At this juncture Welfare came again, and insisted on seeing both parents. Dan, who resented Welfare as much as Flo, was prepared to use her in his battle against his wife. He took Aurora to the doctor himself, allowing Flo to go with him.
What they heard subdued the parents into friendship for each other. They were inarticulately miserable. They both deeply loved the child. Yet the doctor said they had ill-treated her to the point where she had a patch on one lung; her teeth were rotten; her bones were rickety. She had to have regular food, fresh air, and the company of other children. If her condition had not improved by the next visit, she would have to be sent to a sanatorium.
Rose discussed all this with me; and went down to the basement to say Aurora should go to a nursery school.
She came back to say: ‘Would you believe it? They say they have no money for nursery schools. I said, it’s your kid, isn’t it? And all that money with Bobby Brent? If it comes to the worst, sell out your share in one of the houses. But, oh no, perish the thought, money before Aurora every time.’
‘But they love that kid.’ I said.
‘Love?’ said Rose. ‘Don’t use that word to me. I’ve heard all I want for the time being.’ She was going out with Dickie again; but all the joy had gone out of it. She had told him he must marry her; and he was replying: ‘What for?’
‘What for? he says. What for? Weil I’m not getting any younger. I say to him. Don’t you want your own home? Don’t you want children? But, oh no, not Dickie Bolt, he just laughs and twists my arm and says Let’s go to bed.’ She leaned forward in her chair, staring into my fire, her hands trembling together in her lap. ‘And what’s sad is, making love isn’t what it was, the way I feel. I’ve gone all cold on him and I can’t help it. And he says: What’s biting you. Rose? Funny, aren’t they — what’s biting you, he says, enjoying himself, and me scared even to think of what’s going to happen. Suppose I don’t never have a kid? I want to have kids bad.’
‘Give him up.’ I said, ‘He’s no good to you.’
‘Oh, don’t say it. I know he isn’t. But I love him and I can’t help myself.’ She sat, staring, silent. Then she said fiercely: ‘And downstairs, that Flo and that Dan — if I had a kid I’d know how to look after it. I know. I’d treat it right and have some sense, not all that shouting and slapping and kissing.’ She wept hopelessly, and would not be comforted.
Downstairs, now that her parents were no longer quarrelling. Aurora began to improve. Flo took her to the Park every afternoon and pushed her on the swings. She was made to go to bed early. She ate badly but better than before.
Meanwhile Jack, against Rose’s advice, chose this moment to present himself truculently one evening, demanding to come home. The parents were concentrated on Aurora and their fright over her. He was told he could come back if he helped Dan. Jack had heard of Dan’s need for him, and demanded union rates for whatever work he did. Dan lost his temper again. Jack went off, and soon we heard he had gone to Australia. It was much later that Flo discovered the fifty pounds nest-egg she kept rolled in an old corset at the back of her cupboard was missing. He had used it to pay his passage.
War Damage had now finished the two top floors. Dan left his work on the ground-floor flat and was painting them. The workmen wanted to come into my room and Rose’s.
The following conversation took place between me and Flo.
‘Well, dear, isn’t it nice, they’re going to pull down one wall of your room and make it all nice, I don’t know what you’re going to do, I’m sure.’
‘What do you suggest?’
‘Pardon, dear?’
‘Am I going to sleep with a wall down?’
‘You can’t sleep in Rose’s room, because she’s moving downstairs to us, it’s no trouble to her, now she and Dickie’s cooled off, she doesn’t need a room to herself. They’re pulling down her wall, too.’
‘Well, and where am I going to work?’
‘You could lake your typewriter to the bathroom, couldn’t you, sweetheart?’
‘I could, but I won’t.’
‘Ah, my Lord, I knew you’d say that.’
‘Tell me, Flo, do you think it’s fair for me to pay you full rent when I can’t even use my room to work in?’
‘Pardon?’
‘Why should I pay you for something I don’t get?’
‘But the blitz wasn’t my fault, dear. Tell me now, is it true you’re looking out for somewhere to live?’
‘Yes, it is.’
‘There’s that flat downstairs, it’s going to be ever so nice.’
‘But not for me.’
‘Because you don’t want to pay what we’ll have to ask when this room is all done up and nice, do you?’
‘No.’
‘I’ll talk to Dan,’ she said, distressed.
Eventually the builders decided not to rebuild the wall but only to patch it up a little.
‘It’ll be ever so nice for you,’ said Flo, ‘They’re nice men and you won’t be so lonely working away by yourself all day.’
This turned out to be true.
At nine o’clock every morning the men knocked on my door and enquired: ‘Ready, miss? Any dirty work before we start?’
They would then descend to the cellar and carry up coal for me. During that time I had my fire roaring all day and night; I hated so much the thought of going down into the black damp cellar down half a dozen flights of stairs that often I would let it go out and get into bed to read instead.
I had them in my room, three of them, for a month. Two were small, pale, underfed little men who should by rights have been plump and applefaced and amiable, but who were too cautious to do anything but smile, tentatively, and then instantly restore their defensive masks; and their foreman, an offhand, good-humouredly arrogant young man who talked for them all. His name was Wally James, and after he had fetched my coal, we all had a cigarette and many cups of tea. About nine-thirty, he would stretch and say: ‘Well, this won’t keep the home fires burning,’ and in the most leisurely way in the world he set out his tools and began to work.
I gave up all attempts at working, for he would say: ‘That’s right, miss, don’t take any notice of me,’ and start to chat about his wife, his children, the state of the world, and the Government; but most particularly the last two, for he had them on his mind. Eventually I pushed my typewriter away, and we brewed tea and talked.
When this foreman was not there, even if he were out of the room for a few minutes, I would find myself thinking of him as a tall and well-built man, even handsome, for this was how nature had intended him to be. The frame of his body, the cage of his skull, were large, generously defined; but at some time in his life he must have been underfed; for the flesh was too light on gaunt bones, his face was haggard, the eyes deep and dark in their sockets. He had a mop of black hair, rough with bits of dust and plaster; his hands were fine and nervous, but calloused; and the great head was supported on a thin, corded neck.
It took him and his mates four days to remove two panes of glass from my french windows and insert new ones. He assessed the work to last that long; it was what he thought he could get away with. I used to watch him and feel homesick; for I come from a country of accomplished idling.
The memory, perhaps, of a black labourer, hoe in hand, commanded to dig over a flower bed … He saunters out, hoe over his shoulder. He lets the hoe fall of its own weight into the soil and rest there, till, with a lazy lift of the shoulders, the hoe rises again, falls … the man stands, thinking. He straightens himself, spits on his hand and fits it lovingly around the sweat-smoothed wood handle. He gazes around him for a long while. A shout of rage comes from the house. He does not shrug, move, make any sign: he is attacked by deafness. Slowly, the hoe rises, falls, rises, falls. No sign from the house. Leaning on the handle he gazes into the distance, thinking of that lost paradise, the tribal village where he might be lounging at that moment, under a tree, watching his women work in the vegetable garden while he drinks beer. Another shout of rage from the house. Again he stiffens, without actually hearing. The hoe seems to rise of its own accord, and lazily falls, rises and falls, so slowly it seems that some invisible force fights against gravity itself, restraining the hoe in its incredibly lazy down-curve to the soil. ‘Can’t you go any faster than that?’ demands the white mistress from the verandah of the house. ‘What do you think I pay your wages for?’ Why? Well, of course, so that I can pay that stupid tax and get back home to my family … this thought
