Another biscuit went in, glued to his tongue like Holy Communion. Would she never leave? He did not want to be observed as he ate. ‘Well. I’m off,’ Rita finally said. ‘Annetta’s in her room. She’ll be wanting the toilet soon. Remember to lock up.’ Joseph knew she didn’t trust him. He heard the front door bang shut. It was always a relief when she left.
Alone, or almost alone, he enjoyed the stillness of the house; he relaxed into it as if it were his own home, his very own, and what he was doing there was being himself. His shoulders sank. His spine sagged. He took fewer steps. He did as he pleased. He ate biscuits – he piled them in, blissful biscuits, and drank tea straight from the teapot spout, holding down the lid. A person needed privacy to do that; to roam and think and mutter, if necessary. Room to be, and be nude in. Joseph had never lived on his own. He had never been left alone even for one night of his life. He was always the child in the house, although he was not a child now. He’d grown into a man and no one seemed to have noticed, the way they spoke to him. And he was getting bigger all the time, pot-bellied, fat as butter. Rita had to squeeze past him in the kitchen to get at the cupboards and cooker and sink; he was her roly-poly boy. She fussed at his clothes, pulling at them, showing him his bulges. She tapped his love handles, gave them a squeeze that tickled unpleasantly. She scolded him for leaving crumbs and snacking all the time. She rolled her eyes at him, meaning Annetta, but likewise she rolled her eyes at Annetta, meaning him, even though Annetta didn’t understand at all what Rita meant, gone as she was.
The timer went. He got the meat pie out of the oven and left it to cool. There were peas on the hob. He went upstairs to let Annetta out. He unlocked the door to her room and called her name, then went downstairs and served it up: two full plates. She appeared while he was eating and stood by the table.
He enjoyed his supper, and Annetta’s, too. Lately she didn’t eat much, or not at all, and he often ate hers as well so that Rita wouldn’t know. He put their plates in the sink and went upstairs. No need to creep, but he crept, in all his boiled whiteness. He stood at the front window, looking out. His gaze roved the park across the way, where a group of boys were clowning with a tennis ball, giddy with the heat. What weather they were having! Sunny, hot and dry all over England. People were roasting. The forecasters said it would go on all summer long. The boys in the park knew it, their antics delirious. He had missed all of that. It seemed he had always been watching, fingering the curtain edge. He wouldn’t have known what to do with a ball should one pitch in his direction or, for that matter, roll directly to his toes and stop. He had never held a tennis ball, not even in a shop.
He climbed the stairs to Mama’s room and sat on her bed. She had died in there: that’s what he thought every time he went in. She wanted to be at home with them, not in some hospital. She bad-mouthed hospitals, she and Arthur Gillies. No, she wanted to die at home, in her own bed, with her family around her. Late afternoon her room got the light, and when she was dying she wanted the sun, to feel it on her skin and in her eyes.
Her breathing had slowed in the days before she died as she began to wind down. Her voice was faint – he drew in to hear and her rotten breath made him want to retch. She was barely there. Her hand was cool, too cool, but it moved; the fingers dialled patterns on the sheets. Not motherless, not yet, but close. Then, thinking there was time, he left the room. He made himself a cup of tea, ate four or five biscuits. He couldn’t say why he fiddled with the broken larder latch, as if he were going to mend it, for it had been broken for years; why he watched Home and Away – it wasn’t a soap he watched. Mama died before the credits rolled. She died alone. The paramedics said it was often the way. They didn’t know why, except that animals did it: they died alone, at peace with themselves.
Is that what it was? Peace? Is that what happened at the end, when the body came off like a shirt over the head?
When Mama lay in her coffin, her hair looked just right: a wig as black as vinyl, the kind they made records from. London’s own Bettie Page. They had sat up all night with the body, Rita and Annetta, drinking sweet sherry and toasting our Sal. They changed her clothes until they were satisfied, primping her with make-up and jewellery, the wig in pride of place.
Her hair, Joseph thought, when he joined them in the morning, looked like burnt spun sugar on a white paper cone. The cancer had stripped her body of flesh and her bright waxy mouth seemed to scream out of her skull.
She looked, he thought, like a strumpet.
Funny how when Joseph was a boy, she didn’t look like that to him, with her face always painted, dressed up. His mother and her friends cared for him tenderly and faithfully, even if they cooked the Sunday lunch in low-cut spangled gowns or stood to attention when the doorbell rang halfway through the meal, baring their shoulders of the woolly cardigans they wore to keep warm when customers weren’t in the house. He didn’t know they were different; he had no friends, hadn’t met other mothers.
But in death, Joseph didn’t want her to look like that, not after all they’d been through the last few years. First the cancer diagnosis: her lungs, just like her father and uncles and brothers, the pit workers; a plague among them. With treatment, the cancer went away. Everyone celebrated but no one was surprised, for Mama was a tough nut. Almost a year passed while it grew invisibly again. One day it was blue skies and then the sun dropped out of sight: cancer, cancer, everywhere. Cancer in her bones, her brain, her liver, hungrier than ever, starved of her flesh during those long months of cure and ready to gorge. So many men had said, ‘I could eat you whole, you sweet thing,’ when she was young and beautiful, and so she said, surfacing from her sedation, that the cancer was for her sins. ‘We stand before God stripped of our worldly possessions. We stand in His judgement.’ God would have her brilliant hair, her cleavage, her dense, grey gaze, the roses of her complexion, her hot, deep mouth. She would stand before Him in her bones, she whispered, extending to Joseph a wasted arm that rattled its bracelets.
‘What about me? What will happen to me?’
‘You stay here.’ It was all arranged; Mr Wye had seen to things. They had often spoken of it, she said, over tea. She was certain of the arrangement. Joseph had nothing to fear: the house was his, or when Mama died it was. She promised. It was her way of looking after him even when she was gone.
He left Mama’s room and went upstairs. Annetta’s door was open. He looked in. All her clothes and possessions appeared to be piled on the bed: a dun-coloured dome-shaped load. Chewed-looking. He poked the nest and it collapsed. She was not there. He went downstairs to the kitchen, where he had last seen her. Not there. The drawing room, her chair, then all the other rooms, up and down the stairs, double-checking – he even peered out into the garden. She was not anywhere. He was breathless with looking. She was gone. For the second time that day she was gone.
6
On Monday morning Marie went back to work and Flavia cleaned Marie’s bedroom. Flavia had her rota around the house, her weekly routine, and Monday was bedrooms and bed linen, when she washed and ironed their sheets. She couldn’t resist a peek in Marie’s drawers when she dusted, just to see the state of them. She felt under the mattress for sweet wrappers and had a good look inside the wardrobe – just to see.
She was always happy to have the house to herself again. She needed to restore order, for no matter how tidy Marie tried to be – and she did try, bless her – she still disturbed the surfaces. She tracked in dirt. She shed hairs; she filed her nails into piles of powder. She left fingerprints. She slopped her tea, drips that dried into just a bit of colour, and she had a habit of leaving teaspoons in unexpected places: on the mantelpiece, the hall table, next to the bathroom sink. Flavia collected the teaspoons and soaped them till they shone and she never said a word about it to Marie.
Housework lifted Flavia’s spirits. She could see a result. If she felt low, she emptied out a cupboard or scrubbed the hob. Flavia cleaned the old-fashioned way and it took time, but time
was what she had, bags of it, and she was not given to putting her feet up in front of the telly the way some women did the minute they’d scrambled the beds together, leaving the dishes dripping soapsuds in a rack over the sink. Not Flavia. She dried her dishes and put them away where they belonged. Everything had a place. She ironed her tea towels – she ironed every scrap that came out of her washing machine. She didn’t use the same cloth on everything.
There. Just the hoovering to do and she did it properly, using all the attachments. It felt honest, keeping things tidy. Nothing to hide. Flavia knew her house inside out and she brightened the corners rain or shine. It was something to do and it passed the time, but more than that, it was a deep feeling, a fervour in her. God gave her hands to clean.
Marie didn’t mind Flavia doing her room – if anything, she was grateful. But she did hide things. Nail varnish in every bright colour. Perfume, expensive-looking bottles, all of them unopened. Make-up still in its wrapping. Face creams, eye creams, tubes of this, pots of that, sample sachets, none of it to stay. Things appeared and were gone and more would come. Flavia rifled expertly and never peeped. She didn’t know why Marie bought those things.
Her stomach rumbled. She thought about lunch: chicken soup with rice. A glance at the kitchen clock showed her there was still an hour and a half to go before she could eat. She took a skewer, the kind she used for meat kebabs and baking potatoes, and wrapped a bit of rag around the tip before setting to work on the hard-to-reach places: the crease where the window frame met its pane, the long sticky crevice between the cooker and worktop. That’s what she did when she had the time. If the clock still was not showing right, she re-sewed buttons that never stood a chance of dropping off. It was the path she chose in life. She got herself moving, pulled herself forward, went up and down the stairs, putting things away where they belonged. She tried not to think. She prayed instead. Prayer, like housework, kept Flavia busy all day.
*
Marie watched the raindrops slip down the street window of the Linen Cupboard, their race so unpredictable and utterly absorbing. There were no customers because of the downpour – a rare afternoon of bad weather, after weeks of heatwave, and she was grateful for a quiet day. Mrs Albright, the owner, was in the back. Marie had a cup of tea and a biscuit and she perched herself in such a way so as to have a bit of privacy.
She had been to see Mr Wye again. He was less guarded with every meeting – he even seemed to want to help. He had known her father in the army; the war threw them together, unlikely friends, better at business. Arthur had looked him up not long after he started in property, around the time Marie was born, and they had worked together until his death. He said she reminded him of her father. The killer instinct, Mr Wye called it.
Her father, apparently, had been a shrewd businessman, seizing opportunity over and over again. She had seen the list of the properties he owned: twenty houses in Mayfair, Chelsea, Soho, Westminster, Regent’s Park and Primrose Hill. London was having a property boom such as never before and Mr Wye assured her that her father had predicted it years ago. Arthur Gillies believed that London was a miraculous city, possessing nine lives, for no matter how many times the city almost perished, it always triumphed; rebuilt and got rid of the rats.
‘If only your father had that kind of right to life,’ Mr Wye said, and bowed his head.
Marie had been at work when her father died. Flavia kept the policeman waiting outside. He could surely see her peering out at him from a window, but she wouldn’t answer the bell. Marie found the policeman on the front step when she returned home at half five. He was smoking a cigarette – a dozen more were stubbed out in a neat pile by his left foot. A neighbour had offered him a cup of tea. Everyone knew it was bad news.
Marie had never seen a man so bald as that officer. No eyebrows or lashes, not a trace of a beard. As she listened to him she stared. Then she put her key in the door and opened it to find Flavia right there – she fell into Marie’s arms, shaking uncontrollably. She knew without anyone telling her. Flavia asked Marie to help her to bed, and as she went downstairs Marie heard her howl.
Marie invited the policeman to stay a while. He declined; he had been a long time waiting there. She hadn’t seen a wedding ring on his finger, but that didn’t mean anything.
‘Cup of tea?’
‘I better be off,’ he said. He shook her hand. ‘I’m sorry for your loss.’
Marie did not cry. She heard Flavia sobbing upstairs and it tore at her but she didn’t cry. Later, eyes still dry, she stood buttering some bread for her tea when a magpie appeared at the kitchen window. The magpie tapped on the pane with his beak, regarding her with tinsel eyes. Behind him, the evening sky had been raked into streaks of orange and pink. The magpie tapped the glass again. He tapped and tapped. It was her father, Marie realized. He tapped as if he would like to come in. He cocked his little head. His eyes burned brightly. Her hand went up – did she shoo him away or did he just fly off?
I am Marie Gillies. I am forty-one years old. My father has died. A cry snarled in her throat but did not bite. What would it take to cry?
It took weeks. They said she was stoic. At the small funeral, draped in black from head to toe, Marie did not weep. Her mother sat with one hand on the coffin throughout the service; she overflowed with grief, drenching her funeral veil. When they gathered at the graveside, Marie feared Flavia would climb into the hole and so increased her grip: a conduit to Flavia’s endless sorrow. But even watching the coffin drop and the dirt shovelled in heavy wet spadefuls didn’t do the trick, nor did seeing the empty hearse drive off, and their car, too, when Flavia could bear it, leaving her father behind.
Marie looked over old photographs. She dredged up memories of Christmas. She held the gold wristwatch her father had given her on her eighteenth birthday, listening to it tick, a heart in her hand. She had always hated him, and loved him, too, because they went together, those two. She might have married, just to get away from him, but then she could never bring herself to leave her mother, for she was all her mother had in the world, apart from her father – and now he was gone.
Mrs Albright came to the front of the shop where Marie was watching the rain. ‘When you’ve finished,’ she said, ‘there are beach towels to be unpacked.’ It was June, coming up to holiday season, when shoppers would be tempted to buy such things. Marie nodded and smiled to herself, thinking of her own trip. She might buy a beach towel. There were beaches in Italy.
Mrs Albright left her to it. When she was good and ready, Marie went to rinse out her mug. As she passed the counter, she heard Kelly saying something about Marie’s tea break being longer than what the others had. ‘Me, if I’m five minutes in the loo, it’s “Kelly, I’m docking you.”’ Kelly raised her voice, as if Marie couldn’t hear. ‘Look at that, she’s eating on the floor. It ain’t allowed but she’ll get away with it, just you see.’
It wasn’t the first time Kelly had spoken out like that. Marie swallowed the last bite of her biscuit and looked at the girl, a big girl like Marie had been – but she would never have dared stuff herself into the short skirts and tiny tops that Kelly favoured. Marie had been bred with a kind of gentility. As a child she wore ribbons in her dark hair and woollen vests year-round, knitted by Flavia herself. Always immaculate, her fingernails clipped short and the dirt scraped out of them – not that she spent much time playing outdoors. Her mother didn’t encourage it.
‘You dropped crumbs, Marie.’ Kelly’s tone was aggressive. She had no place in the shop, a girl like that.
Marie squared up to her. ‘This isn’t the estate,’ she said. She didn’t know where it came from. She thought there was something wrong with her blood pressure. She felt as if she might explode.
The bell on the shop door went. Kelly ducked behind the counter and disappeared from view. The customer, dressed in pastel flowers, looked at Marie, smiling expectantly. Marie put down her mug, right next to the cash register, just above Kelly’s head. No mug
s on the counter was the rule. Go to the customer immediately was another. Marie turned her back on the customer and headed for the rear of the shop, where her things were. She put on her mac, took up her handbag and sailed out of the front door without saying a word to anyone.
*
Pater noster, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum. Flavia closed the door to Marie’s room. She went downstairs and tidied away the cleaning things, then got into position on the kitchen lino, rocking from side to side to give her knees some relief. Prayer was as bad as scrubbing floors sometimes.
She prayed for Marie’s soul, among other things. Marie had always been a good girl, but she hadn’t been properly baptized. Arthur was an atheist. He didn’t like anything that got in his way, including God. He thought Flavia was a fool for having faith. So, one afternoon, when Arthur was away in London, Flavia put Marie in a bath she had anointed with holy water from a local Catholic church, and prayed over her baby, following the baptism rite from a borrowed hymnal. She hoped it was enough – she’d been worrying all this time. Pray with me, she sometimes wanted to call to the world – she would open the windows and shout so that all could hear – to keep my daughter safe and get her into heaven.
The same prayer every day, and today she tacked on a Glory Be.
Up she got. Looked out of the window: abundant grey, stuffed with cloud, a sky about to rain again. Time to start the washing – she had whites to brighten, and tonight it would be crisp sheets reeking of detergent and starch when she laid her soul to sleep.
*
Marie couldn’t believe what she’d done. The look on their faces! Marie. She wasn’t one to surprise, always so quiet. Did her job and did it right. Of all people!
A dark horse, Mrs Albright muttered, unpacking the beach towels herself.
Marie found herself on the pavement, walking briskly in the rain. Just walking. Gulps of air. Stopping with the lights and then going great guns again – it didn’t matter where she went. She was free, for a bit. Until five o’clock, at least, and then she must get home or Flavia would worry and call the shop – that’s what she had done ten years ago, the only other time Marie was late from work, having stopped off at WH Smith to do some Christmas shopping. She simply lost track of time in the gaiety of extra lights and sparkly decorations and carols piped from above, choosing presents for her colleagues. Flavia was beside herself when Marie arrived just twenty minutes later than usual – not long, but clearly a hellish delay for Flavia, who remained anguished for a few days. What could have been: Flavia lived that, the other version, what didn’t happen. Marie wasn’t sure Flavia had ever let it go, even now, ten years on.
The Ladies of the House Page 7