Around nine o’clock—or sometimes even earlier—Gilbert would lower his paper slowly and rub his eyes with his bony knuckles, prolonging the gesture until Milly’s own eyes felt bruised and she had to look away. Then he would unfold his stiff length from the old chair and stand upright.
“I think I’ll be turning in now,” he would say, and they would exchange a dutiful goodnight kiss, and he would go padding off, around and around the flat, in and out of the rooms, until at last his bedroom door clicked shut with an air of finality, and Milly would let her breath go in a long, shuddering sigh.
As the days went by, her dread lest more than the goodnight kiss would sooner or later be required of her, begun gradually to lessen. He was an old man, after all. But, disconcertingly, her distaste for even the kiss seemed to grow greater, not less, as time went by. The curious feeling of his moustache against her cheek, like a damp nailbrush: the touch of his flabby skin … sometimes it was all she could do not to jerk her head away, or raise her hands in front of her face, as if warding off a blow.
*
And then, nearly a week after the wedding, there had come an evening which Milly would never forget or forgive—though who was the one to be forgiven, she would never know.
It was an evening just like the ones that had gone before, with Milly sitting in her now familiar chair at the side of the fireless grate, watching the faint twitchings of Gilbert’s outspread newspaper, and listening to his heavy breathing behind it. She had not dared to pick up her own book, for fear of provoking him to lay down his newspaper and wait for her to embark on one of those awful attempts at conversation; and as she sat thus, totally without occupation, it slowly dawned on her that this was Monday. It was the evening of the day when Julian and Cora should have received the wedding photograph: and she had forgotten it!
Forgotten it! The moment of supreme triumph, for which she had casually bartered her life, her happiness, and her self-respect, was over. It had come, and it had gone, and it was finished; and she hadn’t even noticed it! All that remained now of that flamboyant gesture of defiance was the price of it: the life-long price which she had contracted, so off-handedly, to pay.
CHAPTER XI
“BARNEY! I SAY, Barney—Oh, I’m sorry! Are you asleep, or something?”
Jacko had switched the light on: now, in deference to Milly’s supposed state of slumber, he disconcertingly snapped it off again.
“There’s a visitor for you!” he whispered considerately through the darkness. “Shall I say you’re asleep?”
By now, Jacko’s highly idiosyncratic technique for not waking people had brought Milly bolt upright on the bed, her heart pounding. Like anyone roused suddenly in unfamiliar surroundings, she was taking a few moments to collect her wits and remember where she was: but in her case, there was the additional problem of having to remember who she was, as well.
Milly Barnes! That’s who! The relief that flooded through her was succeeded by puzzlement. What was the time? Had she been sleeping, or merely deep in reverie? The winter afternoon had still been bright through the window when she had settled on to the bed: now, it was quite dark.
“Put the light on, Jacko, do!” she urged; and then, as he obeyed, she focused her mind on what he had been saying. “A visitor? What sort of a visitor?”
“I say! You look as if the police were after you!” Jacko remarked sympathetically, as the sharp yellow light revealed Milly sitting poised on the very edge of the bed, her outdoor coat clutched round her as if in readiness for flight. Her eyes were still blinking from the alternations of light and dark: under Jacko’s scrutiny, she tried to shake the dazed look from her face, and pushed her hair into place as best she could.
“What sort of a visitor?” she repeated, uneasiness stirring in her as full consciousness returned. “A man or a woman?”
Why it mattered so much, she could not think. Either way, it could mean that she had been tracked down by someone out of her past. But the fact remains that as soon as she heard that the visitor was female, she felt the fear draining out of her limbs, leaving them firm and springy, ready for anything.
“I’ll come down,” she said; and full of curiosity, now, rather than alarm, she set off down the stairs.
The visitor, a rather untidy-looking woman of about forty, in raincoat and trousers, had been left standing in the hall while Jacko came in search of Milly. When she saw Milly coming down the stairs towards her, she looked quite frightened.
“Yes?” said Milly: and then, when the woman still didn’t speak, she went on: “Did you want to see me? I’m Mrs Barnes. Milly Barnes.”
At this, the stranger looked more frightened still, and for one awful moment Milly wondered if she had made some awful mistake … had said the wrong name? had revealed, in some inexplicable way, her true identity? For the first time it dawned on her (in her urgent concern for her own safety, this aspect of her situation had hitherto escaped her) that if people knew who she really was, they would be frightened.
“You wanted to see me?” she repeated, warily; and now at last the woman spoke, her face twitching with sheer nerves.
“Yes, that’s right. Mrs Barnes. It is Mrs Barnes, isn’t it? Yes. You see. That is. I hope you don’t mind my coming round like this?”
Milly hoped so too, fervently. It depended so much on who the woman was, why she had come.
“No, not at all,” she said guardedly: and then listened, with growing puzzlement, while her visitor circled round and round the reason for her presence, never quite daring to pounce.
“I’d like you to be quite, quite honest with me,” she was saying. “I shall quite understand. I mean, I wouldn’t like. That is, I do realise what a very great deal … And how it is nowadays, I mean for everyone, isn’t it?” Here she looked wildly round the little hall as if for moral support. “I hate to ask you, really,” she plunged on: “And of course I know you haven’t…. That is, your time must be…. Well, we all are, aren’t we? And of course. I mean, I do realise that it’s very short notice. It’s not giving you a lot of time, and I’d never have suggested it, only. But I shall quite understand, Mrs Barnes. I should never have asked you, really. But you see, my other woman….”
At the mention of this familiar character, all Milly’s bewilderment cleared.
“When do you want me to come?” she asked; and straightaway all became plain. It seemed that Mrs Lane (for such was the trousered woman’s name) belonged on the same grapevine as the Mrs Day who was a friend of whoever it was who had spied Milly going to work at Mrs Graham’s this morning: she had, Mrs Lane said, heard from “everybody” that Milly was a wonderful worker, reliable, and very quick: and after a little more flattery it became clear that Mrs Lane was wondering—she was just wondering—if all that speed, reliability, and wonderfulness could be hers for forty pence an hour?
How many hours? Why, as many as Milly could condescend to spare….
*
So that was another two afternoons a week, starting tomorrow! Milly went upstairs her mind awhirl with multiples of forty pence and thoughts of what they would buy after the three pounds rent had been subtracted. Why, by the end of tomorrow afternoon, with Mrs Graham’s one pound forty as well, she would be able to pay the week’s rent and put a shilling in the gas-meter! And buy fish and chips …!
“Kevin!” she called, as she reached the top of the stairs. “Jacko! Guess what’s happened!”
They were as delighted for her as she had known they would be; and after a brief and jubilant consultation, it was decided that if she would contribute a shilling for the gas fire, and find some matches somewhere, then they, Jacko and Kevin, would go out and buy pork pies and a tin of Nescafé to celebrate. In Milly’s room, because it was smaller than theirs, and so a shilling’s-worth of heat would go further.
It was the nicest celebration Milly had attended for years; and ended with her helping Jacko and Kevin to write their long-overdue essays on Agrarian Reform in the second half of the Nine
teenth Century. She didn’t know anything about Agrarian Reform, but then Kevin and Jacko didn’t either, and of the three of them, she proved to be the most adept at re-wording passages from the textbook so that they wouldn’t show up as bare-faced copying. Also, she could spell.
She thought idly about taking an economics degree herself; but would it bring in thirty-five pence an hour as reliably as her present avocation? And would a single half-day’s work at it make you famous overnight, as her morning’s work seemed to have done? Would people come round begging you, almost with tears in their eyes, to accept lectureships, the way they came begging for her?
No. On second thoughts, Milly decided against it; and instead, she studied Kevin’s street-map to find the quickest way from Mrs Graham’s flat to Mrs Lane’s home on Castle Hill. It seemed that if she left Mrs Graham’s promptly at two, and took the short cut through the arcade, and then down under the railway arch into the Old Town…. “Fifteen minutes,” predicted Kevin, “No, I’ve done it in seven,” boasted Jacko, “all the way from the bus depot to the top of the Old High Street….” While they bickered, and the last of the shilling’s-worth of gas gulped and died in the hearth, Milly worked out the mileage for herself. Twenty minutes, allowing for getting slightly lost on the way.
*
Actually, she got more than slightly lost: and as she had not managed to leave Mrs Graham’s till ten past two, she was nearly fifteen minutes late, and very out of breath, by the time she lifted the blackened brass door-knocker of The Cedars, Castle Hill. The Old High Street had been steep and winding, and Castle Hill came off it nearly at the top—much further up than it had looked on the map. Milly was very conscious of her flushed face and untidy hair, as well as of her lateness; and she prepared to launch into abject apologies the moment the door should open.
“Call me Phyllis!” was Mrs Lane’s immediate greeting; and before Milly could get out a word, she had added fervently “Please do!” She was wearing the same trousers as yesterday, topped now by a heavy knitted jersey with a much-stretched polo-neck, and almost worn through at the elbows. Brushing aside Milly’s flow of apologies with deprecating little chirrups, she led the way through a cold, lofty hall into a back room which felt even colder, in spite of a small, guttering paraffin heater in the corner.
“Just till we get the coal fires going,” Mrs Lane apologised vaguely, gesturing towards this appliance: and then, looking around her with an air of defeat, she continued: “I don’t know where to ask you to start, Mrs Barnes. I really don’t. It’s got out of hand, it really has. Oh dear!”
Milly tried to think of some way of disagreeing, for politeness’ sake, but the words dried on her lips. The room looked as if nothing had been cleared away or dusted for months. Books and papers loomed top-heavy on every visible surface, and, interlaced among them, stood mugs of congealed tea, lengths of balsa wood, a dismantled tape-recorder, and empty bottles of gin. Over all lay a sort of top-dressing of crumpled garments: shirts, torn vests, ancient corduroy trousers—all waiting to be washed? Ironed? Mended? By Milly?
“This is my husband’s study,” said Phyllis. “His den,” she amended hopefully, as if that might make some sort of difference. “You know what men are!” she added, with a sidelong glance to see how Milly was taking it. “Do you think?” she proceeded; “I mean, the thing is. Well, it’s Eric, you see. My husband. What I want is, Mrs Barnes, if you could try and clean it up a bit? You know—just get it all nice and tidy, but you’ll be careful not to touch anything, won’t you? Eric just goes mad if anything gets touched.”
These instructions made Milly a little thoughtful. Still, forty pence an hour! Besides, this poor woman, with threads of wool dangling from her jersey, seemed so distraught, and was already gazing yearningly at Milly as if she was grateful to her for even looking at the room.
“You couldn’t start straight away, could you?” Phyllis was saying. “Or would you rather have some coffee?”
The alternatives were a little disconcerting, thus presented: but after her long walk up the hill, as well as the four hours’ work that had preceded it, Milly found the courage to settle for the coffee. Besides, she wanted time to think out the task ahead of her, and to learn more about her employer. Already she had sized-up Mrs Lane (or Phyllis, as she must remember to call her) as one of those employers who have at the back of their minds an imaginary dream-home: one which has no relation to the one they are actually living in, but which they believe—and continue to believe—will one day suddenly materialise if they only go on faithfully paying someone forty pence an hour, like sacrificing enough sheep at the temple of Athene. With an employer of this type, a Daily Help’s first task is to get as clear a picture of this imaginary dream-home as she possibly can, so that she can then make all her efforts tend in this direction, or at least appear to do so.
So over coffee, Milly reconnoitred the situation. She discovered that Phyllis Lane saw herself as the presiding genius of a warm, welcoming home, where the atmosphere was easy-going and casual. A home where husband and teenage sons were positively encouraged in their messy hobbies, and were never nagged. In her mind’s eye, Phyllis saw a blazing log fire in that icy hall; she saw an ever-open front door, and a larder bursting with food, so that friends could drop in and find a welcome at any hour of the day or night. All this, it seemed, had been on the verge of realisation for the last eighteen years: and if only Phyllis could manage not to run out of sugar, and to be in when the coal-man called; and if only it wasn’t so difficult parking the car, so that she could shop in bulk…. And if only Eric would understand how difficult it all was….
Her faith that all this would change now that Milly was here, was terrifying: and when, in something like panic, Milly pressed for details of her duties, all she could extract from her new employer was that she, Phyllis, felt that a house should be a home, and so would Milly make sure, when she did the boys’ rooms, not to shift the spare parts of the bicycle Martin had taken to pieces last summer? He had them carefully arranged on the carpet, and so would Milly hoover in between them, being careful of nuts as she went? And if she wouldn’t mind putting clean sheets on Michael’s bed?—they should have been done ages ago, really, but she, Phyllis, hadn’t been able to do it herself, because Michael kept his collection of Bright-O packet-tops on his bed, they were all arranged in sequence, and when he had a hundred of them he was going to send off for an airgun: so would Milly be specially careful not to disarrange them? And the Origami cut-outs they’d had such a craze for over Christmas, they were on the bed too. Oh, and above all, when Milly vacuumed, would she be very careful about the electric train set that was laid out all over the floor? Michael hadn’t played with it since he was eleven, but he was still very particular about people not interfering with it. Milly did understand, didn’t she? Apparently My Other Woman hadn’t grasped the point at all.
“It’ll be nice having the boys’ rooms looking really nice again!” Phyllis concluded wistfully. “It gets beyond me, sometimes, it really does. Boys are so…. After they’ve stopped being children, I mean.”
She smiled, and sighed, and closed her tired eyes for a moment. Behind those drooping lids lay visions of colourful teenage rooms in the Sunday colour-supplements, with Scandinavian wood window-seats, and bright cushions, and one or two brand-new pop records lying carefully-casual on the plain white wood table. My Other Woman had failed to effect the transformation, it was true; but surely this Mrs Barnes would bring it off? After all, she was getting five pence an hour more than My Other Woman.
*
With a good many qualms, Milly set to work. But first there was the usual problem about dusters, and cleaning rags. Like ninety-nine per cent of other employers, Phyllis Lane proffered, with pathetic eagerness to please, bits of torn nylon, and lumps of abandoned knitting. She listened sadly, like a dispirited child, to Milly’s explanation of why they would not do.
“But I’ve got drawers full of them: can’t you use them for anything?” she p
leaded, when Milly turned down the third remnant of tattered quick-knit cardigan, with the buttons still on: and at last, in sorrow and bewilderment, she succumbed to Milly’s by now ruthless demand for something like a piece of old towel. Under further pressure, she unearthed a plastic bucket without a handle, and a cannister of spray-on polish that wouldn’t spray. Silently, Milly promised herself that she would use her very first bit of surplus earnings to buy herself dusters, rags, and proper tins of polish: she would go round equipped with the tools of her trade, like a piano-tuner, or any other specialist.
Mrs Lane had asked her to start in Mr Lane’s study, the room she had first been shown: and for a minute Milly stood looking at it, and felt the panic growing in her. But she defied it. Out of her experience, she whispered to herself: “Do something. Do just one thing. Then your heart will stop beating like this, and you will see your way.”
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