, I’m so sorry,’ and skipped sideways. It was Mrs Skeffington – that ‘gracious me’ could be no one else. Under her arm she balanced a tiny child. She was a tall slight creature, with carefully fluffed out fair hair arranged in girlish wisps on her forehead and neck. Her large clear brown eyes were anxiously friendly; and her smile was tired. There were dark shadows around her eyes and at the corners of her nose. The baby who sounded so forlorn and defiant at night was about fifteen months old. She was a fragile child, with her mother’s wispy pretty hair and enormous brown eyes.

‘Get out of the lady’s way,’ said Mrs Skeffington to the baby, which she had set down – apparently for the purpose of being able to scold her. ‘Get out of the lady’s way, you naughty, naughty girl.’

‘But she’s not in my way.’

‘I do so hope Rosemary doesn’t keep you awake at nights,’ she said politely, just as if I did not hear every movement of her life, and she of mine.

‘Not at all,’ I said.

‘I’m so glad, she’s a real pickle,’ said Mrs Skeffington, injecting the teasing fondness into her voice that went with the words. She tripped upstairs, and as her door shut her voice rose into hysteria: ‘Don’t dawdle so, Rosemary, how many times must I tell you.’

‘I’m not doddling,’ said the baby, whose vocabulary was sharpened by need into terrifying precocity.

Mr Skeffington was an engineer and he went on business trips for his firm. He was nearly always away during the week. According to Rose: ‘He’s just as bad as she is, and that’s saying something. Their tempers fit each other, hand and glove. You wait till he comes back and you’ll hear something. He reminds me of my stepfather – pots and kettles flying and both of them screaming and the kid yelling its head off. It’s good as the pictures, if you don’t want to get some sleep.’

Rose’s stepfather haunted her conversations. She would sit moodily on my bed, listening to Mrs Skeffington nagging at the child overhead, saying from time to time: ‘You wait till he comes, you haven’t heard nothing yet.’ And, inevitably, the next phrase would be – My stepfather.

‘Wasn’t he good to you?’

‘Good?’ A word as direct as that always made her uncomfortable. ‘I wouldn’t like to say anything against him, see.’ Then, after a moment: ‘He was a bad-tempered, lying, cheating swine of a bully – God rest his soul, I wouldn’t say bad things of the dead,’ she would conclude, apologetically.

She had no pity for Mrs Skeffington at all. I could never understand why Rose, who was so tender-hearted, shut her sympathy off from the threesome upstairs. Once I suggested we should tell the NSPCC, and she was so shocked that she could scarcely bring herself to speak to me for days. At last I went to her room and asked her why she was so angry. ‘I didn’t know you was one of them nosey-parkers,’ she said.

‘But, Rose, what’s going to happen to that poor baby?’

‘They’ll take it away from her, most like, and send her to prison. Not that it’s not a good place for her.’

‘Perhaps they might help her.’

‘How? Tell me? What she needs help for, is against her husband and what are they going to do about him? Not that she doesn’t deserve what she gets.’

‘All that’s wrong with her is she’s overworked and tired.’

‘Yes? Well, let me tell you, my mother brought up six of us, and she had no sense for men, real sods they were, but she never carried on like my lady upstairs.’

Meanwhile Miss Powell had moved into the two small rooms above the Skeffingtons. She came down to see me about the child. She wore a red silk gown, trimmed with dark fur, and looked like a film star strayed on to the wrong set. She was very sensible. She suggested we should talk to Mr Skeffington when he came home and tell him his wife needed a holiday.

As soon as she had gone, Rose came in to demand what I though I was doing, talking to that whore.

I said we had agreed to tax Mr Skeffington, and Rose said: ‘You make me laugh, you do. At least the Skeffingtons are decently married, they aren’t a whore and Mr Bobby Brent.’

Flo said to me, her eyes dancing. ‘Mr Skeffington’s coming back tomorrow. You wait till you see him,’ she urged – for it was one of the days she did not like Mrs Skeffington. ‘You just lean over the banisters and have a look. Like a film star, he is. He’s got eyes that make me feel funny, just like Bobby Brent.’ For some days Mrs Skeffington was saying to the child: ‘Your daddy will beat you if you aren’t a good girl.’

‘I am a good girl.’