“Once upon a time —” Mick had taken Rose back to The Lamb, and they were sitting in the parlour. “Once upon a time I was courting an Irish girl, a parlourmaid. That was, oh, forty years ago. The gentry were still living hereabouts, and a young fellow like me spent half his nights creeping down their basement steps. I remember one day she stood at the other end of the kitchen, with her back to me, cutting bread. ‘D’ye love me, Mick?’ she asked, without turning round. I swore a terrible oath that I did. ‘D’ye really love me?’ she asked again, and she looked over her shoulder with one of those melting smiles. ‘To me dyin’ day,’ I said. ‘You don’t, you devil,’ she shouted all of a sudden, turnin’ on me with a face black and furious, her eyes glaring jealousy, ‘You’re lyin’ to me and I hate you!’ And — crash! — she threw the breadboard at me. And before I’d finished ducking, she was across the room with her arms round my neck, and smothering my face with kisses.”
“Very interesting,” said Rose. “And why this particular tale at this particular time?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Just being matey.”
“You look about as matey as a tiger. You didn’t have a word to say walking up the street. The veins were standing up on your temples like flex.”
“All right, I’m talking my temper away. Listen, you pride yourself on having a mind of your own. Are you sure you know your own mind any more than that skivvy did?”
“Quite sure. Why?”
“You’ve had crazes before. Different jobs. Different men. What makes you so sure you won’t blaze up tomorrow with some new lunacy you don’t even dream of today ?”
“Lunacy?” She put her cigarette down in an ashtray and faced him didactically. “The trouble with you, Mick, is that you’re like most fathers. You still think I’m fifteen years old. You can only see me as I was, and you can’t understand what I’ve become. It hurts you because I’m not the little apple of your eye any more, but myself, a separate person, growing away from you. I suppose it hurts all parents when they realise it. But after all, why don’t you face facts, and give me credit for having some grown-up motives for taking the course I have? Why don’t you credit me with having developed a bit of purpose and intelligence. Because I have, you know.”
“That’s all I need from you, a lecture. ‘Fathers Must Face the Facts of Life.’ You don’t have to tell me you’ve changed. It’s the way you’ve changed I don’t like.” A darker hue gathered beneath the weathered ruddiness of his face. “I wish I’d had the rearing of you!”
“Mick!” She was gentle and mocking. “You’re getting angrier and angrier. You are!”
“You’re trying to make me, aren’t you? To me, you haven’t become what you promised to be when you were a kiddie, but the opposite. You were a warm-hearted child. You used to give your spending money away to the first snotty-nosed little brat you saw crying in the street. I used to see generosity in you, and kindness. Where’s it all gone?”
“It hasn’t gone. That’s why I’m what I am.”
Mick uttered a grunt of disgust. “Away with you! You talk to me about grown-up motives, purpose, intelligence, and then I see you roll that boy for his money with as little scruple as some rotten old dockside trot friskin’ a drunk for his wallet. It’s not what you did with Jack’s money that I’m caring about. It’s what it shows up in you, your bloody cold, hard arrogance. It’s like polished granite. I can’t even scratch it. You just can’t see that anything’s wrong so long as it serves your purpose.”
“Mick, is this a quarrel?”
“Maybe. It will be if that smile stays on your face. Maybe not. We’ll see.”
“I could face it, Mick. Though I’d be sorry.”
“So should I.”
She let the little ice-points of attack melt from her eyes. “You know,” she said quietly, “you’re building up a great deal from a very little thing. Yes, don’t interrupt, it is a very little thing. I only acted on an impulse. Not that I regret it, but that’s how I am. Our newspaper was in a pretty bad jam. It’s the most important thing in the world for us. It’s there to help everybody, Jackie Agass included, if he only knew it. And we had to raise the money quickly. I stripped myself to the last farthing, and so did every friend I went to. Whatever I did was entirely off my own bat. Nobody told me to. They might even have disapproved, if they’d known how I’d gone about it.” She pulled a little face. “I wouldn’t like to tell you how often I’ve been told off, for being opportunist, and reckless, and erratic, and all sorts of other things. Anyway, if I’d had the time, I might even have got around to paying him back. In fact I might even have got that watch you gave me out of pawn. I am still human, you know, whether you’re prepared to believe it or not.”
“It’s a bit late in the day to tell me all this. You didn’t think of it when we were tearin’ each other up last night, and you didn’t have the good grace to say it to Jackie Agass.”
For a second she seemed to blaze up again inside. “I will not make excuses for myself! Let them think what they like!”
Mick’s manner was easier now. “D’you know what beats me about you, Rosie? What absolutely defeats me? It’s that granite certainty. You’re right. You’re always right. Everything you do is right. Your newspaper is doing good. You’ve no doubt of that. There’s no glimmer of fear in your mind that it might be doing harm. The truth is whatever you happen to tell other people. Anything they say to you is just a noise in your ears while you’re deciding what to say next. Rosie, nobody knows the outcome of what they are doing. I don’t speak from books. I only have sixty years of life to go from, but that’s a great deal more than you have. What we strive for is never what comes to pass. Nobody on earth has the right to be absolutely certain.”
“We have.”
“You imagine you have. An’ I don’t mind admitting, that’s your strength.”
“I know we have. We’re the first people on earth to discover the laws of history. We’ve learned to control its speed and direction. Against all the so-called brains that have run the world so far, the people that are trying to stop us, we’re like astronomers compared with astrologers. We don’t claim to know everything, far from it, but it’s us who’s the scientists, and all the rest are guessers and whistlers in the dark. We know as much about the process of social birth and death as a doctor knows about birth and death in his hospital ward. The world is pregnant, it’s writhing with pain, and we’re prepared — I’ve no purpose in hiding it — we’re ready to be as ruthless in bringing about a quick and healthy birth as a doctor is when he has to bring a child from a diseased and dying mother. And our end is just as humane as his, whatever we have to resort to, on the big scale or on the tiny little personal scale, to attain it.”
Mick preserved a daunted silence for a few moments. Then he said, “Well, I’ve never seen any personal gifts in you. Perhaps — I might as well be frank — that’s what’s wrong with you and others like you, having ambition but no talents, wanting to ride up to the top merely by turning the world upside down. Grabbing for the prize you can’t earn, and won’t drudge for. Anyway, your clever friends have certainly taught you one gift, and that’s the gift of the gab.”
Rose’s smile returned. This time it was friendly. “If I’ve got it from anyone, you old blarney-monger, it’s you. Give me a drink.”
Mick brought her a glass of brandy, and when she had finished it she relaxed peacefully back into her armchair, gazing reflectively up at the ceiling as if the liquor had stilled her agitation. “I’ve told you often enough what made me what I am,” she said. “It wasn’t any ‘clever friends’. It was my life. This dreadful little street — oh, I know it’s not a slum, but it’s a slum of the spirit. People in streets like this grow up like plants in cellars, away from the sunlight. They could flower into something beautiful, but they don’t. They could grow up to a wonderful stature, but they remain stunted. They are born and die without knowing what life might be. My mother stifled in this street. You’ve said yourself she was made for a life a thousand times better. I think, in a different world she could have found some place that would have allowed her to give to — oh, to everybody — what she gave to us. She wouldn’t have been locked in by ignorance and fear — yes, poor dear, I love her ten times as much as when she was alive, but she was an ignorant woman, and it wasn’t her fault, it was her inheritance. And in a different world there wouldn’t have been the war that killed her. Did she deserve that? And there wouldn’t have been the life that gave our Chris the consumption and denied him the conditions for getting better. You,” she said, “you’re the one to talk! You cared for her, didn’t you? But you can’t see farther than the end of your nose because you’ve got a vested interest in Lamb Street staying as it is. Oh, you’re the great man, you’re the good neighbour, aren’t you? Everybody’s friend. But you’ve been nice and comfortable this last thirty years, in your nice, warm pub, with a better living coming in than anyone else in the street ever saw, and never the dole to fear as they had for years. It suits you all right when they all come flocking into your saloon bar every night to swill your gin, and your mild-and-bitter, all trying to forget the blankness, and the aimless drudgery, and all the other things they’re frightened of outside.”
“You’re very hard on me, old girl. You’re pretty snooty about them, too, considering that they’re your own people.”
“Oh, I don’t blame you, and I’m not sneering at them. You’re all prisoners. What’s more, I know it’s in them to be different. You don’t have to tell me about all the good in them. I haven’t forgotten it. And I’ve seen them show their strength, too, though they haven’t seen it themselves. When we used to go collecting for Spain, and in the war, and when they put Labour in. They can break out of their slum when they all learn to use their strength together, with everyone else like them. So for heaven’s sake don’t keep telling me that I don’t care about them, and that I only want to do myself a bit of good. If you think you know me, then please believe in me, and believe that I live for others as well as myself.”
It was Mick’s turn to smile. “I could deny that, you know. I could remind you of the little girl who wouldn’t stay in one job long enough to learn it. I could remind you of the girl who couldn’t see anything wrong in borrowing a dress off the hook in the shop where she worked, just because she fancied it. I could remind you of the kid who gave herself airs and dreamed of being a princess. I could tell you that you’re just a self-appointed saviour, that you really think yourself better than those you want to lead, and that they don’t want to have people like you marching them in column of fours wherever you want them to go. I could ask you why you’ve never taken the chance of doing good in some humble and anonymous way — if you’re so keen to help others, you could do it on the quiet, nursing, or teaching, or doing welfare work, or going out to help the blacks —”
“What, me?”
“Listen to that ring in your voice! You couldn’t bear it, could you? I could tell you that you’re the worst little snob I know, that your one aim in life has been to escape from Lamb Street and live the kind of life that pleased you better. I’ve been watching you all this morning. You’ve had your nose in the air as if it was a sewage farm you were walking through, not the street your mother was content to live in. I could ask you why you think the life you lead — your flat, and your smart friends — very smart, from what you tell me, considering they’re supposed to represent the underdog — and your parties, and your love affairs, and your discussions about culture and whatnot — why d’you think it’s any less shabby than the poor old Lamb Street mums coming in here to knock back their bobsworths of gin? I could tell you that in my Church there are proud priests and humble priests, and the proud priests aren’t priests at all.”
She was flushing now, and sitting upright. He put his glass down, and gave her a reassuring grin, as if he were able at last to feel some mastery over her. “But I won’t. I’ll assume you’re the genuine article. In that case, there’s only one thing wrong with you. You’re still young. Not enough has happened to you yet. When you’ve been bashed around a bit by the years, you’ll know you can’t change the world, because the world’s made of people, and people aren’t only made of flesh and bone and hope, but of savagery and envy and fear. All your lot’ll be able to do, even if you do win, is to pummel and pound the world around till you’ve changed the shape of it, but it’ll be the same world, with the same human beings in it, and the same yeast of good and evil breeding and bubbling among them. Why don’t you leave ’em alone? All right, they’re bloody cannibals sometimes — I haven’t forgotten Barmy — but that’s how it’s always been. Speaking for Lamb Street — I can’t tell about the rest — we don’t face up to the whole filthy muddle of it too badly. We manage to make a bit of a life out of it, and that’s an achievement, believe you me!”
Rose sat for a moment, still flushed, with her head to one side, as if listening for echoes. Her lips were pursed.
Mick asked, “Another drink?”
“I’ll get it myself.” She crossed to the sideboard, filled her glass and, leaving it where it stood, began to pace restlessly back and forth with her arms hugged across her chest. “You say what’s wrong is that I’m young.” She was not looking at Mick, but was frowning at the carpet. “Perhaps yours is that you’re old. You’re a defeatist. You don’t believe people can be changed for the better. I do.” She turned to face him, and stood looking proudly down at him. “Look here, I’ll tell you something. You had a jolly good slam at me, didn’t you? Well, I’ll do something you’ve not been willing to do — I’ll concede you a point. I’ll admit I’ve got my faults, and I‘ll admit you’ve put your finger on some of them. It’s true I’m ambitious. It’s true I’ve got no special ability. It’s true I want the best out of life. What do you want me to do, love the whole human race and leave myself out? But this is what you don’t understand — the road I’ve taken is the only one that can help me get the better of my faults. Any other way — go on, tell me any other way a girl like me, poor and pretty, tries to get out of the rut — any other way, my faults would have got the better of me, and double-quick, too, I can tell you! How many girls have gone to the bad, who were like me at sixteen? Plenty, and you know it. I could go down on my knees and thank the Party for what it’s done for me. And I know this, too, that the harder I work to change the world for the better, the quicker I’ll change myself for the better. When you see tremendous achievements and tremendous sacrifices, it’s easier not to be vain. When you see real hope for everybody you don’t want so much to grab for yourself. The world opens out wider every day, and there’s more to look at than yourself in the mirror.”
“By God!” Mick thumped his knee. “Look who’s talking!”
“Well, that’s my answer to you, Mick Monaghan, and in time you’ll see that I’m right. And the same goes for everybody else. You walk about the streets of this town, and ask yourself what’s wrong with it. I don’t suppose you ever did. I do. See the people swarming in the streets, pushing and shoving and jostling each other off the pavements, look into all those white miserable faces, all hurrying and worrying. See the dirt and the ugliness, all those catchpenny adverts screaming at you, and the kids at the corners learning how to waste their time — that’s all they’ll ever have to do, except work, till they die. Everybody’s a stranger. Nobody cares about his job, it’s just eight hours a day taken from him, a third of his lifetime. You see them all crawling about as if they’ve lived for generations cap in hand, and so they have, begging for the jobs they hate. Go and watch them flocking to the dog tracks, and queuing up in the drizzle for rotten Yankee films. Think of all the joy that’s stored up in books and plays and pictures and music, it might not exist for all they know. How many of them will ever see the Lakes, or the Avon, or the Dales, or the Cotswolds, before they’ve lived out their poor starved lives? No wonder it’s a nightmare!”
“So it is,” Mick said. “The bloody place is too big. God didn’t make us to live packed like fleas in a barrel.”
“That’s not the point of it. It’s the sheer terrifying, miserable, dreadful lack of purpose that poisons life. That’s the horror. It matters more than material conditions — they’re bad enough, though they keep improving, but they’re not the root of the matter. It’s the emptiness, the lack of meaning, having nothing more to do once you’re born except while away the time as painlessly as possible till you die. Give life a meaning, and everything changes. Listen — one day, when people walk this city, they’ll be the owners of everything they look on. Every day, when they go to work, they’ll know they’re working for their own good and the common good. Then they’ll walk the streets as if the streets belong to them. Their faces will be changed, because their minds will be changed. The word ‘neighbour’ won’t just mean the man next door, but everyone they pass in the streets, the crowds won’t be made up of strangers and rivals any more. People will be secure at heart, because their jobs will be secure and peace will be secure — and it will be, we’ve won half the world already and we’re going to win the other half. No more penny arcades. Children will be educated to enjoy life to the last drop, not just to be office boys and fill in the pools coupon. The world won’t end at the end of your street — people will travel, and they’ll come back richer in heart. That’s how we’ll change people. Well,” she ended a little truculently, “what have you got to say to that?”
Mick studied her with a sombre and compassionate smile. “Drink up your brandy, girl. If that’s what you really believe, I’m not going to say a thing. You talk as if you don’t know about all the people before you who’ve dreamed the same dream as you, and to get it they’ve built and built, organised and organised, disciplined and disciplined, punished and punished, and then they’ve woke up to find themselves in a prison twice as grim as the one they were in before.”
She turned back to get her drink. “You’re old,” she mocked, “your eyes are getting dim.”
“They can still see farther than yours, thank God! I’d like to think you’ll wake up from this dream before it’s too late. You’ve done it before, you know. You’ve chopped and changed, put your heart and soul in something, and forgotten it a year later. I fancy you haven’t changed so much. You’re still restless, you still stride about and look about you as if there’s something you haven’t found yet. Don’t be so sure what you’ll be in a few years time.”
“No!” The intensity of her protest was almost agonized. She clenched her fist and banged it on the sideboard again and again. “No, no, no! Not now! Not this time! You don’t know what it used to be like. Every day that passed, I felt I’d lost a chance to do something tremendous. Every single morning I woke up, I used to say, ‘What is it, where is it, what’s the thing that I have to do, how do I come to life?’ It used to gnaw at me. Not any more,” she cried, her expression one of distress. “I have certainty now. I have confidence. I tell you this is for keeps.”
Mick nodded, and left her to herself till she had recovered. A little later he said, “To change the subject, when are you going to marry again?”
“Why should I?”
“It might bring you down to earth. What’s stopping you?”
“Where’s the man?”
“What man are you looking for?”
“The man I can respect.”
He was smiling again, but gently. “There you go again. There’s nothing to be done with you. There’s no such animal. Don’t get me wrong, girl. It’s not because you’re too good for them, it’s because you’re too conceited. Well, don’t leave it too long. Ten years go quickly, especially when you’re having a good time, and all of a sudden you’ll find you’re going hard. You’ll start turning into one of those handsome hags I’ve seen too often — the dashing young women of yesterday. All wit and no laughter. Everlastingly busy outside and a bit lonely inside. You watch out, my old girl.”
“A pretty picture,” Rose laughed. “I’m terrified. You’d better give me another drink to reassure me.” She went back to her chair. “What would you like me to do? Marry Jack Agass?”
“I wouldn’t advise that. Not for your sake or his. He’ll be happier with the one he’s got.”
“With her? I wish him joy. Imagine going to bed with that female suet pudding!”
Mick grinned. “Don’t be so sure. If she’s anything like her mother, he’s got a warm time ahead of him.”
“Oh? And what do you know about her mother?”
“A gentleman never tells.”
“Oh, Mick, Mick, you old ram!” She lay back in her chair, quivering with merriment. “I can’t help loving you. Is there any woman in this street you haven’t been at?”
“Quite a few, unfortunately. But I reckon I’ve got ten good years ahead of me yet.”
Laughter made her cough. She steadied herself, and raised her glass. “We’ll drink to that. To your ten good years!”
“And I’ll drink to you! Which ‘you’ is the real one, the one you see or the one I see? Here’s hoping I’m wrong!”
Rose’s eyes were bright. “Idiot! Oh, what a pair we are to be lecturing each other!” Father and daughter touched glasses and drank.