In Pursuit of the English

On the evenings when Rose decided life owed her some fun, she would say to me: ‘You’re coming with me to the West End tonight, whether you like it or not.’ She began to dress a good hour before it was time to start. I could hear her bath running downstairs, and the smell of her bath powder drifted up through the house. Soon afterwards she came in, without make-up, looking young and excited. I never found out how old she was. She used to say, with a laugh, she was twenty-three, but I think she was about thirty.

‘Rose, I wish you wouldn’t put on so much make-up.’

‘Don’t be silly. If I don’t wear plenty, Dickie says to me, what’s up with you, are you flying the red flag?’

‘But you haven’t seen Dickie for weeks.’

‘But we might run into him. That’s one of the reasons I’m taking you. He always takes me where we’re going, and if he’s got another woman, then I’ll catch him out and have a good laugh.’

Soon she had painted her daytime face over her real face, and had moulded her hair into a solid mass of black scrolls and waves. When Rose was dressed and made-up she always looked the same. She was conforming to some image of herself that was not the fashionable image for that year, but about three years ago. She took fashion papers, but the way we were supposed to look that year struck her as being extreme. She used to laugh at the pictures of fashion models, say: ‘They do look silly, don’t they?’ and go off to her room to make herself into something that seemed to her safe and respectable, because she was used to it.

‘Come on, get yourself dressed.’

‘But I am dressed.’

‘If you’re coming out with me, then you’ve got to dress up.’

She pulled out the dress she wanted me to wear, and stood over me till I put it on. She knew I did not like the Corner House, but tolerated my dislike. She was only exerting her rights as a neighbour, exactly as I might go into her and say: ‘I’m depressed, please come and sit with me.’ At such times she put aside whatever she was occupied with, and came at once; she recognized a tone in my voice; she knew what was due to communal living.

We always walked to the bus-stop, and it had to be the same bus-stop, and the same bus, though there were several which would have done. She kept pulling me back, saying: ‘No, not that bus. That’s not the number I like.’ And if the bus did not have seats free, downstairs, on the left-hand side, she would wait until one came that had. She made me sit near the window. She liked to sit on the aisle, and she held her exact fare in her hand, watching the conductor until he came for it. She handed it over with a firm look, as if to say: ‘I’m not trying to get away with anything.’ And she put away the ticket in a certain pocket in her handbag – one could not be too careful.

But this ritual was for when we went out, because on ordinary occasions she would take the first bus that came, and sit anywhere and was not above diddling the company out of tuppence on the fare if she could. Pleasure was different, and part of pleasure was to pay for it.

At the Corner House there was always a queue. I might say: ‘It’ll be half an hour at least.’ I regarded queueing as tedious. Rose did not. On one occasion, after we had been twenty minutes in the queue, and were nearly at its head, a woman tried to push in front of us. And then Rose the meek, Rose the resigned, Rose, who would spend a whole evening on her knees with a bucket and a brush because she could not say No to Flo; Rose who would stay up till two in the morning ironing and washing Dickie’s shirts, and then redamp and re-iron them if there was the slightest crease in the collar – and all this devotion at a time when she was not even seeing him; this patient and enduring woman suddenly set her feet apart, put her hands on her hips, and allowed her eyes to flash. ‘Excuse me!’ she began in a belligerent voice, glancing at the rest of the queue for support. Every one was, of course, on her side; every one had been schooled by years of practice in queue-ethics, and had been watching, just as she had, with ox-eyed impassivity for some imposter to push forward. Rose pulled the offender by the elbow and said: ‘Here, you haven’t queued, get to the back.’ The woman smiled in uncertain bravado, opened her mouth to fight, saw the hostile faces all around her, and then, with a pert shrug of her shoulders, went to the back of the queue.

Rose said loudly: ‘People trying to get away with things.’ And she stood triumphantly, standing up for her rights.

When at last our group, which had stood on the fringe of the table-packed space for at least ten minutes, were waved forward by a waiter like a policeman directing traffic, Rose tipped him and whispered, and we were taken to a table immediately by the band. Rose liked to sit just there; it meant she could lean over and ask for the tunes she wanted. She said: ‘You can get the music you want without tipping the waiter to ask for you.’ But that was not the reason. It was that it gave her a feeling of homely satisfaction to be able to smile at the drummer, and get a nod and a smile back again.

She did not like the food much. She used to say: ‘Flo’s spoiled me, she has really.’ But she always ordered the same: beans on toast, with chips and spaghetti. I could not understand why until she said: ‘That’s what we used to get during the war in the canteen. It reminds me, see?’

We used to stay for about two hours, eating and submitting to the music. Then she stretched herself and said: ‘Thanks for coming, dear. I haven’t seen that so-and-so Dickie, but I’ve enjoyed it ever so much.’

Then we walked up Regent Street, very slowly, stopping at each window, criticizing every dress or pair of shoes. Rose had a different standard for these clothes than for the ones she wore herself. She judged these against the current fashions and was critical. She chose dresses for film stars she liked, not for herself. Sometimes we went the whole street without her approving of anything. She would say: ‘Lot of rubbish today, isn’t there? Not anything I’d like to see Betty Grable in. Sometimes I think those fashion-men think we’re fools, with more money than sense.’

Going home on the bus we played her favourite game – spending the money she was going to win in the football pools. She never had less than ten thousand pounds to spend. She was going to buy herself a mink coat, some expensive clothes, and a little restaurant for herself and Dickie. She had chosen the house she wanted. It had a garden for the children she intended to have, and was about ten minutes from where we lived, with a ‘For Sale’ sign on it. We often went there in the evenings to look at it. ‘I hope it won’t be sold too soon,’ she’d say, ‘not before I win the pools.’ And then – ‘Listen to me, talking silly. Still, someone’s got to win it, haven’t they?’

‘When autumn comes,’ she said, ‘I’ll teach you about the pools. I look forward to the pools all the summer. It gives you some excitement in life, doing the pools every week and waiting to hear who’s won.’

She paid Flo thirty shillings a week for her room. It was understood that for this sum she could eat Sunday dinner with the family. It was also understood that if she was invited to another meal during the week, she must pay for it in washing-up or scrubbing or ironing. Her rent included an early morning cup of tea. Rose never drank this, because she slept till the last minute before rushing off to work, so that the tea, left outside her room by Jack, who left for work an hour before she did, was always cold. But if he forgot to leave it there, she made a state trip downstairs, to say: ‘I like people to keep their word. If I pay for a thing, then it’s my affair what I do with it afterwards.’ So every morning the cup of tea cooled outside her door, and was later emptied into the sink by Flo, who grumbled good-naturedly: ‘Some people!’

Rose did not eat breakfast. ‘Why waste money eating when you’re still full of sleep, anyway?’ She ate a sausage roll or a sandwich at midday. These odd snacks during the day cost her ten shillings; she did not eat seriously unless invited by Flo. Two pounds left out of her earnings. She smoked ten cigarettes a day – another ten shillings.

That left her thirty shillings. On pay-day she arranged this balance on her dressing-table and played with it, frowning and smiling, talking of how she might spend it.

She did not plan for holidays: when she had time off she went down to stay with her mother. Nor did she go to parties. Sometimes she dropped down to the Palais at Hammersmith on a Wednesday evening, and came back dispirited: ‘None of them were as good as Dickie, say what you like. They just make me laugh.’

In the end, the money always went on clothes. And in a way which was richly satisfactory to Rose, because she seldom bought in shops, only things like gloves and nylons. She got her clothes from her employer. That fat pale woman spent a great deal on her clothes, and luckily for Rose had only just put on weight. Her cupboards were full of things she would never wear again. Rose would haggle over a dress or a suit she coveted for months, until at last she came in, victorious, saying: ‘I’ve got it for twenty-seven-and-six, there go my cream cakes for a month, not to mention the pictures, but look, this dress cost that fat bitch twenty-five guineas.’ So it was, when Rose was dressed to go out, she looked as if what she wore had cost her six months’ wages. She would stand for a long time in front of the tall looking-glass in my room, surveying herself with grim satisfaction. Finally she would say: ‘Well, it only goes to show, doesn’t it?’ a remark into which was concentrated her attitute towards the rich and the talented, an attitude without envy or sourness, but which was full of self-respect, and implicit in everything she said or did.

And yet, although she dressed herself through these means, she was upset when I said I was going to sell some of my clothes to the second-hand shops. ‘You don’t want to do that,’ she protested.

‘They’re too big for you, or you could have them.’

‘And what would I be doing with all those evening dresses?’ She examined them, and said: ‘Well, you must have had a good time where you came from.’

‘Everyone dances there. It’s a place where people dance a lot.’

‘Yes?’

‘It’s not expensive to dance.’

‘Yes?’

‘But it’s true.’

‘Yes? All I know is, dancing is floor-space and a band and things to eat and drink. That’s money. Who pays for it? Someone does.’

‘All the same, I want to sell these things, they’re no good to me.’

‘Well, don’t sell them around here, that’s all.’

‘Why not?’

‘It’s not nice, is it. People might see, and say things.’

‘Why should I care?’

‘Yes? Well, I do. People see you and me together. Then they see you selling clothes, to those old shops. Yes, I know – you’ll go off one of these days, but I’m living here. So to please me you can just take a bus ride and sell them somewhere else.’

When I had sold them, she enquired: ‘And how much did you get? Enough for cigarettes for a couple of weeks? Oh, I know, don’t tell me. And so you’ve gone and lowered yourself in those dirty old shops, just for that. It’s all right for film stars and models, it stands to reason, everyone knows they can wear a thing once, but not for people like us. You’d do better to keep them and look at them sometimes and remember the good times you had than sell them for cigarette money.’

‘You can talk about cigarettes, going without food to smoke.’

‘And who’s talking, I’d like to know?’

Both of us suffered over cigarettes. I came from a country where they were cheap. I had always smoked a lot. Now I was cut down to half my usual allowance. Rose and I made complicated rules for ourselves, to keep within limits. We tried to smoke as few as possible in the day, to leave plenty for our long gossip sessions at nights. But our plans were always being upset by Flo. There was more rancour created in that house over cigarettes than over anything else. Rose might grumble a little if Flo had forgotten to ask her to supper on an evening when ‘she felt like eating’. She would say: ‘All very well for her, licking and tasting away all day over her stove,’ but shrug it off. For food was something one could do without. But if Flo borrowed a cigarette and forgot to pay it back, Rose would sulk. And, of course, with Flo it was never a question of one cigarette. She would cadge from me, from Rose, from Miss Powell, beg from the milkman or the gas-man. ‘I’ll give it to you next time you come,’ she would say, anxiously grabbing at the offered cigarette.

She could afford to buy as many as she liked. But she never bought enough. Five minutes after she returned from a shopping trip she would come up to Rose’s room, and say: ‘Give your Flo a fag, dear.’

‘But you’ve just gone out shopping.’

‘But I forgot.’

‘I’ve got four left for the evening.’

‘I’ll pay you back tomorrow.’

‘What you mean is, I’ve got to do without this evening.’