by Helen Harris
I was annoyed. I was annoyed with her for being able to do it, and annoyed with myself for feeling something so silly. And I was annoyed with Rob because after all he was responsible. It does seem ridiculous, thinking about it now, but I came home boiling with resentment and when Rob rang, around dinner-time, to tell me that he had gone on to Andy’s from his sitar lesson and he would be late back, I was quite unnecessarily offhand to him on the phone.
A thought struck me shortly afterwards which undermined the whole edifice of bliss Mrs Queripel had built up. If it was such a blissfully happy marriage as she makes out, why weren’t there any children? I mean, I suppose it is just possible that there might be some somewhere, but there aren’t any pictures of them and I don’t think she would be living alone and abandoned like this if there were. Aha, I thought, a chink in her armour, and it’s horrible to realize that I thought like that about a defenceless old lady. But I decided to try and find out about it the next week.
But the next week, last week, Mrs Queripel was not very well and it didn’t seem wise to risk upsetting her. She had caught a cold and it had settled on her chest. Her story was interrupted by frightening wheezes and chokings. She told me about their return to repertory after the honeymoon, and how the joys of married life with Leonard made up for the chilblains and the filthy breakfasts and the stone-cold suppers. I mustn’t be sarcastic, especially as I might only be doing it out of envy, but it seems hard to believe that any amount of newly-wedded bliss could compensate for some of the discomforts she describes. There seem to have been conflicts within the company too, which is not surprising really – travelling around like that in such uncomfortable conditions, crammed on top of one another in all weathers. She hints at great dramas around the corner, which, with a bit of luck, she won’t be able to resist telling me.
I was dismayed to notice that even her cold she blames on someone else’s spite. The world is in evil league against her. Whatever happens to her, whatever goes wrong can be directly attributed to someone else’s wicked machinations. The person responsible for her cold is her poor home help, Pearl, by the sound of it a long-suffering woman who puts up with a great deal of persecution from Mrs Queripel. Pearl deliberately left the bathroom window open, knowing that it was too high up for Mrs Queripel to close it, so that she should catch her death. There was no point in trying to reason with her that it seemed unlikely; Mrs Q had made up her mind. I went up to close the window for her. It was the first time that I had been upstairs. The place was in utter chaos. It looked as though Mrs Queripel had started to move house one day and then changed her mind half-way through. There were piles of motley belongings stacked on the landing and odd fixtures missing, like the lampshade, which you would have expected her to want for a settled existence. And everything was dirty, filthy, neglected. I came down again straight away, but Mrs Queripel still suspected me of loitering to snoop upstairs. I got quite annoyed. ‘Do you suspect me of trying to play tricks behind your back too?’ I snapped. ‘Honestly, whatever next!’
Mrs Q jumped. She said I hadn’t got much manners for someone of my age, but she dropped the subject. Only when I conceded a bit grudgingly that I could see how she must get suspicious, living on her own in such a rough neighbourhood, she said, ‘When you reach my age, my dear, you won’t trust anyone either.’
That day, I came home simply depressed and awash with a moody sense of generalized injustice. Rob was in the full swing of his exuberance at having overcome the problems with Print-Out and our moods could not have been worse matched. Although I was pleased, of course, that he had broken through his ‘block’, at the same time I was cross with him for flourishing so smugly in his surroundings, for being so effortlessly at one with his environment. Playing his loud music, humming, cooking, he was the crest of the wave which had washed Mrs Queripel up on to her reef, to shrivel and die there. He wanted to elbow every tedious old lady off the face of his hale and hearty earth. God, I have some stupid ideas sometimes!
I couldn’t get over the shock of Rob’s shouting at me and it preyed on me throughout my visit. Mrs Q had obviously been looking out for me because she was at the window when I rode up, although she darted back behind the curtain and reappeared in her own good time at the front door, as though my ring had taken her by surprise. She was wearing an outfit I had never seen before and her make-up was, if possible, thicker than ever.
‘Happy Christmas!’ I crowed and, gritting my teeth, I made myself give her a truncated little hug.
‘And to you too, my dear,’ she replied.
Her clothing reeked of mothballs, as if she had taken it out of long years of storage.
I gave her my package. If you knew, you old crow, I caught myself thinking, what bringing that present has cost me! ‘A little thing I made,’ I said to her.
‘Oh, my dear, you shouldn’t have,’ she simpered.
She went ahead of me into the living room, which was dismally the same as on every other Sunday I had seen it, except that on the tea-table I noticed with dismay, there were four packet mince-pies. (I was already at that stage of Christmas when the sight of one more mince-pie is enough to make you queasy.)
‘I’ve got a little something for you too,’ Mrs Queripel said coyly and from behind her armchair she produced one of the most unattractive-looking parcels I have seen. It was big and bulky and untidily wrapped in yellowing tissue paper. She held it up but didn’t actually come towards me, almost as though at the last minute she was reluctant to part with it. I had to walk over to her and claim it.
We sat opposite each other, each with our parcel on our knees, and I said jokingly, ‘Whose first?’
‘Oh, we’re going to open them now, are we?’ exclaimed Mrs Queripel in bright surprise,
‘Why yes, of course,’ I said. ‘They’re already a day late.’
‘Well, now,’ said Mrs Q, clearly torn between the twin attractions of watching my appreciation and satisfying her own curiosity.
‘You go first,’ I said politely. ‘Otherwise I’m sure mine will be an anti-climax.’
She didn’t hesitate for long. Eagerly, her yellow nails clawed off the sellotape and scrabbled in my pretty paper to reveal the brooch I had made for her: a nosegay of wild flowers preserved in an acrylic resin. I think she was pleased.
She thanked me and then she said, ‘Now your turn, Alison.’
I took as long as I could opening the messy parcel, so that I could get my face into an expression of grateful delight. It was so badly wrapped that it virtually fell open in my lap. It contained something soft and squashy which was surprisingly heavy: a fur. I was horrified. ‘Whatever have you done, Mrs Queripel?’ I exclaimed.
She looked smug. ‘Yours is in a shocking state, my dear,’ she said.
I unfolded the fur completely. It was a gingery fox collar, like mine, but as Mrs Queripel said, in far better condition. It had two little black button eyes and a neat sealing-wax nose.
‘It’s absolutely lovely,’ I stammered. ‘But it’s such an extravagant present. I’m not sure I can –’
‘Oh rubbish, girl!’ snapped Mrs Queripel. ‘Don’t stand on ceremony with me.’ She relented a little. ‘At your age, one should have every adornment.’
I realized of course that I would hurt her far more by refusing the fur than by accepting the extravagant gift which it represented. I imagined her going through her wardrobe to choose what I would like. I got up and kissed her thank you. She fluttered with pleasure. ‘Of course, you’ll look after it properly, won’t you?’ she said. ‘Care for it, wrap it in tissue in the summer?’ I promised her I would. But my mind was already partly on another problem; how on earth I was going to explain its appearance to Rob?
He was out when I got back. He hadn’t left a note saying where he’d gone and he didn’t come back. By eleven o clock, I was getting frantic. At about midnight I went to bed and lay there, sick with frightened apprehension. Very very late, Rob came home. He opened the bedroom door, but he didn’t turn
on the light. I waited, without moving.
‘Alison?’ he said.
I went, ‘Mm?’ as though he had woken me up.
‘I’m sorry about earlier on,’ he said. He climbed into bed beside me and gave my shoulder a little interrogatory shake to make sure he had been forgiven. We fell into each other’s arms, just as though it were a happy-ever-after ending in some syrupy romance.
*
When Alison came for the last time before Christmas, Alicia still hadn’t made up her mind whether she would give her the fur or not. She decided that Alison’s behaviour that afternoon would be a test and, depending on how well she did, she would either get the fur, as a reward, or just the bag of sweets.
All day on the Saturday, she mulled it over. On the one hand, it was daft, giving a fur to a dowdy unsophisticated girl like that, with her slapdash ways. On the other, maybe the fur might be the first touch of elegance which would prompt her to change her ways. She drew up a table of what Alison would have to do to win the fur and what faults would whisk it out of her reach for ever. To get the fur, Alison would have to: listen with due care and attention while Alicia was telling her things, be more than usually forthcoming if Alicia were to ask her the odd question of an intimate nature, and make sure to thank her quite sufficiently for her tea. To lose it … well, to lose it would be an easy matter; if she failed to fulfil any of Alicia’s conditions, then that would be that. Just thinking about her little game made Alicia giggle.
That evening, instead of watching the television, she did something quite extraordinary; she took out the fur and set about mending it. It was a shame to let a decent fur go to waste; even if she didn’t give it to Alison, who knows? Maybe she might take to wearing it again herself. It was dreadfully late by the time she finished sewing. She didn’t feel at all well, she realized. She had gone all headachey and shivery. She did hope she wasn’t sickening for something. Just imagine being ill over Christmas, all by herself, with no one to care for her.
She woke in the morning with a terrible throat which cascaded out into a shocking cold as soon as she set foot outside her bedroom. The first thing which caught her eye was the open bathroom window, propped ajar by Pearl to air – as though the place smelt or something – when she went home on Wednesday, and left fatally ajar ever since because it was too awkward for Alicia to reach up to close it. Choking and wheezing, she struggled with the window-catch, but it was beyond her. She had noticed that draught every morning as she did her business in there; no wonder she had caught a cold. She made her way downstairs with a handkerchief pressed furiously to her nose. In the chilly kitchen, a sneeze ripped through her. If a sneeze can promise deadly punishment, that one did.
She suffered all of Sunday. When the time for Alison’s visit approached, she began to wonder if she was well enough to receive her. She was worn out from her cold and her fury. But it occurred to her that she had never asked Alison for her telephone number so, even if she had preferred restful solitude to tiring company, there was nothing that she could have done about it. What would have been a simple matter only two months ago, not answering her bell, didn’t even cross her mind.
Alison came punctually that week, which was the first mark in her favour. Sometimes she could be unpredictably late, for which she never offered a convincing explanation. She was full of concern for Alicia’s cold and she said twice, ‘Oh gosh, are you really sure you’re up to having me?’ That made three marks in her favour. But she let herself down badly when Alicia asked her to go upstairs to close the troublesome window. Alicia had not asked her without a fair bit of hesitation; after all, how did she know she could trust the girl, once she was left to her own devices upstairs? She might go snooping round in Alicia’s private affairs, she might do anything. She seemed to take such an incredibly long time up there, when Alicia had worked out just how long it ought to take a pair of nimble young legs to nip upstairs, into the bathroom, fix the window and pop back down again, that when she reappeared she challenged her straight out with having loitered on the way.
Instead of shamefacedly admitting her guilt, Alison had the nerve to deny it angrily and snapped, with quite unbelievable rudeness, ‘Do you suspect me of trying to play tricks behind your back too? Honestly, whatever next!’
It took Alicia’s breath away. She glared at Alison, but she contained herself. For she was taking comfort in thinking, ‘Right then, no fox for you, my girl!’
As though Alison had read her thoughts, she tried to make up for her outburst. But Alicia stood on her dignity. Let the girl fawn and grovel as much as she liked, she would be perfectly cool to her.
Alison did nearly redeem herself by one touching gesture just before she left. Alicia had been taken with such wheezing and coughing in the end, that Alison had decided it was time for her to go so that Alicia could rest her voice.
‘Will you be all right for shopping?’ she asked Alicia, as she stood up. ‘Is there anything I can get for you?’
With streaming eyes, Alicia stared at her. Where Alison stood, she had a fleeting vision of a human-sized pile of lemon and honey lozenges, Vicks, beef tea, nourishing soup from a tin, menthol and eucalyptus and cough mixture. She shook her head firmly. ‘I’ve got everything I need.’
Alison hesitated. ‘Are you quite sure? Because I can easily just pop up to the Indian’s on my bike. He’s always open.’
Alicia shook her head almost furiously. ‘I’m not short of anything,’ she repeated.
Alison buttoned her coat and tied her wretched fur. ‘Well, look after yourself,’ she said anxiously. ‘I hope you’re better well in time for Christmas.’
‘I’ll be seeing you on Boxing Day, won’t I?’ wheezed Alicia.
‘Oh, definitely,’ Alison assured her. ‘And I hope you have a very happy Christmas. Don’t come near the door; I’ll let myself out.’
Alicia watched her red bicycle light weave away down the road. She had gone and forgotten to ask for her telephone number yet again.
She spent Monday and Tuesday more dead than alive – or at least, that was how she described her condition to herself when she imagined telling Pearl off. The only thing that kept her going was the prospect of coming down on Pearl like a ton of bricks when she walked in the front door on Wednesday morning.
But on Wednesday morning, there was no sign of Pearl at the usual time and while at first Alicia might have been secretly just a little bit pleased beneath her annoyance, because it meant that she could tell Pearl off for being late on top of everything else, as the morning wore on even the slightest suggestion of pleasure vanished. Perhaps Pearl wasn’t going to come? This reinforced Alicia’s dark suspicions. Perhaps, assuming that Alicia must by now be on her death-bed, Pearl had been overcome by guilt and remorse and didn’t dare return to the scene of her crime. Alicia got quite agitated at the thought of Pearl’s wicked face appearing at the front door and she didn’t know if she would have the courage to let her in. She didn’t get a chance to put her courage to the test, though because Pearl never came. Alicia waited at the window for most of the morning and only gave up looking out when the children started coming down the street from the school because it was lunchtime.
At half-past two, her bell rang. She was in the kitchen clearing away the remains of her lunch. Her blood ran cold. Snatching up the tin-opener from the table, she went towards the front door. The shape on the other side was somewhat too slim for Pearl. Alison, could it be Alison come unannounced in the middle of the week, to see if she was all right? Forgetting the tin-opener, Alicia opened the door eagerly and there stood her dreaded social worker, the muscley Miss Midgley.
‘A very merry Christmas to you, Mrs Queripel,’ Miss Midgley announced offensively. ‘I hope I find you well?’
‘What does it look like?’ snapped Alicia. ‘Do I look well?’
‘A picture of health,’ declared Miss Midgley briskly. ‘Though short on seasonal goodwill perhaps – ha-ha!’
Alicia didn’t know how Miss Midgley did
it, but before she could do anything about it, Miss Midgley bosomed her way into the hall and, still booming cheerily strode purposefully into the front room.
Alicia followed her. You’ve got hair like a lavatory brush, she thought to herself. And I bet no one’s ever dreamt of dressing your sausage legs in black stockings!
She glared at Miss Midgley, who was looking busily around the room.
‘My, oh my!’ she commented tactlessly. ‘This place could do with a spot of tidying, couldn’t it? Hasn’t your home help been pulling her weight?’
Alicia fought between righteous indignation at Miss Midgley’s criticism, eagerness to speak up and condemn Pearl and a sudden sort of hysteria at the image of Pearl pulling her weight. She mouthed incompetently.
‘It looks as though it hasn’t seen a hoover in weeks,’ Miss Midgley persisted. ‘Who is your home help? Mrs Hassan? Mrs Desai?’
‘Mrs Cunningham,’ said Alicia. She tried to say that she never let Pearl anywhere near the front room, that it was her private domain and she wouldn’t let anyone lay a finger on anything in it. Miss Midgley didn’t give her a chance to get it out.
‘What day does she come?’ she asked, already not looking at Alicia any more but fumbling in her huge handbag for a notebook in which she started to scribble busily.
Alicia was glad not to have to look her in the eye. She had particularly disconcerting little eyes, quite unnaturally round and pinkish in the middle of bristly lashes, oddly like those of a scared piglet behind her severe spectacle frames. Alicia took a deep breath. ‘She should have come this morning,’ she said, ‘but she didn’t turn up. And it’s my belief I know why.’
Miss Midgley heard Alicia’s story with barely concealed impatience, tapping her biro tetchily on her notebook. She didn’t even let Alicia finish her conclusion, which was going to be that the only solution was to stop Pearl coming and send a white English help instead.