One of Mrs Vaughan’s two married daughters dropped in to tea, a stout, overpowering girl, about three times the size of her mother. They were discussing some rather absorbing medical details when I took in the tea, and I wanted to hear more, so I listened outside the door.
‘Oh, dear, she’s forgotten the sugar,’ I heard Mrs Vaughan say. ‘No, don’t ring, Frances, we must save her legs. She has enough to do as it is. Let’s do without sugar, I don’t really mind whether I have it or not, do you?’
‘Oh, Mummy, you know I can’t drink tea without it. I suppose I’ll have to get it myself. Really, you and your maids, the place might be a charitable institution. You collect a lot of old crocks and pay them colossal wages, and then proceed to spoil them, which they probably don’t appreciate at all. I hope this one’s not quite such an imbecile as Agnes. She –’ Here I surprised them by walking haughtily in with the sugar basin. I placed it on the tray, and stalked out again in my best Plover manner. Imbecile indeed! Old crock! I’d show her. They should realize that I had known better days in high-class kitchens.
For a little while I strove to be the perfect maid, nearly bursting myself with efficiency and correctness, but it wore off after a few days. Mrs Vaughan was just as charming to me whether I made Nonsenses or not, and the lack of formality with which all sorts of odd people tumbled over one another in the flat didn’t encourage me to waste valuable energy on punctiliousness. There was a family dinner party while I was still conducting my efficiency campaign, and I couldn’t make out why Clare, the youngest daughter, was reaching all round the table, opening the mustard and pepper pots.
‘Look, everybody!’ she cried, ‘a revolution in the Vaughan household! Mustard and pepper in all the pots!’ I didn’t see what was funny enough in that to produce screams of joyous laughter from everyone.
‘Look, Pa, that’s something you’ve never known before isn’t it?’
‘I’ve told your mother time and again –’ he began, but nobody paid any attention.
‘We’ve been used to shaking pepper pots fruitlessly for so long that you make us feel peculiar,’ explained Clare to me as I handed her the bread sauce. I liked her. She was completely naive and friendly, like a child, though she had one of her own, ‘turned three’, according to Maud. Frances was a bit more uppish, and I don’t think her husband liked her particularly. He had probably married her on account of her father. He was in his office, so had hopes of advancement, but apart from that he thought Mr Vaughan quite the most entertaining man that ever walked. He was a wonderful audience for him, and would go black in the face and have to be led from the room if his father-in-law so much as said, ‘Pass the salt.’
Although Maud was only thirty, she had been working for the family since she was eighteen, and knew more about their characters and life histories than they did themselves. I had a lot from Mrs Vaughan, of course, who was always ready for a chat at any hour of the day or night, and what she didn’t tell me Maud supplied, with great exaggeration of detail. Once or twice a week, if there was a lot of work to be done, or a room to be turned out, she would stay a bit longer and have lunch with me in the kitchen. On these days, Mrs Vaughan, who always did us proud in the way of food, would order something for which she knew Maud had a particular fancy. Pork was her special delight. It made her face shine more than ever. Mrs Vaughan never poked into the larder, or inquired after puddings and things that had appeared once in the dining-room and only been half finished. They hardly ever appeared again if Maud and I could help it. ‘Pity to leave it in the larder to go off,’ we would say, as we polished off the best part of a trifle or blackcurrant tart. I got revoltingly fat under Maud’s influence and nearly burst out of my uniform.
After lunch, she would relax with a long sigh and proceed to regale me with titbits and anecdotes about our employers. She was surprisingly old-fashioned in that she had quite a feudal feeling for the family. She was passionately keen that they should be kept in their place, both through our unfailing efforts and their own. She even thought that Mrs Vaughan ‘demeaned herself’ a bit too much, and certainly no one else might go as far.
‘It’s not right, Monica,’ she would say. ‘Mrs Chesterton’ (that was Clare) ‘didn’t ought to walk about the streets without a hat – gives people ideas. But she always was one for doing funny things. D’you know –’ in an awestruck whisper, ‘she has no white curtains up in any of the windows of her house! Very strange, I call that. It’s not right, you know, for a young lady not to have everything nice. I used to tell her fortune with the cards before she got married. A tall, dark man, she was going to meet. Well, Mr Chesterton’s fair, but he’s tall all right, so it just shows. Ever such a nice gentleman he is. Always gives you your name.’
I was at the sink, washing dishes to the accompaniment of Maud’s voice. ‘What’s the time?’ I called over my shoulder.
‘Half past kissing time, time to kiss again,’ said Maud infuriatingly, as I really wanted to know. There was to be a tea party for the children this afternoon, and I had a lot to do. It turned out to be nearly half past three.
‘Oh, my Gordon!’ said Maud. ‘I ought to be gone hours ago, Mother’ll be getting nervy. You keep me here, chatting –’
‘And I’ve got to start making cakes and things,’ I said, breaking a plate in my haste. Maud got up and picked up a cloth.
‘Come on, dear, I’ll dry for you.’
‘Oh, Maud, you are a love. Thanks ever so. Oh, heavens, I’ve hardly got any flour, I’ll have to go and ring up for some. What a life this is.’
‘Cheer up, dear, soon be dead,’ said Maud blithely, breaking another plate, and hurling the pieces into the rubbish bin with gay abandon.
I went into the drawing-room where Mrs Vaughan was writing letters.
‘May I use the phone, madam? I’ve run out of flour.’
‘Certainly, Monica. Can you manage? I’ll do it for you if you like. Did I hear Maud? She ought to have gone hours ago. She never used to stay so long when Agnes was here. She was frightened of her. She –’
I had to interrupt her, as a voice was saying, ‘Hullo?’ so her narrative was suspended while I put the fear of God into the grocer and made him promise to send round at once.
‘She was a little mad, you know,’ went on Mrs Vaughan, as soon as I put down the receiver. ‘One day, we were going to have a dinner party, and I went into the kitchen about something, and there was Agnes sitting under the table, waving a burning duster, and singing “God Save the King”. It was Coronation year, but still. She was a dear old thing, really though –’
I had to stand there listening politely, though there were masses of things I wanted to be doing. Mrs Vaughan talked and wrote at the same time, so she couldn’t see me fidgeting pointedly, and edging towards the door. Luckily the telephone rang, and though it was only a wrong number, it gave me a chance to escape.
When Maud had finished the drying, she heaved off to Paddington Green, where she lived with the diabetic one. Frances and her two children arrived early, only a few minutes after the grocer’s boy, so I had to leave my scones to open the door to them.
‘Ooh, look!’ piped the eldest, a fat little brute called Angeline. ‘She’s got white stuff all over her face. Why has she, Mummy? She does look funny. Mummy, Mummy, doesn’t she look funny?’
‘Hush, dear,’ said Frances, throwing me a surprised look. I had been prepared to undress the children, but I took umbrage and removed my flour-streaked face to the kitchen.
I made a lot of tea cakes and scones, and little buns, and I had made a big iced cake the day before, rather damp and undercooked, and probably fatal to small insides, but that was the mothers’ lookout. I took everything into the drawing-room, where Mrs Vaughan was crawling on the floor playing bears with her three grandchildren. One or two nieces had also arrived with their young, and the place was in an uproar. To the children’s great delight, and her own unconcern, Mrs Vaughan’s bun had lost its moorings. I looked round for somewhe
re to put the heavy tray.
‘Oh dear,’ said my mistress, coming out from under the piano, ‘I think we’d better have tea in the dining-room, then we can all sit round the table.’
Out I staggered, and bustled about finding tablecloths and extra chairs, and by the time everything was ready the tea was getting cold. I was glad I hadn’t bothered to make a fresh pot, for the grown-ups didn’t notice. Each mother was too intent on watching her own children, with tears of pride in her eyes, as they slopped their milk and spat out masticated gobs of bread and jam on the clean tablecloth.
Clare’s little boy was my favourite, and she brought him into the kitchen after tea. I left him cold, but he felt a social obligation to entertain me, so went through his repertoire of songs with the air of one pandering to an inferior mentality.
Mr Vaughan came home before they had gone, and pretty soon he was on his knees too, and the whole flat was in such a turmoil that I couldn’t even get among them to clear the tea. Screams and yells of over-excitement rent the air, and Philip, Frances’ son who was a minute edition of his father, was, like him, convulsed with laughter at the ponderous antics of his grandfather. Needless to say, this turned into hysteria, and he lay kicking on his back till his mother came and took him off under one arm.
‘Really, Pa, you are a nuisance,’ she said irritably, ‘you always work him up so. I’m going to take him home before he chokes himself or something. He’ll probably be sick when we get back, anyway. Where on earth’s Angeline got to?’
‘Don’t fuss, Frances,’ said Mrs Vaughan, arriving on the scene with the other child. ‘I’ve been wondering whether perhaps Angy’s getting too much starch. Look at her little tum, it’s like a football.’ She prodded the offending part, and Angeline began to add her yells to her brother’s. The exasperated Frances said hasty goodbyes, and removed them both. Their yells could be heard floating up the lift-shaft as they descended.
When the last child had been hauled and slapped out of the front door by its harassed nurse or mother, Mrs Vaughan sank with a sigh of relief on to the sofa in the drawing-room, where I was tidying up.
‘Thank goodness we’re alone tonight,’ she said to no one in particular. ‘I’m really dead tired. Oh, that telephone!’ She jumped up, though I was much nearer it than she was. I had ceased to bother about answering it when it rang, as she always came running anyway, and stood by my side saying, ‘Is it for me?’ while I was saying, ‘Yes, madam; hold the line, madam.’ It generally was for her, but even if someone did happen to want her husband, it made no difference. She carried on a long conversation with them in his place, until they sometimes forgot what they had rung up about, and rang off before she had even fetched Mr Vaughan.
‘Hullo!’ she was saying now. ‘Oh, hullo, my dear – tonight? But, of course, we always love to see you. Sweet of you to want to come. Quarter to eight? – all right, that’ll be lovely. Good-bye. There!’ she said, turning to me, ‘I spoke too soon. Mr and Mrs Fleming want to come to dinner tonight. I couldn’t say no. I always think it’s so touching when the young people want to come to the older ones. I hope there’s enough to eat, that’s all. What were we going to have?’
‘Wild duck, madam.’
‘Oh, dear, that won’t be enough for four. We’d better have tomorrow’s joint, and the duck can keep. If we’ve got enough vegetables, that’ll be all right, and perhaps you could do us a Scotch woodcock or something, for a savoury.’
‘Yes, madam. I’ll go and put the joint in the oven, madam.’ I spoke glumly, and I certainly felt glum. I still had all the washing up from tea to do, and then a dinner for four on top of that – my head ached from the racket of the afternoon, and my legs were not themselves at all. Anyway, I thought, I would leave most of the clearing up of the children’s mess – sticky fingermarks on doors and paint, and bits of broken toys under the furniture. Maud and I could do it tomorrow. I banged out of the room, and Mrs Vaughan put me to shame by rushing after me saying: ‘You poor dear, I’m afraid you’re having a dreadful lot to do today. I tell you what, I’ll help you with the washing up of the tea things. That’ll make a little difference, won’t it?’
Mr Vaughan came out of the dining-room. ‘Monica! I wish you’d clear this table, I want to use it.’
‘Oh, John,’ said his wife, ‘you’re not going to work now, surely?’
‘No, of course not. What d’you take me for? I’m going to paste photographs in the album.’
‘Well, you must let Monica lay the table when she wants to. Mary and George are coming to dinner.’
‘Oh, dearest, I thought we were alone. I wanted to listen to the wireless. There’s a good concert from Stuttgart. Why must you always ask people? Mary’s so affected, she gives me the shivers.’
‘She isn’t, John; she’s perfectly sweet. She’s probably frightened of you. Some people are, you know, goodness knows why. Anyway, I didn’t ask them, they asked themselves.’
‘Well, it’s a bore just the same. I think I’ll have a Pink Gin to cheer me up.’ There was a pause, followed by a roar: ‘Who’s taken the key of the wine cupboard?’
I had been clearing the table in the dining-room while all this was going on in the hall, and I came out now with my tray, as Mrs Vaughan pointed out that the key was in the cupboard door. ‘Well, that’s not its place,’ he growled. ‘It’s supposed to live in the drawer of the hall table.’
‘But, darling, that’s so silly. If the idea is to stop Monica and me from drinking ourselves to death on your old brandy, there’s no point in hiding the key where we know where it is. Why not either secrete it on your person, or else leave it in the door, which saves a lot of trouble. You’re a sweet old man.’ He screwed up his face to receive her kiss, patted her on the shoulder, and ambled off quite happily into the dining-room with his photos. He didn’t seem to mind at all that no one took him seriously. I had been scared stiff at first when he shouted at me for forgetting things or leaving the lights on, but I was already coming to regard him with the same affectionate lack of awe as the rest of the family.
Mrs Vaughan followed me into the kitchen, where I was just putting the joint into the oven. I started the washing up, and she stood by me and dried, pausing at intervals to go off into a soliloquy about something that she was wiping.
‘I always think this is such a dear little milk jug. It was my mother’s, you know; she loved silver just like I do. Oh, dear, this plate’s got rather a bad crack. I expect that was Agnes. You will be very careful of it, won’t you? Perhaps we oughtn’t to use it. It’s the only one left out of six that we had as a wedding present.’
We were getting along quite nicely, though there was still a lot to be done, when the front-door bell rang.
‘I’ll go,’ said Mrs Vaughan. ‘Your hands are wet.’ I heard her greeting somebody in the hall: ‘Why, Miss Nitchin! How nice to see you! Come in and have a glass of sherry.’ She took the visitor into the drawing-room, and came flying back to me.
‘I’m so sorry, Monica, I wanted to help you. Poor Miss Nitchin has so few friends. I simply must talk to her for a little. I only hope she won’t expect to be asked to dinner. Would you bring in the sherry and some glasses?’
I was annoyed, not with her, because she was so charming and considerate, but with life in general. Fatigue, I suppose, because really, when I thought about it, I had no grievance at all. I told myself sourly that I was unworthy of such a good mistress, but it didn’t stop me taking a very jaundiced view of Miss Nitchin, who sat shabbily and diffidently on the sofa sipping sherry, and moaning about the slump in the dressmaking business. She infuriated me to the point of almost cutting off the top of my thumb, as I sliced carrots viciously, wishing they were Miss Nitchin. I found some plaster in the bathroom, and got on with my cooking as well as I could. I decided to leave the rest of the washing up till after dinner. When I wanted to lay the table, I went and stood pointedly in the dining-room doorway, but it made no impression on the hunched figure sitting within, abs
orbed with pots of paste and snapshots of the back view of his wife as a foreground to the Grand Canal. I tried walking round the table and tripping over the cord of his electric lamp, and jogging his elbow at a ticklish moment. This did the trick.
‘Oh, God,’ he said, getting up resignedly, ‘is there no peace?’ I helped him gather up his things, and he took himself off to the drawing-room, where he luckily solved the Nitchin problem by saying: ‘Oh, hullo, Miss Nitchin! Just going? That’s too bad.’
This blasted her hopes of staying to dinner, and she went off, still moaning, only about ten minutes before the Flemings arrived. Mr Vaughan was right about the affectation. Mary Fleming spent most of the evening giggling and chirruping coyly at him. He was very nice to her, however, and she sat on his right hand, and before long he was discovering how pretty she was, and feeling quite a gay old dog. His wife noticed my bandaged thumb, while I was handing round the dishes, and showed great concern. ‘I’ll put some iodine on it for you afterwards. Now don’t forget and go home before I’ve seen it.’
There was not much chance of my forgetting it, as it was giving me real agony. Between my thumb, and my head and my legs, the end of dinner found me a wreck; I felt more like putting my head in the gas oven, than clearing the table and washing up. My eye fell on a decanter of sherry which was standing on the sideboard, and I considered it fixedly for some time. Well, after all, why shouldn’t I? One quick nip – it would just give me enough heart to finish off what I had to do. Glancing furtively over my shoulder, I poured out quite half a tumblerful, and tossed it off. Everything went black, and then balls of fire shot up my throat, and exploded in a thousand stars before my eyes. It was not sherry at all – it was whisky! Once I had got over the first shock, I felt terrific. I reeled into the kitchen, polished off the work with the speed of a machine, and rushed off home, quite forgetting the iodine, for the pain in my thumb was miraculously cured.
One Pair of Hands Page 19