Franklin was assisted downstairs to the second room in the basement flat, and Jill was put into a sleeping bag in the sitting-room. James said he would look after her, but he went straight off to sleep. Frances came down in the night to have a look at Jill, and found them both asleep. In the dim light from the door on to the landing, Jill looked terrible. She needed looking after. Obviously the girl's parents must be rung and told the situation: they probably did not know it. And in the morning Jill must be asked to go home.
But in the morning Jill had gone, had disappeared into wild and dangerous London. And Rose, when asked where she thought Jill might be, replied that she was not Jill's keeper.
Nervousness on Franklin's account was in order, sharing space with Rose. They were afraid she harboured racial prejudices, 'coming from that background' Andrew's evasion of the class situation. But it turned out otherwise: Rose was 'nice' to Franklin. 'She's being really nice,' reported Colin. 'He thinks she's great.'
He did. She was. An apparently improbable friendship was growing between the good-humoured kindly black youth and the rancorous girl, whose rage bubbled and boiled as reliably as the red spot on Jupiter.
Frances, her sons, marvelled that one could not think of two more different people, but in fact they inhabited a similar moral landscape. Rose and Franklin were never to know how much they had in common.
Since Rose had first come into this house she had been possessed by a quiet fury that these people could call it theirs, as of a right. This great house, its furnishings, like something out of a film, their money... but all that was only the foundation for a deeper anguish, for it was that, a bitter burning that never left her. It was their ease with it all, what they took for granted, what they knew. Never had she mentioned a book and she had a period of testing them out with books no sane person could have heard of that they hadn't read, or hadn't heard of. She would stand in that sitting-room, with two walls all books from ceiling to floor, and know that they had read them. 'Frances,' she challenged, being found there, hands on hips, glaring at the books, ' have you actually read all these books?' 'Well, yes, yes, I believe I have. ' 'When did you? Did you have books in your house when you were growing up?' 'Yes, we had the classics. I think everyone did in those days.' 'Everybody, everybody! Who's everybody?' 'The middle classes,' said Frances, determined not to be bullied. 'And a good proportion of the working class as well.' 'Oh! Who said so?' 'Check it,' said Frances. 'Not difficult to find out this sort of thing. ' 'And when did you have time to read?' 'Let me see... Frances was remembering herself, mostly alone, with two small children, her boredom alleviated by reading. She remembered Johnny nagging at her to read this, read that... Johnny was a good influence,' she told Rose, insisting to herself that one must be fair. ' He's very well read, you know. The communists usually are, it's funny isn't it, but they are. He made me read. '
' All these books, ' Rose said. Well, we didn't have books. '
'Easy enough to catch up if you want to,' said Frances. 'Borrow what you like. '
But the casualness of it made Rose clench her fists. Anything mentioned, they seemed to know it; an idea, or a bit of history. They were in possession of some bank of knowledge: it didn't matter what one asked, they knew it all.
Rose had taken books off the shelves, but she did not enjoy them. It was not that she read slowly, she did: but she was nothing if not persevering, and she stuck at it. A kind of rage filled her as she read, getting between her and the story or the facts she was trying to absorb. It was because these people had all this as a kind of inheritance, and she, Rose...
When Franklin had arrived, and found himself in the complex richnesses of London, he had had days of panic, wishing he had said no to the scholarship. It was too much to expect of him. His father had been a teacher of the lower grades in a Catholic mission school. The priests, seeing that the boy was clever, had encouraged and supported, and the point came when they asked a rich person Franklin would never know who it was if he would add this promising boy to his list of beneficiaries. An expensive undertaking: two years at St Joseph's and then, with luck, university.
When Franklin went from his mission school back to the village, he was secretly ashamed of what his parents' background had been. Still was. A few grass huts in the bush, no electricity, no telephone, no running water, no toilet. The shop was five miles away. In comparison the mission school with its amenities had seemed a rich place. Now, in London, there was a violent dislocation: he was surrounded by such wealth, such wonders, that the mission had to seem paltry, poor. He had stayed for the first days in London with a kindly priest, a friend of those at the mission, who knew that the boy would be in a state of shock, and took him on buses, on the Underground, to the parks, to the markets, to the big shops, the supermarkets, the bank, to eat in restaurants. All this to accustom him, but then he had to go to St Joseph's, a place that seemed like heaven, buildings like illustrations in a picture book scattered about in green fields, and the boys and girls, all white except for two Nigerians who were as strange to him as the whites were, and the teachers, quite different from the Catholic fathers, all so friendly, so kind... he had not had kindness from white people outside the mission school. Colin was in a room along the corridor two doors from his own. To Franklin the little room was fitted out with everything anyone could wish for, including a telephone. It was a little paradise, but he had heard Colin complaining that it was too small. The food the variety of it, the plenty, every meal like a feast, but he had heard grumbles that the food was monotonous. At the mission he had had little to eat but maize porridge and relishes.