The Housekeeper

by Suellen Dainty

  A couple with a small boy was sitting on the grass triangle opposite the bricked-up entrance to the lunatic asylum. I’d looked it up on Wikipedia after I’d first walked past it all those months ago. Hanwell was one of the first asylums to encourage patients to exercise in fresh air and to ban the use of mechanical restraints, a move that was considered radical at the time. But people had still been locked up behind these walls with no real freedom. Even McLeish’s madhouse had to have been better than that.

  I sat down on a nearby bench and gave a polite weekend smile to the couple. The boy stood up and tottered along in that beaming punch-drunk way of children who have just discovered how to walk. I foraged in my backpack and took out Rob’s folder. I’d slipped it into the zippered section before setting out. I wanted to look at McLeish’s verses again in a different place, to see if my reaction was still the same. But in my rush to read them the first time, and probably because of the dim lamplight in my flat, I hadn’t realized that two pages had stuck together. Here, in the daylight, they were clearly visible. I carefully prised them apart.

  The drugs were amazing. Not that sedative shit they handed out in hospitals to slow you down and mess up your mind. We used to call that stuff the lithium handcuff. The drugs McLeish gave us took you way up, with the best hallucinations, clean and clear. But some of the women didn’t like it, in spite of the drugs. They complained about having to cook and clean, all the household stuff. McLeish was old-school like that. Women had their place. They’d leave and then they’d come back. Oh, they were all in love with him. There was one woman, I don’t remember her name. She was amazing looking and she cried a lot. McLeish was keen on her. The drugs didn’t work for her. Bad reaction or something. I heard later she’d died somewhere and by then it was pretty much over. A lot of people left. Someone came and took us away and it was back into the old hellhole, locked in at night, for our own good, so they said. People said McLeish used us. Maybe. I didn’t care. It was the happiest time of my life. Did I say about the drugs?

  I shivered in the bright sun. This man, whoever he was, had said that McLeish handed out psychedelic drugs like chocolates to vulnerable people. The writer had linked the drugs to the death of an unnamed woman. I stared down at the page. The words blurred together. I read the last sentences again and again while an invisible band tightened around my chest. Why hadn’t Rob mentioned this? Did he think I might not be able to cope, that I might become unhinged by such an account? I told myself to be calm. But everything had changed with the resident’s story of reckless drug taking and the unexplained death of a woman. McLeish’s experiments to unlock creativity had gone horribly wrong. He wasn’t the head of an experimental free community set up to support vulnerable people. He was the controller of a warped drug-soaked laboratory.

  A narrow boat chugged past, its decks gleaming with fresh varnish. Pots of red geraniums hung along the sides, and the cabin roof had been converted into a vegetable garden with late summer squashes and zucchini plants growing out of boxes. A floating home, growing food for a family.

  I put the pages into my backpack and turned for home, where I spent the rest of the day trying not to think about anything at all.

  That night, I dreamed that I was driving in congested traffic, hemmed in on every side, when a huge swan, its feathers glued together with oily filth, smashed through my windscreen and attacked me with flailing wings. Then suddenly it fell against me, a dead, stinking weight. In my dream, I was devastated. I cried like a child, not just because it was dead, but also because somehow it was my fault.

  17

  Trust yourself and your instincts when it comes to relationships. But to do that, you must strive to know all about yourself. Take the time to ask these questions. Why do I want this person? Do I want this person, or do I need them? Do I like this person, or am I merely attracted to them? Listen to the answers. Use this knowledge to empower the choices in your life.

  —Emma Helmsley, “Taking the Moment,” September 22, 2016

  The day of autumn equinox came, an equal division of light and dark as the sun crossed the imaginary line at the center of the planet. White cloud-shaped seed puffs from the plane trees clumped together on the pavement as I walked to work. It was still so hot, a full Indian summer. The aftershock of the unnamed man’s statement and the nightmare resounded through me with the thud of each footstep.

  I walked into the kitchen and there was Rob, sitting at the table, piece of toast in his hand, wearing a toweling dressing gown. A blush crept along my cheeks, like I’d come upon him naked. Rob had always been dressed before. Maybe dressed casually, barefoot and in jeans and T-shirt, but never like this, the sun glinting along the stubble on his chin, his hair up in spikes and the smell of sleep about him, that musty smell from their bed that I knew so well.

  “Hi,” he said. “Don’t mind me. I was about to go upstairs. But now that you’re here . . .” He smiled and shrugged his shoulders.

  “Coffee, now that I’m here? While I’m up? No problem.” I smiled back at him, my embarrassment ebbing away and everything in a steadier place again because of the sight of him, his physical presence. Not in a completely steady place. But steadier.

  “Coming right up.” I walked past him into the kitchen. The collar of his dressing gown had fallen down, revealing the intricate whorls of hair on the back of his neck, disappearing down his spine. Five minutes later, I was back at the table with our mugs of coffee. Rob was already standing, and I followed him down the hall into the study, watching the curve of the muscles along his calf, how they tightened and relaxed with each step.

  Just before he sat down, he turned suddenly and we found ourselves face-to-face, only inches away from each other. I felt a compulsion, like vertigo, to fall towards him. How long did we stand there without moving? Long enough for me to see the soft lines on his lips, the crusts of sleep at the corner of his eyes, the gray strands in the lock of his hair that fell over his forehead; long enough for me to want to touch the hollow under his collarbone, to rest my head on his shoulder.

  The tufts of cotton on his dressing gown brushed my arm. My heart slipped. He tilted his head towards mine and I leaned closer, mirroring his movements and matching my breath to his. In and out, so very slowly. The air between us was thick, almost liquid. My lips felt swollen and sensitive to his every breath. I would have kissed him, right there, and done everything with him, without a thought of anything or anyone. But somehow we bumped into each other, awkwardly because I was still holding the mugs of coffee. I stepped back, bewildered by what might have happened and what didn’t.

  “Sorry,” said Rob, tightening the belt of his dressing gown. His upper lip was beaded with sweat and he wiped it clean. With that movement, the air thinned and everything disappeared. He sat down behind his desk and I handed him his coffee.

  “So, how was your weekend?” he asked.

  “Fine,” I replied. It was as if the moment between us hadn’t happened, as if my palms were sweaty for no reason and my stomach was churning of its own accord. “Quiet, but fine. I went for a long walk yesterday. It always clears the head. How’s everything with the book?”

  “Nearly done,” he said. “And about time too.” He ran his hands through the spikes of his hair and fixed me with that steady gaze I knew so well. Nothing at all hinted that we were almost in each other’s arms less than two minutes ago. “I just wish I’d been able to help you more, to find out definitively if you and your mother were there. It’s so tantalizing, but I can’t say for sure. I can only say it’s likely, because of the images in your mind. Our best clue was the photograph of the woman called Mary with McLeish, but that’s not someone you recognize. Maybe when the book is published—although I’m not expecting a huge readership—someone might get in touch with more information. It often happens. I’m sorry.”

  I wanted to ask him about the man’s statement, but he reached over and placed my hand between his two hands, like before, and I forgot everything except the warm
th of his fingers and how he pressed his thumb into my palm, moving it back and forth in a slow, hypnotic rhythm. “But how’s everything with you? Any more thoughts or images?”

  I nodded. That morning, soon after I’d woken, an image had surfaced in my mind of a woman whirling in circles, humming to herself as her nightgown flew up like a ballerina’s tutu, her pale legs unfurling in an elegant arabesque. I’d reached for my notebook.

  Drums beating so loudly. My ears hurt. Someone is playing a piano. I can’t see who it is. They’re dancing now, the women are jumping around the room. My mother is there, somewhere with the others. They told me to go away, but I’m hiding outside behind the door with the crack on the side so I can see. A man watches, moves around like a cat with a mouse. A strange smell, like metal mixed with sweat. I hear their labored breath, the thump of feet on the floor. They dance on and on, their white dresses clinging to their bodies, and then they fling them off and throw them into a corner. The man moves between them, touching breasts and bellies and legs. He lies on the floor. They gather round him and sink down beside him. He gives them the colored chocolates and they do those things again, the things that make me feel sick and spinning. I want my mother, but I can’t find her.

  “It was a bit surreal and vague. A woman dancing.” The idea of giving Rob graphic sexual content so soon after that moment between us was too embarrassing.

  “Just one woman?” he asked.

  “I think so. Also, something else a bit vague—did McLeish give them drugs?” I asked.

  “Yes, he did. Not prescription drugs, but mescaline derivatives, things like that. He thought it would free their minds and make them more creative. It wasn’t a new theory—there were quite a few experimental studies way back in the fifties and sixties, before drugs like LSD were made illegal. Even now, academics are still researching this link. There’s research under way at Imperial College, and the early findings indicate hallucinogens have potential for treating depression and addiction. It’s not as radical as you might think.”

  “But wasn’t what McLeish did still dangerous? I mean, couldn’t people have died?”

  He shook his head. “No one died. Why do you ask?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “These images, these memories—you shouldn’t worry about them. There is nothing abnormal or weird about what you’re thinking, nothing at all. We’ll make sense of it at some stage, I’m sure.”

  My eye traveled above his head around the room, across the shelves of books and the wall of paintings, all the things I knew so well by now, then down to his steady face and smooth olive skin. He took his hands away and left mine on the desk. After the warmth of his skin, the grain of the oak was coarse under my fingers and the butt of a nail rubbed against my thumb. Oh, I had wanted Rob in those few seconds of vertigo. I had wanted to lose myself in him. Now, away from the intoxicating smell and touch of him, I thought of Emma and the family I cared so much about. I couldn’t have continued to work at Wycombe Lodge, to talk to Emma in the evenings and Rob in the mornings, if I had slept with him. The guilt, the sense of betrayal to Emma and Jake and Lily, would have undone me. Wanting him had blunted me to rational thought.

  18

  Hospitality is a most excellent virtue; but care must be taken that love of company, for its own sake, does not become a prevailing passion; for then the habit is no longer hospitality but dissipation.

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

  The first Friday of September, the day of the party, was warm with a drizzle of rain, but bringing a forgiving light that burnished the furniture and obscured stains and scuff marks. By early afternoon, the house was ready. Fresh lilies in the vases, their exotic scent everywhere. Surfaces polished and dusted. Floors vacuumed. From his basket, Siggy watched me as I walked through the expectant rooms, the sound of my footsteps echoing around me. The almost-but-not-quite moment with Rob had been deposited somewhere in my mind where I didn’t have to think about it. As for Rob, nothing changed in his attitude towards me during our morning meetings, although they’d dribbled away to one or two times a week, because he said he was on a last-minute rush with the book.

  By 5 p.m., everyone was back; Jake and Lily from school, Rob from a media lunch in Knightsbridge, and Emma from a book signing out of town.

  “A quick pasta? Salad?” I offered.

  “Thanks but we’ll eat later,” called Emma from the kitchen door. “I’m off to shower and change.”

  “Me too,” said Rob.

  “I’m going to the cinema,” announced Lily.

  “I need to be somewhere later. I’ll get a pizza,” Jake chimed in.

  “But it’s a school night,” I said.

  Lily grinned. “Mom and Dad won’t even know that we’re gone if they’re having a party. At least, they never have before.”

  “Where are you going?” I asked Jake. “Anywhere interesting?”

  Anger, or it might have been fear, flashed across his face. “Not really. But I need to hurry up, or I’ll be late.” He picked up his backpack. Seconds later, I heard the front door close behind him.

  I was alone again. Above me, the pipes shuddered with the rush of water. There were footsteps back and forth, then nothing. In the foxed mirror between the kitchen and the dining room, I glimpsed myself, hair smooth and pulled back, my usual uniform of jeans and shirt exchanged for black trousers and a white embroidered linen top. I didn’t look forlorn or put upon. I didn’t look like the kind of person who might have spent her first five years in a cult, whose mentally ill mother might have been under the spell of a power-crazed psychologist; the kind of person who scribbled bizarre things in a notebook that might or might not be true. That pinched look I used to see every day in the mirrors of the locker room in the restaurant had disappeared. So too had the lines that were beginning to make their way from my nose down to the corners of my mouth. My night worker pallor had changed into the first suntan I’d ever had, the result of my daily walks with Siggy and runs along the towpath. I looked relaxed and normal, almost pretty.

  Two hours later, the rain making everything outside wet and slick, a couple of men from the deli, sweating the way other people breathed, pushed through the front gate with their crates and trays. Three girls dressed in jeans and black aprons followed them.

  “Sally,” said one, introducing herself with an authoritative air. “Fiona sent us. To help with the drinks and things.”

  The other two strolled around the room looking at the pictures. “That’s a Ben Nicholson,” said one with awe in her voice. She looked stoned and spoke in a low drawl. “His pictures are in the Tate.” I’d always thought it was an amateur landscape painted by one of Emma’s relatives.

  “OK,” said Sally. “You can stop gawping and set up the bar. Open the red wine so it can breathe and put the white wine into the ice buckets. Pronto, girls, pronto.”

  “Perhaps I could help?” I asked.

  “Good heavens no!” she replied. The men rushed past and slammed the door, leaving a pungent smell of sweat mixed with stale cooking oil. I retreated to the dining room. Fiona had ordered a glut of food. A whole salmon, its soft, pink flesh gaping under silver skin, lay in the middle of the table. Behind it was an enormous glazed ham studded with cloves. There were bowls of quinoa, spelt, and various other grains, and platters of roast beef and bread. There was cheese as well, far too many types and crowded together on the plate so that the overripe Camembert ran over the cheddar and down onto the table. Everything was festooned with chopped herbs, as if someone had dropped all the food on newly mown grass and picked it up again.

  On the sideboard, teetering on the lumps of hardened wax left by all the burned-down candles, were four chocolate mousse cakes and a lemon tart, still in their cardboard boxes. It looked like a chaotic picnic, nothing like the elegant precise buffets we provided at the restaurant’s private functions, everything polished and sculpted.

  Just before 8:30 p.m., Rob came downstairs in
jeans and a white linen shirt, a scrubbed gleam along his cheekbones. He stood at the bottom of the stairs, tapping his foot against the skirting board until Emma rushed down to join him. One of the girls in black handed them each a glass of wine and together they raised their glasses. “To us,” said Rob, and kissed the top of Emma’s head. “To you,” she replied, moving towards him like a bird floating into a harbor. “And everything to do with you.”

  “Oh, and Anne,” she said, turning to me and raising her glass again. “You’ve been so terrific. And you look so smart. Thank you for making an effort.”

  I felt myself blush. “You look lovely,” I said, although I wasn’t sure. Emma didn’t look anything like her usual self. For once her hair was properly dry, and she had styled it in fashionable waves that reminded me of a drag queen’s wig.

  “I thought I’d make a bit of a change for tonight.” She wore a new dress, not her usual floating silk pajamas. I’d seen it in her wardrobe last week with the tags still attached and thought it was something she’d bought by mistake and planned to return. There was nothing glamorous or smart about it, although it had cost nearly £800. It was dull brown and shapeless, designed by a stern Dutchman with an unpronounceable name who’d made his fashion reputation with asymmetrical inside-out seams decorated with dangling threads. Emma was wearing a pair of the designer’s earrings as well, enormous triangles of orange resin swinging below blue buttons. Her shoes were heavy and black.

  “That’s more like it. I knew it would look good on you.” Rob gazed at her with approval. So he’d chosen her clothes tonight. She’d certainly never worn anything like this before. She looked like a science teacher on acid, with too much coral-colored lipstick and her eyelashes clumped with black mascara. Her normal floating silk pajamas suited her so much better.