is expressed in the sullen set of the shoulders. By the end of the day he has achieved the minimum amount of work.
Wally James, lazily allowing his chisel to slide over the cracked putty that held the cracked glass in place, remarked: ‘When we put the Labour Government in, we thought things would be better for the working people. But the way things would out, what’s the difference?’
‘According to the newspapers …’
‘Now, miss, you won’t hold it against me, but you don’t want to go reading those newspapers now.’ Scrape, scrape, scrape, scrape. ‘This is a real nice window, say what you like.’
‘It will be, when it’s mended. Been cracked ever since I came in.’
‘You don’t say. Well, next time you just let me know. You don’t want to go wasting time with those forms. Takes it out of a person, those forms do.’ He stood back and looked musingly down into the street. ‘Who’d have thought a working man’s Government would get itself all messed up with forms and such.’
‘I don’t see it’s much worse than the last, do you?’
‘I didn’t say worse, couldn’t be worse, could it? But when we put them in, we meant them to be better.’
‘Surely it’s better.’
‘We-ll,’ he grudgingly admitted, ‘you could say it’s better. But take me. I’ve got a wife and two kids. Two kids isn’t a big family.
Drinking tea, he remarked: ‘We could do that job in half a morning.’
‘Yes?’
‘Easy.’ He smoked peaceably. ‘Don’t see any point in slaving my guts out and getting nothing back. I’m fed up. What’s the sense in everything?’
‘Don’t ask me.’
‘I’m not asking, I’m telling. When I think of what those boys said before we put them in and what they do now. All the same, once they get in, that’s right, isn’t it, mate?’
‘That’s right,’ assented the other two. They listened to their foreman speaking with detached interest, I got the feeling that if he had made a passionate speech about raising production, they would have assented, with equal indifference: ‘That’s right.’
‘Listen to them,’ he said scornfully. ‘That’s right, they say, that’s right. Not an idea in their bloody heads. Do you know what they are? Slaves, that’s what. And like it. Let me tell you. Last week all the men were complaining about the tea in the canteen. It came cold every time, and the food was muck. There they were, grumbling their heads off. I said, All right then, who’s coming with me to complain to the boss. Oh, yes, they were all coming. The whole bleeding lot. So I walked out of the canteen and went to the office, and when I turned around, where were they? Yes, where were you?’ The two men continued to strip paper off the walls, without turning around. ‘Scared. Can’t talk up for themselves. I said to the boss. We’re sick of the food and the tea isn’t fit to drink. He said: Where’s the men, then? Why don’t they complain. Well, the tea’s better, but no thanks to them. No thanks to you two either.’
At five o’clock, they knocked off. Wally refilled my coal-box, swept out my room, dusted it, asked for another cup of tea. We talked until it was time for me to go to the nursery to fetch my son.
‘You might not know it,’ I said, ‘hut outside this country I know newspapers which say the working people here are getting big wages and are better off than the middle class.’
‘Is that so? Well you know better now, don’t you? Yes. I know your sort — no harm meant. I’ve seen the books on your shelves. You’re an intellectual, you are. You mean well. But what this country needs is a strong-man government. Oh, not that Hitler stuff and all that about the Jews. I don’t hold with it. But we’ve got all these blacks coming in, taking the bread out of our mouths. And what the Government gives with one hand and it takes back with the other. Before we know it, we’ll have unemployment again. Oh. I know. Well, I’ve enjoyed our little talk. See you tomorrow, miss, and if you greet us with a cuppa we’ll not say no. And none of your lugging coal up behind my back. Don’t hold with women on that kind of caper. Wouldn’t let my wife carry coal and lug furniture about. No, any dirty work about, you let me know, and I’ll fix it.’
When the paper was stripped off, if could be seen that bombing had loosened the walls so that they stood apart at the angles from half-way up to the ceiling, between a quarter and a half inch. They pasted strips of paper over the cracks, and wallpapered over the whole. The great crack across the ceiling was filled in with putty and papered over. ‘It’s a crying shame,’ said Wally. ‘Such a nice house it must have been once. Well, these swine I’m working for, if they could use old newspapers for building materials and get away with it, they would. Don’t you hold it against me, miss. I know what’s good work and what’s not. Well, it’ll hold together. Hundreds of these houses, you’d be surprised — you’d think they’d fall down if someone gave a shout in the street. But they keep on standing out of sheer force of habit, as far as I can see.’
Chapter Seven
Soon the rooms on the ground floor were done. Because Dan was pressed for time and money, none of Flo’s ideas for decorating were put into effect: she had wanted dadoes, hiezes and tinted mouldings. The walls and ceilings were white; and the floors black. The conservatory end, now a place of shining glass and polished stone, had potted plants from Flo’s backyard. No money for fine curtains: they had to use the cheapest thing they could find, government silk, in dull white. No money for the heavy varnished furniture Flo had planned. Neither Rose nor I would give up our furniture, as of course Dan expected us to do; they had to take down stuff from Miss Powell’s and the Skeffingtons’ flats, which they had picked up at sales and which was mostly unobtrusive and even at times pleasant. Flo mourned over the flat, which was large, light, and pretty. ‘We’ll never be able to let it for what we wanted,’ she said. Rose had a student in her shop asking for a place, and brought her home; she was so enthusiastic over the rooms that Flo raised the rent from five pounds to eight pounds a week and got it. Four Australian drama students moved in, and at once the ground floor, which had been the unspeakable hidden sore of the house, became its pride. The girls were pretty and self-possessed; had insisted on a proper lease; paid their rent; and merely looked impatient when Flo and Dan tried to play them up.
‘You’ll have to behave yourselves now,’ Rose commented, when Flo complained the girls had no sense of humour: they had not been amused at her heavy hints about their boy-friends. ‘You can’t carry on the way you do, not with decent people, or they’ll leave.’
Flo and Dan realized at last that this was true; and left all negotiations with the girls to Rose, who, when approaching them, used a manner of ingratiating propriety. She copied it, as she explained to me, from her favourite television announcer. ‘After all,’ she said, ‘it stands to reason it must be the right way the upper-class people carry on, or he wouldn’t be paid all that money for smirking and smiling and minding his manners, would he now?’
On the strength of the eight pounds a week, Dan hired labour. Mick, a building apprentice, and Len, Rose’s brother, moved into the Skeffingtons’ flat, for their food, a bed, and pocket money. They soon finished the top flat; Rose was negotiating to let it to a woman who had come into her shop; when Flo announced, with a mixture of guilt and furtive delight — that she had let it to ‘an ever so nice lady who’s French.’ Rose noted Flo’s expression, made her own enquiries, and told Flo she should be ashamed. ‘And who’s talking? Little miss prim-and-proper? And what was you doing with Dickie not a month back, may I ask you?’ This shaft hit Rose so hard that even Flo was ashamed. ‘I didn’t mean it, sweetheart, I didn’t really,’ she kept shouting, as Rose stood silent, trembling; and finally crept upstairs to cry in her room.
Rose said to me: ‘Do you know what? Flo’s let the top flat lo one of them dirty beasts. And why? Because she gets twice the rent from her. And just now when I’ve got my little brother here who needs a good example set.’
