In Pursuit of the English - Doris Lessing [95]
Flo said to me: ‘Married, she says? Is that what she says? Well, have you told her to get in the family way? And you call yourself her friend? You think men care about lipstick and hair this way and that way – well, she’ll find out.’
This was a reference to the revolution in Rose’s appearance. She had seen a fashion programme on Flo’s television; she brooded about it for some days; then suddenly went off and had her hair cut short and soft, and was wearing light make-up. Her eyebrows were no longer black half-circles; her mouth was its own shape. All this went well with her happiness, and she looked like a girl.
But Flo merely shrugged, and said: ‘We’ll see, you mark my words.’
Meanwhile the house was in chaos. What Flo referred to as ‘The War Damage’ were beginning at the top of the house and working downwards. The roof of the attic had collapsed under a weight of stagnant water, bringing down part of the walls.
‘Lucky I wasn’t in it,’ I said to Dan, but he was in too bad a mood to laugh. His quarrel with Jack was a disaster for him.
The War Damage people were responsible for structural damage, but not for repainting. Soon, they would have rebuilt the attic, and before it could be let, it must be decorated. The work on the old people’s flat was slow. Dan was stilt scraping the layer of filth off the floor, with long steel scrapers. He had poured gallons of boiling water on it; used all kinds of chemical, but the residue had to be taken off by hand. He had not begun on the walls and ceilings, which would have to be stripped right down and resurfaced. The rooms were still crawling with lice.
When the attic was done, the workmen needed to get into Miss Powell’s rooms; and she was angry because Flo had said to her: ‘But it won’t matter, sweetheart: they’re just going to pull down that wall that’s cracked a little, you can stay quite comfortable, if you go out in the days to see friends, the workmen won’t be there at night, and you’ll be ever so happy.’
Bobby Brent had said that if space had not been found for Miss Powell inside a week she would leave. This terrified both Flo and Dan, because relations were bad with Mr Brent for another reason. It had been agreed that Dan would do all the decorations for the night-club; it was now waiting for him.
‘Well,’ said Bobby Brent, when Dan made excuses: ‘If you’re no longer interested in our proposition, then I know what to do.’
Flo wanted to get rid of Mrs Skeffington so as to move Miss Powell down to her rooms. But Rose, who had never had one good word for Mrs Skeffington, told her she should be ashamed even to think of it: ‘You kick her out, Flo, and you can go looking for someone for my room, too.’
‘Ah, my Lord,’ said Flo. ‘what’s come over Rose? Little miss never-say-boo-to-a-goose, and now look at her – she gets herself a man in her bed and she says Do this and Do that.’
‘Besides,’ said Rose to me, winking: ‘Flo doesn’t know it but Mrs Skeffington’ll be going of her own accord any minute.’
‘How do you know.’
‘It stands to reason. Have you heard Rosemary crying at nights?’
‘No. I haven’t, come to think of it.’
‘The way I look at it is this. My lady upstairs knows she’s had that precious husband of hers for good. She’s stopped fretting. Or at least she’s slopped working herself up, and she doesn’t have to fetch and carry for the lazy beast. So she’s not taking it out on Rosemary.’
Rose was right. Mrs Skeffington said that she was going to live with her married sister, because ‘My husband has got a nice engineering job in Canada.’ She said good-bye to us all with pretty formality, shaking us by the hands and saying: ‘It was nice knowing you.’
‘Can you beat it?’ said Rose. ‘There she was, and we holding her hands while she was rolling and screaming with half her inside gone, and now she says: Good-bye, good gracious me, but it was nice knowing you. Some people.’
Dan perfunctorily cleared the Skeffington rooms and invited Miss Powell to move her things down. She said she must ask Mr Ponsonby. That evening there was a terrible row just over my head; with