The Housekeeper

by Suellen Dainty

  I told myself that I would look at Emma’s Instagram page, go for a run, and then attempt the entire exercise again. I opened my laptop and scrolled down, admiring a vase of primroses that a fan had given her after a talk in Ipswich. Gran and I used to pick them along the lane where they grew wild beneath the hedges. Below the photo of the flowers was one of Emma wearing rubber kitchen gloves and looking in a bemused way into an oven. The caption read, “Housework and cooking not my natural calling. Am going to get someone professional to help me out, pronto!” It was clearly a joke, because no one in their right mind would wear rubber gloves to take something out of a hot oven. She’d probably post something amusing about it the next day.

  I locked the door and set off for the river. Again, I found myself heading towards the river at Hanwell, past the asylum to the series of five locks. Those eighteenth-century engineers on the Grand Union Canal had managed to upend nature and raise the water level more than sixteen meters in half a mile. I liked that—the triumph of willpower over the gravity of water, the idea that you didn’t have to succumb to those innate laws that governed the planet. The engineers had thought of everything; small side ponds to conserve water and even steps down to the canal, so horses that stumbled and fell from the towpath could be rescued.

  It was a cold, bright day with a breeze that scudded along the water and lifted the tentative haze from the tops of the trees. I took my jacket from my backpack and wrapped it around me and sat down on a small triangle of grass in the last of the morning sun. I closed my eyes, expecting the usual sadness and loneliness to push up. I waited for the thought of Anton and his new lover, the thump that inevitably accompanied the surfacing of that thought. But there was only an eddy of cool air lifting the hairs on my arms. Maybe I wouldn’t run home just yet. Maybe I would stay here and do as Emma suggested, think about failure and endings and beginnings. I thought about Huckleberry Finn and how he woke up one morning and decided to light out for the territory. It probably wasn’t just a whim. He probably considered his decision more carefully than that.

  I didn’t get up from that patch of grass on the towpath thinking that I could change anything about my life. There was no bolt of lightning, no Saint-Paul-on-the-road-to-Damascus type of epiphany as I ran home. There was, however, something that might have been a possibility of an idea, and it hovered on the edges of my consciousness, almost teasing me as it appeared and disappeared like shifting mist. All through the rest of the day, as I fiddled about the flat, and through that evening as I cooked my dinner of green beans and lamb chops, the possibility floated through my mind until it settled as a fully formed idea.

  No, I couldn’t. The whole thing was completely mad.

  Yes, I could.

  But I had no experience.

  Yes, I did.

  I had plenty of experience, if only I was brave enough to talk about it.

  But was I brave enough?

  Or was this idea of mine very stupid?

  Or worse, could it more accurately be described as cowardice?

  Running away, like I ran away from school all those times?

  Not necessarily, I told myself as I watched a rerun of Hercule Poirot on television, my plate and saucepans washed and dried by the kitchen sink. This could be different. Outside, a burglar alarm blared. Someone shouted. A motorbike roared past. I closed the window and went to my computer. I quickly wrote an email and sent it, then went to bed with my copy of Isabella. I read how sprinkling tea leaves or freshly mown grass on rugs before sweeping kept bedrooms clean and sweet-smelling, and that grates should be polished daily, before I fell into an uneasy sleep.

  Emma’s assistant, who introduced herself as Fiona when I rang the office the next morning, was hesitant at first to even offer an interview, saying I was overqualified. “We haven’t even advertised the position of a housekeeper yet, although we are definitely thinking about it.” She had a polished kind of voice, like many of the customers in the restaurant. “So do you mind me asking how you heard about it?”

  “A friend,” I replied. “Actually, a friend of a friend mentioned it the other day.” I went for a lighthearted tone, something that might contain the hint of a laugh or an exclamation mark. “And I thought, why not! I’m ready for a change!”

  Silence. I didn’t want to tell this Fiona that I’d been following Emma’s Instagram account and was practically addicted to her daily messages. She would think I was some weird stalker and hang up immediately,

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”

  “Anne, with an ‘e.’ Anne Morgan.”

  “Anne, yes. Now I have your email in front of me.” More silence. “The thing is that if Emma does decide to employ someone, she’ll want someone who’ll fit into family life. You seem very overqualified for the job, and our fear would be that you’d get bored after a couple of months and leave.”

  I had my reply ready before she finished. “I can see why you might think that, but look at my work history,” I said, careful not to sound too eager or defensive. “I’ve been sous-chef at Anton et Amis for two years, and I worked for five years at the same place before that. So you can see I’m not a person who chops and changes.”

  Then, something more, a plausible explanation for the career path deviation. “I’d like to take a different direction in my life. The working hours are very long in restaurants and I was ill for a while last year. Although fully recovered now. And chefs spend a huge amount of time cleaning and wiping down, almost as much time as they do cooking. So I don’t mind housework at all. Of course.”

  Of course. Even on the telephone, remember to smile, don’t purse your mouth. No one wants a sad sack moping about the house. “I know you must be very busy, but I’m wondering if you’ve had a minute to look at my references.” At the other end, a barely audible sigh. It might have been a sniff. Again, silence.

  Perched on the edge of the sofa, hair awry and wearing my oldest tracksuit, I pictured Fiona, no doubt chic and highly groomed, scrolling down my email and quickly scanning its contents. She had to be impressed by the whole Anton et Amis thing. Unless you had the unlisted number, you had to wait for ages if you wanted to eat after 6:30 p.m.

  “So sorry to lose Anne—an invaluable member of our team, but it seems her mind is made up,” Anton had written in his reference. “No one who employs her in any capacity will ever regret it.”

  “I’ll call you back,” said Fiona. “Maybe by the end of the week.”

  “Thank you,” I replied, trying to swallow down the hammering in my stomach. A good night’s sleep would have helped. “And if there is anything else, anything at all, please call or email me.”

  Jude, rushing to pick up the twins from kindergarten, sighed into her mobile when I told her. “I can’t believe you’ve applied for a job as a housekeeper, of all things. I don’t care if it’s for your beloved Emma Helmsley. I wouldn’t care if it was for God himself. I thought you were going to try that new place in Bloomsbury. Philip and I had dinner there the other night. It’s had rave reviews and they’re looking for staff. You’d make it to head chef in less than a year. Then you’d be looking at getting your own place, with your own investors. Wouldn’t you like to see the look on Anton’s face if you did that? You’re ruining your career, all over some stupid man. What a waste of good cooking talent.” Brakes screeched in the background. “The way these school mothers drive! Look, martyrdom is so last year, darling one.”

  I sawed at a jagged thumbnail with a worn emery board. “I’m not being a martyr and it’s not all about Anton. I want something different, something quieter for a while. I want to take a bit of time to sort things out. And let’s face it, I need to get a job.”

  “Get a new man, get a new life.” Jude sounded exasperated. “Everything is out there waiting for you. You’re not going to find it scrubbing someone else’s kitchen sink.”

  I spent the next three days painting the sitting room in the morning and running along the towpath in the afternoon.
The sitting room didn’t need repainting, but its carefully inoffensive gray walls had been getting to me and there had been a special offer on white paint at the hardware shop on the main road. Gran would have said white was too cold and antiseptic, but its blankness appealed to me. Fiona had said she would try to get back to me by the end of the week. But she could be busy. She could be away with Emma, or taking some time off. I’d give it until Monday or Tuesday next week. Then I’d call again. If it didn’t work out, I would call the restaurant in Bloomsbury. At least Jude would be happy.

  On Thursday afternoon, I took all my mess—the empty cans, the trays and paint-spattered newspaper pages—down to the garbage bins at the back of my building. The couple upstairs had replaced their usual cut-price Côtes du Rhône with Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon. The bachelor in the flat below was going through a Thai red curry phase. I jammed my rubbish into the bin, made sure the lid was secure, and went back upstairs.

  I made myself a cup of mint tea and saw the telephone machine light blinking. One message. “I’m trying to contact Anne Morgan,” the voice said. “It’s Fiona, from Emma Helmsley’s office. We spoke to each other earlier this week. Could you ring me back please, when you’ve got a minute?”

  It was just 5 p.m. Plenty of time to return her call. I played the message again, trying to decipher the tone of her voice. Was it inviting and friendly and therefore about to offer me an interview? Or politely dismissive, a courtesy call at best? Was I frightened? I wasn’t sure. I only knew that I didn’t want to spend another night on my own, disappointed after being told I didn’t get the job, or that there wasn’t one to get. It could wait until the morning. At least then I wouldn’t look quite so desperate.

  The phone rang again before I’d had time to drink my tea. I left it for a bit, then picked up the receiver.

  “Hello, is this Anne?” The voice was newly familiar.

  “Yes it is.” I scratched hard at a spot of dried paint on my arm. The paint came off, but my arm began to bleed. I pressed it against my jeans, dark blotches blooming along my thigh.

  “It’s Fiona, from Emma’s office. Sorry to ring twice in the one afternoon . . .”

  “That’s fine,” I blurted. “I was out when you called. I was just about to call you back.”

  “Well, Rob and Emma are both free tomorrow, which is unusual for them, given both their schedules. It’s short notice, I know, but they were wondering if you might be able to have a chat with them at home in the morning. I won’t be there. It would be just you and them. Nothing formal. More a conversation than a proper interview, just to get to know each other a bit.”

  “Yes, I’d like that, thank you.”

  “Ten a.m.?”

  “Yes, that’s perfectly convenient. Thank you.”

  Of course I already knew where they lived from my googling, but not their exact address. I scribbled down the street and the house number.

  6

  Cleanliness, punctuality, order and method, are essentials in the character of a good housekeeper . . . Like “Caesar’s wife” she should be “above suspicion” and her honesty and sobriety unquestionable; for there are many temptations to which she is exposed.

  —Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management, 1861

  My bus arrived in Richmond far too early for the interview, and I walked up and down the high street peering into department store windows until it was time to catch the next one towards the river. Apart from two American tourists wearing hiking boots, the bus was empty. It made its way through a deserted winding road with woods on one side and cows and horses in their winter blankets grazing in a field on the other. It was hard to imagine that less than a mile away there was a busy town with cinemas and shops and supermarkets.

  “Different air they breathe here, love,” said the bus driver as I got off. The American tourists bounded past me, eager to explore Richmond Park. “You’ve got nearly twenty-five hundred acres of park on one side and the Thames River on the other. Film stars, rock stars—they love it,” he went on. “No change from ten, fifteen million quid for any of these houses.”

  “I’m going for a job interview,” I replied. “Wish me luck.”

  He gave a thumbs-up sign and drove away. It had rained earlier and there was a smell of damp earth and wet grass. A flock of feral green parakeets flew overhead, a neon streak in a pale wintry sky. The air was filled with their dinning, a strident, joyous noise drowning out the more reserved birdsong from native robins and wrens.

  I’d checked the route the night before, but I made a mistake and got off the bus one stop too early. Then the walk took longer than I’d expected, and the houses were so huge and far apart from each other that I had to jog the last bit, my skirt riding up my legs, my tights making that brushing fibrous noise, and my toes cramping, unaccustomed to high heels. I almost missed it because I was looking for a street number and all the houses had names instead. It was only when I looked closer that I saw the numbers painted in brown below the letter boxes. I walked along until I found the one I was looking for, barely visible on a high brick wall. Above it was a bronze plate engraved with a name. Wycombe Lodge. I stood for a minute to regain my composure and wipe the mud off my shoes.

  Along the wall was a pair of wrought-iron gates, each bar as thick as my arm. The bottom half of each gate was covered with a solid sheet of black metal, so I couldn’t see anything of the house from the street. I walked along to a wooden door with an intercom next to it. I swallowed hard and pressed the buzzer. The night before, I’d wondered whether to announce myself with my usual “Hi” or go for a more mature “Hello.” I thought the second option would be safer, but I didn’t get the chance to say anything at all. There was no voice at the other end, just a buzz as the door opened and then a click as someone hung up the intercom.

  I pushed through to a glorious square house built of wine-colored brick. It was either Georgian or Queen Anne. I could never tell the difference. A climbing rose, still bearing some of last autumn’s hips, reached all the way to the roof, softening what might have been an otherwise austere exterior. Sunlight bounced off the bank of tall windows on the first floor, almost blinding me. When my vision cleared, I saw I was standing in a graveled forecourt edged by giant topiary balls. An empty stone pond with a fountain stood in the middle, in front of a portico with white stucco columns. The door was open. I glimpsed a flagstone floor and a flash of red from a rug.

  I walked towards the door, my shoes with their flimsy leather soles crunching and slipping over the gravel. It was uneven, almost bare in some places. In others, weeds had sprung up and fell over themselves at odd angles. The bottom of the pond was littered with browned leaves. Two pots containing scrawny bay trees stood on either side of the portico. Tucked out of sight behind them were plastic crates of empty wine bottles and dirty dinner plates. A clump of old telephone books, their pages all curled up, lay heaped in a corner.

  “Come in, come in,” called an unseen woman’s voice. I walked into the empty hall, my heels echoing on the checkered flagstones before being muffled by a worn patterned rug. A curved staircase led up to the higher floors. Along the hall were three open doors, and at the end a pair of closed doors. I had no idea where to go and paused next to a narrow table with a rectangular gilt mirror leaning over it. Piles of letters were propped against a vase of fading white roses, the water green and scummy. Blotched petals fell onto a pair of muddy trainers.

  “We’re in here,” said the voice, and I followed its sound into the first door opposite the staircase. Emma stood against the fireplace. Embers smoldered in the grate. She was taller than I’d expected, and she looked younger than she had in the photos, with a small heart-shaped face, the skin tight and gleaming across the bones. Her head was cocked to one side like a curious bird’s. There was a crosshatch of fine lines around her eyes. At first I thought they were green, but then the sun broke through into the room and showed them to be an unusual clear blue with a dark ring around the iris. She wore Converse tra
iners and what looked like a thermal vest over a long, trailing skirt, the hem torn in places where she must have tripped over it.

  “Hello, thank you so much for coming,” she said in a voice like silk. “What a mess we’re in. I’m so sorry.” She made it sound as if our positions were reversed, as if I was the potential boss and she was the one who was under scrutiny. “We had a few friends to dinner last night.” She did this little fluttery thing with her hands.

  Just then Rob walked in, his mobile glued to his ear. He waved and started to walk out again. At the door, he paused long enough to hold his phone at arm’s length. “Hi,” he said. “Back in a minute.”

  “Everything went on a bit later than we thought,” said Emma. She moved a vase of fading lilies from one table to another, seeming not to notice the bright yellow pollen sprinkling everywhere. “We’re a bit done in, so sorry.”

  I knew the feeling. I’d been up until midnight myself, finally deciding on an irreproachable Marks & Spencer black skirt and checked jacket, an outfit that Emma herself might have advised prospective job applicants to wear to an interview. The unapologetic light above the bathroom mirror had showed the dark rings under my eyes as I practiced answering the questions she might ask. Best pronunciation, all crisp consonants and inoffensive vowels.

  “I haven’t actually done this type of work before . . .”

  No. Too negative.

  “I’m sure I could do the job to your satisfaction . . .”

  Did that sound overconfident, arrogant even?