‘That,’ I said with politeness, ‘is very kind of you.’ I was by now longing to be rid of him. He smiled suspiciously, ‘Good-bye,’ I said.
‘Wait,’ he said. ‘The fee is two guineas.’
‘What fee?’
‘I know of just the place. Three rooms, kitchen, pantry, bathroom. Hot and cold and all modern cons. Three guineas a week, inclusive.’ I thought that if this place existed it was cheaper than anything I had seen. ‘I promised it to someone else, but for a retainer I’ll give it to you. I got nothing out of him, all promises he was.’ A look of disgusted anger came on to his face. This look was genuine: the flat, therefore, must also be genuine? But this is an excuse. I felt as if I had been stung into torpor by a predatory spider. I was being impelled to hand over the money. I began fumbling in my handbag, and as I did so, I knew I was a fool. The thought must have shown on my face, for he said: ‘For you, I’ll make it pounds.’ The money melted into the air above the flesh of his palm. I could hardly believe I had given it to him. So strong was this feeling that I wanted to count the money I had left to see if I had given it to him.
A couple of policemen who had been standing against a wall, upshifted themselves with a stolid and determined movement and came towards us. Instinctively I looked around to see if Mr MacNamara had vanished. I was wrong, for he stood negligently beside me, gazing with impatience at the policemen. They, it seemed, had also expected him to vanish, for now they appeared uncertain. ‘Anything I can do for you?’ enquired Mr MacNamara efficiently. They hesitated. He turned his back and marched off.
‘Everything all right?’ asked one of the policemen.
‘I do hope so.’
They looked at each other, communed, and moved back to their wall, where they stood, feet apart, hands behind their backs, heads bent slightly forward, talking to each other with scarcely-moving lips, while their slow contemplative eyes followed the movements of the crowd.
I walked slowly towards the jeweller’s shop, thinking about Mr MacNamara. It had by now occurred to me that he was what they referred to as a spiv. But he was not in the least like any of the rogues and adventurers I had known in Africa. They had all had a certain frankness, almost a gaiety, in being rogues. Mr MacNamara had nothing whatsoever in common with them. His strength was – and I could feel just how powerful that strength was, now I was recovering from my moment of being mad – his terrible, compelling anxiety that he should be able to force someone under his will. It was almost as if he were pleading, silently, in the moment when he was tricking a victim: Please let me trick you; please let me cheat you; I’ve got to; it’s essential for me.
But the fact remained, that at a time when I had less than twenty pounds left, and counting every halfpenny, I had just parted with two pounds, knowing when I did it that I would never see it again. I was clearly much more undermined by England than I had known; and the sooner I got myself into some place I could call my own the better.
When I told Rose I had lost the piece of paper with the address she said it didn’t matter, she’d take me home with her. The pale woman entered from the back and said unpleasantly: ‘Closing early, aren’t you?’
Rose answered: ‘Half past five is closing time, isn’t it?’
‘Like your pound of flesh, don’t you, dear?’
‘I don’t get paid overtime.’ She added casually: ‘I worked three nights late last week. I didn’t notice any complaints.’
The pale woman said quickly: ‘I was only joking, dear.’
‘Oh no you wasn’t,’ said Rose. Without another glance at her employer, she began making up her face, not because there was any need to, but so she could stand negligently, back turned, absorbed in her reflection and her own affairs. Before leaving, however, she said ‘Goodnight’ quite amiably; and the pale woman returned, indifferently: ‘Sleep tight,’ just as if this exchange had not occurred.
Rose had said the house she lived in was just around the corner; it was half a mile off. She did not speak. I didn’t know if she was offended because I had lost the address; or whether she was irritated with her employer. She replied listlessly to my remarks: Yes, dear; or – Is that so? Her face was heavy, despondent. It was difficult to guess her age. In the dimly-lit shop, she looked like a tired girl. Here, though her skin was spread thick with dun-coloured powder, under her eyes were the purple hollows of a middle-aged woman. Yet she looked defenceless, and soft, like a girl.
At first it was all shops and kiosks; then towering gloomy Victorian houses; then a space where modern luxury flats confronted green grass and trees; then a couple of acres of rubble. ‘Bombs,’ said Rose dispassionately. ‘We had them around here something awful.’ It was as if the houses had shaken themselves to the ground. Thin shells of wall stood brokenly among debris; and from this desolation I heard a sound which reminded me of a cricket chirping with quiet persistence from sun-warmed grasses in the veld. It was a typewriter; and peering over a bricky gulf I saw a man in his shirt-sleeves, which were held neatly above the elbow by expanding bands, sitting on a tidy pile of rubble, the typewriter on a broken girder, clean white paper fluttering from the rim of the machine.
‘Who’s he?’ I asked.
‘An optimist,’ said Rose grimly. ‘Thinks he’s going to be rebuilt, I shouldn’t be surprised. Well, it takes all sorts, that’s what I say.’
We turned finally into a street of tall narrow grey houses. I understood, from our quickening steps, that we were going downhill. I was almost running. Rose was moving along the street without seeing it, her feet quick and practised on the pavement. I asked: ‘Have you always lived in London?’
There was a short pause before she answered; and I understood it was because she found it difficult to adapt herself to the idea of London as a place on the map and not as a setting for her life. There was a small grudging note in her voice when she said: ‘Yes, dear, since I was born.’ I was to hear that reserved, non-judging voice often in the future – the most delicate of snubs, as if she were saying: It’s all very well for you . . .
Rose stopped in front of a wooden gate slung loosely between pillars where the plaster was flaking, and said: ‘Here we are.’ The wood of the gate was damp, and in the cracks were traces of green that I thought at first were remains of paint. Looking closer I saw it was that fine spongy fur that one finds, in the veld, cushioning the inside of a rotting tree trunk where the sun never reaches. Rose led the way down steps, along the side of the house, into a narrow gulf of thick damp brick with water underfoot. She let herself in at the door, and we were at once in darkness that smelt strongly of ammonia. A stairway led up, through darkness, to a closed door. In front was another door outlined in yellow light. There was a blare of noise. The door opened violently and out spilled puppies which scrambled and snapped around our feet. Rose said: ‘Come in.’ She went forward into the room, abandoning me, indicating why I was there to the other with a brief meaningful nod of the head.
It was a long, narrow room with a tall window at one end. Towards the top of the window one could see a frieze of dustbins and watering cans. A single very strong electric bulb filled the room with a hard shadowless light. The place was divided into two by curtains – or rather, curtains looped back high against the walls indicated a division. One half was the kitchen, the other a living-room, which seemed crammed with people, puppies, children, kittens. At a table under the light bulb sat two men reading newspapers, and they lifted their heads together, and stared with the same open, frank curiosity at me. They both wore very white cotton singlets, hanging loose. One was a man of about forty, forty-five, who gave an immediate impression of a smouldering but controlled violence. His body was lean and long, swelling up into powerful shoulders and neck, a strong, sleek, close-cropped head. His hair was yellowish, his eyes flat and yellowish, like a goat’s, and the smooth heavy flesh of his shoulders rather yellow against the