The Ladies of the House

by Molly McGrann

  That was the life of a family: dull, steadfast, benign, the meals prepared on time, the dirt swept up with a brush and pan, lights out by ten. It was not the life Sal wanted. Staying in at night, the wireless on in the background, a cup of tea within reach – not for Sal. She had her boy, whom she adored, but there was the backdrop of glamour as well: sequins and frills, silk, satin, cigar smoke, and night after night an ever-changing cast of characters, each with their peccadilloes.

  Joseph grew and remained the most amenable child, silent as a stick if Arthur were around, but otherwise happy. Interested in buses – he spent hours in his room studying the timetables. Sal still saw in the sunrise most days and woke, after those late nights of work, in time to get him off to school. Then she returned to bed: beauty sleep was important. Housework was for the maids; Sal was a businesswoman, after all. Come afternoon, the ladies of the house were busy washing and powdering and dressing at their leisure, turning slowly before the mirror to be sure of every angle. The boy would come home from school, wanting something to eat and a cuddle. Mother is as mother does, and there was just time to sit with him while he had his tea before Sal’s day, as it were, truly began.

  The doorbell. Were the candles lit? Why was Annetta dragging her foot? Had she hurt herself? What was that, a bandage? What was she hiding? Who did that to you? Tell him no the next time he asks – he didn’t ask? You ought to be firmer, then. Just remember, they like it when you’re tough with them.

  The doorbell again. ‘Darling, there you are. The very man I was thinking of. Where have you been? It’s an age since you were last with us! Yes, I do know it’s all happening for you. Rita will take you – you remember Rita.’

  It was busy like that all night. Sometimes Sal could hardly catch her breath – up and down the stairs, keeping track of the cash, pouring drinks, and then to check on Joseph and make sure he slept through it all. He always did, even when they rolled up the rugs and danced and Sal was called upon to produce alcohol and cigarettes at ever-more exorbitant prices. How they laughed, utterly careless, as the night widened and narrowed into dawn’s early light.

  Sal could never picture another life, but in the odd moment she did become conscious of the woman living in parallel to her, an ordinary suburban wife looking after Arthur at the weekends, raising his child, keeping house. Sal knew her name: Flavia. She was Italian – a foreigner. She lived in a quiet cul-de-sac with their daughter, Marie, and she had no idea that Sal and Joseph existed.

  Sal had Arthur during the week and he went back to Kettering at weekends. That was the arrangement, and it never changed. Sal and Arthur ate together, drank together, talked and made love – he slept in her bed. She brought him a cup of tea when he woke bright and early, for no matter what time Arthur went to bed, he was always up by eight. He drank his tea, bathed and dressed and went out; he kept an office in Soho and he had his clubs as well, Boodle’s and Pratt’s. Arthur was always looking at houses to buy, doing things up – modernizing, he said. He kept an eye on whatever building projects were under way at the moment, dropping in on job sites; he would have been robbed otherwise. He was out all day and returned to Sal in the evening, his suits full of dust. He cleaned up again, for he still drove round the houses every night and there were fifteen now. But he always went home to Sal.

  The mornings she woke with him by her side she reached for him and held him tight, and when she woke on her own he was her first thought: where he was, what he might be doing. She had borne his son. She was his heart’s desire, his mistress, lover, companion and keeper, the love of his life, but she wasn’t his wife. She loved him, lived for him. He was in her head all day. She always wanted to see Arthur again the moment he left. Sometimes it was all she could do to stop herself bolting the door once she had him in the house.

  Nevertheless, every Friday Arthur was served a light early supper at Sal’s before his car appeared out front and away he went to the station. Without fail, Sal watched him go from the window. She imagined him walking into Paddington, buying his ticket, settling himself in the first-class carriage with the Evening Standard, dozing on the journey and startling awake. Had he missed his station? Habit stopped him sleeping through. Then . . . what? She couldn’t get beyond his arrival at Kettering. He stepped off the train, into oblivion. Into imagined bliss – except it couldn’t be. He needed Sal too much for that. He’d have given up Sal long ago if it were that.

  Sometimes she kept him on the train. Everyone gathered their things and departed but Arthur remained. He had decided sometime on the journey that he must choose. It was no good, leaving Sal every weekend, knowing how much she cried.

  And yet – there was his wife, waiting for him at home. His wife. He had fallen in love and married Flavia a long time ago; they were married still and they had a child. He married because of the war, the first girl who caught his eye when he went abroad to fight. He’d had lovers, but not the exotic type; he thought it would be different with Flavia, that he could avoid a certain fate: becoming the same man as everyone around him. His Italian bride with her dark eyes and gentle manner, the way she covered her mouth with her hand when she spoke, as if to stop the words from coming out. She had fascinated him once, but now she wasn’t even pretty. The minute she had the baby she changed. She let herself go. She aged – she looked ten years older than she was, while Sal was still a beauty, more beautiful than ever, the most beautiful woman in the world.

  His choice wasn’t easy. His heart was with his lover, but his wife gave him something he couldn’t find words for, something that went to his core: she allowed him, in her blessed ignorance, to be the man he felt he was meant to be, the man that Sal loved. In London he was larger than life, shot through with charisma. He strutted, a bright peacock, Sal on his arm for all to see, his eyes glittering with possession. All week he flew around like that, staying up into the early hours, talking, drinking, building his business, raking in money. Then, weary, he went back to Flavia. He turned his key in the lock, swung the door wide and there it was: a gap to slip inside, somewhere to hide. With Flavia, he was just a man. She made him ordinary. He rested with Flavia. She let him be. And in the end, he was like any other man who put the bacon on the table and rolled over onto his wife on Friday night and slept a dreamless sleep until he came to in the morning.

  The funeral service was in Kettering when he died. Mr Wye told Sal to stay away – it was not her day, he said. None of the girls were welcome, and if he laid eyes on any one of them trying to say goodbye, there would be hell to pay.

  But that was to come, that broken-heartedness. In the meantime, every Friday Arthur Gillies went home. He got off the train at Kettering while Sal, back in London, waited for him to return to where he belonged.

  11

  Sometimes she woke in the morning and for a moment she just was. It was so simplified. Flavia woke and it was light, or not; it was wintertime and that was something in itself, the way the dark felt, as if she had woken at the bottom of a well. Or spring had come and the curtains glowed with sunrise. Today was high summer, the sun already beating bright. Just awake, feeling but not remembering, not having a history, gathering dreams, half remembered. And, for a moment, not knowing. Feeling, seeing what it is. Country. Climate. Century. Season. What – who? Who are you? Are we together? Did she forget? Lapse in her faithfulness?

  Because, if she were honest, in her dreams there were other men. Not anyone she knew or recognized, just men, young and old, nameless: a body that fed her craving, men between her thighs.

  So rarely was Arthur there when she woke – now that he was dead, never, but not before, either. He was always in London. She’d got used to it and knew better than to complain; she had tolerated his working away for more than forty years, to his dying day – that kind of devotion. Her generation of women. But in Flavia’s dreams it was different. All day she could put aside her longing, and then at night they came to her while she slept and was powerless to stop them. Some she wished would come again, but
they never did. A new one appeared and they were naked together, doing all sorts. Things that it never occurred to her might be done – her excitement was great and she often climaxed. Then, waking, feeling the shame that came with that, Flavia prayed.

  She remembered the train journey from Italy to England, just after they were married, Arthur digging under her dress and what it roused in her – desire that never went away, no matter how old she was; unsatisfied love.

  He had died too soon. Flavia wasn’t ready for him to go. She thought he would retire from London at a sensible age and come home to stay. They would settle into a life together. She would look after him perfectly. She would cook for him, anything he liked. They might walk around the park and stop off for a drink in the pub, he with a lager, she, a lemonade, as they had done a few times before Marie was born. He would carry her shopping. Read aloud from the newspaper. Polish an apple on his sleeve and hand it to her as if it were a gift from the very tree of life. They would watch telly in the evenings, with Marie, for she would be there, too: Gillies together.

  Except that he died of a heart attack on a busy London street. She remembered the day – the doorbell rang, rare indeed, and when she looked out of the window to see who was calling, she found a policeman there. It could only be bad news. Whether it was Arthur or Marie, Flavia didn’t want to know. The policeman hung around, wanting to tell her, only Flavia crouched in a corner upstairs, saying her prayers, melting into them as if a fire were in her: her visions were horrors. She wouldn’t answer the door, no matter how many times the man rang. Her relief, when Marie returned at 5.30 as usual – Flavia shook as if she’d taken a chill, her teeth chattered, such joy to see her daughter. And then, knowing it was Arthur who was not coming home.

  Afterwards – weeks later, when they’d taken him apart to have a good look inside – they tried to explain to her what killed him. Arteries clogged with plaque, high cholesterol, fatty diet: her cooking. Included in the coroner’s report was the address where he’d been found. As a name and place, it meant nothing to her and so she could not see, couldn’t picture in her mind the moment of his death; it was missing from her life. That she had not been there filled her with regret. He was alone when he collapsed and his death was instantaneous.

  But Flavia, waking up, forgot all that just for a moment.

  She woke with the taste of a man on her lips. It was light. Feeling, then seeing and, finally, knowing. She remembered who she was: wife of Arthur, deceased; mother of Marie. She offered up a Hail Mary, pushed her legs out of bed and stepped into the day.

  *

  Every day, Marie pretended to her mother that she went to work. She got out of the house just the same as she always did. It was already three weeks since she’d quit the Linen Cupboard. She couldn’t say what exactly she’d been doing. Wandering, mostly, at first half terrified she would be seen by Flavia or someone who knew her mother – not that Flavia had friends to speak of. Neither of them did. Even so, Marie kept away from the places she knew Flavia favoured, taking the long way round if need be. She had time to go the long way. She circled Kettering, or zigzagged, entering shops randomly, handling things, buying what she liked – the usual treats and creams, but she also shopped for her holiday. She bought bright tops with short sleeves. Sandals, sturdy ones. Travel accessories, all sorts of little bits. Plugs. Insect repellent. A small travel kettle and a box of the tea bags she liked. A single teaspoon. An emergency kit full of ointments and plasters and paracetamol. Batteries. An alarm clock.

  She went to the library and looked at books about Italy. She visited a travel agent – more than one. She collected brochures about Italy, sightseeing pamphlets and train timetables. She no longer had to worry about the expense – she investigated luxury hotels and spas. She studied the vistas, the arbours and vines, the masses of flowers, the turquoise waters speckled with sailing boats and speedboats and waterskiers and, overlooking these views, tables laden with food and wine. The men were handsome at every age; the women – the young women – dressed in white to set off their dark colouring, although they fared less well in later life.

  Marie would need a beach towel – she bought three from Marks and Spencer because she couldn’t decide which one she liked most, having the means to be indecisive now. She vowed to buy a swimming costume. She bought sun cream and a hat with a wide, floppy brim. She would sit on a beach and watch the waves roll in, a cool drink in one hand. Marie would never work again. From nine to five, Monday to Friday, she was free. The time was hers to do with as she pleased.

  Sometimes she did nothing. Found a bench and twiddled her thumbs. Bit her nails. Picked at a button until it came unsewn and she tucked it into her pocket for Flavia to reattach. She devoured whole packs of gum – her jaw ached, chewing each piece only until the flavour was gone, then moving on to the next one.

  Sometimes she went to the cinema – she saw every film, even the ones for children, long-drawn-out cartoons filled with catchy tunes that she found herself humming on the way home. It was a relief to get out of the sun and sit for hours on end in the cool dark. The days were hot – the heatwave – and she couldn’t go home until after five o’clock.

  Marie ate in cafes and restaurants, throwing away her mother’s packed lunch. She took long breaks in teashops, sampling all the cakes. It was hot, so she ate ice cream and lollies, and tried sushi for the first time – she liked it, and learned to use chopsticks. Cool reams of fish and seaweed and roe that looked like jelly, salty edamame that went pop in her mouth, miso soup with melting chunks of tofu. She thought she’d like to travel to Japan – her next trip, perhaps. There was nothing, now, to hold her back.

  And all the time, she was remembering. She had never gone so deep. She hadn’t been interested, until now. History, before, was background, atmosphere; it was permanent and secure, moored by Flavia and the house she kept, the food she prepared, always the same: yes, this. The taste. The pattern on the plate. The feel of the chair. The rooms unchanged over the years. Marie had thought she would live and die that way – no, she had not thought, she had not been thinking. Not being.

  But something had happened: she had come to be. It was a shock to her, jolting her awake. In slowly putting the pieces in place, she was making a whole – a her; who she was, coming together. She was here. It had been all cotton wool before.

  And who was he? Who did he think he was? Who had her father been?

  The weekends with him had seemed to go on forever. She thought he probably enjoyed himself, for that is what Flavia wished, to remind her father of what he missed during the week. The peace of home, the shelter of it. He worked so hard, Flavia said. She wanted him to rest, put his feet up, and so he did. He napped. He listened to ‘Tampico’ – he only wanted ‘Tampico’. He wouldn’t let Marie change the record, saying she’d scratch it, so Flavia moved the needle and set it carefully into the groove. Marie heard the record playing late into the night and imagined her mother dead on her feet, rolling through her hips as she sidestepped his footstool.

  She remembered being scared alone at night in her room. Her mother let her keep the door open, but her father sometimes shut it.

  She remembered how far away her mother sounded.

  She remembered her hand on the banister going down, sliding the length of the polished wood and thinking that she would remember it always, the way she felt those nights.

  She remembered it had only been the three of them, without family to speak of. No cousins, no jolly uncles, no aunts to share the burden of domestic life with Flavia, to club around the sink and talk and laugh, washing and wiping after a big meal. At Christmas and Easter, just the three of them seated at the table, heads bent over their plates – quiet, solitary days for which Flavia had prepared all week.

  Flavia loved Arthur; Marie knew that she loved him. Her mother’s devotion to her father, her joy when he was home – and her fear, too, that she somehow wouldn’t get it right, wouldn’t please him: it was all part of loving him. If Flav
ia felt the pinch of absence when he was away, she kept it to herself. She was that generation, the orphans and stalwarts; they picked themselves up, dusted off, carried on. They swallowed their grain of sand and the pearl formed, a glistening sac tucked inside, giving them pain. Pearl upon pearl upon pearl, knotted together on strings of suffering: sterile pain, beautiful to behold.

  At five o’clock, Marie stopped, wherever she was, whatever she was doing, and turned in the direction of home.

  *

  Flavia heard her come in. She said a quick prayer of thanks that her girl was home safe another day, then pulled herself up from the kitchen lino, ready to greet and serve the daughter she loved more than anything in the world. Flavia cracked with every step, knees burred with kneeling, with cleaning and praying all day. Sometimes she got down and then she was stuck. She was beginning to think she ought to take her prayers in a chair but she didn’t know if God allowed that. He was a loving father, but strict.

  ‘Smells good, Ma.’ Ham and peas and boiled potatoes with buttermilk gravy. Marie wiped her face with a tea towel freshly pressed by Flavia, always a clean one to hand.

  ‘Cup of tea?’

  ‘Please,’ Marie said. ‘I’m gasping.’

  She drank – thirstily, Flavia noted. ‘Nice day?’

  Marie shrugged.

  ‘It’s quiet tonight,’ Flavia said. ‘Out on the street.’

  ‘It’s Tuesday,’ Marie said. ‘It’s always quiet on Tuesday.’

  ‘Not always. Not on Halloween. Not on Guy Fawkes,’ Flavia reminded her. When Marie was a girl, Flavia could see how excited she became when it wasn’t quiet. Her cheeks flushed in a becoming way – not pretty, just less sallow. She wanted to be at the window, and she didn’t want the curtains drawn so she could see. Flavia would lure her back to the table only for Marie to run and look with any new pop or bang. They never went closer than that. Flavia didn’t like the dark. As soon as the sun went down, she double-checked the doors were locked and automatically turned up the thermostat, even in summer. She always put the front-door light on because that was called for; to leave the light off would draw notice in the neighbourhood and she didn’t want that, but neither did she expect anyone to knock at the door.