The Ladies of the House

by Molly McGrann

  *

  Tucked up in bed with a hot-water bottle, Marie rested. Flavia said she must be poorly. There was a mug of Horlicks on the bedside table, a pile of toast. Sleep, Flavia told her, rubbing her back. But Marie couldn’t sleep. She was remembering.

  He was a booming voice at the weekend. He was a reason to stay quiet indoors, to mind her table manners, tiptoe on the stairs. Never make a mess or fuss, never laugh, try not to cry. She had been frightened of him when she was little but still she held his hand and pecked his cheek when he wanted her to – his kisses rubbed like sandpaper. He told her to pull up her socks, tuck in her blouse, close her mouth; there was nothing to be gained in going about slack-jawed, he said. She listened. She did as she was told. She kept her distance.

  Who was her father? He was Arthur Gillies – that was his name. But who had he been? She never much cared, except that he was her father and she loved him. She had to. She feared him more.

  But then, they hardly saw him, working in London as he did. He was a businessman preoccupied with business. Once, when Marie asked him what kind of business, he said she wouldn’t understand. That kind of talk was for men, he said. She accepted his explanation and never bothered him about it again. Marie couldn’t recall ever hearing her mother ask her father a question, apart from the usual: how was his dinner? Was the meat cooked the way he liked it? Did he fancy a bit of cake? Nice bit of cake for him? Flavia hovered with the whisky decanter, the claret. Back and forth, back and forth and back again. Would that be all? Another drop? A cup of tea perhaps? She scurried around on mouse feet and Marie picked up the habit. They bustled, they hid. They gave him what he wanted: peace and quiet.

  At sixteen, Marie left school to work. Her father told her she must work, must earn her keep, and listed a range of jobs he thought would suit her – the usual sort of thing for a young woman: secretary, receptionist, cashier. Not waitress, nor was she to go anywhere near a stage – not that she was likely to, being a large girl with a flattened face and pores that drank Max Factor. The stage had never occurred to her. She didn’t know why he said it, except that there was a neighbourhood girl who had set off one day for London and never been seen again. People said she was a dancer – they gave that knowing look when they said it.

  Work, he said. Work hard. Keep quiet.

  She worked. She took a job at the Linen Cupboard. All day long she folded bed sheets and eiderdowns and cot blankets. She plumped pillows. She straightened a rainbow array of flannels. With clean hands, she laid out fine, thin hand towels for inspection, beautifully embroidered with twining vines and coronets, just for guests. Speciality items such as that didn’t sell except for trousseau lists.

  Marie never had a trousseau list.

  If her parents had hoped she would marry, they never said. No one fancied her. She didn’t like to dance, she had hair everywhere, a foreign mother and her father growled like a bear. She had never been kissed. She had crushes, entirely inappropriate: the postman who delivered to the Linen Cupboard, the greengrocer’s son, the handsome young vicar who caused a sensation in town just by opening his mouth – it didn’t matter what came out. Over the years the dream of love slipped away and she worked through it all, never missed a day. Her hands flew, patting, tucking, smoothing, sorting, ringing the till, giving change, every day the same. The years lined up like gravestones. Five years, then ten, twenty. She carried on working just to show her father she was made of the right stuff. Thirty years, five days a week, at the Linen Cupboard.

  Flavia was at the bedroom door, looking in on her. Marie pretended to be asleep. She wanted to be alone. She needed to think. Flavia toddled off, snuffed out the hall light. Nighttime settled like a dead man’s hands. Marie didn’t sleep a wink.

  *

  On Monday, during her lunch break, she returned to the bank. She asked for Douglas Smart, who looked panicked when he saw her. Might they just go into his office for a word, she said – Marie had rehearsed the speech countless times in her head. Douglas Smart told her that in future she should speak only to Mr Dagger-Davis; he would see if Mr Dagger-Davis were free. He excused himself and she watched as he bolted down the corridor, silly shoes flapping and slipping.

  Mr Dagger-Davis appeared: the stale old gentleman who had come to the house when her father died. He escorted her into his office, larger and grander than Douglas Smart’s cubicle, decently furnished. There she was informed that his young colleague had made a mistake. He, Mr Dagger-Davis, had been out of the bank on Saturday, most unfortunate.

  ‘Things are not as they seem,’ he said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The account details you saw are confidential.’

  ‘It’s my father’s money.’

  ‘That’s right. Your father’s accounts are held in trust. The figures you saw are your father’s accounts.’

  ‘But I’m his daughter. His only child. That’s my money – my mother’s money. It’s ours.’

  Mr Dagger-Davis looked at her with a certain patience. ‘Your income is based on the interest of the trust only. You don’t have access to the capital. It’s not yours. You are a beneficiary of the trust. That is the arrangement.’

  ‘The arrangement beneficiary?’ Marie did not understand – not yet.

  ‘Your father made provision for you and your mother through a trust.’

  ‘He didn’t tell us we were millionaires!’

  Mr Dagger-Davis blanched. ‘The accounts are private. You were not meant to see them – my colleague’s mistake, as I said. If you need to speak with someone in more detail about the legality of this matter, I suggest you get in touch with Mr Wye, your father’s solicitor.’ The old man stood and reached for her hand. ‘A pleasure to see you again.’

  Once more Marie stumbled out of the bank. Her lunch break was nearly over, so she hurried back to the Linen Cupboard, where she spent the rest of the afternoon steaming tea towels. Gathering herself.

  She remembered Mr Wye. Like Mr Dagger-Davis, he had been there when her father died. Both men had presented themselves as old friends of her father, although neither Flavia nor Marie had met them before. They came to the house, extended their condolences and eventually sat down, each with a cup of tea and a slice of Flavia’s cherry loaf before him. There were things for Flavia to sign, the usual sort of paperwork, Mr Wye had explained. Once the estate was in order – that was the phrase used by both Mr Dagger-Davis and Mr Wye – the gentlemen disappeared again and life as Flavia and Marie knew it resumed, unchanged except that Arthur Gillies no longer returned at the weekends or for holidays.

  Fifteen years had passed since her father’s death. It seemed no time at all, looking back on it. Marie wondered how it went so unnoticeably. She was not one to pause on the stairs at the end of the day and think, There it goes, out with the lights. But fifteen years – that was a lot of life.

  She made an appointment to see Mr Wye. She got the time off work – an unusual request for her, but Marie insisted. She did not tell anyone where she was going, not even her mother. She arrived early and was seen right away, perched on a slender chair that was much too small for her.

  ‘Your father,’ said Mr Wye, and then paused. He looked eighty, at least, and she wondered why he had not yet retired. When he spoke, though, his voice was strong. ‘Your father and I worked together for a long time. It was a sad day for us all when he died.’ He cleared his throat and looked right at her. ‘What can I do for you, Miss Gillies?’

  ‘I was at the bank,’ she began, and then stopped, shocked with sudden emotion. Choked up. Mr Wye waited. Marie tried to speak but found she could not.

  ‘You should have all you need, you and your mother. If you want to go on holiday that’s fine with us,’ Mr Wye said, not gently. ‘There are funds for that. Write to the bank in the usual way. Mr Dagger-Davis has been in touch and he said you are certain of going. Miss Gillies, you may plan your trip.’

  ‘I know there’s money, millions of money,’ Marie blurted. ‘I saw
it with my own eyes.’

  Mr Wye sighed.

  ‘Why didn’t we know about the money?’

  ‘Your father set up a trust to look after you. His instructions were that you should continue to live in the way to which you were accustomed.’

  ‘My mother doesn’t know.’

  ‘Your father—’

  ‘I want my money!’

  ‘Your father did not expect you to ask questions about the way he did things.’

  Marie paused to consider this. ‘Where did he get the money?’

  ‘He earned it. He was a good businessman.’

  ‘I don’t even know what kind of business he was in,’ she admitted. ‘He didn’t really talk when he was home. He was always tired. He just wanted to rest.’ It had never troubled her before that she didn’t know what her father did to earn a living. There seemed a general sort of work to be done by men, mostly in offices, sometimes in meetings, not very interesting, and that’s what she thought her father did. Business was business – that’s what he said. Not for her head.

  Mr Wye hesitated. ‘He owned property. In London. He bought property cheaply after the war. He was clever. He was ahead of everyone.’

  ‘How much property?’

  ‘A good number of houses. He rebuilt what had been bombed, he modernized – he was always modernizing, bringing things up to date. He was very proud of what he’d achieved.’

  ‘Houses?’

  ‘Rather a lot of them.’ Mr Wye looked at his hands, slowly opened and closed the fingers. The joints clicked. If he pinched the skin, it would hold in a peak once released.

  ‘He still owns them?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Even when he’s dead?’

  Mr Wye snorted. ‘They are held in trust. It’s not unusual.’

  ‘Then we own them,’ Marie concluded.

  ‘Not quite. Not yet.’

  ‘When?’

  Mr Wye cleared his throat. ‘It’s not for me to say.’

  ‘Why won’t you tell me anything?’

  ‘Miss Gillies, I cannot—’

  ‘I just don’t understand.’

  ‘You don’t need to understand, if I may be so blunt—’

  ‘I want you to tell me.’

  ‘Tell you what?’

  ‘Whose houses are they?’

  ‘Miss Gillies—’

  ‘Who lives in the houses?’

  ‘It’s not for me—’

  ‘Who lives there?’

  Old friends of her father, he finally told her. They were mostly very old – some were probably dead, he thought. ‘I must check on them soon. I do from time to time.’

  ‘My father pays to keep his friends in houses in London?’ She could hardly believe what she was saying.

  ‘Yes.’

  The ample flesh across Marie’s shoulders and back prickled in goose pimples; the signal connected with her thighs, which clenched. Her toes curled and both hands cramped with gripping so hard. ‘Why?’ she managed to ask.

  ‘That,’ said Mr Wye, ‘is a long story.’

  5

  Joseph missed the solicitor, Mr Wye, because he was out, making his rounds. Joseph didn’t work, although making his rounds could take four or five hours of his day, depending on the buses. For more than thirty years he had diligently ridden the London buses, every single one. The routes and timetables were in his head; he rode them all, though he had his favourites.

  He began at the newsagent, where he bought the Daily Mail, then progressed, at a slug’s pace, to Camden via the canal, taking in the ever-changing scenery of the water: oily one day, foaming and spidery the next, or speckled with blossoms. The water undulated rubbish. He didn’t know how deep it was. He half expected a body, but all these years had passed and the worst he’d seen was a wingless, bleating seagull, not yet dead.

  Leaving the canal, Joseph caught a bus. Often he started with the 29 to Trafalgar Square and went from there, it being an axis of sorts. Once aboard the bus of his choice, he enjoyed its gentle swaying and shudders. He listened to the bus grunting up the hills, same as his body called out as he exerted himself, and he leaned and clenched on the corners. When the bus sat, he, too, was at ease; then both inhaled and rumbled on again. The bus was a balm to him. What he saw and heard he kept to himself: proof of other small lives being lived all around. People swallowed tablets at prescribed hours, had quiet chats with themselves or gazed at family photos, remembering who they were. Watching them, he felt he was part of life. He nodded as the seat next to him emptied and filled. He replied when necessary, but never more than a halting word or two, having his stutter to contend with. He disembarked for lunch, then climbed back on to return home for mid to late afternoon, depending on the traffic and how far he’d travelled.

  That’s what he did. He’d been riding the buses daily since he was a teenager, but they had always interested him, from when he was a boy. He couldn’t say why. Mama took him on the bus when he was small and it felt like an occasion. They would go somewhere – it didn’t matter where – and he would mark it on the correct timetable. He had all the timetables; Mama and the other ladies collected them for him. Mama would often doze on the bus, holding his hand while he looked out of the window, and he would shake her awake when it was their stop, satisfied with having pulled the bell himself.

  As he grew older, the bus was his escape. After school, at the weekends, off he went. Mama seemed relieved to have him occupied. It kept him out of the house. She didn’t like him there when she had customers. It wasn’t good for business to have a child around, even though he was grown up by then; when he was little he had been more easily hidden. Men came to Mama to get away from their affairs, including children, so many of them not being fond of prattle. All those men hanging around the stairs when he went up to hide in his room after a day out on the buses, arms over his head to muffle his ears – Joseph knew why they were there. He turned on the radio, not too loud so as not to disturb the atmosphere. He stayed in his room all night, hating even to use the toilet; he never flushed lest he made a sound and someone heard and would want to investigate and think they’d seen a ghost.

  Soon Joseph was skipping school to ride the buses and no one noticed. Mama saw that he was happier and that was enough. Making his rounds, she called it. He watched the city change before his eyes. Buildings went up and down and up again; spare acres were erased to make more homes, more shops. He saw crimes committed: a man laid flat with a plank, battery, muggings in broad daylight that he never mentioned to a soul. He saw Prince Philip’s profile in a speeding car more than once, all traffic stopped by the police to let him through the junctions. He saw the Queen wave as she left the Royal Hospital Chelsea. He saw the endless flowers when the princess died.

  It’s not that he had money and therefore his time was his to spend as he pleased, but he did have a house in which to live rent-free, a house for which he had not paid, and he had a bank account that was replenished regularly, seemingly from beyond. He had never lived anywhere else, at least that he could remember, and the house became his when Mama died, simple as that. Annetta called it his house, and so did Rita. No mention of anyone else. In the six years since his mother’s death, nothing had occurred to make him think otherwise. Six years of peace, of sorts, and now in his pocket he had a letter he dared not let out of sight. Duce Glib & Blythe Solicitors wish to inquire of the tenants living in 12, The Crescent, on behalf of the estate of Arthur Gillies, signed by Thomas Wye.

  Joseph knew what the man wanted – instinctively he knew. But the house was part of the agreement between Mama and Arthur Gillies, so she had sworn on her deathbed, just as Joseph was part of the agreement between his mother and what she did for a living. Unlike the others who got pregnant, she would bear her son, and at his birth she made the promise of mothers: to keep him safe from harm.

  The 253 accelerated along an open stretch, hoovering leaves and nearly a cyclist, who shook his fist. The bus ate flies and feathers and drank r
ainwater. It belched, farted exhaust, came to a halt. Passengers got off. More got on. There was a struggle with the pushchairs: who was there first, who would have to wait for the next bus. A pushchair got off in a huff. The bus nosed into traffic – they were on their way. All day Joseph rode and tried to relax. He felt for Mr Wye’s letter, just to be sure, and checked his pocket again before he disembarked in Camden.

  They couldn’t take it away from him. They just couldn’t. Especially when he had so little – all Joseph had in the world was the house and the people in it.

  He walked to the Crescent without looking around himself. He found Rita waiting at the door, ready to be off. She told him that Annetta was asleep upstairs, best left undisturbed, locked in as usual. There – Rita pointed to a wall peppered with nails – hung the key. Tea was in the oven.

  He’d better keep an eye out, she warned Joseph. He nodded and went downstairs to the kitchen, where he helped himself to biscuits.

  At five o’clock he ate his tea. Annetta still hadn’t peeped so Joseph cleaned her plate as well and piled the dishes in the sink for Rita to wash tomorrow.

  He watched telly.

  He stood outside Annetta’s door before he retired: nothing. She was in there. She couldn’t have escaped. The key hung undisturbed on its nail downstairs. She was going nowhere.

  ‘G-g-g-good n-n-n-n-n-night,’ he whispered.

  *

  It was not the alarm that set her off – although it did make Rita jump through her skin every morning, as if she didn’t know it was coming – but the effort of getting her blouse off the hanger. The flimsy plastic hanger, one of many in cheerful, insipid colours: Marigold, Blue Heaven, Pink Cadillac, Rhododendron, Green Lagoon and Holly Berry Glow. She had thrown herself from bed at the bleep and twitched the duvet into place before her eyes were even open. She bathed, chewed her toast, drank her tea, feeling steady, not too bad at all, considering the evening. A bottle of sweet sherry opened at five on the dot, supper of boiled cod and oven chips on a tray in front of the telly, the bottle drunk by ten, then bed. Her usual evening at home.