The Clothes They Stood Up In by Alan Bennett Page A

what he called “this sloppy way of talking” at work; the least he could ask for at home, he felt, was correct English. So Mrs. Ransome, who normally had very little to say, now tended to say even less.
    When the Ransomes had moved into Naseby Mansions the flats boasted a commissionaire in a plum-colored uniform that matched the color of the building. He had died one afternoon in 1982 as he was hailing a taxi for Mrs. Brabourne on the second floor, who had forgone it in order to let it take him to hospital. None of his successors had shown the same zeal in office or pride in the uniform and eventually the function of commissionaire had merged with that of the caretaker, who was never to be found on the door and seldom to be found anywhere, his lair a hot scullery behind the boiler room where he slept much of the day in an armchair that had been thrown out by one of the tenants.
    On the night in question the caretaker was asleep, though unusually for him not in the armchair but at the theater. On the lookout for a classier type of girl he had decided to attend an adult education course where he had opted to study English; given the opportunity, he had told the lecturer, he would like to become a voracious reader. The lecturer had some exciting though not very well formulated ideas about art and the workplace, and learning he was a caretaker had got him tickets for the play of the same name, thinking the resultant insights would be a stimulant to group interaction. It was an evening the caretaker found no more satisfying than the Ransomes did
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and the insights he gleaned limited: “So far as your actual caretaking was concerned,” he reported to the class, “it was bollocks.” The lecturer consoled himself with the hope that, unknown to the caretaker, the evening might have opened doors. In this he was right: the doors in question belonged to the Ransomes’ flat.
    The police came around eventually, though there was more to it than picking up the phone. The thieves had done that anyway, all three phones in fact, neatly snipping off the wire flush with the skirting board so that, with no answer from the flat opposite (“Sharing time in Portugal, probably,” Mr. Ransome said, “or at a big band concert”), he was forced to sally forth in search of a phone box. “No joke,” as he said to Mrs. Ransome now that phone boxes doubled as public conveniences. The first two Mr. Ransome tried didn’t even do that, urinals solely, the phone long since ripped out. A mobile would have been the answer, of course, but Mr. Ransome had resisted this innovation (“Betrays a lack of organization”), as he resisted most innovations except those in the sphere of stereophonic reproduction.
    He wandered on through deserted streets, wondering how people managed. The pubs had closed, the only place open a launderette with, in the window, a pay phone. This struck Mr. Ransome as a stroke of luck; never having had cause to use such an establishment he had not realized that washing clothes ran to such a facility; but being new to launderettes meant also that he was not certain if someone who was not actually washing clothes was permitted to take advantage of it. However, the phone was currently being used by the sole occupant of the place, an old lady in two overcoats who had plainly not laundered her clothes in some time, so Mr. Ransome took courage.
    She was standing with the phone pressed to her dirty ear, not talking, but not really listening either.
    â€œCould you hurry, please,” Mr. Ransome said. “This is an emergency.”
    â€œSo is this, dear,” said the woman. “I’m calling Padstow, only they’re not answering.”
    â€œI want to call the police,” said Mr. Ransome.
    â€œBeen attacked, have you?” said the woman. “I was attacked last week. It’s par for the course these days. He was only a toddler. It’s ringing but