In Pursuit of the English - Doris Lessing [19]
‘How much?’
‘Twelve guineas.’
‘A month?’
Her face creased into suspicion. ‘A week,’ she said affrontedly. ‘Where do you come from? I might as well say now that the old lady won’t take foreigners.’
‘What do you mean by foreigners?’
She looked me up and down, a practised, sly movement. ‘Where do you come from, then?’ She moved slowly backwards, her hand pressed against her chest, as if warding off something.
‘Africa.’
The hand slowly dropped, and at her side, the fingers clenched nervously. ‘You’re not a black?’
‘Do I look like one?’
‘One never knows. You’d be surprised what people try to get away with these days. We’re not having blacks. Across the road a black took to the bottle on the first floor. Such trouble they had. We don’t take Jews either. Not that that’s any protection.’ She sniffed sharply, looking over her shoulder at the bed. ‘Disgusting,’ she said. ‘Disgusting.’ In a prim fine voice she stated: ‘And I may as well say we’re particular about what goes on. Are you married?’
‘I’m not taking it.’ I said going into the living-room.
The nurse came after me; her whole attitude had changed. ‘Why not, don’t you like it?’
‘No. I do not.’
‘It’s very comfortable, only select people in this house …’ She glanced back at the room. ‘Except when there’s mistakes. You can’t help mistakes.’ She stood between me and the door, her hands clasped lightly at her waist, in an attitude of willing service, but with a look of affronted surprise on her face. It was clear that letting this place quickly was necessary as part of her revenge on the couple she had turned out. ‘If the old lady likes you she might put the rent down to eleven guineas.’
‘But I don’t like it.’ I repeated, moving past her to the door.
‘We don’t have any difficulty in letting it, I can tell you that,’ she sniffed challengingly, marching over to twitch the curtains back, so that now the room was absorbed back into its cavernous ruddy gloom. ‘You’re the second in half an hour – by the way, how did you hear of it? It hasn’t even gone to the agents yet.’
‘One hears of places, house-hunting.’
‘I suppose you are a friend of that precious pair downstairs.’ She grasped my arm, as if to pull me to the door. ‘I hear the bell. That’ll be someone else. I suppose, getting me up all these stairs for nothing. Come along now.’ She glanced at me, stiffened, stared: ‘If you’ll be so kind.’ She went on staring. At last, she said: ‘It’s much better when people are straightforward about things, that’s what I say.’
‘About what?’
Looking straight ahead, her hands lying down the folds of her stiff skirt, she descended the stairs with a consciously demure rectitude, and said: ‘If I’d known you were a foreigner, it would have saved me so much time, wouldn’t it? One must have thought for other people, these times.’
‘What kind of a foreigner do you think I am?’
‘I’ve known people before, calling it sunburn.’
In the hail the old lady was lurking in a doorway, leaning forward in her wheeled chair from a mist of pastel shawls. Her small beady eyes, like a bird’s, were fixed on me. Her face was twisted into a preparatory smile of stiff welcome, but a glance at the nurse caused her to give me a slight toss of the head instead. Leaning back, she daintily took a grape from a dish beside her, and held it to her mouth in a tiny bony hand, her eyes still regarding me sideways, so that she looked even more like a watchful parrot.
On the steps was the young man, alone. ‘How do you think I can leave when you won’t let us take our property?’ he asked the nurse.
‘I’m not having you set foot in this house.’
‘I’ve paid