In Pursuit of the English. Doris Lessing
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know, don’t tell me. And so you’ve gone and lowered yourself in those dirty old shops, just for that. It’s all right for film stars and models, it stands to reason, everyone knows they can wear a thing once, but not for people like us. You’d do better to keep them and look at them sometimes and remember the good times you had than sell them for cigarette money.’
‘You can talk about cigarettes, going without food to smoke.’
‘And who’s talking, I’d like to know?’
Both of us suffered over cigarettes. I came from a country where they were cheap. I had always smoked a lot. Now I was cut down to half my usual allowance. Rose and I made complicated rules for ourselves, to keep within limits. We tried to smoke as few as possible in the day, to leave plenty for our long gossip sessions at nights. But our plans were always being upset by Flo. There was more rancour created in that house over cigarettes than over anything else. Rose might grumble a little if Flo had forgotten to ask her to supper on an evening when ‘she felt like eating’. She would say: ‘All very well for her, licking and tasting away all day over her stove,’ but shrug it off. For food was something one could do without. But if Flo borrowed a cigarette and forgot to pay it back, Rose would sulk. And, of course, with Flo it was never a question of one cigarette. She would cadge from me, from Rose, from Miss Powell, beg from the milkman or the gas-man. ‘I’ll give it to you next time you come,’ she would say, anxiously grabbing at the offered cigarette.
She could afford to buy as many as she liked. But she never bought enough. Five minutes after she returned from a shopping trip she would come up to Rose’s room, and say: ‘Give your Flo a fag, dear.’
‘But you’ve just gone out shopping.’
‘But I forgot.’
‘I’ve got four left for the evening.’
‘I’ll pay you back tomorrow.’
‘What you mean is, I’ve got to do without this evening.’
‘I’m dying for a smoke.’
‘You owe me nine cigarettes as it is.’
At which Flo hastily thrust into Rose’s hands her sweet coupons for the week.
‘I don’t like sweets, you know that,’ said Rose, handing them back. ‘Why don’t you ask Dan – he’ll be in in five minutes.’
‘Oh, but he gets so cross with me, he gets so he won’t talk to me, if I ask. I owe him so many already.’
‘Flo. What you mean is, I’ve got to go without, then?’
‘Look, darling! Look, sweetheart, here’s one and six. That’s nine cigarettes. I had it in my pocket all ready. You thought I’d forgotten. Well, I don’t forget like that. Here, take the money.’
‘I don’t want the money. I’m not going to get dressed and go out again just because you get more fun out of cadging than out of buying them, straight and sensible.’
‘Oh, my God, you’re cross with me, darling, you’re cross with your Flo.’ A few seconds later, a knock on my door.
‘Darling, sweetheart, give your Flo a cigarette.’
I used to give her cigarettes. That is, I used to at the beginning. But I could not withstand Rose’s fury. She would get beside herself with rage when Flo had helped herself, and crept out, victorious, flushed with guilt, trying to get past Rose’s door without being heard.
Rose came into me. ‘You mean, you gave her some?’
‘It’s only some cigarettes.’
‘What do you mean, only? She can afford to smoke eighty a day if she wants.’
‘Don’t be so angry, Rose.’
‘I am angry. You make me sick. I hate to see somebody getting something for nothing. And you let her get away with it. Did you know, she even borrows from that dirty Miss Powell upstairs?’
‘The cigarettes are clean enough.’
‘If you think that’s a joke … don’t you let me catch you handing out free smokes to Flo again. What’s right is right.’ She began to smile, her anger all gone. ‘Do you know what?’
‘What?’
‘I paid Dickie out again today. I bought my cigarettes from the kiosk and not from him.’
All through this long period of estrangement, Rose had been going into the shop, as always, to get her ten from Dickie. He would see her come in; lift his eyebrows, hum a tune, to show indifference, and lay her favourite brand on the counter. She would lay the money beside the packet, wait for the change, and go out, like a stranger.
‘Do you know what? Dickie made me laugh today. I paid for my cigarettes with a pound note today. Of course I had change, but I pretended not to. And I knew he wouldn’t because it was first thing Monday. And we’re not speaking, see? So he couldn’t say, he didn’t have change in the till. And I was standing there, waiting. So he took the change out of his pocket, and gave it to me. But I just took it all for granted, and sailed away, not even saying thanks.’
On days when she felt black-hearted, she waited until Dickie’s counter was clear of people, and he was looking out, to make an entrance into the kiosk next door. It was run by a good-looking youth who wanted to take Rose out. She would make a point of staying in there talking and flirting for as long as possible. At evening she would say: ‘I paid Dickie out today. But I think it hurts me more than it hurts him. Because I look forward to getting my fags from him. And I’m so soft, I don’t like to think he’s hurt, if he thinks I like Jim. Jim’s the one at the kiosk, see? Well, I don’t like to hurt him. And so when he sent his shirts and socks into my shop for me to do for him, I just slipped in a new pair of socks I knew he’d like.’
‘I’m damned if I’d wash and iron for a man who’s stood me up.’
‘The point is, I don’t care about nobody else, even if I try, like when I go to the Palais. But the way I think is, he’ll feel different when we’re married and he settles down.’
‘But, meanwhile, he’s taking out someone else?’
At this her face hardened; she had the look of a deaf person, listening to his own thoughts. ‘He’ll be different when we’re married,’ she repeated, with anxiety.
Meanwhile, she was getting more and more depressed. Night after night, when she had had her bath, and was ready for bed, she would knock on my door and say: ‘I’ve got the ’ump. I’ve got to be with someone.’ And she sat, without waiting for me to speak.
I was depressed, too, because I was not writing. We weren’t good for each other. Flo might come in at midnight, to find out what the citizens of her kingdom were up to, and find us sitting on either side of the fire, smoking and silent. ‘God preseve us,’ she would say. ‘The Lord help me. Look at you both. Sorry for yourselves, that’s what.’ Rose would raise her eyes, and sigh, without words.
‘Yes,’ Flo said, examining her, good-natured and disapproving, ‘you think I don’t know. But I do know. What you want, Rose, is a man in your bed.’
‘Maybe, maybe not,’ commented Rose, blowing out fancy smoke patterns and watching them dissolve.
‘Maybe not, she says,’ said Flo to me. ‘Well, I’m right, aren’t I, darling? If you was a friend of Rose’s you’d tell her right. You can’t keep a man by playing hiding-pussy the way she does.’
Rose continued to puff out smoke. ‘We have different ideas,’ she said. ‘It takes all sorts.’
‘Your ideas’d be ever so much more better if you treated Dickie right.’
‘Huh – Dickie!’ said Rose, so that the message might be communicated to Dickie.
Flo said shrewdly: ‘You think you’re going to starve him into kissing