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 Dan and Bobby Brent shouting each other down, and Flo and Miss Powell sighing and complaining in counterpoint. Dan stamped, swearing, downstairs. Flo waddling after him.
‘Ah, my Lord,’ she was saying, ‘all we ask is, she should move into those lovely big rooms till the Damage has finished in hers. Then she can move back up, and the rent the same.’
‘Rent,’ shouted Dan. ‘rent you say? We’re not going to have money to put food into our mouths, all our tenants leaving because you’re too stupid to live.’
Dan had given up his job with the Gas Board, on grounds of urgent family illness. He spent his days over in the nightclub, and his evenings on his house. The hundreds of pounds he had made on the side during the past two years were already re-invested. He was joint owner, with Bobby Brent, of two slum houses in Notting Hill Gate. But there was little cash coming in. Flo was serving fish and chips and corned beef hash at every meal.
Over my head Bobby Brent was now quarrelling with Miss Powell. I had never heard them quarrel in all the months I had been there. Soon, she came downstairs, tear-stained but soignee in a slim black suit and furs. At the turn of the stairs she hesitated. Then she called up the well of the staircase in her refined voice, now plaintive: ‘Raymond — Raymond?’ No reply from Mr Brent. ‘I shall be staying at the X Hotel, if you want me.’ No reply. She waited a little, then went on down. In a moment I saw her driving away in a taxi. Bobby Brent now entered my room, with dignity. Our relations had formalized themselves into mutual insult. Yet he was always a little wary of me; and I was unable to prevent myself being frightened of him. He knew it.
‘And good riddance,’ he said.
‘It would seem short-sighted to quarrel with Dan, so much satisfactory bread and butter, just because you want to get rid of Miss Powell.’
‘Dan Bolt,’ said he with a heavy sneer. ‘He’s not my class.’
‘But with such a talent for making money!’
‘People never understand a man has to better himself Women never understand that.’
‘Now you can marry the daughter of the Member of Parliament who is a lady.’
‘I could, if I wanted to, but as it happens I can do better.’
‘That’s nice.’
‘Marry, marry, marry. That’s all women ever think of. And why should I get married?’
‘Why indeed?’
‘Raymond Ponsonby,’ he said, ‘has no need of any blasted women.’
‘But how about Bobby Brent?’ I said.
‘I say! You’d better be careful what you say. Just because I have a friend, and come to see her, it needn’t mean more than that. Miss Powell’s a friend of mine, and she needn’t go preventing any banns being called.’
‘Good Lord.’ I said, ‘are you married to her all this time?’
He made an involuntary startled movement, as if to go. He looked at me some time, frowning. Then the impulse to boast bettered him.
‘With a lawyer who knows his way about, you’d be surprised.’
‘No I wouldn’t.’
‘Yes you would if I told you. And I will. I put it this way. You hit the thing on the head, as it happens. Raymond Ponsonby is married, but Robert Brent isn’t.’
‘And Miss Powell?’
He laughed triumphantly. ‘How can she be married to a name that’s not on any registers the law would recognize?’
‘I see.’
Suddenly he went black with anger at the thought of how he’d given himself away. He poked his chin out at me, half-shut his eyes, and said: ‘Blackmail’s a game two could play.’
‘As a matter of interest, how would you blackmail me if you set about it?’
He smiled, considering the thing on its merits. ‘Ah,’ he breathed. ‘Ah!’ He began stalking back and forth across my room, vibrant because of some scheme he had just thought of; or perhaps had had up his sleeve for some time — or perhaps because he was waiting for inspiration.
Looking back, I think I gave it to him, by what I said next.
‘I’ve often wondered,’ he remarked, ‘what you think of me. We could be friends, but you don’t give yourself away. I like that. Yes, I like you for it.’
‘I’ll tell you,’ I said. ‘I think you’re a psychopath and a sadist, but luckily for you, in this society it won’t even be noticed. The sky’s your limit as far as I can see.’
‘I say!’ he exclaimed. ‘That’s libel. That’s slander …’ He took a few more turns up and down, his eyes narrowed on some increasingly delightful thought.
‘I say!’ he exclaimed, finally, sitting on the arm of a chair. He offered me a classy cigarette out of a gold cigarette case and said: ‘Have you ever been to the 400 Club?’
‘No, but I’d love to go there with you.’
‘I’ll take you now.’
‘Give me five minutes to change.’ I was wearing a skirt and a sweater.
‘No need. They know me there. And when we’re there I’ll introduce you to a friend of mine. He’ll interest you. There’s a lot of money to be made out of writing best-sellers.’
‘So you keep telling me.’
‘On the other hand, there’s no sense in living in a room like this if you’ve a best-seller in your pocket?’
We looked around my room together. War Damage would have a good deal to do in it. There was a great crack up one wall which widened blackly across the ceiling to end in a great hole through which dust fell lightly day and night. The floorboards were at varying levels. Two big brown rexine chairs, bought by Flo at five bob each at a sale, had strips of pink sticking plaster across the backs where they had split. The suite of fine new utility furniture, wardrobe and dressing-table, for which Flo and Dan would be paying weekly for a year yet, already lacked handles: they had been stuck on originally with glue. The door of the wardrobe had warped and would not shut. The glass in the big french windows which must once, years ago, have opened into a fine tall, cheerful room kept clean by the labours of heaven knows how many housemaids, had cracked and were pasted over with paper.
‘Yes,’ said Bobby Brent thoughtfully. ‘Yes. Well, are you coming? Aren’t you even going to put some lipstick on?’
‘I very likely would, if we were going to the 400 Club.’
‘The trouble with you is, you can’t take a joke.’
On the pavement he hesitated, and said: ‘I tell you what. I’ll take you to the 400 by taxi. I’ll do that for you.’
‘I don’t see why not. You’ve still got the two pounds I gave you.’
