In Pursuit of the English: A Documentary Read online

  ‘I know of just the place. Three rooms, kitchen, pantry, bathroom. Hot and cold and all modem cons. Three guineas a week, inclusive.’ I thought that if this place existed it was cheaper than anything I had seen. ‘I promised it to someone else, but for a retainer I’ll give it to you. I got nothing out of him, all promises he was.’ A look of disgusted anger came on to his face. This look was genuine: the flat, therefore, must also be genuine? But this is an excuse. I felt as if I had been stung into torpor by a predatory spider. I was being impelled to hand over the money. I began fumbling in my handbag, and as I did so, I knew I was a fool. The thought must have shown on my face, for he said: ‘For you. I’ll make it pounds.’ The money melted into the air above the flesh of his palm. I could hardly believe I had given it to him. So strong was this feeling that I wanted to count the money I had left to see if I had given it to him.

  A couple of policemen who had been standing against a wall, upshifted themselves with a stolid and determined movement and came towards us. Instinctively I looked around to see if Mr MacNamara had vanished. I was wrong, for he stood negligently beside me, gazing with impatience at the policemen. They, it seemed, had also expected him to vanish, for now they appeared uncertain. ‘Anything I can do for you?’ enquired Mr MacNamara efficiently. They hesitated. He turned his back and marched off.

  ‘Everything all right?’ asked one of the policemen.

  ‘I do hope so.’

  They looked at each other, communed, and moved back to their wall, where they stood, feet apart, hands behind their backs, heads bent slightly forward, talking to each other with scarcely-moving lips, while their slow contemplative eyes followed the movements of the crowd.

  I walked slowly towards the jeweller’s shop, thinking about Mr MacNamara. It had by now occurred to me that he was what they referred to as a spiv. But he was not in the least like any of the rogues and adventurers I had known in Africa. They had all had a certain frankness, almost a gaiety, in being rogues. Mr MacNamara had nothing whatsoever in common with them. His strength was – and I could feel just how powerful that strength was, now I was recovering from my moment of being mad – his terrible, compelling anxiety that he should be able to force someone under his will. It was almost as if he were pleading, silently, in the moment when he was tricking a victim: Please let me trick you; please let me cheat you; I’ve got to; it’s essential for me.

  But the fact remained, that at a time when I had less than twenty pounds left, and counting every halfpenny, I had just parted with two pounds, knowing when I did it that I would never see it again. I was clearly much more undermined by England than I had known; and the sooner I got myself into some place I could call my own the better.

  When I told Rose I had lost the piece of paper with the address she said it didn’t matter, she’d take me home with her. The pale woman entered from the back, and said unpleasantly: ‘Closing early, aren’t you?’

  Rose answered: ‘Half past five is closing time, isn’t it?’

  ‘Like your pound of flesh, don’t you, dear?’

  ‘I don’t get paid overtime.’ She added casually: ‘I worked three nights late last week. I didn’t notice any complaints.’

  The pale woman said quickly: ‘I was only joking, dear.’

  ‘Oh no you wasn’t,’ said Rose. Without another glance at her employer, she began making up her face, not because there was any need to, but so she could stand negligently, back turned, absorbed in her reflection and her own affairs. Before leaving, however, she said ‘Goodnight’ quite amiably; and the pale woman returned, indifferently: ‘Sleep tight,’ just as if this exchange had not occurred.

  Rose had said the house she lived in was just around the corner; it was half a mile off. She did not speak. I didn’t know if she was offended because I had lost the address; or whether she was irritated with her employer. She replied listlessly to my remarks: Yes, dear; or – Is that so? Her face was heavy, despondent. It was difficult to guess her age. In the dimly-lit shop, she looked like a tired girl. Here, though her skin was spread thick with dun-coloured powder, under her eyes were the purple hollows of a middle-aged woman. Yet she looked defenceless, and soft, like a girl.

  At first it was all shops and kiosks; then towering gloomy Victorian houses; then a space where modem luxury flats confronted green grass and trees; then a couple of acres of rubble. ‘Bombs,’ said Rose dispassionately. ‘We had them around here something awful.’ It was as if the houses had shaken themselves to the ground. Thin shells of wall stood brokenly among debris; and from this desolation I heard a sound which reminded me of a cricket chirping with quiet persistence from sun-warmed grasses in the veld. It was a typewriter; and peering over a bricky gulf I saw a man in his shirt-sleeves, which were held neatly above the elbow by expanding bands, sitting on a tidy pile of rubble, the typewriter on a broken girder, clean white paper fluttering from the rim of the machine.

  ‘Who’s he?’ I asked.

  ‘An optimist,’ said Rose grimly. ‘Thinks he’s going to be rebuilt. I shouldn’t be surprised. Well, it takes all sorts, that’s what I say.’

  We turned finally into a street of tall narrow grey houses. I understood, from our quickening steps, that we were going downhill. I was almost running. Rose was moving along the street without seeing it, her feet quick and practised on the pavement. I asked: ‘Have you always lived in London?’

  There was a short pause before she answered; and I understood it was because she found it difficult to adapt herself to the idea of London as a place on the map and not as a setting for her life. There was a small grudging note in her voice when she said: ‘Yes, dear, since I was born.’ I was to hear that reserved, non-judging voice often in the future – the most delicate of snubs, as if she were saying: It’s all very well for you …

  Rose stopped in front of a wooden gate slung loosely between pillars where the plaster was flaking, and said: ‘Here we are.’ The wood of the gate was damp, and in the cracks were traces of green that I thought at first were remains of paint. Looking closer I saw it was that fine spongy fur that one finds, in the veld, cushioning the inside of a rotting tree trunk where the sun never reaches. Rose led the way down steps, along the side of the house, into a narrow gulf of thick damp brick with water underfoot. She let herself in at the door, and we were at once in darkness that smelt strongly of ammonia. A stairway led up, through darkness, to a closed door. In front was another door outlined in yellow light. There was a blare of noise. The door opened violently and out spilled puppies which scrambled and snapped around our feet. Rose said: ‘Come in.’ She went forward into the room, abandoning me, indicating why I was there to the other with a brief meaningful nod of the head.

  It was a long, narrow room with a tall window at one end. Towards the top of the window one could see a frieze of dustbins and watering cans. A single very strong electric bulb filled the room with a hard shadowless light. The place was divided into two by curtains – or rather, curtains looped back high against the walls indicated a division. One half was the kitchen, the other a living-room, which seemed crammed with people, puppies, children, kittens. At a table under the light bulb sat two men reading newspapers, and they lifted their heads together, and stared with the same open, frank curiosity at me. They both wore very white cotton singlets, hanging loose. One was a man of about forty, forty-five, who gave an immediate impression of a smouldering but controlled violence. His body was lean and long, swelling up into powerful shoulders and neck, a strong, sleek, close-cropped head. His hair was yellowish, his eyes flat and yellowish, like a goat’s, and the smooth heavy flesh of his shoulders rather yellow against the white singlet. But he was going soft; he paunched under his singlet. The other was very young, eighteen, twenty, a dark, glossy, sleek young animal with very black eyes. A woman came forward from the kitchen end. She was short and plump, with a small pointed face in a girlish mass of greying black curls. Her mouth was opening and shutting and she was gesticulating angrily at the puppies under h
er feet and at a small child who was grabbing at her apron. The radio was blaring and she was trying to shout through the music: the noise was so great that my eardrums were receiving it as a dull crashing roar, like a great silence. The older man reached out a hand, turned a knob, and at once a shrill voice assailed me, rising through the snapping and yapping of the dogs and the whining of the child. ‘Shut up,’ she screeched. ‘Shut up, I tell you.’ The older man rose and pushed the puppies outside into the passage with his foot. There was a sudden startling quiet. The room seemed empty because of the absence of sound and of dogs.

  Rose said: ‘Flo, this lady here wants to see your flat.’

  ‘Does she, dear?’ screeched Flo, who had grown so used to shouting through noise that she was unable to lower her voice. ‘Drat you!’ This was to the child, as she slapped down its hands. There was, in fact, only one child there, a little girl who seemed at first glance to be a dwarfed seven or eight, because of her sharp old face, but was three years old. ‘Drat you,’ shouted Flo again. ‘Can’t you shut up when I’m talking?’ The husband got up and lifted the child on to his lap with the patient forbearance of a man married to a termagant. ‘So you want to see our nice flat, dear?’ She smiled ingratiatingly; her eyes were calculating. ‘You’ll be very happy with us, dear. We’re just a big happy family, aren’t we. Rose?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Rose, flatly.

  ‘Dan will show you the way,’ screeched Flo. ‘My name’s Flo. You must call him Dan. You needn’t stand on ceremony with us, dear.’

  ‘She hasn’t taken it yet,’ commented Rose, in her flat expressionless voice.

  ‘She’ll like the flat,’ shouted Flo persuasively. ‘The rooms are ever so nice, aren’t they, dear?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Rose. She hegan smoothing down her eyebrows in front of a small wall mirror, with a forefinger wetted with spit, exactly as she had turned herself away to make up her face in the shop: she was saying: ‘Leave me alone.’

  ‘Let’s all go up,’ shouted Flo. But although she had conducted the interview until this point, she now gave her husband an uncertain, almost girlish look, and waited for him. He rose. ‘That’s right, dear,’ she said to him, her voice softening, and she offered an arch, intimate, merry smile. He responded with a direct, equally intimate flash of his eyes, and a baring of very white, prominent teeth. Even at that early stage I was struck by the boy’s sullen look at the couple. He was Jack, Flo’s son by her first marriage. But they had already adjusted their faces, and returned to the harsh business of life. Dan picked up the little girl and dropped her into Jack’s arms. At once she began to wail. Her mother grabbed her, exclaiming: ‘Oh, you’ll be the death of me.’ She yelled even louder. Automatically the father reached for her, and set her on his shoulders where she sat smiling, triumphant. He did not do this in a way which was critical of his wife; it was an habitual thing.

  All of us, the son included, filed into the dark well at the foot of the stairs. The smell of ammonia was so strong it took the breath. We began to ascend the stairs, which were narrow, of bare wood. I was at the head of the procession, and could see nothing. Flo shouted: ‘Mind the door.’ I came into collision with it, a hand reached under my arm, and we all moved backwards down the steep incline as the door swung in over our heads, letting in a shaft of dull light. We were now in the hall. There was a puddle near the stairs. ‘Drat these dogs,’ shouted Flo.

  ‘Last time it was Aurora,’ commented Rose.

  At once Flo slapped the child where she sat on her father’s shoulders. Aurora let out a single bellow and immediately became silent, and watched us all with her black sharp eyes. ‘Don’t you do that again,’ shouted Flo. The child’s mouth opened and she let out another loud roar as if a button had been pushed. Again she fell to watching us. Nobody took the slightest notice of this scene; and indeed Flo beamed encouragingly at me as if to say: Look at the trouble I’m taking on your behalf.

  ‘Oh dear, oh dear me,’ she grumbled, smiling, ‘that child will be the death of me yet.’

  ‘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 four-pence 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.’