In Pursuit of the English - Doris Lessing [55]
‘Whoever said he had?’
Rose would listen to Churchill talk with a look of devotion I entirely misunderstood. She would emerge at the end of half an hour’s fiery peroration with a dreamy and reminiscent smile, and say: ‘He makes me laugh. He’s just a jealous fat man, I don’t take any notice of him. Just like a girl he is, saying to a friend: No dear, you don’t look nice in that dress, and the next thing is, he’s wearing it himself.’
‘Then why do you listen to him?’
‘Why should I care? He makes me remember the war, for one thing. I don’t care what he says about Labour. I don’t care who gets in, I’ll get a smack in the eye either way. When they come in saying Vote for Me. Vote for Me. I just laugh. But I like to hear Churchill speak, with his dirty V-sign and everything, he enjoys himself, say what you like.’
Similarly she would listen to programmes about the war and say: ‘Well, to think all those exciting things were going on all the time. They didn’t happen to us. Did I ever tell you about the bomb we had on the factory?’
But there were programmes she refused to listen to at all. Or she would return from the cinema sometimes in a mood of sullen rage, saying; ‘They make me sick, they do.’
‘Who?’
To begin with she was vague, saying, ‘I don’t know.’
But later on, when she knew me, and we had begun to fight about what we thought, she would say: ‘Oh, I know what I say’ll be grist to your mill, but I don’t care. Those films. They make fun of us.’
There was a certain wireless programme that I thought was funny, but if Rose came in when I was listening she would say politely: ‘You think that’s funny, do you? Well, I don’t,’ and go out until it was over.
‘I don’t think it’s funny people talk in different ways,’ she said to me at last. ‘That’s what that programme is, isn’t it? Just to make people feel above themselves because they talk well and people like me don’t. Listen to them laughing, just because someone uses the wrong grammar. I’m surprised at you, dear, I am really.’
I have seen her return from a film so angry she would smoke several cigarettes before she could bring herself to speak about it.
‘They make me sick. It was a British film, see. I don’t know why I ever go to them sometimes. If it’s an American film, well, they make us up all wrong, but it’s what you’d expect from them. You don’t take it serious. But the British films make me mad. Take the one tonight. It had what they call a cockney in it. I hate seeing cockneys in films. Anyway, what is a cockney? There aren’t any, except around Bow Bells, so they say, and I’ve never been there. And then the barrow-boys, or down in Petticoat Lane. They just put it on to be clever, and sell things if they see an American or a foreigner coming. “Watcher, cock,” and all that talk all over the place. They never say Watcher, cock! unless there’s someone stupid around to laugh. Them film people just put it in to be clever, like the barrow-boys, it makes the upper-class people laugh. They think of the working-class as dragged up. Dragged up and ignorant and talking vulgarugly. I’ve never met anyone who spoke cockney. I don’t and no one I know does, not even Flo, and God knows she stupid enough and on the make to say anything. Well, that’s what I think and I’ll stick to it. And the bloody British can keep their films. I don’t mind when they have a film about rich people. You can go and have a nice sit-down and take the weight off your feet and think: I wish that was me. But when they make pictures for people to laugh at, then they’ve had me and my money. I’ll keep my money for the Americans, You don’t take them serious, and anyway they don’t laugh at people with different voices in America. That’s because America is all foreigners, the way I look at it, and they can’t all laugh at each other, can they? Sometimes when I’ve got the ’ump I think I’ll go to America and to hell with England, that’s what I think, anyway.’
‘You’d hate it in America.’ I said.
‘How do I know? Well, the