Читать книгу To Room Nineteen: Collected Stories Volume One - Doris Lessing - Страница 13

Rose’s mother was killed one morning crossing the street to do her shopping. Rose was fetched from work, and a young policeman, awkward with sympathy, asked questions and finally said: ‘You ought to tell your Dad, miss, he ought to know.’ It had struck him as strange that she had not suggested it, but behaved as if the responsibility for everything must of course be hers. He thought Rose was too composed to be natural. Her mouth was set and there was a strained look in her eyes. He insisted; Rose sent a message to her father; but when he came she put him straight into bed with a cup of tea. Mr Johnson was a plump, fair little man, with wisps of light hair lying over a rosy scalp, and blue, candid, trustful eyes. Then she came back to the kitchen and her manner told the policeman that she expected him to leave. From the door he said diffidently: ‘Well, I’m sorry, miss, I’m really sorry. A terrible thing – you can’t rightly blame the lorry-driver, and your mum – it wasn’t her fault, either.’ Rose turned her white, shaken face, her cold and glittering eyes towards him and said tartly: ‘Being sorry doesn’t mend broken bones.’ That last phrase seemed to take her by surprise, for she winced, her face worked in a rush of tears, and then she clenched her jaw again. ‘Them lorries,’ she said heavily, ‘them machines, they ought to be stopped, that’s what I think.’ This irrational remark encouraged the policeman: it was nearer to the tears, the emotion that he thought would be good for her. He remarked encouragingly: ‘I daresay, miss, but we couldn’t do without them, could we now?’ Rose’s face did not change. She said politely: ‘Yes?’ It was sceptical and dismissing; that monosyllable said finally: ‘You keep your opinions, I’ll keep mine.’ It examined and dismissed the whole machine age. The young policeman, still lingering over his duty, suggested: ‘Isn’t there anybody to come and sit with you? You don’t look too good, miss, and that’s a fact.’

‘There isn’t anybody,’ said Rose briefly, and added: ‘I’m all right.’ She sounded irritated, and so he left. She sat down at the table and was shocked at herself for what she had said. She thought: I ought to tell George … But she did not move. She stared vaguely around the kitchen, her mind dimly churning around several ideas. One was that her father had taken it hard, she would have her hands full with him. Another, that policemen, officials – they were all nosy parkers, knowing what was best for everybody. She found herself staring at a certain picture on the wall, and thinking: ‘Now I can take that picture down. Now she’s gone I can do what I like.’ She felt a little guilty, but almost at once she briskly rose and took the picture down. It was of a battleship in a stormy sea, and she hated it. She put it away in a cupboard. Then the white empty square on the wall troubled her, and she replaced it by a calendar with yellow roses on it. Then she made herself a cup of tea and began cooking her father’s supper, thinking: I’ll wake him up and make him eat, do him good to have a bite of something hot.

At supper her father asked: ‘Where’s George?’ Her face closed against him in irritation and she said: ‘I don’t know.’ He was surprised and shocked, and he protested: ‘But Rosie, you ought to tell him, it’s only right.’ Now, it was against this knowledge that she had been arming herself all day; but she knew that sooner or later she must tell George, and when she had finished the washing-up she took a sheet of writing-paper from the drawer of the dresser and sat down to write. She was as surprised as her father was: Why didn’t she want to tell George? Her father said, with the characteristic gentle protest: ‘But, Rosie, why don’t you give him a ring at the factory? They’d give him the message.’ Rosie made as if she had not heard. She finished the letter, found some coppers in her bag for a stamp and went out to post it. Afterwards she found herself thinking of George’s arrival with the reluctance that deserved the name of fear. She could not understand herself, and soon went to bed in order to lose herself in sleep. She dreamed of the lorry that had killed her mother; she dreamed, too, of an enormous black machine, relentlessly moving its great arms back and forth, back and forth, in a way that was menacing to Rose.

George found the letter when he returned from work the following evening. His first thought was: ‘Why couldn’t she have got killed next week, after we were married, instead of now?’ He was shocked at the cruel and selfish idea. But he and Rose had been going together now for three years, and he could not help feeling that it was cruel of fate to cloud their wedding with this terrible, senseless death. He had not liked Rose’s mother: he thought her a fussy and domineering woman; but to be killed like that, all of a sudden, in her vigorous fifties – He thought suddenly: ‘Poor little Rosie, she’ll be upset bad, and there’s her Dad, he’s just like a big baby; I’d better get to her quick.’ He was putting the letter in his pocket when it struck him: ‘Why did she write? Why didn’t she telephone to the works?’ He looked at the letter and saw that Mrs Johnson had been killed as long ago as yesterday morning. At first he was too astonished to be angry; then he was extraordinarily angry. ‘What!’ he muttered, ‘why the hell – what’s she doing?’ He was a member of the family, wasn’t he? – or as good as. And she wrote him stiff little letters, beginning Dear George, and ending, Rose – no love, not even a sincerely. But underneath the anger he was deeply dismayed. He was remembering that there had been a listlessness, an apathy about her recently that could almost be taken as indifference. For instance, when he took her to see the two rooms that would be their home, she had made all kinds of objections instead of being as delighted as he was. ‘Look at all those stairs,’ she had said, ‘it’s so high up,’ and so on. You might almost think she wasn’t keen on marrying him – but this idea was insupportable, and he abandoned it quickly. He remembered that at the beginning, three years ago, she had pleaded for them to marry at once; she didn’t mind taking a chance, she had said; lots of people got married on less money than they had. But he was a cautious man and he talked her into waiting for some kind of security. That’s where he made his mistake, he decided now; he should have taken her at her word and married her straight off, and then … He hastened across London to comfort Rose; and all the time his thoughts of her were uneasy and aggrieved; and he felt as anxious as a lost child.

When he entered the kitchen it was with no clear idea of what to expect; but he was surprised to find her seated at her usual place at the table, her hands folded idly before her, pale, heavy-lidded, but quite composed. The kitchen was spotless and there was a smell of soapsuds and clean warmth. Evidently the place had just been given a good scrub.

Rose turned heavy eyes on him and said: ‘It was good of you to come over, George.’

He had been going to give her a comforting kiss, but this took him by surprise. His feelings of outrage deepened. ‘Hey,’ he said, accusingly, ‘what’s all this, Rosie, why didn’t you let me know?’

She looked upset, but said, evasively: ‘It was all over so quick, and they took her away – there didn’t seem no point in getting you disturbed too.’

George pulled out a chair and sat opposite her. He had thought that there was nothing new to learn about Rose, after three years. But now he was giving her troubled and apprehensive glances; she seemed a stranger. In appearance she was small and dark, rather too thin. She had a sharp, pale face, with an irregular prettiness about it. She usually wore a dark skirt and a white blouse. She would sit up at night to wash and iron the blouse so that it would always be fresh. This freshness, the neatness, was her strongest characteristic. ‘You look as if you could be pulled through a hedge backwards and come out with every hair in order,’ he used to tease her. To which she might reply: ‘Don’t make me laugh. How could I?’ She would be quite serious; and at such moments he might sigh, humorously, admitting that she had no sense of humour. But really he liked her seriousness, her calm practicality: he relied on it. Now he said, rather helplessly: ‘Don’t take on, Rosie, everything’s all right.’

‘I’m not taking on,’ she replied unnecessarily, looking quietly at him, or rather, through him, with an air of patient waiting. He was now more apprehensive than angry. ‘How’s your Dad?’ he asked.

‘I’ve put him to bed with a nice cup of tea.’

‘How’s he taking it?’

She seemed to shrug. ‘Well, he’s upset, but he’s getting over it now.’

And now, for the life of him, he could think of nothing to say. The clock’s ticking seemed very loud, and he shifted his feet noisily. After a long silence he said aggressively: ‘This won’t make any difference to us, it’ll be all right next week, Rosie?’

He knew that it wasn’t all right when, after a further pause, she turned her eyes towards him with a full, dark, vague stare: ‘Oh, well, I don’t know …’

‘What do you mean?’ he challenged quickly, leaning across at her, forcibly, so that she might be made to respond: ‘What do you mean, Rosie, let us have it now.’

‘Well – there’s Dad,’ she replied, with that maddening vagueness.

‘You mean we shan’t get married?’ he shouted angrily. ‘Three years, Rosie …’ As her silence persisted: ‘Your Dad can live with us. Or – he might be getting married again – or something.’

Suddenly she laughed, and he winced; her moments of rough humour always disconcerted him. At the same time they pained him because they seemed brutal. ‘You mean to say,’ she said, clumsily jeering, ‘you mean you hope he gets married again, even if no one else’d ever think of it.’ But her eyes were filled with tears. They were lonely and self-sufficing tears. He slowly fell back into his chair, letting his hands drop loosely. He simply could not understand it. He could not understand her. It flashed into his mind that she intended not to marry him at all, but this was too monstrous a thought, and he comforted himself: ‘She’ll be all right by tomorrow, it’s the shock, that’s all. She liked her ma, really, even though they scrapped like two cats.’ He was just going to say: ‘Well, if I can’t do anything I’ll be getting along; I’ll come and see you tomorrow,’ when she asked him carefully, as if it were an immense effort for her to force her attention on to him: ‘Would you like a cuppa tea?’

‘Rose!’ he shouted miserably.

‘What?’ She sounded unhappy but stubborn; and she was unreachable, shut off from him behind a barrier of – what? He did not know. ‘Oh, go to hell then,’ he muttered, and got up and stamped out of the kitchen. At the door he gave her an appealing glance, but she was not looking at him. He slammed the door hard. Afterwards he thought guiltily: She’s upset, and then I treat her bad.

But Rose did not think of him when he had gone. She remained where she was, for some time, looking vaguely at the calendar with the yellow roses. Then she got up, washed her hands, hung her apron on the hook behind the door, as usual, and went to bed. ‘That’s over,’ she said to herself, meaning George. She began to cry. She knew she would not marry him – rather, could not marry him. She did not know why this was impossible or why she was crying: she could not understand her own behaviour. Up till so few hours before she had been going to marry George, live with him in the little flat: everything was settled. Yet, from the moment she had heard the shocked voices saying outside in the street: Mrs Johnson’s dead, she’s been killed – from that moment, or so it seemed now, it had become impossible to marry George. One day he had meant everything to her, he represented her future, and the next, he meant nothing. The knowledge was shocking to her; above all she prided herself on being a sensible person; the greatest praise she could offer was: ‘You’ve got sense,’ or ‘I like people to behave proper, no messing about.’ And what she felt was not sensible, therefore, she could not think too closely about it. She cried for a long time, stifling her sobs so that her father could not hear them where he lay through the wall. Then she lay awake and stared at the square of light that showed chimney-pots and the dissolving yellowish clouds of a rainy London dawn, scolding herself scornfully: What’s the good of crying? while she mopped up the tears that rose steadily under her lids and soaked down her cheeks to the already damp pillow.

Next morning when her father asked over breakfast cups: ‘Rosie, what are you going to do about George?’ she replied calmly, ‘It’s all right, he came last night and I told him.’

‘You told him what?’ He spoke cautiously. His round, fresh face looked troubled, the clear, rather childlike blue eyes were not altogether approving. His workmates knew him as a jaunty, humorous man with a warm, quick laugh and ingrained opinions about life and politics. In his home he was easy and uncritical. He had been married for twenty-five years to a woman who had outwardly let him do as he pleased while taking all the responsibility on herself. He knew this. He used to say of his wife: ‘Once she’s got an idea into her head you might as well whistle at a wall!’ And now he was looking at his daughter as he had at the mother. He did not know what she had planned, but he knew nothing he said would make any difference.

‘Everything’s all right, Dad,’ Rose said quietly.

I daresay, he thought; but what’s it all about? He asked: ‘You don’t have to get ideas into your head about not getting married. I’m easy.’ Without looking at him she filled his cup with the strong, brown, sweet tea he loved, and said again: ‘It’s all right.’ He persisted: ‘You don’t want to make any mistakes now, Rosie, you’re upset, and you want to give yourself time to have a good think about things.’

To this there was no reply at all. He sighed and took his newspaper to the fire. It was Sunday. Rosie was cooking the dinner when George came in. Jem, the father, turned his back on the couple, having nodded at George, thus indicating that as far as he was concerned they were alone. He was thinking: George’s a good bloke, she’s a fool if she gives him up.

‘Well, Rosie?’ said George, challengingly, the misery of the sleepless night bursting out of him.

‘Well what?’ temporized Rose, wiping dishes. She kept her head lowered and her face was pale and set hard. Confronted thus, with George’s unhappiness, her decision did not seem so secure. She wanted to cry. She could not afford to cry now, in front of him. She went to the window so that her back might be turned to him. It was a deep basement, and she looked up at the rubbish-can and railings showing dirty black against the damp, grey houses opposite. This had been her view of the world since she could remember. She heard George saying, uncertainly: ‘You marry me on Wednesday, the way we fixed it, and your Dad’ll be all right, he can stay here or live with us, just as you like.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Rose after a pause.

‘But why, Rosie, why?’

Silence. ‘Don’t know,’ she muttered. She sounded obstinate but unhappy. Grasping this moment of weakness in her, he laid his hand on her shoulder and appealed. ‘Rosie girl, you’re upset, that’s all it is.’ But she tensed her shoulder against him and then, since his hand remained there, jerked herself away and said angrily: ‘I’m sorry. It’s no good. I keep telling you.’

‘Three years,’ he said slowly, looking at her in amazed anger. ‘Three years! And now you throw me over.’

She did not reply at once. She could see the monstrousness of what she was doing and could not help herself. She had loved him then. Now he exasperated her. ‘I’m not throwing you over,’ she said defensively.

‘So you’re not!’ he shouted in derision, his face clenched in pain and rage. ‘What are you doing then?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said helplessly.

He stared at her, suddenly swore under his breath and went to the door: ‘I’m not coming back,’ he said, ‘you’re just playing the fool with me, Rosie. You shouldn’t’ve treated me like this. No one’d stand for it, and I’m not going to.’ There was no sound from Rose, and so he went out.

Jem slowly let down the paper and remarked: ‘You want to think what you’re doing, Rosie.’

She did not reply. The tears were pouring down her face, but she wiped them impatiently away and bent to the oven. Later that day Jem watched her secretly over the top of the paper. There was a towel-rail beside the dresser. She was unscrewing it and moving it to a different position. She rolled the dresser itself into the opposite corner and then shifted various ornaments on the mantelpiece. Jem remembered that over each of these things she had bickered with her mother: the women could not agree about where the dresser would stand best, or the height of the towel-rail. So now Rose was having her own way, thought Jem, amazed at the sight of his daughter’s quiet but determined face. The moment her mother was dead she moved everything to suit herself … Later she made tea and sat down opposite him, in her mother’s chair. Women, thought Jem, half humorous, half shocked at the persistence of the thing. And she was throwing over a nice, decent chap just because of – what? At last he shrugged and accepted it; he knew she would have her way. Also, at the bottom of his heart, he was pleased. He would never have put any pressure on her to give up marriage, but he was glad that he did not have to move, that he could stay in his old ways without disturbance. She’s still young, he comforted himself; there’s plenty of time for her to marry.

A month later they heard George had married someone else. Rose had a pang of regret, but it was the kind of regret one feels for something inevitable, that could not have been otherwise. When they met in the street, she said, ‘Hullo, George,’ and he gave her a curt, stiff nod. She even felt a little hurt because he would not let bygones be; that he felt he had to store resentment. If she could greet him nicely, as a friend, then it was unkind of him to treat her coldly … She glanced with covert interest at the girl who was his wife, and waited for a greeting; but the girl averted her face and stared coldly away. She knew about Rose; she knew she had got George on the rebound.

This was in 1938. The rumours and the fear of war were still more an undercurrent in people’s minds than a part of their thinking. Vaguely, Rose and her father expected that everything would continue as they were. About four months after the mother’s death, Jem said one day: ‘Why don’t you give up your work now. We can manage without what you earn, if we’re careful.’

‘Yes?’ said Rose, in the sceptical way which already told him his pleading was wasted. ‘You’ve got too much,’ he persisted. ‘Cleaning and cooking, and then out all day at work.’

‘Men,’ she said simply, with a good-natured but dismissing sniff.

‘There’s no sense in it,’ he protested, knowing he was wasting his breath. His wife had insisted on working until Rose was sixteen and could take her place. ‘Women should be independent,’ she had said. And now Rose was saying: ‘I like to be independent.’

Jem said: ‘Women. They say all women want is a man to keep them, but you and your mother, you go on as if I’m trying to do you out of something when I say you mustn’t work.’

‘Women here and women there,’ said Rose. ‘I don’t know about women. All I know is what I think.’

Jem was that old type of Labour man who has been brought up in the trade union movement. He went to meetings once or twice a week, and sometimes his friends came in for a cup of tea and an argument. For years he had been saying to his wife: ‘If they paid you proper, it’d be different. You work ten hours a day, and it’s all for the bosses.’ Now he used the argument on Rose, and she said: ‘Oh, politics, I’m not interested.’ Her father said: ‘You’re as stubborn as a mule, like your mother.’

‘Then I am,’ said Rose, good-humouredly. She would have said she had not ‘got on’ with her mother; she had had to fight to become independent of that efficient and possessive woman. But in this she agreed with her: it had been instilled into her ever since she could remember, that women must look after themselves. Like her mother, who was indulgent about the trade union meetings, as if they were a childish amusement that men should be allowed: and she voted Labour to please him, as her mother had done. And every time her father pleaded with her to give up her job at the bakery she inexorably replied: ‘Who knows what might happen? It’s silly not to be careful.’ And so she continued to get up early in order to clean the basement kitchen and the two little rooms over it that was their home; then she made the breakfast, and went out to shop. Then she went to the bakery, and at six o’clock came back to cook supper for her father. At weekends she had a grand clean-up of the whole place, and cooked puddings and cakes. They were in bed most nights by nine. They never went out. They listened to the radio while they ate, and they read the newspapers. It was a hard life, but Rose did not think of it as hard. If she had ever used words like happiness she would have said she was happy. Sometimes she thought wistfully, not of George, but of the baby his wife was going to have. Perhaps, after all, she had made a terrible mistake? Then she squashed the thought and comforted herself: There’s plenty of time, there’s no hurry, I couldn’t leave Dad now.

When the war started she accepted it fatalistically, while her father was deeply upset. His vision of the future had been the old socialist one: everything would slowly get better and better; and one day the working man would get into power by the automatic persuasion of common sense, and then – but his picture of that time was not so clear. Vaguely he thought of a house with a little garden and a holiday by the sea once a year. The family had never been able to afford a proper holiday. But the war cut right across this vision.

‘Well, what did you expect?’ asked Rose satirically.

‘What do you mean?’ he demanded aggressively. ‘If Labour’d been in, it wouldn’t have happened.’

‘Maybe, maybe not.’

‘You’re just like your mother,’ he complained again. ‘You haven’t got any logic.’

‘Well, you’ve been going to meetings for years and years, and you make resolutions, and you talk, but there’s a war just the same.’ She felt as if this ended the argument. She felt, though she could never have put it into words, that there was a deep basic insecurity, that life itself was an enemy to be placated and humoured, liable at any moment to confront her, or people like her, with death or destitution. The only sensible thing to do was to gather together every penny that came along and keep it safe. When her mother had been alive, she paid thirty shillings of the two pounds a week she earned towards the housekeeping. Now that thirty shillings went straight into the post office. When the newspapers and the wireless blared war and horror at her, she thought of that money, and it comforted her. It didn’t amount to much, but if something happened … What that something might be, she did not clearly know. But life was terrible, there was no justice – had not her own mother been killed by a silly lorry crossing the street she had crossed every day of her life for twenty-five years … that just proved it. And now there was a war, and all sorts of people were going to be hurt, all for nothing – that proved it too, if it needed any proof. Life was frightening and dangerous – therefore, put money into the post office; hold on to your job, work, and – put money into the post office.

Her father sat over the wireless set, bought newspapers, argued with his cronies, trying to make sense of the complicated, cynical movements of power politics, while the family pattern of life dissolved into the slogans and noise of war, and the streets filled with uniforms and rumours. ‘It’s all Hitler,’ he would say aggressively to Rose.

‘Maybe, maybe not.’

‘Well, he started it, didn’t he?’

‘I’m not interested who started it. All I know is, ordinary people don’t want war. And there’s war all the time. They make me sick if you want to know – and you men make me sick, too. If you were young enough, you’d be off like the rest of them,’ she said accusingly.

‘But, Rosie,’ he said, really shocked. ‘Hitler’s got to be stopped, hasn’t he?’

‘Hitler,’ she said scornfully. ‘Hitler and Churchill and Stalin and Roosevelt – they all make me sick, if you want to know. And that goes for your Attlee too.’

‘Women haven’t got any logic,’ he said, in despair.

So they came not to discuss the war at all, they merely suffered it. Slowly, Rose came to use the same words and slogans as everyone else; and like everyone else, with the deep, sad knowledge that it was all talk, and what was really happening in the world was something vast and terrible, beyond her comprehension; and perhaps it was wonderful, too, if she only knew – but she could never hope to understand. Better get on with the job, live as best she could, try not to be afraid and – put money in the post office.

Soon she switched to a job in a munitions factory. She felt she ought to do something for the war, and also, she was paid much better than in the bakery. She did fire-watching, too. Often she was up till three or four and then woke at six to clean and cook. Her father continued as a bricklayer and did fire-watching three or four nights a week. They were both permanently tired and sad. The war went on, month after month, year after year, food was short, it was hard to keep warm, the searchlights wheeled over the dark wilderness of London, the bombs fell screaming, and the black-out was like a weight on their minds and spirits. They listened to the news, read the newspapers, with the same look of bewildered but patient courage; and it seemed as if the war was a long, black, noisome tunnel from which they would never emerge.

In the third year Jem fell off a ladder one cold, foggy morning and injured his back. ‘It’s all right, Rose,’ he said. ‘I can get back to work all right.’

‘You’re not working,’ she said flatly. ‘You’re sixty-seven. That’s enough now, you’ve been working since you was fourteen.’

‘There won’t be enough coming in every week.’

‘Won’t there?’ she said triumphantly. ‘You used to go on at me for working. Aren’t you glad now? With your bit of pension and what I get, I can still put some away every week if I try. Funny thing,’ she said reflectively, not without grim humour: ‘It was two pounds a week when there was peace, and I was supposed to be grateful for it. Comes a war and they pay you like you was a queen. I’m getting seven pounds a week now, one way and another. So you take things easy, and if I find you getting back to work, with your back as it is, and your rheumatism, you’ll catch it from me, I’m telling you.’

‘It’s not right for me to sit at home, with the war and all,’ he said uneasily.

‘Well, did you make the war? No! You have some sense now.’

Now things were not so hard for Rose because when Jem could get out of bed he cleaned the rooms for her and there was a cup of tea waiting when she came in at night. But there was an emptiness in her and she could not pretend to herself there was not. One day she saw George’s wife in the street with a little girl of about four, and stopped her. The girl was hostile, but Rose said hurriedly: ‘I wanted to know, how’s George?’ Rather unwillingly came the reply: ‘He’s all right, so far, he’s in North Africa.’ She held the child to her as she spoke, as if for comfort, and the tears came into Rose’s eyes. The two women stood hesitating on the pavement, then Rose said appealingly: ‘It must be hard for you.’ ‘Well it’ll be over some day – when they’ve stopped playing soldiers,’ was the grim reply; and at this Rose smiled in sympathy and the women suddenly felt friendly towards each other. ‘Come over some time if you like,’ said George’s wife, slowly; and Rose said quickly: ‘I’d like to ever so much.’

So Rose got into the habit of going over once a week to the rooms that had originally been got ready for herself. She went because of the little girl, Jill. She was secretly asking herself now: Did I make a mistake then? Should I have married George? – But even as she asked the question she knew it was futile: she could have behaved in no other way; it was one of those irrational emotional things that seem so slight and meaningless, but are so powerful. And yet, time was passing, she was nearly thirty, and when she looked in the mirror she was afraid. She was very thin now, nothing but a white-faced shrimp of a girl, with lank, tired, stringy black hair. Her sombre dark eyes peered anxiously back at her over hollowed and bony cheeks. ‘It’s because I work so hard,’ she comforted herself. ‘No sleep, that’s what it is, and the bad food, and those chemicals in the factory … it’ll be better after the war.’ It was a question of endurance; somehow she had to get through the war, and then everything would be all right. Soon she looked forward all week to the Sunday night when she went over to George’s wife, with a little present for Jill. When she lay awake at nights she thought not of George, nor of the men she met at the factory who might have become interested in her, but of children. ‘What with the war and all the men getting killed,’ she sometimes worried, ‘perhaps it’s too late. There won’t be any men left by the time they’ve finished killing them all off.’ But if her father could have managed for himself before, he could not now; he was really dependent on her. So she always pushed away her fears and longings with the thought: ‘When the war’s over we can eat and sleep again, and then I’ll look better, and then perhaps …’

Not long before the war ended Rose came home late one night, dragging her feet tiredly along the dark pavement, thinking that she had forgotten to buy anything for supper. She turned into her street, was troubled by a feeling that something was wrong, looked down towards the house where she lived, and stopped dead. There were heaps of smoking rubble showing against the reddish glare of fire. At first she thought: ‘I must have come to the wrong street in the black-out.’ Then she understood and began to run towards her home, clutching her handbag tightly, holding the scarf under her chin. At the edge of the street was a deep crater. She nearly fell into it, but righted herself and walked on stumblingly among bomb refuse and tangling wires. Where her gate had been she stopped. A group of people were standing there. ‘Where’s my father?’ she demanded angrily. ‘Where is he?’ A young man came forward and said, ‘Take it easy, miss.’ He laid a hand on her shoulder. ‘You live here? I think your Dad was an unlucky one.’ The words brought no conviction to her and she stared at him, frowning. ‘What have you done with him?’ she asked, accusingly. ‘They took him away, miss.’ She stood passively, then she heavily lifted her head and looked around her. In this part of the street all the houses were gone. She pushed her way through the people and stood looking down at the steps to the basement door. The door was hanging loose from the frame, but the glass of the window was whole. ‘It’s all right,’ she said, half-aloud. She took a key from her handbag and slowly descended the steps over a litter of bricks. ‘Miss, miss,’ called the young man, ‘you can’t go down there.’ She made no reply, but fitted the key into the door and tried to turn it. It would not turn, so she pushed the door, it swung in on its one remaining hinge, and she went inside. The place looked as it always did, save that the ornaments on the mantelpiece had been knocked to the floor. It was half-lit from the light of burning houses over the street. She was slowly picking up the ornaments and putting them back when a hand was laid on her arm. ‘Miss,’ said a compassionate voice, ‘you can’t stay down here.’

‘Why shouldn’t I?’ she retorted, with a flash of stubbornness.

She looked upwards. There was a crack across the ceiling and dust was still settling through the air. But a kettle was boiling on the stove. ‘It’s all right,’ she announced. ‘Look, the gas is still working. If the gas is all right then things isn’t too bad, that stands to reason, doesn’t it now?’

‘You’ve got the whole weight of the house lying on that ceiling,’ said the man dubiously.

‘The house has always stood over the ceiling hasn’t it,’ she said, with a tired humour that surprised him. He could not see what was funny, but she was grinning heavily at the joke. ‘So nothing’s changed,’ she said, airily. But there was a look on her face that worried him, and she was trembling in a hard, locked way, as if her muscles were held rigid against the weakness of her flesh. Sudden spasmodic shudders ran through her, and then she shut her jaw hard to stop them. ‘It’s not safe,’ he protested again, and she obediently gazed around her to see. The kettle and the pans stood as they had ever since she could remember; the cloth on the table was one her mother had embroidered, and through the cracked window she would see the black, solid shape of the dustcan, though beyond it there were no silhouettes of grey houses, only grey sky spurting red flame. ‘I think it’s all right,’ she said, stolidly. And she did. She felt safe. This was her home. She lifted the kettle and began making tea. ‘Have a cup?’ she inquired, politely. He did not know what to do. She took her cup to the table, blew off the thick dust and began stirring in sugar. Her trembling made the spoon tinkle against the cup.

‘I’ll be back,’ he announced suddenly, and went out, meaning to fetch someone who would know how to talk to her. But now there was no one outside. They had all gone over to the burning houses; and after a little indecision he thought: I’ll come back later, she’s all right for the moment. He helped with the others over at the houses until very late, and he was on his way home when he remembered: That kid, what’s she doing? Almost, he went straight home. He had not had his clothes off for nights, he was black and grimy, but he made the effort and returned to the basement under the heap of rubble. There was a faint glow beneath the ruin and, peering low, he saw two candles on the table, while a small figure sat sewing beside them. Well I’ll be … he thought, and went in. She was darning socks. He went beside her and said: ‘I’ve come to see if you’re all right.’ Rose worked on her sock and replied calmly: ‘Yes, of course I’m all right, but thanks for dropping in.’ Her eyes were enormous, with a wild look, and her mouth was trembling like that of an old woman. ‘What are you doing?’ he asked, at a loss. ‘What do you think?’ she said tartly. Then she looked wonderingly at the sock which was stretched across her palm and shuddered. ‘Your Dad’s sock?’ he said carefully; and she gave him an angry glance and began to cry. That’s better, he thought, and went forward and made her lean against him while he said aloud: ‘Take it easy, take it easy, miss.’ But she did not cry for long. Almost at once she pushed him away and said: ‘Well, there’s no need to let the socks go to waste. They’ll do for someone.’

‘That’s right, miss.’ He stood hesitantly beside her and, after a moment, she lifted her head and looked at him. For the first time she saw him. He was a slight man, of middle height, who seemed young because of the open, candid face, though his hair was greying. His pleasant grey eyes rested compassionately on her and his smile was warm. ‘Perhaps you’d like them,’ she suggested. ‘And there’s his clothes, too – he didn’t have anything very special, but he always looked after his things.’ She began to cry again, this time more quietly, with small, shuddering sobs. He sat gently beside her, patting her hand as it lay on the table, repeating. ‘Take it easy, miss, take it easy, it’s all right.’ The sound of his voice soothed her and soon she came to an end, dried her eyes and said in a matter-of-fact voice: ‘There, I’m just silly, what’s the use of crying?’ She got up, adjusted the candles so that they would not gutter over the cloth, and said: ‘Well, we might as well have a cup of tea.’ She brought him one, and they sat drinking in silence. He was watching her curiously; there was something about her that tugged at his imagination. She was such an indomitable little figure sitting there staring out of sad, tired eyes, under the ruins of her home, like a kind of waif. She was not pretty, he decided, looking at the small, thin face, at the tired locks of black hair lying tidily beside it. He felt tender towards her; also he was troubled by her. Like everyone who lived through the big cities during the war, he knew a great deal about nervous strain; about shock; he could not have put words around what he knew, but he felt there was still something very wrong with Rose; outwardly, however, she seemed sensible, and so he suggested: ‘You’d better get yourself some sleep. It’ll be morning soon.’

‘I’ve got to be getting to work. I’m working an early shift.’

He said: ‘If you feel like it,’ thinking it might be better for her to work. And so he left her, and went back home to get some sleep.

That next evening he came by expecting to find her gone, and saw her sitting at the table, in the yellow glow from the candles, her hands lying idly before her, staring at the wall. Everything was very tidy, and the dust had been removed. But the crack in the ceiling had perceptibly widened. ‘Hasn’t anyone been to see you?’ he asked carefully. She replied evasively: ‘Oh, some old nosy parkers came and said I mustn’t stay.’ ‘What did you tell them?’ She hesitated and then said: ‘I said I wasn’t staying here, I was with some friends.’ He scratched his head, smiling ruefully: he could imagine the scene. ‘Those old nosy parkers,’ she went on resentfully, ‘interfering, telling people what to do.’

‘You know, miss, I think they were right, you ought to move out.’

‘I’m staying here,’ she announced defiantly, with unmistakable fear. ‘Nothing’s getting me out. Not all the king’s horses.’

‘I don’t expect they could spare the king’s horses,’ he said, trying to make her laugh; but she replied seriously, after considering it: ‘Well, even if they could.’ He smiled tenderly at her literal-mindedness, and suggested on an impulse: ‘Come to the pictures with me, doesn’t do any good to sit and mope.’

‘I’d like to, but it’s Sunday, see?’

‘What’s the matter with a Sunday?’

‘Every Sunday I go and see a friend of mine who has a little girl …’ she began to explain; and then she stopped, and went pale. She scrambled to her feet and said: ‘Oh oh, I never thought …’

‘What’s wrong, what’s up?’

‘Perhaps that bomb got them too, they were along this street – oh dear, oh dear, I never came to think – I’m wicked, that’s what I am …’ She had taken up her bag and was frantically wrapping her scarf around her head.

‘Here, miss, don’t go rushing off – I can find out for you, perhaps I know – what was her name?’

She told him. He hesitated for a moment and then said: ‘You’re having bad luck, and that’s a fact. She was killed the same time.’

‘She?’ asked Rose, quickly.

‘The mother was killed, the kid’s all right, it was playing in another room.’

Rose slowly sat down, thinking deeply, her hand still holding the scarf together at her chin. Then she said: ‘I’ll adopt her, that’s what I’ll do.’

He was surprised that she showed no sort of emotion at the death of the woman, her friend. ‘Hasn’t the kid got a dad?’ he asked. ‘He’s in North Africa,’ she said. ‘Well, he’ll come back after the war, he might not want you to adopt the kid.’ But she was silent, and her face was hard with determination. ‘Why this kid in particular?’ he asked. ‘You’ll have kids of your own one day.’

She said evasively: ‘She’s a nice kid, you should see her.’ He left it. He could see that there was something here too deep for him to grasp. Again he suggested: ‘Come to the pictures and take your mind off things.’ Obediently she rose and placed herself at his disposal, as it were. Walking along the streets she turned this way and that at the touch of his hand, but in spirit she was not with him. He knew that she sat through the film without seeing it. ‘She’s in a bad way,’ he said helplessly to himself. ‘It’s time she snapped out of it.’

But Rose was thinking only of Jill. Her whole being was now concentrated on the thought of the little girl. Tomorrow she would find out where she was. Some nosy parkers would have got hold of her – that was certain; they were always bossing other people. She would take Jill away from them and look after her – they could stay in the basement until the house got rebuilt … Rose was awake all night, dreaming of Jill; and next day she did not go to work. She went in search of the child. She found her grandmother had taken her. She had never thought of the grandmother, and the discovery was such a shock that she came back to the basement not knowing how she walked or what she did. The fact that she could not have the child seemed more terrible than anything else; it was as if she had been deprived maliciously of something she had a right to; something had been taken away from her – that was how she felt.

Jimmie came that night. He was asking himself why he kept returning, what it would come to; and yet he could not keep away. The image of Rose, the silent, frightened little girl – which was how he saw her – stayed with him all day. When he entered the basement she was sitting as usual by the candles, staring before her. He saw with dismay that she had made no effort to clean the place, and that her hair was untidy. This last fact seemed worse than anything.

He sat beside her, as usual, and tried to think of some way to make her ‘snap out of it’. At last he remarked: ‘You ought to be making some plans to move, Rose.’ At this, she irritably shrugged her shoulders. She wished he would stop pestering her with this sort of reminder. At the same time she was glad to have him there. She would have liked him to stay beside her silently; his warm friendliness wrapped her about like a blanket, but she could never relax into it because there was a part of her mind alert against him for fear of what he might say.

She was afraid, really, that he might talk of her father. Not once had she allowed herself to think of it – her father’s death, as it must have been. She said to herself the words: My father’s dead, just as she had once said to herself: My mother’s dead. Never had she allowed those words to form into images of death. If they had been ordinary deaths, deaths one could understand, it would have been different. People dying of illness or age, in bed; and then the neighbours coming, and then the funeral – that was understandable, that would have been different. But not the senselessness of a black bomb falling out of the sky, dropped by a nice young man in an aeroplane, not the silly business of a lorry running someone over – no, she could not bear to think of it. Underneath the surface of living was a black gulf, full of senseless horror. All day, at the factory (where she helped to make other bombs) or in the basement at night, she made the usual movements, said the expected things, but never allowed herself to think of death. She said: My father’s been killed, in a flat, ordinary voice, without letting pictures of death arise into her mind.

And now here was Jimmie, who had come into her life just when she needed his warmth and support most; and even this was two-faced, because it was the same Jimmie who made these remarks, forcing her to think … she would not think, she refused to respond. Jimmie noticed that whenever he made a remark connected in any way with the future, or even with the war, a blank, nervous look came on to her face and she turned away her eyes. He did not know what to do. For that evening he left it, and came back next day. This was the sixth day after the bomb, and he saw that the crack in the ceiling was bulging heavily downwards from the weight on top of it, and when a car passed, bits of plaster flaked down in a soft white rain. It was really dangerous. He had to do something. And still she sat there, her hands lying loosely in front of her, staring at the wall. He decided to be cruel. His heart was hammering with fright at what he was going to do; but he announced in a loud and cheerful voice: ‘Rose, your father’s dead, he’s not going to come back.’

She turned her eyes vaguely towards him; it seemed as if she had not heard at all. But he had to go on now. ‘Your Dad’s had it,’ he said brightly. ‘He’s copped it. He’s dead as a doornail, and it’s no use staying here.’

‘How do you know?’ she asked faintly. ‘Sometimes there are mistakes. Sometimes people come back, don’t they?’

This was much worse than he had thought. ‘He won’t come back, I saw him myself.’

‘No,’ she protested, sharply drawing breath.

‘Oh, yes I did. He was lying on the pavement, smashed to smithereens.’ He was waiting for her face to change. So far, it was obstinate, but her eyes were fixed on him like a scared rabbit’s. ‘Nothing left,’ he announced, jauntily, ‘his legs were gone – nothing there at all, and he didn’t have a head left either …’

And now Rose got to her feet with a sudden angry movement, and her eyes were small and black. ‘You …’ she began. Her lips shook. Jimmie remained seated. He was trying to look casual, even jaunty. He was forcing himself to smile. Underneath he was very frightened. Supposing this was the wrong thing? Supposing she went clean off her rocker … supposing … He passed his tongue quickly over his lips and glanced at her to see how she was. She was still staring at him. But now she seemed to hate him. He wanted to laugh from fright. But he stood up and, with an appearance of deliberate brutality, said: ‘Yes, Rosie girl, that’s how it is, your Dad’s nothing but a bleeding corpse – that’s good, bleeding!’ And now, he thought, I’ve done it properly! ‘You –’ began Rose again, her face contracted with hatred. ‘You –’ And such a stream of foul language came from her mouth that it took him by surprise. He had expected her to cry, to break down. She shouted and raved at him, lifting her fists to batter at his chest. Gently holding her off he said silently to himself, giving himself courage: ‘Ho, ho, Rosie my girl, what language, naughty, naughty!’ Out loud he said, with uneasy jocularity: ‘Hey take it easy, it’s not my fault now …’ He was surprised at her strength. The quiet, composed, neat little Rose was changed into a screaming hag, who scratched and kicked and clawed. ‘Get out of here you –’ and she picked up a candlestick and threw it at him. Holding his arm across his face, he retreated backwards to the door, gave it a kick with his heel, and went out. There he stood, waiting, with a half-rueful, half-worried smile on his face, listening. He was rubbing the scratches on his face with his handkerchief. At first there was silence, then loud sobbing. He straightened himself slowly. I might have hurt her bad, talking like that, he thought; perhaps she’ll never get over it. But he felt reassured; instinctively he knew he had done the right thing. He listened to the persistent crying for a while, and then wondered: Yes, but what do I do now? Should I go back again now, or wait a little? And more persistent than these worries was another: And what then? If I go back now, I’ll let myself in for something and no mistake. He slowly retreated from Rose’s door, down the damaged street, to a pub at the corner, which had not been hit. Must have a drink and a bit of a think … Inside the pub he leaned quietly by the counter, glass in hand, his grey eyes dark with worry. He heard someone say: ‘Well handsome, and what’s been biting you?’ He looked up, smiling, and saw Pearl. He had known her for some time – nothing serious; they exchanged greetings and bits of talk over the counter when he dropped in. He liked Pearl, but now he wanted to be left alone. She lingered and said again: ‘How’s your wife?’ He frowned quickly, and did not reply. She made a grimace as if to say: Well, if you don’t want to be sociable I’m not going to force you! But she remained where she was, looking at him closely. He was thinking: I shouldn’t have started it, I shouldn’t have taken her on. No business of mine what happened to her … And then, unconsciously straightening himself, with a small, desperate smile that was also triumphant: ‘You’re in trouble again, my lad, you’re in for it now!’ Pearl remarked in an offhand way: ‘You’d better get your face fixed up – been in a fight?’ He lifted his hand to his face and it came away covered with blood. ‘Yes,’ he said, grinning, ‘with a spitfire.’ She laughed, and he laughed with her. The words presented Rose to him in a new way. Proper little spitfire, he said to himself, caressing his cheek. Who would have thought Rose had all that fire in her? Then he set down the glass, straightened his tie, wiped his cheek with his handkerchief, nodded to Pearl with his debonair smile, and went out. Now he did not hesitate. He went straight back to the basement.

Rose was washing clothes in the sink. Her face was swollen and damp with crying, but she had combed her hair. When she saw him she went red, trying to meet his eyes, but could not. He went straight over to her and put his arms around her. ‘Here, Rosie, don’t get worked up now.’ ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, with prim nervousness, trying to smile. Her eyes appealed to him. ‘I don’t know what came over me, I don’t really.’

‘It’s all right, I’m telling you.’

But now she was crying from shame. ‘I never use them words. Never. I didn’t know I knew them. I’m not like that. And now you’ll think …’ He gathered her to him and felt her shoulders shaking. ‘Now don’t you waste any more time thinking about it. You were upset – well, I wanted you to be upset, I did it on purpose, don’t you see, Rosie? You couldn’t go on like that, pretending to yourself.’ He kissed the part of her cheek that was not hidden in his shoulder. ‘I’m sorry, I’m ever so sorry,’ she wept, but she sounded much better.

He held her tight and made soothing noises. At the same time he had the feeling of a man sliding over the edge of a dangerous mountain. But he could not stop himself now. It was much too late. She said, in a small voice: ‘You were quite right, I know you were. But it was just that I couldn’t bear to think. I didn’t have anybody but Dad. It’s been him and me together for ever so long. I haven’t got anybody at all …’ The thought came into her mind and vanished: Only George’s little girl. She belongs to me by rights.

Jimmie said indignantly: ‘Your Dad – I’m not saying anything against him, but it wasn’t right to keep you here looking after him. You should have got out and found yourself a nice husband and had kids.’ He did not understand why, though only for a moment, her body hardened and rejected him. Then she relaxed and said submissively: ‘You mustn’t say anything against my Dad.’

‘No,’ he agreed, mildly. ‘I won’t.’ She seemed to be waiting. ‘I haven’t got anything now,’ she said, and lifted her face to him. ‘You’ve got me,’ he said at last, and he was grinning a little from sheer nervousness. Her face softened, her eyes searched his, and she still waited. There was a silence, while he struggled with common sense. It was far too long a silence, and she was already reproachful when he said: ‘You come with me, Rosie, I’ll look after you.’

And now she collapsed against him again and wept: ‘You do love me, don’t you, you do love me?’ He held her and said: ‘Yes, of course, I love you.’ Well that was true enough. He did. He didn’t know why, there wasn’t any sense in it, she wasn’t even pretty, but he loved her. Later she said: ‘I’ll get my things together and come to where you live.’

He temporized, with an anxious glance at the ominous ceiling: ‘You stay here for a bit. I’ll get things fixed first.’

‘Why can’t I come now?’ She looked in a horrified, caged way around the basement as if she couldn’t wait to get out of it – she who had clung so obstinately to its shelter.

‘You just trust me now, Rosie. You pack your things, like a good girl. I’ll come back and fetch you later.’ She clutched his shoulders and looked into his face and pleaded: ‘Don’t leave me here long – that ceiling – it might fall.’ It was as if she had only just noticed it. He comforted her, put her persuasively away from him, and repeated he would be back in half an hour. He left her sorting out her belongings in worried haste, her eyes fixed on the ceiling.

And now what was he going to do? He had no idea. Flats – they weren’t hard to find, with so many people evacuated; yes, but here it was after eleven at night, and he couldn’t even lay hands on the first week’s rent. Besides, he had to give his wife some money tomorrow. He walked slowly through the damaged street, in the thick dark, his hands in his pockets, thinking: Now you’re in a fix, Jimmie boy, you’re properly in a fix.

About an hour later his feet took him back. Rose was seated at the table, and on it were two cardboard boxes and a small suitcase – her clothes. Her hands were folded together in front of her.

‘It’s all right?’ she inquired, already on her feet.

‘Well, Rosie, it’s like this –’ he sat down and tried for the right words. ‘I should’ve told you. I haven’t got a place really.’

‘You’ve got no place to sleep?’ she inquired incredulously. He avoided her eyes and muttered: ‘Well, there’s complications.’ He caught a glimpse of her face and saw there – pity! It made him want to swear. Hell, this was a mess, and what was he to do? But the sorrowful warmth of her face touched him and, hardly knowing what he was doing, he let her put her arms around him, while he said: ‘I was bombed out last week.’

‘And you were looking after me, and you had no place yourself?’ she accused him, tenderly. ‘We’ll be all right. We’ll find a place in the morning.’

‘That’s right, we’ll have our own place and – can we get married soon?’ she inquired shyly, going pink.

At this, he laid his face against hers, so that she could not look at him, and said: ‘Let’s get a place first, and we can fix everything afterwards.’

She was thinking. ‘Haven’t you got no money?’ she inquired, diffidently at last. ‘Yes, but not the cash. I’ll have it later.’ He was telling himself again: You’re properly in the soup, Jimmie, in – the – soup!

‘I’ve got two hundred pounds in the post office,’ she offered, smiling with shy pride, as she fondled his hair. ‘And there’s the furniture from here – it’s not hurt by the bomb a bit. We can furnish nicely.’

‘I’ll give you back the money later,’ he said desperately.

‘When you’ve got it. Besides, my money is yours now,’ she said, smiling tenderly at him. ‘Ours.’ She tasted the word delicately, inviting him to share her pleasure in it.

Jimmie was essentially a man who knew people, got around, had irons in the fire and strings to pull; and by next afternoon he had found a flat. Two rooms and a kitchen, a cupboard for the coal, hot and cold water, and a share of the bathroom downstairs. Cheap, too. It was the top of an old house, and he was pleased that one could see trees from Battersea Park over the tops of the buildings opposite. Rose’ll like it, he thought. He was happy now. All last night he had lain on the floor beside her in the ruinous basement, under the bulging ceiling, consumed by dubious thoughts; now these had vanished, and he was optimistic. But when Rose came up the stairs with her packages she went straight to the window and seemed to shrink back. ‘Don’t you like it, Rosie?’ ‘Yes, I like it, but …’ Soon she laughed and said, apologetically: ‘I’ve always lived underneath – I mean, I’m not used to being so high up.’ He kissed her and teased her and she laughed too. But several times he noticed that she looked unhappily down from the window and quickly came away, with a swift, uncertain glance around at the empty rooms. All her life she had lived underground, with buses and cars rumbling past above eye-level, the weight of the big old house heavy over her, like the promise of protection. Now she was high above streets and houses, and she felt unsafe. Don’t be silly, she told herself. You’ll get used to it. And she gave herself to the pleasure of arranging furniture, putting things away. She took a hundred pounds of her money out of the post office and bought – but what she bought was chiefly for him. A chest for his clothes: she teased him because he had so many; a small wireless set; and finally a desk for him to work on, for he had said he was studying for an engineering degree of some kind. He asked her why she bought nothing for herself, and she said, defensively, that she had plenty. She had arranged the new flat to look like her old home. The table stood the same way, the calendar with yellow roses hung on the wall, and she worked happily beside her stove, making the same movements she had used for years; for the cupboard, the drying-line and the draining-board had been fixed exactly as they had been ‘at home’. Unconsciously, she still used that phrase. ‘Here,’ he protested, ‘isn’t this home now?’ She said seriously: ‘Yes, but I can’t get used to it.’ ‘Then you’d better get used to it,’ he complained, and then kissed her to make amends for his resentment. When this had happened several times he let out: ‘Anyway, the basement’s fallen in, I passed today, and it’s filled with bricks and stuff.’ He had intended not to tell her. She shrank away from him and went quite white. ‘Well, you knew it wasn’t going to stay for long,’ he said. She was badly shaken. She could not bear to think of her old home gone; she could imagine it, the great beams slanting into it, filled with dirty water – she imagined it and shut out the vision for ever. She was quiet and listless all that day, until he grew angry with her. He was quite often angry. He would protest when she bought things for him. ‘Don’t you like it?’ she would inquire, looking puzzled. ‘Yes, I like it fine, but …’ And later she was hurt because he seemed reluctant to use the chest, or the desk.

There were other points where they did not understand each other. About four weeks after they moved in she said: ‘You aren’t much of a one for home, are you?’ He said, in genuine astonishment: ‘What do you mean? I’m stuck here like …’ He stopped, and put a cigarette in his mouth to take the place of speech. From his point of view he had turned over a new leaf; he was a man who hated to be bound, to spend every evening the same way; and now he came to Rose most evenings straight from work, ate supper with her, paid her sincere compliments on her cooking, and then – well, there was every reason why he should come, he would be a fool not to! He was consumed by secret pride in her. Fancy Rose, a girl like her, living with her old man all these years, like a girl shut into a convent, or not much better – you’d think there was something wrong with a girl who got to be thirty before having a man in her bed! But there was nothing wrong with Rose. And at work he’d think of their nights and laugh with deep satisfaction. She was all right, Rose was. And then, slowly, a doubt began to eat into the pride. It wasn’t natural that she’d been alone all those years. Besides, she was a good-looker. He laughed when he remembered that he had thought her quite ugly at first. Now that she was happy, and in a place of her own, and warmed through with love, she was really pretty. Her face had softened, she had a delicate colour in her thin cheeks, and her eyes were deep and welcoming. It was like coming home to a little cat, all purring and pliable. And when he took her to the pictures he walked proudly by her, conscious of the other men’s glances at her. And yet he was the first man who had had the sense to see what she could be? – hmm, not likely, it didn’t make sense.

He talked to Rose, and suddenly the little cat showed its sharp and unpleasant claws. ‘What is it you want to know?’ she demanded coldly, after several clumsy remarks from him. ‘Well, Rosie – it’s that bloke George, you said you were going to marry him when you were a kid still?’

‘What of it?’ she said, giving him a cool glance.

‘You were together for a long time?’

‘Three years,’ she said flatly.

‘Three years!’ he exclaimed. He had not thought of anything so serious. ‘Three years is a long time.’

She looked at him with a pleading reproach that he entirely failed to understand. As far as she was concerned the delight Jimmie had given her completely cancelled out anything she had known before. George was less than a memory. When she told herself that Jimmie was the first man she had loved, it was true, because that was how she felt. The fact that he could now question it, doubting himself, weakened the delight, made her unsure not only of him but of herself. How could he destroy their happiness like this! And into the reproach came contempt. She looked at him with heavy, critical eyes; and Jimmie felt quite wild with bewilderment and dismay – she could look at him like that! – then that proved she had been lying when she said he was the first – if she had said so … ‘But, Rosie,’ he blustered, ‘it stands to reason. Engaged three years, and you tell me …’

‘I’ve never told you anything,’ she pointed out, and got up from the table and began stacking the dishes ready for washing.

‘Well, I’ve a right to know, haven’t I?’ he cried out, unhappily.

But this was very much a mistake. ‘Right?’ she inquired in a prim, disdainful voice. She was no longer Rose, she was something much older. She seemed to be hearing her mother speaking. ‘Who’s talking about rights?’ She dropped the dishes neatly into the hot, soapy water and said: ‘Men! I’ve never asked you what you did before me. And I’m not interested either, if you want to know. And what I did, if I did anything, doesn’t interest you neither.’ Here she turned on the tap so that the splashing sounds made another barrier. Her ears filled with the sound of water, she thought: Men, they always spoil everything. She had forgotten George, he didn’t exist. And now Jimmie brought him to life and made her think of him. Now she was forced to wonder: Did I love him as much then? Was it the same as this? And if her happiness with George had been as great as now it was with Jimmie, then that very fact seemed to diminish love itself and make it pathetic and uncertain. It was as if Jimmie were doing it on purpose to upset her. That, at any rate, was how she felt.

But across the din of the running water Jimmie shouted: ‘So I’m not interested, is that it?’

‘No, you’d better not be interested,’ she announced, and looked stonily before her, while her hands worked among the hot, slippery plates. ‘So that’s how it is?’ he shouted again, furiously.

To which she did not reply. He remained leaning at the table, calling Rose names under his breath, but at the same time conscious of bewilderment. He felt that all his possessive masculinity was being outraged and flouted; there was, however, no doubt that she felt as badly treated as he did. As she did not relent he went to her and put his arms around her. It was necessary for him to destroy this aloof and wounded-looking female and restore the loving, cosy woman. He began to tease: ‘Spitfire, little cat, that’s what you are.’ He pulled her hair and held her arms to her sides so that she could not dry the plates. She remained unresponsive. Then he saw that the tears where running down her immobile and stubborn cheeks, and in a flush of triumph picked her up and carried her over to the bed. It was all quite easy, after all.

But maybe not so easy, because late that night, in a studiously indifferent voice, Rose inquired from the darkness at his side: ‘When are we going to get married?’ He stiffened. He had forgotten – or almost – about this. Hell, wasn’t she satisfied? Didn’t he spend all his evenings here? He might just as well be married, seeing what she expected of him. ‘Don’t you trust me, Rosie?’ he inquired at last. ‘Yes, I trust you,’ she said, rather doubtfully, and waited. ‘There’s reasons why I can’t marry you just now.’ She remained silent, but her silence was like a question hanging in the dark between them. He did not reply, but turned and kissed her. ‘I love you, Rosie, you know that, don’t you?’ Yes, she knew that; but about a week later he left her one morning saying: ‘I can’t come tonight, Rosie. I’ve got to put in some work on this exam.’ He saw her glance at the desk she had bought him and which he had never used. ‘I’ll be along tomorrow as usual,’ he said quickly, wanting to escape from the troubled, searching eyes.

She asked suddenly: ‘Your wife getting anxious about you?’

He caught his breath and stared at her: ‘Who told you?’ She laughed derisively. ‘Well, who told you?’

‘No one told me,’ she said, with contempt.

‘Then I must have been talking in my sleep,’ he muttered, anxiously.

She laughed loudly: ‘“Someone told me.” “Talking in your sleep” – you must think I’m stupid.’ And with a familiar, maddening gesture, she turned away and picked up a dishcloth.

‘Leave the dishes alone, they’re clean anyway,’ he shouted.

‘Don’t shout at me like that.’

‘Rose,’ he appealed after a moment, ‘I was going to tell you, I just couldn’t tell you – I tried to, often.’

‘Yes?’ she said, laconically. That yes of hers always exasperated him. It was like a statement of rock-bottom disbelief, a basic indifference to himself and the world of men. It was as if she said: ‘There’s only one person I can rely on – myself.

‘Rosie, she won’t divorce me, she won’t give me my freedom.’ These dramatic words were supplied straight to his tongue by the memory of a film he had seen the week before. He felt ashamed of himself. But her face had changed. ‘You should have told me,’ she said; and once again he was disconcerted because of the pity in her voice. She had instinctively turned to him with a protective movement. Her arms went around him and he let his head sink on her shoulder with that old feeling that he was being swept away, that he had no control over the things he did and said. Hell, he thought, even while he warmed to her tenderness: to hell with it. I never meant to get me and Rosie into this fix. In the meantime she held him comfortingly, bending her face to his hair, but there was a rigidity in her pose that told him she was still waiting. At last she said: ‘I want to have kids. I’m not getting any younger.’ He tightened his arms around her waist while he thought: I never thought of that. For he had two children of his own. Then he thought: She’s right. She should have kids. Remember how she got worked up over that other kid in the blitz? Women need to have kids. He thought of her with his child, and pride stirred in him. He realized he would be pleased if she got pregnant, and felt even more at sea. Rose said: ‘Ask her again, Jimmie. Make her divorce you. I know women get spiteful and that about divorces, but if you talk to her nice –’ He miserably promised that he would. ‘You’ll ask her tonight?’ she insisted. ‘Well …’ the fact was, that he had not intended to go home tonight. He wanted to have an evening to himself – go to the pub, see some of his pals, even work for an hour or so. ‘Weren’t you going home tonight?’ she asked, incredulously, seeing his face. ‘No, I meant it, I want to do some work. I’ve got to get this exam, Rosie. I know I can take it if I work a little. And then I’m qualified. Just now I’m not one thing and I’m not the other.’ She accepted this with a sigh, then pleaded: ‘Go home tomorrow then and ask her.’

‘But tomorrow I want to come and see you, Rosie, don’t you want me?’ She sighed again, not knowing that she did, and smiled: ‘You’re nothing but a baby, Jimmie.’ He began coaxing: ‘Come on, be nice, Rosie, give me a kiss.’ He felt it was urgently necessary for him to have her warm and relaxed and loving again before he could leave her with a quiet mind. And so she was – but not entirely. There was a thoughtful line across her forehead and her mouth was grave and sad. Oh, to hell with it, he thought, as he went off. To hell with them all.

The next evening he went to Rose anxiously. He had drunk himself gay and debonair in the pub, he had flirted a little with Pearl, talked sarcastically about women and marriage, and finally gone home to sleep. He had breakfast with his family, avoided his wife’s sardonic eye, and went off to work with a bad hangover. At the factory, as always, he became absorbed in what he was doing. It was a small factory which made precision instruments. He was highly skilled, but in status an ordinary workman. He knew, had known for a long time, that with a little effort he could easily take an examination which would lift him into the middle classes as far as money was concerned. It was the money he cared about, not the social aspect of it. For years his wife had been nagging at him to better himself, and he had answered impatiently because, for her, what mattered was to outdo their neighbours. This he despised. But she was right for the wrong reasons. It was a question of devoting a year of evenings to study. What was a year of one’s life? Nothing. And he had always found examinations easy. That day, at the factory, he had decided to tell Rose that she would not see as much of him in future. He swore angrily to himself that she must understand a man had a duty to himself. He was only forty, after all … And yet, even while he spoke firmly to himself and to the imaginary Rose, he saw a mental picture of the desk she had bought him that stood unused in the living room of the flat. ‘Well, who’s stopping you from working?’ she would inquire, puzzled. Genuinely puzzled, too. But he could not work in that flat, he knew that; although in the two months before he had met Rose he was working quite steadily in his evenings. That day he was cursing the fate that had linked him with Rose; and by evening he was hurrying to her as if some terrible thing might happen if he were not there by supper-time. He was expecting her to be cold and distant, but she fell into his arms as if he had been away for weeks. ‘I missed you,’ she said, clinging to him. ‘I was so lonely without you.’

‘It was only one night,’ he said, jauntily, already reassured.

‘You were gone two nights last week,’ she said, mournfully. At once he felt irritated. ‘I didn’t know you counted them up.’ he said, trying to smile. She seemed ashamed that she had said it. ‘I just get lonely,’ she said, kissing him guiltily. ‘After all …’

‘After all what?’ His voice was aggressive.

‘It’s different for you,’ she defended herself. ‘You’ve got – other things.’ Here she evaded his look. ‘But I go to work, and then I come home and wait for you. There’s nothing but you to look forward to.’ She spoke hastily, as if afraid to annoy him, and then she put her arms around his neck and kissed him coaxingly and said: ‘I’ve cooked you something you like – can you smell it?’ And she was the warm and affectionate woman he wanted her to be. Later he said: ‘Listen, Rosie girl, I’ve got to tell you something. That exam – I must start working for it.’ She said, gaily, at once: ‘But I told you already, you can work here at the desk and I’ll sew while you work, and it’ll be lovely.’ The idea seemed to delight her, but his heart chilled at it. It seemed to him quite insulting to their romantic love that she should not mind his working, that she should suggest prosaic sewing – just like a wife. He spent the next few evenings with her, newly in love, absorbed in her. And he felt hurt when she suggested hurriedly – for she was afraid of a rebuff – ‘If you want to work tonight, I don’t mind, Jimmie.’ He said laughing: ‘Oh, to hell with work, you’re the only work I want.’ She was flattered, but the thoughtful line was marked deep across her forehead. About a fortnight after his wife was first mentioned she delicately inquired: ‘Have you asked her about the divorce?’

He turned away, saying evasively, ‘She wouldn’t listen just now.’ He was not looking at her, but he could feel her heavy, questioning look on him. His irritation was so strong that he had to make an effort to control it. Also he was guilty, and that guilt he could understand even less than the irritation. He all at once became very gay, so that his mood infected her, and they were giggling and laughing like two children. ‘You’re just conventional, that’s what you are,’ he said, pulling her hair. ‘Conventional?’ she tasted the big word doubtfully. ‘Women always want to get married. What do you want to get married for? Aren’t we happy? Don’t we love each other? Getting married would just spoil it.’ But theoretical statements like this always confused Rose. She would consider each of them separately, with a troubled face, rather respectful of the intellectual minds that had formulated them. And while she considered them, the current of her emotions ran steadily and deep, unconnected with words. From the gulf of love in which she was sunk she murmured, fondly: ‘Oh, you – you just talk and talk.’ ‘Men are polygamous,’ he said gaily, ‘it’s a fact, scientists say so.’ ‘What are women then?’ she asked, keeping her end up. ‘They aren’t polygamous.’ She considered this seriously, as was her way, and said doubtfully: ‘Yes?’ ‘Hell,’ he expostulated, half seriously, half laughing, ‘you’re telling me you’re polygamous?’ But Rose moved uneasily, with a laugh, away from him. To connect a word like polygamous, reeking as it did of the ‘nosy parkers’ who were, she felt, her chief enemy in life, with herself, was too much to ask of her. Silence. ‘You’re thinking of George,’ he suddenly shouted, jealously. ‘I wasn’t doing any such thing,’ she said, indignantly. Her genuine indignation upset him. He always hated it when she was serious. As far as he was concerned, he had just been teasing her – he thought.

Once she said: ‘Why do you always look cross when I say what I think about something?’ Now that surprised him – didn’t she always say what she thought? ‘I don’t get cross, Rosie, but why do you take everything so serious?’ To this she remained silent, in the darkness. He could see the small, thoughtful face turned away from him, lit by the bleak light from the window. The thoughtfulness seemed to him like a reproach. He liked her childish and responsive. ‘Don’t I make you happy, Rose?’ He sounded miserable. ‘Happy?’ she said, testing the word. Then she unexpectedly laughed and said: ‘You talk so funny sometimes you make me laugh.’ ‘I don’t see what’s funny, you’ve no sense of humour, that’s what’s wrong with you.’ But instead of responding to his teasing voice, she thought it over and said seriously: ‘Well I laugh at things, don’t I? I must be laughing at something then. My Dad used to say I hadn’t any sense of humour. I used to say to him: “How do you know what I laugh at isn’t as funny as what you laugh at?”’ He said, wryly, after a moment, ‘When you laugh, it’s like you’re not laughing at all, it’s something nasty.’ ‘I don’t know what you mean.’ ‘I ask you if you’re happy and you laugh – what’s funny about being happy?’ Now he was really resentful. Again she meditated about it, instead of responding – as he had hoped – with a laugh or some reassurance that he made her perfectly happy. ‘Well, it stands to reason,’ she concluded, ‘people who talk about happy or unhappy, and then the long words – and the things you say, women are like this, and men are like that, and polygamous and all the rest – well …’ ‘Well?’ he demanded. ‘Well, it just seems funny to me,’ she said lamely. For she could have found no words at all for what she felt, that deep knowledge of the dangerousness and the sadness of life. Bombs fell on old men, lorries killed people, and the war went on and on, and the nights when he did not come to her she would sit by herself, crying for hours, not knowing why she was crying, looking down from the high window at the darkened, ravaged streets – a city dark with the shadow of war.

In the early days of their love Jimmie had loved best the hours of tender, aimless, frivolous talk. But now she was, it seemed, always grave. And she questioned him endlessly about his life, about his childhood. ‘Why do you want to know?’ he would inquire, unwilling to answer. And then she was hurt. ‘If you love someone, you want to know about them, it stands to reason.’ So he would give simple replies to her questions, the facts, not the spirit, which she wanted. ‘Was your Mum good to you?’ she would ask, anxiously. ‘Did she cook nice?’ She wanted him to talk about the things he had felt; but he would reply, shortly: ‘Yes,’ or ‘Not bad.’

‘Why don’t you want to tell me?’ she would ask, puzzled.

He repeated that he didn’t mind telling her; but all the same he hated it. It seemed to him that no sooner had one of those long, companionable silences fallen, in which he could drift off into a pleasant dream, than the questions began. ‘Why didn’t you join up in the war?’ she asked once. ‘They wouldn’t have me, that’s why.’ ‘You’re lucky,’ she said, fiercely. ‘Lucky nothing, I tried over and over. I wanted to join.’

And then, to her obstinate silence, he said: ‘You’re queer. You’ve got all sorts of ideas. You talk like a pacifist; it’s not right when there’s a war on.’

‘Pacifist!’ she cried, angrily. ‘Why do you use all these silly words? I’m not anything.’

‘You ought to be careful, Rosie, if you go saying things like that when people can hear you, they’ll think you’re against the war, you’ll get into trouble.’

‘Well, I am against the war, I never said I wasn’t.’

‘But Rosie –’

‘Oh, shut up. You make me sick. You all make me sick. Everybody just talks and talks, and those fat old so-and-so’s talking away in Parliament, they just talk so they can’t hear themselves think. Nobody knows anything and they pretend they do. Leave me alone, I don’t want to listen.’ He was silent. To this Rose he had nothing to say. She was a stranger to him. Also, he was shocked: he was a talker who liked picking up phrases from books and newspapers and using them in a verbal game. But she, who could not use words, who was so deeply inarticulate, had her own ideas and stuck to them. Because he used words so glibly she tried to become a citizen of his country – out of love for him and because she felt herself lacking. She would sit by the window with the newspapers and read earnestly, line by line, having first overcome her instinctive shrinking from the language of violence and hatred that filled them. But the war news, the slogans, just made her exhausted and anxious. She turned to the more personal. ‘War takes toll of marriage,’ she would read. ‘War disrupts homes.’ Then she dropped the paper and sat looking before her, her brow puzzled. That headline was about her, Rose. And again, she would read the divorces; some judge would pronounce: ‘This unscrupulous woman broke up a happy marriage and …’ Again the paper dropped while Rose frowned and thought. That meant herself. She was one of those bad women. She was The Other Woman. She might even be that ugly thing, A Co-Respondent … But she didn’t feel like that. It didn’t make sense. So she stopped reading the newspapers, she simply gave up trying to understand.

She felt she was not on an intellectual level with Jimmie, so instinctively she fell back on her feminine weapons – much to his relief. She was all at once very gay, and he fell easily into the mood. Neither of them mentioned his wife for a time. It was their happiest time. After love, lying in the dark, they talked aimlessly, watching the sky change through moods of cloud and rain and tinted light, watching the searchlights. They took no notice of raids or danger. The war was nearly over, and they spoke as if it had already ended. ‘If we was killed now, I shouldn’t mind,’ she said, seriously, one night when the bombs were bad. He said: ‘We’re not going to get killed, they can’t kill us.’ It sounded a simple statement of fact: their love and happiness was proof enough against anything. But she said again, earnestly: ‘Even if we was killed, it wouldn’t matter. I don’t see how anything afterwards could be as good as this now.’

‘Ah, Rosie, don’t be so serious always.’

It was not long before they quarrelled again – because she was so serious. She was asking questions again about his past. She was trying to find out why the army wouldn’t have him. He would never tell her. And then he said, impatiently, one night: ‘Well, if you must know, I’ve got ulcers … ah, for God’s sake, Rosie, don’t fuss, I can’t stand being fussed.’ For she had given a little cry and was holding him tight. ‘Why didn’t you tell me? I haven’t been cooking the proper things for you.’

‘Rose, for crying out aloud, don’t go on.’

‘But if you’ve got ulcers you must be fed right, it stands to reason.’ And next evening when she served him some milk pudding, saying anxiously: ‘This won’t hurt your stomach,’ he flared up and said, ‘I told you, Rosie, I won’t have you coddling me.’ Her face was loving and stubborn and she said: ‘But you’ve got no sense …’

‘For the last time, I’m not going to put up with it.’

She turned away, her mouth trembling, and he went to her and said desperately: ‘Now don’t you take on, Rosie, you mean it nicely, but I don’t like it, that’s why I didn’t tell you before. Get it?’ She responded to him, listlessly, and he found himself thinking, angrily: ‘I’ve got two wives, not one …’ They were both dismayed and unhappy because their happiness was so precarious it could vanish overnight just because of a little thing like ulcers and milk pudding.

A few days later he ate in heavy silence through the supper she had provided, and then sarcasm broke out of him: ‘Well, Rosie, you’ve decided to humour me, that’s what it is.’ The meal had consisted of steamed fish, baked bread and very weak tea, which he hated. She looked uncomfortable, but said obstinately: ‘I went to a friend of mine who’s a chemist at the corner, and he told me what it was right for you to eat.’ Involuntarily he got up, his face dark with fury. He hesitated, then he went out, slamming the door.

He stood moodily in the pub, drinking. Pearl came across and said: ‘What’s eating you tonight?’ Her tone was light, but her eyes were sympathetic. The sympathy irritated him. He ground out: ‘Women!’ slammed down his glass and turned to go. ‘Doesn’t cost you anything to be polite,’ she said tartly, and he replied: ‘Doesn’t cost you anything to leave me alone.’ Outside he hesitated a moment, feeling guilty. Pearl had been a friend for so long, and she had a soft spot for him – also, she knew about his wife, and about Rose, and made no comment, seemed not to condemn. She was a nice girl, Pearl was – he went back and said, hastily: ‘Sorry, Pearl, didn’t mean it.’ Without waiting for a reply he left again, and this time set off for home.

The woman he called his wife looked up from her sewing and asked briefly: ‘What do you want now?’

‘Nothing.’ He sat down, picked up a paper and pretended to read, conscious of her glances. They were not hostile. They had gone a long way beyond that, and the fact that she seemed scarcely interested in him was a relief after Rose’s persistent, warm curiosity – like loving white fingers strangling him, he thought involuntarily. ‘Want something to eat?’ she inquired at last.

‘What have you got?’ he inquired cautiously, thinking of the tasteless steamed fish and baked bread he had just been offered.

‘Help yourself,’ she returned, and he went to the cupboard on the landing, filled a plate with bread and mustard pickles and cheese, and came back to the room where she was. She glanced at his plate, but made no comment. After a while he asked sarcastically: ‘Aren’t you going to tell me I shouldn’t eat pickles?’

‘Couldn’t care less,’ she returned equably. ‘If you want to kill yourself, it’s your funeral.’ At this he laughed loudly, and she joined him. Later, she asked: ‘Staying here the night?’

‘If you don’t mind.’ At this she gave a snort of derisive laughter, got up and said: ‘Well, I’m off to bed. You can’t have the sofa because the kids have got a friend and he’s got it. You’ll have to put a blanket and a cushion on the floor.’

‘Thanks,’ he said, indifferently. ‘How are the kids?’ he inquired, as an afterthought.

‘Fine – if you’re interested.’

‘I asked, didn’t I?’ he replied, without heat. All this conversation had been conducted quietly, indifferently, and the undercurrent was almost amiable. An outsider would have said they hardly knew each other. When she had gone he took a blanket from a drawer, wrapped it round his legs, and settled himself in a chair. He had meant to think about himself and Rose, but instead he dropped off at once. He left the house early, before anyone was awake. All day at the factory he thought: About Rose, what must I do about Rose? After work he went instinctively to the pub. Pearl stood quietly behind the counter, showing him by her manner that she was not holding last night’s bad humour against him. He meant to have one drink and go, but he had three. He liked Pearl’s cheerful humour. She told him that her young man was playing about with another girl, and added, as if it hardly concerned her: ‘There’s plenty of fish in the sea after all.’

‘That’s right,’ he said, non-committally.

‘Well, we all have our troubles,’ she said, with a half-humorous sigh.

‘Yes – for what they’re worth.’ At this he felt a pang of guilt because he had been thinking of Rose. Pearl was giving him a keen look. Then she said: ‘I didn’t say he hadn’t been worth it. But now that other girl’s getting all the benefit …’ Here she laughed grimly.

He liked this cheerful philosophy, and could not prevent himself saying: ‘He’s got no sense, turning you up.’ He looked with appreciation at her crown of bright yellow curls, at her shapely body. Her eyes brightened, and he said good night quickly, and left. He mustn’t get mixed up with Pearl now, he was thinking.

It was after eight. Usually he was with Rose by seven. He lagged down the street, thinking of what he would say to her, and entered the flat with a blank mind. For some reason he was very tired. Rose had eaten by herself, cleared the table, and now sat beside it, frowning over a newspaper. ‘What are you reading?’ he asked, for something to break the ice. Looking over her shoulder he saw that she had marked a column headed: ‘Surplus Women Present Problem to Churches.’ He was surprised.

‘That’s what I am, a surplus woman,’ she said, and gave that sudden, unexpected laugh.

‘What’s funny?’ he asked, uncomfortably.

‘I’ve a right to laugh if I want,’ she retorted. ‘Better than crying, anyhow.’

‘Oh, Rose,’ he said, helplessly, ‘oh, Rose stop it now …’ She burst into tears and clung to him. But this was not the end, and he knew it. Later that night she said: ‘I want to tell you something …’ and he thought: Now I’m for it – whatever it is.

‘You were home last night, weren’t you.’

‘Yes,’ he said, alertly.

A pause, and then she asked: ‘What did she say?’

‘About what?’ It was a fact that he did not immediately understand her. ‘Jimmie,’ she said incredulously, under her breath and he said: ‘Rosie, it’s no good, I told you that before.’

She did not immediately reply, but when she did her voice was very bitter: ‘Well, I see how it is now.’

‘You don’t see at all,’ he said sarcastically.

‘Well, then, tell me?’ He was silent. Her silence was like a persistent question. Again he felt as if the warm, soft fingers were wrapping around him. He felt suffocated. ‘There’s nothing to explain, I just can’t help it.’ A pause, and then she said in the flat, laconic way he hated: ‘Yes?’ That was all. For the time being, at least. A week later she said, calmly: ‘I went to see Jill’s Granny today.’

His heart faltered and he thought: Now what? ‘Well?’ he inquired.

‘George was killed last month. In Italy.’

He felt triumph, then he said guiltily: ‘I’m sorry.’ She waved this away and said: ‘I told her Granny that I want to adopt Jill.’

‘But Rosie …’ Then he saw her face and quailed.

‘I want kids,’ she said fiercely. He dropped his gaze.

‘Her Granny won’t want to give her up.’

‘I’m not so sure. At first she said no, then she thought it over a bit. She’s getting old now – eighty next year. She thinks perhaps Jill’d be better with me.’

‘You want to have the kid here?’ he asked, incredulously.

‘Why shouldn’t I?’

‘You’re working all day.’ She was silent, he looked at her – and slowly coloured.

‘Listen a minute,’ she began, persuasively – not unpleasantly at all, though every word wounded Jimmie. ‘I furnished this place. It was my furniture and my money. And I’ve got a hundred still in the post office in case of accidents – I’ll need it; now the war’s over we won’t be earning so much money, if I know anything. So far, I’ve not been …’ But here her instinctive delicacy overcame her, and she could not go on. She wanted to say that she paid for the food, paid for everything. Lately, even the rent. One week he had said, apologetically, that he hadn’t the cash, and that if she could do it this once – but now it was a regular thing.

‘You want me to give you the money so you can stay here with the kid?’ he inquired, cautiously. She was blushing with embarrassment. ‘No, no,’ she said, quickly. ‘Listen. If you can just pay the rent – that would be enough. I could get a part-time job, just the mornings. Jill goes to school now, and I’d manage somehow.’

He digested this silently. He was thinking, incredulously: She wants to have a kid here, a kid’s always in the way – that means she can’t love me any more. He said, slowly: ‘Well, Rosie, if that’s what you want, then go ahead.’

Her face cleared into vivid happiness and she came running to him in the old way and kissed him and said: ‘Oh, Jimmie; oh, Jimmie …’ He held her and thought, bitterly, that all this joy was not because of him, all she cared about was the kid – women! But at the back of his mind were two other thoughts: First, that he did not know how he would find the money to pay the rent unless he passed that examination soon, and the other was that the authorities would never let Rose have Jill.

Next evening Rose was despondent. ‘Did you see the officials?’ he asked at last.

‘Yes.’ She would not look at him. She was staring helpless down from the window.

‘Wasn’t it any good?’

‘They said I must prove myself a fit and proper person. So I said that I was. I told them I’d known Jill since she was born. I said I knew her mother and father.’

‘That’s true enough,’ he could not help interjecting, jealously. She gave him a cold look and said: ‘Don’t start that now. I told them her Granny was too old, and I could easily look after Jill.’

‘Well then?’

She was silent, then, wringing her hands unconsciously, she cried out: ‘They wasn’t nice, they wasn’t nice to me at all. There were two of them, a woman and a man. They said: How could I support Jill? I said I could get money. They said I must show them papers and things …’ She was silently crying now, but she did not come to him. She stayed at the window, her back turned, shutting him out of her sorrow. ‘They asked me, how could a working girl look after a child, and I said I’d do it easy, and they said, did I have a husband …’ Here she leaned her head against the wall and sobbed bitterly. After a time he said: ‘Well, Rosie, it looks as if I’m not good for you. Perhaps you’d better give me up and get yourself a proper husband.’ At this she jerked her head up, looked incredulously at him and cried: ‘Jimmie! How could I give you up …’ He went to her, thinking, in relief: ‘She loves me better after all.’ He meant: better than the child.

It seemed that Rose had accepted her defeat. For some days she talked sorrowfully about ‘those nosy parkers’ at the Council. She was even humorous, though in the way that made him uneasy. ‘I’ll go to them,’ she said, smiling grimly, ‘I’ll go and I’ll say: I can’t help being a surplus woman. Don’t blame me, blame the war, it’s not my fault that they keep killing all the men off in their silly wars …’

And then his jealousy grew unbearable and he said: ‘You love Jill better than me.’ She laughed in amazement, and said, ‘Don’t be a baby, Jimmie.’ ‘Well, you must. Look how you go on and on about that kid. It’s all you think about.’

‘There isn’t no sense in you being jealous of Jill.’

‘Jealous,’ he said, roughly. ‘Who says I’m jealous?’

‘Well, if you’re not, what are you then?’

‘Oh, go to hell, go to hell,’ he muttered to himself, as he put his arms around her. Aloud he said: ‘Come on, Rosie girl, come on, stop being like this, be like you used to be, can’t you?’

‘I’m not any different,’ she said patiently, submitting to his caresses with a sigh.

‘So you’re not any different,’ he said, exasperatedly. Then, controlling himself with difficulty he coaxed: ‘Rosie, Rosie, don’t you love me a little …’

For the truth was he was becoming obsessed with the difference in Rose. He thought of her continuously as she had been. It was like dreaming of another woman, she was so changed now. At work, busy with some job that needed all his attention, he would start as if stung, and mutter: ‘Rose – oh, to hell with her!’ He was remembering, with anguish, how she had run across the room to welcome him, how responsive she had been, how affectionate. He thought of her patient kindliness now, and wanted to swear. After work he would go straight to the flat, reaching it even before she did. The lights would be out, the rooms cold, like a reminder of how Rose had changed. She would come in, tired, laden with string-bags, to find him seated at the table staring at her, his eyes black with jealousy. ‘This place is as cold as a street-corner,’ he would say, angrily. She looked at him, sighed, then said, reasonably: ‘But Jimmie, look, here’s where I keep the sixpences for the gas – why don’t you light the fire?’ Then he would go to her, holding down her arms as he kissed her, and she would say: ‘Just leave me a minute, Jimmie. I must get the potatoes on or there’ll be no supper.’

‘Can’t the potatoes wait a minute?’

‘Let me get my arms free, Jimmie.’ He held them, so she would carefully reach them out from under the pressure of his grip, and put the string-bags on the table. Then she would turn to kiss him. He noticed that she would be glancing worriedly at the curtains, which had not been drawn, or at the rubbish-pail, which had not been emptied. ‘You can’t even kiss me until you’ve done all the housework,’ he cried, sullenly. ‘All right then, you tip me the wink when you’ve got a moment to spare and you don’t mind being kissed.’

To this she replied, listlessly but patiently: ‘Jimmie, I come straight home from work and there’s nothing ready, and before you didn’t come so early.’

‘So now you’re complaining because I come straight here. Before, you complained because I dropped in for a drink somewhere first.’

‘I never complained.’

‘You sulked, even if you didn’t complain.’

‘Well, Jimmie,’ she said, after a sorrowful pause, as she peeled the potatoes. ‘If I went to drink with a boy-friend you wouldn’t like it either.’

‘That means Pearl, I suppose. Anyway, it’s quite different.’

‘Why is it different?’ she asked, reasonably. ‘I don’t like to go to pubs by myself, but if I did I don’t see why not, I don’t see why men should do one thing and women another.’

These sudden lapses into feminism always baffled him. They seemed so inconsistent with her character. He left that point and said: ‘You’re jealous of Pearl, that’s what it is.’

He wanted her, of course, to laugh, or even quarrel a little, so the thing could be healed by kisses, but she considered it, thoughtfully, and said: ‘You can’t help being jealous if you love someone.’

‘Pearl!’ he snorted. ‘I’ve known her for years. Besides, who told you?’

‘You always think that nobody ever notices things,’ she said, sadly. ‘You’re always so surprised.’

‘Well, how did you know?’

‘People always tell you things.’

‘And you believe people.’

A pause, Then: ‘Oh, Jimmie, I don’t want to quarrel all the time, there isn’t any sense in it.’ This sad helplessness satisfied him, and he was able to take her warmly in his arms. ‘I don’t mean to quarrel either,’ he murmured.

But they quarrelled continuously. Every conversation was bound to end, it seemed, either in Pearl or in George. Or their tenderness would lapse into tired silence, and he would see her staring quietly away from him, thinking. ‘What are you getting so serious about now, Rosie?’ ‘I was thinking about Jill. Her Granny’s too old. Jill’s shut up in that kitchen all day – just think, those old nosy parkers say I’m not a fit and proper person for Jill, but at least I’d take her for walks on Sunday …’

‘You want Jill because of George,’ he would grind out, gripping her so tight she had to ease her arms free. ‘Oh, stop it, Jimmie, stop it.’

‘Well, it’s true.’

‘If you want to think it, I can’t stop you.’ Then the silence of complete estrangement.

After some weeks of this he went back to the pub one evening. ‘Hullo, stranger,’ said Pearl. Her eyes shone welcomingly over at him.

‘I’ve been busy, one way or another,’ he said.

‘I bet,’ she said, satirically, challenging him with her look.

He could not resist it. ‘Women,’ he said, ‘women.’ And he took a long drain from his glass.

‘Don’t you talk that way to me,’ she said, with a short laugh. ‘My boy-friend’s just got himself married. Didn’t so much as send me an invite to the wedding.’

‘He doesn’t know what’s good for him.’

Her wide, blue eyes swung around and rested obliquely on him before she lowered them to the glasses she was rinsing. ‘Perhaps there are others who don’t neither.’

He hesitated and said: ‘Maybe, maybe not.’ Caution held him back. Yet they had been flirting cheerfully for so long, out of sheer good-nature. The new hesitation was dangerous in itself, and gave depth to their casual exchanges. He thought to himself: Careful, Jimmie, boy, you’re off again if you’re not careful. He decided he should go to another pub. Yet he came back, every evening, for he looked forward to the moment when he stood in the doorway, and then she saw him, and her eyes warmed to him as she said lightly: ‘Hullo, handsome, what trouble have you been getting yourself into today?’ He got into the way of staying for an hour or more, instead of the usual half hour. He leaned quietly against the counter, his coat collar turned up around his face, while his grey eyes rested appreciatively on Pearl. Sometimes she grew self-conscious and said: ‘Your eyes need a rest,’ and he replied, coolly: ‘If you don’t want people to look at you, better buy yourself another jumper.’ He would think, with a sense of disloyalty: Why doesn’t Rosie buy herself one like that? But Rose always wore her plain, dark skirts and her neat blouses, pinned at the throat with a brooch.

Afterwards he climbed the stairs to the flat thinking, anxiously: Perhaps today she’ll be like she used to be? He would expectantly open the door, thinking: Perhaps she’ll smile when she sees me and come running over …

But she would be at the stove, or seated at the table waiting, and she gave him that tired, patient smile before beginning to dish up the supper. His disappointment dragged down his spirits, but he forced himself to say: ‘Sorry, I’m late, Rosie.’ He braced himself for a reproach, but it never came, though her eyes searched him anxiously, then lowered as if afraid he might see a reproach in them.

‘That’s all right,’ she replied, carefully, setting the dishes down and pulling out the chair for him.

Always, he could not help looking to see if she was still ‘fussing’ about the food. But she was taking trouble to hide the precautions she took to feed him sensibly. Sometimes he would probe sarcastically: ‘I suppose your friend the chemist said that peas were good for ulcers – how about a bit of fried onions, Rosie?’

‘I’ll make you some tomorrow,’ she would reply. And she averted her eyes, as if she were wincing, when he pulled the pickle bottle towards him and heaped mustard pickle over his fish. ‘You only live once,’ he remarked, jocularly.

‘That’s right.’ And then, in a prepared voice: ‘It’s your stomach, after all.’

‘That’s what I always said.’ To himself he said: Might be my bloody wife. For his wife had come to say at last: ‘It’s your stomach, if you want to die ten years too soon …’

If he had attacks of terrible pain in the night, after a plateful of fried onions, or chips thick with tomato sauce, he would lie rigid beside her, concealing it, just as he had with his wife. Women fussing! Fussing women!

He asked himself continually why he did not break it off. A dozen times he had said to himself: That’s enough now, it’s no good, she doesn’t love me, anyway. Yet by evening he was back at the pub, flirting tentatively with Pearl, until the time came when he could delay no longer. And back he went, as if dragged, to Rose. He could not understand it. He was behaving badly – and he could not help himself; he should be studying for his exam – and he couldn’t bring himself to study; it would be so easy to make Rose happy – and he couldn’t take the decisive step; he should decide not to return to Pearl in the evenings, and he could not keep away. What was it all about? Why did people just go on doing things, as if there were dragged along against their will, even against what they enjoyed?

One Saturday evening Rose said: ‘Tomorrow I won’t be here.’

He clutched at her hand and demanded: ‘Why not? Where are you going?’

‘I’m going to take Jill out all day and then have supper with her Granny.’

Breathing quickly, his lips set hard, he brought out: ‘No time for me any more, eh?’

‘Oh, Jimmie, have some sense.’

Next morning he lay in bed and watched her dress to go out. She was smiling, her face soft with pleasure. She kissed him consolingly before she left, and said: ‘It’s only on Sundays, Jimmie.’

So it’s going to be every Sunday, he thought miserably.

In the evening he went to the pub. It was Pearl’s evening off. He had thought of asking her along to the pictures, but he didn’t know where she lived. He went to his home. The children were in bed and his wife had gone to see a neighbour. He felt as if everyone had let him down. At last he went back to the flat and waited for Rose. When she came he sat quietly, an angry little smile on his face, while she chatted animatedly about Jill. In bed he turned his back on her and lay gazing at the greyish light at the window. It couldn’t go on, he thought; what was the point of it? Yet he was back next evening as usual.

Next Sunday she asked him to go with her to see Jill.

‘What the hell!’ he exclaimed, indignantly.

She was hurt. ‘Why not, Jimmie? She’s so sweet. She’s such a good girl. She’s got long golden ringlets.’

‘I suppose George had long yellow ringlets, too,’ he said, sardonically.

She looked at him blankly, shrugged, and said no more. When she had gone he went to Pearl’s house – for he had asked for the address – and took her to the pictures. They were careful and polite with each other. She watched him secretly: his face was tight with worry; he was thinking of Rose with that damned brat – she was happy with Jill, when she couldn’t even raise a smile for him! When he said good night, Pearl drawled out: ‘Do you even know what the film was called?’

He laughed uncomfortably and said: ‘Sorry, Pearl, got things on my mind.’

‘Thanks for the information.’ But she was not antagonistic; she sounded sympathetic. He was grateful for her understanding. He hastily kissed her cheek and said: ‘You’re a nice kid, Pearl.’ She flushed and quickly put her arms around his neck and kissed him again. Afterwards he thought uneasily: If I just lifted my little finger I could have her.

At home Rose was cautious with him and did not mention Jill until he did. She was afraid of him. He saw it, and it made him half-wild with frustration. Anyone’d think that he was cruel to her! ‘For crying out aloud, Rose,’ he pleaded, ‘what’s the matter with you, why can’t you be nice to me?’

To which she sighed and asked in a dry, tired voice: ‘I suppose Pearl is nice to you.’

‘Hell, Rosie, I have to do something when you’re away.’

‘I asked you to come with me, didn’t I?’

They were on the verge of some crisis, and both knew it, and for several days they were treating each other almost like strangers, for fear of an explosion. They hardly dare let their eyes meet.

On the following Saturday evening Rose inquired: ‘Made a date with Pearl for tomorrow?’

He was going to deny it, but she went on implacably: ‘Things can’t go on like this, Jimmie.’ He was silent, and then she asked suddenly: ‘Jimmie, did you ever really ask your wife to divorce you?’

He exploded: ‘Hell, Rosie, are you going back to that now?’

‘I suppose you are thinking it’s not my affair and I’m interfering,’ she said, and laughed with that unexpected, grim humour of hers.

Rose went off to Jill in the morning without another word to him. As for him, he went to Pearl. The girl was gentle with him: ‘If you don’t feel like the pictures, you don’t have to take me,’ she said, sympathetically. So they went to a café and he said, abruptly: ‘You know, Pearl, it’s no good getting to like me, women think I’m poison when they get to know better.’ He was grinning savagely and his hands were clenched. She reached out, took one of them and said: ‘It’s for me to say what I want, isn’t it?’

‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you,’ he said at random, putting his arm around her, feeling that he had, by this remark, absolved himself of all responsibility for Pearl. He was thinking of Rose. She’d be back home by now. Well, it’d do her good not to find him there. She just took him for granted, and it was a fact. But after a restless five minutes he said: ‘I better be getting along.’ When he left her, Pearl said: ‘I love you, Jimmie, don’t forget that. I’d do anything for you, anything …’ She ran into the house, and he saw she was crying. She loves me, at any rate, he thought, thinking angrily of Rose. Slowly he climbed the long, dark stairs. He was very tired again. I must get some sleep, he mused, dimly, this can’t go on, it wears a man out, I’ll go straight to bed and sleep.

But he opened the door on bright light; she was already in, seated at the table. She was still in ber best clothes: a neat grey suit, white blouse, brooch; and her hair looked as if she had just combed it. Her face was what held him: she looked tight-lipped, determined, even triumphant. What’s up? he thought.

‘Don’t go to bed straight away,’ she said – for he was throwing off his shoes and coat. ‘There’s something we’ve got to do.’

‘It’d better be pretty important,’ he said. ‘I’m dead on my feet.’

‘For once you’d better stay on your feet.’ This brutal note was new and astonishing from Rose.

‘What’s going on?’

‘You’ll see in a minute.’

He almost ignored her and went to bed; but at last he compromised by pushing the pillows against the wall and leaning on them. ‘Wake me up when the mystery’s ripe,’ he said, and dropped off at once.

Rose remained at the table in a stiff attitude, watching the door and listening. The day before she had made a decision. Or rather, a decision had been made for her. It had come into her head: Why not write and ask? She’ll know … At first the idea had shocked her. It was a terrible thing to do, contrary to what she felt to be the right way to behave. And yet from the moment it entered her head, the idea gathered strength until she could think of nothing else. At last she sat down and wrote:

Dear Mrs Pearson, I am writing to you on a matter which is personal to us both, and I hope it gives no offence, because I am not writing in that spirit. I am Rose Johnson, and your husband has been courting me for two years since before the war stopped. He says you live separate and you won’t divorce him. I want things to be straight and proper now, and I’ve been thinking perhaps if we have a little talk, things will be straight. If this meets with your approval, Jimmie will be home tomorrow night, ten or so, and we could all three have a talk. Believing me, I mean no trouble or offence.