The Commonplace Day

by Rosemary Friedman

  Fog had hidden the end of Colchester Street. I backed round, trying to avoid the dustbins.

  It took me over an hour to get home. By the time I did you could hardly see the bonnet of the car. I got lost twice, finally joined a convoy crawling through the fog, felt exhausted, hysterical. Tim had put on the porch light so that I could see the house.

  I had the sensation I’d been away for weeks, the events of the day beginning to tell. Inside the front door everything hit me, the light and the warmth, the thick pile of the grey carpet, the smell of steak pie. It reeked of opulence; fresh flowers even in the Dresden vase on the table. I was filthy from the fog.

  “Liz?” Tim called.

  “Yes.”

  “I was worried. It’s come down quite heavily.”

  “It took me an hour.” I went in in my coat.

  Ellen Potter was sitting in a chair next to Tim’s, her hands between her knees. He was mending her watch, trying to, at any rate. He was very good at getting them to pieces but I’d never known him get one back.

  “Are you feeling better?” I asked her.

  “I am, thank you. I’m sorry you had to go to so much trouble.”

  “No trouble at all; it was just a pity about the fog. I put the cat out.”

  “I’ll get you a drink,” Tim said then looked at the fragments of watch on the arms of the chair, his knees. “Diana, you do it. Get Mummy a drink.”

  She was on the floor with the Daily Express, reading the strip on the back page.

  “This week!” Tim said.

  She heaved herself up. “What of?”

  “Whisky, darling. Just a little.”

  She opened the cupboard and Ellen Potter looked at the bottles inside. Gin and whisky, two sorts of sherry, Dubonnet and Cinzano, Vermouth sweet and dry. I thought of the beer bottle in her room.

  “Will you excuse me a moment?” she said.

  “Have a drink. It will buck you up.”

  “I won’t, thank you.”

  I didn’t think we had any beer.

  When she’d gone, I said: “I’m sorry about this.”

  “About what?” He was concentrating on the watch.

  “Bringing her here. I couldn’t really help it. You should see where she lives.”

  “It was very decent of you. Poor old girl. Knocked down, was she?”

  “It didn’t actually hit her. She just got a fright and fell and bumped her head. It would be kinder if you didn’t mess about with that watch.”

  “She’s upset about it.”

  “It would be quicker if she took it in to be repaired.”

  “Any idea what it costs to have a watch repaired?”

  “I suppose it would be seventeen and six at least.”

  Tim raised one eyebrow. “More like thirty bob.” He understood the situation better than I. I could see now why she’d been anxious.

  The whisky warmed me.

  Ellen Potter came back. “I’ve dished up for you. I thought you’d be tired.”

  I stared at her, wondering suddenly if she’d like to stay and be a maid, well more of a housekeeper really, cooking and doing odd jobs. She’d have a comfortable room, warm, plenty to eat…

  “Let’s eat then,” Tim said. He put the pieces down carefully on the arm of the chair. “I’m starving.”

  Ellen had gone again and Tim put his arms round me affectionately, holding me close. I thought my God what if I had spent the afternoon with Dobbie.

  “Let’s go to bed early,” he said kissing me on the mouth.

  I looked quickly in Diana’s direction as if she understood. She was engrossed still in the newspaper.

  “Go and wash and tell Robin it’s on the table.”

  She stood up.

  “And pick up the newspaper.”

  Tim slapped my bottom and I went to wash.

  Ellen Potter had found plates, everything. I was grateful, felt hungry. By the time you’d cooked it, served it yourself, standing over the heat of the cooker, often you got past eating, especially when you had to jump up in between.

  I had the spoon in the pie.

  “Dobbie phoned,” Tim said from the top of the table. “And Jack. They’re coming round.”

  “What did he want?”

  “I told you. They’ll be round later. They really wanted us to go over there.”

  “I meant Dobbie.”

  “Nothing particular. He said it wasn’t important. I said you’d ring him.”

  Not important. Of course that was just to put Tim off. I’d ring him later, arrange something for tomorrow. I couldn’t believe the day, the day, had come and almost gone and I hadn’t after all slept with Dobbie. I looked at Ellen Potter picking at the steak pie, you’d have thought she’d be hungry, and hated her; then I imagined she wasn’t there, that I had slept with Dobbie and now I was home, simulating, pretending to be an attentive wife, mother.

  “My wife makes fabulous pastry,” Tim said.

  I winked at Ellen.

  “What time are Martha and Jack coming?”

  “Nineish.”

  I could have done without them tonight especially with Ellen Potter.

  “I’m awfully tired.”

  “They won’t stay late. Jack has a cold. He wants to show me his new camera.”

  When we’d finished Diana stayed to help and Ellen said:

  “You run along. I’ll help your mother.”

  “Have you finished your homework?”

  “All except some English.”

  “Why didn’t you do it before instead of reading the newspaper?” I said edgily. “I wouldn’t mind if you read the front page. If I’m not here to chase you… Have you practised?”

  “No. I was just going to.”

  “Do get on. It will be ten o’clock again.”

  “All the people in my class go to bed at ten.”

  “Diana!”

  “All right; I’m going.”

  “Lovely girl,” Ellen said when she’d gone. “Lovely pair.”

  “Not bad.”

  She watched, fascinated, as I stacked the things in the dishwasher, cutlery in the baskets in the front, plates in the racks on the bottom drawer, jug and glasses on the top. One spoonful of powder, shut the whole thing up.

  “Isn’t it marvellous!”

  Just the saucepans to wash now, they had to be done with Brillo. She took a cloth ready to dry them.

  “Do sit down. I’ll be finished in five minutes. You’ve had quite an ordeal.”

  “I’m all right again now. I’ll be out of your way in the morning.”

  I took a deep breath. “Look, I was wondering if you’d like to stay here for a bit; as a sort of housekeeper…not doing very much…but you’d have your room, the one you’re in now actually…and board and lodging…?”

  I looked into the washing-up water fishing for the mop.

  “You’re very kind,” she said drying a saucepan lid. “But I’ve got my home…”

  Home!

  “Not that I’m not used to working. I’ve always worked. I was with the Co-op for ten years, Clerkenwell way where we lived when my husband was alive. He couldn’t work, not the last few years, and there wasn’t much by way of a pension. He was in the printing line. Anyway, there’s Ginger.”

  He must be about a hundred.

  “Robin would love to have Ginger. He’s had a tortoise and a rabbit at various times…”

  “…and there’s the cemetery,” she said, “at the top of the street. It’s lovely in the summer, with the roses and sweet-william, watching the people walk through. And the stones are lovely; there’s a Boy Scout in uniform, and a violin and bow, he was a bandmaster, and loads of angels, quite big some of them. Such lovely names too, you don’t see them today. Clementina, Zenobia, I often wonder what she was like, Violet, Lizzie – ‘Lizzie Ringwood fell asleep November 27, 1891’ – I know them nearly all by heart, you see, Alice, Emily, Ada…”

  And Ellen Potter, I thought, looking at the hands twi
sted with rheumatism, only there was no-one to erect a headstone.

  “…of course in the winter it’s not so nice but as I said I like walking and watching the children. There’s a lot of children in our street. It’s not Clerkenwell, of course, we had four rooms there, but of course I don’t need it, not on my own. And I’ve got the radio.”

  She made it sound like riches.

  “I thought of getting a budgerigar, but I’m afraid with Ginger, for the company, they’re chatty little things. Not that I mind being on my own.”

  “I should hate it.”

  “I did at first. You get used to it. New faces, new surroundings, it takes a while to settle, but I like it up that way and as I say there’s the cemetery up the road.”

  Seven

  The number was engaged. Perhaps he was talking to a woman, Catherine, angry after this afternoon. If I had my time over again I wondered whom I’d marry, Dobbie or Tim? Tim for love, reliability, Dobbie for kicks. It was the kicks one missed. You’d never be sure though with Dobbie, those indolent eyes that brought out the woman in women. You’d be scared to let him out of your sight. Anyway, I loved Tim. Love; an affectionate, devoted attachment, the dictionary said, especially that passionate all-absorbing form of it when the object is one of the opposite sex. Why then did I have my hand on the telephone for Dobbie, envy the names in the gossip columns with the bodies of gods and goddesses and the morals of ferrets, feel I’d missed out knowing it was they who had, on the lasting things, Robin, Diana, Tim? It was still engaged. There was a knock on the door.

  “Come in.”

  “Who on earth’s that downstairs?” Martha said.

  I tidied the clothes I had taken off, Dobbie’s clothes, and explained about the accident to Ellen Potter.

  “Serves you right for rushing away,” Martha said. I remembered that aeons ago I hadn’t paid for my lunch.

  I hung the dress back in the cupboard. Tomorrow I would wear a different one and perhaps would have better luck. I told Martha that I’d asked Ellen Potter to be our housekeeper.

  “What did she say?”

  “She said she liked her home. Colchester Street. Martha, you have no idea what it’s like, this dreadful place! She hasn’t a soul in the world; no money, nothing.”

  Martha fingered the gold and ruby dahlia on the lapel of her suit.

  “Ask her again. Perhaps you can talk her into it.”

  I shut the cupboard. “She says she’s happy.”

  “Well then!”

  “You know why? Because there’s a cemetery at the top of the road where she sits looking at the tombstones. A cemetery.”

  “It takes all sorts,” Martha said.

  “Martha don’t you see? Ellen Potter has nothing, nobody. Look at us.”

  Martha was examining her face in the mirror.

  “I’m looking.”

  “No. I mean look at us. We’ve got husbands, families, dishwashers, waste-grinders, food-mixers, God knows what…”

  “So?” Martha opened her mouth to inspect her teeth.

  “So shouldn’t we be the contented ones? Jack’s making a mint. If there’s anything you want you’ve only to ask for it, and where do you spend your days? With Dr Raus!”

  “My head’s going round,” Martha said, “I had two hours this afternoon and I’m completely exhausted.”

  “What’s wrong with us? All of us.”

  “Darling, if I knew what was wrong with me I wouldn’t be paying three guineas a whack to Dr Raus. You’re all right, anyway. I always quote you; wonderful wife, mother…”

  “If only you knew.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re cracking up, Liz.”

  “Not cracking, crumbling. Don’t you ever have the feeling that life has done the dirty on you? That it has led you to expect something, then let you down.”

  “Darling, you do need Dr Raus.”

  “I’m ashamed, in a way. I have so much compared with the Ellen Potters, yet I seem to be worse off.”

  “I wouldn’t say that.”

  “I don’t mean materially, although the more you have the more you seem to need, desperately, I mean within. She feels secure, the kind of security that has nothing to do with Life Insurance, I don’t. I feel like the blind man in blind man’s buff, spinning round and round, trying to reach something.”

  “You really do need sorting out.”

  “I’ll sort myself out. Do you think we’re looking in the wrong place?”

  “For what?”

  “Contentment, peace; I feel so restless. I used to think it would come when we had our own house after that awful furnished flat; then when we had children; then when we could afford someone to help with them; then when we had a terrace to sit on in the summer; then when I had my own car and was independent. There always seems to be something and you know that when you get it everything will be all right, you’ll feel this great big sensation of fulfilment. It isn’t so. What is it we’re after?”

  “Dr Raus would know.”

  “Has she helped you?”

  “It’s early days.”

  “But Martha you’ve been going for two years! You can’t change your pants without asking her.”

  “That’s unkind. Besides, it’s only the first stage, gradually you get weaned away.”

  It reminded me of Farex and Robinson’s Groats.

  “We’ve got as far as sex now. We haven’t done it, not properly I mean, since Andrew was born. She doesn’t mind what you tell her.”

  “You could tell me for three guineas a time.”

  “You couldn’t. That’s the whole point.”

  “When you think,” I said, “that there are a hundred Colchester Streets for every Hazelbank.”

  “I don’t,” Martha said. “You mustn’t.”

  The room was tidy.

  “Are you coming down?” Martha said.

  “You go ahead. I just have a call to make.”

  “Who to?”

  “No-one you know.”

  “You’re very secretive today. Who is it? A lover?”

  “Of course.”

  “What’s his name? I won’t breathe a word to Tim.”

  “Giuseppe.”

  “Ask him if he has a friend for me.”

  Dobbie’s line was still engaged. I called the operator but she verified engaged speaking. I told myself not to panic. A lot of his business was done on the telephone.

  Downstairs Martha said, “Did you know Liz had a lover?”

  “Yes, me,” Tim said. “What will you have to drink?”

  “Gin.”

  “Jack drank all the gin last night.”

  “Whatever you have then. Make it a large one, I feel depressed.”

  “That’s a change,” Jack said.

  “What about?” Tim poured whisky.

  “It doesn’t have to be about anything,” Martha said. “You can put the teeniest drain of water in it. If anything, it’s about the kitchen floor.”

  Ellen Potter was sitting with folded hands in the corner.

  “Would you like a drink?” I said and realised it was the third time I had done so that day. She probably thought we were chronic alcoholics.

  “I won’t, thank you.”

  “Are you feeling all right?” Perhaps she’d like to go to bed.

  “Oh yes. Fine, thanks.”

  “I brought my camera,” Jack said, picking it up from the settee.

  “He’s like a child with a new toy,” Martha said.

  “They always are; with golf clubs and cameras and fishing rods.”

  “Smile!” Jack said.

  “What now?”

  “Yes. Keep still. Put your arm round her, Tim.”

  Tim hugged me.

  “Thank you.”

  “Have you been out?” Martha said. “You can’t see a thing. We had to walk round.”

  “It was noble of you to come.”

  “Jack wanted to show his toy.”

  “Here you are!” Jack said wit
h pride. He held out a photograph.

  I took it, Tim and me, Tim smiling.

  “That was quick.”

  “Good, eh?”

  Martha took the photograph. “You don’t look a day older than when you got married. Do they, Jack?”

  “Don’t feel it,” Tim said. “Except when I run upstairs.” He patted his tummy. “It begins to tell.”

  “It cost seventy-five pounds wholesale,” Jack said. “Chap I know imports them.”

  I looked quickly at Ellen Potter.

  “Pretty good I think. By the time you’ve had the old-fashioned kind developed and printed you’ve lost interest.”

  “You don’t get the same definition,” Tim said.

  Jack examined the photograph. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”

  “It’s not bad.”

  “It’s bloody good.”

  “You can’t compare it to my Voigtländer.”

  “You can you know.”

  “It’s all right for an amateur!”

  “Stop it you two!” Martha said. “Have you thought about next summer? We thought we’d try Spain.”

  “You don’t like the heat.”

  “There’s a little place in the North, the Spaniards go there, it’s not so hot and supposed to be absolutely divine. Why don’t you come?”

  “Tim won’t. Not to Spain. All those people languishing in jails and being tortured. He won’t spend money in a fascist country.”

  “Tim needs a halo. You can’t worry about all these little things. We’re planning a holiday not a political meeting.”

  It was pointless to pursue the matter.

  “We’re thinking of taking the car,” Martha said.

  “You don’t like driving though.”

  “I don’t like planes, ships, or trains, either. I don’t want to stay at home.”

  “You need a magic carpet,” Tim said.

  “I need something.”

  “A good spank!” Jack said.

  “Dr Raus would be horrified. It would solve nothing. Like spanking a child.”

  “Rubbish! I had a few in my day.”

  “Where has it got you?”

  “At least I can stand on my own feet.”