Late Call

by Angus Wilson

  She’d quite scared herself the evening of that play. Having high blood pressure gave people these morbid fancies; but you had to be careful because a lot of worrying like that would send the blood pressure rushing up. Anyway, with all their religions and philosophy and that, they hadn’t solved these problems in thousands of years, so what price an ignorant old woman like her taking them on? It would all be the same in a hundred years, that’s all you could say. That and do your best, which she’d tried to do. She’d done her stint of hard work in her day. Arthur seemed as pleased as Punch with life—she’d spent her ^200 gratuity in paying all his debts, but what did he care about that? As to the family, with all that education what did they want with her? She was grateful to them for being so kind and she tried to do a good part by them where she could; for the rest she could repay them best by keeping her trap shut. She’d thought this again and again as she watched some of the old residents fretting their days away with nagging and groaning, and what was sauce for the goose was sauce for the gander.

  Morbid fancies apart, one problem did vex her at spare moments —as now when she had got back from shopping, or between programmes and books, or in the evening interval just before the family returned. Should she write to Miss Priest? She knew the address now—the hotel’s name had slipped through into the newspaper reports. A woman reporter had interviewed Miss Priest there. “A tall well-dressed white-haired woman looking younger than her years, Miss Priest laughed at my suggestion that many in her position would have fled from the scene of such tragic association as soon as they were able. ‘I can’t answer for many, can I?’ she told me. ‘But I shan’t miss Theodora less by leaving Ibiza. The best I can do for her is to stay here and help the police as much as I can in their investigation.’ “ Sylvia had recognised immediately in this the good sense and courage she had so liked all those years ago. But the reporter had added a comment, “It was a point of view certainly. But as I looked back at the hotel up to the balconies with their showers of purple bougainvillea pouring down in the harsh sunlight, I didn’t envy Miss Priest her continued stay even in so romantic and comfortable a luxury hotel.” “Don’t cast nasturtiums”—it came back to Sylvia from the Rectory days where cook used to say it; she would like to have written it on a postcard and sent it to the reporter woman. She was quite sure that Miss Priest would never be callous. But you can’t write and tell someone that. What could she write? To thank Miss Priest for having offered an ordinary working woman like herself friendship; to apologise for not having accepted it; to explain that she had been held back by shyness, and something else, caution—if you don’t hold your hand out you won’t get it bitten? As if Miss Priest, who had travelled everywhere and had hundreds of friends, would have cared about the silly reserves of a manageress of a little hotel—yet now, perhaps, even if she didn’t remember Sylvia’s name, any letter of friendship . . . She went up to her own room and took out her writing pad. The telephone rang. She almost decided to let it ring unanswered; as like as not, by the time she got down to Harold’s study, they would have rung off. But after all it was Harold’s house and Harold had a right to his messages.

  “Hullo? Oh, Mrs. Bartley. I’m afraid Harold’s left for school. Well, you knew that. Oh? Yes, of course. Well, anything I can do. I see. Yes. Yes. Oh! Oh dear, I don’t know! I’m not at all clever, you know. Of course, I don’t understand about it, but if you and Harold both take that view, I’m sure there must be ... Well, I’m good with figures. Oh, I see. Not really. I very often used to type the menus and that, and if the receptionist was away . . . All with two fingers, you know. If it would really help. Oh, I don’t think that would be necessary. Well, we could talk about that later. I’d like to think about it. Shall I ring you up again? About seven. Yes. Of course.”

  So there it was. And of course she must do it, since Harold was so concerned about this Goodchild’s meadow business. But to be truthful she hoped the job wouldn’t take long, for Muriel Bartley’s smart brightness scared her a bit, and then there was her little afternoon rest to consider, and now that she’d become quite keen on some of the after tea children’s programmes she didn’t want to miss them.

  Harold was delighted. “I can’t take too prominent a part in this little public agitation, as Muriel knows, with my position as headmaster. The County Council might start objecting. But I still feel I set the thing in motion. And to know that one of the family’s helping ...”

  Sylvia was warmed by his obvious satisfaction. “Well, I’ll do my best, dear.”

  “Oh, you’ll do it perfectly. It’s quite a routine little job. Or at least I know nothing about it, but I don’t see Muriel slave driving you. I’m the last person, you know, Mother, to want you to strain yourself in any way. You’re under doctor’s orders. But I have been a bit concerned . . . Well, in general, you know retirement’s not an easy thing and we don’t want you getting net curtainitis.” He waved his hand towards the heavy flame velvet curtains with which Beth had gone splash in the sitting room. “It’s only an adaptation malady, of course, but ...”

  So the Zephyr dropped Sylvia each morning at Muriel Bartley’s as Harold went to the school; and she walked back each midday through the bracing March sunlight, unless it rained, when Muriel took her home in the Vauxhall. She felt killed by kindness.

  Muriel Bartley’s home was certainly a strange setting to work in—a twin to Harold’s, called “Sorbetts” after some old farm that had been there; but not at all alike inside. Muriel in her morning attire of black trousers, striped silk shirt and golden Chinese slippers made that clear the first day.

  “I’m afraid it’s not contemporary here. I like old things, or more perhaps the old style. And then I’m a terrible collector. The things I’ve collected since Geoff and I have gone on these cruises in the last few years. Do you like my dolls? And the china? And my glass? Oh! I don’t know. Sometimes I think I’ll sell it all up and start afresh. After all, it’s the collecting that’s the fun. But I don’t really get a lot of time for the house by the time I’ve finished bossing everyone around. That’s my trouble, I’m a great bosser. You musn’t let me push you around. Just hit back. Like all bullies, I crumple up quickly.”

  Muriel had her own little work room, the equivalent of Harold’s study. It was quite plain—all efficiency furniture, except for a little cocktail bar that she’d cleverly squeezed into one corner. “I couldn’t stand someone in the room I’m working in. It’d give me the jim jams. Especially another woman. I expect you feel the same. Two old hens together?” She laughed and Sylvia laughed too in relief.

  Each day then Sylvia sat on a precarious little painted wooden chair at a precarious little painted wooden table in the drawing room surrounded by the French style suite—Louis something, Muriel said it was—upholstered in powder-blue figured satin, except for two deep chintz-covered sofas in which, as Muriel said, “You soon sank never to rise again.” There was only just room for the typewriter on the table, so that the envelopes and directories and leaflets were all ranged at her feet on the thick pile, powder-blue, fitted carpet. On the first morning it took her some time to forget the distraction of all the objects that surrounded her—the blue satin oval panels each hung with Cries of London in white frames, the hundred or so dolls in national dress in the cabinet before her, the rows of ships in bottles, and Venetian glass swans and paperweights in the cabinet behind her, and to her left the china cabinet in which poodles and ladies in crinolines and rose-entwined country cottages all jostled together among white china baskets, see-no-evil monkeys and a huge china Cheshire cat with a long neck and one eye closed in a sexy wink. There was something interesting everywhere to distract her from the names and addresses which she copied from the directories to the envelopes.

  However, as Harold had said, it proved to be a routine little job. There were three different printed leaflets—one for private residents, another for people in business and another for clubs and societies; Sylvia’s task was to collect addresses from t
he directories and type them on the envelopes. She could in fact make only one mistake—that of putting the wrong leaflets into the wrong envelopes. Once she’d got used to working in such a fancy setting and had ceased to listen for Muriel’s footsteps she found that she could work very quickly. Soon she was typing and sorting almost automatically, while thinking over yesterday’s episode of “Down Our Way” or of the new one about prison wardresses—how was that nice little Scotch wardress going to prove to the up-to-date and thoroughly fair Governor that she hadn’t smuggled cigarettes into the sick bay when everyone of the other wardresses was in league against her? The pleasure of yesterday’s viewing and reading merged happily into the prospect of the afternoon before her. She knew of course from another book that the Queen eventually got tired of the Duchess’s airs and graces and quarrelled with her, but this was a historical novel and you couldn’t always tell how things would go in them, besides the heroine was a young lady-in-waiting torn between love for the poor bullied Anne and admiration for the violent Sarah; it was difficult to know which side she would choose when things finally came to a head. It was usually midday before Sylvia had time to turn around.

  Time to go home—or almost. For there’s always a fly in the ointment. Midday brought Muriel, changed from trousers into a suit for attendance at an afternoon committee or just in order to run down to one of the four branches of Hartley’s to make things hum—she did all the firm’s books in her little office at home.

  “How about a little tipple for a good little girl? What! Seventy-eight addresses this morning! You deserve a double for that!” And off to the little bar they went, where Sylvia hoisted herself with some difficulty on to a swivel stool. From there she stared at the row of jugs on the back shelf. The first had a girl’s head peeping out from the inside, then each jug showed a little more of her as she climbed out with no clothes on; at last the girl was completely out of the jug, clasping it in her arms and showing her sit-down-upon while she looked back saucily over her shoulder. Sylvia always had her favourite gin and it, and enjoyed it, or would have done had it not been for keeping up with Muriel’s talk.

  “So you haven’t travelled abroad? Oh, well, I don’t know that you’ve missed much. The sun’s nice, of course. But every year I say to Geoff, ‘That’s the last time’. What with the food, and then some of the prices are daylight robbery. It’s all much the same anyway—the Northern Capitals, Greek Islands, we’ve done the lot. But still you can usually get a good game of poker. And then Geoff and I enjoy dancing. Yes, it seems a pity not to travel.”

  “The hotel always kept me too busy to travel.”

  “Oh, well, business must come first of course. And then your old man being a bit silly about money. . . . Oh I know all about it, Harold told me. ‘Don’t lend my Dad anything’, he said before you arrived. Not that Geoff and I do lend. If you’re going to give, give to charity is our motto. Do you do any work for the Red Cross? Or probably more for the Women’s Toc H, with the Captain an Old Contemptible?”

  “I know I should have done, but in the hotel business . . .”

  “Not being your own mistress, of course. . . . Harold told me of the bust up you had when he was a kid. Shame! I really think I’d up and leave Geoff if he touched the business. ... I don’t know how it is, but Geoff and I have always been the same—we’re both money makers. But we do try to give to charity. You can earn your lolly and have a good time with it, but remember the poor devils that haven’t had the same break, that’s what we always say. Now this afternoon, for instance, I’m on this committee for the orphans through the Townswomen’s Guild. Poor damned kids that nobody wants. But you’ve had a hard life yourself, Harold told me. You’ll know what I mean. Silly isn’t it, really, gambling? I mean I like a little flutter. But when it breaks up the home . . .”

  “I don’t know what Harold’s said, but you musn’t think ...”

  “Oh, don’t worry! We like the old boy, Geoff and me. He’s a bit of an old rip, of course. But he’s a good sport, you can see that. Oh no, it’s more that we felt sorry for you. I said to Geoff that first night we met you at ‘The Sycamores’, ‘Harold’s mother’s been through it all right.’ You can always tell by the eyes.”

  During the whole of that first week at Muriel Hartley’s Sylvia found that she eventually sat down to her lunchtime snack hot with a mixture of shame and irritation. She could never quite understand it, for no one could be more lively and kind than Muriel. And no one did more for others—if it wasn’t “the damned kids that nobody wanted” it was sure to be “the poor devils who can’t see”, or “the blighters that are born a bit wonky in the head”—so many causes that Sylvia had never got round to helping. Not that Muriel was preachy about it, not at all, she always understood exactly why Sylvia had not had time—rotten childhood, Arthur’s gambling, the crash at Paignton, Iris’s death—she seemed to know everything that had gone wrong in Sylvia’s life, and some things even that she’d forgotten. Nobody could be more praising of the work you did—”I’ve never seen anything like it. You eat the work up. If we don’t save Goodchild’s meadow after all your efforts, I’m damned well sure we never will.” She was always appreciative. And yet Sylvia had indigestion every day by the time she took her afternoon rest. Perhaps it was the gin and it; yet she hardly liked to refuse it, for Muriel would think she was going pussyfoot or something.

  On the Wednesday of the second week, the last envelope was filled, addressed and sealed. Muriel was a bit taken aback. “What are we going to give you to do now?”

  Sylvia felt most distressed. “Oh, there’s no need, I’m perfectly . . . Unless of course I can be of use.”

  “Oh, I don’t know what really. A promise is a promise though.”

  “Now, Mrs. Bartley, if Harold’s said . . .”

  “Nobody’s said anything. Of course not. Besides, a good cause can’t afford to lose good workers.” And sure enough she produced another little job that needed doing.

  “Now don’t let me down over this, Mrs. C., I’ve stuck my neck out properly. But I don’t see why you shouldn’t manage it. You did the envelopes in double quick time. Of course, this is harder. Now what you’ve got to do . . .” And she explained to Sylvia that “The Save the Meadow League”—for that’s what they were called now—had made a counter proposal to the Corporation. They all agreed—none more than Harold and the Bartleys—that an extension of executive type housing was needed to give Carshall that mixed, all status quality that the new town pioneers had intended. They suggested that, to avoid encroaching on the meadow belt, the Ministry should be persuaded to agree to a small extension of the town into the surrounding country. As it so happened, Muriel explained, the farmer who rented Goodchild’s meadow owned suitable land for building right on the edge of the town, so if he sold that to the Corporation nobody would be the loser.

  Sylvia didn’t quite understand it all. But that wasn’t really necessary. The bright sparks on the committee had already been through the Reith Commission Report and Carshall Corporation’s annual reports and those of the other New Towns. Muriel gave Sylvia a list of references to copy out from all the documents. She had only to arrange them under suitable headings: Agricultural Belts, Compulsory Purchase of Agricultural Land, Restricted Leases, Multi Status Housing, and so on.

  “Harold’s always talking about the need to settle you in here. Well, after this lot, you’ll be able to teach the General Manager about his business.”

  The new task cost Sylvia a most exhausting concentration. No doubt the division of subjects was clear enough to the committee, but she often found it difficult to decide whether an extract should be classed as “Compulsory Purchase” or as “Boundary Extension”. She compromised by the additional labour of copying it out twice. She tried hard also to believe that Muriel hadn’t manufactured the job for her; but her good sense told her that there must be many faster typists available, and, as to the division into subjects, if the committee could not have made that when they select
ed the references, they must be exceptionally lazy. Disguise it how you may, a job made to take up time is a waste of time. And so try as she would to keep them out of her mind, the comforts of her own easy chair in her own sitting room, the thought of a nice long read (Deborah Forrester, although only a slip of a girl, had dared to warn the haughty Sarah that she was trying Queen Anne’s patience too far), or even the warm sensation of just sitting lazing in her chair looking through Elsie Tanner’s column in the TV Times (she always had some good tip about life to offer), all ran in and out of the web of speeches and figures and legal decisions that made up her morning’s work. In the event of disagreements concerning compulsory purchase between the Corporation and a landowner, the County Council supporting the landowner, or in a direct dispute between the Corporation and the County Council, on appeal to the Ministry of Town and Country Planning, the Minister would appoint an inspector to hear in public session the objections of any interested individual or body of individuals. But in fact she was not interested. In her experience the Ministry people would settle matters on their own, however interested you might be, as they had all the problems of rationing in the years after the war, and goodness knows those problems had concerned her enough when she was running the hotel at Scarborough. As to bothering about such matters where you weren’t directly concerned, she wondered that the people on the committee could have so much spare time. Look at that business about the widening of the Esplanade at Eastsea! A nice state the hotel would have got into if she’d spent her time going into all the ins and outs of that. Anyway the Town Council and the Ministry of Transport had got it all carved up between them before the public enquiry came on—Arthur had been told the inside story of it down at the club.