Mrs Soames …! Dear Julian, I am now Mrs Soames…. From then on, it had all been as irreversible as falling down a precipice.
Including the bump at the bottom. The utter, stunning shock … followed by the slow awakening … the painful flexing of limbs to see what has been broken, what merely bruised and sprained; and finally the dazed survey of the strange, utterly new landscape … the rocks, the boulders, with here and there the possibility of a path, to somewhere or nowhere, as the case might be.
It must have been two or three weeks after her marriage to Gilbert that Milly began thus to pick herself up after the shock, and to take stock of her situation. She began by facing the enormity of her own folly in marrying him at all: and then, when that quickly proved futile, she began looking for ways to escape.
There were none. None, that is, which would not involve Julian and Cora learning, with gleeful pity, of the failure of her new marriage.
“Poor thing, isn’t it pathetic?” Cora would say, tasting the words on her palate, like rare wine: and “The unwanted wife syndrome,” Julian would comment, with a shrug. He loved to put things in categories.
No. Escape was out of the question. What was left, then, was endurance. What she had brought upon herself, she must live with. Live, and make something of it.
Make something of it? Milly remembered how she had looked around the underground dungeon that Gilbert called the dining-room: she looked at the mountainous mahogany furniture looming out of the grey light that she must henceforth think of as daylight; and for a moment she had covered her eyes. Make something of it? She must be mad!
Yet Milly was not without a certain dogged courage even then—even in those days, when she had not been Milly at all, and her body had not yet undergone the experience of being tested to the uttermost limit, and not found wanting. Yes, even in those days she had had inside her something almost as useful as courage—a defiant uncrushable pride. The sort of pride that can be used—as a mallet can be used if you haven’t got a hammer—as a useful substitute for courage.
And so Milly had uncovered her eyes, and looked again into the lowering shadows which, down here, was all you had of noonday.
“I’ll show you!” she said out loud, into the gloomy great room, her voice sounding reedy and thin in the oppressive silence. “I’ll show you! You won’t defeat me! Just you wait …!”
And straightaway there came into her head a scheme of such boldness, of such devil-may-care bravado, that she caught her breath.
Cushions! For this black cavern of a room she would make bright cushions, scarlet, flame, and emerald! She would scatter them here and there on the black horsehair sofa, and in the shabby great chairs! And flowers, too—dahlias, asters—all the reds and golds and purples of late summer, massed in the centre of that gloomy great table! She would defy the great deathly room, she would hurl colour into its shadows, fling glory into the very face of its darkness: with her own hands, dripping brilliance, she would bring it to its knees!
For a moment, her spirit wavered. Surely there must be some ordinary, practical reason why she couldn’t do anything of the kind?
But there wasn’t. Gilbert was out today, on one of his mysterious errands “to see a man” about something (the days were as yet far off when Gilbert would no longer go out anywhere, but would stay at home, behind closed shutters, watching her) and he had left her plenty of money for the household shopping. He wasn’t mean—one must allow him that, at any rate—and as she stuffed the wad of pound notes into her bag and bustled about getting ready to go shopping for the cushion material and the flowers, Milly found herself indulging in the pious exercise which she had been practising ever more frequently of late—that of listing Gilbert’s good qualities to herself in the faint hope that, if only she could make the list long enough, it might somehow add up to liking him.
Liberal with money. Undemanding. Unfailingly courteous, even when she had angered him. Affectionate—yes, she must allow him that—it was not his fault, after all, if her flesh shrank back at the merest brush of his hand in passing. Helpful about the house, too—sometimes taking over the entire cooking of an evening meal, closeting himself in the scullery for long, mysterious hours, at the end of which he would bring out strange, sour-smelling curries in covered dishes or bitter, spicy vegetable stews. And afterwards, all through the meal, he would watch her face, alert for some tiny grimace, some small, involuntary twist of her mouth, to belie her over-enthusiastic words of praise.
He was helpful, too, about the washing-up—if only she had appreciated that kind of help. It was her fault, not his, if irritation rose into her throat like heartburn as he padded softly about behind her, in and out of the scullery, putting things away, muttering to himself, sometimes, as he did so. Not much, as yet: the muttering seemed, in these early stages, like a mere mannerism, albeit an irritating one.
What else? As she made her way up the area steps, shopping basket in hand, into the unbelievable sunshine, Milly tried to add to the list.
Kind? Well, not unkind, anyway. He had awkward moods sometimes; occasional fits of explosive irritability about nothing; and strange, unpredictable spells of sulking—but in general he was quite nice to Milly, in his stiff, inhibited way. Considerate, too; opening doors for her, carrying trays, inquiring after her comfort. And as to sex, his demands were absolutely nil—whether by his own choice or because he had sensed her distaste, Milly did not know, and the last thing she wanted was to find out. Mercifully, he belonged to a generation which does not expect to talk about these things, and Milly could only feel grateful for the repression—neurosis—whatever it was—which made it possible for them to go to their separate rooms each night without ever having to engage in one single word of discussion about it.
As she hurried through the golden September sunshine towards the main road, Milly added up these qualities for the twentieth time, struggling to make the answer come out different for once. She made herself visualise Gilbert’s pleasure and surprise when he saw the new cushions … and then—who knew?—the sight of his pleasure might make her feel pleased? For a few moments, they would be pleased in unison … and perhaps this would be the beginning of some vague sort of friendliness between them? Or something?
*
The new cushions gleamed out of the darkness like jewels in the deep earth; crimson, scarlet, gold and peacock blue: and the flowers on the great mahogany table seemed to be reflected in a deep pool of colour. She had polished the table as it hadn’t been polished in years, stacking the old bundles of newspaper all up at one end as she worked: and now the old wood shone darkly beneath the blaze of reds and purples, picking up the colours, and throwing them back with a strange, coppery sheen, as though they were on fire.
*
Gilbert stood in the doorway, not speaking, staring in what seemed to be a sort of trance. He stood there so long, and with such a complete absence of reaction, that Milly began to feel quite scared. In the quietness, she began to hear her own heart beating. Was he struck dumb with surprise? Shocked, in some way, by the sudden loss of familiar ugliness? Or was he pleased—so pleased as to be at a loss for words? He seemed to be looking with particular intensity at the table, in its unaccustomed glory.
At last he spoke.
“Why have you been disturbing my papers!” he barked out, in a voice Milly had never heard him use before. “What were you looking for?”
For a moment, Milly was so taken aback that she couldn’t speak. Then: “I wasn’t looking for anything, Gilbert! Truly I wasn’t!” (Why so defensive, though, like a schoolgirl accused of cheating?) “All I was doing…. That is …” (Again this idiotic inflexion of guilt.) “All I was doing was clearing the table…. To make it look nice, Gilbert, for the flowers! I’ve polished it, don’t you see? Don’t you think it looks nice, Gilbert? Now it’s polished? With the flowers …?”
Not even for one second did his glance flicker towards the flowers, to see if they looked nice. The light, shining, silvery eye
s remained fixed on Milly. They were so bright, one might have imagined they were lit up by mercury lighting from within.
“You didn’t find anything, then? You didn’t untie any of the bundles?”—his voice was still high and strange—“Remember, my dear, it will be best if you tell me the truth!”
“But—but Gilbert, there isn’t anything to tell! Of course I didn’t untie the bundles—why should I?—They’re only old newspapers …!”
Her voice stumbled into silence. Under the strange intensity of his gaze she found herself fidgeting, hanging her head. “I—I’m sorry, Gilbert!” she finished, absurdly humble.
Whether it was because of this humbleness, or whether he had somehow satisfied himself that she was speaking the truth, Gilbert began to relax.
“Very well, my dear,” he said stiffly. “I shall have to accept your assurances. But please remember, for the future, that I don’t like anyone to interfere with my papers. Not anyone at all. Do you understand?”
For the next hour or so, he occupied himself in sorting the bundles, and restoring them to their original places on the table.
He would not let Milly help him, and so she sat, idle and ill-at-ease, while he groaned and fumbled through his self-imposed task, peering closely at each dog-eared package, and muttering: sometimes testing the string, to see if it had become rotten over the years: arranging and rearranging, and sighing heavily to himself, until at last he seemed satisfied. He straightened up, and turned to look at Milly.
“There,” he said. “Everything is back in its proper place now, and so that is the end of the matter. We will say no more about it.”
He paused, and as Milly watched, a curious look of cunning came over his face, narrowing and sharpening his features until she was reminded of a weasel.
“I’ve arranged them in a very special way,” he said, watching her closely, “so that I’ll know immediately if you touch them again.”
“But—But of course I wouldn’t dream …!” Milly was beginning indignantly; but Gilbert raised his hand in a small gesture which somehow reduced her to instant silence.
“I said, we will say no more about it,” he repeated, with a strange edge to his voice: and the argument was at an end.
*
It seemed a long time till bedtime. Gilbert made no further reference to the disturbing of his papers, and as to the flowers and the new cushions, he said absolutely nothing at all. The cushion that was in his arm chair—a brilliant scarlet one—he lifted out carefully, and without comment, and set it on the floor, as if it was a cat that had usurped the best seat; and then he settled down, as usual, behind the newspaper.
Milly, sitting opposite, seethed silently with anger and bewilderment; but since she dared not speak, much less argue, her feelings had nothing to feed on, and so gradually, as the evening ticked by, they withered to a small knot of resentment and incomprehension.
Oh, well. Gilbert was in one of his funny moods. He often got crabby and unreasonable in the evening. Evenings were his worst time.
Or that’s what she thought at the time, anyway. She did not know yet, of course, what the nights were going to be like, a little later on.
CHAPTER XIV
WITH AN EFFORT, Milly roused herself. It was quarter past one now, and Mrs Graham still wasn’t back. Milly was going to be late for her next job. By the time Mrs Graham had come in, and by the time she had finished reproaching Professor Graham for whatever it was he was doing wrong there behind the newspaper….
“Arnold!”
Mrs Graham’s voice and the slam of the flat door came almost simultaneously:
“Arnold! Why on earth haven’t you started lunch? Whatever are you waiting for?”
A swirl of briskness and frosty air flicked for a moment at Milly’s domain in the kitchen, and then moved on. Mrs Graham might be reckless in some ways, but not so reckless that she would risk annoying the Daily Help when there was a perfectly good husband available.
“It’s such a waste of time!” she rounded on him again. “There’s no need to wait for me, I’ve told you a million times! You could practically have finished your lunch by now, and given yourself a bit of time to relax before you have to rush back!”
“I am relaxing,” the professor pointed out, placidly. “At least, I was till you came in, my love. And I never have to rush back, as you know very well, dearest. I always leave myself plenty of time.”
He had lowered his newspaper as he spoke, and was blinking at his wife over the top of it with a sort of innocent wonder. Or was he annoying her on purpose?
It was hard to tell, for by now Mrs Graham was launched on a saga of grievance so fluent that nothing he could say, annoying or otherwise, could deflect it even for a moment from its (obviously) well-worn channels:
“If we had a car—” she was saying—and from her tone of voice Milly knew that she must have been saying it for years—“If you’d only get a car, Arnold, we wouldn’t have all this trouble! It would cut your travelling time by an hour a day, at least….”
“But I like my hour’s travelling time,” the professor explained, maddeningly. “It gives me time to collect my thoughts. It’s peaceful.”
“Peaceful!” The word seemed to have touched the very core of Mrs Graham’s annoyance. She flung her coat and scarf on to a peg and came right into the room. “Peaceful! And how peaceful do you think I find it, slogging about in all weathers? Do you realise that I had to wait forty minutes for the bus this morning? Forty minutes, on that icy corner by the library gardens?”
“You must have just missed the twelve twenty-five, then,” observed her husband, consulting his watch interestedly. “If you miss the twelve twenty-five there’s nothing till after one. I find that myself, when I’m coming from the library.”
Whoever it was who first suggested turning swords into ploughshares must have had a shrewd idea of how devastating, in skilled hands, the weapons of sweetness and light can be.
“Oh—you!” cried Mrs Graham, fast losing control of the situation. “I’ve never known anyone so …! Ah, thank you, Mrs Er, we’re just ready …!”
The complete change in her voice and manner, from fishwife to lady of the house, almost made Milly drop the joint, from sheer admiration. What acting! And what made it even more of a tour-de-force was that Mrs Graham surely knew—and knew that Milly knew that she knew—that Milly had heard every word of the dispute across the four feet of space dividing the kitchen from the dining-room.
Pure atavism, of course: a race-memory of the days when servants weren’t quite real, and so it didn’t matter what they heard. And more appropriate—had Mrs Graham but known it—than anyone could have guessed, because Milly, of course, wasn’t quite real. Not her name, nor her way of life, not anything about her. She was a construct: a figment of her own imagination: a splinter off the final, shattering explosion of her former self, shot out into space, and now somehow taken root, like a dragon’s tooth, in Mrs Graham’s kitchen….
“… And did you chop up Alison’s lettuce and mix it in as I showed you, Mrs Er?”
Mrs Graham’s rather school-mistressy tone, and the exaggerated concern with which she peered into her daughter’s plate, annoyed Milly for a moment. Had she not been chopping Alison’s lettuce for a long time now, and never a word of complaint from either the carpet or the plastic seat of the high chair? For a moment, intoxicated by that consciousness of power which is part and parcel of being a Daily Help, she toyed with the idea of Taking Offence: of watching them grovel and squirm, pumping out flattery and blandishments on an absurd scale, in a desperate effort to placate her.
But, noblesse oblige. Like other ruling classes before them, the Daily Helps of today must learn to wield their power decorously, and to resist its heady corruptions.
Besides, by now Milly realised that the fuss about the lettuce wasn’t really about the lettuce at all, nor was it really addressed to her. Mrs Graham was simply trying to reestablish her own image of herself after the quarr
el. Outmatched by her husband, she was going to show herself in control at least of a lettuce leaf.
Lunch was necessarily a rather subdued affair after all this. Mrs Graham took over the carving, as she always did when she wanted to show her husband how late it was, and how there was no time to have him fumbling about at the job; and while the knife flashed this message across the table in a morse-code of lightning strokes, and slices fell from the leg of lamb like grass before the blades of a mower, conversation would have seemed discourteous: a boorish interruption of this fine flow of communication. Even Alison messed her dinner about more quietly than usual, refraining from saying “Da!”, with craftsman’s satisfaction, as each handful landed on the floor. And as to Professor Graham, he showed no signs of being aware of anything at all. With the loose-leaf notebook of his afternoon’s lecture propped in front of him, he accepted with apparent contentment whatever food was set before him, and ate it with good appetite. The only sign he made of being aware that anyone else existed was in the way he clutched absently at his plate and glass every time Milly passed behind his chair on her errands to and from the kitchen: a legacy, this, of years of eating in university canteens, where zealous clearing-up women, like seagulls on the Embankment, snatch food from under the very knife and fork of the unwary. Milly wondered if he would ever learn that she, at least, was not as zealous as all that? Or were the long-term effects of Higher Education irreversible?
*
It was nearly three o’clock by the time Milly got to Mrs Day’s that afternoon: but it didn’t really matter, because Mrs Day was never in. Milly had, in fact, never met her, and apart from that initial telephone call, and later on a message about where to find the key, she had never spoken to her. Thus she didn’t know her at all—or rather, the only Mrs Day she knew was the one she had gradually constructed, clue by clue, from the trail of evidence left around the flat.
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