The Housekeeper

by Suellen Dainty

  “I’ve been working in restaurants for years, and in so many ways it’s the same as running a house . . .” Yes, that might work. Remember to smile. Try to get some sleep. In bed, I lay on my back and listened to the rise and fall of my breath. A cab pulled up across the road, its brakes squeaking. The headlights swung on the ceiling as it turned around and drove away. There was the clattering of garbage bins and the urgent scream of a fox, like a person pursued. After that, there was no sound until the raucous ping of my alarm.

  Emma was gazing at me, nodding as if she’d agreed with something I’d just said. But I hadn’t said anything at all. I knew she was expecting a response, something that would indicate my suitability for the job, that I wasn’t the sort of person to show up at an interview and not have anything to say about myself.

  “You must be so busy,” I said. “With your work and talks and everything.”

  Was it the right kind of comment? Too late now. I brushed specks of pollen off my jacket and concentrated on keeping my body still and formal so the nerves inside wouldn’t show themselves.

  “I hope I’m not late,” I said, although I knew I was punctual to the minute.

  “Of course not,” smiled Emma. Gold hoop earrings danced about her face. “Would you like to take a seat?”

  I went to sit down, but she kept standing, so I straightened up again, feeling ridiculous, as if I’d begun to curtsy to her but changed my mind. I smiled, hoping that it was the kind of professional smile that might convey competence and efficiency.

  The sitting room was large and elegant, with high ceilings covered in elaborate plasterwork. There were two windows at the front and French doors leading onto a garden at the other end. I sensed its history of lustrous evenings and lively conversation. But now the room and everything in it were at odds with each other, like split personalities. I’d imagined something smarter, maybe some of those Italian modular sofas with walls in shades of muted beige, and abstract pictures hung at orchestrated angles; or classic squashy sofas in chintz with elegant armchairs and antique sideboards.

  I didn’t expect the old-fashioned 1980s egg yolk–colored walls, the cracked bamboo side tables, and the rickety furniture. A high wing chair stood on one side of the fireplace opposite a faded sofa. Strands of stuffing—it looked like horsehair, although I couldn’t be sure—were coming through. Scattered about were pairs of those Edwardian armchairs with cane sides and mahogany legs, all scarred with bits gouged out of them. There were holes in the rugs as well, patched from underneath with pieces of duct tape. Bits showed through, dull silver like discarded coins.

  The mess of it all! Empty wineglasses smeared with fingerprints crowded the side tables, and three plates gummed with hardened cheese were scattered on the floor. Emma didn’t seem to notice. She didn’t even pretend to be embarrassed about everything skewed at odd angles, the candles left to collapse into gray stalagmites on the mantelpiece. And me so anxious the night before in my little box with the cushions prancing en pointe along the sofa, the coffee table at a perfect parallel, mugs washed up on the hour.

  There had been no need for the Q and A session in front of the bathroom mirror either. Emma only asked two things. When could I start and did I like dogs? Right then, a small hairy cairn terrier made his entrance and peed on the rug right in front of me. Although I could see he was a male, he squatted like a bitch. I’d have tapped him on the nose with a rolled up newspaper and put him outside, but Emma giggled.

  “Poor Siggy. All my fault. I forgot to let you into the garden. I’m sorry, little boy.”

  The dog’s urine began to spread from a puddle to a large wet patch while Emma smiled and waited for me to reply to her questions. All I could think about was the urine seeping through the pile and how it would smell. I scrabbled in my bag for a wad of tissues, bent down and began blotting it. Emma did another hand fluttery thing.

  “I should have thought of that, how silly. Naughty Siggy.”

  The dog wagged his tail and she leaned down and scratched his ears before picking up a wastepaper bin, full of wine corks and old newspapers, and offering it to me with an apologetic shrug. I put the sodden tissues in it.

  There was a whoosh of air behind me and Rob came back into the room. He pocketed his mobile and rubbed his hands together. His eyes wandered around the walls and came to rest on me. Behind the rimless spectacles, they were alert and appraising. His gaze moved slowly and unapologetically around my face and head. I wasn’t used to being studied so closely, and I worried that my appearance would be found deficient because of its very ordinariness, its lack of definition. The nervous hammering inside ratcheted up several notches. The room was so warm, almost hot. My neck pricked with perspiration. I shifted my feet. A tiny piece of gravel rubbed against my heel.

  His face crinkled into a sudden disarming smile. “Well!” he exclaimed, opening his arms like a concert conductor, waving them around. “I’m afraid you’ve caught us a bit unawares.” His voice had a slight northern burr, and it really was chocolate, the way critics described it. He didn’t sound afraid at all. He was taller than Emma by about half a head, with a handsome olive-skinned face and thick black hair combed straight back from his forehead. He wore a crumpled pale blue linen shirt hanging out over faded jeans. He was barefoot, with long brown toes, reminding me of a monkey.

  Both of them had the untroubled, slightly vacant look that I associated with effortless superiority and moneyed ease. Together they were more attractive than apart. Rob’s darkness made Emma’s fair skin and hair less bland and predictable, and her pale, fine features lightened what might otherwise have been a sallow cast to his face. He moved towards her and touched her shoulder. It was an affectionate gesture, but not an intimate one; just enough to make me feel an outsider. Rob folded his arms. Emma leaned against him and put her arm around his waist

  “So, what do you think?” she asked. “Will you take us on? We’re not that bad, really.”

  As if on cue from some invisible film director, they smiled. They were so sure I would like them, and they were right. For that moment, both were completely focused on me, and I felt that they believed in me, that they saw in me qualities I’d never noticed before. It seemed they liked me more than I liked myself, although they didn’t know me at all. The feeling was immediate and almost too peculiar to express. It was like walking into a strange room and finding it acutely familiar.

  “I hope we haven’t ruined our chances with this mess from last night,” said Emma, still clutching the wastepaper bin. “We promise to try to be good. And Jake and Lily are practically grown up. They’re at school every day and we’re out of the house at work, so you wouldn’t have to put up with us being under your feet all the time.”

  She sat down on a cane chair and stroked Siggy’s head with one hand. He closed his eyes and lifted his head. If he’d been a cat, he would have purred with pleasure.

  “We wouldn’t expect you to start too early in the morning, or stay late in the evening,” she continued. “But we need someone to sort us out, just a bit. Keep us on the straight and narrow. Rob’s got this book to get finished and I’ve got all this other stuff to do. So . . . would you, I mean could you . . . perhaps think about coming to work here?” Her voice was diffident, like she was asking a huge favor from a random stranger.

  “Please say yes,” said Rob, beaming and nodding at the same time.

  “Yes, then. Yes,” I repeated, not quite believing my good luck, how everything was falling into place around me like blossoms from a tree. “I’d love to.”

  I almost leaned towards them on the way to an embrace, before remembering that both Rob and Emma had never set eyes on me before that morning.

  “What do you think?” asked Emma. “Maybe start sometime in the late morning and leave about seven p.m.?”

  “I hope that’s OK,” said Rob. He mentioned an amount of money.

  “It’s fine. It’s great.” I’d never worked such a short day, and the salary was a bit less th
an I’d earned at Anton et Amis. But I was frugal.

  Emma stood up, still clutching the wastepaper bin. “What a relief! Thank you so much. Fiona said that if we didn’t snap you up right now, someone else would and we’d regret it for the rest of our days.”

  Once the interview, such as it was, had ended, Rob and Emma both began questioning me, one after the other, often interrupting. Was it true that Tony Blair had dined at the restaurant? Yes, I replied. He’d ordered from the set price menu.

  “Really?” said Emma. “How interesting.” At first I thought she was being merely polite, but her intent gaze and frequent nods indicated otherwise. Maybe she was trying to decipher the psychology of Blair’s policy on the Middle East by whether he chose à la carte or prix fixe. Did his choice indicate a man who knew his own mind and would not be swayed by cholesterol-raising heftily priced plates of Scottish lobster and hand-fed beef fillet, or a certain economic meanness and lack of original thinking? How did this illuminate his political decisions? I’d read enough of Emma’s books and blogs to know that any detail of a life, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant, had its own interest.

  “And what about Madonna? What did she eat?” asked Emma, her hands clasped, leaning forward, so close that I could smell her scent, something woody and herbal. I had to plead ignorance on that one, as it had been my day off.

  “Do people really spend a thousand pounds on a bottle of wine, or is that an exaggeration?” Rob asked.

  “Sometimes,” I said. “Hedge-funders on bonus day. People whose horse had won a big race or who’d bought or sold a company.”

  “I do hope you won’t get bored too quickly,” said Emma. There was a worried look on her face and she stared at me. “We’re terribly dull and normal compared to all the people you’ve been working for. No scandals in our life. We just plod along from day to day. We don’t even own a car. Are you really sure you won’t get bored?”

  “Not at all,” I replied. It felt so good to have someone think what I’d done was interesting. “Besides, I was working in the kitchen, not sitting next to them at dinner.”

  “Well,” said Emma. “It sounds pretty glamorous to us.” A phone rang in another room and she jumped up. “That’s someone I have to speak to. I’m sorry. Everything is getting away from me this morning. I wanted to show you around the house, so you’d know where everything is. Can it wait until you start? Do you mind?”

  “No, it’s fine,” I said.

  She shook my hand. “We’re so happy that you’re going to take up our offer. Really happy.” Then she was gone, her Converse trainers squeaking on the flagstones.

  Rob showed me to the front door. “See you very soon then.” He patted me on the arm. “You’re one of us now. Let’s hope you don’t regret it.” We laughed, as if he’d made a ridiculous joke.

  “I bet I won’t,” I said. After he closed the front door with a solid thud, I stood on the porch and surveyed the curve of the gravel forecourt, the weathered stone of the pond and the massive topiary balls planted so long ago. Everything had an air of pleasing permanence, despite the peeling paint on the front door and the plastic crates behind the pots. It didn’t matter if weeds grew and the place needed a sweep. Most people would admire its gracious beauty before noticing trivial things like that.

  A bus accelerated around the corner and I jolted.

  That was the thing with places like this. Their walls and gates and balustrades had stood solid for centuries, through wars and bombs and family feuds. It made you think that nothing could get in. It made you forget that three hundred feet away a number 65 bus was making its way to Kingston.

  7

  Try, as much as possible, to surround yourself with people with a generous spirit who inspire you and take you with them to a place of higher awareness. That place of higher awareness is the starting point for achieving your dreams.

  —Emma Helmsley, “Taking the Moment,” March 16, 2016

  Jude tried to talk me out of it. “I don’t understand. It’s like you’re deliberately aiming low.”

  “I’m not aiming low,” I said, wiping the steam from the kettle off my kitchen window. “I just want a break from restaurant work. I decided I wanted something quieter for a while.”

  “Hmmph!” She sounded out of breath. “Sorry. I’m exercising in the park. This new trainer will be the death of me. Can’t you think a bit more about it? You can’t get anything quieter than being alone in someone else’s house all day.”

  “I’m not on my own. There are the children—they’ll be home from school in the afternoons. And there’s a dog.”

  “A dog! That’ll make all the difference.”

  “You don’t understand,” I said. A pigeon landed on the ledge. I banged the glass. It flapped its wings and flew off, leaving a dribble of pale droppings.

  “I know I can get another job in a restaurant, and I know I’m good at what I do. What I need right now is something simple. I want the time to think about how to fix my life, and I think I can make Emma’s life less complicated and stressful. I really do.”

  “If you say so,” she said. “Uh-oh, I’m in trouble now. The trainer is wagging his finger at me. Got to go, love you.”

  I started at Wycombe Lodge the next week, arriving half an hour early on my first day so that Emma could show me around the house.

  “Thank goodness you’re here,” she said when I pressed the buzzer. Again the front door was open, but this time Emma was in the hall, dressed in a tailored navy suit and a white silk shirt. She looked older, more imposing. Siggy sat by her feet, staring up at me with his head cocked to one side. “I had this terrible feeling last night that you’d changed your mind and weren’t going to show up. Oh, it’s so good to see you.”

  “I haven’t changed my mind.” I smiled. “And it’s good to see you too. It’s good to be here.” Wycombe Lodge was just as I remembered, but a bit neater. The crates and piles of old phone books had disappeared, and someone had made a start on the weeds in the gravel.

  Together we walked down the hall, Siggy’s claws scratching on the flagstones in time to the clack of Emma’s heels. We went past the sitting room where I’d met Emma and Rob, then past a study with two desks and a desktop computer. Next to the study was another smaller sitting room with a television and more mismatched furniture. There was an enormous cloakroom with the usual basin and toilet, but also two armchairs and an open fireplace full of half-burned logs and ashes.

  “Isn’t that the funniest thing,” said Emma, as if she were reading my mind. “A fireplace in a room like this. But I guess when they built the house, they wanted people to be comfortable when they needed a pee. We still light it sometimes, for parties.”

  She opened the doors at the end of the hall, and we walked into a dining room with windows all around. A long, scratched oak table stood in the center, surrounded by odd chairs, some rickety and fragile, others large and imposing, as if specially made for overweight people. A pine dresser and sideboard stood against the walls. French doors led onto a square of muddy lawn bordered by high brick walls with a tall beech tree in one corner.

  All the time Emma kept talking, telling me straight out that the house didn’t belong to them. It was owned by her family under some complicated trust. She could live there as long as she liked, but it would never be hers. When she died or if she decided to move away, some other relative would live in it, or perhaps Jake and Lily might be able to take it over. I envied that about her, the way she tossed private family information into a conversation with a complete stranger. “You’ll meet Jake and Lily this afternoon,” she said as we walked through to the kitchen. “They’ve already left for school.” From upstairs there was a thumping sound and the rush of water through pipes, then a clatter in the dining room.

  Rob dashed into the kitchen. “I’m running so late for my production meeting,” he announced to Emma. He pecked her on the cheek before stopping short and staring at me, as if he was trying to work out why a stran
ger was in his kitchen.

  “It’s Anne,” I said, dryness in my mouth in case over the weekend he’d changed his mind about me and forgotten to discuss it with Emma. But the moment was over in less than a second. He patted my arm in an avuncular way. “Welcome, welcome,” he said. “Anne! Yes of course. Here you are. I hope we don’t let you down.” He grabbed a half-eaten piece of toast from the mess of cereal packets and plates on the table. “My only saving grace is that I’m not going to be in your way when I’m working from home. I’m religious about not leaving the office during working hours.”

  Emma giggled. I hadn’t noticed at our first meeting, but one of her incisors was crooked. It made her look less perfect, prettier. “Rob means his man’s shed at the bottom of the garden. It’s got everything, even a shower and a composting loo. Rob is the only one allowed in—it’s a no-go area for the rest of us.”

  She gestured towards the garden in an elegant wave. In the center of the brick walls was a gate opening onto a long double border of tangled shrubs. At the end stood a miniature clapboard cottage painted duck-egg blue, with a pitched shingled roof, a porch, and a white front door, like an illustration from an old-fashioned children’s book.

  “Just as well no one goes inside,” said Rob. Toast crumbs sprayed down his shirt. “I may as well tell you now. You’ll find out soon enough. I’m an absolute slob around the house. The only thing I do is put out the garbage bins each week. I’ve tried to be neat, but I’m just not very good at it. So sorry, hope you won’t mind.”

  “I won’t mind at all,” I said.

  That was the thing with Rob and Emma. They had a great pleasure and confidence in their own dazzling selves, as if there were no sad dark places, no simmering secrets inside either of them that needed to stay hidden. Every nook and cranny of their personalities was out there on the shelf. Pick me up, they seemed to say. Turn me over. You won’t find me wanting.