Ruth Joyner then turned to domestic service. She took a situation as kitchen-maid in the house of a retired grazier. She would sit cutting the vegetables into shapes. Or, standing at the full sink, she would sing the hymns she remembered from Home. Until the cook objected, who was bringing out her own niece from Cork, and had never been accustomed to associate with any but Catholic girls.
Ruth had worked in several large houses before she came to that of Mrs Chalmers-Robinson, which was, in fact, her final situation, and which remained with her in memory as the most significant phase of her independent life. Though why, it was difficult to say. Certainly she met her husband. Certainly the house was large, and white, and solid, with a magnolia tree standing at the door. But Mrs Chalmers-Robinson herself was the flimsiest of women, and her servant Ruth Joyner received nothing of material advantage from her mistress, beyond her wages, and a few cast-off dresses she would have been too embarrassed to wear. But the house of the Chalmers-Robinsons (for there was a Mister, too) remained important in Ruth Joyner’s mind.
She had been advised by an employment agency to apply for the situation, which was described as that of house-parlourmaid.
“But I have had no experience,” the girl suggested.
“It does not matter,” said the woman.
Ruth had discovered a great deal did not matter, but at each fresh piece of evidence her brow would grow corrugated, and her eyes wear an expression of distress.
Even Mrs Chalmers-Robinson, who was on her way to a luncheon engagement, and who had just recovered a very pretty sapphire brooch on which she had recently claimed the insurance, did not seem to think it mattered greatly.
“We shall give you a trial,” she said, “Ruth – isn’t it? How amusing! I have never had a maid called Ruth. I think I shall like you. And I am quite easy. There is a cook, too, and my personal maid. The gardener and chauffeur need not concern you. Both the men live out.”
Ruth looked at Mrs Chalmers-Robinson. She had never met anyone quite so dazzling, or so fragmentary.
“Oh, and my husband, I forgot to say, he is in business,” the brilliant lady thought to add. “He is away a good deal.”
Mrs Chalmers-Robinson looked at Ruth, and decided the face was about as flat as a marble tombstone. But one that was waiting to be inscribed. (She would make an effort to remember that, and work it up as a remark for luncheon.) But she did so hope she had discovered in this girl something truly dependable and solid. (If she contemplated Ruth Joyner literally as some thing, it was because she did long for marble, or some substance that would not give way beneath her weight and needs, like the elastic souls of human beings.)
Then Mrs Chalmers-Robinson got up, in mock haste, protesting mock hungrily:
“Now I must fly to this wretched lunch!”
And gashed her new maid with a smile.
Ruth said:
“Yes, madam. I hope you will enjoy yourself.”
To the mistress, it sounded quaint. But touching.
“Oh, we shall see!” She laughed. “One never can tell!”
She allowed herself to feel sad for a little in the car, but turned it into an agreeable sensation.
Ruth had soon accustomed herself to life at the Chalmers-Robinsons’. She was quite perfect, Mrs Chalmers-Robinson remarked to her husband – not that perfection does not always have its faults – and it had to be admitted Ruth was slow, that she breathed too hard when handing the vegetables, and preferred not to hear the telephone. Then, sometimes, she would stand at the front door, particularly at evening, as if looking out on a village street. Her mistress intended to mention that, but failed to do so, perhaps even out of delicacy, or affection. So the massive girl continued to stand in the doorway, in the porch, beside the magnolia tree, and as the details of her dress and body, from the points of her starched cap to the toes of her blancoed shoes, dissolved in evening, she might have been some species of moth, or guardian spirit, poised on magnolia wings before huge, flapping flight.
For one so laborious, she moved very quietly, and succeeded in a way in permeating a house which, until then, had worn rather a deserted air. If the flour which dusts a big yellow cottage loaf had fallen on the marquetry table, where the visiting cards were left in a salver, it would have appeared less unnatural after the new maid’s arrival.
Once Mr Chalmers-Robinson, on returning from a club at dusk, had brushed against her in the entrance.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” she said. “I was listening to the locusts.”
“Oh!” he jerked back. “The what? Yes! Damn pests are enough to burst anybody’s ear-drums!”
What did one say, he wondered, to maids?
“I am glad you came, sir, tonight. There is something good,” she announced. “There is crumb cutlets and diplomatic pudding.”
So that he began to feel guilty, and realized he was a stranger in his own house.
Mr Chalmers-Robinson preferred clubs, where he could come and go as he pleased, without becoming involved in intimate relationships, or irritated by insubstantial furniture. He liked men better than women, not as human beings, but in the context of their achievement and public lives. Women were too apt to reduce everything to a personal level, at which his self-importance began to appear dubious. He resented and avoided such a state of affairs, except when the sexual impulse caused him to run the risk. Then the personal did add somewhat to the pleasurable, and he could always write off his better judgment as the victim of feminine dishonesty. He was certainly attractive to women, in his well-cut English suits, smelling of brilliantine and cigars, and he accepted the favours of a few. If he ceased to find his wife attractive after he had bought her, he continued to admire her ability for getting out of tight corners, and eschewed divorce perhaps for that very reason.
E. K. Chalmers-Robinson (Bags to those who claimed to be his friends) was himself an expert at tight corners, though admittedly there had been one or two at which he had failed to make the turn. One such minor crash carried off a yacht, a promising colt, a Sèvres dinner service, and the personal maid, soon after Ruth Joyner appeared.
“My husband is a business genius, but no genius is infallible,” Mrs Chalmers-Robinson explained. “And Sèvres, one has to face it, is just a little bit – well, blue.”
“I suppose so, madam,” Ruth agreed.
She liked genuinely to please, for which, all her life, she remained the friend of children.
Her mistress continued:
“Between ourselves, Washbourne has always been something of a trial. I used to hope it was only gallstones, but was forced gradually to the conclusion that she is a selfish old creature. You, Ruth, I am going to ask to take on a very few of her duties. No doubt it will be amusing for you to lay out my clothes, and hand me one or two things when I dress.”
“Of course, madam,” Ruth said.
And was soon initiated into mysteries she had never suspected.
Mrs Chalmers-Robinson had reached the stage of social evolution where appearance is not an end, but a martyrdom. Never for a moment must she cease tempering the instrument of her self-torture. She was for ever trying on and putting off, patting and smoothing, forcing and easing, peering into mirrors with hope, and retreating in disgust. She would hate herself bitterly, bitterly, at moments, but often at the eleventh hour, when she had worn herself to a frazzle, she would achieve an unexpected triumph by dint of a few slashes and a judicious diamond. Then she would look at herself in the glass, biting her still doubtful mouth – a Minerva in a beige cloche.
She would breathe:
“Quickly! Quickly! The side pieces.”
And Ruth would hand the little whisks of hair which the goddess used to wire beneath her helmet, for motoring, or luncheon.
But Mrs Chalmers-Robinson was not all on the surface. Not by any means.
Once she confided in her maid:
“I am going to let you into a secret, Ruth, because you at least have shown me loyalty and affection. I am thinking of
taking up Christian Science. I feel it will be so good for me.”
“If it is what a person needs,” hesitated the slow maid.
Once her mistress had despatched her to the bay with a toy bucket to fetch sea-water for her pearls, because that was what the pearls needed.
“Oh, what I need!” Mrs Chalmers-Robinson sighed. “I did at one time seriously consider going over to Rome. Because, as you realize, I have such an insatiable craving for beauty, splendour. But I had to give up all thought of it in the end. Quite frankly, I could not have faced my friends.”
“I believe,” Ruth began.
But Mrs Chalmers-Robinson had already left to keep an appointment, so she did not hear what her maid believed, and the latter was glad, because her struggling tongue could not have conveyed that infinite simplicity.
Alone in the house – for the cook would retire into livery indolence, and the gardener had a down on somebody, and the chauffeur was almost never there, for driving the mistress about the town – the maid would attempt to express her belief, not in words, nor in the attitudes of orthodox worship, but in the surrender of herself to a state of passive adoration, in which she would allow her substantial body to dissolve into a loveliness of air and light, magnolia scent, and dove psalmody. Or, in the performance of her duties, polishing plate, scrubbing floors, mending the abandoned stockings, gathering the slithery dresses from where they had fallen, searching carpets for silverfish, and furs for moth, she could have been offering up the active essence of her being in unstinted praise. And had some left over for a further expression of faith to which she had not been led. Whenever the door-bell rang, she would search the faces of strangers to discover whether she would be required to testify. Always it seemed that some of her strength would be left over to give, for, willing though she was to sacrifice herself in any way to her mistress, the latter would never emerge from her own distraction to receive.
So the intentions of the maid haunted the house. They lay rejected on the carpets of the empty rooms.
Not always empty, of course. There were the luncheons, and the dinners, but preferably the luncheons, for there the wives were without their husbands, and their minds could move more nimbly divested of the weight: wives who had stupid husbands were in a position to be as clever as they wished, whereas stupid wives might now put their stupidity to its fullest, its most profitable use.
It was the period when hostesses were discovering cuisine, and introducing to their tables vol-au-vent, sole Véronique, beignets au fromage and tournedos Lulu Wattier, forcing their husbands into clubs, hotels, even railway stations, in their longing for the stench of corned beef. Mrs Chalmers-Robinson in particular, was famous for her amusing luncheons, at which she would receive the wives of graziers – so safe – barristers, solicitors, bankers, doctors, the Navy – but never the Army – and with discretion, the wives of storekeepers, some of whom, by that time, had become rich, useful, and therefore, tolerable. Many of the ladies she entertained, the hostess hardly knew, and these she liked best of all. How she would glitter for the ones who had not yet dared venture on the Christian name.
Mrs Chalmers-Robinson had been christened Madge, but developed into Jinny in the course of things. Those who were really in the know, those whom she simply adored, or with whom she shared some of the secrets, would refer to her as “Jinny Chalmers”, while those whom she chose to hold at bay, would see her in their mind’s eye as “that old Ginny Robinson”. And it was not true. Of course she would not deny that she took a drop of something if she happened to be feeling tired, but would drink it down quickly because she so loathed the taste, and later on, when her nerves demanded assistance, and Christian Science would not always work, she did cultivate the habit of standing a glass behind a vase.
But before a luncheon, Mrs Chalmers-Robinson would invariably dazzle. She would come into the dining-room, to move the cutlery about on the table, and add two or three little Murano bowls filled with different brands of cigarettes.
Even if she felt like frowning, she would not let herself. She might say:
“How I wish I could sit down on my own to a nice, quiet grill, with you to wait on me, and tell me something interesting. But I must congratulate you, Ruth. You have everything looking perfect.”
Although it was at her own reflection that she looked, and touched just once – she would not allow herself more – touched her inexorable skin. Then, quickly, she would moisten her mouth until it shone, and widen her eyes as if she had just woken. Her eyes had remained so lovely, they were terrifying in the face. Such a blaze of blue. They should have given pleasure.
Just then the bell would start ringing, and Ruth running, to admit the ladies who were arriving. The ladies would be exhausted from all the committees they had sat on, charity balls at which they had danced, race meetings to which they had worn their most controversial clothes. They had been working so hard at everything they had barely strength left to hold a brandy cruster.
The year Ruth Joyner started work at the Chalmers-Robinsons’, the ladies were wearing monkey fur. When the girl first encountered that insinuating stuff it made her go cold. The idea of monkeys! Then she heard it was amusing, and perhaps it was, the live fur of dead monkeys, that strayed down from hats, and into conversation, until forcibly ejected. In the drawing-room, the talk would be all of fur and people. Ladies sat stroking their dreamy wisps, while the smoke reached out and fingered, like the hands of monkeys.
Before one lunch, which Ruth Joyner had cause to remember, a lady told the company of some acquaintance common to them all who was dying of cancer. It seemed ill-timed. Several of the ladies withdrew inside their sad fur, others began knotting the fringes. One spilled her brandy cruster, and at least her immediate neighbours were able to assist in the mopping. Until the conversation could resume its trajectory of smoke, violet-scented, where for a moment there had been the stench of sick, drooping monkeys.
Everyone felt far better in the dining-room, where Ruth and an elderly woman called May, who came in when help was needed, were soon moving in their creaking white behind the chairs of monkey-ladies.
Mrs Chalmers-Robinson kept her eye on everyone, while giving the impression she was eating. She could knit any sort of party together. She heard everything, and rumbles too.
She whispered:
“Another of the little soles, Ruth, for Mrs du Plessy. Ah, yes, Marion, they are too innocent to refuse!”
Or, very, very soft:
“Surely you have not forgotten, May, which is the left side?”
But the wine had contented everyone. And already, again, there was a smoke, blurry and blue, of released violets, it could have been.
At the end, when a big swan in spun sugar was fetched in, the ladies clapped their rings together. It was so successful.
Ruth herself was delighted with the cook’s triumphant swan. She could not resist remarking to a lady as she passed behind:
“It was the devil to make, you know. And has got a bomb inside of it.”
Which the visitor considered inexperienced, though comical.
Dressed in polka dots, and altogether devoid of fur, the lady was of some importance, if no fashion. She was the daughter of an English lord, a fact which roused the respect of elegant women who might otherwise have neglected. Beside her sat a barrister’s wife. They called her Magda. Magda was amusing, it seemed, though there were nicer souls who considered her coarse. It was certainly daring of the hostess to seat the barrister’s wife beside the Honourable, but daring Jinny Chalmers had always been.
After lunch Magda visibly eased some elastic part of her clothing, and began to light one of her cigars. A few of the ladies were thrilled to see.
“These weeds have on many occasions almost led to my divorce,” Magda confessed to her Honourable neighbour. “I hope you will decide, like my husband, to stick it out.”
She spoke in a decidedly deep voice, which vibrated through several of the ladies present, and thrilled almost as m
uch as the cigar.
But the Honourable threw up her head, and laughed. Early in life, in the absence of other distinguishing qualities, she had decided on good nature.
The other ladies glanced at her skin, which was white and almost unprotected, whereas they themselves had shaded their faces with orange, with mauve, even with green, not so much to impress one another, as to give them the courage to confront themselves.
Now Magda, who had tossed off the dregs of her wine, and planted her elbows in the table, remarked, perhaps to the ash of her cigar:
“Who’s for stinking out the rabbits?”
But very quickly turned to her Honourable neighbour, drawing her into a confidence, of which the latter humbly hoped she might be worthy.
“Or should we say: monkeys?” Magda asked.
But her strings so muted that the other ladies, however they strained, failed to hear.
“Did you ever see,” – the barrister’s wife was frowning now – “a bottomful of monkeys? That is to say, a cageful of blooming monkey bottoms?”
Magda could not spit it out too hard.
“In fur pants?”
It was provoking that everyone but the distinguished visitor had missed it, especially when the latter threw back her head, in her most characteristic attitude of defence, and let out a noise so surprising that she herself was startled, by what, in fact, had issued out of memory, where as a little girl on a cold morning, she heard a gamekeeper deride his own performance over an easy bird.
On intercepting that animal sound, some of the ladies looked at their hands, kinder ones thought to gibber. But the parlourmaid offered the important guest a dish of chocolates, seeing that she had begun to enjoy herself at last amongst the monkey-ladies. The Honourable Polka Dots accepted a chocolate with trembling fingers, and after rejecting the noisy foil, plunged the chocolate into her mouth, from which there trickled a trace of unsuspected liqueur, at one corner, over the smear of lip-salve with which she had dared anoint herself.
The daughter of the lord remained with Ruth Joyner, not because the guest at table was in any way connected with what came after in the drawing-room, rather as some inconsequential, yet in some way fateful presence in a dream – Ruth did, indeed, dream about her once or twice – a stone figure, featureless, anonymous, stationed at a still unopened door.
Riders In the Chariot Page 31