don’t take them serious, and anyway they don’t laugh at people with different voices in America. That’s because America is all foreigners, the way I look at it, and they can’t all laugh at each other, can they? Sometimes when I’ve got the ’ump I think I’ll go to America and to hell with England, that’s what I think, anyway.’
‘You’d hate it in America.’ I said.
‘How do I know? Well, the way I look at it is. America must be like England was during the war.’
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, On the floor above the Skeffingtons Miss Powell cooked a roast and two veg for Bobby Brent.
But in the basement preparations for Sunday dinne; began on Saturday afternoon when Flo went to the market, assisted by Jack, and came back with baskets laden with food. By now she had appropriated my meat coupons and Rose’s. It was understood we should all share Sunday’s food. ‘It’s only right.’ Flo said, ‘All them cigarettes, and I’ll never get round to paying you back, sweetheart. I don’t know why it is, but there’s something about cigarettes that’s too much for me. Well, you just give me your meat ration, and you’ll not be sorry, I swear it.’
On Sundays we all slept late. About twelve Flo knocked on my door and on Rose’s, and said, smiling with pleasure: ‘We’re starting now. Come on down.’
In the basement, the children played on the floor among the puppies and the kittens, the men sat in their white singlets over the Sunday newspapers, and Flo and I and Rose began work.
‘That Mrs Skeffington, that Miss Powell, they’re cooking their roasts again,’ Flo said. ‘That’s their week’s ration gone and Where’s the sense. I’ve told them. I’ve told them over and over. But Mrs Skeffington, she says her husband kills her without he gets his roast Sundays. And Miss Powell’s the same. Ah, my Lord, it’s enough to make you cry, the waste of it.’
Meanwhile, Rose and I were preparing vegetables and beating butter and sugar.
‘Ah, my Lord, but say what you like, I talk and I talk, but what can you do with this Government, no eggs, no meat, no fat, nothing but flour and water, and you expect me to cook with that?’ Rose winked at me; Dan smiled over the edges of his paper.
‘Yes, and look—’ Here Flo flung open the doors of her food cupboard. ‘See that? See that butter, for a whole week? The grocer couldn’t give me extra, well, it’s not my fault, is it now, if the food tastes of nothing at all.’
Flo had ‘cooked English’ until the year her Italian grandmother came on a visit. It so happened that her mother had to go off unexpectedly to visit a relation in hospital. Flo and her grandmother were alone in the house together.
‘And no sooner had she set foot on our soil, the old cow broke her leg. There she was, propped up stiff as a dead rabbit with her bum on one chair and her heels on another, groaning and carrying on, and saying: “I’m going to die.” Die, my fanny. She’d the energy for a fifty-year-old, though she was seventy-nine and she’d lived out two husbands and one or two men on the side. She said: You look after me, my girl, or I won’t give you permission to marry. I said: I’m married already, you old witch — that was my first husband, what died all those years ago — but I’ll look after you. I wouldn’t see ray worst enemy die of starvation. We liked each other, see?’ Flo interrupted herself in an explanatory way. ‘Well. I put on my apron and cleaned up for her and cooked her dinner and she began to wail like a baby with a pin stuck in it. She said: I don’t mind dying of a broken leg, if that’s God’s will — she was a Catholic, see? You mustn’t mind that, everyone is in Italy, so she said, it’s just a habit with them, like we have a Labour Government in with us. But I’m not going to die of your English cooking, she said. You must learn to cook or your husband will die of it.’
‘And what had you cooked?’ asked Rose, playing her part in the tale.
‘Fish and chips, like always.’
‘What’s wrong with fish and chips?’ asked Dan, obediently, as Flo looked at him, waiting for him to contribute.
‘What’s wrong? Why, that’s all I knew.’
‘Best food in the world,’ said Dan grinning.
‘Yes, but you know better now, don’t you, sweetheart?’
‘You’ve just broken me in,’ he said.
‘My God, the ingratitude.’ Flo said to me, ‘Do you hear? When we started courting, he knew nothing but fish and chips. And when I cooked real food, like my granny taught me, he’d grumble, grumble, grumble, grumble. He’d come to the back of my kitchen in Holborn, and I’d feed him all the best bits, and he’d carry on like he was being poisoned.’
Dan nodded, and went on with the
‘But now he knows.’
‘Eat what I’m given,’ he said, grinning.
