One Pair of Hands

by Monica Dickens

  ‘Keep yer bleedin’ ’air on, if you call it ’air,’ was his brilliant parting shot.

  ‘The only way I can tell you and your horse apart is the horse is better looking,’ I shouted after him up the area steps. Not scintillating, but good enough by dairy standards. So, quite satisfied, I waded back to where I had left off scrubbing. When I had finished my arms were streaked with grey to above the elbows, and as I had taken the precaution of removing my stockings, my legs were in the same state. I thought I had better wash before handing round the lunch, so I shut myself in the bathroom and scrubbed with the best scented soap. I didn’t hear Martin trying the door as the tap was running, and when I came out he was hovering about irritably and intimated to me that the kitchen sink was the proper place in which to clean my vile body. I swelled with class consciousness, but said nothing and retired below, leaving a trail of ‘Ashes of Roses’ in my wake.

  After lunch I got myself dirty all over again cleaning the stove, so as a protest I didn’t bother to wash before taking up the tea. Mr Parrish stared very hard at a large smudge on my cheek and the black borders of my fingernails, but decided not to waste his breath on me. I was able to go soon after that as he was going out. I laid the breakfast tray all ready so as to save time in the morning. I was pleased with the results of my field day in the kitchen. It was looking very trim, and I discovered a gloomy insect-ridden hole under the stairs where I stacked all the old vases and rubbish. Needless to say, I had no sooner done this than Mr Parrish came clattering down the stairs looking for ‘that iridescent glass bowl that I put on top of the dresser’.

  He exclaimed at the unaccustomed tidiness and was pleased, I think, but he said: ‘Oh, dear, what have you done with all that stuff I put in here to be out of the way? Not thrown it away, I hope?’

  ‘Oh, no, sir, I put it in a cupboard. It did catch the dust so. I’ll soon get it for you.’

  I unearthed it while he fiddled around on a tour of inspection in the kitchen.

  ‘Didn’t you know that you mustn’t keep marmalade in an open bowl? It ought to be kept in the pot and just turned into the bowl when it’s wanted. Oh! and you oughtn’t to squeeze the orange juice overnight, even if you do put it in the frig. It loses its vitamins, you see. What became of that tin of milk that was in the cupboard?’

  ‘I used it to make scones, sir.’

  ‘Oh, dear, I was keeping it for Mimi. She does so love it. Ought you to have used it for scones? Were they all right? I always think it gives things a tinny flavour when cooked.’

  All this was said in quite a tolerant if patronizing way. He really meant to educate me quite kindly, and he may have known more about things than I did – certainly no one could have known less, but I began to understand how our old cook at home felt when she guarded ‘her’ kitchen in that proprietary way. Anyway, a man shouldn’t interfere with domestic details.

  ‘In fact, a cook’s what you’re turning into, mentally and physically,’ I thought as I pulled my gloves over my work-soiled hands and flapped off to Woolworth’s on my dropped arches.

  I arrived the next morning with my arms full of brown paper bags containing all I needed to make kitchen life happy. I had only spent about six shillings, but it had cleared me out, as it was a long time since pay-day, so when I went up for my master to order the food, I mentioned quite casually in the course of conversation what I had spent.

  ‘You rather let yourself go, didn’t you?’

  ‘Well, sir, they were really all things I had to have.’ I enumerated them, and though he tut-tutted a bit he couldn’t dispute it.

  ‘I don’t seem to have any change. Well, never mind. I’ll give it you another time. Now about lunch. I shall be alone as my secretary doesn’t come today. I shall be out for tea. I have a gentleman coming to dinner. I thought perhaps we might have a chicken, some soup to start with, and perhaps a sweet omelette, plenty of jam. I like that. Oh, heavens! Don’t tell me that’s Mimi!’

  A terrible yelping was corning from outside accompanied by shrill barks. Mr Parrish shot out of bed, and we both rushed to the window. Mr Parrish nearly fainted with horror. Mimi was standing on the top step, snarling and yapping, and looking even more objectionable than usual, while in the street a small terrier was jumping up and down, barking with frenzied rage at the Peke.

  ‘Oh, run down at once and get poor Mimi!’ wailed Martin, so down I had to go and pick up the crazy thing, at great peril to my own skin, and take it indoors, holding it tightly round the middle.

  ‘All right, all right, I sympathize with you,’ I said to the terrier who was jumping up my legs, and shutting the front door in his enraged face. I took Mimi upstairs to her anguished father. The climax was reached when we discovered a drop of blood on her chest, and even when, after an exhaustive search, we discovered it must have been the other dog’s blood, he was still not appeased.

  ‘I’d no idea you just put her out in the street and left her all on her own. You ought to stay and watch her till she’s had her little run and then bring her in. You never know what may happen in London.’

  ‘No, really,’ I thought, ‘this is too much – a model, perhaps, but not a Peke’s nursemaid.’

  Aloud I said: ‘I’m very sorry, sir, but I’m afraid I really wouldn’t have time in the mornings to stop after that.’

  ‘Well then you must make time.’ This remark was so ridiculous that I couldn’t even bother to answer it, so I put Mimi down on the bed and left the room in a sullen silence.

  Soon after that E. L. Robbins arrived with his vacuum cleaner, and while he was initiating me into its mysteries I poured out my grievances as one does into the first ear that comes along. He was all sympathy, and we got very matey over a cup of tea. We had just got to the stage when he was begging me to call him Ernest when Mr Parrish rang down for more breakfast. I rushed round, throwing eggs and bacon into a pan, and roping Ernest in to watch the toast.

  ‘Two breakfasts, upon my word!’ he said, scraping the black part off a bit he had burnt.

  ‘Here, put this milk in that little saucepan and heat it up,’ I said. ‘This wretched egg’s gone and broken, but it’ll have to do.’ It was soon ready, and I clattered off upstairs with the tray, leaving Ernest washing saucepans quite happily in the sink wearing one of my aprons.

  My employer was talking on the telephone as I forced my way through the thickness of the atmosphere to his bedside. ‘Just going to have some breakfast – is it really eleven o’clock? Yes, I’m still in bed. Isn’t it monstrous? I know, but I did a lot of work yesterday, and I don’t think I feel in the mood to do any more for a bit. All right about tonight? About a quarter to eight, then? Delightful. Goodbye, Simon.’ He rang off and said to me:

  ‘You might bring me my letters up here as my secretary isn’t coming today. I’ll read them in bed.’

  I was afraid he might have the idea of using me as a secretary, so I flung them at him and ran downstairs before he could think of it. Ernest had finished the saucepans and was making himself quite at home with the paper and a cigarette. But I had a lot of work to do, so I told him that he’d have to go.

  ‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘why aren’t you doing your own trade? Is there a slump in the vacuum cleaner trade?’

  ‘There’s not a lot doing today, as a matter of fact,’ replied Ernest, picking up his bowler hat and little attaché-case. ‘When can I see you again, my dear? I always love a chat. In any case I ought to bring another screw for that handle sometime.’

  I had thought of asking Isobel to come to tea as my employer would be out, so I told him he could come along too, if he wanted to meet an attractive girl. He jumped at it.

  ‘I say, I am a lucky fellow – two ladies all to myself.’ I hustled him off down the passage, and he was just going out of the back door, still chattering about ‘charming ladies’ and ‘the cup that cheers’, when we suddenly realized that my employer had not signed the agreement which he had brought with him. I took it up to the bedroom, with a pen
and ink, but Mr Parrish was lying back on the pillows, looking rather wan, and he waved me away with a limp hand.

  ‘No, no, I can’t possibly sign anything today; my head’s terrible. Even to see the printed word – take it away.’ I raised my eyebrows and removed myself with the breakfast tray, which showed every sign of having been attacked with hearty appetite.

  I explained the situation to Ernest and we did a bit of shoulder shrugging and exchanging of ‘Well I nevers’, and at last I got rid of him and returned to my housework. I lugged the ‘Sucka’ up to the dining-room, plugged it in, and had been having a happy time with it for about ten minutes when a fat figure appeared in the doorway, propping itself up with one hand and holding its head with the other.

  ‘For God’s sake stop that filthy row,’ he wailed. ‘I’ve been shouting for ages and my head’s splitting.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, sir. Very thoughtless of me.’ Perhaps he really had got a headache after all. ‘Shall I make you a nice cup of tea?’

  ‘God, no!’ He retired and I went down, trailing the tube of the vacuum cleaner bumpety-bump down the stairs behind me. It got caught round the post of the banisters when I turned the corner at the bottom and brought me up with a jerk. When I disentangled it I discovered that a rather vital-looking part had been broken off. More work for E. L. Robbins. The edges of the stairs were looking a little dirty so I decided to ‘take a brush to them’ as I couldn’t use the ‘Sucka’. There is quite soothing rhythm about brushing stairs, crawling methodically from one to the next, and my brain was lulled into vacancy by the mechanical strokes of my right arm, so that I didn’t notice the ‘knock, knock, crash, crash’ that accompanied the cleaning of each stair. I was soon shocked out of my coma, however, for when I was about half-way Martin shot out of his bedroom with an agonized roar. I gave up. I had done half the stairs anyway. Or, no, I hadn’t even achieved that – I had made the elementary mistake of starting at the bottom instead of the top, and had been carefully brushing the dirt down on to the clean stair below.

  Martin revived about lunch time and actually managed to stagger as far as the dining-room, where he sat staring moodily into space while I handed him his lunch. I had not reckoned on him being able to eat half a pound of steak and two apple dumplings, so there was not much left for me to eat. I counted up the eggs in the larder, and leaving enough for the omelette for dinner, I could spare myself a couple for lunch.

  I put them in the oven to bake while I was serving my employer and, forgetting about them, recollected them just in time to remove them before they should be spoiled. I hurriedly seized a too thin cloth, and, plucking the pots out of the oven, burnt my hands so badly that I dropped them upside down on to the floor. I could have cried with rage and frustrated hunger. Mr Parrish, hearing the crash on his way upstairs from the dining-room, poked his head round the door and said, ‘What’s broken?’

  I hastily put my body between him and the wreckage and said:

  ‘Oh, nothing at all, sir, I just dropped one of the oven shelves.’

  I found Mimi in the dining-room, so I hauled her into the kitchen to lick up the eggs. I myself made a pathetic and inadequate meal of bread and cooking cheese. I didn’t dare eat any of the fruit in the dining-room, as Mr Parrish sometimes ‘fancied’ an apple or an orange last thing at night, and, if he ate fruit at dinner, there might not be any left.

  He went out quite soon, and I washed up and tidied the kitchen for my tea party. Isobel fell down the area steps and broke a milk bottle, and not knowing that the house was empty was scared that my employer would come out and find her, so I found her hiding in the coal cellar till the danger was past.

  Ernest Robbins arrived soon after and I hit on the brilliant idea of making them help me clean the silver.

  When it was done, we had tea with masses of hot buttered toast and the best raspberry jam, which Isobel had delved into before I could stop her. I would have to think up a good excuse for its disappearance.

  We had great difficulty in getting rid of Ernest. He was one of those people who can never find their way out. I wanted to show Isobel over the house before they came back, but we didn’t fancy having him trailing us about through the bedrooms.

  It turned out that he had forgotten the screw, anyway, so he would have to come back the next day. Could he be doing it on purpose? I eventually turned him out, saying that I was going to scrub the kitchen floor, and he left us with a:

  ‘Good night all. Thanks for ever such an enjoyable time.’

  We toured the house after that, and Isobel was suitably repulsed by the personal habits of my employer. We saw Mr Parrish from the window paddling down the street in a green pork-pie hat, so we had time to rush back to the kitchen before he got in. He came down to get a flower vase. I hastily put away the raspberry jam pot, but didn’t bother about Isobel. I didn’t think it would matter having a friend in, but it was a bit awkward to know whether or not to introduce them. Mr Parrish evidently didn’t expect it, because he stopped on the threshold, said ‘I beg your pardon’ rather coldly and retreated. I shot out and got his vase out of the cupboard for him, saying, for form’s sake:

  ‘I hope you don’t mind my having a friend in the kitchen, sir?’

  ‘No, but don’t overdo it – and not men. No followers.’

  Isobel made an apt but rather coarse remark as he retired to his bedroom to change. When she had gone I started to cook the dinner. While I was getting the eggs from the larder they ‘slipped out of me ’and’ and all but two were broken. That wouldn’t be enough for the omelette, so, cursing, I had to put on my coat and run out into the rain to the little dairy down the road. When I got back the red arrow was dancing madly in all the spaces at once.

  ‘Wherever have you been?’ said Mr Parrish when I rushed upstairs. ‘I’ve been ringing all the bells for ages, I thought perhaps they didn’t work.’ I had to explain about the broken eggs, and he made no offer to refund me, but I suppose that was really quite fair. ‘Will you put out the sherry and tell Mr Nichols to wait in here if he comes before I’m ready? I’m going out now; you might take Mimi for a little run some time.’

  ‘Very well, sir.’ (I don’t think!) Simon Nichols arrived while I was in the middle of a delicate operation with a sauce, which rather prejudiced me against him. However, he seemed quite a little gentleman, and he and Martin Parrish had a cosy dinner by candlelight, and if I was a little surprised by some of the conversation which I heard when I listened outside the dining-room door I thought no more of it when they had retired to the pink-shaded light of the drawing-room. Tomorrow was pay-day, anyway, so I flung myself with heart and soul at the uninspiring array of greasy plates and other sordid articles that make up the background of a kitchen life.

  Chapter Five

  WHEN I HAD been with Mr Parrish about ten days I began to think it was time I got some pay. I had not liked to ask for my six shillings again, and he seemed to have forgotten about it. I hoped he wasn’t going to forget my wages too. I was wondering how I could tactfully jog his memory when he gave me the opportunity himself.

  He rang for me one morning, when I was very busy making cakes, to say:

  ‘Will you pay the laundry when they come, for last week, and let me know how much it is?’

  I saw my chance to drop a hint. ‘I’m so sorry, sir, but I’m afraid I haven’t enough money on me. I’m rather short as it’s the end of the week.’

  ‘Good Lord, is it? I must give you your wages. I don’t owe you anything else, do I?’

  ‘Well, sir, there was that money I spent at Woolworth’s.’

  ‘What was that? Oh, yes, I remember. Five shillings, wasn’t it? Didn’t I give it to you?’

  ‘Not yet, sir – it – er, was six shillings.’

  ‘Well, I’ll give you ten shillings extra – you can take it out of that when you’ve paid the laundry.’

  He handed me two pound notes, and I went back to take the by now very rock-like cakes out of the oven.

&n
bsp; When the laundry man came he was in rather a bad temper as it was raining, and he felt cold and wet and wanted his tea. He looked even blacker when I offered him a pound, and muttered: ‘Haven’t got any change.’ I didn’t know what to do, but luckily just at that moment I saw Ernest Robbins’ boots descending the area steps. I never thought I should be so pleased to see him. It was evidently his pay-day too, for he was able to supply all the silver we needed. I was sorry to see that the laundry bill came to six and sixpence, so I should have to launch a fresh attack on Mr Parrish’s pocket, which always seemed so short of change. I offered the laundry man a cup of tea to cheer him up, but he refused with a mumbled:

  ‘Thanks – no time,’ and drove off through the rain.

  Ernest said he had come to fit a screw to the handle of the ‘Sucka’, and I had to give him a cup of tea and some of my burned cakes. I got rid of him quite early by telling him that I ‘wasn’t allowed followers’, in the kitchen.

  ‘Well, it’s the last thing in the world I want, my dear, to get you into trouble,’ he said, and paddled off quite tractably; I hoped the soles of his boots weren’t too thin.

  Soon after Mr Parrish and I ‘had words’. He came down to the kitchen with the grocer’s book in his hand and a look of dismay on his pink face. I didn’t hear him descending the stairs as he was wearing slippers, and he very nearly caught me having a quick swig of the cooking wine which I was using to make a sauce. Trusting that he might attribute my guilty flush to the heat of the stove, I listened in silence while he ranted at me.