didn’t think she had that much fight in her, she’s such a lady and all. I’ll give her that. But you call a doctor now, sweetheart, and you’ll do for her, you will really. I’ll go up again and see what I can do for help. You stay here and if I need you I’ll call.’
When Flo went. Rose came in. ‘I’m going out now,’ she said. ‘This would happen, just when I want to be happy and not think about anything. Can you hear?’
From above us came the sound of moaning.
‘Of course.’
‘Yes. I know you can. But I don’t want to. I’ll see you later.’
Soon afterwards Flo came to say Mrs Skeffington was asleep for the night. And Rosemary had been given a tablespoon of whisky to keep her quiet. We both made trips upstairs to listen outside the door; and Miss Powell made trips down. We couldn’t hear anything. Miss Powell said she had arranged to call a friend of hers who was a nurse, if anything went wrong. Flo approved of this; nurses weren’t doctors: they were friendly, they were women, they understood.
When Rose came back at midnight, soft-faced and smiling and happy, she seemed a visitor from another country. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘so that’s all fixed.’ She sat down in my big chair, and began to make herself comfortable. In five minutes she had changed herself from a pretty girl into a plain woman. First, straddled in the chair, she stripped the corset-belt from under her petticoat. Then she undid her brassiere, and removed the carefully-bunched cotton-woo! with which it was stuffed. She stuck a cigarette in the corner of her mouth — a thing she would rather die than do in public — so that, with her eyes screwed up against the smoke she looked like a wise old sardonic woman. Finally she took a comb from her black packed hair, and reflectively scratched her scalp with it. No man present: she could be herself.
‘Have a good time?’
‘What do you think?’
‘Where did you go?’
‘The pictures. I didn’t care where we went, so long as I was with him. He wouldn’t talk to me at first, not a cheep out of him. I didn’t take any notice; I talked nice about whatever came past, so to speak. Then, after the pictures he look my hand and squeezed it ever so hard.’ She showed me, with satisfaction, and creased red flesh on her wrist. ‘And he said, look if you’re going out with me, you’re not going out with other men, see? I said; Going out with you, am I? Haven’t noticed it recently. He said. As far as I’m concerned, you’re coming out with me. So I smiled, secret-like, and played I didn’t care either way. Then, when he got mad, I looked at him straight and said; No fooling now. You’re not playing me up again, understand? Then I patted his cheek, like that …’ Rose patted the chair in a brisk maternal way. ‘I said; I’m telling you straight. If you don’t want me, there are those who do. You can take it or leave it. When we got to the gate, he kissed me proper …’ She smiled, and immediately her face dimmed to worry. ‘He said he wanted to come in. But I wouldn’t let him, I don’t know what I ought to do. If I let him come in …’
‘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 with water, and the floors over their heads filled with debris. There was no running water, electricity, no sanitation. They fetched in water from a house down the street; used the backyard as a lavatory at night; burned candles; went to the public bathhouse once a week. Flo and Dan had bought the half-ruined house without even knowing the old couple were in it. They paid eighteen shillings a week rent, and could not be got out.
‘You don’t know about the Rent Act,’ said Rose. ‘That keeps them safe. Flo and Dan didn’t understand it either, at first, and they tried to throw the old people out. Then they barricaded themselves in. That’s all I’m going
