by Helen Harris
I giggled miserably and I said, ‘I turn into a vampire when you’re asleep.’
Rob’s hand reached across the bed in the dark, hoping for a part of me. It landed awkwardly on my face and I bit it quite hard.
‘Fuck!’ said Rob, withdrawing his hand. ‘You do too.’
‘I like going to see her,’ I said apologetically, ‘because she tells me stories. She’s telling me her life story, you know. She’s quite a character. She’s had a pretty interesting life’.
‘OK,’ said Rob, as if he were setting me a problem in a maths exam. ‘But before you knew what she was like, if she hadn’t turned out to be – what was it you said the other day: “a bit of a one”? – what made you want to go and do it in the first place?’
He questioned me for what felt like ages, probing, sounding my secret depths of resentment. I ended up doing what he had done when I first mentioned Mrs Queripel the day before; confronted with a disclosure which threatened disruption, I rolled away and I moaned, ‘Rob, I want to go to sleep,’ which, of course, I then couldn’t. I knew perfectly well why I couldn’t explain my initial motivation – it was such a criticism of Rob.
Mrs Q was all set for the furniture removal. It was as if she had thought of nothing else all week; she had everything so carefully worked out, all her plans minutely laid. I thought we ought to do the moving first and then have our tea afterwards, as a reward. (Not that her teas could ever be a reward, they are so disgusting.) But she insisted that we sit down and have the tea first. It was almost as if she wanted to put off the evil hour. I thought she might have second thoughts after tea, which would have been frustrating because by then I was really quite looking forward to seeing the upstairs of the house and what it was that I had to move.
Apart from that one brief trip upstairs to fasten the bathroom window, which was almost opposite the head of the stairs, all I had ever seen of the house was the front room and the hall.
Mrs Q still looked a bit ill to me and I wasn’t too happy when she told me she was coming up with me to show me exactly what had to be moved where, and ‘to give you a hand’. I said, ‘I’m sure I’ll manage OK if you explain,’ but she wasn’t having any of it.
Climbing the stairs ahead of her – she said, ‘You go first and wait. I’m a teeny bit slow’ – I found myself entering such a dark and dismal region of neglect that the downstairs of the house suddenly seemed bright and cared for in comparison. Behind me, Mrs Q’s awful rasping breaths sawed away at my sangfroid. I tried not to take in the sweet stench of damp nor the unbearable intimacy of a pair of tobacco-coloured stockings forgotten on a pile of newspapers, as I waited for her on the landing.
How long had it been since someone other than Mrs Queripel had set foot up here? I knew she kept her home-help to certain strictly defined parts of the house and wouldn’t let her in to what she had just described to me downstairs as her ‘holy of holies’: the front bedroom. I felt quite horror-struck at the sudden thought that, apart from Mrs Queripel, I might be the first person to enter their bedroom since dead Leonard.
Mrs Q had to lean against the wall for a while to get over her climb. But there was unmistakable pride in the way she rallied and went staunchly forward into the front bedroom.
I knew I must admire the room. Whatever it was like, however grubby and gloomy, I had to draw breath and go, ‘Oh, Mrs Queripel, how lovely!’ But I was not prepared for it to be empty – well, empty apart from a big wardrobe, a chest of drawers with the drawers gone, the bedside table and the bed. There were no bits and pieces; the room was bare. It was such a sudden contrast to the jammed clutter downstairs that I gaped.
‘This used to be a lovely room,’ said Mrs Queripel. ‘We chose the paper together in Debenham and Freebody, and curtains and bedspread to match in Selfridges.’
‘It’s ever such pretty material,’ I said.
Mrs Q gave a harsh laugh. ‘You don’t need to humour me, my dear,’ she said. ‘I know it’s a hollow shell.’
‘But why?’ I ventured. ‘Where is everything?’
She grinned the most dreadful grin. ‘Why, all around you downstairs, you ninny,’ she said. ‘I’ve moved it down myself. In preparation.’
‘In preparation?’ I repeated stupidly.
‘You’re not very quick on the uptake today, are you, dear?’ she said nastily. ‘That’s what I need your help for – moving my last bits and pieces. Today, I’m moving downstairs too.’
And then something terrible happened; she sat down on the bed and she began to cry. I felt completely helpless. I didn’t know what to do. I sat down beside her and I put my arm round her. It is all very well being generous and spontaneous, a tower of strength in times of trouble; Mrs Queripel stank. And, remembering that incident, I think I shall never forgive myself for thinking first of all how much she stank and wanting to recoil and let go of her, instead of thinking how I could help and what would be the best thing to say.
She shook in my arms and her crying made a dreadful, unbearable noise, an undignified monotonous series of squeaks like a pet animal pleading to be let in from the rain. Quite mechanically, I repeated things like, ‘There, there!’ and ‘Oh dear!’ and ‘Come, come!’ and all the while I was hating myself for minding her smell and the way the strands of yellowish hair shook on her scrawny neck.
It seemed an interminable time until she said something. She said, ‘I shan’t sleep in this bedroom ever again,’ and her crying redoubled.
‘You’re moving downstairs?’ I said feebly. ‘Why? Where are you going to sleep?’
‘You saw,’ Mrs Q sobbed. ‘I can’t manage those stairs twice a day any more. I don’t want to be stranded. I shall have to live in the front room from now on.’
‘But there’s no bed,’ I protested, ‘and what about the bathroom?’ And I was thinking, ‘Oh Christ, she wants the bed moved. She’s mad; there’s no way I can move that thing, even if it comes to pieces. I shall have to ask Rob to come here and help and then everything will be ruined.’
Mrs Q said, ‘I’ll sleep on the put-you-up. I can do my business out the back. I’ve got a little scullery beyond the kitchen.’
‘But will you be comfortable?’ I asked. ‘Are you sure you’ll be able to make do?’
Having to deal with my objections helped her to recover. ‘Needs must,’ she said bravely, and she felt better enough to give the bedspread an affectionate little pat. ‘It’s “Goodbye to All That”,’ she pronounced.
‘But are you sure you’ll be all right?’ I insisted. ‘I mean, maybe you should think about asking the Council for some sort of help?’
I didn’t mean moving house, of course. I know enough to realize that’s often the last straw for old people, leaving the homes where they have lived for years. I just meant ramps, maybe, or a second telephone, or a grant for a better bathroom downstairs. But Mrs Queripel misunderstood me and she clutched my wrist so tightly that I gasped.
‘Don’t you dare!’ she hissed. ‘Anything, but not that. I’ll never leave this house, never, do you understand? They’ll have to carry me out feet first.’
I assured her quickly that she had misunderstood me. Her defiance gave her strength. She got to her feet, dabbing at her undignified tears, and she started to instruct me what to move. She was in a hurry to complete her plans before any sort of authority intervened.
She wanted me to carry down her bedside table and her lamp, the two pillows and the bedding and, last of all, a little brown suitcase like a child’s, out of the wardrobe, which held, so she informed me, her ‘necessaries’. It seemed too awful to think that she should have packed a suitcase for her last trip downstairs, as though she were setting out on a real journey. But she told me that the case held letters and papers which she stored in there and that she wanted to ‘keep it by her’ in her new nook downstairs.
It struck me, as I put each thing in turn in the place which had been specially cleared for it, how woefully unobservant I had been. Of course, each week there had bee
n a few new things in Mrs Queripel’s living-room, but I had completely failed to notice them. I hadn’t noticed them and I hadn’t understood what was happening.
When I had carried everything down, Mrs Queripel was still upstairs. I found her when I came back up for the last time, sitting once again on the stripped double bed, picking wistfully at the mattress buttons and staring into space.
‘Well, it’s all shipshape now,’ I announced brightly. ‘Are you coming?’
She shifted her gaze with an effort from her daydream to me. ‘Leonard would have put it in a nutshell,’ she announced. ‘You make your bed, so you must lie on it.’
I more or less had to carry her down the stairs myself. She was in such a state of emotion, combined with her breathlessness, that I worried that if I let go of her she would just slither to the bottom in a crumpled heap. It didn’t seem awfully sensible to leave her in that state, even though it was long past the time when I would normally have left. So I sat with her for a while in the front room, encouraging her to drink the fresh pot of tea I had made, and I tried to cheer her by pointing out the advantages of her new arrangement.
‘You’ll have everything at arm’s length. You can watch television in bed.’
She didn’t react to anything I said but just sat huddled in her armchair, shaking her head and breathing gusty breaths. Eventually, I just couldn’t stay any longer. As I got up to go, a group of West Indian boys walked down the street outside carrying with them a blast of defiant music from a giant radio, and Mrs Q, who would normally have turned her face sharply to the window, pursed her lips and tutted, didn’t even react.
I said, more loudly than necessary, ‘Now, do look after yourself, won’t you, Mrs Queripel? Have you got something nice laid in for your dinner?’
She twitched with affront and she said, ‘I’ve got all I could possibly need. I don’t want for anything.’
‘No, of course,’ I said. ‘No. But you promise me you will make yourself something?’
I felt so uneasy about leaving her in that state that I did something I have carefully avoided doing all this time. I wrote down my telephone number for her, and I told her that if she ever had any problem, she must not hesitate to ring me.
I was so late back, so dreadfully late back that Rob was looking out for me from his study window. He greeted me agitatedly in the hall.
‘For heaven’s sake, whatever happened to you? I thought maybe you’d walked out on me for good?’
‘Rob, please, let me tell you I’m not in a joky mood.’
‘Why, what’s the matter? Is something wrong?’
I didn’t want to tell him what was wrong. I didn’t want him meddling in my friendship with Mrs Q with his advice and theories.
‘Mrs Queripel asked me to move some furniture for her. I’m filthy. I’ve got to have a bath.’
‘Now?’ asked Rob. ‘But dinner’s ready, long ready. I’ve made a ratatouille.’
‘I’m filthy,’ I repeated stubbornly. ‘I’ve got to have a bath.’
‘Well, be quick,’ Rob said angrily. ‘It’s probably ruined already.’
I was not deliberately slow in the bath, but I could have been quicker. I heard Rob turn on the television and when I came out, in my dressing-gown with a towel wrapped round my head, he was sitting in front of it eating his ratatouille with his plate on his knees. Without turning round, he said, ‘Yours is in the warming cupboard.’
Because of the bad feeling, I was particularly glad to go back to the museum on Monday. On Tuesday, Mary-Anne handed in her notice. Mr Charles’s stratagem of moving her to the library might as well have been designed to get rid of her. Apparently she and Mrs Dennis, the librarian, have been rubbing each other up the wrong way constantly and finally, this week Mary-Anne could stand it no more. She came and told me the good news as soon as she had told Mr Charles. She stood in front of the Desk, with a jaunty smirk on her white face, and flourished her fingers disdainfully over my papers.
‘I’m off,’ she sang, ‘to pastures new.’
She perched herself in an unnecessarily debonair way on the edge of the desk and, lowering her voice, said to me with faked concern, ‘The only thing I’m not over the moon about is leaving you here on your own. I worry about what will become of you.’
‘Oh, I shouldn’t worry about that,’ I exclaimed with annoyance. ‘I’ll survive without you, I hope.’
‘No,’ she said urgently. ‘No, I’m quite serious about this, Alison. You must promise me you’ll think about moving on too. I can’t bear the thought of you staying on and on here and quietly fossilizing.’
A year ago, it’s true, I was especially frustrated with the museum. In contrast to the bright new world which Rob had opened up, it seemed dark and muffled and stale. I even had a brief period when I imagined I might go and work on one of Jean’s projects for women. But nowadays I find I’m reconciled to it again. I like the glass cases of precious aged objects in the greenish light. I like sitting at the Desk in the slow afternoons, daydreaming, weaving fantasies of happy-ever-after promotions and endings; of acquiring my own office and my own field of expertise, and of my father miraculously coming in one day to ask for advice on a piece of antique furniture and finding in the scholar’s seat – intellectually imposing but still sweet – me.
*
Beyond the maroon curtains (why maroon?) strange lights were sweeping across the sky. Alicia was in the cinema with Leonard, watching an escape film. Two hunched figures in a little boat were rowing, rowing madly across the black surface of a bay, while from the cliff-tops a strong searchlight was feeling out across the water to detect them. They were rowing as fast as they could, their hearts thumping, but the searchlight was longer and stronger than their arms. It came irresistibly across the water, probing into the black heart of their panic, and they knew that however fast they rowed the beam would catch them and their escape would explode in a burst of dazzling light.
Something was sticking into her back. She couldn’t tell if it was an oar or a bit of the boat. As she struggled to free herself she unbalanced the boat, or maybe a wave came, and the whole thing tipped up on one side, nearly flinging her out not into the cold, heaving but at least final waves, but on to the front room floor.
She had thought she would not sleep a wink. She had tried everything; her pills, counting, breathing, even reciting parts from best-forgotten plays. But the oddity of going to sleep downstairs on the settee, like a visitor in her own house, unsettled her. The hard stuffed back of the settee was sometimes like a companion’s body beside her, but she had lain alone for so long that this was not even a consolation but something which made her feel faintly guilty, as if as well as abandoning her marital bedchamber, she was betraying Leonard even further. She would never get to sleep down here. She would never get to sleep again.
The discomfort of the settee was bad enough, but it was nothing compared with the horror of finding you were sleeping virtually in the street. For, on the other side of the maroon curtains, Shepherd’s Bush went on just a few feet away from her. All day, as she watched it for entertainment, the street was as good as empty. But after dark it seemed it took on a strong, unpleasant life of its own. Fierce car headlights, brilliantly intrusive, swept across her private ceiling. Engines, too noisy to be those of ordinary cars, belonging to monster customised machines, sliced the night. And, worst of all, there were the footsteps and sometimes voices, right beside her head. She lay in torment, first with her eyes screwed tight shut to encourage sleep and to keep out the eerie street-light, and then, after a particularly brutal set of footsteps, with her eyes wide open so that if anyone tried to break in, she would be prepared for them.
In the morning, she discovered it was only five o’clock, for she had been woken from her nightmare by loutish people leaving early to go off to work. She realized that if this was how her remaining nights were to be, she would not be able to stand it. When she woke again, it looked quite light outside and she was frozen, lying tu
rned to stone in an unfamiliar icy room, for the bedclothes had fallen off her.
That was a wretched day, divided between the armchair and the settee. It was too cold to have much of a wash out in the scullery and she felt too low to cook herself anything. She watched a variety show, a chat show, a documentary and a film on the television. She thought malevolently of all she would have to say to that young man of Alison’s when he appeared on it. When it was late enough for her to be able to go to bed, she only undressed to her undies and then she put her daytime cardigan back on over her nightdress for extra warmth. And, once again, she couldn’t sleep because everything felt so higgledy-piggledy and wrong.
By mid-week, she had begun to wonder what things were like upstairs. She worried that maybe something had sprung a leak, or in the dicy wiring a slow, slow fire was beginning, or perhaps, the whole upstairs of the house was gradually crumbling away.
Pearl came up over her horizon on Wednesday morning like a big black sun, glowing with good nature and generosity. Alicia greeted her in the hall. ‘Oh, Pearl, I could hardly wait for you to get here!’
Pearl’s naturally bulging eyes stuck out so far it looked fearfully for a moment as if something might pop and she hooted, ‘Why, Mrs Queripel, whatever’s got into you?’
Alicia took no notice of Pearl’s derision. She was about to clutch Pearl’s hand but, at the very last minute, thought better of it and went for her sleeve instead. ‘Pearl,’ she said dramatically, ‘I need your help.’
Pearl took off her hat and unbuttoned her coat in an infuriatingly leisurely way. ‘What’s the problem today?’ she asked.
Alicia led her into the front room, not caring in her distress that the bedclothes were still lying openly on the settee, and that she had left her dentures gaping gormlessly in their glass of water on the coffee table.