by Ruth Rendell
“Mainly to give you a break, Miss Parchman,” said the doctor. “He could go at any time, he could last for years.”
But he showed no signs of going. Eunice bought him nice bits of fish and made him steak and kidney pudding. She kept up his bedroom fire and brought him hot water to shave in while he whistled “The King of Love my Shepherd is” and “I am the Lord High Executioner.” One bright morning in spring he sat up in bed, pink-cheeked and strong, and said in the clear voice of one whose lungs are perfectly sound:
“You can wrap me up warm and put me in Mum’s chair and take me up on the common, Eu-nicey, mother of Timothy.”
Eunice made no reply. She took one of the pillows from behind her father’s head and pushed it hard down on his face. He struggled and thrashed about for a while, but not for long. His lungs, after all, were not quite sound. Eunice had no phone. She walked up the street and brought the doctor back with her. He asked no questions and signed the death certificate at once.
Now for freedom.
She was forty and she didn’t know what to do with freedom when she had it. Get over that ridiculous business of not being able to read and write, George Coverdale would have said. Learn a useful trade. Take in lodgers. Get some sort of social life going. Eunice did none of these things. She remained in the house in Rainbow Street, for which the rent was scarcely now more than nominal, she had her blackmail income, swollen now to two pounds a week. As if those twenty-three years had never been, those best years of all her youth passed as in the twinkling of an eye, she went back to the sweetshop and worked there three days a week.
On one of her walks she saw Annie Cole go into a post office in Merton with a pension book in her hand. Eunice knew a pension book when she saw one. She had been shown by her father how to sign his as his agent. And she knew Annie Cole by sight too, having observed her leaving the crematorium just before Mr. Parchman’s funeral party had arrived. It was Annie Cole’s mother who had died, and now here was Annie Cole collecting her pension and telling the counter clerk how poor Mother had rallied that day. The advantage of being illiterate is that one achieves an excellent visual memory and almost total recall.
Annie thereby became Eunice’s victim and amanuensis, paying her a third of that pension and doing needful jobs for her. She also, because she bore no malice, seeing Eunice’s conduct as only natural in a catch-as-catch-can world, became the nearest Eunice ever had to a friend until she met Joan Smith. But it was time now to kill Mother off finally, she was getting scared, only Eunice as beneficiary wouldn’t let her. She determined to be rid of Eunice, and it was she who, having flattered her blackmailer to the top of her bent on her housewifely skills, produced as if casually the Coverdales’ advertisement.
“You could get thirty-five pounds a week and all found. I’ve always said you were wasted in that shop.”
Eunice munched her Cadbury’s filled block. “I don’t know,” she said, a favourite response.
“That place of yours is falling down. They’re always talking about pulling that row down. It’d be no loss, I’m sure.” Annie scrutinised The Times which she had picked at random out of a litter bin. “It sounds ever so nice. Why not write to them and just see? You don’t have to go there if you don’t fancy it.”
“You can write if you want,” said Eunice.
Like all her close acquaintances, Annie suspected Eunice was illiterate or semiliterate, but no one could ever be quite sure. Eunice sometimes seemed to read magazines and she could sign things. There are many people, after all, who never read or write, although they can. So Annie wrote the letter to Jacqueline, and when the time came for the interview it was Annie who primed Eunice.
“Be sure to call her madam, Eun, and don’t speak till you’re spoken to. Mother was in service when she was a girl and she knew all about it. I can give you a good many of Mother’s tips.” Poor Annie. She had been devoted to her mother, and the pension-book fraud had been perpetrated as much as a way of keeping her mother alive and with her as for gain. “You can have a lend of Mother’s court shoes too. They’ll be about your size.”
It worked. Before Eunice could think much about it, she was engaged as the Coverdales’ housekeeper, and if it was at twenty-five rather than thirty-five pounds a week, either seemed a fortune to her. And yet, why was she so easily persuaded, she who was as bound to her burrow and her warren as any wild animal?
Not for change, not for pastures new, not for adventure, pecuniary advantage, or even the chance of showing off the one thing she could do well. Largely, she took the job to avoid responsibility.
While her father was alive, though things had been bad in many respects, they had been good in one. He took responsibility for the rent and the rates and the services bills, for filling in forms and reading what had to be read. Eunice took the rates round to the council offices in cash, paid the gas and electricity bills in the same way. But she couldn’t hire television or buy it on the H.P. There would have been forms to fill in. Letters and circulars came. She couldn’t read them. Lowfield Hall would solve all that and, as far as she could see, receive her and care for her in the only way she was interested in forever.
The house was rendered up to an amazed and delighted landlord, and Mrs. Samson saw to the selling of the furniture. Eunice watched the valuing of her household goods, the indifference on the man’s face, with an inscrutable expression. She packed everything she possessed into two suitcases, borrowed from Mrs. Samson. In her navy skirt, hand-knitted navy jumper, and raincoat, she made, characteristically, her farewells to that kind neighbour, that near mother who had been present when her own mother gave her birth.
“Well, I’m off,” said Eunice.
Mrs. Samson kissed her cheek, but she didn’t ask Eunice to write to her, for she was the only living person who really knew.
At Liverpool Street Station Eunice regarded trains—trains proper, not tubes—for the first time in nearly forty years. But how to find which one to take? On the departure board, white on black, were meaningless hieroglyphs.
She hated asking questions, but she had to.
“Which platform for Stantwich?”
“It’s up on the board, lady.”
And again, to someone else: “Which platform for Stantwich?”
“It’s up on the board. Thirteen. Can’t you read?”
No, she couldn’t, but she didn’t dare say so. Still, at last she was on the train, and it must be the right one, for by now eleven people had told her so. Out into the country the train took her and back into the past. She was a little girl again, going with her school to Taunton and safety, and her whole future was before her. Now, as then, the stations passed, nameless and unknown.
But she would know Stantwich when she got there, for the train and her future went no further.
5
She was bound to fail. She had no training and no experience. People like the Coverdales were far removed from any people she had ever known, and she was not accommodating or adaptable. She had never been to a party, let alone given one, never run any house but the one in Rainbow Street. There was no tradition of service in her family and no one she knew had ever had a servant, not even a charwoman. It was on the cards that she would fail abysmally.
She succeeded beyond her own stolid hopes and Jacqueline’s dreams.
Of course, Jacqueline didn’t really want a housekeeper at all. She didn’t want an organiser and manager but an obedient maid of all work. And Eunice was accustomed to obedience and hard work. She was what the Coverdales required, apparently without personality or awareness of her rights or that curiosity that leads an employee to pry, quiet and respectable, not paranoid except in one particular, lacking any desire to put herself on the same social level as they. Aesthetic appreciation for her was directed to only one end—domestic objects. To Eunice a refrigerator was beautiful while a flower was just a flower, the fabric of a curtain lovely whereas a bird or a wild animal at best “pretty.” She was unable to differentiate, as
far as its aesthetic value was concerned, between a famille rose vase and a Teflon-lined frying pan. Both were “nice” and each would receive from her the same care and attention.
These were the reasons for her success. From the first she made a good impression. Having eaten the last of the Bounty bar she had bought herself at Liverpool Street, she alighted from the train, no longer nervous now that there was nothing to be deciphered. She could read Way Out, that wasn’t a problem. Jacqueline hadn’t told her how she would know George, but George knew her from his wife’s not very kind description. Melinda was with him, which had floored Eunice, who was looking for a man on his own.
“Pleased to meet you,” she said, shaking hands, not smiling or studying them, but observing the big white car.
George gave her the front seat. “You’ll get a better view of our beautiful countryside that way, Miss Parchman.”
The girl chattered nineteen to the dozen all the way, occasionally shooting questions at Eunice. D’you like the country, Miss Parchman? Have you ever been up in the Fens? Aren’t you too hot in that coat? I hope you like stuffed vine leaves. My stepmother’s doing them for tonight. Eunice answered bemusedly with a plain yes or no. She didn’t know whether you ate stuffed vine leaves or looked at them or sat on them. But she responded with quiet politeness, sometimes giving her small tight smile.
George liked this respectful discretion. He liked the way she sat with her knees together and her hands folded in her lap. He even liked her clothes which, to a more detached observer, would have looked like standard issue to prison wardresses. Neither he nor Melinda was aware of anything chilly or repulsive about her.
“Go the long way round through Greeving, Daddy, so that Miss Parchman can see the village.”
It was thus that Eunice was given a view of her future accomplice’s home before she saw that of her victims. Greeving Post Office and Village Store, Prop. N. Smith. She didn’t, however, see Joan Smith, who was out delivering Epiphany People literature.
But she wouldn’t have taken much notice of her if she had been there. People didn’t interest her. Nor did the countryside and one of the prettiest villages in Suffolk. Greeving was just old buildings to her, thatch and plaster and a lot of trees that must keep out the light. But she did wonder how you managed when you wanted a nice bit of fish or suddenly had a fancy, as she often did, for a pound box of chocolates.
Lowfield Hall. To Eunice it might have been Buckingham Palace. She didn’t know ordinary people lived in houses like this, which were for the Queen or some film star. In the hall, for the first time, all five of them were together. Jacqueline, who dressed up for any occasion, who got into emerald velvet trousers and red silk shirt and Gucci scarf to greet her new servant, was there waiting. And even Giles was there. Passing through at that particular moment, looking vaguely for his Hindi primer, he had been collared by his mother and persuaded to remain for an introduction.
“Good evening, Miss Parchman. Did you have a good journey? This is my son Giles.”
Giles nodded absently and escaped upstairs without a backward glance. Eunice hardly noticed him. She was looking at the house and its contents. It was almost too much for her. She was like the Queen of Sheba when she saw King Solomon—there was no more spirit in her. But none of her wonderment showed in her face or her demeanour. She stood on the thick carpet, among the antiques, the bowls of flowers, looking first at the grandfather clock, then at herself reflected in a huge mirror with gilded twirls round the edge of it. She stood half stunned. The Coverdales took her air for poise, the silent self-sufficient containment of the good servant.
“I’ll take you to your room,” said Jacqueline. “There won’t be anything for you to do tonight. We’ll go upstairs and someone will bring your bags up later.”
A large and pleasant room met Eunice’s eyes. It was carpeted in olive-drab Wilton, papered in a pale yellow with a white vertical stripe. There were two darker yellow easy chairs, a cretonne-covered settee, a bed with a spread of the same material, and a long built-in cupboard. The windows afforded a splendid view, the view, which was better seen from here than from any other room in the house.”
“I hope you find everything to your liking.”
An empty bookcase (destined to remain so), a bowl of white lilac on a coffee table, two lamps with burnt orange shades, two framed Constable reproductions, Willy Lott’s Cottage, The Leaping Horse. The bathroom had light green fittings, and olive-green towels hung on a heated rail.
“Your dinner will be ready for you in the kitchen in half an hour. It’s the door at the end of the passage behind the stairs. And now I expect you’d like to be left alone for a while. Oh, here’s my son with your bags.”
Giles had been caught by George and coaxed into bringing up the two cases. He dumped them on the floor and went away. Eunice disregarded him as she had largely disregarded his mother. She was staring at the one object in those two rooms which really interested her, the television set. This was what she had always wanted but been unable to buy or hire. As the door closed behind Jacqueline, she approached the set, looked at it, and then, like someone resolved upon using a dangerous piece of equipment that may explode or send a shock up one’s arm, but knowing still that it must be used, it must be attempted, she pounced on it and switched it on.
On the screen appeared a man with a gun. He was threatening a woman who cowered behind a chair. There was a shot and the woman fled screaming down a corridor. Thus it happened that the first programme Eunice ever saw on her own television dealt with violence and with firearms. Did it and its many successors stimulate her own latent violence and trigger off waves of aggression? Did fictional drama take root in the mind of the illiterate so that it at last bore terrible fruit?
Perhaps. But if television spurred her on to kill the Coverdales, it certainly played no part in directing her to smother her father. At the time of his death the only programmes she had seen on it were a royal wedding and a coronation.
However, though she was to become addicted to the set, shutting herself up with it, drawing her curtains against the summer evenings, that first time she watched it for only ten minutes. She ate her dinner cautiously, for it was like nothing she had ever eaten before, was taken over the house by Jacqueline, instructed in her duties. From the very beginning she enjoyed herself. A few little mistakes were only natural. Annie Cole had taught her how to lay a table, so she did that all right, but on that first morning she made tea instead of coffee. Eunice had never made coffee in her life except the instant kind. She didn’t ask how. She very seldom asked questions. Jacqueline assumed she was used to a percolator—Eunice didn’t disillusion her—while they used a filter, so she demonstrated the filter. Eunice watched. It was never necessary for her to watch any operation of this kind more than once for her to be able to perform it herself.
“I see, madam,” she said.
Jacqueline did the cooking. Jacqueline or George did the shopping. In those early days, while Jacqueline was out, Eunice examined every object in Lowfield Hall at her leisure. The house had been dirty by her standards. It brought her intense pleasure to subject it to a spring cleaning. Oh, the lovely carpets, the hangings, the cushions, the rosewood and walnut and oak, the glass and silver and china! But best of all was the kitchen with pine walls and cupboards, a double steel sink, a washing machine, a dryer, a dishwater. It wasn’t enough for her to dust the porcelain in the drawing room. It must be washed.
“You really need not do that, Miss Parchman.”
“I like doing it,” said Eunice.
Fear of breakages rather than altruism had prompted Jacqueline to protest. But Eunice never broke anything, nor did she fail to replace everything on the exact spot from where she had taken it. Her visual memory imprinted neat permanent photographs in some department of her brain.
The only things in Lowfield Hall which didn’t interest her and which she didn’t handle or study were the contents of the morning-room desk, the books, the letters from
George in Jacqueline’s dressing table. Those things and, at this stage, the two shotguns.
Her employers were overwhelmed.
“She’s perfect,” said Jacqueline who, parcelling up George’s shirts for the laundry, had had them taken out of her hands by Eunice, laundered exquisitely by Eunice between defrosting the fridge and changing the bed linen. “D’you know what she said, darling? She just looked at me in that meek way she has and said, ‘Give me those. I like a bit of ironing.’ ”
Meek? Eunice Parchman?
“She’s certainly very efficient,” said George. “And I like to see you looking so happy and relaxed.”
“Well, I don’t have a thing to do. Apart from her once putting the green sheets on our bed and once simply ignoring a note I left her, I haven’t had a fault to find. It seems absurd calling those things faults after old Eva and that dreadful Ingrid.”
“How does she get on with Eva?”
“Ignores her, I think. I wish I had the nerve. D’you know, Miss Parchman can sew too. I was trying to turn up the hem of my green skirt, and she took it and did it perfectly.”
“We’ve been very lucky,” said George.
So the month of May passed. The spring flowers died away and the trees sprang into leaf. Pheasants came into the fields to eat the green corn, and the nightingale sang in the orchard. But not for Eunice. Hares, alert and quivering, cropped under the hedges, and the moon rose slowly behind the Greeving Hills, red and strange like another sun. But not for Eunice. She drew the curtains, put on the lamps and then the television. Her evenings were hers to do as she liked with. This was what she liked. She knitted. But gradually, as the serial or the sporting event or the cops and robbers film began to grip her, the knitting fell into her lap and she leant forwards, enthralled by an innocent childlike excitement.