In Pursuit of the English - Doris Lessing [56]
Rose, now she was depressed, talked about the war all the time. At this distance – it was 1950 now – those six years of hardship meant to her warmth, comradeship, a feeling of belonging and being wanted, a feeling she had never been given before or since. She could talk about the war for hours and never mention death, fear, food shortages or danger.
‘Eight hundred people we were, in the factory. We got to know each other, by face, anyway. It was funny, everyone not knowing what’d happen next day, if their house was still standing or not, by the time they got home at nights, but at least we were all together, if you know what I mean, I used to be sorry for myself, with all the night work and everything. I used to say: When will the war be over – and not think it’d ever be over. But now I wish it was back. I don’t mean the killing part of it, but I didn’t know anyone who was killed, much, not much more than in peacetime – I mean, I know they were killed, but I didn’t know them. But then people liked each other. You could talk to people, if you felt like it, even upper-class people, and no one would think the worse. You got to know people. You’d think about some lardyda person, they’re not so bad, when you gel to know them, they can’t help it, poor sods, it’s the way they’re brought up. I remember when I got scared and raids were bad, I used to go down to the shelters and the air was foul, and I couldn’t sleep and the ground was shaking all around, and I wished it would all end. But it was nice, too. You could talk to the man sitting next to you in the Underground at night, and share your blanket with him if he hadn’t got one, and he never thought the worse. You’d say good-bye in the morning and you’d know you’d never see him again, but you’d feel nice all day, because he was friendly, and you was friendly too. See? And if I got real shook-up and frightened and I couldn’t take the shelters, I used to go home to my mother. My stepfather was giving her hell, because he was dying of tuberculosis, only he was keeping it quiet, and we didn’t know he was so ill, otherwise we’d have had more patience with the old so-and-so, but he wouldn’t have me in the house, he said I was a bad girl, because of being out at nights after ten o’clock – he just made me laugh with his dirty mind. So I’d creep all quiet into mother’s room and she’d lock the door and say she had a headache and we’d get under the bed on a mattress because of the bombs and we’d talk. It was company, see, with the Germans overhead and the bombs. And I’d hear that old so-and-so crying for my mother, and I’d think, sod him. Of course if I’d known his lungs were rotting on him with TB, I’d not have grabbed my mother when I had the chance, but I didn’t know. If someone had told me I’d be glad to have the war back, I’d have laughed in their face. Now I think: That was a good time, say what you like. I earned eight pounds a week. Where am I going to earn eight pounds a week now? Lucky I had the sense to put some in the post office for my old age. Not that it’ll be worth anything by then, the way money’s melting to nothing week by week as we live. But I like to think I have something there. Without the war, I wouldn’t. Yes. I know, dear, it’s funny you can only get something nice these days when there’s a war, but that’s how things seem to me. People liked each other. Well, they don’t now, do they? And so don’t talk to me about your socialism, it just makes me sick and tired, and that’s the truth.’
Chapter Four
I had come to England with pounds of tinned food in my trunk as to a starving country, prepared to tighten my belt and to suffer, as the newspapers back home continually assured us the British people were suffering. But I will always think of that house in terms of good eating. Not only was the whole place perfumed with the smells of feasting every evening. On Sundays there was a real feast, the emotional climax of the week.
On Sundays Mrs Skeffington cooked a roast and two veg for Mr Skeffington,