In Pursuit of the English - Doris Lessing [104]
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