In Pursuit of the English

‘Perhaps it was the old people,’ said Jack, regarding the puddle.

‘Oh,’ said Flo, ‘so it must be. Dirty, filthy old swine …’ She caught a glance from her husband and smiled guiltily. ‘But they won’t bother you, dear. They sit by themselves in there, getting up to their mischief and their tricks …’ Again Dan glared at her, and she smiled. ‘They won’t bother you at all, dear,’ she said, and hastily went upstairs. We followed her, flight after flight, past shut doors. Nearing the top of the house was a shallow grey cement sink, with a tap which was making a happy tinkling noise, like a celesta. ‘This tap,’ said Flo in an offhand voice to her husband. Dan frowned. He heaved violently on the tap, his great shoulder muscles bulging, and a steady splash-splashing resulted. ‘Look,’ said Dan to me. ‘If you turn it round like this it’s quite all right.’ Once again he heaved with all his strength. We stood at varying heights on the stairs above and below the obstinate tap, gazing at it in suspense. Dan slowly, warily, straightened himself. A single heavy drop of water gathered weight on the lip of the tap and hung, trembling. It flew downwards to the puddle in the sink with a defiant tinkle, and at once another followed.

Flo decided to shrug. ‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘there’s the bathroom downstairs for real washing, it only costs fourpence for a real good deep bath, and you can use this just for washing up. If you turn it good and tight, it will be quite all right, you’ll see.’

‘She’ll need some strength,’ said Rose. ‘It runs all over the landing some days, when Mrs Skeffington doesn’t turn it hard enough. It needs a man.’

Flo nudged her to be quiet, and Rose shrugged. ‘We’ve only just moved in,’ said Flo, ‘and we haven’t got everything fixed right yet.’ We started climbing again.

‘Two years,’ said Rose’s voice from the flight below. ‘Oh, you shut up,’ said Flo in a loud whisper down past my head; as if the act of lowering her voice and directing it to Rose made it inaudible to everyone else. Then she screeched gaily to me: ‘We’re nearly there now.’

We climbed two more flights in silence. Flo was ascending in front of me with the phlegmatic calm of a mountaineer who has only an hour to the summit; her fat flanks moved regularly up and down; her feet were planted wide for balance; and her hands pushed down on each knee in turn, for greater propulsion.

We came to another door, which Flo opened saying: ‘You’ll be nice and private in here, see?’ There was one more short, sharp flight, very steep, ending in an abrupt twist that brought us to a handkerchief-sized landing. ‘Here we are,’ said Flo, with an anxious glance at me. It was a small room under the roof, with double skylights slanting inwards for illumination. A vast double bed took up most of the floor space, with a glossy toffee-coloured wardrobe. There was a minute kitchen that held a gas cooker, and a set of food canisters ranged on the floor. They all stood around me, smiling encouragingly, even Rose, whose desire for accuracy and fairness was momentarily quenched by the necessities of the occasion. She said: ‘It’s ever so private up here.’ She thought, and added: ‘There’s a lot of room, really.’ She was tiny, as I’ve said, and as she spoke she moved in from the wall, straightening herself painfully, for she had been bent in a curve, because the roof slanted down almost to the floor. Then, having done what was expected of her, she said: ‘Excuse me,’ and escaped downstairs, looking embarrassed.

Flo said: ‘We don’t know what we’d do without Rose, and that’s a fact. We get all our people through her. They come into the shop and ask if she knows, when they’re stuck for a flat – like you did.’ She offered me this information as if Rose’s compliance was an additional attraction of the house.

‘I have a small boy,’ I said, with dread.

‘That’s right,’ said Flo instantly. ‘Rose said so, when she phoned us. That’s nice, dear. He can play with Oar. We like kids. Don’t we, Dan?’

Dan said, ‘That’s right,’ and meant it.

‘And Rose likes kids, too. We all do.’

‘Is Rose a relation?’

‘Oh no. She lives here, see, because she’s going to marry Dan’s brother.’ But here Dan frowned; glances were exchanged and Dan said: ‘Well, how do you like it?’

‘How much?’ I said. Three pairs of eyes exchanged glances. At last Flo asked: ‘How much did you think of paying?’

Dan was calculating, his yellow eyes on my clothes. ‘Have you got a lot of cases?’ he enquired.

‘Far too many.’ At this, the three faces became extremely businesslike, and Flo said: ‘You wouldn’t think four pounds too much, would you, dear?’ At once she grinned in an abashed way, when Dan glared at her.

‘Yes, I would,’ I said, and picked up my handbag from the bed.

‘She’s made a mistake,’ said Dan scowling. He was furious with Flo, and she instinctively wrung her hands and appealed to him with her eyes for forgiveness like a small girl. ‘The price is thirty-five shillings,’ he said.

‘Of course it is,’ said Flo apologetically. ‘I was thinking of the rooms downstairs.’

‘One pound fifteen,’ I said.

‘Thirty-five shillings,’ corrected Flo. They waited again, their eyes fixed anxiously on my face.

‘I’ll get my things over,’ I said. ‘And I’ll fetch my son.’

For the next few minutes I was the passive victim of their exclamations of delight and welcome. They showed me how to use the gas-stove. And Flo kept saying: ‘Look, it’s ever so easy, dear,’ as she pulled the shoelace that had been suspended from the electric light, ‘look, it just goes on and off as you pull it, see?’

Finally they went downstairs, smiling at each other.

I heard Flo say in an offended offhand voice to Dan: ‘Oh, shut up, she’s taken it, hasn’t she?’

I got over my luggage and stacked it in the slant under the roof. By climbing on to a trunk in the middle of the room I could see over through the skylights into a brick channel between the outer wall and the roof which was filled with damp and blackened refuse – fragments of brick, bits of paper, scraps of rag. From this channel were propped some planks which shored up the roof. Flo, who had come up with the luggage, sat on the bed watching me anxiously, and anticipating any criticism I might have been tempted to make with defensive or encouraging remarks. ‘We had the blitz, dear,’ she kept saying. ‘We had it ever so bad. It was right through this part, because of that station, see? The Government’s going to mend everything for us, when they get around to it. I don’t know what they’re doing, we’ve filled in the forms and all, over and over again.’

I fetched my son, and at once he vanished into the basement with Aurora. Later, exhausted with the warmth and the welcome of the family downstairs, he fell asleep, saying he liked this house and he wanted to stay in it.

This upset me, because in the meantime I had decided it was impossible; in spite of my having suddenly understood that this was indubitably a garret, and that I had fulfilled the myth to its limit, and without any conscious intention on my part. There was no room in this garret to put a typewriter, let alone to unpack my things. I would have to start again.

Then I remembered Flo had said something about rooms downstairs. I went down to see Rose about it.

When she opened her door to me I at first did not recognize her; she looked like her own daughter. She had just taken a bath, and wore a white wool dressing-gown. Her black hair was combed loose, and her face was pale, soft and young, with dark smudges of happiness under the eyes. Her mouth, revealed, was small and sad. She said, with formality, ‘Come in, dear. I’m sorry the room is untidy.’ The room was very small and neat; it had a look of intense privacy, as a room does when every article means a great deal to the person living in it. Rose had brought her bed and her small easy chair and her linen from her own home. The curtains and bedcover had pink and blue flowers; and there was a cherry-pink rug on the black-painted floor. That everything she touched or wore should be perfectly clean and tidy was important to her; she was one of the most instinctively fastidious people I have ever known. Now she pushed forward her little blue-covered armchair, waited until I had sat down, and said, smiling with pleasure: ‘I’m glad you came. I like some company.’

‘I came to ask about the room Flo mentioned – is there another one free in the house?’

At once she looked sorrowful and guilty; and by now I knew her well enough to understand why. Her loyalties were in conflict. She said: ‘I don’t rightly know. You’d better ask Flo.’ She blushed and said hastily: ‘Of course that place upstairs isn’t fit for a pet cat, let alone a woman with a kid.’ She added: ‘But Flo and Dan’ll be good to that kid of yours. They really like kids.’ ‘Yes, I know,’ I said. ‘That’s the trouble.’ ‘I see your trouble,’ she said. She hesitated. ‘If there was a room going, and I’m not saying because I don’t know – it’s like this, see – Flo and Dan are new in this house business, they have fancy ideas about the rent they’re going to get. And they never thought they’d let that dump upstairs at all – see, at least, not for so much. Of course, you’re a foreigner, and don’t know yet.’

‘I see,’ I said. ‘I’ll ask Flo, then.’

‘Yes, that would be better for me. I’m a friend of hers, see?’

‘Of course.’

‘About that other place you saw – did you see it?’

‘Yes.’ I began to tell her, but she knew about the house. ‘I know because I get to know all sorts of things, working in that shop. But was there anything about someone kicked out?’

‘A Mr MacNamara,’ I said. Her face changed with rich suddenness into a delighted appreciation.

‘Mr MacNamara, is he? The son of a rich lord from Ireland?’

‘I don’t know about the lord.’

She sat on the bed, and regarded me patiently.

‘There’s a lot you don’t,’ she said. ‘If he’s Mr MacNamara to you, then watch out. You didn’t give him money, did you?’

I admitted it. To my surprise, she was not scornful, but worried for me. ‘Then watch out. He’ll be after some more. Didn’t you see what he was like?’

‘Yes, I did. It’s hard to explain …’ I began, but she nodded and said: ‘I know what you mean. Well, don’t you feel too bad. He’s got a real gift for it. You’d be surprised the people he diddles. He did my boss out of twenty quid once, and to this day she wonders what came over her. And now you take my advice and have nothing to do with him. Mr MacNamara. Well I remember when he was a barrow-boy, and he knows I remember it, selling snaps and snails and puppy-dogs’ tails for what he could get. But even then he had his head on the right way, for the next thing was, he had his own car and it was paid for. That’s the trouble with him – it’s not what you call a spiv; at least, not all the time. One minute he’s got his hand in the gas-meter and the next he’s doing real business.’

‘Well, thank you for telling me.’

She hesitated. Then she said in a rush: ‘I like you, see. We can be friends. And not everyone’s like Flo – I don’t want you to be thinking that.’ She added guiltily – ‘It’s because she’s a foreigner, it’s not her fault.’

‘What kind of a foreigner?’

‘I’m not saying anything against her; don’t think it. She’s English really. She was born here. But her grandmother was Italian, see? She comes from a restaurant family. So she behaves different. And then the trouble is, Dan, isn’t a good influence – not that I’m saying a word against him.’