‘As you wish,’ George said, and they stood aside and watched Madame Sousatzka as she carefully lifted the charts from the wall.
‘Is he a doctor, or something?’ Frank wanted to be friendly, too.
‘Yes,’ said Madame Sousatzka. She was not prepared to go into the matter and she went on rolling up the charts. When the walls were stripped she stood in the corner, holding the charts to her. She watched the men as they examined the room. George measured, prodded and peeled, while Frank scribbled and ticked. The men were silent. George no longer expressed any enthusiasm over his discoveries. In fact, he seemed suddenly bored by the whole business.
‘That’s it,’ he said after a short while, ‘let me help you put the charts back.’
Madame Sousatzka sensed his change of heart and she allowed him to help her. When it was finished, she opened the door for them to leave first; she looked round the naked room, still aware of Cordle’s presence. ‘Thank you, Cordle,’ she whispered, ‘We’re going now.’
As they reached the first landing, the ‘phone rang. When a ‘phone rings in a lonely house, you don’t answer it automatically. Like Madame Sousatzka, you listen a while to its ringing. She would wonder who it was. She would think of half a dozen unexciting people and hope it wasn’t one of them. She would give her ear wholly to the sound of the bell, and enjoy the concrete knowledge that somebody wanted her. She would approach the ‘phone and stretch out her hand, testing the caller’s patience, savouring the rhythmic insistence of the caller. Once she had over-tested, and the ringing had stopped as her hand touched the receiver. She was furious at herself for missing the call and she spent weeks of vain enquiry to find out who it had been. Since that time, she would pick up the ‘phone promptly, to acknowledge her presence, but she would wait a few minutes before saying ‘Hullo’, in order to prolong her excitement. Now, with George and Frank immediately behind her, she couldn’t play her private game. As she lifted the receiver, she half hoped it would be the wrong number. It was a pity to waste a telephone call under such conditions. ‘Hullo,’ she drawled, bored as a habit-worn telephonist.
‘Madame Sousatzka?’ a small voice both questioned and answered at the other end.
Madame Sousatzka caught hold of the coin-box that held the money. ‘Marcus!’ she gasped. Frank and George looked at her and saw her stagger slightly, her face a pale yellow. George stopped forward to hold her.
‘Is there anything wrong, Madam?’
‘Go away,’ Madame Sousatzka screamed, ‘I must be by myself.’ The men turned to walk down the stairs, staring behind them. ‘No, my darrlink,’ Madame Sousatzka was saying, ‘Not you, my darrlink, I was talking to someone else. Is all right with you, Marcus?’ The colour had returned to her face, the yellow rinsed out with her tears. ‘Yes, of course,’ she said. ‘Tonight. Eight o’clock. I wait for you. Is all right everything now,’ she said, almost to herself. ‘I wait for you, Marcus. Is all right.’ She heard Marcus put the ‘phone down, and she stared at the receiver in her hand. ‘Is all right,’ she said, laughing to herself. ‘Is all right, Jenny,’ she shouted in the direction of the top storey. ‘Is all right, Cordle,’ she ran towards his room, relaying the good news through the door. As she came downstairs and passed the telephone she picked up the hanging receiver and replaced it violently, as if she wanted to break all communication. She didn’t need it any more. Everything was all right again. She ran past the men in the hall and leaned over the basement staircase. ‘Is all right, Uncle,’ she yelled, ‘is all right.’
It did not strike her as odd, that none of the tenants had answered her. It didn’t matter. She came towards Frank and George, who couldn’t fathom the change in her manner. She looked at them both with a feeling of great love. ‘Is all right now,’ she said gently. ‘Is everything all right with Madame Sousatzka. Come, I show you my room. My piano, my life,’ she said, opening the door. ‘You go about your business,’ she said, ‘I go about mine. I have so much to do. I have a lesson. An important lesson. A great pianist. I must get everything ready.’
She started to sing as she opened the large kidney lid of the piano, as if to air it after lack of use. She removed the velvet band that covered the keys. She busied herself with the music, selecting pieces from the various piles. She opened a book of studies and placed it on the stand, gently turning up the corners to facilitate the turn-over. She began to giggle with excitement. With her two hands she played a scale the length of the keyboard, chromatically, so that every note would be run in. She followed this with a number of arpeggios and chords, testing the keyboard for varying tones, warming it up, as one cranks a car engine on a frosty morning.
Frank and George, their business forgotten, stared at her, bewildered. They watched her as she sat at the piano, twirling the stool higher and higher.
‘Oh, I forget so soon,’ she said. ‘Please, Mister,’ she said, going over to Frank who was the shorter of the two, ‘would you please sit on the stool and make so is the right height? You are like my Marcus. I mean only in the height you are like him.’ Frank let himself be led to the stool, and as he sat down he started to adjust the seat. ‘Is comfortable?’ Madame Sousatzka asked him when he’d stopped twiddling.
‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘I like a seat with a back, myself.’
‘Not for the playing,’ Madame Sousatzka laughed. ‘Is right for the playing? You can reach the piano?’ Frank stretched out his arms and rested his unkempt long-nailed hands on the keys. Madame Sousatzka looked at them, horrified. ‘Is all right,’ she said quickly, taking his hands away. She stared at the range of notes his hands had covered and she desperately wanted to wipe them clean. She felt Frank was like a tramp who, just for kicks, had taken a nap on a virgin bridal bed.
‘Thank you,’ she managed to say, ‘now all is ready.’
‘Give us a tune, Madam,’ said George, ‘while we get on with the job.’
Madame Sousatzka closed the lid of the piano. ‘Not now,’ she said. ‘Everything is ready. Must not disturb.’
‘Pity,’ said George, disappointed. ‘I like a drop of music myself.’
‘Will it be very long? The house business, I mean,’ Madame Sousatzka was getting impatient. It was already three o’clock and she wanted to savour the waiting time alone.
‘About an hour, I should say,’ said George. ‘Come on, Frank, get cracking. I’m going to need that plan again.’
Frank pulled it out of his brief-case and spread it over a chair.
‘Now let’s see,’ said George, ‘where are we?’
Frank pointed with his pencil. ‘We’re here,’ he said gaily. His services as a stand-in had given him confidence. ‘Entrance floor. Front room.’
‘So this door should lead to the dressing-room,’ said George, his hand on the door knob.
‘Correct,’ said Frank, who had suddenly assumed seniority. ‘Absolutely correct.’ He went over and opened the door with confidence, only to be faced with a rusty old-fashioned geyser and the beginnings of an off-white bath. He shut the door hastily behind him, thinking that he had mispointed the place on the map. But George was a thorough man. He wanted to check on everything.
‘Hullo, hullo, hullo,’ he said, opening the door and greeting the geyser in triplicate. ‘What have we here? A bathroom. How nice.’ He was dating Cameron & Hodge again. ‘No sign of a bathroom on my map, Madam. This is 132 Vauxhall Mansions, isn’t it?’ he asked disdainfully.
‘Yes, it’s a bathroom all right,’ said Madame Sousatzka. She could think of nothing else except Marcus’s promised visit. ‘Yes, I wanted a bathroom, so I built the bathroom. Very good man. Very expensive. But I understand. I take it away, yes?’ George was annoyed to have the wind taken out of his sails so quickly. ‘I take it away,’ Madame Sousatzka went on. ‘I take away the bathroom on the ground, I put back the lavatory on Cordle’s floor. I mend all the pipes. I take away all the damp. I mend the roof. I kill worms in the wood. I do everything. You send me the catalogue. I do it.’ She wanted
them very much to go away.
‘All this is going to cost you a lot of money, Madam,’ George persisted. With this surprise bathroom he had good grounds for an argument. He wanted to scold her. He wanted to tell her that she had no right to play about with the law. Even if she was pleading guilty, he was not going to let her off without a reprimand.
‘Every penny I will pay,’ said Madame Sousatzka with enthusiasm, and no doubt, had she had the cash, she would have thrust it into George’s hands then and there.
‘Yes, but it’s not that easy,’ said George, hanging on to her guilt. ‘This sort of thing isn’t done, you know. Cameron & Hodge’ – he almost crossed himself at this point – ‘take a dim view of this sort of thing. Isn’t that right, Frank?’
‘That’s right,’ said Frank sadly, and he managed a sidelong smile at Madame Sousatzka to show her what side he was on.
‘It’ll all have to go,’ George argued, as if someone were trying to shout him down. Madame Sousatzka said nothing. George tried again. ‘The geyser, this bath, the lavatory, it’ll all have to go,’ he decided. ‘There’s no provision for a water system here on my map.’
‘As you say,’ said Madame Sousatzka.
‘It’ll cost you a pretty penny,’ George gurgled. ‘Can’t go against the law for nothing.’
‘I have said already,’ said Madame Sousatzka, tired now, ‘that I will pay for everything. What d’you want with me, Mister?’ she said quietly. ‘You want also my blood?’
George looked at her as if he thought it wasn’t a bad idea. ‘As long as we understand each other,’ he said. ‘Get out the book, Frank, and take all this down. Everything I tell you.’ George had begun to sense Frank’s wavering loyalty. Frank had his book and pen ready and George bent down, dictating in his ear in whispers. He’d done all he could to humble Madame Sousatzka. Now he was going to try and make her afraid.
But Madame Sousatzka did not even look at them. She was re-sorting the music on the piano, testing the distance from the stool to the keyboard, and heartily wishing they would go away. She heard George’s whispers growing louder and more angry, so she set the metronome going to drown them. George dictated louder, competing with the rhythmic tick and bell of the machine, but Madame Sousatzka set it faster, and the bell, now ringing at each alternate tick, put George off his stride completely.
‘We will finish at the office,’ he yelled to Frank. ‘Now let us go to the basement.’
Madame Sousatzka turned off the metronome and announced herself gaily at their service. ‘I lead the way,’ she said. ‘The stairs is a little shaky. Frank, if you want to write it down in the book, there is dry rot here too. Very dry. Also bad drains. Put it all down for Mr Cameron and Mr Hodge. Is very important.’ Frank pulled out his notebook automatically. He was a man who would have taken orders from anybody.
‘I will tell you what to put down, Frank,’ said George. ‘That is my job. I assure you, Madam,’ he said to her back as he followed her down the stairs, ‘I shall not miss anything. This basement,’ he added, ‘I shall go through with a tooth-comb.’
‘Who’s there?’ Uncle shouted as they came down the stairs.
‘We are here,’ Madame Sousatzka shouted back. ‘We come to look at the dry rot.’ By now, she didn’t even care whether Uncle had bothered to clean up her room or not. In fact, she rather hoped she’d left it in its usual state. She heard scuffling inside Uncle’s room. She must be tidying up after all. She went into the room without knocking. ‘Don’t bother, Uncle,’ she began to say. And then she saw Cordle.
He had been on his knees by Uncle’s rocking-chair, and he was beginning to stand up. When he saw Madame Sousatzka the blood rushed to his face in a violent blush, sensing that he could have given time for the grass to grow. Uncle giggled nervously. Madame Sousatzka tried desperately to convey to them an understanding smile. For a moment, she forgot about Marcus’s telephone call, and a swift pang of jealousy pricked her. She hadn’t wanted Cordle herself, but she didn’t particularly want anyone else to have him. But more than anything, she didn’t want their pity. She remembered Marcus, and she wanted to deal out her happiness to them like a card in Snap. ‘Marcus is coming back,’ she said quietly.
Uncle and Cordle, relieved to change the subject, came towards her, taking her hands in theirs. Frank and George tried to circumnavigate their reunion, dodging around the circle they had formed in the doorway, trying to get into the room and on with the job.
‘Did he telephone?’ Uncle asked, breathless.
‘Yes, ten minutes ago. He wants to see me. He wants a lesson. He comes at eight o’clock. I wait for him in my room. He’s come back, Uncle,’ she whispered. ‘Cordle,’ she said touching his shoulder, ‘Marcus has come back to Madame Sousatzka.’
‘I will get my couch ready,’ said Cordle happily, ‘and put on a clean overall. We will all go back to work, Sousatzka. Uncle, find the draught board and make his bed. Oh, Uncle,’ he laughed, ‘we shall all be happy again.’
‘We shall start to live,’ said Madame Sousatzka, solemnly, ‘all of us.’
‘If you can spare me a moment, Madam,’ said George disdainfully. He stood, quizzing the map in his hand, like a tourist lost in a grotto. ‘Perhaps you will tell me, to save us time, where on this floor you have installed the lavatory, the bathroom, and the shower.’
‘Here is nothing installed,’ said Madame Sousatzka proudly. ‘Here is exact as Mr Cameron and Mr Hodge left it.’ She spoke in reverent, hushed tones, as if the basement were an important historic ruin. ‘There is no water here. Mr Cameron’s and Mr Hodge’s convenience is in the garden. From here is a long walk.’ She intended to give George his money’s worth. ‘Here in the basement is untouched. Genuine period. Oh, I made a mistake,’ she confessed. ‘I modernize the ruin just a little. I put in the gas. I’m sorry. I take it out again. Then real genuine.’
She paused to give George a chance. He did the only thing that was left to him. He ignored her. He turned to Frank and started talking to him in highly technical terms. Frank looked uncomfortable, but he felt sorry for George and he pretended to understand everything he was saying. After all, they worked as a team and they must stick together. He even jotted down a few meaningless phrases in his notebook. Then George got busy with his tape, and his plumbline, while Frank pulled out his large sheet of paper, and with his red pencil he ticked away all house diseases like a madman. He thought of the application form he’d had to fill in when he’d applied for the job. ‘Do you suffer from any of the following?’ it had asked. ‘Please put a tick where applicable.’ Had he ticked them as he was ticking now, he would have succumbed to epilepsy, tuberculosis, venereal disease, diphtheria, malaria, and several unheard-of maladies. He wondered fleetingly how many applicants owned up to their maladies, or whether they suppressed them like poverty. He stopped ticking for a moment, suddenly overcome by a feeling of guilt. It was not his business to diagnose the diseases of a house. It was the house that was applying for life, and for Frank this house had suddenly become personalized. The house was Madame Sousatzka, and all those odd people who surrounded her; the blonde up in the attic, and these two crones in the basement, and Madame Sousatzka herself, who not so long ago in her studio had given him his first break. He closed his pen and put it back in his pocket. Even without one more tick the house was condemned twice over, and how often could one demolish a house? He folded up his paper and watched George as he knelt on the floor, prodding the boards and the skirting like a punch-happy boxer, whose victim has long since surrendered.
Madame Sousatzka was still huddled in the doorway with Uncle and Cordle. She was repeating for the tenth time her conversation with Marcus on the telephone. And Cordle was asking her the same questions over and over again. ‘Did he sound happy? Did he mention Manders? Did he ask about me? Or Uncle, or Jenny?’
‘No, he hadn’t,’ Madame Sousatzka told them. ‘But tonight everybody will see him. Marcus is coming home.’
‘I’ll go to my room to
wait for him,’ said Cordle. ‘Are you coming, Uncle?’
Uncle looked at Madame Sousatzka for a moment, as if asking her permission.
Madame Sousatzka smiled. ‘You wait with Cordle, Uncle,’ she said. ‘I will wait for the men to leave my house. Then I wait for Marcus in the studio.’
Uncle was drawing on her long stored-up energy. There was no hint of dismay at the thought of the journey in front of her. Madame Sousatzka watched them go upstairs together, and she knew that their need for Marcus had lessened and the surplus had been added to hers.
The two men were in the process of packing up. ‘We’ll be back,’ George said to her, in case she thought she was seeing the last of them. ‘Can’t possibly do the whole job in one visit. We’ll be back tomorrow,’ he added, ‘and we’ll probably have to come again after that. Probably with Mr Cameron,’ he said, lowering his voice with respect.
‘Yes, of course,’ Madame Sousatzka said, ‘very often, I like you to come. Special Mr Cameron.’ She was willing to entertain them to her dry rot every day for the rest of her life, if only they’d go away now and stop robbing her of her waiting time. She wanted to sit down and organize how she would spend it. She didn’t want to think about it. She wanted to sit down with paper and pencil and write it down. It was part of the pleasure of waiting.
Frank closed the clasp on his brief-case. George was taking his time, gathering up his papers and tools one by one. Madame Sousatzka started to walk up the steps, hoping that they would follow her. She looked at her watch. Four hours of waiting were still left to her. She tried not to think too much about it. She wanted to wait until she was completely alone. She heard them coming up the steps behind her, and suddenly she wanted to delay them. The anticipation of waiting for Marcus had already exhausted her, and she wanted to postpone it, as if the waiting itself were the sole object of her excitement.
‘Please,’ she said to Frank, who was first at her side, ‘would you like both of you a cup of tea?’
Madame Sousatzka Page 19