In Pursuit of the English - Doris Lessing [76]
‘Oh God, oh God!’ said a terrible voice from upstairs.
‘Serves her right,’ said Rose.
‘You’re a hard-hearted little beast,’ I said.
‘Yes? You listen to me. My mother had eight children. Well, some of them died early. She’s only fifty now. And if she’d done away with one or two before they was born, she didn’t start when she’d only one. She liked kids. It wouldn’t hurt my lady upstairs to have another kid. What’s she complaining about? My mother went out to work, cleaning places for people like you, excuse me saying it, people who didn’t know how to keep a place clean, and she brought us up, and she had two no-good men, one after the other, aggravating her all the time, I’ve no patience.’
‘Your mother had a house to put the children in.’
‘Is that so? My mother had us in two rooms until she married that bastard my step. She had us all in two rooms. And we were always clean and nice. She only got a house if you can call it a house. I know you wouldn’t, when she married and then it was four rooms for ten people.’
‘Yes, well I’ve heard you say you wouldn’t have kids until you had a proper house to put them in.’
Anxiety gripped her face. ‘Yes. I know. Why do you have to remind me? Dickie’s not going to give me Buckingham Palace, if he ever gives me anything. Oh, why did all this happen tonight when I’m trying to be happy?’
‘Oh, my God, my God!’ came from upstairs.
‘Oh, drat her,’ said Rose, almost in tears. ‘Why does she have to go on, I don’t want to think about everything. They’re always talking about new houses and new this and new that, I always used to think of myself living in a nice place of my own. But when I left school, all I did was go into a shop, just like my mother did before she had kids. What’s new about that? And there was the war. All through the war, they kept saying, everything’s going to be different. Who’s it different for – Flo and Dan, not me. Half the girls I was at school with are in one room and two rooms with kids. And now they’re cooking up another war. I know what that means. I don’t care about Russia or Timbuctoo. All I know is, I want to start getting married before they begin again and kill all the men off in their bloody wars while we sing God Save the King.’
‘Oh, my God, God. God!’ came from upstairs.
Rose got up and said: ‘I’ll take her up a cup of tea.’
She came down and said: ‘She’s got a bleeding, all over the sheets. Lucky Rosemary’s lost to the world. And that Miss Powell’s getting a friend of hers that’s a nurse. So she won’t die this time. Miss Powell says, will you go upstairs and lend a hand. That’s because she doesn’t like me, and I don’t care, I’ve no patience. I’ll see you in the morning.’
Chapter Five
During the next few days, while Rose was occupied by her worry about whether she should go to bed with Dickie or not. I think she would have been pleased to have some of Flo’s crude advice, but the family downstairs was occupied plotting for the court case. She was aggrieved about it. ‘My life’s hanging on a thread,’ she’d say; ‘and no one cares except about their dirty money.’
‘I do.’
‘Yes, but you’re different.’
‘I don’t see why.’
‘Yes? Well, if you haven’t learned by now my worries about life are different from yours then I haven’t taught you much.’
‘Then tell me what’s going on about the case.’
‘What’s the use? What I tell you will be different from what Flo and Dan tell you.’
‘That’s why I want to hear it from you.’
‘Yes, but they’ve made me promise. And, anyway, the whole thing makes me so sick … money, money, money; well, I didn’t have to tell you that, you know Flo and Dan.’
‘You know you’re going to tell me sometime.’
‘Then I’ll be careful what I say, just facts, and not what I think, and then I won’t be breaking my promise to Flo.’
The facts were these. Two very old people lived in two rooms on the ground floor. They had been there for years before the war. When the house was bombed, they stayed in it, although the basement was filled