The wardrobe doors drooped from their hinges like bad teeth. Rita wanted a blouse and there were plenty, a whole lifetime of blouses, a good fifty years’ worth. She chose the pink georgette that wouldn’t crease and flicked at the top button. It popped off like a bottle cap and the blouse collapsed backwards at the shock. She chose another blouse, not so pressed, with a tie all in knots. The next, a pale floral print, showed a mustard-coloured stain on the left breast; a fourth, woollen, in cream, was the wrong season.
A deadly feeling clamped down on Rita like a lid; a fire lit. Something scrabbled to get out, something red-hot with claws and a skin of spikes. Oh, she got cross, she did. Rita needed to pick a fight. The blouses still on hangers shuddered when she kicked at the wardrobe; some slid like broken eggs to the floor. Her tantrum blowing full, she began to kill the blouses one by one, cracking hangers as easily as babies’ forearms. We will die in here, she thought. They would die, she and the blouses, and the long-legged spiders that seemed to double in size every time they swallowed a fly, and the money plant in the corner, overwatered and rotting inside. ‘Die,’ she said. ‘Die, die, die.’
She was dressing for lunch with Edward. He was the kind of man she had been used to a long time ago: upper class, arrogant. She needed, in the next ten minutes, to dress for him in a way that complemented his quiet, classic, inoffensive style. She pictured him in well-cut navy gabardine, leaning in to whisper to her as they shopped together at Peter Jones after lunch – a token for her, a gesture of what was to come. A silk scarf, or a pair of leather gloves. Sensible, beautiful, just intimate enough. His mahogany-coloured hair crested in waves across his head: cultivated hair, brushed until it shone, pruned without looking just-cut.
If only Edward would marry her.
If he would just marry her. She was ready to marry again. She wasn’t choosy. They were, these men she met, every one of them, good enough to strike a bargain with. Keep it light, keep it moving, that’s what she told herself when sizing up any potential husband over a table for two in Covent Garden or Soho.
If one of those men would marry her and give her a house—
William walked out of her life three weeks ago. William and his wonderful house in Belgravia, where he would be dashing around right now, a cup of tea steaming on the bureau in his dressing room, a pressed shirt slipping neatly from its wooden hanger. Now he was choosing his tie. Now he was leaving the house for an appointment at his club or with his tailor or shoemaker. A car waited outside. The housekeeper reclaimed the cup and saucer from the bureau and upended both in the dishwasher. The dishwasher – how she longed for a dishwasher, and a housekeeper, and a waiting car. William was seventy-six years old, a confirmed bachelor, but Rita had married all kinds. Nothing surprised her, not least a bachelor settling down in his dotage. They thought they wanted a woman half their age, but what did those women know? She heard they shaved their private parts and behaved like pornographic film stars in the bedroom. There was no art, no elegance in such behaviour.
Rita had retained her elegance, of that she could be sure.
Of course she had met William and Edward and Charles and Giles and Sebastian – and George, Harry, Andrew, Mick, Vincent, Anthony, Peter, and the Spaniard, Marco – through her personal ad. That was how to meet a man these days. Attractive, well-spoken older woman seeks someone to dine with. She had done it for years and it was a nice little earner. Dinner, then a room somewhere.
The phone rang and she jumped – how she jumped! Right out of her skin. Rita was all nerves today. She must have slept badly, although she didn’t recall waking in the night. She answered, listened, sighed. ‘I’ll be there quick as I can.’
*
Joseph didn’t know how she did it, but she did. Like Houdini. He went to bed safe in the knowledge that she was locked up for the night and he woke in the morning to find she was gone. Her door was open and there was no Annetta in bed, no Annetta downstairs wanting breakfast. The kettle was cold. The front door creaked in the breeze – she’d left it ajar for anyone to walk right in and take what they wanted, and all that time Joseph was asleep upstairs, oblivious.
He phoned Rita right away. The key to Annetta’s room still hung on its nail. He would show it to Rita when she arrived, proof that he had done as he was told. He knew she wouldn’t believe him. He didn’t believe it himself: how a person opened a door that was locked from the outside – unless it hadn’t been locked in the first place. Joseph would never dare suggest that to Rita, when it was Rita who had locked Annetta’s bedroom door.
He looked again, to be sure – he looked in every room, even the cupboard that housed the water pipes. No Annetta.
He’d had a goldfish once. He didn’t know why he thought of it then but he did. When he was eight, one of Rita’s boyfriends brought him a goldfish he called Noisy – he liked the joke, even if no one else got it. Noisy had crimson lips and a silver-sequinned body and circled his bowl in endless figure of eights. Joseph took great care of him, watching him swim for hours on end. Noisy died one day while he was at school. He hid Noisy’s bowl in the cupboard that housed the water pipes and cried about it when he was alone, but he never told anyone, not even Mama. After a week, the water was thick with scum and bits of black lint hung in streamers from Noisy floating on top. There was a very bad smell coming off – Mama would soon sniff it out on one of her inspections of the house. He waited until everyone was occupied that night, then carried Noisy’s bowl outside and left it on the front pavement. In the morning, Noisy was gone and no one could figure out how the fishbowl got there. Impossible. Mama always had one eye on the front door and swore she wouldn’t have missed it. Rita thought it was a punter playing a trick. Annetta thought it was a ghost. Joseph never told them. He let them believe what they wanted.
*
Well, Rita was fond of saying. Well. Never mind. If no one’s going to do it. Well, she said again, and paused. She waited. Well. She knew what would happen: she would do it herself.
‘Well?’
Joseph looked at his shoes: there was bacon grease across the top of one. He had size ten feet, wide as planks, and wore regular black brogues from Marks and Spencer. His grey flannel trousers and navy-blue polo shirt came from there, too. He looked just like his father, especially now that he’d lost most of his hair. It was uncanny. Sometimes she caught sight of him and thought it was Arthur Gillies himself standing before her – her heart skipped and she felt suddenly at sea, until she realized it was only Joseph.
‘Not back then, is she? The minx. How’d she get away this time?’
He shrugged.
‘You need to keep an eye out. I’m only repeating myself, wasting my breath. Never mind. Not your fault, is it? Never is.’ Rita passed him her handbag. She turned and faced the park. ‘Well. Here I go. You put the kettle on. That’s the least you can do.’
First the swings and sandpit, then a slow turn around the park’s lower basin, checking all the benches. Nothing. Rita’s heart sank: she must climb the hill, for Annetta was drawn to the wilder, lonely reaches where teenagers lurked with cigarettes and aerosols and dogs ran off the lead. Rita despised the dogs especially, the way they came at her as if about to leap and latch on and knock her down all in one go. Or they stopped dead in the path; stopped and raised a leg, swizzle pouring out just where her foot had meant to step. Worse yet, the big dogs simply defecated before her very eyes, glaring back at her as if nothing would stop them. Labradors and sheepdogs and Rottweilers, stuffed with meaty chunks, and the small dogs, too, lost on a fat lap but leaping into her path as she approached, teeth bared, snapping at her ankles. Yappity yappity. Yappity yappity. Never-ending.
The sun was high as she began her ascent – the heat took it out of her and Rita unbuttoned her coat. She took care on the tarmac, baked soft as it was, her heels sinking and sticking. She didn’t want to fall; sometimes she did. She had confessed this to her GP after losing her balance one day when she was at the shops. An ambulance had come to car
ry her off to hospital but she refused to go. She got to her feet, brushed herself down and rubbed a bit of spit on her handbag where it had scraped the pavement. She was fine, she said. Just a dizzy spell, nothing to worry about. She bade the paramedic team goodbye with a wave and her best jolly voice and set off back the way she had come – never mind the shops. She would have a bit of toast for her tea. ‘They don’t hand out awards for independence,’ one of them had called after her.
Well.
It happened again, a few weeks later. Black waves, was how she put it. Black waves in the aisle at Tesco and down she went, bruising her hip when she landed. No ambulance, she insisted. She wasn’t a time-waster. There was nothing wrong with her. Fit as a fiddle, she was. A taxi would get her home just fine, and when the driver assisted her to the door of her block of flats, that was as far as she’d allow him. There was a lift, she pointed out. That’s what lifts were for: people who couldn’t climb stairs, for one reason or another. Lazy gits. She dragged herself into the lift and up she went, cursing under her breath all the way. For the love of Jesus. She was a silly old cow, she was. In the door and straight to bed. She couldn’t even get herself a hot-water bottle, that’s how bad it was. Her hip went purple and wouldn’t be slept on so she turned to the other side – not her usual way to sleep, but that was life. Just get on with it. Her GP, examining her a week later, said she should use a walking stick. ‘You won’t catch me with one of them,’ Rita cackled. ‘And I’m keeping my high heels, too. They’re good for my legs. Can’t walk without them.’
No black waves now, just the bright midday sun blasting away. She felt perfectly well – she was the picture of health, and Rita always went out looking her best. Click clack. Heel, toe, bones solid, blood aflow. She didn’t feel a day over forty.
There was shouting in the distance, a crowd of people gathering further along. Usually it was some drunks fighting among themselves or getting moved on. They never went quietly, did they? Rita strained her eyes, turned her good ear – it worked perfectly, while the other one felt stuffed with cotton wool. What was the commotion? A flash of nudity – Rita’s eyebrows, all pencil lines, shot up.
*
How many times had it happened now? Rita tried to count as she filled the bathtub. A dozen times at least Joseph had called her in a panic because he could not find Annetta anywhere in the house. She got the key, Annetta did, and slunk out of the front door. Even the worst weather failed to stop her: she would come home soaked, shaking with cold, and no wonder, for she took off her clothes.
Annetta lay in the bath for a long time, warming through. Rita looked in every once in a while. ‘Just checking,’ she said. Annetta blew bubbles. She lapped bathwater and her chops dripped. Another five minutes and Rita was back, ready to rub her down with a towel. ‘Stand still,’ Rita said. She found a clean set of pyjamas and dressed her like a doll, roughly inserting her arms and legs, buttoning her up as if that would keep her in. ‘Where are your clothes, Annetta?’ Rita wondered aloud. Annetta took no notice of her. Her clothes were strewn across the park; a dog had run off home with her stockings; a jackdaw had her cardigan, with its brass buttons, for his nest.
Rita wiped the fog from the mirror but Annetta wasn’t interested in looking at herself. She was like a person in a dream: not here but there. Did she notice the water draining from the bath in thirsty slurps? Did she mind when Rita stepped on her bare foot? Not at all. She allowed herself to be led downstairs, clutching a bit of Rita’s skirt. Then it was a cup of tea and boiled egg and soldiers before Rita marched her back to bed and locked the door. Let her shout and pull at the knob; at least Rita knew where she was.
After that, Rita needed a sit-down. Joseph wanted to be off, she could tell. If he didn’t ride a bus every day he wasn’t himself. ‘Never mind, I’ll stay here and keep an eye on things,’ she grumbled. It was just like a man not to see what needed doing but to do what he wanted. Well. And didn’t she know it? She’d married all kinds, but they had the one thing in common: pure selfishness.
When she was sure that Joseph was gone, Rita hunted in her handbag for her mobile. She used it only for her personal ad. She pressed the button to turn it on. The screen flashed, that little bit of advertising. Marvellous. She waited. In a moment a message would be there – or not. She was hopeful every time.
Nothing. Well. Away it went. Never mind.
She had a headache. Usually she took a bit of sweet sherry for relief, but there was nothing to drink in the house, not since Arthur Gillies died. Over the years she had searched to the rafters, rummaged through cupboards and drawers, groped the high shelves, twitched her nose along the floorboards, seeking the trail of a bottle. Arthur was well enough preserved in the stuff in his grave, but not a drop remained in his penultimate resting place. Rita might have slipped out to the pub for a swift one, but there was Annetta to think about. ‘Not on my watch,’ she said aloud.
She checked the time. Three o’clock. Joseph would be gone for a couple of hours, if she knew him. She would try to relax herself. Shoes off, legs up and a blanket over her knees, just like any other granny. There. That was better. The rest of the afternoon she dozed in front of the telly. More dreams of the past, of old lovers – most of them dead by now, she was sure, though they were young, all of them, in her dreams. She thought it meant something, to dream so much of long ago. She feared she was coming to the end of her time, the past rushing up to meet her at the door. It would be equilibrium, when it ended. When she ended. No future, only the past, but the past a sort of nothingness, the nothing of it all being done, nothing left to do, or no chance to do it anymore. Death was lightness, a dream; she in other people’s dreams until they, too, came to the door and found it open.
It was only natural she should think of it. She had gone to a few funerals this year, old women she had known since they were young. She couldn’t help but picture herself in the box. The way the undertaker always got it wrong when he set the mouth – she expected he would make her grin and bear it – and the yellow dress she would wear for her final destination. Clasped in one hand, a red rose. How many people would deem her enough of a friend that they must see her out? Sometimes there were only a handful of mourners at the services she went to, and Rita didn’t have any children. Her husbands were all dead. Just herself and Joseph and Annetta left.
Well.
She woke when Annetta banged upstairs. ‘I need to spend a penny,’ she wailed. Rita led her to the bathroom and waited until she finished – Rita even wiped her bottom these days. ‘I’ve got cold feet,’ Annetta complained, so down went Rita to fill the hot-water bottle, then back up again. Oh, these tall houses, so tall and thin and cold! Rita preferred her modern flat, everything compact, the small rooms clustered around a boiler that she never turned off.
Then Annetta wanted a drink of water. Then she needed the toilet.
‘But you’ve just been,’ Rita said.
‘I need the toilet,’ Annetta insisted, fingering the enamel H that had fallen off the hot tap in the bath. Rita took the H and pocketed it for the junk drawer in the kitchen. So the game would renew, Rita finding the H in the washing or under the pillow when she changed the sheets on Annetta’s bed. Back and forth the H changed hands, and had done these last two years, since Annetta’s dementia began.
Now Annetta wanted a cup of tea. Sometimes she asked for sugar, sometimes not. It depended on what kind of day she was having. Annetta had good days and bad days. On good days it was almost like there was nothing wrong, but on bad days there were tantrums, repetition, nudity, running off. On bad days she had sugar in her tea. Rita said it only gave her energy to shout and try to get out, but she stirred in the sugar just the same, two teaspoons. Annetta wanted three but Rita said, ‘Your teeth will drop out, darling.’ Annetta, more often than not, grabbed at the cup and spilled half into her saucer. Just like a child, she was.
‘Sugar?’ Rita asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Yes please,’ said Rita, bu
t she may as well have been talking to herself. Well. Annetta sat and slurped. Rita stroked her head. She touched the docile shoulders, rested her hands, feeling the bones. Annetta was thinner; Rita could crush her. ‘How’s that?’
‘Most kind,’ Annetta mumbled.
Rita looked at her watch. Four fifteen. She slipped away and found her mobile, felt it spring to life at her touch. What a wonder it was. Sure enough, there was a missed call from Edward, her cancelled lunch. What about dinner? She phoned him straight back. Yes, she said in her message – for one was always leaving messages – dinner sounded fine, she knew the place he suggested. She would be wearing a red coat.
Something to look forward to, Rita thought, snapping the clasp of her handbag. Her horizon had opened up again, and didn’t she believe in possibility? Didn’t she believe in making her own luck? Didn’t she just. She had guts, Rita did. Joseph would be home soon and she would be on her way into the setting sun.
She settled Annetta into bed. Then it was downstairs to put supper in the oven and do the washing-up. Rita heard a thump at the door. It was only Joseph, but still she opened the cupboard where a mirror was pasted, stuck there since the old days. She took a good look at herself, high heels tip-tapping as she turned for a side view and then the back, making sure of her curls: still there, white as sheep’s wool. Her eyebrows, drawn on that morning, arced in surprise, her rouge two bright spots of excitement, her wrinkled chin whiskerless, carefully plucked. Not bad, she thought with a cluck.
*
Joseph went straight to the biscuit tin. ‘Hello yourself,’ Rita said. ‘You’ll spoil your appetite, eating those. Fancy a brew, my love?’ He looked at her, chewing, his eyes soft and distant, crumbs speckling his lips. Rita chose a biscuit. ‘Really, I shouldn’t. There’s meat pie for your tea in the oven.’ She looked hard at him. She didn’t need to say it, but she did anyway. ‘Keep an eye out.’ He avoided her gaze, nodded.
The Ladies of the House Page 6