In Pursuit of the English. Doris Lessing

mouth was opening and shutting and she was gesticulating angrily at the puppies under her feet and at a small child who was grabbing at her apron. The radio was blaring and she was trying to shout through the music: the noise was so great that my eardrums were receiving it as a dull crashing roar, like a great silence. The older man reached out a hand, turned a knob, and at once a shrill voice assailed me, rising through the snapping and yapping of the dogs and the whining of the child. ‘Shut up,’ she screeched. ‘Shut up, I tell you.’ The older man rose and pushed the puppies outside into the passage with his foot. There was a sudden startling quiet. The room seemed empty because of the absence of sound and of dogs.

      Rose said: ‘Flo, this lady here wants to see your flat.’

      ‘Does she, dear?’ screeched Flo, who had grown so used to shouting through noise that she was unable to lower her voice. ‘Drat you!’ This was to the child, as she slapped down its hands. There was, in fact, only one child there, a little girl who seemed at first glance to be a dwarfed seven or eight, because of her sharp old face, but was three years old. ‘Drat you,’ shouted Flo again. ‘Can’t you shut up when I’m talking?’ The husband got up and lifted the child on to his lap with the patient forbearance of a man married to a termagant. ‘So you want to see our nice flat, dear?’ She smiled ingratiatingly; her eyes were calculating. ‘You’ll be very happy with us, dear. We’re just a big happy family, aren’t we, Rose?’

      ‘That’s right,’ said Rose, flatly.

      ‘Dan will show you the way,’ screeched Flo. ‘My name’s Flo. You must call him Dan. You needn’t stand on ceremony with us, dear.’

      ‘She hasn’t taken it yet,’ commented Rose, in her flat expressionless voice.

      ‘She’ll like the flat,’ shouted Flo persuasively. ‘The rooms are ever so nice, aren’t they, dear?’

      ‘That’s right,’ said Rose. She began smoothing down her eyebrows in front of a small wall mirror, with a forefinger wetted with spit, exactly as she had turned herself away to make up her face in the shop: she was saying: ‘Leave me alone.’

      ‘Let’s all go up,’ shouted Flo. But although she had conducted the interview until this point, she now gave her husband an uncertain, almost girlish look, and waited for him. He rose. ‘That’s right, dear,’ she said to him, her voice softening, and she offered an arch, intimate, merry smile. He responded with a direct, equally intimate flash of his eyes, and a baring of very white, prominent teeth. Even at that early stage I was struck by the boy’s sullen look at the couple. He was Jack, Flo’s son by her first marriage. But they had already adjusted their faces, and returned to the harsh business of life. Dan picked up the little girl and dropped her into Jack’s arms. At once she began to wail. Her mother grabbed her, exclaiming: ‘Oh, you’ll be the death of me.’ She yelled even louder. Automatically the father reached for her, and set her on his shoulders where she sat smiling, triumphant. He did not do this in a way which was critical of his wife; it was an habitual thing.

      All of us, the son included, filed into the dark well at the foot of the stairs. The smell of ammonia was so strong it took the breath. We began to ascend the stairs, which were narrow, of bare wood. I was at the head of the procession, and could see nothing. Flo shouted: ‘Mind the door.’ I came into collision with it, a hand reached under my arm, and we all moved backwards down the steep incline as the door swung in over our heads, letting in a shaft of dull light. We were now in the hall. There was a puddle near the stairs. ‘Drat these dogs,’ shouted Flo.

      ‘Last time it was Aurora,’ commented Rose.

      At once Flo slapped the child where she sat on her father’s shoulders. Aurora let out a single bellow and immediately became silent, and watched us all with her black sharp eyes. ‘Don’t you do that again,’ shouted Flo. The child’s mouth opened and she let out another loud roar as if a button had been pushed. Again she fell to watching us. Nobody took the slightest notice of this scene; and indeed Flo beamed encouragingly at me as if to say: Look at the trouble I’m taking on your behalf.

      ‘Oh dear, oh dear me,’ she grumbled, smiling, ‘that child will be the death of me yet.’

      ‘Perhaps it was the old people,’ said Jack, regarding the puddle.

      ‘Oh,’ said Flo, ‘so it must be. Dirty, filthy old swine …’ She caught a glance from her husband and smiled guiltily. ‘But they won’t bother you, dear. They sit by themselves in there, getting up to their mischief and their tricks …’ Again Dan glared at her, and she smiled. ‘They won’t bother you at all, dear,’ she said, and hastily went upstairs. We followed her, flight after flight, past shut doors. Nearing the top of the house was a shallow grey cement sink, with a tap which was making a happy tinkling noise, like a celesta. ‘This tap,’ said Flo in an offhand voice to her husband. Dan frowned. He heaved violently on the tap, his great shoulder muscles bulging, and a steady splash-splashing resulted. ‘Look,’ said Dan to me. ‘If you turn it round like this it’s quite all right.’ Once again he heaved with all his strength. We stood at varying heights on the stairs above and below the obstinate tap, gazing at it in suspense. Dan slowly, warily, straightened himself. A single heavy drop of water gathered weight on the lip of the tap and hung, trembling. It flew downwards to the puddle in the sink with a defiant tinkle, and at once another followed.

      Flo decided to shrug. ‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘there’s the bathroom downstairs for real washing, it only costs fourpence for a real good deep bath, and you can use this just for washing up. If you turn it good and tight, it will be quite all right, you’ll see.’

      ‘She’ll need some strength,’ said Rose. ‘It runs all over the landing some days, when Mrs Skeffington doesn’t turn it hard enough. It needs a man.’

      Flo nudged her to be quiet, and Rose shrugged. ‘We’ve only just moved in,’ said Flo, ‘and we haven’t got everything fixed right yet.’ We started climbing again.

      ‘Two years,’ said Rose’s voice from the flight below. ‘Oh, you shut up,’ said Flo in a loud whisper down past my head; as if the act of lowering her voice and directing it to Rose made it inaudible to everyone else. Then she screeched gaily to me: ‘We’re nearly there now.’

      We climbed two more flights in silence. Flo was ascending in front of me with the phlegmatic calm of a mountaineer who has only an hour to the summit; her fat flanks moved regularly up and down; her feet were planted wide for balance; and her hands pushed down on each knee in turn, for greater propulsion.

      We came to another door, which Flo opened saying: ‘You’ll be nice and private in here, see?’ There was one more short, sharp flight, very steep, ending in an abrupt twist that brought us to a handkerchief-sized landing. ‘Here we are,’ said Flo, with an anxious glance at me. It was a small room under the roof, with double skylights slanting inwards for illumination. A vast double bed took up most of the floor space, with a glossy toffee-coloured wardrobe. There was a minute kitchen that held a gas cooker, and a set of food canisters ranged on the floor. They all stood around me, smiling encouragingly, even Rose, whose desire for accuracy and fairness was momentarily quenched by the necessities of the occasion. She said: ‘It’s ever so private up here.’ She thought, and added: ‘There’s a lot of room, really.’ She was tiny, as I’ve said, and as she spoke she moved in from the wall, straightening herself painfully, for she had been bent in a curve, because the roof slanted down almost to the floor. Then, having done what was expected of her, she said: ‘Excuse me,’ and escaped downstairs, looking embarrassed.

      Flo said: ‘We don’t know what we’d do without Rose, and that’s a fact. We get all our people through her. They come into the shop and ask if she knows, when they’re stuck for a flat – like you did.’ She offered me this information as if Rose’s compliance was an additional attraction of the house.

      ‘I have a small boy,’ I said, with dread.

      ‘That’s right,’ said Flo instantly. ‘Rose said so, when she phoned us. That’s nice, dear. He can play with Oar. We like kids. Don’t we, Dan?’

      Dan said, ‘That’s