Free In Pursuit of the English by Doris Lessing

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 modem 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 Iunderstood 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 smoulderingbut 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 white singlet. But he was going soft; he paunched under his singlet. The other was very young, eighteen, twenty, a dark, glossy,