The Staircase Girls

by Catherine Seymour

  The work was different and required less carrying (no coal fires on in the bedrooms to set and clean), only one set of stairs to the first floor, far fewer bedrooms and no kitchen work at all. There was a fairly new vacuum cleaner that wasn’t too heavy and it had an attachment for doing stairs, which were wooden and so didn’t require washing down.

  The master and his wife were lovely and treated her as if she was one of the family rather than a bedder. They called her by her first name and insisted that she did likewise to them both. The master would defer to Joyce’s judgement on what tie to wear if his wife was not available for consultation, and his wife would ask after Joyce’s family with genuine interest. The couple were in their early sixties and, although the wife had recently retired, that was because she wanted to assist with as many duties of the master as she was able to, and both seemed to have boundless reserves of energy. The lodge was usually set for parties, events and various gatherings on most weekends, some of which Joyce attended and helped carry trays around to guests, to earn a little extra money. They had four grown-up children, so the bedrooms in the lodge were either empty or occupied for a few nights by visiting guests – some of them VIPs.

  One of their most important VIP guests was Prince Philip, who first visited when his eldest son was a student, and had struck up a friendship with the master of the college. Joyce soon discovered that the Duke of Edinburgh had a great sense of humour and he liked to joke with her and other staff at the lodge. They got on so well with the duke that it became expected for them to play tricks on him during visits. Joyce’s favourite became the apple pie bed – with Mrs Atkins’s encouragement and assistance, they’d make his bed up with a tightly shortened sheet so that he could only get halfway into the bed, and under the bottom sheet she’d lay a few apples and a couple of books, making lumps and bumps.

  The morning after the first time they did it, Prince Philip marched into the kitchen before breakfast, wagged a finger at Joyce and the housekeeper, and smiling broadly called them ‘naughty little girls’, and made them ‘promise’ not to do it again. Naturally, the next time he was an overnight visitor the bed was again made up with apples. Joyce loved to see the master and duke all dressed up and parading their way to the Senate House or Guildhall for ceremonies. She felt proud to have been a small part of the ceremony, because she’d made sure the master’s tie was straight.

  The experience of working at the master’s lodge was one of the happiest of her life. She got to know the master’s children and their families when they visited for Christmas, which was always her favourite time of year. The tree at the lodge was huge and always beautifully dressed. On Christmas Eve she’d set a big fire in the main reception area and enjoy a glass of wine and mince pies with the master, staff and various fellows and choice students, as the college choir sang carols on the lawn (unless it was too wet or cold, when they’d sing in the entrance hall). She was encouraged to bring her sons to the lodge whenever it was convenient, and both Trevor and Kevin loved to go if they could.

  Joyce was saddened that she had to take time off during the summer when the lodge was empty. The master and his wife often travelled in the summer break, and unless there was a special conference set to be hosted at the college and the lodge occupied by VIP speakers, she had nothing to do for at least six weeks. She’d discovered that some of the bedders at different colleges had begun to organize travel and accommodation in Kent in the summer weeks, in order to pick hops, and she was asked along more than once. Because her job was considered among the best of them for bedders, Joyce quickly made a lot of new friends at the college, all of them eager to hear stories about the master and his VIPs. They were all just as eager to be put in the frame for any job that might come up, Joyce understood that, and they knew a word from her to the housekeeper and master could get them in.

  Life in the college had changed a lot since Joyce last worked there, she realized, and much of what she heard from the bedders made her glad that she was at the lodge and not on a staircase. For a start there were now female students at the college and in rooms that were on the same staircase as the boys, too. More than one bedder told Joyce about arriving at work and finding a girl in a boy’s room and vice versa. One woman told her that she was always finding condoms lying about in the rooms of girls. ‘The boys always hide them, but the girls have no shame,’ she’d said indignantly. The same bedder was adamant that at least one of the fellows in residence had a different female student in his room every night. ‘He’s a right Errol Flynn, he is,’ she’d said almost admiringly, although naturally she disapproved.

  The morning after the May Ball of 1979, Joyce was in the master’s bedroom making the bed when she looked out of the window to the great spreading chestnut tree below, and was amazed to see what looked like a pile of bodies under it. After opening the window and leaning out to get a better view, she realized that there were three women, all of them in various states of undress, fast asleep on the grass. She was about to go down to see if they were alright when she spotted the porter and two of the proctor’s men half-running across the lawn towards them, carrying blankets. She watched as the men lay the blankets over the women while trying to keep their heads turned away so as not to see anything they shouldn’t (they knew people were watching them, she thought).

  The girls were students who’d drunk too much at the ball, decided to go paddling in Jesus Ditch and left most of their clothes on Jesus Green. The door to their staircase was locked when they got back, so they’d all sat under the tree to wait for the morning, fell asleep and even the sun coming up hadn’t woken them. Lucky it was so warm, Joyce thought. She’d heard of boys getting drunk and falling asleep on the common, unable to find their way back to their college, who then died of cold and exposure.

  The same morning, Joyce learned later from a friend at another college that an Austin 1100 car had been discovered in one of the courts, where no cars were allowed (and it seemed impossible to drive into). Apparently a lord’s son had organized the prank, but he was so well liked that no one told him off. The car had to be taken apart in order to get it out. It wasn’t exactly a repeat of what happened in 1958 when the university woke up one June morning to find a complete Austin 7 car on the roof of the Senate House, but it was definitely a reminder of how smart the boys could be when they put their minds to it.

  Joyce heard about how one student proved very smart, and forgiving, during her time at the master’s lodge. The master’s wife told her how a bedder at the college had been caught trying to spend a stolen pound note at a shop in town, but the student from whom she’d taken it didn’t want her to be prosecuted. Talking to other bedders about it later, Joyce was told that the woman in question ‘was my neighbour, and I felt awful for her – she’s alright, but in a rough marriage. She’s had loads of jobs and it’s no wonder, I reckon. The boy planted a pound note and ’cos she smoked she got copped in Woolworths on the cigarette counter as she handed it over. She had done it before – not every day, not every week, but he noticed money going missing, so he marked the pound note. She was followed to the shop and stopped before she handed it over. She was always borrowing money, or trying to from us, an’ all.’ The other bedders agreed with nods and ‘me too’, so the tale teller continued. ‘She came round and told me when I got home. They must have taken her to the police station – she said, “I got caught, Edna.” I don’t think the boy wanted her to go, but ’course she was sacked. Anyway, they cover things like that up, the colleges.’

  In 1981 Joyce’s father died. At the time Kevin was stationed at the Old Park Barracks in Dover, serving in the Army Junior Leaders’ Regiment. He was given compassionate leave and both he and Trevor, who was in the TA, obtained permission to wear their uniform at the funeral (the permission was necessary because the IRA was very active and soldiers were high risk targets). Although deeply saddened by the passing of her father, Joyce was made to feel immensely proud as her two big sons walked behind and saluted the coffin as
it was unloaded.

  After the funeral and when left alone, Joyce had time to consider all that her father had achieved in his life, how he had won medals in the war but never boasted about it – he’d left them to Trevor and Kevin, who treasured the gift enormously – and how he had taught her sons how to be men. Her dad had more than taken the place of their absent father, he’d improved on what Ken might have done with them, she believed. Trevor was now happily married, Kevin making great progress towards a career in the army. They’d be alright. As would her brother Douglas. After he’d suffered so much through his service, he was now relatively contented and still working for Sainsbury’s, close by and always in easy contact with her.

  Joyce was grateful to work with so many nice people. In the years that followed her father’s death she continued as the favoured bedder at the lodge, and couldn’t see any reason to leave. That was until the master told her that he was moving on. Unable to imagine what working for a new master might be like, Joyce resigned and left the lodge even before the master and his family. She applied for and got a position at the lovely Eaden Lilley department store in town just as the summer term came to an end. As the May Balls began, Joyce was at work helping to open a new restaurant at the store called The Green House. It was named for the fact that the entrance stood on Green Street, but there were plenty of flowers around the place, too. Funny, she thought, that a flower bulb led me to bedding and, now I’ve left, flowers are all about me again.

  Although Joyce never again worked as a bedder nor at a college, after retiring she spent thirteen very happy years as a volunteer at the world-famous Fitzwilliam Museum on Trumpington Street, the building surrounded by university houses, rooms and faculties. More than once over the years, while sitting quietly in a room at the museum, someone would approach her and ask if she was, by any chance, Joyce, who used to be a bedder . . .

  AUDREY

  Cambridge 1974 onwards

  With two children under the age of three, Audrey had to cut down on the number of customers she could do at home, and the family needed another way to make extra cash. They weren’t the only ones having money trouble at the time, of course. It was 1974 and the coal miners were striking. The Tory government introduced a three-day working week in January, in order to save what little coal the country’s industry had until the prime minister Ted Heath could get the miners to accept his terms (which they never did). With reduced working hours came reduced wages, especially in the nationalized industries like the Post Office.

  That summer, after the three-day week had ended, a few of Barry’s mates discovered that if they had a spare room there was money to be had from the growing number of language schools springing up around the place. Since most of them had no ‘spare’ room, strictly speaking, they were renting their children’s bedrooms, dining or living rooms for cash, cramming everyone else into other rooms. Barry suggested to Audrey that if they had a spare room they could do likewise next year, and she agreed. She was all in favour if it meant that she could have the new Indesit front loader washing machine she had her eye on. That would make her job a lot easier with the amount of towels from hairdressing she had to wash, as well as the kids’ nappies. Barry would never buy anything ‘on the knock’, so she needed the cash that a lodger would bring in.

  Their second child was also a girl, who they’d named Paula. Barry continued to drink heavily, but a little surprisingly he proved to be a ‘fantastic father’ to their two daughters, as Audrey told her regulars when they came for highlights or a perm. ‘He reads to Nadine and Paula every night and makes them laugh,’ she said almost proudly. ‘He’s brilliant, and they love him.’ It was a reminder of why she had fallen in love with him. ‘He’s got a good sense of fun has my Barry, and is quite intelligent really. It’s just the drink that spoils him.’

  Barry’s caring for the girls allowed Audrey time in the evenings of that winter to do extra work, but because of the babies she couldn’t have customers round to the house for hairdos. Instead, she found work at the colleges doing silver service waitressing. Barry didn’t object, telling her that as long as she was bringing money in and it didn’t interfere with his life, he didn’t mind. When he began shift work, which included nights, he didn’t want women coming in for hairdos when he was trying to sleep during the day, either, nor when it was teatime. So Audrey worked her appointments around him and the children’s naps, mostly in the mid-afternoons, and went out in the evenings when she had work at a college.

  College waitressing sometimes involved serving between eight and ten courses in an evening, and it was hard work, but she usually found it interesting, especially when weird food was being served.

  ‘The food is amazing,’ she told Barry, ‘the money that they must spend! They had quails’ eggs tonight and I didn’t even know what the tiny little things were. I’d never seen them before, have you?’

  Audrey worked a lot of large reception dinners at colleges, many of them medieval-style banquets. She noticed that there were rarely any students present, though, which she thought was odd, until she realized that the guests were paying a lot of money to be in the big halls, eating at long refectory tables surrounded by oil paintings of important people from history, and wouldn’t have appreciated the company of students.

  The waitressing sometimes left scars on her, though. ‘Oh Audrey, what have you done?’ one of her hairdressing customers asked one afternoon, pointing to her forearms.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ she replied matter-of-factly, ‘just burns from carrying ten plates that were hot the other night. The heat goes straight through the napkins, especially from the great big silver trays, but it’s not too bad.’

  Work wasn’t the only source of painful incident at the time, which proved to be the most trying period of her marriage.

  Despite Audrey’s extra earnings (she even made some money in tips) and Barry’s shift work paying better, prices seemed to be going up daily, even food was costing more and more. There never seemed to be enough money at the end of the week for anything but the basics – which included Barry’s beer, naturally. Despite being a wonderful dad, he was still sometimes an abusive husband, but Audrey wouldn’t take a slap or two without retaliation. They tried to keep their rows away from the kids, which they managed to do since most happened when he came back from the pub late at night. Their set-tos never roused the kids from their sleep even though they’d shout, swear and hit each other. Neither ever caused any more than superficial damage to the other either, and Audrey was used to passing off her scratches and bruises as accidents, if the kids asked – although she always told friends and family the truth about their cause.

  The family struggled through into the autumn with a slight lessening of tension between them. With money tight Barry drank a little less, and the arguments became fewer as the nights got longer until, one winter’s evening in late 1974, Barry was shaken by an experience he wouldn’t ever forget.

  It was the usual mayhem in their house at bedtime, and he was trying to read the girls a story before they went to sleep, when Nadine grabbed the book and ripped it up in a fit of anger. Barry blew up and took every one of her books out of her room, shouting at her that she wasn’t going to get any of them back until she’d learned to look after them. They were yelling at each other as Audrey tidied the kitchen when she heard a knock at the front door.

  Audrey wasn’t sure at first whether to console Nadine or see who was calling, but knowing that Barry wouldn’t have wanted her to get involved in their spat, she answered the door. She was slightly surprised to find two policemen outside, and asked immediately if the neighbours had complained about the noise, and if so she was sorry, but their daughter was having a tizzy.

  ‘No madam, it’s not that,’ one of them interrupted her. ‘We all have problems at bedtime with kiddies, don’t we? Actually it’s a lot more serious than that.’

  Audrey folded her arms and stood in the doorway, denying them entry or much of a view past her, trying to wo
rk out what Barry had done that might be classed as ‘serious’.

  ‘Well?’ she asked, hardening her voice.

  ‘Well, we’ve had an anonymous call to say that your husband, Barry Woolard, could be the Cambridge Rapist.’

  Audrey felt a sense of relief wash over her.

  ‘Your husband is described as being about five feet six, with dark hair. Is that correct?’ The officer continued in a deep, serious voice without waiting for a response. ‘He is often seen out and about at odd hours, and in areas of previous attacks. All of which matches with our descriptions and sightings of the sex attacker.’

  Audrey was aware that behind her an unusual hush had fallen in the house and that the eyes of Barry and Nadine were trained on her back. She opened her mouth to speak, but then threw her head back and howled with laughter. She couldn’t stop and was soon gasping for breath, leaning against the door frame for support. The policemen looked on in astonishment.

  ‘Madam,’ the deep-voiced copper half-shouted, ‘we have had all sorts of reaction to this sort of inquiry, but we have never had anyone laugh.’ Audrey was doubled up in pain from laughing so hard, but struggled to say, ‘You haven’t met him yet!’ After another spluttering laugh, she tried to calm herself, took a deep breath and continued. ‘Please, my husband is not the Cambridge Rapist.’

  Once she’d managed to control her hysteria, Barry came downstairs, got his jacket and obligingly accompanied the officers to the station for questioning. Audrey managed to settle the children, who had become infected by their mother’s hysterical laughter, and sat down to wait for Barry’s return. While she was convinced, like the police, that the rapist – who the papers called the ‘Beast of Bedsit Land’ after carrying out horrific rapes on women living alone – had to be a local man, she knew it was not her husband. When Barry eventually returned from the station, it was clear that he’d stopped at the pub on the way home, but he was still very shaken by the incident.