In Pursuit of the English - Doris Lessing [68]
Night after night Rose sat slumped into my big leather chair, sometimes until long after everyone else had gone to bed, which in that house was very late. She would not bear if I spoke to her. She lay back with her eyes closed, and under her eyes were heavy black bruises. If she spoke, it was to grumble steadily in a monologue: ‘On my feet all day with that blasted Jewess. I said to her today. Look who does the work, you or me? Then get off that chair. Or buy another chair. Can’t you afford five bob for a chair? Can you believe it, she won’t get another chair into the shop in case I sit on it. She likes to think of me wearing out my feet for the money. And as for that husband of hers …’ Rose was always anti-Semitic, in a tired tolerant sort of way. She was convinced that ‘the Jews’ were all like her employers, who were the only Jewish people she had ever met. But now she was depressed, she talked like a minor Goebbels, and it was queer and frightening to hear the violent ugly phrases in Rose’s flat, good-natured, grumbling voice. ‘But I got even with him today. I called him a dirty Jew to his face. He didn’t like that. I said, I know about you, don’t think I don’t. You eat babies, you do, if the Government doesn’t keep an eye on you.’
‘You don’t really believe that, do you?’
‘I’ll believe it if I want to, I’d believe anything of that pair.’
‘Then I’m not going to listen.’
‘Please yourself. But I’ll sit here a bit, if you don’t mind. I’ve got the ’ump.’ Incidentally the aitch in ’ump was the only one she ever dropped; the radio had made her self-conscious. She even said: ‘I’ve got so silly, listening to those lardy-das on the wireless, if I drop an aitch I go right back and pick it up again.’ But having the ’ump was a recognized spiritual condition; Rose dropped the aitch humorously, as a middle-class person might.
I began to read. Rose watched me. I suggested it might be better if she read, instead of worrying about Dickie.
‘What I want is a book to tell me how to get sense into a man’s head.’
A few evenings later we were walking back from the pictures when she stooped to pick up a paperback that had been dropped on the pavement. ‘Oooh, look,’ she said derisively. The picture on the cover was of a woman in a low-cut white satin dress, leaning back against a table in a state of urgent defence, clutching at the folds of her dress. ‘Look at that,’ said Rose. ‘She’s as good as being raped, but she’s got time to worry about keeping her clothes clean.’ The man in the picture looked as if he were biting the woman’s ear. ‘That’s a man all over,’ Rose said. ‘He’s going to bite her ear off if she doesn’t give him what he wants. That’s love all right. I’m going to read it.’ She read the book as we walked home, remarking ‘Just push me the way I should go. I can’t keep my eyes off this, and that’s a fact.’
At home she arranged herself in my big chair and said: ‘Just make a nice cup of tea and don’t talk. I want to see if Lady Godiva gets into bed or not.’ From time to time she’d look up to say: ‘He’s just given her a watch with diamonds. He loves her for herself, he says.’ ‘Now she’s his secretary. She wants to help him with his career.’ Late that night she left my room saying: ‘We’re up to page 97, and he’s already given her chocolates, a watch, a car and a mink coat. She’d better watch out. Well, I’ll finish it tomorrow night, so don’t you decide to go out. I like to have company when I read.’
Next evening she snuggled herself into my chair with the book. I said: ‘If you like those books, why don’t you buy some?’
‘What, waste money on this silly stuff? No, it came my way, as you might say, so I don’t mind. Besides, it’s giving me ideas about putting sense into Dickie’s head.’ At midnight she put the book down with a