‘Now don’t you start on your talk. Just don’t talk. I don’t want to think about nothing at all. Because when I start thinking I begin to think about what might happen. Suppose I don’t marry Dickie, what then?’
‘You’ll marry someone else.’
‘Yes? They’re all the same, when you get down to it.’
‘Things are different from they used to be. You don’t have to get married.’
‘They might be different for you, but they’re not for me.’
This was how she always put an end to our discussions about socialism. ‘You’re different,’ she had concluded, listening to me exhort about the system. ‘You’re middle-class — you don’t mind me saying it, I’ve got nothing against you personally, see? So if you want to talk about socialism, you’re welcome.’
‘Rose, socialism is for the working people, not for us.’
‘Yes?’
‘Yes. You won’t get it until you fight for it.’
‘Yes? I’m not going to waste my time getting excited. Things will last out my time. In the newspapers they’re always talking about a new this and new that. Well, there’s one thing I know, my mother worked all her life, and I’m no better off than she was.’
‘Yes, you are. You won’t starve, for one thing.’
‘Starve? Who’s talking about starving? She never starved either. There’s always someone to help you out if you’re in trouble. You would, if I was in trouble. But I know her life and I know mine. And I know the difference, not much.’
‘It’s your fault, because you won’t fight.’
‘Yes? Well you talk, if you enjoy it, I’ll think my own thoughts.’
‘We’re supposed to have a new society.’
‘Yes?’
‘Do you get angry because there are still rich and powerful people when all that is supposed to be finished?’
‘Who said it was?’
‘A lot of people.’
‘Well, if you want to believe all them lies, who’s stopping you?’
‘I didn’t say I believed it.’
‘Then you’re talking sense for once.’
‘All the same. The reason they are saying it is they want to put something over on you.’
‘Yes? Well, they’re not. As for them with their parties and their good times and their money here and their money here, I say, good luck to them. They’ve either got brains, which I haven’t, or they’ve done something dirty to get it. Well. I don’t envy their consciences. Would you like to be Bobby Brent or Dan or Flo?’
‘Much rather, than being virtuous and poor.’
‘Then you’re not my friend. Excuse me for saying so. I don’t like you talking like that. Then why don’t you put money into their dirty deals?’
‘Because I haven’t any.’
‘Don’t give me that talk. I don’t believe it, for one. And for another, I don’t like to hear it. And I’ll tell you something else. Sometimes I’m sorry you’re my friend, because you make me think about things.’
‘Good. That’s what friends are for.’
‘Yes? But not if it makes you unhappy. I’ve told you before, there’s one thing wrong with you. You think it’s enough to say things are wrong to change them. Well, it isn’t. I’ll tell you something else. My stepfather was Labour. Well, it stands to reason, he had unemployment and all that. And who’s Labour Party in this house? The Skeffingtons upstairs.’
‘Good for them,’ I said.
‘Yes? That pair of no-goods? They have everything bad, and so they vote Labour.’ Suddenly she giggled. ‘It made me laugh. When we had that election. Flo and Dan, they had Tory posters all over. Well, that makes sense, they’re doing all right. And the Skeffingtons stuck a Labour in their window. Flo went up and tore it down. So the Skeffingtons made a fuss about their rights. They make me laugh. Lucky they pay the rent regular. He said to Flo: All right, then we’ll leave. And she said: All right, then leave. Then she thought about the rent, and her heart broke. So for weeks, you can imagine how it was, all the house plastered up and down with Vote for Churchill, and just one window, Vote for Labour.’
‘And you?’
‘Me?’
‘You have the vote.’
‘Don’t make me laugh, I know what’s what. I just watch them at it and laugh to myself.’
‘Well, you make me angry.’
‘Yes I know I do, and I don’t care.’
‘For one thing, you make me cross because you hang about waiting for Churchill to speak. What has he ever done for you?’
‘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
