Read Online In Pursuit of the English by Doris Lessing - Free Book Online Page A

A few paces off a well-dressed woman was running towards the bus. He pressed the bell; the bus began to move; and the woman fell back, annoyed. Now he had held up the bus over the affair of the potatoes as if he had all the time in the world. Once again Mr MacNamara exclaimed: ‘I say!’ Whistling under his breath, the conductor passed down the bus. The three working women opposite surveyed us with critical eyes, in which showed a calm triumph. The bond between them and the jaunty conductor could be felt.
    ‘It should be reported,’ said Mr MacNamara belligerently. At once occurred that phenomenon which is inevitable, in an English crowd on such occasions. The women looked straight ahead of them, disassociating themselves, shaking gently with the shaking of the bus. Every face, every pair of shoulders expressed the same thing: This is no affair of mine. In this emotional vacuum, Mr MacNamara fumed alone.
    My stop appeared and I stood up. ‘Good-bye,’ I said. At once he got up. ‘You haven’t got my address,’ he said.
    ‘I haven’t a pencil,’ I said. At this, there came indulgently pitying looks on to the faces of the women, I found a pencil in my hand. ‘Try that,’ urged Mr MacNamara, restored to normal by the familiar situation. ‘That’s a real pencil. I can get them for you from a friend in Brixton.’
    ‘Ah, Brixton’s the place for pencils now,’ said the conductor.
    ‘That’s enough,’ said Mr MacNamara, his eyes once more suffused with anger.
    ‘Temper, temper,’ remarked one of the women gazing out of the window. When Mr MacNamara said: ‘Here, what’s that?’ she turned her head with a look of calm unconcern, and rose to her feet. To the conductor she said: ‘Give the bell a shove for me, love.’ The conductor came right down the car to help her out. To the rest of us he said: ‘Hurry up now.’ As I stepped off, the conductor said to me, grinning, ‘Mind his pencil, lady.’ The women began to shriek. The bus departed in a tumult of good humour. Mr MacNamara, his fists squared, shouted after it: ‘I’ll report you,’ and the conductor shouted calmly back: ‘A sense of humour, that’s all I ask.’
    ‘That wouldn’t have been possible before the war,’ said Mr MacNamara.
    ‘What wouldn’t?’
    ‘They’re all out of hand.’
    ‘Who?’
    ‘The working-classes.’
    ‘Oh!’
    ‘Of course you wouldn’t know,’ he said after a moment’s suspicion. ‘In your part of the world there isn’t any trouble, is there? With niggers it’s easy. I’ve often thought of emigrating.’
    ‘Here I must leave you,’ I said.
    ‘Tomorrow morning at nine-fifteen.’ He glanced at his watch, frowning. ‘No, at nine-forty. I’ve an appointment at nine-fifteen.’
    ‘I’ll telephone you,’ I said. For I had already decided Iwould go back to Rose and take the flat she offered, I felt that this was where I would end up. Besides, it was the first time I had heard, in all those weeks of hunting, of a landlady who would welcome a child.
    Mr MacNamara and I were facing each other on a street corner, while people surged past. We kept our places by sticking out our elbows into aggressive points. He was very irritated. ‘I work to strict business methods,’ he said. ‘But I’ll tell you what I’ll do for you. I’ll constitute myself your agent, that’s what. I’ll work for you. I’ll get you a flat by tomorrow morning.’
    ‘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 modem 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