The Staircase Girls

by Catherine Seymour

  Early one morning Stephen was missing from his room and it worried Rose. Twice before he’d let her know that he was staying ‘with a friend’, and not to worry, but the day before this time, he’d only said his usual, ‘Ta-ta, Rose, see you tomorrow,’ as she left.

  As she stood in the doorway looking at the empty and unslept-in bed, the porter came up behind her and said, ‘Rose, Mr Hobbs ’ere has had to go to hospital.’

  ‘Oh no, whatever for?’ Rose asked.

  ‘Well, he fell over drunk. Seems he was out on the lash, if you know what I mean?’

  ‘Oh dear, I do. Silly bugger. Never mind, I’d best do his room so it’s tidy for when he gets back.’

  Before leaving for the day, Rose went back to Stephen’s room to see if he’d returned. He was sitting on his bed, the left side of his head covered by a bandage.

  ‘What have you done?’ she asked.

  ‘Rose dear, it’s just a slight cut, nothing to worry about, but are you in tomorrow?’

  ‘Of course I am, you know I’m in every day.’

  ‘Lovely! Do you think that you could come in a bit early and wash my hair for me?’

  ‘Well, I dunno about that . . . that’s a bit much, Stephen, ain’t it, really?’

  ‘Please, Rose, you see I’ve got a date with the nurse who patched me up last night.’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve got a date with the nurse and I can’t go with my hair like this . . .’ he pulled a blood-caked strand away from the top of his head to show her. Rose laughed. ‘She must need her own head seeing to. Alright then, I’ll come in a bit early but don’t you tell anyone. I don’t want the housekeeper to hear about it. She’d have a fit. She doesn’t think I should be talking to you, let alone touching your person!’

  The next morning as Rose washed Stephen’s hair he was clearly feeling hung over, and the headache that he would usually chase away with what he called ‘an old family recipe tonic’ (it smelled like a compost heap to her) wouldn’t shift, he said.

  ‘That’ll be the big cut you got the night before last,’ Rose told him, reaching round his shoulder for the Vosene shampoo.

  ‘Oh yes! Of course, I forgot . . .’ Stephen muttered.

  Rose laughed and watched his grin turn to a wince in the mirror above the sink as she firmly pushed his head over it.

  The wash took a few minutes, and when Rose had finished clearing the shampoo out of his hair with jugs of warmish water, trying to keep the plaster over his cut dry, he sat back on the stool he’d used to perch over the sink, dried the ends of his hair and said, in as serious a tone as she’d ever heard him use, ‘I don’t like being here, Rose. My mother and father pushed me to come.’

  ‘Well, that ain’t right, is it,’ she instantly felt angry on his behalf. ‘You shouldn’t be pressured into it. It’s not like my boys, we had no money and their old man was killed in the war,’ she lied, then added, ‘But you, Stephen, you’ve got all the chances in the world, I reckon.’

  She finished pouring jugs of water over the un-bandaged part of his head and handed him a towel. ‘You dry it, I’m not your bleedin’ mother.’

  Stephen put the towel over his head and reached for his cigarettes. ‘Thank you, lovely Rose, how about a smoke for you, plus ones for Ron and yourself later?’

  ‘You’ve worried me now, Stephen,’ Rose told him, taking the cigarettes and putting two in the pocket of her pinafore. ‘You’re not getting that depression, are you?’

  Stephen laughed with real delight. ‘No, Rose, I don’t drink because I’m depressed, I drink because I’m bored. Although I suspect that the nursey tonight is going to stop me from being too bored for a while.’

  ‘Well, alright then,’ Rose said, not totally convinced. She decided to tell him a story to scare him, though, and to get him to think more about what he was doing.

  ‘During the finals the year afore last, I was asked by Janet Ward on Staircase G to help her get into one of her boy’s rooms. “It won’t open,” she says, “and there’s an ’orrible stench.” It was first thing in the morning and I followed her up to the room. There was an ’orrible smell, right enough, so we went and got Ernie the maintenance man to help, but he weren’t able to open the door and said that there were something drastically wrong. So off he went to tell the porter and fetch a ladder. Once they’d set it up outside, the porter went first, and Ernie after him, through the window. Well, they found the boy dead. He’d taken an overdose they reckoned, and must ’ave been there for a few days. He definitely meant to do it ’cos he’d put furniture up against the door to stop anyone getting in, which is why Janet hadn’t been in for all that time. She thought he’d gone away and locked his door to let ’er know he was out.’

  Stephen had turned white. ‘Do you mean Phelps? But he went home, didn’t he? Couldn’t hack it, so left. That’s what we heard.’

  ‘It were all ’ushed up ’cos the college don’t like havin’ police in an’ the papers finding out about stuff,’ Rose told him. ‘You know he ’ad just started, an’ all. He was another one what din’t really want to come to college and was pushed into it. That room really needed to be fumigated.’

  Stephen sat on the edge of his single bed and looked up at her from under the edge of the towel on his head, silently smoking.

  ‘You know,’ Rose stopped on her way towards the desk, ‘most of your lot have never even lived prop’ly at home, ’ave you? What was it, did you come straight from boarding school to university?’ Stephen nodded and looked down at his feet. ‘Tsk,’ she turned and stubbed her cigarette out in the ashtray beside her. ‘Bloody hell – no point in ’aving kids if you never bloody see ’em.’

  Rose thought about her own two children, and how she’d always wanted them near her when they were little, and tried to give them the attention and care that she’d never had when a child. She’d lived in so many different places as a small child that she couldn’t help but feel sympathy with anyone who’d not had a settled home life with a mum at least, and preferably a dad, too.

  MAUD

  Cambridge 1950–55

  Sitting in a tent in the grounds of the college, Maud was having what she thought might just be the best day of her life. There was champagne, music and the young girls all looked like Hollywood stars. It was just like a film, she thought. She sat with her brand new sewing basket inside a tent next to the bar, along with a Red Cross nurse who bandaged a couple of ankles and handed out aspirin, calmed a couple of girls down who’d become hysterical (‘Too much booze and not enough food,’ she told them both), and spent as much time wandering the grounds looking for casualties as she did seated inside.

  Maud had enough time at the beginning of the evening to stand at the entrance to the tent watching everyone passing by, listening to the music (a swing band, a female singer and then the swing band again, she thought she heard). It was a world away from her lonely life at home with Hugh. After a couple of hours people started to arrive asking her for repairs to their costumes. The first couple offered a glass of champagne to Maud, but she refused. ‘Oh no, thank you,’ she said to one young man who brought a flute glass to her and insisted on wearing his shirt as she replaced two buttons. ‘I don’t want to get so tipsy that I end up stabbing you with the needle.’

  She did, however, accept cheese and grapes that were offered during the evening. ‘It’s like I’ve got my own little party going on here,’ she told one of the students, while sewing their button back on their suit jacket cuff. She hadn’t forgotten her pastilles and made sure she had one every time she ate a new piece of cheese, though the students didn’t seem to notice her breath.

  Before she knew it, the evening was ending. There were no more requests for her services and she was about to leave, at around five in the morning, when one of the bedders who had been washing the glasses asked her to come with her and the others to stand on the roof of the college. ‘We can watch the students going ’ome, it’s ever so funny,’ she promised.


  Most of the women on the roof had spent all evening and night collecting glasses from the lawn. Many of them, unlike Maud, had accepted a couple of glasses of champagne during the evening and were very jolly. ‘Just to keep us awake, you know,’ one of them said. ‘Now, come on, we’ve got to go to the top and look down across the lawn. It’ll be a sight for sore eyes.’

  After climbing the narrow stairs up to the spire, the five women stood on the roof and looked across the whole of Cambridge as the sun began to cast a glow across the town. Then they gazed down at scores of students lying on the grass in the college grounds. The women giggled and Maud couldn’t help but join in.

  After an hour or so of joking and pointing at students who made their unsteady way along the town’s cobbled and winding streets, Maud decided to walk back, pushing her bicycle so that she could make the night last for as long as possible.

  On reaching home she leaned her bike inside the front garden and put her latch key in the lock of her mother-in-law’s house with a deep sigh. But the front door wouldn’t open, and there seemed to be something blocking it. Pushing hard she wondered if her mother-in-law had put something against the door as a kind of protest against Maud’s staying out all night. Soon she created enough of a gap to be able to squeeze into the hallway. There she discovered what was blocking the door – it was Hugh. His face looked as if it had been slashed and there was blood seeping out of several cuts. She gasped and bent to him, ‘Hugh, what on earth happened?’

  He lay on the floor silently weeping and didn’t answer.

  ‘I need to clean you up,’ Maud said as calmly as possible, although she was close to panicking. She ran to the kitchen and grabbed a dishcloth, with which she wiped enough blood from his face to see that the cuts were superficial, and not too deep. ‘What happened, Hugh?’ she whispered to him.

  He looked directly into her eyes for the first time in months and said, ‘Help me up the stairs, Maud, please.’

  ‘Of course.’ She helped him up on his feet and walked him up the stairs.

  ‘Just put me to bed, I’ll be alright,’ he told her.

  ‘I need to call the police, Hugh,’ she said, as she helped ease him onto his bed. ‘You’ve been attacked.’

  Hugh looked away and stammered, ‘No, no, don’t do that. Bring a bowl of warm water, help me clean myself up. I don’t want Mum to see me like this.’

  Feeling calmer, Maud obeyed and cleaned his wounds as he sat on the edge of the bed.

  ‘I just want to sleep now. Do you mind leaving me?’

  ‘If you’re sure?’ She thought she had an idea of what might have happened. There had been a lot of grad bashing going on in town, and nights of the balls were worse than usual. Hugh must have been mistaken for a grad. The rise in the number of attacks lately was the talk of her college, with some people suggesting that it was a son of a bedder from another college who was the worst of them. Maud knew who that was and thought she’d find his mother and give her a piece of her mind.

  ‘Just call if you need anything. You going to be alright?’ she asked, and Hugh nodded. ‘You sure?’

  ‘Thank you, Maud. I’m sorry you had to see me like this.’

  ‘So am I.’ She closed the door quietly behind her and went to her room, exhausted and longing for the oblivion of sleep.

  Maud slept in until three that Sunday afternoon, the latest she had ever done so. When she saw Mrs Ingram in the kitchen she explained that Hugh had been hit by a car the night before when on his bike. That, she thought, was a plausible explanation for his injuries. After all, there was no sign of his bike in the yard. Actually, she then wondered, what had happened to it – maybe his attackers had taken it? Whatever, it wasn’t important at the moment. ‘He’s alright, nothing’s broken, he was just a bit shaken up,’ she continued, ‘best leave him to rest.’ Mrs Ingram looked duly worried, but agreed with Maud.

  That evening Maud knocked at Hugh’s door before entering, carrying a tray of food that she had prepared for him. ‘It’s nothing much. Just a few sarnies and a Battenberg. And a nice cup of tea.’

  Hugh sat up in bed wearing his pyjamas. ‘That’s very thoughtful of you. Thank you.’

  Maud put it on his bedside table and Hugh reached over to touch her sleeve. ‘Sit down, Maud, please. I want to speak to you. There’s something I need to ask you.’

  ‘I’d rather stand.’

  Hugh stared at her for a second and then blurted, ‘Will you tell Trevor that I was beaten up?’

  ‘Trevor?’ Maud was confused.

  ‘Trevor, your porter, at the college. He’s my friend, Maud . . . A special friend . . . And he has been for a long time.’

  Maud’s face grew ashen. ‘No, no,’ she cried. ‘What do you mean? Not that . . .’ She suddenly felt sick. ‘Is it him that you go fishing with? On those trips to Felixstowe?’

  Hugh nodded. ‘Yes, only we don’t fish, Maud. You know what I mean, don’t you? I thought that you knew anyway . . .’ He looked imploringly into her eyes, which were rapidly filling with tears as her heart filled with ice.

  Her knowing was a relief for Hugh, but for Maud it was something quite different. At that moment, she realized, she hated him more than she’d hated anyone before in her life. Afraid of what she might say if she spoke, instead Maud threw her head back and walked out of his room, shutting the door firmly behind her.

  Maud spent that night lying in her bed, fully clothed, not sleeping but recalling days and nights when she’d thought that her husband was doing one thing when he was clearly doing something quite, quite different. What a fool she’d been. She kept coming back to the sound of her nan’s piercing voice in her head telling her that she’d never find a real man to love her; she was too worthless, ugly, stupid and selfish to ever deserve a loving husband. Her nan was right. It was the only conclusion that she could reach, the evidence proved it.

  The following morning, a Monday, Maud pulled on her work pinafore over Sunday’s clothes and, although she was still furious with him, felt compelled to look in on Hugh. She knocked on the door and opened it slowly. Unsure if he was asleep, she stepped quietly over to the bed. He was lying motionless, his mouth slightly open. There was no sound. The silence became so overpowering that it was like a loud buzzing in her ears.

  Hugh had died in his sleep.

  Maud didn’t scream or cry. For a while she stood there looking at him, unthinking and unfeeling. He’s only thirty years old, she thought. It must have been the same heart trouble that had killed his dad. She didn’t think that the attack of Saturday night had anything to do with it, after all Hugh only had scratches to his face. Not wanting to upset her mother-in-law, who would sleep for another hour or so, Maud covered Hugh with the sheet and left the room.

  She went through her usual morning routine as if in a trance, and then made her way into work on her bicycle. She went to work just as she would have on any Monday, and didn’t talk to anyone for the first hour and a half.

  Then Trevor came to find her, hurrying across the quad, wiping his eyes, coughing and trying not to run. She saw him from the window of one of her students’ rooms as she dusted the books lined up along the sill. Knowing that Mrs Ingram must have telephoned to tell her that she’d found her son dead, Maud dropped her duster where she stood and walked steadily out of the room, down the stairs and, ignoring Trevor who was calling to her, got on her bike to return home.

  The post-mortem later revealed that Hugh had received a massive blow to the back of his head, which had caused heavy bleeding on his brain. A short police investigation into the attack drew a blank, and the case was left open. It could have happened when he fell in the kitchen at home, the police told Maud, who had nothing to say in response.

  Mrs Ingram cried on hearing the verdict. She was prescribed large amounts of sedatives and didn’t leave her room for the following two weeks. Maud made the decision not to tell her about the police investigation into the queer bashing suspicion. Another secret wasn’t going to m
ake much difference to her, she thought.

  In the weeks following Hugh’s death Maud began to hear stories about his past from neighbours and customers, who all thought that she’d known about his double life. One day Maureen, a bedder who worked at the same college, came round to see her. Maureen was particularly close to Trevor, and told her that she’d heard about her husband from him. Feeling deeply ashamed, Maud said nothing and let Maureen go on. ‘Trevor knew your Hugh very, very well, love,’ she said in sympathetic tones. Whenever Hugh was on leave from the navy he visited the public toilets in Cambridge town centre looking for sex, until he met Trevor.

  Maud felt sick, but waved Maureen on. ‘They first met the night of Hugh’s supposed first date with you, love, an hour before you was to meet under the lamp post.’ Trevor, she said, told Hugh that, ‘No one suspects that I’m “one of them”,’ and that he knew Hugh was, too. ‘Takes one to know one,’ he reckoned.

  Maureen continued the story of how Hugh and Trevor went to a nearby toilet after a couple of pints, and then Hugh left before Trevor, but a group of local boys who’d seen them enter the toilets lay in wait and chased him. Trevor managed to give them the slip by going into a college, but two of the thugs grabbed Hugh – which was where the blood on his shirt had come from that night, realized Maud. Just as she’d hoped, Hugh had returned to the Orkneys from that trip home almost in love – but with Trevor, not Maud.

  On his next leave, Hugh went looking for Trevor and eventually found him. Their relationship developed in parallel to that of Maud and Hugh. According to Maureen, Trevor thought it was a good idea for Hugh to marry her, but he claimed that he told the younger man, ‘Make sure you tell her, though. If she’s going to be keeping your secret she needs to be able to cover for you.’ Which was why Maureen and everyone else who knew, thought that she had, too.