MacNamara. The conductor, who was leaning negligently against the steps, smiled tolerantly, and said: ‘Who’s for the Church?’
‘That’s me,’ said the woman, upheaving herself from beside me. Potatoes rolled from her bag into my lap, and she grabbed at them as they scattered. ‘Here,’ she shouted upwards, crouched among feet, ‘potatoes at sixpence a pound. Mind your great boots.’
‘Now, love,’ said the conductor indulgently, ‘get a move on or I’ll take them home to my missus.’
‘Try it,’ she retorted, and lurched off the bus, thrusting potatoes into her bag and her pockets. From the pavement she remarked in a detached voice: ‘Still, sixpence a pound is what you pay for new potatoes, when it’s right, and not like what some people I know try to get.’ Where this barb was directed could not easily be decided, for she was gazing absently at the back of the bus. One of the three women who remained took it up, saying: ‘That’s right dear, some people have no consciences.’ This exchange hung in the air as far as I was concerned, in spite of the gently-grinning faces all around me. I heard Mr MacNamara complain: ‘I say!’ The woman on the pavement, who must have been waiting for him to react, beamed directly at the conductor, and, indicating her bruised potatoes, said: ‘I won’t have to mash them now, will I?’
‘That’s right, love,’ he said. He had his thumb on the bell, and was looking up and down the street. 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 I would 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 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
