that showed she loved him, see?’ Or, with a pathetic look at Rose: ‘And then it was time for bed.’
Then he complained about his parents: Flo’s temper frightened him, she was a bad mother to him. And Dan hated him and wished he was dead.
The only person Aurora admitted to her fantasies was Jack, She would arrange a cushion on a chair in a convenient position, find some hard object, and stab to or beat it over and over again. ‘Dead. Dead. Dead,’ I heard her murmur viciously.
‘Who’s dead?’
She had the deaf look all the people in the house seemed to assume at such moments.
‘Dead. He’s dead. Dead, Jack’s dead. My daddy’s happy. Mommy’s crying. Jack’s dead.’
Once Rose came up at midnight, and said: ‘My God, are those two at it downstairs?’
‘What about?’
‘Jack. Dan’s silly about him. He says Jack doesn’t earn enough money.’
Jack was a sort of errand-boy for a big local shop. He earned five pounds a week. He referred to the firm as ‘my company’. He wanted to be a professional footballer. He had played football for ‘his company’ and for the army, too. He could get ten pounds a week as a professional, he said. If he became a swimming coach, then he could earn eleven, he knew a place. Or he could be a physical instructor. The sky was the limit for them, he said, all the money you liked.
‘It’s like this,’ said Rose. ‘Dan earns all that money, and he can’t see why Jack can’t. He doesn’t see, some people can earn money like other people breathe. Well, Jack just pays Flo thirty shillings, the way I do, and spends the rest on the pictures. But Flo keeps slipping him money when Dan’s not looking. And so they quarrel all the time. You should hear them. Dan says it’s a matter of principle. Ha, Dan talking about principles, its enough to make a queen laugh.’
Dan worked for the local gas board. But he regarded the money he earned there as peanuts. Going into people’s houses and flats to fit appliances or fix the gas was useful to him, and that was why he kept the job. The way he made his money was not exactly illegal — ‘Not really illegal, darling,’ as Flo said, anxious I should approve, ‘not so much that as using your intelligence.’ He went into bombed houses and stripped them of anything saleable, working at night, so as not to be noticed, and disposed of what he found. He would say casually to a householder: ‘That wash-basin, that bath, it’s not up to much, is it? — not for a house of this class. Now I tell you what, I can get you a new bath, three pounds cheaper than what you’d pay.’
He had connections with the building trade, because he had worked in all branches of it at various times. It was easy for him to get a bath, a wash-basin, a lavatory pan at cost price. This new object would be installed, and he’d make a small profit. ‘This old bath’s no good to you,’ he’d tell the householder, ‘you’d have to pay to get it taken away,’ The backyard was always full of baths, wash-basins, cisterns, lavatory pans, and tangles of piping. Then, while fixing a gas leak or mending a refrigerator. Dan would say: ‘That old bath of yours, it’s not up to the standard of the rest, is it? I tell you what. I’ll get you another. Just as good as new — a factory reject. It got a bit scratched in the enamel, and I’ll do it two-thirds of the usual price.’
One week I know for a fact Dan earned fifty-odd pounds in this way, over and above his wage and the rents for the house.
‘Do you know what?’ Rose said. ‘That Dan, he’s just working-dirt like me, and I know his mum and his dad live on the old age pension and nothing over. But he’s the new rich. Well, isn’t he? I don’t envy him his conscience and that’s the truth.’
For a week the quarrels in the basement were so bad that Jack and Rose spent all their evenings with me. Sometimes Jack went out to lean over the banisters and listen. ‘Still at it,’ he said, settling himself back on my floor. Rose went down on occasional reconnaissance trips and came back to say: ‘Hammer and tongs. Well, they’ve only been married three years, so what can you expect.’
‘It’s still about me,’ said Jack, with satisfaction.
‘Don’t flatter yourself. It’s about Bobby Brent. Flo wants to put Oar in a paying nursery, since they can’t get a Council nursery, but Dan says a woman’s place is in the home.’
At this we all laughed, even Jack.
‘The way I look at it is this. When married people quarrel about something, they’re usually quarrelling about something else they don’t like to mention, if you understand me. I bet I know what’s eating Dan.’
‘I know, too,’ said Jack. ‘All he wants is to kill me, but he can’t understand he wants me for witness for his case.’
‘What case?’ I said.
‘I spoke out of turn,’ said Rose. ‘I promised Flo. She’ll tell you in her own good time. And what makes it worse is, Flo’s flying the red flag this week, and so they can’t make it up in bed. So there’s no peace for any of us the next three days, the way I reckon it.’
‘Ah, shut up,’ said Jack.
‘And who’s talking? Prim and proper. Well, who was knocking at my door last night just because Flo set him on?’
A couple of days later the quarrels had got so bad that Jack was white-faced, and Rose softened enough to put her arms around him. ‘Poor little boy, poor baby,’ she said, half-derisive, half-tender, ‘Don’t cry. Peace will reign any minute now, you’ll see.’
It was a Sunday morning. Suddenly, from one moment to the next, silence fell downstairs, save for the sound of the radio.
Aurora came in. She was sucking her bottle.
‘You’re working,’ she said.
‘That’s right.’
‘Mommy and Daddy are working, too.’ She helped herself to a large handful of sweets, exactly as her mother helped herself to cigarettes, with a quick guilty look and a smile of triumph she could not suppress. ‘They’re working on the bed. Like this.’ She began bouncing up and down on her stomach on the floor. After a minute she turned her head to watch herself bouncing in the long mirror. ‘Like this,’ she murmured.
In about an hour Flo appeared. Her eyes were red with past crying, and she was lauding. ‘Why, is Oar with you?’ she exclaimed in beautiful surprise. But she couldn’t keep it up. She sat down, taking a cigarette, and said: ‘Dan and me nearly split up, but now it’s all over. Don’t go, I said to Dan. The trouble with you is, you’re not used to a decent woman and her ways. I’m not like the women you’re used to — he’s had black, white, green, pink, and yellow, all over the world, being in the Navy, dear. But I’m different, see? I said to him: If you shout at me, and use your fists, I’ll just go right out and get a job and leave you to manage Oar. That’d fix you, that would.’
Aurora seemed pleased at this possibility. ‘Is my Dad going to look after me,’ she enquired.
‘Oh, you,’ said Flo, slapping at her vaguely. Aurora sucked philosophically at her bottle and listened.
‘Give the bastards what they want, that’s all. He’s a hot one and no mistake. Have it every night if he could. But I play tired. Even when I wouldn’t mind. I think to myself, laughing away in the dark: Let the sod wait, do them good, or they take you for granted. I learned that with my first husband, not that he was much good, not a patch on Dan. Dan gets so mad I hear him wriggling and growling away on the other side of the bed.’ She laughed out loud, like a young girl, clapping her hands to her kneecaps. She noticed Aurora suddenly, and flung her arms out and gathered the child to her. ‘You love your mummy, darling, don’t you, sweetheart.’ Aurora went on sucking at the bottle. ‘Of course you love your mother,’ said Flo, firmly, letting her go again. She sat loosely, hands dangling, smiling peacefully to herself. ‘Well, and so now Dan and I are already laughing at ourselves for quarrelling. Now, if Rose had any sense …’
‘You tell her yourself.’
‘Oh, she won’t listen to me. She’s so grumpy these days, I can’t say a word. But Dickie’s Dan’s brother. They’re like as two peas, for all that Dickie’s a civilian, so to speak, just selling things behind a counter and my Dan’s from the Navy, and that makes a man, say what you like. But I keep telling Rose, when she’s listening, if you want a man you’ve got to go about it proper. She plays cold with Dickie so he gets fed-up. Now you tell her, any real friend of hers would do right and tell her.’
‘She doesn’t like talking about it,’ I said.
‘She doesn’t know anything, let alone talking, I know. Many the times I’ve gone to bed early with Dan and left them alone and sent Jack to the pictures, but all I hear is a giggle and a slap, and he goes home with his hands in his pockets. So she’s only got herself to blame he’s got another woman.’
