Summary
Rose speaks through the door, asking who is knocking. No verbal replies come, only repeated knocks. Eventually, Mr. Kidd opens the door and tells Rose he knocked. She says she heard him, correcting the statement to “We heard you” when he seems to not be able to hear her. The old man Kidd greets Bert and says he’s been inspecting the building’s water pipes because of the cold weather. Rose invites him to sit down, but Kidd says he is just dropping in to see how things are going. He compliments the cozy atmosphere, and Rose thanks him. He asks Bert if he is going out today, and before Bert can answer, Kidd adds that he went out himself, but just to the corner. Rose agrees that not many people are out today. Kidd says he thinks it is very likely to snow.
Addressing him formally as Mr. Kidd, Rose invites Kidd to sit again, but he says no, it’s all right. Rose comments that it is too bad he has to go out in such cold weather and asks whether he couldn’t send out a helper instead. She asks if he has a woman to help him, but Kidd insists he has no woman. Rose swears she remembers a woman he had, but realizes she might have been “thinking of somewhere else.” Kidd says there are “plenty of women round the corner” but none here.
Kidd becomes distracted by Rose’s rocking chair. He swears he has seen it before, but Rose says it wasn’t there when they moved in: she brought it there herself. She adds that perhaps Mr. Kidd has seen it before somehow, and he concedes that maybe he has. However, he adds that he wouldn’t swear an oath on his memory of the chair.
Bert, having said nothing, yawns and stretches before continuing to look at his magazine. Kidd says he won’t sit down when Mr. Hudd is having some rest after his tea, adding that he has to start cooking his own tea (a British term for an early evening meal). He tells Bert he was admiring Bert’s little van, which he has noticed Bert wraps up for the cold. He says he could hear the smoothness of Bert’s gear changes when he drove off the other morning.
Rose is surprised to learn he could hear the van, commenting that she thought Kidd’s bedroom was at the back of the building. Kidd is confused, then clarifies he wasn’t in bed but was awake and “up and about.” Rose replies that she can’t get up early in cold weather like this; she prefers to take her time because she can. After a pause, Kidd says the room they are currently standing in used to be his bedroom, when he lived there. Rose says she didn’t know that.
Kidd sits in the armchair, saying he will sit down for a little while after all. He asks if the chair was there when they moved in. Rose says it was; Kidd says he can’t remember this chair. Rose asks when this was his bedroom. Kidd says it was a long time ago. After a pause, Rose explains that she was just telling Bert about how she’d been telling Mr. Kidd about Bert’s driving prowess. Kidd agrees that Bert can drive, saying he’s seen Bert “bowl down the road all right.”
Rose tells Mr. Kidd that this is a very nice and comfortable room. Kidd says it’s the best room in the house, and Rose comments that it must get damp downstairs. Kidd says not as bad as upstairs. Rose wants to know more about dampness downstairs, but Kidd insists it’s worse upstairs because the rain gets in through the roof. Another pause occurs, and Rose asks whether anyone lives upstairs. Kidd says there used to be people, but they’re gone now.
Rose asks how many floors Kidd has in the house, and he laughs. He says they had “a good few” floors “in the old days,” but he doesn’t count the floors anymore. Rose says it must be “a bit of job” to keep count. Kidd says he used to count them and never got tired of it. He kept track of everything in the house, and there was a lot to keep his eye on. He says he lost track after his sister died, adding that she was a capable woman who took after his mother. Kidd adds that he thinks his mother “was a Jewess” who didn’t have many children. When Rose asks if his sister had any babies, Kidd simply says she resembled their mother, but she was “taller, of course.”
As Kidd goes on, recalling details about how he stopped counting the floors when his sister died, Rose asks several times what his sister died of. Instead of answering, Kidd says his sister appreciated his help with things and that she had a “lovely boudoir. A beautiful boudoir.” Kidd concludes that he has “made ends meet.” Rose says she and Bert do too. She comments on how the house must be full of renters; Kidd says it is.
Rose asks where Kidd’s bedroom is now. He says he can take his pick. He gets up from the chair and tells Bert to be careful when he goes out because the roads will be no joke. He tells him to “have a good run,” reminding him that it will be dark soon, but not for “a good while yet.” Before exiting, he says, “Arrivederci,” an Italian phrase for bidding farewell to someone. When Kidd is gone, Rose says that she doesn’t believe he ever had the sister he spoke of.
Analysis
In the second scene, the elderly, befuddled landlord, Mr. Kidd, brings a comedic sensibility to this tragicomic play. Building on the theme of miscommunication, Pinter shows Kidd and Rose failing to hear each other properly as they struggle through polite conversation. With Kidd’s bewildered manner, it is easy to look past the fact that he claims to be there to check on the pipes, but he doesn't inspect the plumbing; instead, he is curious to know when Bert is leaving to drive his van. The importance of this curiosity will be revealed later in the play.
Building on the theme of bewilderment, Pinter contributes further to the surrealist atmosphere of the play with Kidd’s descriptions of the house and the neighborhood surrounding it. Perplexingly, he comments on how there are plenty of women around the corner from them but none “here” who could help him run the rooming house. He also is distracted by his indefinite memories of the room’s furniture, mixing up what was there before and what Rose brought with her when she moved in.
Alongside bewilderment is the theme of uncertainty as Rose and Kidd attempt to discuss the seemingly vaporous boundaries of the rooming house. Kidd no longer remembers—or is capable of or willing to count—the number of floors it contains. In reality, the building is unlikely to be more than four to six stories, but Kidd speaks of the difficulty of keeping track of the floors as though the building is expanding and shrinking in size like a living thing. Although he has lived in the house a long time, it seems Kidd has become alienated from his environment.
Kidd’s peculiar behavior continues as he fails to address Rose’s questions directly, instead speaking about his deceased sister, who used to help him keep the rooming house in order. He speaks with affection and nostalgia as he mentions specific details concerning her resemblance to his mother and how lovely her bedroom was. Meanwhile, he won’t answer Rose’s question about how the woman died.
The peculiar description is made even more strange after Kidd leaves the stage: As soon as he had exited, Rose comments—in an instance of dramatic irony—that she doesn’t believe he ever had a sister. With Rose’s comment, Pinter suggests that Kidd is suffering from dementia or another mental health issue. As the man in charge of the rooming house, Kidd’s loose grasp on reality is reflected in the environment as a whole. However, it is unclear whether the environment in the house is strange because Kidd is strange, or if the house has exerted its enigmatic influence over him and the house’s other inhabitants.
