The Ladies of the House

by Molly McGrann

  ‘Never mind,’ Annetta said.

  Sal didn’t say anything, just tried to enjoy whatever programme they watched. Without Arthur, she had lost her power, her spark. To have a television in the drawing room was a step down; there was no opportunity for conversation when the telly was on, she always said. The men she knew, the men who came to her house seeking excitement or comfort, were for the most part big talkers, especially about themselves. It was part of the service. They needed attention, that’s all.

  At midnight Sal rose and switched off the telly. She pushed the deadbolt into place. Arthur was not coming – no one was. Even so, she left the light on. Just in case.

  When they bade each other goodnight, they always kissed on the lips, like real sisters.

  ‘Goodnight, then,’ Rita said.

  In the morning, she rose early to bathe and dress with care. She made up her face, fastened on pearls – a wedding gift from Pat McCarthy – and sprayed her black curls into a stiff filigree crown of sorts. Her dress showed off her narrow frame; Rita hadn’t gained an ounce since she was twenty, she always boasted. When she went downstairs, Sal asked for her key and Rita gave it. Later that afternoon, after a drink or two to calm her nerves, she married Pat McCarthy, who knew nothing about her past as one of London’s famed prostitutes, and that was the end of that.

  Rita had better be off. Colonel Smith awaited her at a table for two around the corner.

  What was this business of her not being able to stand up properly?

  It might have been five goblets. Sometimes Rita lost track, but that wasn’t her memory going, it was just her enjoying herself. She was sharp as a tack. She emptied her purse onto the table: a few pennies, a ten-pence piece. She had spent it all. Good thing she had her bus pass.

  Rita knocked over her chair. Eyes on her. The ancient mariner. S’funny. She was a picture in her lavender suit and feather fascinator. Dear Lord, put out a hand, someone, for here came a black wave, rushing and boiling, fizzing in her ears, and it swept her from her feet.

  *

  When Arthur died suddenly, Mama went into shock. She was hysterical from the moment she heard in a phone call from one of the girls at the Chelsea house. Something about his heart. Rita had taken the phone when Mama began to scream. ‘Tell me,’ Rita said into the receiver, and when she was told, all colour drained from her face.

  ‘You won’t like this,’ she said, turning to Joseph. ‘Your father’s dead.’ It might have been the first time that Rita referred to Arthur Gillies as Joseph’s father. The truth was always in the air, but even so was never stated loud and clear.

  Mama closed the doors to the Crescent house immediately and took to her bed. When Mr Wye forbade her to attend Arthur’s funeral, she threatened to kill herself. How she wailed as the hour of the service came and went and his body was put into the ground. She wanted death in those first months of grief. She could hardly bear to look at Joseph, who resembled his father so much. Sometimes she shut the door on him and wouldn’t see him for days on end. It broke his heart, to be pushed away like that.

  Joseph cowered in his room. Mama was Mama, irreplaceable, and he wanted her desperately. He hated Arthur Gillies all the more for this last trick. His father – yet Arthur had never been a father to Joseph. Joseph felt no acknowledgment, no affection from him, just the grim, granite look whenever Arthur glanced in his direction, and the way he always wanted all of Mama’s attention when he was in the house. Forty years of that: Joseph was glad he was dead.

  But Mama’s grief was slow to give; the noose was tight. For a long time all was black before her eyes. It was months before she properly embraced Joseph, and his face, so like his father’s, ceased to make her cry.

  After Arthur died and the houses were officially closed, there was no need for Mr Wye to call, although he still dropped by from time to time for tea with Mama. ‘Your mother and I need to have a word,’ Mr Wye would say, and Mama smiled at Joseph as if to reassure him all was well: a nervy smile that made her cheeks tremble. Joseph always toddled off straight away to find a quiet spot to eavesdrop. Mostly Mr Wye talked business: long, dull conversations that made him yawn. He also tried to kiss Mama more than once and she was always politely firm in her refusal, reminding him of her status, if not her title.

  It was only when she became ill that he stopped his visits. After she died, Mr Wye simply disappeared. There had been no communication from him since, in six years – and now this. Mr Wye was coming tomorrow.

  Joseph’s asthma – the orchestra arrived. Tuning up: strings, then wind instruments, one on top of the other, and a timpani. Ribs of iron – they would not give; a vice, an almighty screw. When he breathed he crucified himself.

  Breathe not.

  The phone rang. He heard it as if from a distance. To breathe, he needed his inhaler – not there when he felt in his pocket. He called out for Annetta. His stutter. Breathe not. He clamoured for air: not there. The letter from Mr Wye – not there when he felt in his pocket.

  The appointment tomorrow.

  The phone rang and rang. Joseph picked it up but his efforts to speak were useless. He clawed at himself. Wings beat in his ears. Soon he lost consciousness.

  *

  Next thing she knew the driver was shaking her awake outside the house in the Crescent.

  ‘Black waves,’ she said to him, by way of explanation.

  ‘Will I help you to the door, madam?’

  ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake,’ Rita said. Annetta stood on the front step, wearing her underpants over a pair of trousers – Joseph’s grey flannel trousers – and nothing else. The taxi driver sniggered. Rita shot him a look. ‘Pray you don’t get what she’s got.’

  Annetta seemed not to recognize Rita. She smelled strongly of urine; she was wet down her front. ‘Joseph!’ Rita banged on the door. Where was he? ‘Open up, Joseph!’ She couldn’t make the key fit. It wasn’t the right key. She tried again, and again. When she finally got the door open, there was Joseph, down on the floor.

  The storm of him, lungs full of rain, every last gasp flattening into fizz. Beads of sweat stood out on his forehead like hail pellets – soaked through, he was, but no wind to fill him up. Annetta pestered him with questions. What was he doing down there? Was he sleeping? Was he tired? She joined him on the floor – she had caught sight of the biscuit tin lodged under one leg. The tin was crushed, bent out of shape; a tin that had been with them since the old days. Its lid would not fit, no matter how Annetta wept and pressed – she had the tin on his chest and was putting her weight into it, pressing for England, pushing the life out of him.

  Rita barked orders that no one heard or understood, her feathery fascinator pointing fingers in all directions. ‘Annetta, hurry and get his – upstairs – no, leave the tin. Leave the tin, I said. Leave the bastard – go on! Go on. Hurry up now, darling, Joseph needs his – his – his thingy. His thing to breathe. Annetta! Do you hear me?’ And off Annetta went, taking the biscuit tin with her.

  Joseph spluttered, his face like a boiled cauliflower: waterlogged, colourless. He tugged at Rita’s sleeve and then his damp hand slid down her arm. Rita fanned him, as if that would help get the air in. Annetta reappeared, empty-handed, at the top of the stairs.

  ‘What?’ she said.

  ‘His – to help him. His thing. His blue inhaler.’ Rita finally found the word. ‘His inhaler,’ she repeated triumphantly.

  Annetta left and returned, bearing the biscuit tin.

  Rita rolled her eyes to the ceiling. ‘God give me strength.’

  ‘Why is Joseph on the floor?’ Annetta said, coming down the stairs and bending over him. ‘Have you fallen, Joseph? Did you hit your head?’

  Rita lurched to her feet. She would get it herself, just like she always did. In her good wedding suit, too. Chasing rainbows round the house, fetching things for them. Oh, it made her cross, the way she waited hand and foot. And then she saw it: Joseph’s inhaler in a dark corner of the front hall. ‘There,’ she cried,
and she had it, sticky with cobwebs. ‘Right here all the time. What are you like, Joseph?’ She inserted the inhaler into his mouth and squirted. ‘Feel his feet. Like ice.’

  ‘Is that very bad?’

  ‘Let’s warm him up.’ Rita peeled off his socks. ‘Annetta, the other one.’ Annetta did the same – maybe it came back to her from all those years ago, how to touch a man and make him come to life in her hand.

  The medicine took hold and eased Joseph’s chest. He breathed. His colour returned. Rita helped him to the chesterfield, tucked him in with a rug despite the day’s heat. She went downstairs and boiled the kettle, reappeared with a laden tea tray. The biscuit tin was passed round for inspection. No, they couldn’t believe the state of it. ‘Like an asteroid hit,’ Rita declared. ‘All bent out of shape. There’s nothing a soul can do with it now. Look at her shoulders, poor girl.’ Sure enough, the young Queen seemed to stoop under the weight of her ermine.

  ‘We’ll never find another one the same,’ Annetta added mournfully. ‘It was a Peek Freans. Remember the picnic we had on the day? Joseph, you were only tiny. We went across to the park and had coronation chicken sandwiches and sausage rolls and potted shrimps and lemonade and a tin of Peek Freans. I still love a Bourbon biscuit – just like you, Joseph. Always my favourite. It was what my mother called a proper biscuit. A Bourbon biscuit was a Sunday biscuit.’

  ‘Gracious me! How you can remember all that and not remember the blooming way home, I’ll never know,’ Rita said.

  Joseph’s fingers played with the fringe of the rug. He remembered the picnic – so unusual for them to have a day out together, mixing with people as if they were just the same. He sat close to Mama, watching the other children. There was a blaze of sun. When Mama pushed him to join in the play, he cried. She had looked at Rita and Annetta and sighed, then offered him a biscuit. By the end of the day he’d got the tin on his lap, having his fill while the games went on. But then it never was enough biscuits, not even when Joseph scoffed the lot, not for the hole he had in him.

  His eyes glided about the room, catching on antimacassars and cushions that had lost their feathers, the tarnished silver and filmy crystal decorating the mantel, the familiar pictures hung askew. He heard the fire click as it flared and waned, another old thing on its last legs but still going. He was alive. He could see, hear, touch and taste – he ate another biscuit, washed it down with tea. He could speak, but they would only talk over him.

  ‘Joseph needs another cuppa,’ Rita said. ‘Never mind me, I’ll take what’s left in the pot. I don’t mind the dregs. You look like you’ve been in the wars, Joseph. What a day.’ It was clear to Joseph that she was drunk, reeling as she was, dropping things, rattling the cups in their saucers as she passed them round. He had smelled it on her breath when she tucked him into his nest on the chesterfield – a wine of some sort, sweetly fermented.

  ‘I want sugar,’ Annetta said.

  ‘Of course you do, darling,’ Rita said, stirring it in. Finally, after much fussing and stumbling, she sat.

  In such a life a biscuit tin becomes a beloved friend. As they passed the tin, they spoke of it fondly, commending its service: fifty years of biscuits. Annetta stroked the Queen’s faded cheek, then Rita took the tin and placed it on a high shelf above the telly, looking out over the room: Elizabeth, newly crowned, right hand raised to acknowledge her subjects.

  ‘There she is,’ Annetta said. ‘Doesn’t she look marvellous? She’s just the same as us, you know.’

  Rita snorted. ‘Like hell she is.’

  Then Rita said she might have another tin to spare at home – Quality Street, mind, but perfectly adequate, one of their jumbo Christmas tins that she loved.

  ‘I’m a chocoholic,’ Annetta declared. ‘Oh yes, a chocoholic,’ she said happily. ‘That’s me.’

  ‘I like a toffee,’ said Rita. ‘When was the last time you had a toffee?’ And she tipped back her head and opened her mouth as if to let the syrup pour in and set her teeth as solid as in concrete.

  Annetta laughed and clapped her hands in delight, and even Rita was smiling. Joseph snuggled under his rug. No one saw them, but they were there. They had been there all the time.

  13

  Marie stopped at a phone box, as was her habit now. She used them all around town, so as not to leave a trail. She swiped her calling card, dialled a number. The line connected – it tugged. A woman answered, sometimes a man – one man, not so old as the women. He had a stutter, that’s how she remembered him. The women sounded uncertain. It wasn’t hard to scare them. She didn’t say anything, and the doing was easy enough: just pick up the phone; any phone would do. Dial, take a breath and hold it. Hello? Hello? Marie heard their growing fear, the breathing at the other end becoming more harried: catching on itself like a record that skipped. But she never spoke, never reassured them that all would be well, for these people lived in her houses and she intended to sell: the money would be good. The money, on twenty houses, would be great – she, who was already rich, would be richer by miles.

  Eventually both parties put down the phone. Try again, another one, or the same helpless person. All day long. That’s what Marie did now. It killed the time until she could go home.

  She dialled. Listened – as long as it took. She was not having fun, doing this. That’s not why she did it. She was having her revenge. Those women – in her houses – what they had done. Slappers! Whores! Living off the fat of her land. Marie wouldn’t stand for it.

  *

  Egg and chips for supper, double-dipping the potato wedges in boiling fat to crisp them up. The way Flavia fried eggs, throwing a little water into the pan after the white had set; the water bubbled instantly, lifting the white, flying-saucer-like, poaching it. ‘I love this supper,’ Marie said, adding salt and vinegar and ketchup to her chips, prodding the yolk until it burst, a hot dip that would cool and harden if she wasn’t quick.

  ‘So simple,’ Flavia said. ‘An easy supper on a hot day. Who wants to cook in this heat?’

  Marie ate heartily. She described, over the meal, the new linen that had arrived in the shop, all tropical floral sheets and napkin rings made to look like gilt braid and the beach towel that was all the rage, printed with a waterskiing penguin.

  She helped her mother with the washing-up and went off to watch telly.

  Flavia’s hip juddered as she lowered herself onto the hard floor to pray. She crossed herself, saying a quick one just to get herself down there. When she thought she needed to do a bit of penance, she removed the bedside rug or knelt, as she was doing now, on the kitchen lino.

  Dear Lord, she had been in her daughter’s wardrobe again, to see what was new, what was hidden.

  Ave Maria, gratia plena, dominus tecum.

  She used the worktop to pull herself up. Back on her feet, she didn’t like to sit down again until she knew she was done. Checking one last time that the kitchen was tidy – she found crumbs on the table and dabbed them away with a moistened fingertip – Flavia hobbled off to join Marie in the sitting room.

  She looked at her daughter on the couch.

  ‘What, Ma?’

  ‘More sun,’ Flavia said. ‘On your face. More brown.’

  ‘I told you, I sit outside when I have my lunch. It’s too hot in the shop. What do you want to watch?’

  ‘Anything,’ Flavia said. ‘I’m not fussy.’ She patted her belly. ‘I don’t think I could eat another thing.’

  ‘But I have a treat,’ Marie smiled.

  They watched television while they picked over the box of chocolates that Marie produced from upstairs. She never failed to produce a box of chocolates in the evening. She had a stack of them in her wardrobe, all Thorntons, big boxes of truffles, extra sweet. Flavia turned up the central heating – even in that hot weather, when she and Marie steamed like puddings.

  They sat there until bedtime. They had tea and biscuits – last food, Flavia called it – then she gathered the cups and saucers and took them to t
he kitchen, leaving them by the sink; it was a privilege she allowed herself, to leave these few dishes until the morning.

  Marie suddenly went to her mother and put her arms around her and kissed her – so tender. Flavia was surprised. It was a long time since they had touched each other, despite living together all those years.

  ‘Goodnight,’ Flavia said, wiping Marie’s cheek with a finger. Drying it.

  ‘Goodnight, Ma.’

  *

  Everything was ready; her suitcase was packed, holed up in a locker at the railway station. She had double-checked her tickets and itinerary – she had the details memorized, her brain having proved itself capacious for facts and figures, now that it was properly engaged.

  After supper, once they’d washed up, they watched a bit of telly. Marie could do that without really being there. She could sit with her mother, fill her chair, for all Flavia wanted was some company; the ghost of a person was enough. Marie laughed when Flavia laughed. They shared a box of chocolates. Marie offered to boil the kettle but Flavia shook her head and set off to the kitchen. ‘You want a biscuit?’ she called. Marie always did.

  Marie had already sent Flavia a postcard – from Kettering – which would be the first of a series, for she intended to write to her mother every day she was travelling, as well as taking photographs and keeping a journal. She would be gone for three weeks, she wrote in plainest English. She was going to Italy for a holiday. Sorry to tell her mother this way. Then she explained where Flavia would find a copy of her itinerary, plus the person to call in case of any questions or emergencies: Thomas Wye, followed by his number – although Flavia was unlikely to call, for Marie didn’t remember ever seeing her pick up the phone. If Marie were at home, Flavia made her call whoever it was she needed.