The Master

by Colm Toibin

  The house was, in its own small way, perfect and beautiful, even to those who only knew it from the outside. Its secret, however, was its garden, which was private, secluded, rich with ancient plantings and cultivated with care and taste.

  As soon as he leased the house, Henry had retained George Gammon, a local gardener, part-time. Every day he had some discussion with him about changes which might be made, new plantings and seasonal adjustments, but mainly they spoke about what was blooming now, or likely to bloom soon, how different this year was to last year, and how much work could be soon completed. Both of them then took in the walled space in its detail and its totality. He enjoyed how George Gammon let the silence linger, adding nothing further, and waited until Henry decided it was time to go back to his work before moving away himself.

  The Smiths did not take to Rye. During the ten years they worked for him in Kensington, living in servants’ quarters in his apartment, they dealt with the same merchants each day and frequented the same establishments. They knew many other servants in the immediate environs. For them, a few streets of Kensington represented a village in which they were fully at home. Each morning, Mrs Smith, her expression respectful, but trying also, in a pained and shy way, to be alert and intelligent, took her day’s orders from the novelist. When he was working, these orders were for plain, well-cooked food served with silent discretion by Mr Smith. Sometimes, when there was company, he gave the Smiths several days’ notice and discussed the dishes at some length with the wife. When he was away he did not know what the Smiths did, but he presumed that they took as full a possession of his apartment as they dared and developed many bad habits.

  When he was in residence, however, they were quiet and careful and cautious, and pleased with their employer who was generally, he thought, undemanding. When they had been working with him for six years and knew that he was going abroad after the death of his sister, Mrs Smith had approached him about a personal matter. Later, he realized how much discussion must have taken place between them before they agreed on this course of action. She visibly shook as she spoke. The request was unusual, and most employers, however benign, would have instantly refused, would have been concerned indeed at its forward nature, but he was struck by the energy Mrs Smith put into her speech and her fearful sincerity. He also, of course, understood her great need.

  Her sister was ill, she told him, and would undergo an operation. She needed a place to convalesce. The patient could not look after herself during this brief time, and she had no one else to care for her. Since Mr James would be in Italy for several months and the apartment would, they supposed, be empty, she wondered if there was any possibility that her sister could move into the guest room and be cared for there. She would be gone, of course, before Mr James returned.

  He was glad that he did not ruminate on the matter or seek advice. He made up his mind in that second and told Mrs Smith that, provided she and her husband could meet all her sister’s expenses, then her sister could stay, but the apartment must be empty and silent when he returned from Italy. Once he had spoken he watched his cook trying to contain herself, trying to say thank you, but trying also to go back to her husband with the news as quickly as possible. She walked nervously backwards, thanking him all the while, before turning and fleeing the room.

  He did not mention her sister to Mrs Smith in the days before his departure. He had made the conditions clear and thought it would be indelicate to bring them up again. Nor did he care to see Mrs Smith again in her importuning role. During his time in Italy, therefore, he presumed that Mrs Smith’s sister was causing him no personal expense and that all traces of her would be gone on his return.

  As soon as he came through the door two months later, however, he knew that a sick person was being ministered to in his apartment. He was interested when Mr Smith, who met him in the hallway, made no reference to this fact. When he asked Mr Smith, barely disguising his impatience, kindly to tell his wife that Mr James wished to see her in his study, Mr Smith managed to suggest that this was a normal request which could be conveyed without much concern.

  Mrs Smith seemed braver than at any other time he had seen her. She stood before him quite in possession of herself. Yes, she said, her sister was still here, and suffering from cancer and she, Mrs Smith, was awaiting Mr James’s advice about what to do.

  Had it been a novel, his character would have said something very dry indeed to Mrs Smith, but Henry was aware that her sister lay stricken in a nearby room and that Mrs Smith had a heavy responsibility which he now shared, since the sick woman was under his roof.

  ‘Does the doctor come?’ he asked.

  ‘Sir, he has been here.’

  ‘Could you make sure that he comes again and soon, and that I have a chance to speak to him?’

  The doctor was gloomy and curious. When he wished to know the status of Mrs Smith’s sister in the household, Henry insisted that they stick to medical matters. It was clear, the doctor said, that the lady would need a further operation, but after the operation she would need a great deal of care and he did not know if such care would be forthcoming.

  ‘It costs money, this care. It all costs money.’

  When Henry opened the door for him, Mr Smith was hovering in the hallway.

  ‘Could you see to the operation and let me know what care will be needed subsequently?’ he asked brusquely.

  ‘It will all cost, you must know that, sir,’ the doctor said before he departed.

  Sometime over the next two weeks, as the patient underwent her operation, Henry realized that Mr Smith was drinking. He waited until both Smiths were absent and the housemaid out on a chore before he went into the kitchen and found an empty bottle of whisky and some empty bottles of sweet wine and sherry. Later, he checked through the household accounts but found no evidence that these bottles were acquired at his expense. He felt foolish for snooping in the kitchen and determined that he would not do so again. If the Smiths wished to purchase alcohol, they were free to do so as long as it did not interfere with their work. Mr Smith seemed glazed, so to speak, especially in the late afternoon and early evening, but perhaps this effect was caused as much by the pressures of his sister-in-law’s illness as by the alcohol.

  The news from the hospital once the operation had been declared successful was that the patient would require twenty-four-hour nursing care for at least one month. As far as he could ascertain, Mrs Smith’s sister, until she was well, had nowhere else to go. Since no guests of his own were due to arrive, he would have difficulty, he thought, passing the guest room each day knowing that it was vacant while Mrs Smith’s sister, already familiar with the room, was suffering neglect elsewhere. Mrs Smith’s difficulty would be even greater. He knew that she must be preparing herself for a final onslaught on his pity and decided that he could not bear the aura of preparation in the household before she would approach him, her manner full of abject and grasping humility. He decided to inform her forthwith that he would take her sister into his guest room and pay for her nursing care on the proviso that his own quarters were not disturbed nor his routine affected. Her face, as she listened to the news, seemed to suggest that her fear of him was greater than ever.

  The Smiths were grateful. Once her sister had recovered and returned to her employer Mrs Smith even made a brief, formal speech to tell him so. Perhaps more significant, however, was the fact that his involvement in the sister’s welfare seemed to tie him into the fate of the Smiths. Clearly, should either of them need medical care, or any other sort of care, it would be their employer’s responsibility. He paid them reasonably well, and they had no expenses, Mr Smith wearing his master’s cast-offs and Mrs Smith having no interest in finery, and this led him to presume that they were, as good provident people, saving most of their income towards a happy and easy retirement.

  His agreeing to help them in time of need did not result in better service; nor, on the other hand, did the Smiths’ work worsen in any radical way. Mrs Smith s
till took her instructions every morning and obeyed them as best she could. Mr Smith still appeared to be drinking, but no dreadful loss of decorum was immediately apparent, and it was only when he was scrutinized that his speech and his gait in the latter half of the day seemed laboured. Nonetheless, a certain change took place. Mrs Smith was now capable of discussing with Mr Smith a matter which had nothing to do with the household in the presence of their employer. She knew that Henry treasured silence, and she must have known, too, that he expected her and her husband to discuss private matters only in their own quarters. Yet Henry could not correct her; she had, in the days when he had offered her sister charity, won some invisible battle with him which allowed her to make herself at home in such subtle ways in the household. Looking after her sister, exercising mercy and pity, had shortened the distance between him and Mrs Smith.

  Because he was excited and preoccupied in the months before his move to Rye, he had no memory of the Smiths’ response to the news. As they were growing older, he thought they might enjoy the peace of a small town and the larger facilities of Lamb House. In any case, they made no overt protest, and he made sure that they would not be overburdened by the move, that their main task in these months should be the moving of themselves and their possessions to their new quarters at Rye. One or two of his friends, he knew, had noticed Smith’s efforts to disguise the fact that he was drunk as he served dinner, but he believed that once away from the noisy pressures of London, Smith could be spoken to and guided to sobriety.

  He discovered, as soon as they were installed in the house, that there was a problem. The Smiths were sleeping in the servants’ quarters in the attic. Because there was only one staircase, they had to pass through the first floor of the house, where his study and sleeping quarters were, to get to their room. The floorboards in their room squeaked; one of them especially, which lay directly over his bed, seemed to move in and out of place every time one of the Smiths stepped on it. At night, during those first weeks at Rye, the Smiths ascended to their room at a normal hour, but they did not settle; they moved up and down irregularly, pacing the floorboards, becoming briefly quiet, then agitated once more, indifferent to the repose of their employer who lay below them. Sometimes he could hear their voices, and a few times he heard the sound of a heavy solid object falling to the floor.

  Warren the architect was consulted. The floor, he said, was in good condition; a new set of floorboards would make no difference. The Smiths should be told, he said, to move more quietly, or their sleeping quarters should be relocated to the ground floor. There was, he pointed out, a small room off the pantry which would have space for their bed and could be made suitable for them by creating a larger window and putting up some sensible wallpaper. Thus the Smiths took up residence in a room off the pantry.

  The shopkeepers of Rye did not warm to the Smiths; the butcher did not understand her notes, and took no pleasure in her remonstrances when the cuts he sent were not the cuts she ordered. The baker did not bake the bread she required, and did not find it amusing when she had to return to him on discovering that his rival baker did not produce such bread either, nor any other bread which was to her taste. The grocer did not like her London manners, and soon the list of orders had to be delivered to the grocer by Mr Smith, his wife’s presence being unwelcome.

  The Smiths discovered that Lamb House stood alone in Rye. Around it were smaller and more modest houses which had a parlourmaid and perhaps a part-time cook, but not a couple who had the standing of the Smiths. The houses with like-minded servants were the manor houses and great houses in the countryside, but these servants did not wander in the town as their peers had wandered in Kensington. The Smiths quickly ascertained that there was no one else like them in Rye, that there were to be no casual daily greetings and exchanges of news. Soon, in the shops, they were met with coldness or mild hostility, unlike Burgess Noakes, who was received with warmth and affection everywhere he went.

  Mr and Mrs Smith retreated into Lamb House, Mrs Smith priding herself on never leaving its precincts and never having visited most of Rye’s best-known monuments. In the kitchen, the pantry and the pantry garden she reigned supreme. When she took her orders, she managed a new tone which emphasized her steely competence and willingness to carry out her duties, but did not spare her employer signs of resentment.

  In Kensington Henry had often had guests, but, though he cared about the quality of his own hospitality, the evenings when he entertained were mild distractions. Now, in Rye, he cared a great deal more about his guests, wrote many letters inviting friends to see his new abode, and awaited their arrival and their response to the house with some excitement. Thus the decor and daily cleaning of the guest rooms were essential, as were the quality of the food and the service, which would now include breakfast and luncheon. Mrs Smith was unaccustomed to many guests. At first when it was a novelty he explained to her who was coming and what their needs would be, but soon it became clear to Mrs Smith that there would be a constant stream of guests at Lamb House, and it would be her job to cook for them and ensure their comfort.

  The morning meetings during which he gave her instructions became tense. Nothing she actually said made the difference; merely the set of her face, the silences and the slow, soft sighs. He paid no attention to her new attitude, he told her who was coming and what should be done and did not wait for any response. But after a while she began to detain him with sour comments, alluding to the increased cost of caring for guests, or the dreadful butcher, or the nuisance that was Burgess Noakes. A note of belligerence crept into her voice when more visitors were due. He could not contain his own longing to see old friends and members of his family and found it shocking and irritating that Mrs Smith should express her ill feeling against his guests in such clear terms.

  Her husband, in the meantime, had developed a controlled gait and wooden movements, which many guests mistook for an old-fashioned formality, but which Henry knew to be ordinary drunkenness. He wished he could mention the matter to the Smiths, that he could approach them as Mrs Smith had once approached him, asking for their help, insisting that Smith should cease his drinking. But he did not have the courage to make such demands. He knew, in any case, that in her denials of her husband’s intoxication, Mrs Smith’s vehemence would come to the fore and he did not wish to face that.

  Burgess Noakes, on the other hand, grew more obliging and willing as time went on. He missed nothing and forgot nothing. He did not learn to smile, but he soon knew the names and habits and needs of every guest, and seemed also to know if a telegram warranted an interruption of his master when he had company or whether it should be deposited on the hall stand. He trod the floorboards of his attic room with the utmost discretion.

  Burgess greeted Mrs Smith’s regular banishing of him from the kitchen with indifference. When he was not attending to his duties, he wandered into the depths of Rye where he began to perfect the art of bantam-weight boxing, at which he soon became a champion. He returned home happily, however, and always at the appointed hour, exuding a pride at his position in Lamb House and seeming to know everything which occurred within its confines. As Henry began to suspect Mrs Smith of joining her husband in drink, he knew that if he should ever require an account of the Smiths’ personal habits, he would merely have to consult Burgess Noakes.

  That his guests should be content with their stay and wish to return to Lamb House meant much to him. He enjoyed letters that mentioned past and future visits. He had no close companions in the town or locality; there could be no easy outings for a few hours in the evenings. Thus his visitors were important. He found the waiting for them, the sense of expectation before a visit, the most blissful time of all. He alerted everyone that he spent the morning hours in his study. Having left his guest at breakfast, he loved going there, knowing that they would come together again in the afternoon. In the meantime he would have several hours of solitude or dictation with the Scot. He also relished the days after a guest had de
parted, he enjoyed the peace of the house, as though the visit had been nothing except a battle for solitude which he had finally won.

  Soon, however, his contented solitude could turn to loneliness. On grey, blustery days in the first long winter, his study in Lamb House, and indeed the house itself, could seem like a cage. Both he and the Smiths had been removed from their natural hinterland. He had his work, but he knew that they became, by the end of each day, quietly and effectively intoxicated.

  He was not sure of the extent of Mrs Smith’s drinking. She ran her kitchen smoothly; her cooking, as it were, did not falter. Her appearance in the morning, however, grew more slovenly and her response to the news of more visitors increasingly bellicose. Her hair hung dangerously close to where the pots and pans might be. Nor did the state of her fingernails invite confidence. He wondered if she knew why he had suspended soup when there were visitors, and gravy too, as well as any of the more runny sauces. Mr Smith could not be counted on to serve them safely.

  As he served dinner, Smith managed not to stagger on the way into the room with each dish, but once he turned to leave the room he could not exercise the same control. Henry formed the habit of placing his principal guest facing away from the door. He noticed that once guests at the table saw Smith stagger or falter then they could not stop watching him. His aim was to prevent the matter from becoming a subject for discussion at the dinner table, or among the guests later. He did not want it known in London nor among his small circle of American friends that he employed drunken servants.