In Pursuit of the English. Doris Lessing

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ nagging at the child overhead, saying from time to time: ‘You wait till he comes, you haven’t heard nothing yet.’ And, inevitably, the next phrase would be – My stepfather.

      ‘Wasn’t he good to you?’

      ‘Good?’ A word as direct as that always made her uncomfortable. ‘I wouldn’t like to say anything against him, see.’ Then, after a moment: ‘He was a bad-tempered, lying, cheating swine of a bully – God rest his soul, I wouldn’t say bad things of the dead,’ she would conclude, apologetically.

      She had no pity for Mrs Skeffington at all. I could never understand why Rose, who was so tender-hearted, shut her sympathy off from the threesome upstairs. Once I suggested we should tell the NSPCC, and she was so shocked that she could scarcely bring herself to speak to me for days. At last I went to her room and asked her why she was so angry. ‘I didn’t know you was one of them nosey-parkers,’ she said.

      ‘But, Rose, what’s going to happen to that poor baby?’

      ‘They’ll take it away from her, most like, and send her to prison. Not that it’s not a good place for her.’

      ‘Perhaps they might help her.’

      ‘How? Tell me? What she needs help for, is against her husband and what are they going to do about him? Not that she doesn’t deserve what she gets.’

      ‘All that’s wrong with her is she’s overworked and tired.’

      ‘Yes? Well, let me tell you, my mother brought up six of us, and she had no sense for men, real sods they were, but she never carried on like my lady upstairs.’

      Meanwhile Miss Powell had moved into the two small rooms above the Skeffingtons. She came down to see me about the child. She wore a red silk gown, trimmed with dark fur, and looked like a film star strayed on to the wrong set. She was very sensible. She suggested we should talk to Mr Skeffington when he came home and tell him his wife needed a holiday.

      As soon as she had gone, Rose came in to demand what I though I was doing, talking to that whore.

      I said we had agreed to tax Mr Skeffington, and Rose said: ‘You make me laugh, you do. At least the Skeffingtons are decently married, they aren’t a whore and Mr Bobby Brent.’

      Flo said to me, her eyes dancing. ‘Mr Skeffington’s coming back tomorrow. You wait till you see him,’ she urged – for it was one of the days she did not like Mrs Skeffington. ‘You just lean over the banisters and have a look. Like a film star, he is. He’s got eyes that make me feel funny, just like Bobby Brent.’ For some days Mrs Skeffington was saying to the child: ‘Your daddy will beat you if you aren’t a good girl.’

      ‘I am a good girl.’

      ‘You’ll see, he’ll beat you. For God’s sake, keep quiet now, Rosemary.’

      When he did come, I heard the following dialogue through the floor: ‘It’s always the same. As soon as I come home, you start complaining.’

      ‘But I can’t keep a home going on what I earn.’

      ‘I told you before I married you, I’ve got to pay alimony. Sometimes I’m sorry I ever did. Can’t you keep that kid quiet?’

      ‘I can’t help it if Rosemary’s a naughty girl.’

      ‘I’m not a naughty girl,’ wailed Rosemary.

      ‘Don’t start,’ he said aggressively. ‘Now don’t start, that’s all.’

      The child wept. Mrs Skeffington wept, and Mr Skeffington went out, slamming the door, five minutes after he’d come home.

      Rose came in. ‘You heard?’ she asked.

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘You still think you’re going to talk them into sense?’

      ‘No, not really.’

      ‘I told you. You’ve got a lot to learn …’

      ‘All the same, what about the baby?’

      ‘What you don’t know yet is, there’s some people you can’t do nothing about.’ She offered me a cigarette, as a sign she was forgiving me. ‘I’ve been thinking about you, dear. Your trouble is this. You think, all you’ve got to do is say something, and then things’ll be right. Well, they won’t be. You leave that pair of love-birds upstairs alone. Because I tell you what’s going to happen. He’s left one wife with kids already. He’s not one to stick. And he’ll leave her, too. And then she’ll be better off and her temper’ll improve. You’ll see.’

      Later Mr Skeffington came in. Soon we heard her plead: ‘Oh not tonight, not tonight, Ron. I’m so tired. I was up with Rosemary all last night.’ Rose grinned at me, nodding, as if to say: There. I told you. He said: ‘I’ve been away two weeks and that’s what I get when I come home.’ ‘Oh, Ron, darling.’ A comparative silence. We heard his voice, adjusted to tenderness. Complete silence. Then the child started to cry. Mrs Skeffington wailed: ‘Oh, Rosemary, Rosemary, can’t you ever stop?’ She must have been up most of the night. At seven the alarm shrilled so long that most of the house was aroused. Finally there came a shock and a crash as the clock was flung across the room. ‘Oh, Ronnie,’ said Mrs Skeffington, ‘now you’ve woken Rosemary.’

      He was a slight, fair, dandyish young man, with a jaunty moustache. If any of us women, Rose, Flo, myself, Miss Powell were carrying something on the stairs, we could not take two steps before we found him beside us: ‘A pleasure,’ he would say, assisting us on our way. His wife carried all her own burdens. She got up at seven every day, washed and dressed and fed the child, and took it to the council nursery school. She came back at lunchtime to cook her husband his meal. She finally collected the little girl at six, having spent her day cooking in a nearby cafe. Her evenings she spent cleaning and cooking.

      At nine in the morning, Ronnie Skeffington, smelling of shaving soap and hair lotion, would emerge from the bathroom in a silk dressing-gown, and proceed upstairs with the newspapers. His breakfast had been cooked for him and was waiting in the oven. At ten he went off to work, and came back at one, expecting to find his lunch ready. He usually did not come home until late at night.

      ‘Say what you like,’ said Flo, ‘that Ronnie, that Miss Powell, they give the house class. Imagine now, if you was to open the door and there was Mr Skeffington, all polite and brushed, you’d think this house has got nice flats in it, now wouldn’t you?’

      ‘Don’t start putting up the rents yet,’ said Rose, dryly, after one such flight.

      ‘Rents, I didn’t say nothing about rents, dear.’

      ‘No, I’m just telling you not to start.’

      There were two rooms beneath mine and Rose’s. An old couple lived there. I never heard them. I never saw them. When I asked Rose about them, her face would put on the sorrowful guilty look which meant that over this matter her loyalty was to Flo. She would say: ‘Don’t worry about them. There’s nothing to tell.’ When I asked Flo, she said: ‘They’re filthy old beasts, but they don’t worry you, do they?’

      About a week after I moved down beside Rose, Flo came in to ask me down to supper that night. I thanked her. She lingered, looking hurt. СКАЧАТЬ